Joseph Lied: Why The Afore's Joseph Smith Trilemma Is A Logical Dead End

[malkie]

If I think about that guy in our ward who ran a Ponzi scheme and got busted for it, he was sincere. His actions became self-destructive and consistent with somebody who believes he was wronged.

“Hey, but he was sincere, and that’s gotta count for something!”

Sounds crazy, right?

Joseph Smith in Nauvoo is hard to rationalize away. The guy had gone way too far. He was driving his truck right into a giant stone wall at 90 mph. Someone was bound to murder him sooner or later.

And I can’t see signing up for that. I can’t see signing up to live under Brigham’s regime either. The Mormonism I grew up in became intolerable once I was enough of an adult to think for myself. I remember the off-kilter demands the bishop made of me and my family. They were nothing severe; it just struck me as oddly inappropriate to allow a virtual stranger to tell me how to be a husband and father. I did not need his help to do those things. His “help” was not going to improve our lives.

I would have had no desire to live in the Mormon society of the 19th century. Finding an escape hatch would have been a top priority.

I've observed a lot of Mormons who seem happy - anxious, even - to allow a virtual stranger to tell them how to be a husband and father, a wife and mother. Some not only allow the bishop to tell them what to do, and how to do it: they invite him or require him to do so. The bishop is the shepherd of the flock, and knows what's best for them, or so they believe. They tell him all sorts of intimate things about themselves and their families, confess their "deviances", ask for guidance which he is ill-equipped to give, but he gives it anyway as he feels inspired to. He is responsible for all of this because his god has decided that he's the best man to do the job.

Could you see yourself as not only a Reverend, but as a Bishop?

[huckelberry]

The Unibomber was sincere. Sincerity is, as you essentially argue above, a not negligible but certainly not decisive factor. I tend not to place much stock in it, since it is eminently possible for people to be sincere in their errors.

If I think about that guy in our ward who ran a Ponzi scheme and got busted for it, he was sincere. His actions became self-destructive and consistent with somebody who believes he was wronged.

My, at this point the story becomes even more interesting. Can details, explanation, be expanded?

[huckelberry]

“Hey, but he was sincere, and that’s gotta count for something!”

Sounds crazy, right?

Joseph Smith in Nauvoo is hard to rationalize away. The guy had gone way too far. He was driving his truck right into a giant stone wall at 90 mph. Someone was bound to murder him sooner or later.

And I can’t see signing up for that. I can’t see signing up to live under Brigham’s regime either. The Mormonism I grew up in became intolerable once I was enough of an adult to think for myself. I remember the off-kilter demands the bishop made of me and my family. They were nothing severe; it just struck me as oddly inappropriate to allow a virtual stranger to tell me how to be a husband and father. I did not need his help to do those things. His “help” was not going to improve our lives.

I would have had no desire to live in the Mormon society of the 19th century. Finding an escape hatch would have been a top priority.

I've observed a lot of Mormons who seem happy - anxious, even - to allow a virtual stranger to tell them how to be a husband and father, a wife and mother. Some not only allow the bishop to tell them what to do, and how to do it: they invite him or require him to do so. The bishop is the shepherd of the flock, and knows what's best for them, or so they believe. They tell him all sorts of intimate things about themselves and their families, confess their "deviances", ask for guidance which he is ill-equipped to give, but he gives it anyway as he feels inspired to. He is responsible for all of this because his god has decided that he's the best man to do the job.

Could you see yourself as not only a Reverend, but as a Bishop?

weird, alien. Really done?

[huckelberry]

I feel a bit embarrassed for CS Lewis when I think of his famous either or query about Jesus, alternative readings are common, not difficult to consider. Perhaps Lewis being a smart fellow knew that but was pushing people to consider more closely. After all many people do not consider close enough to consider the alternative path seeing Jesus as propelled by the hopes and pain of the time culturally motivated by ideas of a possible kingdom of God. Jesus had some vivid ideas about what that could mean for human relationships. He and followers were inspired. Perhaps he was carried away in the temple action and his followers were more carried away expanding his inspiration into thinking of a special connection to God which later expanded in beliefs. In this picture Jesus did not claim to be God, that idea grew after he died. I think some of these paths can be seen even if one is thinking Jesus really was divine.

I think some of these causal pathways could be similarly influencing Joseph Smith and some other religions inventors of a variety of character. Social tension and hope encourage imaginative vision hoping to see answers and hope. People respond wanting to believe some message is especially real powerful and a future to be a part of. A person like Joseph Smith may be drug along by the expectations of others. Of course he would have to be actively creating himself. Joseph Smith may have truly believed he had inspiration which people needed. Their desire for it may have helped Joseph Smith think using fictions to communicate his inspiration was OK. I have wondered how much he thought of a magic world view whose truth was a step beyond standard religion and could only be brought to people by the use of fiction. Peoples need and desire to see him as an authority itself helped calling fiction real.

