The (Inter)National Book, Or, "We Are Doomed!"

[Loran Blood]

The trouble I have with any religious book becoming a "National Book" as a source code for morality and mores is that the practical implimentation of such a source code almost always leads to unrighteous dominion.

As I've read Lehi's arguments thus far, I've seen nothing indicating he wishes any "practical implementation" of anything, in any political or coercive sense.

At one time the Waltz was banned as immoral.

The point being?

The music of the 60's was/is a reflection of the times. It inspired and lead to the ending of a war, the ending of Jim Crow, and more equal rights for women.

So, in other words, rock music was instrumental in the handing over of a peaceful, agrarian, emerging nation to totalitarian oppression, the creation of the Boat People, second wave (and third?) feminism, and the ending of Jim Crow? Well, certainly, it was, indeed, a "reflection of the times."

At a bare minimum, it should at least be pointed out that the Vietnam War did not end when America left it, by any stretch of the imagination, which is hardly surprising, because it did not begin when America entered it.

In any case, you seem to be confusing Lehi's understanding of a "national book" with some kind of forced, legal implementation of mandatory compliance; some kind of Christian Sharia, which does not at all seem to be what Lehi has in mind at all. His use of pop music as the alternative national book should be a hint of what he's trying to say here. The "book" need not be an actual written text with a front and back cover. It can be any form of sociocultural "vector" or communication form that carries knowledge, information, attitudes, perceptions, and values. What he is saying is that this has changed drastically since that all important era of the sixties and seventies, and he's exactly right.

[Calm]

America and its moral superstructure eliminated slavery, and led the world in so doing.

Great Britain abolished slavery in its nations and colonies before the US, France as well I believe.

[Loran Blood]

3. Good is what you want others to do unto you. Evil is what you don't want others to do unto you.

In other words, it is, for the most part, substantially subjective and relative.

Whips and chains, anyone?

[Loran Blood]

But isn't it a statistical fact that the number of members in the LDS church is increasing? Wouldn't that equate (in a religious manner) to a more righteous time? According to those who believe in the faith.

No. According to the revelations, Christ will come again the second time when the world is "ripe." It will be at the terminal point of maximum spiritual, moral, and intellectual degradation, a degradation that will be pervasive and global in scope and influence.

[Jesterss]

No. According to the revelations, Christ will come again the second time when the world is "ripe." It will be at the terminal point of maximum spiritual, moral, and intellectual degradation, a degradation that will be pervasive and global in scope and influence.

So then what's the point in a restored revelation if in the end, moral degradation will be at a max? Seems to be a delayment of the inevitable...

[Loran Blood]

Great Britain abolished slavery in its nations and colonies before the US, France as well I believe.

Sorry about that, you're right, but Britain and France were a bit late, coming in behind Mexico and Chile. Perhaps it would be better to say that America abolished the Atlantic slave trade, as it existed at the time. It did not abolish slavery, however, outside the western world, which, of course, continues to this day in some places (including Africa).

Edited October 7, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

So then what's the point in a restored revelation if in the end, moral degradation will be at a max? Seems to be a delayment of the inevitable...

The point is to gather Israel and allow as many as so desire to accept the gospel, enter Zion, and come out of "Babylon" before the whole thing implodes of its own iniquitous weight. That's what raising a "warning voice," - one of the primary responsibilities of the Saints - is all about.

[Ariarates]

The Lord, through revelation to some of his prophets, used organized warfare to visit judgement upon peoples and cultures considered "ripe" in their cultural decadence and moral deterioration. I have little desire to defend such phenomena, but at the same time recognize that these actions were, indeed, divinely inspired at certain times and places and in certain contexts, and accept them as such.

That's what I was saying: certain times, certain places, certain contexts - apparently there is some other moral standard by which you judge these things and which make you relectant to defend such pratices because deep down, as a human being, you know they are wrong.

People don't need books to tell them what is right, they need books to tell them that what is wrong to them as human beings is right in the eyes of God.

So much Nonsense, in my view.

That's because the view you express in your reply is based on a supernatural distinction between body and spirit. This perspective probably won't help you (or even make you want to) understand the science I referred to.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Ariarates

[Ariarates]

In other words, it is, for the most part, substantially subjective and relative.

Whips and chains, anyone?

Is that what you want others to do unto you?

