Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

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K Graham
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 3:42 am
Came across this a second ago:

Image

- Doc
It all makes sense now.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Kishkumen »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 3:43 pm
Maybe so or perhaps you are attaching a complexity that isn't there to justify your decisions or feelings. People can find meaning in just about anything if they convince themselves that there is meaning in that thing.
OK, sure, and this could be applied to you in reverse just as easily. People can find meaninglessness in just about anything if they convince themselves that there is no meaning in that thing.

On the other hand, as a professional historian who has spent a very long time studying early Mormonism, I am guessing that my tendency to interpret things differently has a lot more to do with that experience and skill set than it does with merely wishful thinking or narcissism.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Kishkumen »

K Graham wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 3:50 pm
But the two aren't mutually exclusive. Mormons typically say both things. The Church is factually true, and they know this because of their "spiritual witness." This is what I had been taught before joining the Church and the first time I had heard of any Mormons teaching that the Church was only true in a metaphorical sense, was well after my mission years when I saw apologists trying to come up with other paradigms to salvage their faith in the face of contradicting evidence.

When anachronisms are found in the Book of Mormon, the members just say well those things haven't been discovered yet. Meaning, they still believe it is factually true, and we all know the Mormon paradigm includes self-defensive mechanisms like assuming Satan is behind everything out there trying to prove it false. So when I bring up the fact that horses didn't exist in America at the time of the Book of Mormon wars, they don't say, "Oh it isn't factually true, only spiritually true." No, they typically say one of two things. My personal favorite is, "Archeology is in its infancy so we may still find horse remains from that time period." The other defense is to blame Satan for inventing all kinds of evidence because, being the one True Church on the planet means Satan has devoted all his time and effort to keep people from joining it.
Indeed! This is the LDS paradigm. Obviously it doesn’t work, and because it doesn’t work, because it is essentially the only game in town, it makes all the sense in the world for people to leave the LDS Church once they come to the realization that it doesn’t work. And that is honestly extremely laudable. Having believed in something that does not work, to find it does not work and confront that is really an amazing thing.

What I question is whether that means Mormonism has utterly failed. Mormonism does depend on a certain naïvété. And clearly it would not exist were it not for the ignorance and presumption of its founder. At the same time, it is almost uncanny how Joseph Smith put things together in a way that still invites curiosity and repays closer examination. You can leave aside any notion that God is behind it and this would still be the case. People who have no belief in Mormonism are still drawn to it as a fascinating object of inquiry.

There was a little group known as The Process Church that had an idiosyncratic theology, to put it mildly. They often get lumped in with Satanists because their theology had a larger and rather unique role for two different entities known as Lucifer and Satan, Although the group is essentially defunct, it still draws interest from people who study this kind of thing. One reason why, in my opinion, is because its theology does productively engage with the larger Western tradition in very unique and thought-provoking ways.

Mormonism presents a very similar case, in that its theological speculations and certain practices (temple) are very often unique, interesting, and yet deeply rooted in various strands of Western spirituality and practice. The funny thing is that the LDS Church has, by force of willful collective amnesia, neglect, or bourgeois preoccupations, actively suppressed that about itself in its quest to assimilate and help its people assimilate into the larger culture. So Mormonism is interesting, but LDSism is practically soul-and-mind-killingly boring.

Having forgotten, neglected, or fought the more interesting aspects of its own roots, LDSism is a ticking time bomb for anyone who has an ounce of curiosity. Once one sees that its odd combination of untenable ideas, methods, and empty discourse is laid bare, the thinking person either gets out or of a necessity forges their own version of LDSism that they can practice and believe on the sly within the larger LDS Church. The latter accommodations are doomed to be individual because the LDS Church actively suppresses those who seem poised to provide real nourishment to other members.

