Your second step is to stop thinking just of yourself, and start thinking of others--like Kevin.
Please let me know how you are progressing in those first two important steps.
Once Kevin responds, feel free to follow along.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-
Oh. so your offer to help others was insincere? Wow. Thanks for nothing!
- VRDRC
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
The problem with this, Wade, is that Kevin doesn't just want to believe in the Church. He wants to believe in the Church without a bunch of cognitive dissonance. He wants to be able to reconcile belief in the Church with his higher and more important commitments to science, rationality, and non-contradiction. I'm afraid you won't be able to help him with that, no matter how much preaching about humility you do.
Furthermore, for someone who preaches about humility, you are remarkably self-assured about your own ability to resolve Kevin's problems with the snap of your fingers. Personally, I think you're here because you expect Kevin to reject your help, at which point you'll get to go tell everyone how insincere he was about wanting to believe. But that, of course, will completely miss the point. Because you can't help. What help can you possibly expect to offer now, where you and everyone else have failed in the past?
CaliforniaKid wrote:The problem with this, Wade, is that Kevin doesn't just want to believe in the Church. He wants to believe in the Church without a bunch of cognitive dissonance. He wants to be able to reconcile belief in the Church with his higher and more important commitments to science, rationality, and non-contradiction. I'm afraid you won't be able to help him with that, no matter how much preaching about humility you do.
I don't think that you are going to succeed in 'speaking to Wade's condition' if you refer to commitments to 'science, rationality, and non-contradiction' as possibly being 'higher and more important' than belief in the CoJCoLDS.
I suspect that for Wade, that is the core of Kevin's problem. I am not quite sure how far Wade thinks 'humility' has to go - but I suspect that he may even see a wish to avoid contradiction as a sign of sinful pride.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
wenglund wrote: 1) faith in God and 2)the restored gospel of Christ, and whether he is willing and ready to have his mind and heart opened once again to 3) spiritual growth.
You realize, of course, that these are not mutually inclusive, right?
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
CaliforniaKid wrote:Personally, I think you're here because you expect Kevin to reject your help, at which point you'll get to go tell everyone how insincere he was about wanting to believe.
Kind of. This is a schtick of Wade's veterans of these exchanges have seen many times. You'll find that his help will chiefly consist of offering a mock-therpay (think Dr. Phil) to resolve character faults that he will portray as roadblocks to belief. It will be done through a series of Socratic questions. That Mormonism is ultimately a reasonable conclusion is taken for granted. The implication ends up being that his target doesn't believe, not because it is completely unreasonable to believe in Mormonism, but because of some collection of personal faults. (Lack of humility, for instance.) Wade will do this through a superficially nice, though really barbed and sardonic, tone designed to provoke reaction. And if he gets that reaction, he'll question sincerity and use it as validation of those character faults he is implying. If called on this, he'll do a "What?! Me?!" routine that is really quite childish.
Wade is fairly transparent about this - you can already see him setting up the pins in this thread - and the effect is just a troll-job regardless of Chap's or my beliefs about his intent.
wenglund wrote:I meant what I said about only wishing to help Kevin, or anyone else for that matter, with their unbelief.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-
Helloooo...
I'm ready to be helped with my unbelief. Let's get started, yes?
- VRDRC
Do you believe in the words of Isaiah (chapters 40-55) as recorded in the Book of Mormon? Do you believe in the KJV errors as recorded in the Book of Mormon?
*Edit: I suppose Wade's trolling of gays by setting up a fake institute and offering to heal of them of their Sexual Attraction Disorder (or SAD for short) is more infamous. Anyway, good thread.
CaliforniaKid wrote:Personally, I think you're here because you expect Kevin to reject your help, at which point you'll get to go tell everyone how insincere he was about wanting to believe.
Kind of. This is a schtick of Wade's veterans of these exchanges have seen many times. You'll find that his help will chiefly consist of offering a mock-therpay (think Dr. Phil) to resolve character faults that he will portray as roadblocks to belief. It will be done through a series of Socratic questions. That Mormonism is ultimately a reasonable conclusion is taken for granted. The implication ends up being that his target doesn't believe, not because it is completely unreasonable to believe in Mormonism, but because of some collection of personal faults. (Lack of humility, for instance.) Wade will do this through a superficially nice, though really barbed and sardonic, tone designed to provoke reaction. And if he gets that reaction, he'll question sincerity and use it as validation of those character faults he is implying. If called on this, he'll do a "What?! Me?!" routine that is really quite childish.
Wade is fairly transparent about this - you can already see him setting up the pins in this thread - and the effect is just a troll-job regardless of Chap's or my beliefs about his intent.
Maybe you are right, and I am just too charitable. In the case of stemelbow I have reluctantly had to move from viewing him as not very bright to viewing him as a troll.
I have generally seen Wade as someone with a bit of a learning/communication problem. But maybe he is just a troll with bit of a learning/communication problem. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
*Edit: I suppose Wade's trolling of gays by setting up a fake institute and offering to heal of them of their Sexual Attraction Disorder (or SAD for short) is more infamous. Anyway, good thread.
Aaaaaargh! This has been going on for at least seven years? Those posts have dates in 2005.
The mind recoils shuddering from such a prospect (or, rather, retrospect).
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.