What physicist needs to constantly, or at least often, spend time reading Einstein's papers about Relativity or risk stopping believing in Relativity?
LOL. Great Seth!
What physicist needs to constantly, or at least often, spend time reading Einstein's papers about Relativity or risk stopping believing in Relativity?
Sethbag wrote:Scottie wrote:One thing you seem to be forgetting. LDS believe that Satan and his minions, as real live entities, are constantly chipping away at the testimonies of the faithful. The armor of God must be repaired daily lest Satan penetrate it and send you down the slippery slope to apostasy. Add that in with the natural man being an enemy of God and you have created a need to reaffirm testimonies.
Yeah, LDS believe that, but couldn't these explanations just be rationalizations for why there's this constant need for Gospel immersion in order for it to remain plausible? That is, the observation is made that constant immersion is required. This demands some kind of explanation, because it really ought not to be the case, as my physicist examples helps show. Yet the need for Gospel immersion is really there, and needs an explanation. So they come up with the "well, Satan did it!" explanation. This satisfies the need for an explanation, and supports the Church belief at the same time. Simultaneously, it acts to scare people who may be wavering in wearing their mental retainer, to keep doing it/start doing it again, because after all, one wouldn't want to subject oneself to Satan, wouldn't one?
Choose any science, or field of engineering, or really, almost any human knowledge area or pursuit you care to mention, and ask yourself, in which of these fields is it necessary for those trained in (and presumably who "believe" in) these fields to constantly immerse themselves in the written works and treatises underpinning these fields, or risk having their knowledge and "belief" in these principles undermined by other ideas?
Sethbag wrote:Pardon me, but this doesn't jive with the experience of a lot of us. The fact is, many of us wanted to believe way more than we wanted to disbelieve. With the family pressures, the social pressure, the concept of going to the Celestial Kingdom and becoming a god, or becoming worm food (tough choice, eh?) there were a zillion reasons to want it all to be true. What were the reasons for wanting it not to be true? So I could save 10% of my money? So I could have a few beers or drink tea or something? You almost sound like the typical TBM here, giving the knee-jerk "he just wanted to sin" reason for why I stopped believing.
Kimberly Ann, the reason your mental retainer didn't work is because, to keep the analogy going, you fell and slammed your teeth into the curb, and no retainer will reverse the effects of that. :-)
Yeah, the retainer doesn't always end up succeeding, but my point is, keeping our minds in line is what it's for, and it actually does work on a lot of people, to a very great degree. And the expectation is that it works, and that's the expecation of the TBMs, hence them seemingly always asking, as soon as they find out you don't believe anymore, if you've been reading the scriptures, going to the temple, etc. They assume that you probably haven't, and that that's the reason why you've lost your belief. They assume that not doing those things regularly puts you at risk for losing your testimony. They're probably right, and my point is that that ought to be a giant red flag, and yet that's completely lost on the TBMs.
Scottie wrote:However, you're suggesting that it's odd that nobody has questioned the need to reinforce our testimonies. I'm saying that I don't blame them one bit for not questioning. After all, if you put yourself back inside the TBM mindset, with the perfectly sound argument that Satan is there ready to strike, the need to keep the testimony up is completely logical.
asbestosman wrote:It's true that my confidence in enginerring isn't diminished by time, but my confidence in my memory of it is. While I am unlikely to doubt that the concepts taught in my engineering books are now false (aside from the few errata many books contain which I occasionally notice because I get confused), even so I think it wise to refresh myself with it so that memory of it is correct and so that I can also remember things I had forgotten--or possibly even missed.
Sethbag wrote: And that's something that's unique to this religious perspective. I can't think of any non-religious fields of thought where ideas are so at risk that constant immersion is thought to be necessary to maintain belief.
Gadianton wrote:Wade is right, there is a comparison between doing the repetitious little things in a relationship and reading the Book of Mormon 1/2 hour a day - the same stories, over and over again. Relationships and dogmatic ideologies are comparable in that way. And that goes hand in hand with something a teacher told me, "Before you get married, keep your eyes wide open, and after, keep 'em shut". In other words just like in a marriage, after one joins the church they are to immerse themselves in hypnotic little activities that fixate their eye single to the ideology, eyes closed, fingers plugged in ears, and screaming. They are bound and willfully ignorant to any other idea or opinion.