Another Faith Crisis Letter

[clarkgoble]

56 minutes ago, Thinking said:

Of course The Church doesn't think it's been led astray, and the whole the Lord won't let the Church be led astray belief is so circular. There are some groups who do believe that the LDS Church has gone astray.

How could one know independent of God saying it? Not trying to be cute here but the very meaning of "led astray" is wrapped up with how God views the Church. Wilford Woodruff says the prophet can't lead the church astray and I believe him. I think the way the primitive church was "led astray" was God took away his prophets and apostles.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

But how can that statement of not leading the church astray be valid without presuming some infallibility with the prophet when it comes to those areas where the church can be led astray? One needs to believe that whenever it comes to major decisions, the prophet will not make a mistake, or be infallible in those decisions. However, that cannot be sustained. Fallible humans control the church and can certainly cause it to make mistakes. Nevertheless, the leaders want us to believe, at least where astray decisions are made, that fallibility is not a part of the equation there, hense situational infallibility. Aren't prophets, prophets when acting as such, hense infallible when acting as such?

You miss the point I have just made:  It is precisely because the prophets and the people are prone to make mistakes (and Pres Uchtdorf assures us that mistakes have been made) that we need the reassurance that we will still be O.K., despite ourselves, only because this is the last dispensation before Jesus' triumphal return.  Despite our fallibility, ways will be found to overcome, through faith and perseverence.  The kicker is that, as you say, prophets are only prophets when acting as such -- in their always human ways.  You seem to have a view that, by some magical process, all decisions will theoretically be the right ones -- which you very well know is nonsense.

[Exiled]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I think that's equivocating over what it means to lead the church astray.

Of course it is?  What does astray mean anyway? It is an ambiguous term, conveniently, so is one ever really leading an organization astray? Astray from what? The ambiguous gospel that is never defined?

[Exiled]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You miss the point I have just made:  It is precisely because the prophets and the people are prone to make mistakes (and Pres Uchtdorf assures us that mistakes have been made) that we need the reassurance that we will still be O.K., despite ourselves, only because this is the last dispensation before Jesus' triumphal return.  Despite our fallibility, ways will be found to overcome, through faith and perseverence.  The kicker is that, as you say, prophets are only prophets when acting as such -- in their always human ways.  You seem to have a view that, by some magical process, all decisions will theoretically be the right ones -- which you very well know is nonsense.

They are always men and acting as such, just like you and me. This is my view. It is the church that claims otherwise, a claim that cannot be supported. So why should I follow them as opposed to anyone else?

[sunstoned]

8 hours ago, bluebell said:

I don't believe that God will ever allow a prophet to speak as a prophet to His church and be wrong, though I do believe that prophets are fallible people.

I think the question for me how would we know if God spoke to the prophet or if the prophet was acting on his own?  The priesthood restriction was supported by every prophet since BY.  Was it from God or was it from men?  It doesn't really matter as the result was the same: it was the doctrine of the church.  

[sunstoned]

6 hours ago, kiwi57 said:

Ah yes, that popular ex-Mormon "faith-demoting rumour."

No archaeological support for the BoM is not a ex-mormon rumor.  It is reality, and sometimes reality really bites.  You just need to deal with it.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Exiled said:

They are always men and acting as such, just like you and me. This is my view. It is the church that claims otherwise, a claim that cannot be supported. So why should I follow them as opposed to anyone else?

I guess you still don't get it.  Of course we are all men all the time.  That does not prevent us from being inspired. If you have an apriori belief that true inspiration via the Holy Spirit is impossible, then you certainly have a right to that view.  That does not, however, verify your view -- just because you believe that --- any more than a believer in inspiration is automatically correct.  The LDS Church does not claim that prophets are not men.  Yet that seems to be your false claim simply for the purpose of denying it.  The straw man again.  You are thinking in a closed, self-assuring loop -- a vicious circle.

You should follow your own beliefs.  That does not mean that everyone else is obligated to follow you.   You need to be more respectful of the beliefs of others, and not to make false claims about their beliefs in order to justify yours.  Does that make sense?

[kiwi57]

On 12/14/2017 at 4:54 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Actually that is not true.  The LDS Essay is written by a scholar with a doctorate in genetics, and the statements he makes are correct in every detail.  Markers can and have disappeared, and we know why.  What I always suggest is that we test the skeletal remains at archeological sites suspected of being Nephite-Lamanite-Mulekite.  That way we don't have to depend on the difficult survival of markers into modern times, among some specific tribal groups.  Ancient DNA (aDNA) is the best option, but requires the recovery of skeletal remains, and it is not always possible to find appropriate samples -- especially in humid environments.

Even Simon Southerton, professional apostate (and plant geneticist) somewhat grudgingly admits that, given the likely population of Mesoamerica circa 600 BC, the Lehi colony's genetic signature stands a very small chance of being detectable any more. He then tries to rescue that by claiming that the Book of Mormon describes a completely empty hemisphere, which of course it does not do.

