"Research is Not the Answer"

[_Themis]

Really? What are the conventions, absurdities, and improbabilities of atheism, and what are the conventions, absurdities, and improbabilities of your own religion?

It what you say when you cannot name any conventions, absurdities or improbabilities. Keep things vague. I suspect when it comes to his own religion he may stick to things the church has either moved away from or tries not to take a current position on anymore. Some of the things I can think of now that are proven is things like the age of the earth or a global flood, or the vague beliefs/absurdities like needing some deity to die for our sins.

Can you choose to go back to believing in Santa Claus if you want to?

This one may be next to impossible since it is an agreed upon absurdity by everyone not really young and at a stage they will believe just about anything their parents tell them. How about a Phd in geology believing again in a young earth? Would that be impossible or just really unlikely few ever could make that choice.

[_consiglieri]

Consiglieri, I listened to this in the car today. I was struck by your letter from JFMc, where he said something along the lines of nobody in Church being interested in new views or new thinking etc. I think you understood that to mean him talking about the members of the Church, but I thought about the kinds of Church circles he would be mixing in at the time, who his father was, and I see his comment to you to be alluding to a much bigger statement about the mindset of Apostles of the day. What do you think?

This is a really good question! I had never thought of it that way.

My impression from reading a lot of Joseph Fielding McConkie, and listening to him give an address at Education Week at BYU back in 1994, is that he was very much along the lines of his orthodox father and grandfather (BRM and JFS).

I think he may have stood out a bit in welcoming new ideas and new thinking, such as he was with mine, but only if said new ideas and new thinking could be fit comfortably within orthodox Mormonism.

In other words, a paper that proposed the ancient Israelites had a form of the endowment would be acceptable from his point of view, whereas a paper proposing the LDS endowment came from Masonry would likely not be.

I am certain he saw his father and grandfather as setting the gold standard in gospel learning, a standard he sought in his own way to replicate.

I can imagine Joseph Fielding McConkie sharply felt the void created in LDS scriptorians by the passing of BRM and JFS, and he may have looked at other church leaders as substantially lacking in this regard.

So to some extent, I can see how his comments might have had application to church leaders (and fellow BYU professors) as well as to the general membership.

Nice point!

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[_Fence Sitter]

I can imagine Joseph Fielding McConkie sharply felt the void created in LDS scriptorians by the passing of Bruce R. McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith, and he may have looked at other church leaders as substantially lacking in this regard.

--Consiglieri

Given the advances in Biblical and even Book of Mormon scholarship, in all fields, over the last fifty years, and the accessibility to that work via the internet for curious Mormons, the Church is going to pay the price for not better expanding and developing it's theology to accommodate those advances. As the reality of Biblical mythology sets in and spills over into the Book of Mormon, the Church is going to be left without a framework to support the faltering faith of those who discover that the Old Testament Biblical patriarchs didn't exist and how that affects thier views of actual events in the Book of Mormon and the Restoration.