Droopy wrote:The problem, epistemological, philosophical, and certainly psychological, you have here of course, are with the many Latter Day Saints who have grappled with precisely the same doctrinal/historical problems you have, on very much the same terms, and with the very same stakes in view, who's love and thirst for truth itself have precluded the very thought of leaving the Church.
You are either trapped in a miasma of Postmodern subjectivsm, or you must be prepared to grapple with the very real possibility that what led you out of the Church was not a love of the truth, but internal conflicts within yourself between the truth and other priorities and imperatives internal and unique to you alone. I do not condemn you for this, as this struggle comes to many, but simply point it out, and point out a fair account of one's struggle with "the truth" involves a deep and nuanced wrestle with all of the relevant dynamics.
You must also be prepared to grapple with the very real possibility that the cock sure certainty with which you approach Book of Abraham issues, or other issues within the Church are really a defense mechanism (as it is with Brent Metcalf and so many others) disguising the fact that the overwhelming body of these issues are almost wholly hypothetical or theoretical in nature and have no real resolution possible through purely scholarly means.
You must be willing to admit that you have jumped the starting gate with the evidence because it suited the above mentioned personal priorities and imperatives to do so.
Cocksure certainty? Once again, you are reading what you want to into my posts. I am and always have been aware of the distinct possibility that the conclusions I have reached are erroneous. Perhaps you are projecting when you say I am dead-set in my beliefs and entirely closed to self-examination. If there ever appears a good reason for me to re-evaluate my current beliefs, I will gladly do so. Your condescending attacks have never once motivated me to do that, sorry to say.
I am also aware that people who are smarter than I am have reached different conclusions regarding the church. Of course, smarter people than I have also reached the same conclusions I have. So that's kind of a wash.
The only internal conflicts that led me out of the church were the nagging feeling that I was justifying the unjustifiable, that I was rationalizing some pretty obvious and wrongheaded things. In other words, I was defending what clearly wasn't true. That was it. I didn't have some unsatisfied desire to sin. I wasn't a complainer. No one offended me. I just knew in my heart that I couldn't defend what wasn't true anymore. Period.
And there's no need to go after my background in literary theory, as if poststructuralism is necessarily a self-gratifying relativism, even I were an adherent of poststructuralism.
You act as if I have never weighed the evidence, never dealt in gray areas, never given the church and its leaders the benefit of the doubt. Clearly, you don't know me, and you don't know what you're talking about.
