Dissing Boyd K. Packer

[Tacenda]

10 hours ago, ksfisher said:

You seem to be imagining Sunday classes more like Church History 101 than as classes where members are taught to have faith in Jesus Christ and live the gospel.  It would seem to me that Joseph Smith's polygamy is something that fits President Packers definition of something that is true but not useful.  I'm not really sure how it impacts my life today.  Not a bit as far as I can tell.

I'm also surprised when adult members of the church say they know nothing about the church and polygamy.  These are things I've known about for as long as I remember. 

Not necessarily Joseph Smith Polygamy/Polyandry 101. But how about the wives of the prophets included in some things, that way you could show that Joseph lived polygamy and recognise women too. The women in the church's history have been given the swift kick to the behind, IMO. Nothing much is written about them for the curriculum in our church. 

[Kenngo1969]

23 hours ago, Nevo said:

I'm not sure what your definition of "available" is, but to this day BYU restricts access to Fawn Brodie's and Dan Vogel's biographies of Joseph Smith. You can't find them on the shelves or even in the non-circulating reference section. The only copies are squirreled away in Special Collections. To see them, you need to fill out a Reading Privilege Request form and provide photo identification. Approval is "limited to those who show scholarly intent." Assuming you clear all of these hurdles, you are only allowed to read the books in the reading room (after your phone and other personal belongings have been securely stowed in a locker). It's clear to me that BYU doesn't want to make these books readily available to students—otherwise they would just put them on the shelves and let people sign them out.

I know, and members of the Paramilitary Strike Force of the Strengthening Church Members Committee are posted at the entrances to bookstores as well, to monitor the buying habits of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to take appropriate corrective action (up to and including terminating the subject: they are fully authorized to kill, if necessary) should Church members exit bookstores with any inappropriate material.  

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Making-Prophet-Biography/dp/1560851791

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679730540/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687582&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1560851791&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=R16QVCSTP6VB2MNE8RK4

And just so I avoid incurring the wrath of the PSF of the SCMC:

https://www.amazon.com/maam-thats-not-history-vindication/dp/B0006EJPJC

 

[cinepro]

On 10/27/2016 at 9:31 AM, ksfisher said:

You seem to be imagining Sunday classes more like Church History 101 than as classes where members are taught to have faith in Jesus Christ and live the gospel.  It would seem to me that Joseph Smith's polygamy is something that fits President Packers definition of something that is true but not useful.  I'm not really sure how it impacts my life today.  Not a bit as far as I can tell.

I'm also surprised when adult members of the church say they know nothing about the church and polygamy.  These are things I've known about for as long as I remember. 

 

Well, to be fair there is a Sunday-School class every four years called "Doctrine and Covenants and Church History", so if there were some Church members who imagined that they would be learning about Church History in that class, I think I'm going to cut them some slack.

Maybe in the interest of honesty they could rename the class "Selected Portions of the D&C Reinterpreted for Our Day and Carefully Crafted Faith-Promoting Nuggets from Church History."

 

Edited October 28, 2016 by cinepro

[Calm]

On 10/27/2016 at 1:22 PM, James Tunney said:

Further, the church just excommunicated Mr. Runnells because he pointed out the troubling history.

Runnells hardly points out the whole history though.  He leaves things out himself.  If the argument is it has to be all or one is deceptively hiding history, what critic passes that standard?

(I don't believe believe Runnells was disciplined because he pointed out troubling history.  It was his various conclusions about the Church and fundamental teachings being false and publicly promoting that likely would have had him exed.)

add-on:. Corrected for accuracy

Edited October 28, 2016 by Calm

[Calm]

17 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Not necessarily Joseph Smith Polygamy/Polyandry 101. But how about the wives of the prophets included in some things, that way you could show that Joseph lived polygamy and recognise women too. The women in the church's history have been given the swift kick to the behind, IMO. Nothing much is written about them for the curriculum in our church. 

That is likely to change with the publication of women's journals and such, there will now be much more material easily accessed (it should be noted, IMO, that church narratives used for the most part have been widely available, it is understandable curriculum writers go to well known easy examples instead of spending time researching through journals and personal writings for new stories).

[cinepro]

12 minutes ago, Calm said:

Runnells hardly points out the whole history though.  He leaves things out himself.  If the argument is it has to be all or one is deceptively hiding history, what critic passes that standard?

(I don't believe believe Runnells was excommunicated because he pointed out troubling history.  It was his various conclusions about the Church and fundamental teachings being false and publicly promoting that which got him exed.)

Not sure if it matters, but Runnells attended his "court", but at the very end he resigned before they could take action.

[Calm]

On 10/27/2016 at 2:10 PM, stemelbow said:

I believe he suggested some such people were there, as in in the audience, when he gave the speech.  So that would include Church employees doing research. How anyone would think it stealing for people to have access to documents to copy those documents is beyond me. 

If the intent was to copy to give them to others including those known for being antiMormon (speaking in the clinical sense) and not for the purpose of personal or professional research as required, would you consider that stealing?

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Not sure if it matters, but Runnells attended his "court", but at the very end he resigned before they could take action.

True, my brain is still asleep today.  Corrected post, thank you.

Edited October 28, 2016 by Calm

[James Tunney]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Runnells hardly points out the whole history though.  He leaves things out himself.  If the argument is it has to be all or one is deceptively hiding history, what critic passes that standard?

(I don't believe believe Runnells was disciplined because he pointed out troubling history.  It was his various conclusions about the Church and fundamental teachings being false and publicly promoting that likely would have had him exed.)

add-on:. Corrected for accuracy

I don't think he intended to point out the whole history. It's not the critic's job to do so. The burden is on the seller and not the buyer. The allegation was and is that the church sold its members a version of history that doesn't correspond to the real history.

Packer approved of this when he only wanted faithful history told and when he said that things that are true aren't always useful. This is one of the reasons why people like Runnells are upset or disillusioned when confronted with Joseph marrying other men's wives, the seer stone v. the artwork depicting the translation in a different manner, etc. They feel they were sold something else, something false.

[Kevin Christensen]

One of the reasons why I'm not a passenger on the Victim train is that when ever I run across something I did not expect, I stop and consider, "What should I expect?" which is basically what checking your own eye for beams is about.

What should I expect?  Not, "I am entitled to have everything handed to me."  I've been involved with recovery literature for over 13 years, and I've become very aware that a sense of self-righteous entitlement is one of the most disruptive stumbling blocks in the human repertoire for concealing our personal need to repent in favor of pointing indignation elsewhere.   The Perry Scheme is instructive for those inclined to look.

From Kuhn again:

"For the moment, let us simply take it for granted that to an extent unprecedented in other fields, both the layman's and the practitioner's knowledge of science is based on textbooks and a few other types of literature derived from them. Textbooks, being pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science, have to be rewritten in whole or in part whenever the langue, problem-structure, or standards of normal science change. In short, they have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each scientific revolution, and once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them. Unless he has personally experienced a revolution in his own lifetime, the historical sense of the working scientist or of the lay reader of textbook literature extends only to the outcome of the most recent revolutions in the field."

"Textbooks thus begin by truncating the scientist's sense of his discipline's history and the proceed to supply a substitute for what they have just eliminated. Characteristically, textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or more often, in scattered references to the great heroes of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long standing historical tradition. Yet the textbook -derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solutions of the text's paradigm problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific." (Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 137-138) 

The important thing in approaching Joseph Smith and Mormonism is to insist on unchanging perfection.  That way any imperfection or change discovered provides all the self-justification that a person could possibly want, as well a platform from which to claim victimhood.

Or, alternatively, rather than expecting of Joseph Smith and Mormonism what no human society has provided or can provide, we could ask whether there is any indication that his inspiration is real, which is a very different thing than asking whether everything we have been given is perfect and unchanging, something that the formal statement of "mine authority" and the "authority of my servants" in D&C 1 bluntly disavows.

Fussing over a single talk by a single authority given over forty years ago is not careful science nor balanced scholarship.  It is, and has always been, self-serving propaganda.  It does not account for the the massive and conspicuous Joseph Smith Paper's Project and therefore does not explain LDS culture. 

And for the record, I did respond at in print at length to Runnells.  And to the friend he recruited to challenge my response. 

Just saying,

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[VideoGameJunkie]

I think it's interesting that Jeremy Runnels is asking for money for the CES letter. He's trying to profit off of apostasy and making others apostasize.

[Bernard Gui]

On October 26, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Bernard Gui said:

Some here knew Leonard Arrington. I have enjoyed his writings. Is it fair to say he was demoted from his position as Church Historian to a professor at BYU? Is it fair to claim Elder Packer was an unethical liar?

Back to the OP, would anyone care to comment on these questions?

Quote

Radio Free Mormon: "For a historian [or lawyer] it's a breach of [ethics, integrity, and morality] to not tell the truth, but apparently for BKP, and he presumes all the teachers he's talking to and the Church he represents, there's no breach of integrity or ethics or morality in being deceptive about Church history because that's the course of conduct he wants his listeners to follow."

 

Edited October 29, 2016 by Bernard Gui

[cdowis]

33 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Back to the OP, would anyone care to comment on these questions?

Radio Free Mormon: "For a historian [or lawyer] it's a breach of [ethics, integrity, and morality] to not tell the truth, but apparently for BKP, and he presumes all the teachers he's talking to and the Church he represents, there's no breach of integrity or ethics or morality in being deceptive about Church history because that's the course of conduct he wants his listeners to follow."

 

Let'sstart from the beginning.

1. What specific "not telling the truth" are you referring to?

2. What specific historians were CES teachers attending the seminar where Elder Packer was speaking?  To whom in the audience was he directing his remarks.

3. When you say "breach of ethics,, integrity, and morality" in teaching the Institute students, please tell us what immorality, what unethical behaviour, and what breach of ethics were being taught?  Please be specific on the specific lesson materials which included immorality, etc  Give us the exact quotes from those lessons.

Otherwise, this is simple minded, hysterical ranting and raving that we can find on any antiMormon video or web site.  Let's see what you got.

Edited October 29, 2016 by cdowis

[Bernard Gui]

9 hours ago, cdowis said:

Let'sstart from the beginning.

1. What specific "not telling the truth" are you referring to?

2. What specific historians were CES teachers attending the seminar where Elder Packer was speaking?  To whom in the audience was he directing his remarks.

3. When you say "breach of ethics,, integrity, and morality" in teaching the Institute students, please tell us what immorality, what unethical behaviour, and what breach of ethics were being taught?  Please be specific on the specific lesson materials which included immorality, etc  Give us the exact quotes from those lessons.

Otherwise, this is simple minded, hysterical ranting and raving that we can find on any antiMormon video or web site.  Let's see what you got.

You'll have to listen to the podcast for his arguments.

I added the weird format because another poster said I misrepresented the podcast.

 

Edited October 29, 2016 by Bernard Gui

[cdowis]

50 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

You'll have to listen to the podcast for his arguments.

<Meta Discussion mode>

Uh.... no.  YOU wanted my view of the answers and as the author of this thread, if you want to discuss answers, YOU need to precisely  define the questions.

[cinepro]

18 hours ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

I think it's interesting that Jeremy Runnels is asking for money for the CES letter. He's trying to profit off of apostasy and making others apostasize.

He's really just trying to profit off the publication and dissemination of a book he wrote.  He's hardly the first person to do that (the the tradition of book authorship, publication and sale for profit must go back centuries).  Whether or not someone apostatizes after reading it is up to them; Runnells gets paid either way if they buy the book or make a donation.

[Jeanne]

19 hours ago, VideoGameJunkie said:

I think it's interesting that Jeremy Runnels is asking for money for the CES letter. He's trying to profit off of apostasy and making others apostasize.

It is also interesting that Church Apostles and other authorities ask for money for their books.  They are trying to profit on getting new members or member retention and making others pay for it. 

[cdowis]

19 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

 

[VideoGameJunkie]

1 hour ago, Jeanne said:

It is also interesting that Church Apostles and other authorities ask for money for their books.  They are trying to profit on getting new members or member retention and making others pay for it. 

Whats bad is pastor Joel Osteen who owns a $10.6 million mansion and makes $40 million a year from his church and tens of millions more from his books which he promotes during sermons.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, cinepro said:

He's really just trying to profit off the publication and dissemination of a book he wrote.  He's hardly the first person to do that (the the tradition of book authorship, publication and sale for profit must go back centuries).  Whether or not someone apostatizes after reading it is up to them; Runnells gets paid either way if they buy the book or make a donation.

Perhaps now, but iirc when he first made the choice to ask for money, it was simply to support him in his various responses to criticisms, publishing the CES letter in various languages free online, etc.. He said he was spending so much time and blowing through his own savings that he either would have to be supported by donations or quit his efforts.

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Perhaps now, but iirc when he first made the choice to ask for money, it was simply to support him in his various responses to criticisms, publishing the \CES letter in various languages free online, etc.. He said he was spending so much time and blowing through his own savings that he either would have to be supported by donations or quit his efforts. [Emphasis added by Kenngo1969.]

I know which one of those two options I would advise him to select.  

[Kenngo1969]

Apologies if this is off-topic, but I've said it before, and I think it bears repeating here.  Critics such as Mr. Runnells have the advantage over apologists and over the faithful when it comes to winning back the hearts and minds of the questioning. Rarely are sound-bite criticisms refutable by sound-bite responses: more often than not, to be effective, such refutation needs to be more in-depth.  However, skeptics are more likely to pay attention to (and to be swayed by) the sound-bite criticisms than they are to pay attention to (and to be swayed by) the in-depth responses.  Critics such as Mr. Runnells know this, and they take full advantage of it.

[VideoGameJunkie]

This is pastor Joel Osteen's house property which should be disconcerting to people who give religious people money. This is a pastor's house, not a professional athlete or Hollywood actor.  http://jameslparis.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d71ad53ef01bb07d15a9f970d-pi

Edited October 30, 2016 by VideoGameJunkie

[sunstoned]

23 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Apologies if this is off-topic, but I've said it before, and I think it bears repeating here.  Critics such as Mr. Runnells have the advantage over apologists and over the faithful when it comes to winning back the hearts and minds of the questioning. Rarely are sound-bite criticisms refutable by sound-bite responses: more often than not, to be effective, such refutation needs to be more in-depth.  However, skeptics are more likely to pay attention to (and to be swayed by) the sound-bite criticisms than they are to pay attention to (and to be swayed by) the in-depth responses.  Critics such as Mr. Runnells know this, and they take full advantage of it.

I agree with you.  When it takes ten to fifteen pages to respond to why JS married other men's wives or why the BofA is not really a translation like JS said it was, you are going to lose people.  This situation is not helped at all by the fact that there are multiple apologists theories for each of these issues.  I think most people are use to the truth much less convoluted than that.

Edited October 31, 2016 by sunstoned

[cdowis]

4 hours ago, sunstoned said:

I agree with you.  When it takes ten to fifteen pages to respond to why JS married other men's wives or why the BofA is not really a translation like JS said it was, you are going to loose people.  This situation is not helped at all by the fact that there are multiple apologists theories for each of these issues.  I think most people are use to the truth much less convoluted than that.

Matt 16 [13] When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
[14] And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
[15] He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
[16] And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
[17] And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.