bluebell

People are still mad about it. The local paper did a whole article just interviewing the group’s attorney about how the WY Supreme Court got it wrong.

With the way that these smaller temples are put together offsite and then assembled I don’t know if that would work. Maybe there could be design elements that could be added though. But, from the perspective of someone who is currently living in a smaller town that put up a lot of opposition to a temple because of “steeple height“, I don’t think it would matter. The majority of the people who don’t want a temple in their community don’t want the temple there because of how they feel about the church. They wrap it up in more politically correct language now than they used to, but you can tell how they really feel in the comment section of the local Facebook groups and newspapers. Places where they can hide behind usernames. Wasn’t this the town that easily approved a protestant church’s steeple height with no problems in the same area of town? @Amulek, am I thinking of the wrong place?

This kind of comes across as emotional blackmail to me. The mayor is essentially saying, I know what you’re doing is completely legal, but we don’t like it and if you don’t do what we want then it’s going to look bad and we might hate you forever. Maybe the church should give in and just let that temple be a monument to the religious bigotry that exists in Fairview, Texas.

Agreed. It’s why I post here and never cared to be a part of the faithful only-latter day saint message boards that have popped up. It’s boring. We all have biases and echo chambers are incredibly detrimental to reason.

It's an objective fact that the church doesn't provide members with financial statements, but it is your belief that members need financial statements from the church "in order to be good stewards of their resources". It is an objective fact that the church teaches that God commands us to pay tithing, but it is your personal interpretation that the church claims that God has commanded members "to donate blindly to them." You don't seem to be able to separate your personal beliefs and interpretations from objective facts (or at least, you don't seem to notice when you conflate the two), which is why it's hard to believe that your personal biases are not impacting your conclusions on this topic, despite you stating that they aren't.

All the bolded statements are statements of belief, right? They are subjective and are largely informed by your personal feelings about the church and interpretations of the doctrines it teaches rather than being supported by evidence. They seem like examples of belief bias, which are hard to square with your earlier statements about how your personal biases are not impacting your conclusions on this topic.

Same

It’s probably a holdover from Protestantism.

To clarify, I didn’t think you were doing that at all. It was Analytics response to my post and question to him that was most front in my mind. No apologies from anyone necessary.

I had a reply to this and lost it and haven't wanted to retype it again. But the gist was that I'm sure my thoughts and belief on this topic have changed some since 2012. I have more information than I did then, more wisdom, and have been exposed to posters ideas here. I don't remember what I thought about investing tithing back then but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I had a negative reaction to it. Now, understanding that all tithing is invested (whether by the bank or the church) unless it's being stored in a cave in cash, the idea makes good sense to me. But what hasn't changed is my opinion that the church was honest in its explanations of where the money for the mall was going to come from and that it wasn't coming from tithing back in 2012. As for motivated reasoning, I find it's a bit of a cop-out when applied to others because it comes across as a moral judgment rather than an explanation, but I know it's a real thing and so it's relevant for all of us. We're all invested in our opinions and beliefs about the church being right so in that way we are all motivated in our reasoning. It's a good thing to remember for ourselves, not the best thing to try to apply to other people.

It’s playing on both pro stereotype and anti stereotype ideas. So you get stuff like The Harmonites and then the Swords of Justice. A large part of me wishes it wasn’t a spoof because calling the deacons the Federation of Joy would be the best part of church. 😂

Agreed. It's definitely something both of our perspectives and beliefs are susceptible to. Bias is a very real thing.

I saw that last week and sent it to so many people, I thought it was hilarious and adorable!

In your opinion what changed so that the majority of members were not bothered by the whistleblower report about the tithing when it came out? If the majority of them would have been bothered before I mean.

Sorry for the confusion I just realized that you were quoting JAHS concerning the indirect tithing stuff. It's could be technically accurate to say that the church indirectly used tithing to build a mall, but from my perspective not very useful to this specific discussion. From my perspective, it would be more accurate to say that tithing could have helped make buying the mall possible, even though none was used to purchase it. "Indirectly used" doesn't make a lot of sense to me on this topic because it's like saying that farmers indirectly use poop to get milk. It could be technically accurate (milk comes from cows and cows eat grass and a farmer fertilizes his field with manure to grow the grass), but it's also pretty irrelevant in a discussion on whether or not poop created the milk. Unless you want people to doubt the safety of the milk and the morality of the farmer. If that is the goal then framing the discussion in terms of the "indirect use of poop in milk" does become more relevant. I think the same is true for trying to tie the mall purchase to the 'indirect use' of tithing. It doesn't answer the question of whether or not tithing was used to purchase the mall (which is the topic of discussion), but it can help muddy the waters and create some bias. (I don't honestly know if you are trying to tie the purchase of the mall to the indirect use of tithing or not. You might just be making a statement about how that could theoretically be argued, and in that case, I agree with you. If you are trying to make a statement about how that should be argued, or about how it is relevant to the discussion, then that is where we disagree, for the reasons I explained above).

Good job tracking all that down!

So is this illustrating that the idea that tithing is part of the investment fund is speculation? I’m not sure if I’m reading it correctly.

I responded to this but must have forgotten to post it. I'm not seeing where Hinckley said that the "reserve consists of tithing money that is saved for a rainy day". That sounds like an interpretation of two quotes, based on some assumptions that are not specifically stated. Beyond that, there is no such thing as indirect tithing. Tithing is 10% of someone's income. To suggest that 'indirect tithing' exists is to argue for a completely different definition of tithing than what the church uses, isn't it? Because neither interest from tithing money nor things bought with that interest can be defined as 'one tenth of a church member's income'.

Do we know that tithing was used or is that an assumption (another sincere question). The church has a lot of for-profit business ventures and also receives a lot of donations that are not tithing (I know that there are members who leave the church money and property after they die, for example. We have one in our ward who was very very wealthy) and I'm unsure where the 'tithing was used to capitalize...' argument is coming from.

He realized it but then came up with an explanation of why it didn't actually prove what he had said it would prove. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_the_Curve#:~:text=Behind the Curve is a,attendees from around the globe. You can watch the documentary on netflix I think (or maybe it was peacock or hulu? I don't remember anymore).

I think this is where the conspiracy theory mindset comes in. It's like the guy who believed the earth was flat who concocted a simple experiment with lasers and lights to prove he was right, but ended up proving that the earth is round when the experiment showed it's curvature. This kind of experiment had been done many times before over the years, from kids science classes to hi-tech physics stuff and he had access to those findings. But he refused to believe they were real despite all the facts he had access to. (and he still refused to believe it even after he proved it himself, showing how strong and unyielding bias can be)

I'm still not seeing where the church outlines that tithing was used. Can you be more specific?

I’m looking for the quote where the church claims that the mall was indirectly funded through tithing.

Can you provide the quote? Sincere question because I’d like to see it. Not a gotcha

But it seems like the issue there is that many people still don’t believe tithing funds were used. So even there, the issue isn’t whether or not Hinckley lied but what constitutes “tithing”.