It's only substantially relative and subjective if you assume that there are substantial differences in what human beings want for themselves and eachother. If morality is biological, your argument doesn't hold.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Ariarates

[Calm]

Sorry about that, you're right, but Britain and France were a bit late, coming in behind Mexico and Chile. Perhaps it would be better to say that America abolished the Atlantic slave trade, as it existed at the time. It did not abolish slavery, however, outside the western world, which, of course, continues to this day in some places (including Africa).

Whatever, the US certainly was not a leader.

[Calm]

So then what's the point in a restored revelation if in the end, moral degradation will be at a max? Seems to be a delayment of the inevitable...

For some of the same reasons why Noah and Enoch did their preaching and gathering of the Saints.

[LeSellers]

Whatever, the US certainly was not a leader [in abolishing slavery].

Actually, she was.

The Constitution, while it did not prohibit slavery, nor even set a date for doing so, did define a limit to importing new slaves (in 1807, as I recall). The "slavery debate", as part of the Constitutional Convention, was not the first time USmericans contested the practice. It was hot, it was divisive, it was one of the most contentious points during the Convention. It was one of a fairly small number of issues that nearly derailed the whole movement.

The mere fact that slavery did not actually end in the whole of USmerica until the end of the War Between the States seems to swamp the fact that many states did prohibit it long before then. (It's like those who claim that USmerican women did not get the franchise until the XX amendment—simply not true: many states had granted it decades earlier, and the thrust was that all would, even without the federal—or more accurately, antifederal—alteration. In fact, in one territory, Deseret/Utah, females suffrage was rescinded by the feds—another anti-federal move.) In 1861, there were 19 "Free" States, and 15 "Slave" States. Even in 1789 (the year the Constitution took effect), there were already 5 of the 13 states that had prohibited slavery (among whites, anyway: Indians continued to hold other Indians as slaves long afterward). By 1800, there were 8 "Free" States.

New territories were admitted to the Union as either slave or free, but it is important to note that in those free territories, slavery was forbidden. Even in the South, there were many abolitionists. (It may be important to some to note that there were many northerners who supported slavery, too. Some people must have "all the facts", lest we be accused of lying or hiding the truth.)

By any measure, USmerica led the way in abolishing slavery. She was more successful than England, since slavery still exists in India and Egypt, but none does anywhere in USmerican-controlled lands.

The Britain, proper, of the XVIII~XIX had no slaves. Stopping slavery in the colonies was rather easy compared to what had to happen in the USmerican homeland to accomplish the same result. There were no Members of Parliament who opposed it with a personal interest bias, as there were in the US Senate and House. The colonies had little representation, so their interests were not presented in Commons or Lords.

While I readily acknowledge William Wilberforce and the effort and sacrifice he, and others, made to accomplish abolition in the Empire, his work was child's play compared to that of John Quincy Adams and the myriad of others in political office and outside it whose work eventually led to the XIII amendment.

Further, and in direct reference to the OP, it was based on the National Book, the Bible, that all of these efforts came to fruition, whether in England or USmerica. Without that common referent, without a National Book, it is very doubtful it would have happened.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

The importation of slaves continued until the South surrendered. Unfortunuately slavery is still happening in the US, though it is illegal.

http://abcnews.go.co...=2981327&page=1

http://today.msnbc.m...irls-nightmare/

Edited October 8, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[Loran Blood]

Yawn.

They are going to hell in a hand basket. Not.

This op-ed is a polemic who's basic thesis is that there is no evidence of any particular problems with contemporary children and youth and that present concerns are baseless, and then provides not a shred of evidence in support of that thesis (the author claims there is no empirical evidence on the matter, which I find to be disingenuous at best). The author claims he has scoured the social science world for data and come up empty handed, expecting his readers to accept this assertion upon his weighty word as an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

This threadbare argument is an old one, and one which the baby boom generation pioneered when certain specific contributions to the sociocultural milieu by many of its members are held up to interrogation and critique and found to be deeply wanting, along a number of dimensions, and fundamentally at variance with long human experience and tradition. The observation that sociocultural health and deterioration are cyclic in nature have little bearing on the concerns of Lehi or anyone else, within or without the Church, who have been raising a voice of warning for several generations now regarding the alarming moral, cultural, and intellectual exhaustion of American and Western culture generally, since most importantly the late sixties.

