Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

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_NorthboundZax
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Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _NorthboundZax »

Just for funsies I'm posting this from another thread

Sethbag wrote:
cinepro wrote:A similar question was recently discussed over at MAD. Turns out, when the chips are down, "authority" may not be as concrete as we previously thought.

Wow, there's a real shocker. :mrgreen:


NorthboundZax wrote:I used to think about that as a missionary. If "Amen to the priesthood of that man" happened, but bishops and whoever didn't know/care, where do such perfomed ordinances by this person land?

A few years ago, I wrote a version of the following:

NBZ wrote:The Kolobian bureaucracy will be excluding a number of people who thought that they had checked off all the required boxes to enter the Celestial Kingdom, as many ordinances require exact wordings and actions to be valid. Using probability analysis we can estimate the number of erroneously performed ordinances to find the number of people that will be doomed to lower kingdoms than they otherwise would have achieved.

For example, baptism can be checked off in heaven only if the prayer is recited verbatim with the correct hand gesture and the baptizee is entirely immersed in the water at some instant in time shortly thereafter (exposed toes, knuckles, or incompletely immersed hair requires a do-over). Two witnesses are required at each baptism to verify its suitability. Confirmation, initiatory, and endowment also require exact standards, but are trickier and not always as thoroughly policed as baptism. So these ordinances likely have been botched even more often than for baptisms.

It is not uncommon for one or both of the witnesses to ask that the baptism be redone for the one or more of the following reasons (but not limited to): verbal deviation from the written standard, arm not fully to the square or fingers extended correctly, or the bapitzee not fully immersed. A little probability analysis can be illuminating regarding how reliable this process is. Whether or not false negatives are theologically significant or not (causing a properly performed ordinance to be re-performed) should probably also be explored as there are undoubtedly even more of those.

Suppose a slightly erratic priesthood holder performs baptisms correctly only 75% of the time, but has two witnesses that are each correct 90% of the time (wrong 10% of the time). With two witnesses the rate of false positives will be about 1 in 400 ((1-0.9) ´ (1-0.9) ´ (1-0.75)). Estimating from the number of baptisms attended by the author in the last decade and a half (~40) that needed to be re-performed (~4-7) I would guess that 80-90% accuracy for those doing the baptizing. For the sake of argument, suppose 95% accuracy on their behalf. For the witnesses, 98% accuracy seems sufficiently conservative. Assuming that witness fallibility is independent is a best-case scenario, although not entirely realistic (a mistake may be missed by both witnesses for the same reason such as an inopportune sneeze). These values suggest false positives with the chance of 1 in 50 thousand. For matlab reasons, let’s use an even more conservative estimate of 1 in 100 thousand.

The probability, f, of having at least one false positive (unnoticed mistake) in a population of size s is given by f = 1 - (1-p)^s, where p is the probability of a mistake not being noticed (e.g., 1/100,000). f ranges from 0 (impossible) to 1 (certain). As f becomes larger, the likelihood that more than one also increases. The probability, q (again ranging from 0 to 1), that there will be any particular number, g (0, 1, 2, …), of false positives in a given population is found by

q = k * (1-p)^(s-g) * p^g,

where

k = s!/(g!(s-g)!)

and ! means factorial.

With a current pool of 12 million members, f > 0.999999999999, meaning that there is a greater than 99.9999999999% chance that one or more souls are eternally oopsed because their ordinance was unknowingly botched. Just among the 4 million, or so, actually striving for the CK, there is probably between 30-50 oopsed souls. With a quick extrapolation to the roughly 20-50 million baptisms occurring in the church since 1830 (not counting all the proxy work), there is a greater probability of someone winning the Missouri Mega Millions Powerball Lottery twice in a row than in having everyone’s ordinances who wanted them done to the bureaucratic standards of Kolob.

These problems could actually be even worse than shown above. What if an eternally oopsed person baptizes someone else? Since the baptizer couldn’t have the proper authority, that baptizee is also oopsed and the witnesses definitely aren’t going to catch it. Since Joseph and Oliver didn’t have any witnesses to make sure they did it right, there is a good case that we are all doomed to lesser kingdoms anyway, even if Mormon mythology had any truth to it.

Image


Scottie wrote:That was great, NBZ!!

