Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

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JohnW
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by JohnW »

Doctor CamNC4Me and Everybody Wang Chung,

Your skills at the strawmeme are impressive. You leave me speechless . . .
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

2023 AD

Your words cut pretty deep John. Pretty deep.
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:56 am
Doctor CamNC4Me and Everybody Wang Chung,

Your skills at the strawmeme are impressive. You leave me speechless . . .
Fair enough. I don’t know what anyone is supposed to do with this, though:
Having the faith to not be healed is an extremely important thing.
Mormonism is a sort of prosperity gospel - I won’t bore you with the million talks about blessings associated with faithfulness or handing money over to hyper-billionaires. The expectation set by LDS leadership is if you do ‘these things’ you’ll receive ‘those things’. If the expectation is that you should just be happy with whatever outcome then Mormonism is essentially incorporating Buddhist philosophy, or a version of stoicism, and thus renders itself irrelevant.

I get the larp that if you hand money over to hyper-billionaires so you can get some ‘ordinances’ that opens heaven up to you, and all its associated eternal progressions. But, then it’s just a racket. Even if you believe in a god that gatekeeps access to spiritual growth and eternal progression through orthopraxy, then you really ought to question the morality of the whole thing. It’s just an expensive busy-work-larp at the end of the day.

How do you make what you said above make sense for you?

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
dastardly stem
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by dastardly stem »

JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:47 am
dastardly stem wrote:
Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:58 am


But if god is all knowing and all benevolent, whatever those actually mean, the outcome would be exactly what he wants. If people don’t choose him, he’s the only one who knows why. Or if everyone can potentially know him, only he knows what inspiration or what information each person needs. But apparently he chooses not to sufficiently inspire or inform many. I say apparently because he intends plenty to end up in outer darkness or even the Telestial kingdom. Coorect?
I thought this was only the case with the full trifecta of traits. The problem of evil only is a problem with all three. If God is all-knowing and all-benevolent but not omnipotent, he can want people to be saved and be unable to save some of them. This is the Latter-day Saint version of God. He is limited in who he can save. I know this sometimes makes members uncomfortable, but our theology does not preach strict omnipotence. We are happy with something less than that. As I recall, we discussed this some time back.
My point was less about who could or should be saved. But let’s think about this. If god is all-knowing, as you say, then he’d know exactly what it would take for each person to believe in him. If he knows what, say it took for you, then he too knows what it’d take for everyone else. If he blessed you with what it’d take, then he can so bless another. But since some don’t believe, then it could be that he’s limited in more ways than you assume. Or maybe he’s not so benevolent? Maybe not all-knowing. This does come back to the problem that I think spoils the god hypothesis the most—god is poorly defined. He’s not just something, but he’s everything and he’s everything, apparently, so much, he amounts to nothing at all. To believe in him is perfectly comparable to someone believing they have a useless invisible dragon in the garage. It’s as good as if he’s there then as if he’s not.

But if there were a god, and he was something that existed, it doesn’t appear to me anyone has the foggiest clue what he is, what he thinks, what he cares about, or where he is. That we take Old Testament era ideas and try to build them into Greek, Roman, Egyptian ideas and wrangled them through philosophy for hundreds of years holding out hope that we can possibly make sense of our vain ambitions for eternal glory and power just seems silly at this point. How long shall we torture ourselves with this nonsense?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

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dastardly stem wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:48 pm
But if there were a god, and he was something that existed, it doesn’t appear to me anyone has the foggiest clue what he is, what he thinks, what he cares about, or where he is. That we take Old Testament era ideas and try to build them into Greek, Roman, Egyptian ideas and wrangled them through philosophy for hundreds of years holding out hope that we can possibly make sense of our vain ambitions for eternal glory and power just seems silly at this point. How long shall we torture ourselves with this nonsense?
Good take. My view is, I am a conscious entity, attached to a brain in this universe, and this whole thing is a ride at some super-cosmic amusement park. The ride is called MindF**k. Human reason can't figure it out beyond that. The Reality responsible for this universe is utterly indescribable and unknowable.