That’s why you see people like the Givenses operating right on the threshold of getting into real big trouble. They love Mormonism so much, and they see so much in it, but within the LDS paradigm they will be inhibited or expelled.
Well, it sure seemed like it to me. One of the first pro-Mormon videos I was shown as an "investigator" was of a Mormon archaeologist combing through Mesoamerica, drawing all sorts of parallels between things like Quetzalcoatl and the teachings of Jesus. I went to a symposium at the Stake center where some "expert" of some kind talked about newly discovered glyphs which we were told translated to sentences that only appear in the Book of Mormon, etc. When Spencer Kimball said Missionaries were donating blood to help accelerate the process of converting black people and Indians (Lamanites) into white and delightsome saints, or when he dedicated a page of his book to talk about Cain existing today in the form of Sasquatch, or any of the dozens of stories told by authority figures about garments stopping bullets, etc. It all seemed to be quite literal to me.
Yeah, and, honestly, I am not attacking anyone’s experience or saying they missed the boat. I am not an LDS neo-apologist saying that critics and ex-Mormons did the wrong thing, didn’t understand it all how they should have, are lazy learners, or what have you. What I am saying is that LDSism is not Mormonism, and that fighting LDSism does not discredit Mormonism as a historical phenomenon. Mormonism, for all intents and purposes, started to die at the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum. From there it fragmented into various sects that took up the project in various ways. People with an LDS background assume that their version is the real Mormonism.

It really isn’t.

Most critics and ex-Mormons approach questions about early Mormonism within the paradigm of their fight against LDSism and its apologetics. It is nearly impossible to get them to think about these issues outside of that paradigm, and, frankly, they are in no way obliged to do so.
I'm fairly certain that for most Mormons it is about both, which is why the vast majority of people baptized into the Church end up leaving it. They appreciate the warm fuzzies they initially experience, but then later realize it was self induced because the premise of those warm fuzzies was factually untrue. God isn't a man with literal bones, Indians aren't descendants of Jews, the entire concept of families are forever is incoherent and just silly, etc.
Yes. On the one hand, you are absolutely right. On the other hand, it is entirely the result of adopting a new set of assumptions that gets them to “realize it was self induced.” Or that the idea of being “self induced” is actually a problem. I could respond to the rest of your laundry list of allegedly ludicrous and laughable propositions, but it would be a waste of my time. Since you have all of these items on the list you want to put them on, and keep them relegated to, it would be pointless to try to get you to think about them differently.

And that is neither your fault nor does it reflect badly on you.
The Book of Mormon has meaning to whomever decides to read meaning into it.
Why is that a problem? You say that like it’s a problem, but I don’t see it as a problem. That is the way narratives work. A written narrative is just a selective reflection of human experience, cobbled together from real events as interpreted by limited minds, or from more or less relatable events that did not in fact happen in real life. What you do with those narratives is a matter of community and individual choice.
You say it is nonsense but the fact is Church leaders have stated several times that the truthfulness of the Gospel hinges on the Book of Mormon being what it purports to be. And that only makes sense given the extraordinary claims made by the Church. Claims that purport to be factually true. Like it being the ONLY True Church on the face of the earth. There was nothing figurative or metaphorical about this proclamation.
I don’t think you understand that the LDS Church does not really matter to me. I am not fighting the LDS Church, so what I say about the Book of Mormon does not have to be in reference to what the LDS Church does. I am arguing that the Book of Mormon, and indeed the entire Smith Restoration need not be read in reference to the LDS paradigm, which is a later development after the death of Joseph Smith. Yes, I understand that on this board we are for the most part a community of ex-LDS people who criticize “Mormonism” from an ex-LDS perspective.

What I am doing is coming in and saying that this is not the only way to think about these things. There are other “games” to play.
In my view the reason the Church wants members to constantly reaffirm their testimony because it serves as a defense against the evidence against it. Self delusion is a powerful tool. But I don't hold this against Mormons. As I've said before, I think many people are better off in the Church. Hell, I wouldn't mind paying tithing if I thought the money would actually go towards charity, and not funneled into another business venture.
The concept of self-delusion is also a powerful tool. It is used by many people to get others to conform to their own paradigm. With minority religions, for example, it is often used by “anti-cultists” (both secular and religious) to browbeat people who have different ideas. The person you disagree with must be operating under some “self-delusion” or perhaps they have been “brainwashed.” These are just rhetorical weapons to push people around. They have no scientific value whatsoever.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 6:08 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Sun May 15, 2022 3:43 pm
Maybe so or perhaps you are attaching a complexity that isn't there to justify your decisions or feelings. People can find meaning in just about anything if they convince themselves that there is meaning in that thing.
OK, sure, and this could be applied to you in reverse just as easily. People can find meaninglessness in just about anything if they convince themselves that there is no meaning in that thing.

