Chap wrote:
OK - just to see how it looks:
I believe that, like all religions, the CoJCoLDS is a purely human institution. I do not believe it has any message from a superior power for mankind. The good bits in it are, at least potentially and to a large extent actually, the common property of mankind. The bad bits are in part common to all centrally maintained structures of belief and authority, and partly stem from peculiar historical features of the history of the Mormon church. Like other religions, it has features that seem to any person looking at them for the first time to be quite implausible and even mildly ridiculous, but which are much more easily accepted by people habituated to the church by their parents from their earliest years. As a religion of relatively recent growth, and one that makes major historical claims (a Jewish civilization in the Americas, and so on) the CoJCoLDS is particularly vulnerable to attack based on secular scholarship. Sadly, the determination of some Mormons to defend against all such attacks leads them into argumentative tactics that are hard to see as consistent with intellectual integrity. Further, the reluctance of the church to tell prospective converts the whole truth can look like a deliberate 'bait and switch' game.
But to many ordinary people, Mormonism is the channel through which they try to express the best they know. I have no interest in knocking on their doors to tell them they ought to give it up. However, if anyone turns up here to argue that the Book of Abraham is anything other than a pious fraud or (more charitably) a pious delusion suffered by Joseph Smith, I 'll take them on.
There: now I have attacked M&G's religion. I wonder how upset she will be, Ray?
Chap,
I don't think that's an unreasonable position. A lot of people believe that. At one time, I even believed it, at least superficially - I never could fully and honestly deconstruct some of my spiritual experiences and even when I broke them down and analyzed them, they still were.
I won't even attempt to argue anyone into belief or condemn them for unbelief because if my life hadn't played out as it has, I'd be just as incredulous. I wish I could prove what I know in my bones but I can't. I... had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone! I wish... I... could share that... I wish, that everyone, if only for one... moment, could feel... that awe, and humility, and hope. But... That continues to be my wish.
Besides, if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space.
Have a good one.