Does DCP Require Biased Moderation?

[_Bond...James Bond]

I don't think he requires it...he's quite capable of arguing with rhetoric, wit, humor, etc.

And he appears to generally avoid any "tar baby" arguments (Can I use that phrase? It's probably racist...but I used it so whatever) so I don't think he requires it. But it makes his job/hobby/mission/quest a whole lot easier when the Mods are willing to pull him out of any situations he may stumble into that he can't easily pull himself out of.

[_Some Schmo]

I don't think he requires it...he's quite capable of arguing with rhetoric, wit, humor, etc.

And he appears to generally avoid any "tar baby" arguments (Can I use that phrase? It's probably racist...but I used it so whatever) so I don't think he requires it. But it makes his job/hobby/mission/quest a whole lot easier when the Mods are willing to pull him out of any situations he may stumble into that he can't easily pull himself out of.

Then how do you explain his quick exit from here?

[_Bond...James Bond]

I don't think he requires it...he's quite capable of arguing with rhetoric, wit, humor, etc.

And he appears to generally avoid any "tar baby" arguments (Can I use that phrase? It's probably racist...but I used it so whatever) so I don't think he requires it. But it makes his job/hobby/mission/quest a whole lot easier when the Mods are willing to pull him out of any situations he may stumble into that he can't easily pull himself out of.

Then how do you explain his quick exit from here?

He had to go on a trip to somewhere to do something something...he's a busy man and he's always going somewhere to do something something....something something....

[/sarcasm]

[_charity]

Solomanineris, I have been attending the temple since 1961.

Your characterization of the experience as "most hideous, traumatic experience" makees me really wonder about you. Even going back to my initial temple experience when I really had no idea what to expect, I cannot even remotely imagine anything hideous or traumatic about it. Not by any stretch of the imagation, and I have a pretty good one.

So, are you emotionally and intellecutally fragile? A person who has an exaggerated startle response? Who see threatening figures behind bushes? Who wears a tin foil hat so aliens can't read your thoughts?

Or, with a reasoned view, are you making up stories to try to fool the unwary?

It was kind of traumatic for me. I was extremely uncomfortable during the washing and anointing part, and the pre-1990 endowment was just a little upsetting to me, as I have described elsewhere.

Honestly, after going through literally hundreds of times, it got pretty much rote and boring. I did have one rather impressive spiritual experience in the temple, but other than that, no, it was never more than just obligatory, even though I tried to make it more than that.

Your post would have been much more effective had you left the last two paragraphs out. So you two had different impressions of the temple. Big deal. You didn't need to sneer at him like that.

C'mon, John. Uncomfortable? Even extremely uncomfortable does not add up to hideous and traumatic! That kind of exaggeration happens for two reasons. Either the person is fragile. Or speaking to push an agenda. I am inclined to the later.

[_the road to hana]

Either the person is fragile. Or speaking to push an agenda. I am inclined to the later.

A person has to be fragile to consider making death gestures and taking death oaths contra to reason in the context of religious initiation?

All it really demonstrates is that for fanatics, defense of the indefensible is a full-time job.

If it wasn't traumatic, why did they remove it? Whimsy?

[_charity]

The old saying in the church that people leave to sin is so obviously a self-preservation mechanism, only a complete fool wouldn't recognize it.

I never left the church to "sin." I left because I had never believed it, and didn't have to go anymore because I stopped living in my parents' house. It's that simple.

The sinning just turned out to be a fringe benefit.

The fact that you only started to sin after leaving the Church and your parents' house doesn't mean that others don't. I know of one who did. He didn't like the Word of Wisdom. He decided he didn't want a church which told a man what to drink sitting on his own couch watching a football game.

Just as the idea that ALL people who leave the Church do so for sin is as wrong as your idea that NO ONE does.

[_harmony]

The old saying in the church that people leave to sin is so obviously a self-preservation mechanism, only a complete fool wouldn't recognize it.