The Nephite "pride cycle" is indicative of the patterns we are now facing in our own social setting, and which have proved the undoing of numerous cultures before ours. The fact that the decline is, in a latter day sense and for the first time in history, global, only increases the urgency and cogency of the concerns. Have parents been concerned, and even alarmed regarding the behavior and values of their children, in centuries past? Yes they have, and what if, just what if they were right, in many cases?

[Loran Blood]

Lehi:

The importation of slaves continued until the South surrendered. Unfortunuately slavery is still happening in the US, though it is illegal.

http://abcnews.go.co...=2981327&page=1

http://today.msnbc.m...irls-nightmare/

Yes, STS, but that's not the legal chattel slavery of several centuries ago, but illegal criminal servitude, much of it sexual in nature and driven by our culture's (and Europe's) insatiable appetite for eroticism, including in its most degrading forms. I'm just saying that this is an apples/oranges comparison and of no real historical value relative to the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States.

[Loran Blood]

That's what I was saying: certain times, certain places, certain contexts - apparently there is some other moral standard by which you judge these things and which make you relectant to defend such pratices because deep down, as a human being, you know they are wrong.

I don't know that they are wrong. I do know that they would be very difficult to obey as commandments from God, but their are "hard doctrines" and hard truths that sometimes have to be confronted. In any case, I have a fundamental distrust of secular humanist concepts of the good and the just, based on my long study of history and human nature. Sometimes it works out (when it happens to coincide with gospel conceptions), but in many other cases, human ideas of morality and the good devour their own children.

People don't need books to tell them what is right, they need books to tell them that what is wrong to them as human beings is right in the eyes of God.

Human beings then, are naturally good, pure, and innocent, and civilization, with its systems of moral philosophy, ethics, and rules of civil conduct, is a fundamentally corrupting and negating influence?

That's because the view you express in your reply is based on a supernatural distinction between body and spirit. This perspective probably won't help you (or even make you want to) understand the science I referred to.

That assumes that what you have referred to is actually science, and not just scientism in an evening gown. I've grown rather weary and skeptical, over the years, of the penchant for attaching the imprimatur of "science" to every nostrum or philosophical position one wishes to take in an attempt to head off intellectual scrutiny at the pass at the outset. That too, has a long history.

Edited October 9, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

Whatever, the US certainly was not a leader.

I'd have to disagree here. The general sentiment tending toward abolition of the practice predates the signing of the Constitution and most certainly of the Civil War. I'd also have to say that the American philosophy and ethos was predominant in providing the decisive intellectual and moral argument for the eradication of this ancient institution.

[Ariarates]

I don't know that they are wrong. I do know that they would be very difficult to obey as commandments from God, but their are "hard doctrines" and hard truths that sometimes have to be confronted.

They are difficult to obey because they go against your human instincts that they are wrong. You need an ideology to help you overcome that natural resistance. That ideology can be anything, religious or secular.

In any case, I have a fundamental distrust of secular humanist concepts of the good and the just, based on my long study of history and human nature. Sometimes it works out (when it happens to coincide with gospel conceptions), but in many other cases, human ideas of morality and the good devour their own children.

The same holds true for religious concepts of right and wrong.

Human beings then, are naturally good, pure, and innocent, and civilization, with its systems of moral philosophy, ethics, and rules of civil conduct, is a fundamentally corrupting and negating influence?

There's no need to take what I said to such extremes because then it no longer represents what I said. I do believe that human beings are endowed with a fundamental knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. That is supported both by LDS doctrine (the light of Christ) and biology (man as a social animal).

That does not mean that man is perfectly good and never choses evil. No surprises there - neither from a religious, nor from a humanist point of view.

That assumes that what you have referred to is actually science, and not just scientism in an evening gown. I've grown rather weary and skeptical, over the years, of the penchant for attaching the imprimatur of "science" to every nostrum or philosophical position one wishes to take in an attempt to head off intellectual scrutiny at the pass at the outset.

I only said there is an increasing amount of research that points toward morality being a biological quality. That's hardly an expression of scientism. I'd be happy to discuss the science with you but if you are content to summarily dismiss it based on your years of experience and study, that's fine too.