On the other hand, as a professional historian who has spent a very long time studying early Mormonism, I am guessing that my tendency to interpret things differently has a lot more to do with that experience and skill set than it does with merely wishful thinking or narcissism.
We all have our biases. I can't find any spiritual worth of Mormon scripture given it being invented by a man who wanted to impose a theocracy on the United States just prior to his death. It was invented under dubious circumstances and Joseph Smith was very adept at maneuvering to stay in control. Power was his aim throughout. In the end, Joseph Smith was about to go down the wrong path and lead our ancestors with him. He had crowned himself king and requested 100,000 troops to "quell" the Native Americans (probably wanting to unite with them to then go after the US government for not siding with him regarding Missouri issues). He was the fascist leader everyone complains about today. As a result, it's hard to grant him any spirituality in my book. Then BY fulfilled the theocracy dreams of Joseph Smith and we got polygamy and mountain meadows. Today, we have the Fund that the leaders worship. Any spirituality seems incidental, something used as a means to the real goal of power for the few leaders at the top.

Anyway, I don't doubt you credentials as a historian.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Physics Guy »

I have indeed found Mormonism interesting, but not in a religious or spiritual way. I've found interesting things in other religions, things that seemed profound to me and worth contemplation. I was expecting to find something like that in Mormonism—and maybe it is indeed there—but I haven't seen it so far.

Instead what seems most interesting to me in Mormonism is that it seems like such a retro movement. Smith liked the Old Testament so much, it appears, that he made more of it. Or perhaps he didn't like it so much, himself, but he correctly guessed that there was a market for an Old Testament sequel.

The idea that the Hebrew Bible was somehow insufficient is one of the oldest and most basic Christian ideas. It's raised explicitly and at length in the Christian scriptures. The Christian Old Testament is effectively a different book from the Hebrew Bible even if it's an accurate translation of the text, because Christians brought their own reading to the whole thing; what the Old Testament became for Christians soon ceased to have much to do with what it meant to Jews. And a big part of what defines the Christian Old Testament is that it is the Bible 1.0 that had to be radically revised by the Christian gospel.

But somehow the early Mormons just didn't buy that. They were keen enough on Jesus, at least as a name, but they really wanted to re-imagine him as an Old Testament character, in an Old Testament setting—in the sense of what "Old Testament" meant to early nineteenth-century American Protestants. The only inadequacy these folks seemed to perceive in their Old Testament was that there wasn't enough of it. They were eager for more.

I'm curious why. What was it about the New Testament's koine culture, with everyone speaking pidgin Greek and trying to lie low and get along under Roman domination, that turned off those early Mormons? Why were they more attracted to the alternately triumphant and tragic tribalism of the Old Testament? Did they prefer covenants to parables? If so, why? Did they want more great wars and battles, more great plagues and wonders, instead of just the occasional arrest and execution, the occasional healing? If so, why did these 1830s New Englanders really want the big crowd scenes when previous centuries of European Christians had seemed content with the smaller sets of the New Testament or the lives of the saints?

The growth of Mormonism seems to represent a strong retro movement in a corner of Christendom. I'm curious why it occurred.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Kishkumen »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 2:33 pm
We all have our biases.
True.
I can't find any spiritual worth of Mormon scripture given it being invented by a man who wanted to impose a theocracy on the United States just prior to his death.
Is that really the reason? I suspect that you ceased to find any spiritual worth in Mormon scripture before you had problems with the theocracy part. The looks more like a rhetorical strategy that aims to make it seem ridiculous for anyone else not to join you in your "sensible" conclusion.
It was invented under dubious circumstances . . . .
Definitely interesting ones.
. . . . and Joseph Smith was very adept at maneuvering to stay in control.
Well, he was the one who came up with most of the important writings and ideas. So, why would he not want to remain in control? Now you want to fault him for being good at it, as though doing so were something sinister?
Power was his aim throughout.
That is beyond reductive.
In the end, Joseph Smith was about to go down the wrong path and lead our ancestors with him.
That sounds right. It is a good thing that he was stopped!
He had crowned himself king and requested 100,000 troops to "quell" the Native Americans (probably wanting to unite with them to then go after the US government for not siding with him regarding Missouri issues).
Yes, he was quite a character, that old Joe. Like many people in his position, he got carried away, in my opinion. Being the leader of a group like the Nauvoo-era Mormon church is psychologically dangerous and can be perilous for those who follow such leaders. No doubt.
He was the fascist leader everyone complains about today.
I don't think it is as simple as that. He definitely became more authoritarian in the Nauvoo era.
As a result, it's hard to grant him any spirituality in my book.
Well, I am not sure what your terms mean, but I concede that you seem to have some idea of Joseph Smith not meeting some standard you are comfortable with. Mostly, I think you were once fed a bunch of fairytales about who Joseph Smith was, basically a whitewashed, idealized LDS portrait, and, now that you have found that to be way out of wack, you have rejected the whole kit and caboodle. I can certainly understand that, even if I have no idea what spiritual means to you or why anyone but you should care what your definition is.

