Our leaders

[_Boaz & Lidia]

Holy sh!t droopy. What a waste of bandwidth.

POST LINKS NEXT TIME.

And thank you, as you have proven my point, quite perfectly.

An objective viewer can explain Smith's behavior in a few sentences.

The diatribe that you cut-n-pasted is similar to a defense attorney defending a confessed ciminal. Bottom line is to keep his client out of prison.

Every Mormon member is a defense attorney for Joseph Smith and must keep Smith within the divinity that he claimed to have been given.

You have an explicit need to believe and are therefore required to be subjective in the analysis of the historical data concerning this matter.

[_truth dancer]

Try to enjoy the daylight TD. You can't really discuss this issue rationally, so you really shouldn't be making the attempt at all, in my opinion.

This has been hashed out a gazillion times here, and yet you're still on square one with it.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Ummm, no offense Loren but you are the one who typically has nothing to say but the usual taunts and name calling.

But, it is true that square one is probably the fact that Joseph Smith, (married thirty something year old man that he was), coerced girls into being his, with promises of exaltation for them and their families.

I guess we can agree on this.

;-)

[_Yoda]

Try to enjoy the daylight TD. You can't really discuss this issue rationally, so you really shouldn't be making the attempt at all, in my opinion.

This has been hashed out a gazillion times here, and yet you're still on square one with it.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Everything I have read from TD has been quite rational. Just because she disagrees with you does not make her irrational.

[_mcjathan]

Try to enjoy the daylight TD. You can't really discuss this issue rationally, so you really shouldn't be making the attempt at all, in my opinion.

This has been hashed out a gazillion times here, and yet you're still on square one with it.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Droopy, do you mean TD's square one of the golden rule? Seems like a pretty good square to be stuck on...

Also, in the article you quote previously, FAIR completely loses their credibility to all but the most insular believers when they do things like try to establish the moral equivalence between a person lying to save the life of a Jew during WWII and Joseph lying to cover his polygamous relationships. To compare the two is repugnant and, to say the least, unconvincing.

I will say this again: You and the church would be better served in the long run by simply saying that much of Joseph's behavior in regards to polygamy seems to be inexcusable, and then repeat the oft used phrase that a prophet isn't always speaking (or acting) as a prophet.

[_Droopy]

Ummm, no offense Loren but you are the one who typically has nothing to say but the usual taunts and name calling.

I've tried intellectual substance. Name calling and taunts are the only thing that works here.


Funny. Probably 90% of my posts throughout the time I've been here have been substantive - strictly about ideas and arguments. But only the 10% dedicated to calling spades spades ever gets remembered.

In case you haven't noticed TD, taunts and name calling are the meat and potatoes of every single room on this board, except the Celestial, and that only because of moderator oversight. This place is just one small step from RFM, and its always has been.

Please, give me a break.

[_Droopy]

Try to enjoy the daylight TD. You can't really discuss this issue rationally, so you really shouldn't be making the attempt at all, in my opinion.

This has been hashed out a gazillion times here, and yet you're still on square one with it.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Everything I have read from TD has been quite rational. Just because she disagrees with you does not make her irrational.

I really can't tell Liz, because TD never makes any arguments. Statements of opinion yes, but never arguments, and without arguments, I cannot judge whetgher she is capable of rational discourse or not.

Suffice it to say, she has clearly never done the requisite homework or study of the plural marriage issue such that she could discourse intelligently upon the matter. She can criticize and defame Joseph and other early practitioners of the Lord's form of plural marriage, and engage in great swelling moral condemnations of plural marriage (but not, curiously, other modern moral problems in the area of human sexuality) but not discourses intelligently on it, and I'm frankly getting tired of discussing Mormon issues with people not up to intelligent discussion of such issues.

I can't even understand what I'm doing here anymore at all, except that I was surfing the net today and was just kind of bored and dropped by.

After Mormons and their Church being labeled as Nazi sympathizers, I'm pretty sure I've just about had it with this intellectual leech field.

[_Droopy]

Droopy, do you mean TD's square one of the golden rule? Seems like a pretty good square to be stuck on...

Also, in the article you quote previously, FAIR completely loses their credibility to all but the most insular believers when they do things like try to establish the moral equivalence between a person lying to save the life of a Jew during WWII and Joseph lying to cover his polygamous relationships. To compare the two is repugnant and, to say the least, unconvincing.

I will say this again: You and the church would be better served in the long run by simply saying that much of Joseph's behavior in regards to polygamy seems to be inexcusable, and then repeat the oft used phrase that a prophet isn't always speaking (or acting) as a prophet.

When I see a shred of evidence that you have actually read the entire essay and digested its arguments, perhaps then we could have a discussion about them, on a point by point basis. Your above statement about Joseph lying to "cover his polygamous relationships" indicates that you, in point of fact, have not.

