Finding "New Spirituality In The Book Of Mormon"

[wayfarer]

Why borrow the fully discredited pious fraud explanation of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from Dan Vogel, and then try to stick the one you call "the god" with base motives? The ;;more you try to defend or vindicate your middle way or whatever you call your heresy. the more you let your mask fall. Please get back on topic. Do you think that the Robert M. Price, a militant atheist and one who also argues that there was no historical Jesus, offers what Thomas calls a "new spirituality in the Book of Mormon" by reading it the way he does? Or will you grant that this is bunk? Please, do not attack me. Just try dealing with the topic of this thread.

i am not borrowing anything from vogel. you and hamblin wish to ascribe a level of historicity to scripture that is inconsistent with biblical text transmission. you clearly are ignorant of wellhausen et al if you think that dan vogel is any source of "pious fraud". and what in heaven's name are you incoherently talking about sticking god with base motives?

i find no issue with finding spirituality in the book of mormon reading it any number of ways, including Price's approach. if he as a nonmember can find spirituality in it, then more power to him! You seem to be bent on making some point that he is a "militant atheist" as if that matters to a spiritual reading of the book of mormon. as faithful, we certainly see much more than that, but i see no point in your ad hominem labels "militant atheist" other than to try to disparage Price through the label -- it is largely irrelevant and disingenuous.

but you don't stop there, do you. you insist on smearing mark thomas by making him a close friend of the dirty militant atheist -- ad hominem guilt by association -- completely ignoring that mark is a believer. this selective picking facts and ignoring others creates a strawman that you then disparage. wow... that's intellectual history for you.

if the topic here is opining on the articles versus your review, i go to the sources and find merit to a spiritual reading of the book of mormon, and find your caricature in review severely wanting.

[wayfarer]

You've never understood the argument. Or at least you are not engaging it.

Historicity of the BOM is not about inerrancy nor literalness. Historicity means that there really was a Lehi, Nephi, Alma, Mormon, Moroni, etc. And most important, that the resurrected Christ literally came to the Americas.

was there a literal moses or exodus? did there have to be? did god command the israelites to perform genocide? did god stop the rotation of the earth to allow the israelites to wipe out its enemies? is it possible to realize that the figures of mythological accounts need not have existed at all in order to be normatively effective?

if you require that the figures in the book of mormon literally existed, then i would submit to you that your faith is in serious jeopardy when the geographic region of the Lehite population in america shrinks to zero. not saying it will, but it is not on a positive trajectory.

personally, i don't take that risk. i see no problem with either a literal reading or an entirely metaphorical reading as proposed by price and thomas. my faith is based on other things than book of mormon literalism (ie existence of the characters and visit of christ). if you find my position incoherent, i respect your opinion, but there are many who share both my faith as well as "incoherent" position, and who find it completely coherent.

Edited February 17, 2013 by wayfarer

[theplains]

... the laying on of hands of resurrected angels (John, Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah, Elias, etc.) ...

How are John (who Joseph Smith said never died), Peter and Elijah considered resurrected

angels?

Thanks,

Jim

[Louis Midgley]

This thread seems dead. I am not sure why Jim (theplains) posted to this thread, and I am not sure why "wayfarer" is an apologist for whatever it is that he finds so attractive in what both Robert Price and Mark Thomas have written. I will, however, try to drag out of him his reasons for being so annoyed at the two items that annoy him.

[rongo]

How are John (who Joseph Smith said never died), Peter and Elijah considered resurrected

angels?

Thanks,

Jim

Good catch. Technically, John and Elijah would be translated, not resurrected. Although they could be resurrected at any point following Jesus' resurrection.

The point, of course, was that Mormonism claims angelic ministration from angels that have physical bodies, whether via resurrection or translation.

[mfbukowski]

uh, no. physical acts are symbolic 'deed for word'. Physical deeds matter to those who require physical evidence in order to sustain their faith. As all are at different levels of faith, then physical acts are entirely appropriate.

As an ordinance worker, I think it is noteworthy that we are instructed to do our very best in performing temple ordinances, and to help patrons in any way we can, to have a spiritual experience. When a patron is constantly corrected in performing the ordinance "wrong" it is not likely that the patron will have a spiritual feeling in their hearts when they are totally consumed by saying each word correctly.