I never left the church to "sin." I left because I had never believed it, and didn't have to go anymore because I stopped living in my parents' house. It's that simple.

The sinning just turned out to be a fringe benefit.

The fact that you only started to sin after leaving the Church and your parents' house doesn't mean that others don't. I know of one who did. He didn't like the Word of Wisdom. He decided he didn't want a church which told a man what to drink sitting on his own couch watching a football game.

Just as the idea that ALL people who leave the Church do so for sin is as wrong as your idea that NO ONE does.

We all sin. The idea that only ex-members sin is ludicrous and flies in the face of the Atonement and every teaching of the LDS church.

It's entirely possible that in the grand scheme of things, lying to one's wife about one's extramarital peccadillos is a more grievous sin than drinking while sitting on one's couch watching football.

[_the road to hana]

The fact that you only started to sin after leaving the Church and your parents' house doesn't mean that others don't. I know of one who did. He didn't like the Word of Wisdom. He decided he didn't want a church which told a man what to drink sitting on his own couch watching a football game.

No doubt there's a special discussion board just for them.

[Guest]

It's spiritual abuse to take a 19- or 21-year-old young person completely unprepared and put them through the type of experience that is entailed in (particularly the pre-1990) LDS temple ritual.

I was a 20 year old, a member of the Church 3 days less than a year, in late May 1961. All I knew before I went was that the men and women didn't sit together. Spiritual abuse? Nonense. Anyone who calls it "spiritual abuse" is speaking for effect. Or has a tin foil hat in their drawer.

If they had to hold an empty shotgun to their head and repeat the same promises, would you object? Or still glow about how wonderful and marvelous it all is?

I would object to a shotgun, empty or not. But there wasn't any kind of gun involved. You get weirder and weirder. You must have taken the tin foil hat out of the drawer.

Your allegiance to an organization might not be tested ever, even if you were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. Other people have their BS meters turned up on high.

I don't know if you ever were in the temple. You sound like you are repeating something you have heard, from solomarineris, even. Because what you are suggesting is no where near what reality is.

Dismissing the temple ritual, especially certain aspects pre-1990, as benign is what's not reasonable.

I don't find committing my life to the Savior and His Church to be unreasonable. Wouldn't you be willing to die rather than to betray the Savior?

charity wrote:
Either the person is fragile. Or speaking to push an agenda. I am inclined to the later.


A person has to be fragile to consider making death gestures and taking death oaths contra to reason in the context of religious initiation?

This shows that you don't understand what the oaths were. So, if you had gone to the temple, you did not listen carefully enouigh. I can't tell you on the board exactly where you went wrong, but your understanding is totally wrong.

If it wasn't traumatic, why did they remove it? Whimsy?

Because it wasn't needed anymore in light of changing culture. You don't understand that "the endowment" is not the same thing as "the presentation of the endowment." You are guilty of presentism, hana.

[_Some Schmo]

The fact that you only started to sin after leaving the Church and your parents' house doesn't mean that others don't. I know of one who did. He didn't like the Word of Wisdom. He decided he didn't want a church which told a man what to drink sitting on his own couch watching a football game.

Just as the idea that ALL people who leave the Church do so for sin is as wrong as your idea that NO ONE does.

We all sin. The idea that only ex-members sin is ludicrous and flies in the face of the Atonement and every teaching of the LDS church.

harmony, you stole the post right out of my keyboard.

I was a teenager at the time. Of course I was doing things the church would have considered sinful. However, I was quite content to do those things while acting the good Mormon boy part because it made it easier to live peacefully with my TBM parents.

As I've said before, in a strictly technical sense, it's true that all people leave the church to sin, because according to the church, to not believe and not attend church IS a sin. Anything but a purely Mormon lifestyle is sinful. It's inescapable. Saying that people leave to sin is just one more thing Mormons tell themselves in order to feel good about staying, but in reality, it's meaningless.