Don't we have any expectations that posters are telling the truth, at least as they know it?
I suspect that Kevin would make a distinction between activity and affirmation. I think it's best to assume that Kevin is acting in good faith until you have really good reason to think otherwise, no matter how disposed you might be to think he's a villainous liar.
Don't we have any expectations that posters are telling the truth, at least as they know it?
I suspect that Kevin would make a distinction between activity and affirmation. I think it's best to assume that Kevin is acting in good faith until you have really good reason to think otherwise, no matter how disposed you might be to think he's a villainous liar.
I don't think Kevin is a liar. I think he is conflicted. I think this last statement of his is more in line of a Freudian slip. But I think the paradigm (since we have just discussed that ad nauseum) of the poster if important. Kevin has made two different statements. He didn't use the word "affirmation." He characterized himself as active in a post where he was personally insulting to me.
Hmm, the guy left the church because he found out Joseph Smith had more than one wife? Is that what Scott Gordon thinks? No wonder he doesn't get it. It's not just that Joseph Smith had more than one wife. It's that Joseph Smith lied, spiritually coerced and manipulated young girls and women into entering polygamous relationships with him which in some cases they expressly did not want, and had to be convinced to do it. It's that he lied about it, publicly, to most members of the church, and even to his wife Emma.
Scott, I got news for you. When Joseph Smith staged a second "sealing" of the Partridge sisters to him in front of Emma, after finally wearing down Emma to give her consent, the second sealing being to hide the fact that Joseph had already married the two sisters months before behind Emma's back. This guy was a grade A asshole, and you expect us to just look at all this and say hey, God must have commanded it. No, God didn't command it.
I think this quote from Emily Partridge is particularly telling "I cannot tell all Joseph said, but he said the Lord had commanded [him] to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him and although I had got badly frightened he knew I would yet have him..."
Right. God commanded Joseph Smith to take even more wives than he already had by February of 1843. And God had already given Emily to Joseph, and all that remained was for Joseph to inform her of that fact. Bullcrap. That was spiritual manipulation. She was taught that Joseph was a Prophet of God, and here he's laying out a fait accompli where God has already given her to him. Hmm, what should she do? She's already his, because God said so (through him). She really didn't have much choice in the matter, did she?
And what's with Joseph Smith sending a man on a mission and then propositioning his wife to join him in a secret marriage while her real husband is off laboring for the Lord in the mission field? What the hell is that, Scott? You honestly believe that it was God's will that Orson Hyde be sent on a mission to Jerusalem, and that while Orson Hyde, the Apostle, was gone, the Prophet Joseph Smith should marry Orson Hyde's wife? You honestly think that it was the Will of the Lord that Marinda Hyde, a married woman, be alone with the Prophet Joseph Smith for any reason at all, much less alone with him so that he could court her, marry her, and presumably have sex with her? While her husband was off serving a mission?
Scott, there's a reason why exmos don't like this kind of thing. It's because it's CRAP. We simply do not, and cannot accept that crap like this came through a real prophet of a God who actually exists.
Scott, there's also ample evidence pointing to the conclusion that Joseph Smith made up the Book of Abraham. There's evidence of all sorts of other things which point to a "big picture" view of Joseph Smith not having really been a true prophet.
That's why we stop believing. Not because we haven't read the various hagiographies floating around the church. It's because once the veneer has been stripped away and Joseph's actions seen for what they were, he was a vile, manipulative, deceitful man who thought more about where and from whom he could get his next piece of ass, than he thought of his own legal and long-suffering wife Emma. He fraudulently passed off invented scripture as ancient records, came up with self-serving "revelations" seemingly at will, aggrandized himself (as if mayor, prophet, and president weren't enough, he had to have himself made a general of his own little private army, had himself crowned King of the Earth, and started a run for President of the United States).
When viewed in context, Joseph Smith and his church bear all the hallmarks of a particularly successful cult of personality, of which there are quite a few other examples in this world.
The "spiritual witness" LDS boast of is bogus. The means of learning "truth" that is touted, ie: praying and receiving a spiritual witness, is bogus. The LDS spiritual witness is essentially impossible to tell from an emotional response, euphoria, and other psycologically understood phenomena.
LDS prophets have taught some of the most horrible and damnable lies, as Truth from God, which even modern LDS feel the need to disavow, such as that a baby born black is already, on day 1, manifestly of lesser valiance in the pre-existence. They teach even to this very day laughable "history" that is utterly demolished and disproven such as the global, worldwide Flood of Noah, that no reproduction happened before Adam and Eve, the very first human beings, "fell" some 6000-odd years ago, and that ancient Israelites who had been cursed with dark skin are the "principal ancestors" of the American Indians. That the first homo sapiens on Earth lived in Missouri, not in Africa, where all science points as the cradle of our species.
