Radical Incoherence

[Kishkumen]

So, Kwaku for grown-ups?

Kind of, yes. Not inasmuch as I think the two are polar opposites when it comes to thoughtfulness and sense of responsibility. The signatories to this statement are much more thoughtful and responsible than Kwaku is. In those respects they are light years apart.

[Doctor Scratch]

So, Kwaku for grown-ups?

Kind of, yes. Not inasmuch as I think the two are polar opposites when it comes to thoughtfulness and sense of responsibility. The signatories to this statement are much more thoughtful and responsible than Kwaku is. In those respects they are light years apart.

Reverend--

Who is it that's pushing this idea?

[mentalgymnast]

Here’s my radical orthodoxy: forget the church. Jesus did not found one. The Gospel is true; the church is a legal fiction. Get over it.

You, of course, are free to take that position although it cuts you off from the mainstream church.

I’ve read through this document a couple of times now and I would have to say I’m a hundred percent on board with it’s content. As I’ve mentioned in this forum, I believe it’s a form and/or degree of fundamentalism that takes some folks down the path of apostasy. This document makes that rather clear.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Regards,
MG

[Analytics]

What's driving this is quite clear: the irreconcilable conflict between intellectual integrity and loyalty to the Church. The point of the document is to help them deal with their own cognitive dissonance by pretending that a "narrow path" actually exists that allows intellectual integrity and loyalty to this Church to simultaneously exist. What they are doing is pledging full loyalty to the church, pretending to pledge loyalty to the truth and integrity, and feigning that this position isn't a flagarent self-contradiction.

I can't help but think of Emerson when I read their disingenuous manifesto.

I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side,--the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

[mentalgymnast]

What's driving this is quite clear: the irreconcilable conflict between intellectual integrity and loyalty to the Church. The point of the document is to help them deal with their own cognitive dissonance by pretending that a "narrow path" actually exists that allows intellectual integrity and loyalty to this Church to simultaneously exist.

The irreconcilable conflict is between what we know and what we don’t know. That naturally creates a certain degree of cognitive dissonance. It’s to be expected. It’s called ambiguity. The path that believers follow is between that which we know in a worldly sense, and that which requires reasonable but not blind faith. Unfortunately, fundamentalism...and its different manifestations...leads to a place of ‘either/or’ with little or no room for exploration or further understanding.

Ambiguity and the fact that we don’t ‘know it all’ leads towards a state of being in which we live our lives having to deal with some uncertainty. Some deal with this better than others. The manifesto is simply saying that there are core truths that are adhered to, while at the same time we are open to further light and knowledge as we discard incomplete understandings from the past. That’s natural evolution. It’s the way the world works. The world is not static, it’s dynamic and ever changing. And so are we. And so were our ancestors. Including those that served in leadership positions in the church.

Regards,
MG

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Oh, are we back to MG pretending he’s not a fundamentalist evangelical on fire for Mormonism?

Cool.

- Doc

[Philo Sofee]

Kish
Here’s my radical orthodoxy: forget the church. Jesus did not found one. The Gospel is true; the church is a legal fiction. Get over it.

My new signature line!

[Kishkumen]

You, of course, are free to take that position although it cuts you off from the mainstream church.

I’ve read through this document a couple of times now and I would have to say I’m a hundred percent on board with it’s content. As I’ve mentioned in this forum, I believe it’s a form and/or degree of fundamentalism that takes some folks down the path of apostasy. This document makes that rather clear.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Regards,
MG

Greetings, mentalgymnast. You are very welcome, of course. I knew you would approve of it, and, yes, I am free to take a position that cuts me off from the LDS Church. That, of course, happened some time ago and was entirely voluntary on my part. It was a decision of conscience that sprang from immoral and misguided policies imposed by Church leadership.

It is unfortunate that such things happen, that otherwise decent people can be drawn into conflict by their genuinely held beliefs. The leaders of the LDS Church believe that socially conservative views drawn from the world around them are true, and I find that these same views are unsupported by revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith. This is a form of empty Christian fundamentalism that has led the LDS Church down the road of apostasy.

Insistence on these false beliefs leads to many to psychological pain and destruction, which the leaders of the LDS Church, convicted of their own rightness, somehow find a livable thing to bear. I choose not to live with that burden, and I see no requirement that I do live with it. It ain't pretty. In fact, it's tragic, but my power to do.

[Kishkumen]

Reverend--

Who is it that's pushing this idea?

Hello, Doctor. The idea of radical orthodoxy?

[Kishkumen]

Apologetics would probably work. Sunday School teachings are banal, but the intellectual history and justification of our banal teachings could be more interesting.

Yes, it could, Dean Robbers. It will be interesting to see whether they follow through and provide something of this nature.