[kiwi57]

3 hours ago, sunstoned said:

No archaeological support for the BoM is not a ex-mormon rumor.  It is reality, and sometimes reality really bites.  You just need to deal with it.

You're changing the subject. The popular ex-Mormon "faith-demoting rumour" is the claim that the New World Archaeological Foundation was an attempt by the Church to find archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon. It was not.

That's reality, and if it "bites" you, then you'll just need to deal with it.

[Exiled]

7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I guess you still don't get it.  Of course we are all men all the time.  That does not prevent us from being inspired. If you have an apriori belief that true inspiration via the Holy Spirit is impossible, then you certainly have a right to that view.  That does not, however, verify your view -- just because you believe that --- any more than a believer in inspiration is automatically correct.  The LDS Church does not claim that prophets are not men.  Yet that seems to be your false claim simply for the purpose of denying it.  The straw man again.  You are thinking in a closed, self-assuring loop -- a vicious circle.

You should follow your own beliefs.  That does not mean that everyone else is obligated to follow you.   You need to be more respectful of the beliefs of others, and not to make false claims about their beliefs in order to justify yours.  Does that make sense?

You are misstating my position. I think the so-called inspiration comes from within and not from an outside force. However, I do not wish to come here and offend you or anyone. Nevertheless, I think at times you are not fair to the former believers who state an opinion contrary to yours. They don't have the evil motives you wish to assign any more than missionaries or anyone else that speaks their mind on this site or anywhere else.  "Anti-mormon" does not equal mere disagreement and mere disagreement does not automatically equate to an evil motive. Furthermore, I don't believe it is fair to constantly put the blame on the members for not understanding what their leaders have said or taught or have kept from them. Communication is always a two way street and that means that sometimes the communicator is at fault for not communicating effectively or completely.

[clarkgoble]

11 hours ago, Exiled said:

Of course it is?  What does astray mean anyway? It is an ambiguous term, conveniently, so is one ever really leading an organization astray? Astray from what? The ambiguous gospel that is never defined?

You must have missed my comment above. It means into apostasy such that God no longer accepts the church. It does not mean every teaching is correct. I'm rather sure we have some incorrect or at least misleading teachings right now. It's just that it's not obvious what will change in the future.

10 hours ago, sunstoned said:

No archaeological support for the BoM is not a ex-mormon rumor.  It is reality, and sometimes reality really bites.  You just need to deal with it.

There's no unambiguous archaeological support that would say there were Law of Moses following Nephites in mesoAmerica. That's true. I'm not sure that's the same as saying there's no archaeological support. After all the views of pre-classical mesoAmerica has shifted a lot this century. And in a direction towards what the Book of Mormon describes. (I mentioned this earlier in this thread) Of course there remain a few sticky points in the Book of Mormon - primarily metal. But I don't think anyone here would deny those problems. But over time things seem to be getting closer to the Book of Mormon, not farther apart.

Edited December 15, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Exiled said:

You are misstating my position. I think the so-called inspiration comes from within and not from an outside force.

I did not misstate your position.  In fact I very clearly said what you are saying here, and I have no problem at all with people taking that view -- that inspiration cannot be real, that it is an entirely internal, psychological process in any human.  You could add that there is no God, and no spiritual forces of any kind in the universe.  Again I have no problem with such a claim, and I defend your right to have that view.  However, your lack of respect for other views is a problem which you cannot overcome.

1 hour ago, Exiled said:

.................................. Nevertheless, I think at times you are not fair to the former believers who state an opinion contrary to yours. They don't have the evil motives you wish to assign any more than missionaries or anyone else that speaks their mind on this site or anywhere else.  "Anti-mormon" does not equal mere disagreement and mere disagreement does not automatically equate to an evil motive.

I did not say that all anti-Mormons have an evil motive.  I do not at all mind respectful anti-Mormons, such as Rob Bowman, for example.  What I object to is the blatant and continuous lying by some anti-Mormons -- those who are clearly making an effort to destroy belief, the same way a wolf might thin a herd of deer or elk by attacking and eating the weak members of the herd.  Anti-Mormon predators are unethical and despicable.  At the same time they are part of nature, and of the law of the survival of the fittest.

1 hour ago, Exiled said:

Furthermore, I don't believe it is fair to constantly put the blame on the members for not understanding what their leaders have said or taught or have kept from them. Communication is always a two way street and that means that sometimes the communicator is at fault for not communicating effectively or completely.

I am not playing the blame game, but instead am describing reality.  Many people do not understand their political or religious leaders on a wide array of subjects, and one can see this very clearly in the inaccurate comments they make, and their strong belief in fake news.  One reason for that may be that they were poor students in school, getting poor grades, and refusing to be well-read and well-informed.  Some of it may even be poor parenting, or a poor choice of friends.  If the only worthwhile pursuit one seeks after work is a drink at the bar with his buddies, and a discussion of one's favorite sports team, there is no great likelihood that he will know anything  at all about religion or politics.  Just the opposite.