So we try to teach- not to correct. If words are missed, and it feels as if a correction would destroy the spirit, we ignore the missed words and concentrate on the spirit, and trust God to correct it if he deems it necessary.

So the physical act is itself important for commitment to occur. Even in the playground, it used to be common practice to draw a line in the dirt and have anyone who wants to be on one team as opposed to another, to cross over the drawn line. The physical act shows a willingness to put commitment into action.

But ordinances are not magic words. These are not incantations - they are personal manifestations of a commitment to God and what is important is the spirit of commitment and in the case of the Priesthood, an acknowledgement of what authority has been assigned, by whom it has been assigned, and what duties and responsibilities accompany it.

[mfbukowski]

And that Middle Way is glorious indeed.

Oh gosh- there you go again!

There is no need for a "middle way". Christ said he was THE WAY. Because you think your understanding is slightly different than others, it does not mean you are not on his path. We are not robots, we all have agency and our own way of seeing things, and the Church of Jesus Christ is big enough for all of us if we allow it to be.

[mfbukowski]

I am delighted to see you again in the role of an apologist for your own novel understanding of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I don’t think that this thread is the proper place to set out your heresies–that is, your new and presumably improved version of the historical grounds and contents of the faith of Latter-day Saints beginning with Joseph Smith right down to the present. I strongly recommend that, if you are open to persuasion, you start by reading the two essays about which Mark Thomas has opined in the item I included above. The topic of this thread is the opining of Robert M. Price, and the support given him by Mark Thomas through something called “Book of Mormon Round Table” that was conducted when Thomas was an employ (but not a teacher) of the BYU business school. And the bizarre emotional outburst from Thomas when he discovered my history of his relationship with Free Inquiry, Price and so forth. What I wrote is called intellectual history.

Thomas does not like history at all–it is, he thinks, just boring facts. I think Thomas is right that those concerned about the rash of attempts to pull the Church from its historical foundations should read what he has written (and what Robert Price has written). My essays were my attempt to help the Saints to know of and understand the significance of the rash of presumably new ways of unraveling the faith of the Saints.

On the other hand, I came to the church through atheistic humanism. For reasons totally unknown to me, God decided to give me several very powerful spiritual experiences which turned my life around and turned me into what I think is a "True Believing Mormon" even though due to the curse of my secular philosophical training, I will never see things exactly as you do.

I find calling others "heretics" non-productive and would wonder why in fact you think it IS productive to call people names. I am just not seeing how this helps anyone.

[mfbukowski]

Of course, if God revealed a pious fiction to JS to produce the BOM, why couldn't God have just as easily revealed a pious reality about something else? Like other teachings of Jesus in Judea? There is not a reason in the universe that God would reveal fiction about Jesus to try to convince people about the reality of Jesus. God is not a lunatic.

There is a difference between believing on faith that such things "really happened" while at the same time saying that they could never be proven historically, by human beings as we now know things.

The only possible way that one can "know" these things are true, is if God reveals them to you personally. And once one has had that revelation, the possibility to prove it rationally though human means becomes totally irrelevant. One does not need to do so. The need for evidence becomes irrelevant.

When God gave me a testimony, you could call what I knew by whatever name you wanted, including "fiction". I knew what I knew and that was enough for me to surrender my life to whatever God wanted me to do. I didn't- and don't- care if it is "fiction" because it cannot be proven "fact" or not. I know it is true.

[mfbukowski]

What about the god, who through pious fraud, declared "Sh'ma Ysrael, (hashem) eloheinu, (hashem) ehad!" through writing ascribed to moses that moses never wrote? Why do you ascribe to Joseph Smith a different method of scriptural transmission than that practiced by the priests of Josiah?

Honestly I know you are being all counter-culture and all but capitalizing God would help a lot.

When someone offers you his hand, you don't pick your nose, and when you are trying to communicate on a religious board about how you are a believer, you don't fail to capitalize "God".

