Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

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_DonBradley
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _DonBradley »

William Schryver wrote:lizzie:
In your opinion, do you think this practice will come back during our lifetime?

No, I don’t. And, frankly, it’s probably already too late to benefit me. Geez, I can barely keep up with the current demands being placed on my performance! :lol:


I dunno, Will...the 19th century Mormon literature is full of (androcentric) defenses of polygamy on the grounds that a young wife works wonders in "rejuvenating" an aging man...

Besides, we've seen enough aggressiveness in a post or two of yours to make me think the old testosterone has definitely not run out yet!

:wink:

Don
_DonBradley
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _DonBradley »

beastie wrote:
It far easier to imagine this story coming out of a faulty 1896 memory and imagination in long-polygamous Utah than an actual 1833 sequence of events in monogamous early Kirtland.


Thanks for the clarification, Don, now I follow your point and agree. Human memory is a tricky thing, and very susceptible to redaction.


No problem. I'm glad I made sense! Memory isn't the only brain function that can fail me. :redface:

Don
_JohnStuartMill
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _JohnStuartMill »

DonBradley wrote:
William Schryver wrote:Besides, we've seen enough aggressiveness in a post or two of yours to make me think the old testosterone has definitely not run out yet!

I dunno, Don. If that were the case, he wouldn't be squirming at "demands made on [his] performance".
"You clearly haven't read [Dawkins'] book." -Kevin Graham, 11/04/09
_William Schryver
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _William Schryver »

DarkHelmet wrote:
William Schryver wrote:They didn't think like us! They didn't write like us! They didn't have the same sense of morality, or decency, or propriety.

In many ways, I think we would greatly offend them. That's why any discussion of plural marriage in the 19th century has simply got to take place after a serious study of the times in question. Our current discussions of the practice in that era are so rife with presentism that it distorts the entire conversation, and leads to no greater understanding about what was really going on at the time. <sigh>


Should we spend the same amount of time studying the mindset of the Missourians who persecuted the saints? Perhaps we should spend time seriously studying the men who murdered Joseph Smith to really understand them. It was a different time. Those men didn't have the same sense of morality, or decency, or propriety.

Exactly!

But you obviously don't understand how right you are in making such a suggestion.

That's what makes this discussion such a fruitless one in the final analysis. The study of history is almost a completely lost art in 21st century western civilization. The study of and writing of history has been almost completely taken over by modern evangelists for various political viewpoints. There is little or no interest in actually coming to an understanding of things as they really happened, or in understanding the various dynamics that produced the outcomes we see. Almost everyone uses history to make a point about the present; about how they want us to see things now. There are almost no current historians who try, through their work, to help transport us (as it were) to a time and place long past. Rather, they constantly attempt the impossible (and seemingly illogical) task of transporting figures from the past to our day in order to examine them through the lens of our present.
... every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol ...
_JohnStuartMill
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _JohnStuartMill »

Silly me, believing that proper action is uniform across all human cultures. Maybe I should take a page from those open-minded relativist Mormons.
"You clearly haven't read [Dawkins'] book." -Kevin Graham, 11/04/09
_William Schryver
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _William Schryver »

JSM:
Silly me, believing that proper action is uniform across all human cultures.

And thus my point is proved.

Now, I suppose there is a need for term definition when it comes to the phrase "proper action." But, the notion that anything is "uniform across all human cultures," is shockingly naïve, and manifests an extraordinary ignorance of history, anthropology, and the nature of the cyclical evolutions of civilizations.
... every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol ...
_why me
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _why me »

DarkHelmet wrote:
Should we spend the same amount of time studying the mindset of the Missourians who persecuted the saints? Perhaps we should spend time seriously studying the men who murdered Joseph Smith to really understand them. It was a different time. Those men didn't have the same sense of morality, or decency, or propriety.

The mindset of the Missourians were centered in the frontier. They were rough, intolerent, and quick to judge. They also had fire in their blood.

We need to understand frontier mentality and why they reacted the way they did. But fear, intolerence, and ignorance would be a start in understanding their mindset. We can see this mindset coming to fruition in the 1860's. It was not a mindset that would accept polygamy without retribution.
I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.
Joseph Smith


We are “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all…”
Joseph Smith
_beastie
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _beastie »

That’s all fine and well, but I never suggested that polygyny increased the birth rate. I was merely contradicting your claim that polygyny decreases the birth rate. And nothing you wrote (or cited) in your post above supports your assertion in that respect.