I could be wrong.
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by malkie »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:05 pm
JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:56 am
Doctor CamNC4Me and Everybody Wang Chung,

Your skills at the strawmeme are impressive. You leave me speechless . . .
Fair enough. I don’t know what anyone is supposed to do with this, though:
Having the faith to not be healed is an extremely important thing.
Mormonism is a sort of prosperity gospel - I won’t bore you with the million talks about blessings associated with faithfulness or handing money over to hyper-billionaires. The expectation set by LDS leadership is if you do ‘these things’ you’ll receive ‘those things’. If the expectation is that you should just be happy with whatever outcome then Mormonism is essentially incorporating Buddhist philosophy, or a version of stoicism, and thus renders itself irrelevant.

I get the larp that if you hand money over to hyper-billionaires so you can get some ‘ordinances’ that opens heaven up to you, and all its associated eternal progressions. But, then it’s just a racket. Even if you believe in a god that gatekeeps access to spiritual growth and eternal progression through orthopraxy, then you really ought to question the morality of the whole thing. It’s just an expensive busy-work-larp at the end of the day.

How do you make what you said above make sense for you?

- Doc
I'm prepping a separate post on the 'not healing' blessings - yep, it's very different from when I was an active member, and from when I was a 'gator.
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by malkie »

JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:56 am
Doctor CamNC4Me and Everybody Wang Chung,

Your skills at the strawmeme are impressive. You leave me speechless . . .
They are very skilled memebrs of the board.
You can help Ukraine by talking for an hour a week!! PM me, or check www.enginprogram.org for details.
Слава Україні!, 𝑺𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒂 𝑼𝒌𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊!
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by Philo Sofee »

John W
I thought this was only the case with the full trifecta of traits. The problem of evil only is a problem with all three. If God is all-knowing and all-benevolent but not omnipotent, he can want people to be saved and be unable to save some of them. This is the Latter-day Saint version of God. He is limited in who he can save. I know this sometimes makes members uncomfortable, but our theology does not preach strict omnipotence. We are happy with something less than that. As I recall, we discussed this some time back.
Your current religion might teach this, but Joseph Smith certainly did not. It shows how far the drifting has become from the founding Restoration prophet of the last dispensation, for sure.
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JohnW
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by JohnW »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:05 pm
Mormonism is a sort of prosperity gospel - I won’t bore you with the million talks about blessings associated with faithfulness or handing money over to hyper-billionaires. The expectation set by LDS leadership is if you do ‘these things’ you’ll receive ‘those things’. If the expectation is that you should just be happy with whatever outcome then Mormonism is essentially incorporating Buddhist philosophy, or a version of stoicism, and thus renders itself irrelevant.
I think you are generally right here. At its most basic level, the gospel is a prosperity gospel of sorts. We do a certain set of things and get a certain set of things in return, salvation being one of the them. I think the point upon which we disagree is the level of complexity of the system. I would argue that the gospel is not a simple system. There is no clear correlation between the set of things given or sacrificed and the set of things received from God or the church. This is why maintaining faith even when things don't go your way is important. Sometimes God requires sacrifice of us with no apparent return on the "investment." Other times a person can argue a clear cause and effect in their interactions with God. There just isn't a nice logical relationship between an interaction with God and his reaction. I see this as a feature of the system, I suspect you see this as a bug. I certainly don't blame people for giving up after getting frustrated with the apparent illogical nature of interaction with God. I almost did the same. Of course, if we as humans always give up when things aren't behaving logically then any number of scientific advancements would have never occurred. Chaos theory comes to mind.
I get the larp that if you hand money over to hyper-billionaires so you can get some ‘ordinances’ that opens heaven up to you, and all its associated eternal progressions. But, then it’s just a racket. Even if you believe in a god that gatekeeps access to spiritual growth and eternal progression through orthopraxy, then you really ought to question the morality of the whole thing. It’s just an expensive busy-work-larp at the end of the day.

How do you make what you said above make sense for you?