However, you forgot the LDS mantra... it will all work out in the end.
_John Larsen
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _John Larsen »

Did you really just post a quote of yourself quoting yourself?
_The Dude
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _The Dude »

So, the take-home message seems to be that rituals and authority cannot be all that important for salvation if God is a loving and merciful father. Somehow, I suspect that is a common sentiment among the majority of Mormons who don't often speak up during Sunday meetings.
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond
_JoetheClerk
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _JoetheClerk »

Per those in the LDS Church who say a restoration of Priesthood was needed the Book of Mormon tells us this is a fiction. The Three Nephites never left and they have the Priesthood. Add in John who is supposed to still be here and you have a continuing line of Priesthood Authority on earth since Jesus days.

If restoring something that was never lost was important somehow then the whole idea of it is off kilter and nothing in the teachings is concrete either.
_harmony
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _harmony »

JoetheClerk wrote:Per those in the LDS Church who say a restoration of Priesthood was needed the Book of Mormon tells us this is a fiction. The Three Nephites never left and they have the Priesthood. Add in John who is supposed to still be here and you have a continuing line of Priesthood Authority on earth since Jesus days.

If restoring something that was never lost was important somehow then the whole idea of it is off kilter and nothing in the teachings is concrete either.


It might help if there was a revelation, duly accepted and canonized by the members, regarding the restoration of the higher priesthood. You will no doubt have seen the lack thereof. There is a report... there is nothing canonized. The lack thereof is very strange, considering all that has been done in the name of the higher priesthood, including starting the church.
(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.
_The Nehor
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _The Nehor »

The Dude wrote:So, the take-home message seems to be that rituals and authority cannot be all that important for salvation if God is a loving and merciful father. Somehow, I suspect that is a common sentiment among the majority of Mormons who don't often speak up during Sunday meetings.


Perhaps, but keeping covenants and obedience in submitting to the rituals is.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
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_Chap
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _Chap »

The Nehor wrote:
The Dude wrote:So, the take-home message seems to be that rituals and authority cannot be all that important for salvation if God is a loving and merciful father. Somehow, I suspect that is a common sentiment among the majority of Mormons who don't often speak up during Sunday meetings.


Perhaps, but keeping covenants and obedience in submitting to the rituals is.


Exactly. It is clear from the whole tenor of the unfolding prophetic content of the Old and New Testaments that God has progressively revealed to humanity that one of the most important things to Him is that human beings should perform certain rituals correctly.

There is not a lot He cares about more than that, I should think. Jesus repeated this lesson to His disciples over and over again, and made it plain that his mission on earth was mainly about getting ritual right. And his apostles taught it too: "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but do not do my rituals correctly, I am as nothing", said Paul. Of course that's what the epistle said before it was altered by apostates: I am quoting from the Restored Version.
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.
_The Nehor
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _The Nehor »

Chap wrote:Exactly. It is clear from the whole tenor of the unfolding prophetic content of the Old and New Testaments that God has progressively revealed to humanity that one of the most important things to Him is that human beings should perform certain rituals correctly.

There is not a lot He cares about more than that, I should think. Jesus repeated this lesson to His disciples over and over again, and made it plain that his mission on earth was mainly about getting ritual right. And his apostles taught it too: "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but do not do my rituals correctly, I am as nothing", said Paul. Of course that's what the epistle said before it was altered by apostates: I am quoting from the Restored Version.


The Law of Moses says this. Then if you read about Jesus the man went out and got baptized and then insisted you had to be born of water like he was. Then he instituted a new ritual at Passover and told his followers to continue to do it in remembrance of him. Of course it wasn't exclusively about ritual but feel free to beat that strawman as much as you like. He won't put up any resistance.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
"I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
_harmony
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _harmony »

The only ritual that really counts is this: bow your head and bend your knee before God.

Man's rituals, no matter how convoluted or simple, are, at the end of the day... man's rituals.
(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.
_The Nehor
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Re: Priesthood authority not as concrete as we thought

Post by _The Nehor »

harmony wrote:The only ritual that really counts is this: bow your head and bend your knee before God.

Man's rituals, no matter how convoluted or simple, are, at the end of the day... man's rituals.


What about God's rituals?
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics
"I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
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