https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... y-not.htmlDCP's first rule wrote:I long ago formulated what might be grandiloquently termed Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions and Worldviews: If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid, informed, and reasonable person can find plausible and satisfying.
DCP March 2022 wrote:I have a hard time understanding those who claim to have been liberated by their apostasy from the Church, and by what I assume often to be their abandonment of their covenants, and their rejection of the commandments.
In my experience, more than a few have indicated that they felt perpetually guilty as members of the Church. Presumably they hadn’t been sufficiently loving or kind, or hadn’t been fully honest or hadn’t worked hard enough or had been late or angry or had failed in a duty.
In this regard, guilt is like pain. It’s an indicator that something is wrong. There are people who don’t feel pain. Does that sound wonderful? Well, consider: Such a person could be leaning against a stove with his hand on a hot burner and be entirely unaware of the problem until he smelled burning flesh. (There have, apparently, been such cases.) Such a person would walk on a twisted ankle, doing further and perhaps irreparable damage to it, and be unaware of a stomach pain that should take him as soon as possible to the emergency room. Seen in this way, both pain and guilt can be helpful indicators for navigating mortal life. To be without them would put us far out to sea.
DCP August 2021 wrote:It is, I realize, a weird character flaw — or, probably more accurately said, a regrettable personality defect — but I’m quite interested in what critics of the Church have to say. For example, I look in every few days on two extremely unpleasant (and mostly atheist) online anti-Mormon message boards, so as to see what’s agitating or delighting people there.
I’m often astonished, to be frank, at the profound cynicism, the deep and hostile negativity, of some people on those sites. I don’t discount the fact that there are reasons for doubt and occasions for taking offense or feeling injured. But the attitude of some seems to me to go beyond that. Candidly, it often seems to me a spiritual illness. And a debilitating one.
I sincerely hope that these folks are happier and more pleasant in real life, away from those sites. If they were ever interested in my counsel, though, it would be to avoid such places like the plague. Not merely because they’re faith-destroying, but because the sneering, angry cynicism and the incessant fault-finding and defamation that flourishes on such sites seems to me soul-destroying.
DCP's mischaracterization of ex-Mormons is just as abhorrent as people who say "All/most Muslims are evil, violent, and going to hell." DCP has been defending Islam lately, which is great. It would be nice for him to apply that same understanding to ex-Mormons.