Edited October 9, 2011 by Ariarates

[thesometimesaint]

Loran Blood:

I've got plenty of examples of good old economic slavery here in the present day US.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28415693/ns/us_news-life/t/child-slavery-now-being-imported-us/

[Loran Blood]

They are difficult to obey because they go against your human instincts that they are wrong. You need an ideology to help you overcome that natural resistance. That ideology can be anything, religious or secular.

I don't this argument will get you very far, because exactly the same thing can be said about all things understood as "good" and "righteous," including structures such as representative government and deliberative democratic institutions in lieu of autocratic or mob rule (the human norm). Dr. Thomas Sowell has said it perhaps as succinctly and lucidly as it could be said:

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Knowledge of and sensitivity to the good, the beautiful, the just, and or "right" and "wrong" must be taught, inculcated, reinforced, and deeply ingrained or it can very easily be lost before such perceptive biases are internalized. LDS theology does include the concept of the "Spirit of Christ" that comes into the world with every human being born, and is identified with the "conscience;" a general feeling, perception, or awareness of general right and wrong in the ethical realm. That medium, however, must be continually cultivated and nurtured. It does not simply grow on the vine without tending, weeding, and fertilization. Secondly, this awareness is not very particular, but only general in application, and can, over time, be easily led away by intellectual sophistry and human passions.

There's no need to take what I said to such extremes because then it no longer represents what I said. I do believe that human beings are endowed with a fundamental knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. That is supported both by LDS doctrine (the light of Christ) and biology (man as a social animal).

That does not mean that man is perfectly good and never choses evil. No surprises there - neither from a religious, nor from a humanist point of view.

I only said there is an increasing amount of research that points toward morality being a biological quality. That's hardly an expression of scientism. I'd be happy to discuss the science with you but if you are content to summarily dismiss it based on your years of experience and study, that's fine too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNnx_X5ue2c&feature=related

Question: is this natural behavior moral or immoral?

[Loran Blood]

Loran Blood:

I've got plenty of examples of good old economic slavery here in the present day US.

http://www.msnbc.msn...ng-imported-us/

1. On the American side, this is representative of illegal criminal activity, not legal chattal slavery, which was abolished a century and a half ago.

2. The core of the problem here seems to be centered in aspects of African and Muslim culture, including such culture as transplanted to America, and not in America itself - which is hardly surprising, no?

Edited October 9, 2011 by Loran Blood

[volgadon]

1. On the American side, this is representative of illegal criminal activity, not legal chattal slavery, which was abolished a century and a half ago.

I agree with you here.

2. The core of the problem here seems to be centered in aspects of African and Muslim culture, including such culture as transplanted to America, and not in America itself - which is hardly surprising, no?

It was also centered in aspects of England, which culture was transported to America. Here is a famous example. http://books.google.com/books?id=gKgLAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=bloody+assizes&hl=en&ei=AuuRTr_zGemQsQKJwdW3AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Loran Blood]

I agree with you here.

It was also centered in aspects of England, which culture was transported to America. Here is a famous example. http://books.google....epage&q&f=false

Yes but, that's ancient history. STS seems bent on assigning the continuation of slavery in the modern West to some kind of ongoing, leftover cultural baggage, which I am arguing is long past. But do I really have to make this argument at all?

[thesometimesaint]

It ain't so "Ancient History".

In Mormonland until OD2 the idea was that because the black race were condemned to be servants in this life in the Bible. They could never aspire to anything more than servants to the superior white race in the next.

The reason the SBC exists is that they believed blacks had no soul. They were no better than livestock, and often treated worse.

[Tarski]

Please don't push this into politics. It' s not about politics, it's about morality and establishing norms.

Lehi

The "good book" doesn't seem all that good to me.

There are quite a few objectionable social norms in the Bible and quite a few modern ethical notions that seem foreign to the Bible. I am afraid that if we had ever really been using the Bible as a model without "picking and chosing" on the basis of contemporary sensibilites, we would be in real trouble. (*cough* stoning anyone?)

Modern ideas arguably foreign to Biblical ethics:

Human rights.

Separation of church and state (and the related rejection of theocracy in the western world).

Capitalism.

Full democracy.

Women's suffrage.

Rejection of slavery.

Rejection of the notion of a chosen race. (the idea of racism seems to be a modern one)

Bible passages that seem to be advising objectionable ethics are very very easy to find:

"A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death."

"When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. "

" If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever."

"Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel"