Cylon wrote:If all Mormons thought that way, you would belong to a very, very small church. Do you think there would even be any apostles left?
It is refreshing to hear a believing Mormon acknowledge that, absent a testimony, the church's claims are absurd. Kudos to Tobin for his honesty.
I agree.
Tobin wrote:No, but it might be a pure faith and maybe even a Christ-like faith as well. One based on the spirit instead of a bureaucracy and dedicated to doing some good in the world instead of building monuments to itself. I can't think the Lord is too pleased with how the LDS Church conducts itself.
I agree with that, too. I just think that if God were really interested in speaking to people personally as his preferred method of instilling testimony, he would speak to more than just a tiny fraction of the worldwide population, and wouldn't tell them completely contradictory things.
Tobin wrote:No, but it might be a pure faith and maybe even a Christ-like faith as well. One based on the spirit instead of a bureaucracy and dedicated to doing some good in the world instead of building monuments to itself. I can't think the Lord is too pleased with how the LDS Church conducts itself.
I agree with that, too. I just think that if God were really interested in speaking to people personally as his preferred method of instilling testimony, he would speak to more than just a tiny fraction of the worldwide population, and wouldn't tell them completely contradictory things.
That can't be helped. Humans are fallible and imperfect. Our perceptions of a perfect God will be imperfect and even contradictory by definition. But, I think it is a much more honest approach than the top-down hierarchies we see in organized religion. If the members of the LDS Church asked more questions and checked with God first, the LDS Church would not have landed in nearly as many messes as it has.
"You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night.... Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful." -- Judge Doom
Ah come on, is no one going to pick up the gauntlet and smack down my faux apologist post? I had to exercise some long dormant mental gymnastics muscles to write that.
Was I that far off the mark in how I characterized the typical apologist's response to a question like Bob's?
This might sound a little far-fetched, but I think you locate when and how the LDS church went down the wrong path in the D&C. It's in the little quoted and mostly obscure section of D&C 28. Because of this you can also date when the LDS church went down the wrong path, September 1830.
D&C 28:1-7 lays the foundation for a top down hierarchy. In no uncertain terms, Joseph Smith takes power away from the members of the church here and puts it squarely in his own hands. This basically severed the connection the average church member had with God, because now any insight or revelation a member had to square with the Joseph Smith and his successors. Even worse, it in effect made the church members powerless because there was no way to tell the prophet that he was wrong. Appeals to scripture, reason, or experience were essentially moot, because by definition the prophet was right and you were wrong. Granted, it took a long time for the consequences of this section to be worked out; there was still a lot of freewheeling Mormonism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but eventually this part of section 28 completely won out.
D&C 28:8-10 sends Oliver Cowdery to the Lamanites. The major point here is that there is a lot of historical evidence that at least part of the reason for this mission was to marry Lamanite women, i.e. start polygamy. It took Joseph a while to get this one right, this was one of several false starts before he hit upon a way of making polygamy work. It would take another 9-10 years before he was able to make it work in Nauvoo, but this was the first salvo. Few things that the LDS church has done have been more destructive or have had worse consequences than has polygamy.
Finally, D&C 28:11-16 has Joseph rebuking Hiram Page for using a seer stone. At this point Joseph had decided that seer stones were no longer respectable, even though he had used them to translate the Book of Mormon within the previous two years. No mention is ever made of this. Joseph wants to forget about it, so the institution of the church won't acknowledge them officially anymore. This is the beginning of sending Mormon history down the memory hole and the beginning of lying for the Lord in an official capacity (here it's a lie by omission, but of course full blown lying will happen in the name of protecting the church and its leaders).
There you have it, the worst aspects of Mormonism, all starting in September 1830.
Aristotle Smith wrote:There you have it, the worst aspects of Mormonism, all starting in September 1830.
My only disagreement with your excellent post is that it merely codified the worst aspects of Mormonism, which were already in place. Joseph's need for absolute power and his attraction to multiple women predate this revelation, but this is the first time it was publicly set in stone that he was in charge and could do as he wished.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it Norm--that I should have so much knowledge when there are people in the world that have to go to bed stupid every night." -- Clifford C. Clavin, USPS
"¡No contaban con mi astucia!" -- El Chapulin Colorado
Tobin wrote:No really. Note the lowercase 'g' in gods vs 'G' in God. If you are going to dabble in a religion like Mormonism (or others that are based on the Bible), you should come armed with at least some comprehension of what is being discussed. 'gods' here is an appellation which indicates a greater nearness to God than any other which is bestowed on other men. It implies you are like unto God. Often it is used in the Bible for representatives of God on earth.
God is a god.
H.
"Others cannot endure their own littleness unless they can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level." ~ Ernest Becker "Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death." ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Tobin wrote:It isn't a senitment. That is exactly why I choose to be Mormon. Otherwise, there is NO reason to be Mormon. The claims are absurd, preposterous, ridiculous and so on. People DO NOT see God, Angels, and have Gold Books land in their laps. It is simply a fact. Unless that happens to you, there is no reason to believe it. The Book of Mormon, the Bible, Joseph Smith, and so on make these claims. IF they are true, we had better be able to experience EXACLTY the same stuff or it is all non-sense.
People don't see God, but somehow they can hear him and know it's him?
H.
"Others cannot endure their own littleness unless they can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level." ~ Ernest Becker "Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death." ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Can we split the political stuff from this thread? I want to keep the thread about my bad attitude.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it Norm--that I should have so much knowledge when there are people in the world that have to go to bed stupid every night." -- Clifford C. Clavin, USPS
"¡No contaban con mi astucia!" -- El Chapulin Colorado