The bottom line here is that this is primarily about you and your conversion away from LDSism. I respect that, but it has nothing to do with anything I am personally interested in as a historian.
Then BY fulfilled the theocracy dreams of Joseph Smith and we got polygamy and mountain meadows. Today, we have the Fund that the leaders worship. Any spirituality seems incidental, something used as a means to the real goal of power for the few leaders at the top.
So maybe to you spiritual means free from politics, sex, violence, or money. You have constructed a narrative in which you reject the possibility of spirituality if things appear to go against your personal values. I think that is fine for you as a personal decision. I have removed myself from LDSism on a similar basis.

On the other hand, there is no absolute purity in human life. You can find reasons to reject almost anything claiming spirituality if you demand that everyone must live up to the strictest and highest standards before you admit the possibility of a substantive claim. Or, of course, you can do what many do today, and that is reject spirituality altogether as something that cannot or does not exist. Then you can be free of any consideration of these issues.

I chose otherwise.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Kishkumen »

Physics Guy wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 3:11 pm
I have indeed found Mormonism interesting, but not in a religious or spiritual way. I've found interesting things in other religions, things that seemed profound to me and worth contemplation. I was expecting to find something like that in Mormonism—and maybe it is indeed there—but I haven't seen it so far.

Instead what seems most interesting to me in Mormonism is that it seems like such a retro movement. Smith liked the Old Testament so much, it appears, that he made more of it. Or perhaps he didn't like it so much, himself, but he correctly guessed that there was a market for an Old Testament sequel.

The idea that the Hebrew Bible was somehow insufficient is one of the oldest and most basic Christian ideas. It's raised explicitly and at length in the Christian scriptures. The Christian Old Testament is effectively a different book from the Hebrew Bible even if it's an accurate translation of the text, because Christians brought their own reading to the whole thing; what the Old Testament became for Christians soon ceased to have much to do with what it meant to Jews. And a big part of what defines the Christian Old Testament is that it is the Bible 1.0 that had to be radically revised by the Christian gospel.

But somehow the early Mormons just didn't buy that. They were keen enough on Jesus, at least as a name, but they really wanted to re-imagine him as an Old Testament character, in an Old Testament setting—in the sense of what "Old Testament" meant to early nineteenth-century American Protestants. The only inadequacy these folks seemed to perceive in their Old Testament was that there wasn't enough of it. They were eager for more.

I'm curious why. What was it about the New Testament's koine culture, with everyone speaking pidgin Greek and trying to lie low and get along under Roman domination, that turned off those early Mormons? Why were they more attracted to the alternately triumphant and tragic tribalism of the Old Testament? Did they prefer covenants to parables? If so, why? Did they want more great wars and battles, more great plagues and wonders, instead of just the occasional arrest and execution, the occasional healing? If so, why did these 1830s New Englanders really want the big crowd scenes when previous centuries of European Christians had seemed content with the smaller sets of the New Testament or the lives of the saints?

The growth of Mormonism seems to represent a strong retro movement in a corner of Christendom. I'm curious why it occurred.
So, there are a few things that I would bring to bear on these questions. First of all, Joseph Smith was interested in understanding the deep past in his environment. The first draft of the Book of Mormon probably dealt with antediluvian American and was modeled on the antediluvian narrative in Genesis. We see what is left of this in the current Book of Mormon in the Jaredite material, in my opinion. He was also heavily influenced by Masonic myth, which found its focal point in legends about King Solomon and the Temple.