That, according to the author, was not why deceptions took place (rather, it was to protect the church from legal action and from state sponsored, as well as spontaneous populist persecution throughout several formative periods in the Church's growth, not to protect Joseph himself from the stain of moral opprobrium because Joseph was using his position as leader of the Church to obtain sex from female members).

[_Nevo]

Of course Joseph lied to Emma about practicing polygamy. If you've read anything on this subject you can't possibly say that Joseph didn't lie to Emma about polygamy. Just off the top of my head, don't you remember how Joseph married the Partridge sisters behind Emma's back and then later setup a 2nd sham wedding with the sisters this time for Emma's benefit? Dude, pick up a book or two and do some reading before making such an inaccurate statement.

I'm not claiming that Joseph was completely forthcoming with Emma about his polygamous activities. There was a certain amount of deception involved. But to say that "Joseph lied to Emma about practicing polygamy" gives the impression that he was representing to Emma that he wasn't practicing polygamy--which would be false. Emma knew about because he told her.

Do you really want to try to justify Joseph using God to threaten Emma? Whatever happened to the long-suffering Joseph who lived by the creed: "No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned. By kindness, and pure knowledge"?

Who ever said that Joseph lived by this creed? Joseph had a forceful personality that "let nothing stand in his way. For years the Church existed almost entirely in his mind. He had to compel it into existence by sheer force of will." (Richard Lyman Bushman, "The Character of Joseph Smith," BYU Studies 42, no. 2 [2003]: 30). Joseph could use strong-arm tactics when the situation called for it.

But I do think that Joseph really believed that God would destroy the disobedient. Commenting on Joseph's ascription of the Zion's Camp cholera outbreak to divine retribution, Bushman observes:

"No revelation told Joseph that God had sent the cholera. He read his own ideas about Deity into the event. In the retelling, Joseph called Him Jehovah, whose Old Testament character punished recalcitrants with suffering and death. In the camp's extremity, Joseph seems to have called up a God out of his Puritan past, a God who would destroy His own people if they neglected His commands. This was the God, we must assume, to whom Joseph felt responsible for establishing Zion and preparing his people for exaltation, a God harsh and implacable, inflicting punishment on those who failed" (Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 246).

So you think that it is preposterous that Joseph wasn't open about polygamy because it would have been too hard on him. On the other hand, the church glorifies Joseph for his courage in proclaiming his first vision despite the persecution. . . . It isn't believable to me that the God of the universe command Joseph to practice polygamy and despite this close communion with the Almighty, Joseph can't muster the courage to proclaim God's will to the world (or his wife, or even his church).

I think it took great courage for Joseph to proclaim the doctrine of plural marriage to his wife and closest associates--even though some of them weren't ready to receive it. As Ronald Esplin explains, "In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith clearly felt tension between the sense of urgency to complete his work and the relative lack of preparation for the Saints to receive it. . . . Throughout this period he labored carefully to prepare the Saints for innovations and succeeded in introducing many. But in some cases he decided to move ahead with those he felt would embrace new teachings, preserve them, and eventually deliver them to the church. In all of this, he was committed to doing what God required of him--his duty as he understood it--whatever the cost" (Ronald K. Esplin, "The Significance of Nauvoo," in Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited: Nauvoo in Mormon History, ed. Roger D. Launius and John E. Hallwas [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996], 29-30).

In his haste to introduce plural marriage before his death, Joseph probably did made mistakes. But then he never claimed otherwise: "I do not, and never have, pretended to be any other than a man, 'subject to passion' and liable, without the assisting grace of the Savior, to deviate from that perfect path in which all men are commanded to walk." "Although I do wrong, I do not the wrongs that I am charged with doing; the wrong that I do is through the frailty of human nature, like other men. No man lives without fault."

[_Mahonri]

Sounds as if you have never personally met Boyd Packer. Tommy Monson, Marion Romney, Bruce McConkie and a lot of the leadership. Some of them are mean, petty, vain and tyrannical as anyone in the early days.

Surest way to lose a 'testimony' is to go to work in the penis palace. (the big white phallic symbol in the center of SLC, Utah... the gleaming white structure towering high with two oblong balls at the bottom)

[_harmony]

Sounds as if you have never personally met Boyd Packer. Tommy Monson, Marion Romney, Bruce McConkie and a lot of the leadership. Some of them are mean, petty, vain and tyrannical as anyone in the early days.

Actually, this is what I was trying to start a discussion about, not Joseph's character (I already have my opinion on Joseph's character).

What do you base this comment on?

Surest way to lose a 'testimony' is to go to work in the penis palace. (the big white phallic symbol in the center of SLC, Utah... the gleaming white structure towering high with two oblong balls at the bottom)

Have you worked in the church office building? Could describe the experience (without references to body parts)?

PS> sorry, all. I've been on the annual mother-daughter-granddaughter outing this weekend and just got home. Thanks for keeping the thread alive.