[Calm]

I suppose I should post links, but someone could do that for me. The first essay is entitled “Atheist Piety: The Religion of Dogmatic Dubiety” (see pp. 111-143), which is a commentary on a special feature on LDS topics in the flagship atheist magazine in the English speaking world; and the second is a book review of a self-published collection of essay on the Book of Mormon by Robert M. Price (see pp. 145-150).....

To see how Price came to be interested in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, please see my comments on his essay entitled “Joseph Smith: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” on pp.123-130 of “Atheist Piety.”...

To see why this is the case with Thomas, please see is essay entitled “Was Joseph Smith for Real? How he Lied, Perhaps Even to Himself,” Free Inquiry 1999-2000, pp. 37-39. (I have provided the address with which this essay can be accessed on p. 137 of “Atheist Piety.”)

Haven't seen the links put up, sorry if this is repeat.

Atheist Piety: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/atheist-piety-a-religion-of-dogmatic-dubiety/

Can't figure out how to link to the middlish of the essay for the section on the book review, so people will just have to scan down to find it or do a 'find' on the page.

Thought the below might be interesting for context.

Was Joseph Smith For Real: http://www.secularhu...age=thomas_20_1

Edited February 19, 2013 by calmoriah

[mfbukowski]

You've never understood the argument. Or at least you are not engaging it.

Historicity of the BOM is not about inerrancy nor literalness. Historicity means that there really was a Lehi, Nephi, Alma, Mormon, Moroni, etc. And most important, that the resurrected Christ literally came to the Americas.

The allegory of the Olive Tree is obviously not literal nor historical. That is not, and never has been, the question. The question is: did Jacob really exist. Texts are never "history." They are memorials of history.

What is incoherent is that claim that God would reveal false and fictitious tales about a Christophany in the the New World in order to convince people that Jesus really is the Christ, when he could have revealed actual authentic information about the historical Jesus in Judea to achieve the same purpose.

I don't doubt that any of this happened- the point is that if it cannot be proven, it might just as well be fiction for all we can know rationally

So how does it make one better than others if one believes it "really happened" and another doesn't care if it really happened but believes as strongly as you do?

I am so tired of this discussion- I just wish we could reach a compromise here between fellow members of the church and get on to substantive issues instead of bickering about who is a heretic and why there should be a "middle way" when there is just one way and we are all part of it- like it or not!

[mfbukowski]

Why borrow the fully discredited pious fraud explanation of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from Dan Vogel, and then try to stick the one you call "the god" with base motives? The ;;more you try to defend or vindicate your middle way or whatever you call your heresy. the more you let your mask fall. Please get back on topic. Do you think that the Robert M. Price, a militant atheist and one who also argues that there was no historical Jesus, offers what Thomas calls a "new spirituality in the Book of Mormon" by reading it the way he does? Or will you grant that this is bunk? Please, do not attack me. Just try dealing with the topic of this thread.

Why would you NOT grant someone any level of "spirituality" they are able to get from any source?

If it makes his life more meaningful, who are you to find that improper in some way?

I just don't understand this at all! Why would you care what he finds "spiritual"?

[Calm]

Honestly I know you are being all counter-culture and all but capitalizing God would help a lot.

When someone offers you his hand, you don't pick your nose, and when you are trying to communicate on a religious board about how you are a believer, you don't fail to capitalize "God".

Yes, please....this would help in not creating the illusion of nonbelief in God when wayfarer writes. Too many insist on not capitalizing God to belittle the belief and for me this motivation emotionally transfers to others who do it for other reasons even when I know that the motivation is not the same. If it is simply carelessness and nothing more on wayfarer's part not to capitalize "God", it seems to me showing respect to God by showing care even in the littlest of ways is something we should strive to do. When I see others respecting God (even those who do not believe themselves in God but try to respect others' beliefs), I tend to respect them more myself.

[Calm]

So how does it make one better than others if one believes it "really happened" and another doesn't care if it really happened but believes as strongly as you do?

There is a difference between not caring something happened and promoting the idea that it didn't happen. I believe Brother Midgley and Hamblin are concerned with those who promote the idea it didn't happen because of the implications of what it means as it all ties back to Christ and the Atonement and the important of the actuality of that life and that act.

[volgadon]

Why would you NOT grant someone any level of "spirituality" they are able to get from any source?

If it makes his life more meaningful, who are you to find that improper in some way?

I just don't understand this at all! Why would you care what he finds "spiritual"?

Amen. There is so much more to it than that, of course, but we all progress at our own pace. As the Hebrew saying has it, there are seventy faces (aspects) to the Torah. If a person limits themselves to one or two then that is their choice, however the poorer they might be for it. I'm reminded of the weird and wonderful fairy-tales of R. Nahman of Braslav. They often contain tales within tales, and the actual meaning, hidden, needs to be sought for beyond superficial appearances. They were widely popular, and you can be certain that the majority of their audience (who weren't Bratslav Hasidism) did not concern themselves with hidden meanings. For R. Nahman's followers, however, these tales were considered repositiories of the deepest, powerful truths.

[mfbukowski]

There is a difference between not caring something happened and promoting the idea that it didn't happen.

I could not agree more.

But I don't see wayfarer promoting the idea that it didn't happen. For me it is about making the alleged epistemological question irrelevant, since it cannot be solved. I take it for granted that it DID happen, but the question for me is how we KNOW it did happen.

The only possible answer to that is personal revelation. And once we know that, all that is left is irrelevant semantics.

Edited February 19, 2013 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

If it makes his life more meaningful, who are you to find that improper in some way?

Perhaps this has something to do with his concern:

However, in this essay written for Dr. Price, he relaxes his fancy footwork and explains clearly that what he calls “critical scholarship” (pp. 124, 126, 134) is an attempt to prove that the Book of Mormon was fashioned by Joseph Smith and hence is merely nineteenth-century religious fiction and not a divine special revelation. He boasts that “critical scholarship distances the scholar from the text [of the Book of Mormon] so that a more objective reading is possible. However,” he also admits, “that distance often creates a hermeneutical difficulty—the text is less personal and less meaningful for the reader” (p. 134). Put another way, when the Book of Mormon is read as merely nineteenth-century fiction devised by Joseph Smith, it becomes a mere curiosity or annoyance rather than the ground for a genuine faith in God.

see page 126 http://www.mormonint...43-PDF.pdf Edited February 19, 2013 by calmoriah

[Calm]

Potentially relevant quotes from the essay:

Since the argument is circular, one can reverse it, which is what Tom Flynn has done: “If today’s LDS church can be accounted for without once imagining that there really were golden plates, then how much more confidently can we sup- pose that Christianity can be understood without any need to presume that there really was a Jesus, much less that he rose from the dead?” (p. 21). The answer is, of course, not a bit more confidently.

page 128

[Calm]

Can't edit post #43 and can't get the link to the pdf to work, so please just go to the previous link to the nonpdf version.

Edited February 19, 2013 by calmoriah

[Calm]

Do you think it's possilble, Dr. Midgley, that your characterization of 'quirky frontier fiction fabricated by a liar/lunatic' is nothing more than a strawman of what Mark Thomas believes? Is is possible, to you, that you're creating a false dichotomy?

At the very least, Mark Thomas clearly states that Joseph lied:

"How he lied, perhaps even to himself" http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=thomas_20_1

Thomas also states that Joseph saw a vision, but implies if I read him right that the vision was created by his psychological interactions with his surroundings as opposed to a real encounter with God:

On these two pieces of historical evidence (the historical and psychological setting of 1823 New York), I rest my case that Joseph Smith actually saw visions. This does not mean that he never lied. He did. But he probably had sense data roughly corresponding to the unredacted core versions of his visions.

Lying to himself could be seen as implying a mental disorder...thus justifying the accusation that Thomas sees JS as a lunatic.

As far as frontier fiction fabricated by Joseph Smith, it would seem to be implied in this comment:

Like any text, the Book of Mormon was produced in a particular historical setting for a particular audience. An understanding of how the internal forms of the text address their nineteenth-century audience can greatly aid us as readers today.

http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=22027 Edited February 19, 2013 by calmoriah

[The Nehor]

So it is all a beautiful sacred lie?

[wayfarer]

This thread seems dead. I am not sure why Jim (theplains) posted to this thread, and I am not sure why "wayfarer" is an apologist for whatever it is that he finds so attractive in what both Robert Price and Mark Thomas have written. I will, however, try to drag out of him his reasons for being so annoyed at the two items that annoy him.

ROTFL. This is truly funny. You wanted this thread to die, because it didn't go where you wanted it to go. Ironically, it was on the way to death, but by your waking it up 8 hours ago (it was idle for nearly two days), you've received even more feedback that dissents from your original objective. I think you expressed your intent rather succinctly:

My essays were my attempt to help the Saints to know of and understand the significance of the rash of presumably new ways of unraveling the faith of the Saints.

You have a singular purpose: to expose whom you think are people who are enemies and then warn the Saints to shun and avoid them. In my observation, you do this in a disciplined, consistent manner:

1. You start from a position that such people are 'the other'. e.g. "Some vocal cultural mormons".

2. You cherry-pick from their words quotes that support your position that they are "the other". e.g. those that question "why stay" or even say there is no reason to believe in a literal Christ (when the same person said that he chooses to believe anyway, demonstrating that 'reason' is insufficient to have faith).

3. You misuse scripture to justify a summary, categorical, negative judgment on them.

4. You apply a label that will declare that they are "the other": e.g. "heretic", "anti-christ".

5. You warn the Saints that such "others" are so vile that if one follows them, one will become as sinful as they. e.g. your dismissal of Mark Thomas as being Pryce's ally.

6. Once you have labeled "the other" as "heretic" or "anti-christ", you use all your energies to dismiss them, neither considering the messages they write either in whole or in part, except to the extent that some specific words can be lifted out of context to justify your summary judgment.

You have created a separation between you and those you deem as 'authentic Saints' and "the others", in a way that essentially declares war on them. You have chosen to speak evil -- in terms of hateful labels -- of those who have been anointed and who continue to be true to their covenants, but have a distinct way of looking at things than you do. When you sow such things, you're going to reap hateful labels in return. That's not a threat -- that's the way things work.

Note, even in your message above -- you choose to treat the label of a friend theplains, while putting my label "wayfarer" in quotes. I am "the other" to you. You have made it clear that I am not worthy of being called a Saint because I am a heretic. labeling and dismissing is hardly an academically valid way of dialogue -- so very much beneath the credentials you carry. For your own sake, please stop.

Since you declare me as your enemy and heretic, please understand that I accept that role willingly, for I have made a covenant: I have sworn on the altar of god* eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man, and I consider labeling and dismissing saints without hearing them to be a form of tyranny. (In Jefferson's letter to Benjamin Rush where these immortal words were first penned, he did not capitalize the word "god")

So when you have the intent of dismissing Pryce and Thomas, and others here find in their writings at least something of edifying content, then we have violated the intent of your thread, and you want it to die. You cannot control others that way. That is the tyranny over the mind of man -- you want the argument to go away. It won't happen.

While I categorically reject the use of the terms 'lying' or 'delusional' for the process of how the book of mormon emerged, I would hope that there are multiple ways of accepting it as a divine work. If Pryce's words can get someone to read the book of mormon and find spiritual content, then hallelujah!

Edited February 19, 2013 by wayfarer

[wayfarer]

Oh gosh- there you go again!

There is no need for a "middle way". Christ said he was THE WAY. Because you think your understanding is slightly different than others, it does not mean you are not on his path. We are not robots, we all have agency and our own way of seeing things, and the Church of Jesus Christ is big enough for all of us if we allow it to be.

Bingo! And as long as some do not allow agency and our own way of seeing things, then I choose to differentiate my beliefs in a meaningful way that preserves the essence of the Way while avoiding the extremes.

But then, once I started looking into the terms "Middle Way", I found much, much more than just a differentiating label. I found that we're in the middle of a lot of things, and while it definitely would be more 'accurate' to say 'Centered Way', (as the late Stephen Covey would call the 'Divine Center'), I will continue to use Middle Way for a number of considered reasons.

For now, let's agree to disagree, and solve it over a diet coke....someday.

[mathonihah]

"For he that is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40) KJV 2000 Bible