Am I to conclude then, that other than your assertion that polygyny decreases a woman’s sexual access to a man, there is no other reason for which births would decrease under such a system? You’ve certainly provided no evidence of the fact. And I might argue that citing any evidence deriving from studies done in impoverished, fourth-world locales in Africa or Asia is irrelevant to our discussion, which presupposes a western cultural and economic paradigm.

I assert that, under polygyny, the husband will be more sexually active (what with "variety" being the spice of life, and all), and thus compensate for the fact that each individual woman has marginally less access to him. I certainly have as much evidence for my assertion as you presented for yours.


The articles I cited stated that either the birth rate declined, or the infant mortality rate increased with polygyny, as compared to monogamy, which would have the same effect. So the question is not just reduced access to the male as a sperm provider, but reduced access to the male in terms of material, physical, and emotional support, which leaves the infants at higher risk of mortality.

Let’s look at the case of Brigham Young to test your unsupported assertion. Brigham Young had 56 wives. He was known to have conjugal relations with sixteen of those wives. Those sixteen wives bore him 57 children, 46 of whom survived to maturity.

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapte ... young.html

That factors into a birth rate of 3.5 children per female. If we factor in the survival rate, that numbers lowers to 2.9. The birth rate for the general, monogamous, US population:

Family sizes were large early in the nineteenth century, being approximately seven children per woman at the beginning of the century and between seven and eight for the largely rural slave population at midcentury.


http://www.answers.com/topic/birthrate-and-mortality

So did Brigham Young’s wives produce the average number of children, as compared to their monogamous US counterparts? No.




Why don't you provide a list of all the men you know of in Mormon history who had to give their wife "to a man with a higher degree of glory."

I'll be here waiting ...


The varying degrees of glory will take place in the next life, so how could I provide examples from LDS history?

LDS history does provide examples of either men losing their wives to men of a higher priesthood authority, or men having more difficulty finding wives in general, however. I have no idea of the numbers involved, but apparently the numbers were significant enough to warrant this statement by Brigham Young:

"The second way in which a wife can be separated from her husband while he continues to be faithful to his God and his priesthood I have not revealed except to a few persons in this church, and a few have received it from Joseph the Prophet as well as myself. If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the priesthood with higher power and authority than her husband, and he is disposed to take her, he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is. In either of these ways of separation you can discover there is no need for a bill of divorcement. To recapitulate: First, a man forfeits his covenant with a wife or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God and his priesthood—that wife or wives are free from him without a bill of divorcement. Second, if a woman claims protection at the hands of a man possessing more power in the priesthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to rescue her and has obtained the consent of her husband to make her his wife, he can do so without a bill of divorcement. If after she has left her husband and is sealed to another she shall again cohabit with him, it is illicit intercourse and extremely sinful...."


http://en.fairmormon.org/Primary_source ... l_marriage
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.

Penn & Teller

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
_why me
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _why me »

William Schryver wrote:
I also read Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels actually lived among my ancestors in Manchester and wrote about their lives.

This is a great book but one that is very rarely recommended because of its socialist leanings. Engels' book demonstrates the evils of early capitalism and why there was a need for socialism. And from it, Engels and Marx began a long partnership in demonstrating the evils of capitalism.
I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.
Joseph Smith


We are “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all…”
Joseph Smith
_JohnStuartMill
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Re: Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

Post by _JohnStuartMill »

William Schryver wrote:JSM:
Silly me, believing that proper action is uniform across all human cultures.

And thus my point is proved.

Now, I suppose there is a need for term definition when it comes to the phrase "proper action." But, the notion that anything is "uniform across all human cultures," is shockingly naïve, and manifests an extraordinary ignorance of history, anthropology, and the nature of the cyclical evolutions of civilizations.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not going out of my way to heap blame on people who committed atrocity X because they grew up in cultures that considered atrocity X to be ethical. There's a difference between thinking that someone's actions were unethical and thinking that the person was morally blameworthy. I don't consider myself to be a better person than Thomas Jefferson, but I can still recognize that slavery is and has always been wrong.

That said, people who claim to get their morals from a non-capricious Creator should be given special scrutiny. If they advocate for immoralities in the name of an eternal God, then their claims of divine inspiration should be treated skeptically for that reason.
"You clearly haven't read [Dawkins'] book." -Kevin Graham, 11/04/09
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