Coggins7 wrote:You are not the only one posting on this thread Runtu. No one's putting words in your mouth. I'm responding to a general tendency and the same general claims to which Plutarch was responding. The Wood books have been available, and many others, detailing the problems in church history and texts that anti-Mormons have been harping on for decades, are out there for inquireing minds who want to know.
Claims that the church hides this and that, when it patently doesn't, invoke suspicions of less than sterling motivations from the critics themselves, or even lesser actual knowledge of church scholarship on these subjects and the degree to which such scholarship is available to LDS and supported by the church either directly or indirectly. The point is, all of the classic criticisms of the church are available for analysis in church approved or supported sources, and any Mormon interested in them can aquire them and learn of them at any time. Neither the conservative anti-Mormons nor the liberal secualrists are special and annointed sources of gnostic secrets the rest of us TBM's were worfully unaware of.
As an aside, Itls really difficult to believe we're actually revisiting the changes in scripture dead horse here. Of all the criticisms ever made of the church over the last 50 years, this is without doubt one of the weakest. I've never seen a single, solitary instance of an altered text in any canonical text that was anything but either trivial, or explainable in terms of changing conditions around the church or the development of church doctrine in the line upon line manner in which it is supposed to come. The very idea that the Lord could not limit Joseph to one gift at one time, and then in a later revelation expand or revoke it, involves either a rigid fundamentalist attitude toward the nature of scripture, or a flat footed rejection of the very concept of divine scripture and hence a retreat to the default position of purely sociological and psychological explanations for everything surrounding the origins of the church and its core texts.
Protestants especially, should be more than a little circumspect when criticising the church for alterations in its scriptures. Very careful.
I just love it when the self proclaimed apologist blames the dumb damn member for not doing their homework, when, after they have done their home work they find things that the Church has not taught them and are upset and ask, why was I not taught this in seminary, institute or Sunday School.
I do not think I have ever said that the material was not available. When I started doing more leg work you are right, I found most of the information from book at DB, or BYU Studies, or Dialogue and Signature Books. The latter two though are not the Church at all. But why should one have to do leg work? Why the sanitized, yes Coggins, sanitized history in the manuals. Why did I need to read Mormon Enigma to find out about polyandry and the more detailed account of polygamy? Why did I need to read Quinn's books to find out about the questionable timing of the priesthood restoration stories? Why? Why does the church not teach this in their course so the average member is not surprised when they run across it?
Well because it takes away from the mythology that the sanitized version of the restoration promotes. Look bud, it was not me who said all that is true is not useful. It was not me who ousted the Lowell Bennions for not teaching a more "faithful" history. It is was not me who told institute and seminary teachers that they needed to teach a faithful (meaning leave out the stuff that may cause doubts) history only.
No Coggins, anyone when does the leg work can find the truth and detail, but it takes work and effort and is not readily accessible. The official LDS Church manuals an course certainly do not bring up controversy, not at all. And that is where most members get their information.