Is "slowing growth" really a concern, as opposed to membership loss?

[Scott Lloyd]

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Can you name any group or organization that has a mission to destroy the Mormon church?  What percentage of the population are we talking about in this great and spacious building? 

While many may disagree with policies of the Mormon church, I don't see any group actively trying to tear down and destroy the Mormon church.  Perhaps you can identify exactly what you are talking about.

Are you being intentionally obtuse or are you really not grasping this? Did you even bother to look at the link I provided from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism?

The typological symbolism of the great and abominable church and the church of the Lamb is not about specific groups or entities. It's not even expressly about what you incorrectly call "the Mormon church." It's about the tension between ideologies that conform to the lies and malice that Satan is trying to promulgate vs. the doctrine and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Hamba mentioned a thing that I identified as comporting to these Satanic lies and malice. In a prior post, he mentioned other things: the suggestions of policies being floated by a political party currently in power in his country's parliament that would broaden the definition of abortion to include so-called "post-natal abortion," a euphemistic term for parents deciding to butcher their baby after birth when they decide they really don't want children after all. Also, the killing of disabled children. And the suggestion by one of his progressive Facebook "friends" that the problem of long-term care for the elderly be solved by sending strong men into nursing homes with cricket bats.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[thesometimesaint]

Have you read Johnathan Swift?

[california boy]

30 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Now look who's being "sarcastic" and "dismissive." Physician, heal thyself.

My response post to Hamba was not about Marx and Engels. It was bout what he identified as a speaker's "radical gender theory in the schools" as "a specific attempt to free individuals from the 'bondage' of traditional  family relationships and obligations."

Did you really not get that, or were you just trying to be dismissive and clever?

I was quite clearly giving you the kind of medicine you love to give out.  How did you like it?

[Scott Lloyd]

1 minute ago, california boy said:

I was quite clearly giving you the kind of medicine you love to give out.  How did you like it?

Didn't really upset me. Just thought I would highlight the hypocrisy.

 

[Scott Lloyd]

18 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Have you read Johnathan Swift?

You mean his "A Modest Proposal"?

I doubt the individuals Hamba was referring to were engaging in satire. I got the impression they were in earnest.

But Hamba can clarify if need be.

 

[Storm Rider]

Everybody take a breath, step back, and consider how we may each stop talking past one another.  Set down the axes and just converse about the topic; it is not personal; it is a topic about something that each of us is committed to and that is happiness, societal happiness and how to achieve it in a stable, long-lasting manner.

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

First, you are going to have to convince me that Trump is a conservative.  I don't think it is wise to derail this even further by trying to make this about Obama or Trump. 

When these kinds of topics come up the Left will often wrap itself in the self-righteous cloak of slavery, genocide, polygamy, and the list goes on.  First, it was not the Democrats that ended slavery - that is so often forgotten. It was not the Democrats that ended polygamy regardless of the way it is or was practiced.  However, it is the Democrats that speed to the defense of Muslims.....that practice polygamy in the US today.  Strange how politicians can speak out both sides of the mouths (Please note that I said politicians without identifying any party i.e. they all do it).  However, it is when their followers blindly mouth trite phrases and attack sound bites without any comprehension of history or the effects of their litany of desires and needs for self-satisfaction.

Societies, with all its flaws, runs the gamut of being strong to being weak.  The future offered by Leftist ideologies only leads to the complete destruction of common sense and the traditional family unit.  It leads to unhappiness, failure, and the eventual defeat of the individual.

If you think Barack Obama is a conservative and Donald Trump is a liberal, that's fine and has nothing to do with my point.

You are right about one thing, in the 1800's the Republicans were the liberals who wanted to tear down institutions that had been around for thousands of years and replace them with ones based on enlightened values. Thaddeus Stevens, for example, was a "radical Republican," because not only did he want to do away with the millennial-old traditional institution of slavery, he also wanted freed slaves to have full civil rights, including the <gasp> right to vote. Conservatives opposed his ideas for the same stated reasons you oppose same-sex marriage--allowing blacks to have full civil rights and to vote would lead to the end of civilization, etc. Now of course the Republicans have become conservative and the Democrats have become liberal.

Now that that is straight, can you clarify what you are criticizing liberals for? You seem to think there is something wrong with tearing down societal structures that have been around for thousands of years. Doing so isn't that new. For the last 300 years we've been in the age of enlightenment that has been systematically evaluating and tearing down the institutions that had dominated civilization for thousands of years, Freedom from slavery, freedom from serfdom, government by the consent of the governed, universal suffrage, civil rights, free speech, free press, freedom of religion, marriage as a partnership between equals, etc., are all radical new ideas that liberals have enacted in just the last couple of centuries. These radical new ideas overturned virtually all of the basic societal structures that had been around for thousands of years before.

That is how I see the world. In this discussion, I'm just trying to understand what you are talking about. Do you really want to go back to any of the societal structures that existed 1,000 years ago? 2,000 years ago? Earlier? I can't imagine you really do. I'm guessing that when you refer to societal structures that have been around for thousands of years what you are really talking about is an idealized version of the societal structures that existed in the 40's and 50's in the U.S.

[Analytics]

Here is a hilarious 2:30 that shows what it would look like if we went back to the societal structures that existed 60 years ago. Do we really want to go back to that, much less to the structures that existed for thousands of years before?

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Analytics