The Nehor

Being inconsistent in how you write is proof it is an authentic ancient text?

I have no idea. That is what I am trying to figure out. I admit that it is unsettling not to have solid answers to questions like this but not having something to fill a void in my understanding if I discard something doesn’t mean that what was there was accurate. It is unfortunate not to know it. The LDS faith posits that a long extinct belief was correct and had to come back. Virtually all Christian faiths accept a time before their faith arrived. Judaism wasn’t really proto-Christianity and Judaism as we understand it doesn’t really go back that far. So if some variant of the Christian faith is correct then it wasn’t around for a time and was openly ridiculed by the Greco-Roman world it appeared in for many reasons but one of the main reasons was how new it was. They saw antiquity as proof that their gods were strong. I don’t share their conviction that that is correct. I am not sure what I think God expects or whether God expects anything of us or if God exists at all. This goes back to Christianity not always being on the Earth. In the LDS faith I heard the idea that God wouldn’t let the truth lose was false since the Jews (to some degree) lost the truth why couldn’t Christianity? I am admittedly less convinced that Judaism had some ‘truth’ that Christianity recovered from Judaism but that is a common narrative. Oh, I definitely expect change over time. That is a given. One of the things my best history professor taught was that any time a culture claims that their practices (relgious, cultural, economic, etc) extend unchanged back to time immemorial get very very skeptical. We have lots of cultures that have made those claims and every time we can check it turns out not to be true. I have joked that the LDS Church should be approaching its Councils phase soon. Starts in a burst of revelation and miracles and goes on like that for a while and then slowly becomes more institutional and operating more and more out of practicality slowly changing in ways that many won’t notice. There have been three eras of different conceptions of sealing practices in the Church and I bet less than 5% of members know much of anything about the previous models. My understanding is that there was a time where the gnostics likely outnumbered the proto-orthodox and a gnostic version of Christianity was the first to attempt a systemic doctrinal structure. I don’t find it terribly convincing but it was clever and interesting. Also I have to admit I have a secret love for the shade that the gnostics and proto-orthodox were throwing at each other. Wow, those guys were good at character assassination.

That is not what I said but if you want to take offense at the imagined thing you think I said you do you. So was it a choice to believe that was what I said?

It is more that I am saying that I don’t trust the sublime times or the down times any more and decided to try to figure out God or the lack thereof by other means becuase, as you said, good times and bad times both come and go. The quantity of bad times presents problems for an especially benevolent God existing but by itself it isn’t that conclusive.

Ummmm…..no. I doubt because I deeply examined the evidence and saw a lot of reasons to doubt. If I thought objective reality could be amended to what I want it to be by beliefs then I would choose differently but that is not the Universe I live in.

Are they though? I don’t have the mental ability to convince myself of things that I am convinced are untrue or the ability to doubt things that have repeatedly been proven to be true. Maybe in some cases it is a choice I don’t think that is always or even usually the case.

Most of my friends think I am pretty optimistic. Also what is an “unending rupture of victim classes”? The idea that mortal experiences are awful and unjust is weird? Has your life truly been that great? Warning: Vulgar language around one of the most empathetic things I have heard directed at those who are tired of living and want to give up. I send this to people who are struggling with their life and it usually makes them feel seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh7QWBb2U2A And yeah, while my life is not particularly good I know a lot of people who have it much much worse and have endured things that probably would have broken me completely. So yeah, I question why God decided to give them these horrific scars that may never heal. It is called empathy. Then again I heard that got reclassified as sin in large parts of our culture. When Dante went down into hell his humanity led him to feel empathy and pity for those being tormented. Then he corrected himself when his guide Virgil told him that his pity and empathy were misplaced as showing empathy was sin because the damned deserved that punishment and wishing it was not this way was questioning the judgement of God. Really really messed up stuff and it is still amongst us and not just towards the dead. Also to the “unending rupture of victim classes” which I assume means…..victims?

Yes, and this is why a lot of people leave. It doesn’t seem to be working and they are told the problem is really with them. But really, I am not upset over my life and that is not why I am doubting. My life has never been that great. i am used to a degree of misery and frustration and having to fight my own brain chemistry and deal with feeling like an outsider looking in. I have become less convinced that the gospel is suddenly going to reverse that either before or after death or that this process was somehow “refining” me. I have felt a sublime connection to God in the past. I even have experiences where I feel that sublime euphoria and connection sometimes now. I am just not convinced it is from God and I have read up on enough mystical experiences from all kinds of cultures and faiths that sound similar that I have a hard time accepting that these are an indicator of some eternal objective truth.

I now have a mental image of an apostle speaking in General Conference and an angel with a flaming sword appearing in the congregation and pointing at his eyes and then pointing at the speaker. Now I can’t stop giggling.

There are other ways God could communicate with us. I have a hard time believing God went with this option because it was the best of a lot of bad choices. He could have an angel show up every General Conference to give us more direct communication. He could have an angel visit each of us individually a few times a year to update us on what we need to work on and what we need to do. There are plenty of other options. God chose not to use them so the message getting through clearly just doesn’t seem that important to God for whatever reason.

It doesn’t seem like whomever is running this show knows me very well. You can argue that God does know me super well and is playing some kind of long game but I like to think that an omniscient and omnipotent God that wanted to communicate that He knows me well would find a way to do it so that I would recognize since He, you know, knows me better than I do. If I don’t recognize it is that really some kind of defect in me?

The wrong Kennedy survived.

Yeah, that is more than a little callous to the guy who thought he was damned and was clearly distressed. I mean, that was back when the CHI was still held close to the chest so it is not like he could have checked the rulebook. And for this latest pushback that counsel doesn’t help anyways. So is the general rule about who is to be the primary or sole breadwinner still in effect or not? People are still out there teaching it. Should they be? I see apostles complaining about people not listening to the things they teach but a lot of the time it is because they don’t acknowledge changes they have subtly made without telling anyone. If you communicate vaguely and cagily you can expect misunderstandings.

Or even basic health stuff like dead body disposal. He left that dead bear cub in Central Park.

I should support him because he was related to someone? That is just stupid. Also the idea that the Democratic party is full of people I should deeply trust and respect due to affiliation? What? Why would I do that? That is cult leader type thinking. Also he is a lawyer, not an expert in medicine. And his stance on vaccines is contributing to all the lovely measles outbreaks my state is experiencing. I guess we are too stupid to look at history and see how bad diseases can be. We forgot they were bad and have to try them again just to see what happens.