But he was, at the same time, a Christian, albeit of a heterodox kind. And, I think he got caught up in the Seeker tradition, as well as a kind of yearning for elements of the Christian tradition that were taken out of most of the Christianity of his experience thanks to the dominance of Protestant Christianity in his environment. You should read the scholarship of Stephen J. Fleming if you really want to start to understand this side of Smith. There is a specific intellectual and cultural background to what Smith is doing that need not be consigned to the mysteries of his personal whim.

One of the interesting paradoxes is that a lot of what he was doing was drawing from the well of Christian Platonism, and then perhaps hiding that by overtly dismissing "the philosophies of men." Again, see Stephen J. Fleming.

A lot of work remains to be done on these problems, but I think there are answers already beginning to be explored. Naturally, it will take many years of scholarship to turn the tide and overcome the amnesia of origins created by the deliberate mythmaking of the Smith family itself, and then perpetuated by ignorant followers who just believed the cover story they were told.

Mormonism is really just a heterodox species of Christianity on the American frontier. The various strands of influence that contributed to it were either heterodox Christian or esoteric. It may be an interesting and unique combination of these elements, but nothing about it is completely inexplicable once you understand its relationship with its environment.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by dastardly stem »

Kishkumen wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 3:55 pm
Mormonism is really just a heterodox species of Christianity on the American frontier. The various strands of influence that contributed to it were either heterodox Christian or esoteric. It may be an interesting and unique combination of these elements, but nothing about it is completely inexplicable once you understand its relationship with its environment.
In a way Mormonism is exactly what is expected in religion making it seems to me. Meaning just as you suggest there are various strands of influence on Mormons the same could be said of Christianity, it seems to me. Traditional Christianity feels grander and more important because its been around longer, the origins are more mysterious, and far more people refer to it for religion than Mormonism. But, interestingly, neither, in my view, are any more historically, philosophically or empirically viable than the other. If there is anything to the concept of "spirituality" in the west, Mormonism has as much a right to it as any. The seemingly obvious man-made or con aspect of it is immaterial. no doubt if we had as much on early Christianity as we do on early Mormonism it'd look just as fraudulent. I'd say it does look just as fraudulent. But who cares? "Spiritual" is the concept that debunks any criticism of religion anyway. If people get meaning and purpose, I suppose, we conclude that's what's important. I mean truly if people are better off dedicating their lives to make-believe things...I mean have at it. And, yet, I'd clarify, I'd still say that what they think they are better off doing, I disagree with. I mean they'd be better off without religion or the concept of spiritual...but they don't think so.

We can't just dismiss that which is very important to so many. I grant all of that. And I appreciate you pushing this perspective for that purpose. It hits closer to home for me when people want to dismiss Mormonism as if dismissing it and not dismissing all religion makes any sense.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Dr Exiled »

Kishkumen wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 3:41 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 2:33 pm
We all have our biases.
True.
I can't find any spiritual worth of Mormon scripture given it being invented by a man who wanted to impose a theocracy on the United States just prior to his death.
Is that really the reason? I suspect that you ceased to find any spiritual worth in Mormon scripture before you had problems with the theocracy part. The looks more like a rhetorical strategy that aims to make it seem ridiculous for anyone else not to join you in your "sensible" conclusion.
It was invented under dubious circumstances . . . .
Definitely interesting ones.
. . . . and Joseph Smith was very adept at maneuvering to stay in control.
Well, he was the one who came up with most of the important writings and ideas. So, why would he not want to remain in control? Now you want to fault him for being good at it, as though doing so were something sinister?
Power was his aim throughout.
That is beyond reductive.
In the end, Joseph Smith was about to go down the wrong path and lead our ancestors with him.
That sounds right. It is a good thing that he was stopped!
He had crowned himself king and requested 100,000 troops to "quell" the Native Americans (probably wanting to unite with them to then go after the US government for not siding with him regarding Missouri issues).
Yes, he was quite a character, that old Joe. Like many people in his position, he got carried away, in my opinion. Being the leader of a group like the Nauvoo-era Mormon church is psychologically dangerous and can be perilous for those who follow such leaders. No doubt.
He was the fascist leader everyone complains about today.
I don't think it is as simple as that. He definitely became more authoritarian in the Nauvoo era.
As a result, it's hard to grant him any spirituality in my book.
Well, I am not sure what your terms mean, but I concede that you seem to have some idea of Joseph Smith not meeting some standard you are comfortable with. Mostly, I think you were once fed a bunch of fairytales about who Joseph Smith was, basically a whitewashed, idealized LDS portrait, and, now that you have found that to be way out of wack, you have rejected the whole kit and caboodle. I can certainly understand that, even if I have no idea what spiritual means to you or why anyone but you should care what your definition is.