[Physics Guy]

C.S. Lewis was a good writer but not a philosopher. His academic subject was literature, and literature can in a certain way be a shallow subject. You can just take the text as you have it as the bedrock truth; you don't have to ask whether chapter 3 is really part of the novel, or whether it's really that cold in Narnia. In a lot of subjects it's a struggle just to pin down your starting point. What do we really know about Julius Caesar, and how do we know it? That's a a big rabbit hole right at the front door. In literary criticism that doesn't have to be a problem.

Some literary criticism is in fact about who wrote what, when, or which text is authentic. Most of the subject, though, can take off from a clear and solid starting point. You don't have to be a source critic; you're allowed to just take the text itself as a premise. There is even a respected approach to literary criticism called "close reading", in which the whole point is just to consider the text itself carefully but not worry about how it may relate to any other texts. I loved how I could get good grades on essays based on reading only one book. Getting really good at literary criticism is as hard as getting really good at anything else, but the subject has got to have one of the lowest barriers to entry. You can read one book, and think. It's like theoretical physics, only more so, because the analog to learning calculus is just learning to read.

Anyway, I think that Lewis's apologetics suffers a lot from his seeming unawareness of how hard it is to find solid premises. He takes for granted that the canonical texts about Jesus—or even just their traditional interpretations—are the universally accepted ground truth. He even tends to assume that the mores of mid-twentieth-century middle-class Britain are universal. If you've accepted his starting point, then his rhetoric can seem persuasive, but it's apt to collapse completely, like a house of cards, if you poke at its base.

On the other hand, though, I think you can find a lot of good things in C.S. Lewis's writings, even if you have to doubt their authority and recognise outright errors. Just as his di- or trilemma was a false dilemma, so also his own work can have a lot of good in it without being all wrong or all right.

[Limnor]

On the other hand, though, I think you can find a lot of good things in C.S. Lewis's writings, even if you have to doubt their authority and recognise outright errors. Just as his di- or trilemma was a false dilemma, so also his own work can have a lot of good in it without being all wrong or all right.

I don’t think trying to force someone to choose is how Jesus goes about things. His approach seemed to be more about attraction than tricking people into believing Him. Joseph, on the other hand, repeatedly cornered people with authority claims and secrecy.

[malkie]

I've observed a lot of Mormons who seem happy - anxious, even - to allow a virtual stranger to tell them how to be a husband and father, a wife and mother. Some not only allow the bishop to tell them what to do, and how to do it: they invite him or require him to do so. The bishop is the shepherd of the flock, and knows what's best for them, or so they believe. They tell him all sorts of intimate things about themselves and their families, confess their "deviances", ask for guidance which he is ill-equipped to give, but he gives it anyway as he feels inspired to. He is responsible for all of this because his god has decided that he's the best man to do the job.

Could you see yourself as not only a Reverend, but as a Bishop?

weird, alien. Really done?

This is the voice of experience - as in "been there, done that".

[huckelberry]

weird, alien. Really done?

This is the voice of experience - as in "been there, done that".

Malkie, giving it second thought I can see how a person could genuinely hope for a bit of guidance from an authority who might have divine assistance. I guess I am not as open about that sort of thing as many others. I could not have imagined asking a bishop about my struggle with doubts for example, I gather some people do .

[malkie]

This is the voice of experience - as in "been there, done that".

Malkie, giving it second thought I can see how a person could genuinely hope for a bit of guidance from an authority who might have divine assistance. I guess I am not as open about that sort of thing as many others. I could not have imagined asking a bishop about my struggle with doubts for example, I gather some people do .

Because the bishop is often thought of as the "father" of the ward (a divinely appointed father!) some folks turn to the bishop for advice about all sorts of things, from wayward teens, to financial problems, to emotional issues, to marital disagreements, confident that the bishop's god-given wisdom will help them. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, while some bishops may have counseling skills, others are woefully inadequate to the task. I count myself, in retrospect, among the latter group.

I was (sorry to say) more of a letter-of-the-law guy than I should have been, and was encouraged by my leaders to think that I was not likely to make any serious mistakes as long as I prayed about what I was doing. It would likely have been better for the branch members if I had refused the calling as branch president. After a couple of years I was kicked "upstairs" to the district presidency where in some ways I think I did less harm - more admin, and much less one-on-one counseling.

If you had come to me about your struggles with doubt, you may not have had a very comforting and sympathetic experience.

[I Have Questions]

On the other hand, though, I think you can find a lot of good things in C.S. Lewis's writings, even if you have to doubt their authority and recognise outright errors. Just as his di- or trilemma was a false dilemma, so also his own work can have a lot of good in it without being all wrong or all right.

I don’t think trying to force someone to choose is how Jesus goes about things. His approach seemed to be more about attraction than tricking people into believing Him. Joseph, on the other hand, repeatedly cornered people with authority claims and secrecy.

Here’s one for you Limnor - in 1986 the current President of the Church (an Apostle back in 1986) made the following statement during a talk to students, which he tried to explain in a subsequent interview.

I also said something else that has excited people: that it’s wrong to criticize leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true, because it diminishes their effectiveness as a servant of the Lord. One can work to correct them by some other means, but don’t go about saying that they misbehaved when they were a youngster or whatever. Well, of course, that sounds like religious censorship also.

He also said

“Not everything that’s true is useful,” and that [meant] “was useful to say or to publish.”