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.
The simple fact of the matter here appears to be, quite simply, that you are on your way out my friend; you are looking for a way, searching for a way, itching for a way, and, in time, if you continue on this course, you will, indeed, find a way. I've seen it so many times before.
As I posted before, and which you apparantyl did not read or comprehend if your read it: alll these issues have been availale in sources the church at the very least supports indirectly for a very, very long time. Most of these criticisms I was aware of decades ago from reading apoligietic material that was then available, such as Nibley. You are howling at the moon to the wrong person Jason, because I'm not going to buy it. I've been in the church too long, read and studied too much, and paid attention far too long to be cajoled by any self serving protestations to the contrary. Polygamy? Polyandry? Come on. I was well aware of these things in the seventies as a teenager, and I dealt with them then.
Do you have a testimony of Joseph Smith or don't you? Do you know the church is true through the spirit of revelation or don't you? If you actually think I'm going to be cowed down by the pathetic PC boilerplate promulgated by the likes of Quinn, who has a deep personal agenda regarding the church quite independent of his apparantly 'scholoarly" attempts to delegitimize it on general historical grounds, or the ministrations of others who do not have the gift of the Holy Ghost, do not understand the gospel and its teachings in anything but a sociological, psychological, or purly intellectual sense, or who have any number of political, psycholgical, philosophical, or otherwise personal agendas that drive their attempts to deliegitimize and impugn the church, its history, and its leaders, then you are very sadly mistaken.
You can also take your pretentious, self satisfied claims of "sanitized history" and take it back to the intellectual ghetto where you found it. The mission of the church is to perfect the Saints, not destroy them by focusing on each and every possible or plausible inconsistency or anomaly in the history of the church or
theoretical or
hypothetical problems with such history or doctrine.
I'd advise you to spend much, much more time on your knees in prayer and in the scriptues and writings of the Lord's annointed then hunched over Quinn, Metcalf, and Dialog imagining yourself to be so much smarter and enlightended that those who concentrate on the fundametal truths of church history and doctrine and ignore the posturings of the people in the big floating building and their pointing fingers of disdain. Those people, and those sources, are out to utterly, completely, and without quater destroy the resotred gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you wish to be a part of that project, you may so do at your own risk. But keep in mind that those whom you influecne to lose their own souls be subverting and destroying their faith are on your own head as much as on theirs for accepting your subversion.
The war in heaven has continued to this very moment and is raging as we speak. You are either on one side or the other. There is no nertrality, and there is no mercy from one of the sides. Make up your mind if you want to be a Latter Day Saint and part of his Kingdom, or part of another, but don't feed me this thin gruel of oh-the-poor-enlightened-scholars-who-were-excommunicated-by-the-big-bad-church pap about sanitized history. Its not sanitized, ita simply been reduced to the things that matter spiritually for most of the Saints and the other things left for individuals, if they are interested, to find out for themselves, most of which they can do without going outside LDS sources for that knowledge. If you never hear of these issues, it won't hurt you in the least. If you do hear of them, and study them, and you happen to have a testimony of the gospel by the power of the Holy Ghost, it won't shake your faith in the slightest and you will likely feel no need to come to forums like this and make common cause with apostates and anti-Mormons who are seeking, whether they know it or not, to deprive you of your salvation and exaltation.
Now thay you've in essence claimed that Joseph Smith and many of his successor were liars, frauds, perverts, crackpots, and intellectual charlatans, what, might I ask, if left of the calling and mantle of a Prophet, of the concept of worthiness, and of the origin and development of the church as a divinely authorized organizatin representative of Jesus Christ and his gospel? What's your alternative? Who are you to judge and by what authority?
How deeply and thoroughy Jason, have you subjected your precious Dialog and Signature Books scholars to
critical philosophical analysis, the same kind of critical analysis you are oh so quick to lay on the church and its leaders?
There's pleanty of it to go around because the claims of these people are far from water tight and are hardly free from philosophical and historical problems and inconsistencies.
Go ahead. See if you can outthink God. Think and analyze your way out of the church and then justify it to your Savior at your judgement. I've done just as much thinking, analyzing, and theorizing as you have, and probably more, and at the end of the day I see no reason to doubt the "faith promoting" history of the church, but have the same qeustions you have about that history about both the motivations and intellectual substantiveness of much of the scholarship aimed at deliegitimizing it. Your very selective as to whom you will subject to critical evaluation. Dialog, Signatiure books, critics with advaneed degrees: pure, impeccable, to be believed implicitly. Joseph Smith and other early church leaders, as well as modern church leaders and scholarly apologists: to be questioned as inheranty dubious, unreliable, and even dishonest.
My how true colors show if you put enough detergent in the wash.
I see that I have severly misjudged you as an allie in the continuing battle of ideas against those who seek to delegitimize the church, its leaders, its honestly taught and accepted history, and the integrity of its founders.
So be it. I accept that reality, but sadly.
Loran