- Doc
Maybe an analogy will help. Generally speaking, if we are overweight and want to become more healthy, we should begin to diet. I can try to oversimplify and say diet is just a prosperity thing. If you eat fewer calories you lose weight. Yes, that is broadly true, but doesn't take into account the complexities of nutrition. Also, the nature of dieting is such that we will not see effects of any changes to our diet for some time. I shouldn't eat one healthy meal, jiggle my belly a bit, and give up because I didn't see any difference. I have to have trust that the human system is complex enough that I may not see the results immediately or even results that I initially expect. In some way, how well we do in a dieting program is directly related to how much we trust in the dieting program. Something similar could be said about the gospel. If we don't maintain our faith in God, even when he doesn't give us exactly what we want when we want it, then we will likely get very little out of the gospel.

So how do I make sense of what I said above? I have to find a way to be ok with the fact that some things won't make sense. I have to balance that while not completely dropping logic and reason. A person's spiritual journey is exactly that, their spiritual journey. They have to work through the hiccups. They have to take sufficient spiritual nourishment from what sometimes seems meager bread crumbs God hands out between the relatively rare feasts. At the same time, they have to keep their wits about them, because it is extremely easy to be fooled when it comes to spirituality.
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Re: Modern Miracles - David McKay's "Gift of Tongues"

Post by JohnW »

dastardly stem wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:48 pm
JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:47 am


I thought this was only the case with the full trifecta of traits. The problem of evil only is a problem with all three. If God is all-knowing and all-benevolent but not omnipotent, he can want people to be saved and be unable to save some of them. This is the Latter-day Saint version of God. He is limited in who he can save. I know this sometimes makes members uncomfortable, but our theology does not preach strict omnipotence. We are happy with something less than that. As I recall, we discussed this some time back.
My point was less about who could or should be saved. But let’s think about this. If god is all-knowing, as you say, then he’d know exactly what it would take for each person to believe in him. If he knows what, say it took for you, then he too knows what it’d take for everyone else. If he blessed you with what it’d take, then he can so bless another. But since some don’t believe, then it could be that he’s limited in more ways than you assume. Or maybe he’s not so benevolent? Maybe not all-knowing. This does come back to the problem that I think spoils the god hypothesis the most—god is poorly defined. He’s not just something, but he’s everything and he’s everything, apparently, so much, he amounts to nothing at all. To believe in him is perfectly comparable to someone believing they have a useless invisible dragon in the garage. It’s as good as if he’s there then as if he’s not.
I think it shouldn't be about who does and doesn't believe either. I don't think God's be-all-end-all is for people to believe in him. From the scripture in Moses, it is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of us. Yes, believing in God certainly helps that process, but it isn't strictly required. That is why we do temple work for people who have died without a belief or good understanding of God.
But if there were a god, and he was something that existed, it doesn’t appear to me anyone has the foggiest clue what he is, what he thinks, what he cares about, or where he is. That we take Old Testament era ideas and try to build them into Greek, Roman, Egyptian ideas and wrangled them through philosophy for hundreds of years holding out hope that we can possibly make sense of our vain ambitions for eternal glory and power just seems silly at this point. How long shall we torture ourselves with this nonsense?
I think this point cuts a little deeper. Yes, we all have rather different ideas of God. This is true even within the church. How can God set up a system where it doesn't really matter whether people believe in him or even have a good idea of who he is? This is a dealbreaker to me. Every person who ever lived on this planet has to have a necessary and sufficient idea of God's character for LDS theology to make sense. Maybe that is just a few basic attributes, but it must be the case. How can we become like him, the whole point of our theology, if we don't know who he is? To me, the only way I can work around this is if we actually do have a good idea of God's character, we have just mislabelled it. I think the main contender is our conscience. We tend to have a shared morality across cultures (there is a whole field of study on this). We all have an internal list of attributes of God; we just so happen to call that list goodly attributes instead of godly attributes. If we become good people, then that is becoming like God. This can be done by everyone everywhere, regardless of whether they think God sits on a cloud, a throne, or a mountain. Anyway, enough speculation on my part.
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