The bottom line here is that this is primarily about you and your conversion away from LDSism. I respect that, but it has nothing to do with anything I am personally interested in as a historian.
Then BY fulfilled the theocracy dreams of Joseph Smith and we got polygamy and mountain meadows. Today, we have the Fund that the leaders worship. Any spirituality seems incidental, something used as a means to the real goal of power for the few leaders at the top.
So maybe to you spiritual means free from politics, sex, violence, or money. You have constructed a narrative in which you reject the possibility of spirituality if things appear to go against your personal values. I think that is fine for you as a personal decision. I have removed myself from LDSism on a similar basis.

On the other hand, there is no absolute purity in human life. You can find reasons to reject almost anything claiming spirituality if you demand that everyone must live up to the strictest and highest standards before you admit the possibility of a substantive claim. Or, of course, you can do what many do today, and that is reject spirituality altogether as something that cannot or does not exist. Then you can be free of any consideration of these issues.

I chose otherwise.
Is that really the reason? I suspect that you ceased to find any spiritual worth in Mormon scripture before you had problems with the theocracy part. The looks more like a rhetorical strategy that aims to make it seem ridiculous for anyone else not to join you in your "sensible" conclusion.
It is ridiculous to drink the Mormon cool-aide as it were and so how else could I put it? And by the way, I hated the Mormon leadership structure long before leaving. I grew up surrounded by it and didn't like what I saw. But, I had experiences that I thought were from outside of myself and that kept me from totally disavowing it, going back to the sty for a while and then ultimately rejecting it once I realized that I was tricked into believing the nonsense. Looking back on how the church was run and how the leaders I knew were so incredibly ordinary, without any inspiration, and I knew some of the highest officials over the years, that realization was certainly one of the final nails in the coffin for me. They were nice enough but nothing special that would make you think you were in the presence of someone called by a god.

Now, of course this has nothing to do with our history and I find it interesting probably because there has been a continued effort to whitewash it.
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Re: Missing Scroll Theory & Catalyst Theory in light of Mormonism Live

Post by Dr Exiled »

dastardly stem wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 4:21 pm
Kishkumen wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 3:55 pm
Mormonism is really just a heterodox species of Christianity on the American frontier. The various strands of influence that contributed to it were either heterodox Christian or esoteric. It may be an interesting and unique combination of these elements, but nothing about it is completely inexplicable once you understand its relationship with its environment.
In a way Mormonism is exactly what is expected in religion making it seems to me. Meaning just as you suggest there are various strands of influence on Mormons the same could be said of Christianity, it seems to me. Traditional Christianity feels grander and more important because its been around longer, the origins are more mysterious, and far more people refer to it for religion than Mormonism. But, interestingly, neither, in my view, are any more historically, philosophically or empirically viable than the other. If there is anything to the concept of "spirituality" in the west, Mormonism has as much a right to it as any. The seemingly obvious man-made or con aspect of it is immaterial. no doubt if we had as much on early Christianity as we do on early Mormonism it'd look just as fraudulent. I'd say it does look just as fraudulent. But who cares? "Spiritual" is the concept that debunks any criticism of religion anyway. If people get meaning and purpose, I suppose, we conclude that's what's important. I mean truly if people are better off dedicating their lives to make-believe things...I mean have at it. And, yet, I'd clarify, I'd still say that what they think they are better off doing, I disagree with. I mean they'd be better off without religion or the concept of spiritual...but they don't think so.

We can't just dismiss that which is very important to so many. I grant all of that. And I appreciate you pushing this perspective for that purpose. It hits closer to home for me when people want to dismiss Mormonism as if dismissing it and not dismissing all religion makes any sense.
The problem I see is when belief in fantasy turns into misguided politics and sometimes war. Too much of our politics has religious overtones to it and I think both major parties in the US misuse it. If that weren't a problem that has plagued society over the years, then sure, have at the fantasy. Dream as many dreams as one wants. But, perhaps, think real hard prior to spreading the fantasy to others.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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