Give me a freaking break Scott. You've got no clue why we left or stopped believing. We left or stop believing because we broke the spell, and were able to see the church for what it really was, without the confirmation bias and skewed worldview that people like you have. The LDS church is just one more not-true church in a world filled to the brim and overflowing with not-true churches. It's nothing special at all really; it's just special in our eyes because it's the one most of us were born into.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
If one is going to make a life changing decision such as leaving a church, it should be based on more than one disturbing fact, or on reading one disturbing book, or worse, a few articles from an Internet web site.
Why not? If one learns that Joseph Smith was a lying serial adulterer. Or if one learns that the Book of Mormon is fiction. Or if one learns that the PofGP is a fabrication of Joseph Smith's mind. Or if one learns that BY either set in motion or covered up the MMM. Of if one learns that Joseph Smith couldn't get the story of the 1st vision right. Or if one learns that the Lord's annointed were racist pigs.
Why is not any of these by themselves sufficent to conclude that one prefers not to devote his/her life and 10% of his/her income to the organization that perpuetuates these lies and moral offenses?
The ONLY people for whom this would not be sufficient to conclude the whole thing is crap are those who are already emotionally invested in the fraud to begin with.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
Does the history include the 121 independent eyewitness accounts of the mantel of Joseph Smith being passed on to Brigham Young on August 8, 1844, such as the one from nine-year-old William Van Orden who suddenly said, "The Prophet [is] not dead, for I [see] him on the stand"?
He wasn't on the stand or at the pulpit. Young appeared behind the crowd standing on a wagon. When he completed his whistley oratory, he ducked back in the wagon and was gone.
My impression was that he then removed his makeup and pulled the whistle out of his mouth. Crackpot.
If Chris Angel the Mindfreak can do crazy stuff, why can't a corrupt and power mad old pervert?
Didn't you tell me in another thread that you are still an active member, whose bishop wants you to take other Church assignments?
Are you really this stupid? I said I am not active, at least not in spirit; I don’t pay tithes. I don’t accept Book of Mormon historicity. I don’t accept the Book of Abraham. I no longer believe Joseph mith had special abilities as a genuine prophet. I go to Church still, but mainly for my family. I said my bishop was trying to get me to hold a calling but I told him I wasn’t worthy because I didn’t have a testimony.
Learn to read and stop acting like an idiot.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
charity wrote:He was the one who said it. It wasn't like I sicced Dog the Bounty Hunter on him to follow him around and count how many times he went in and out of a church building. He said he was active. Now he says he is one of those who left.
Don't we have any expectations that posters are telling the truth, at least as they know it?
I can understand why you might be tired of lies, but you really ought not to take it out on dartagnan. Perhaps you are reading lies into the perfectly normal incongruities of life. One can be gone from church in terms of testimony, but have to, for family or other personal reasons, be there every week. Really, it is non of your business. Your attempt to catch d in a lie is a pretty pathetic tactic.
I get what you are saying. What you are really saying is that because he is a critic, you find him less trustworthy, no?
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
dartagnan wrote:Learn to read and stop acting like an idiot.
Have to say, charity, you made your own bed there.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
charity wrote:I don't think Kevin is a liar. I think he is conflicted. I think this last statement of his is more in line of a Freudian slip. But I think the paradigm (since we have just discussed that ad nauseum) of the poster if important. Kevin has made two different statements. He didn't use the word "affirmation." He characterized himself as active in a post where he was personally insulting to me.
And then comes "those of us who have left."
OMG! That is so lame! This is how you try to recover from calling him a liar? LOL!!! Pathetic.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
Didn't you tell me in another thread that you are still an active member, whose bishop wants you to take other Church assignments?
Are you really this stupid? I said I am not active, at least not in spirit; I don’t pay tithes. I don’t accept Book of Mormon historicity. I don’t accept the Book of Abraham. I no longer believe Joseph mith had special abilities as a genuine prophet. I go to Church still, but mainly for my family. I said my bishop was trying to get me to hold a calling but I told him I wasn’t worthy because I didn’t have a testimony.
Learn to read and stop acting like an idiot.
Daniel, I went back and found your post.
"I’m inactive as far as tithe paying goes, and having a traditional testimony (I believe the Book of Mormon is inspired but not history) But I still attend and take part in Church activities. I guess you could say I have downgraded myself to cultural Mormonism. The irony is that most Mormons are cultural Mormons. Meaning, they show up for social reasons not because they actually know anything about Mormonism. They know squat about LDS doctrine and Church history.
Tell it to my bishop and ask him if he thinks I should be excommunicated. His name is Isaac Cain. He is constantly being told by other gospel teachers that I’m the most knowledgeable person there. He is trying to get me to hold a calling even though I told him my testimony-free status makes me unworthy. "
I see you stated your situation as a cultural Mormon. Next time I read "cultural Mormon" I will read "inactive."
The question still stands. As a cultural Mormon you consider yourself to have left the Church?