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, sunstoned said:

No archaeological support for the BoM is not a ex-mormon rumor.  It is reality, and sometimes reality really bites.  You just need to deal with it.

There is plenty of archeological support for the BofM, although this is a fact which is unacceptable to those who have already made up their minds and are not interested in the facts.  That way they don't have to deal with it.

[sunstoned]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

There is plenty of archeological support for the BofM, although this is a fact which is unacceptable to those who have already made up their minds and are not interested in the facts.  That way they don't have to deal with it.

This topic has been argued ad nauseam, and it is not worth a thread derail. My comment was in response to kiwi57 who equates no archaeological support to a ex-mormon rumor, which is complete hyperbole.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, sunstoned said:

This topic has been argued ad nauseam, and it is not worth a thread derail. My comment was in response to kiwi57 who equates no archaeological support to a ex-mormon rumor, which is complete hyperbole.

Yeh, and I own the Brooklyn Bridge and I'll sell it to you cheap.  Falsehoods, whether gratuitous or hyperbolic, are still just falsehoods.

[kiwi57]

6 hours ago, sunstoned said:

This topic has been argued ad nauseam, and it is not worth a thread derail. My comment was in response to kiwi57 who equates no archaeological support to a ex-mormon rumor, which is complete hyperbole.

Kiwi57 argued, asserted or implied no such equivalence. Kiwi57 directly refuted your earlier claim to that effect, and you persist in making that claim despite knowing it to be false.

[Physics Guy]

Whether or not there are any legitimately different ways of being Mormon, I'm pretty sure that people have in fact understood many different things under the Mormon label. So I don't see anything wrong with anyone saying, "Hey, that's not my Mormonism you're attacking." It might be convenient for critics if everyone who wanted to call themselves Mormon were somehow obliged to endorse whatever the critic wanted them to endorse, but Mormons aren't being paid to amuse their critics. It's ridiculous for any non-Mormon to tell any Mormon what they as a Mormon are obliged to believe.

How much solidarity is one supposed to show for people who claim the same denominational label, though? If critic A attacks the pious superstition of Mormon B, at which Mormon C is just as appalled as critic A is, should Mormon C clap critic A on the shoulder and say, "Oh, I know. That's such nonsense, and I'm embarrassed when people profess it as Mormonism. Can I quote your cogent argument on my blog?" Or should Mormon C rather rein in their endorsement of this anti-Mormon critic A, for the sake of religious solidarity, and instead make a generic complaint about how critic A has set up a straw man?

I've often felt this tension myself, and I haven't always known how to resolve it. At the moment what seems most right to me is to agree wholeheartedly with the critic on the point in question, but also make a point of saying that although I disagree with some of my fellow believers on this issue, I agree with them on other issues that I consider more important.

[Physics Guy]

I was interested in learning about Scientology as a social phenomenon, not in practicing it. The blatant baiting-and-switching that Scientologists used, flipping back and forth between "hard" and "soft" interpretations of their product, was one of the most interesting things that I learned. It was interesting because subtler forms of this fallacy show up everywhere. I think it's a hard fallacy to avoid.

You see a movie and like it, and rave about it to a friend; if they seem lukewarm, you dial it back a few notches and make a softer sell, because your friend is never going to see your movie unless you can at least maintain your credibility. But now your more measured praise isn't enough to get your friend to drive to the theater, and they're squinting at you for coming on so strong at first about this film when now you're making it out to be nothing so special after all. So you find yourself talking up a different aspect of this movie as wonderful, even though it isn't really the thing about this film that you most liked. You might even go back and forth a few times like this, if your friend isn't smart enough to agree that the film sounds good enough that they might definitely see it sometime, to let you both leave it at that.

As an outsider who has read a fair bit about Mormonism in the past couple of years, I have to say that I am just not clear what it means to be a Mormon prophet. Mormon prophets aren't infallible, but yet somehow they're authoritative. And I'm afraid I just don't get how the Book of Mormon was produced in a blatantly miraculous way, but yet somehow has all the vagaries of an ancient text that has been garbled through many centuries of transmission. I'm prepared to believe that these are paradoxes or tensions rather than sheer contradictions in terms, but it seems to me that they are topics on which it must be very difficult not to slip into the good-cop-bad-cop fallacy of enthusing about the miraculous when it seems acceptable to do so, and then dialing back to naturalism when the crowd looks tough. To make Mormon Scriptures and prophets sound reasonable is one thing; to do so while still keeping them profoundly impressive is a trickier task.

[Tacenda]

https://www.postmormonmentalhealth.com/blog/mormons-crazy-gaslighting/

Sorry for this old thread, I'm unable to start threads. HappyJack posted a topic awhile back about gaslighting and when I found it, it was closed. So hopefully it's ok if I use this thread. 

When I read this, which is btw from a post Mormon, it did have some information that do steer toward the church gaslighting. Such as the minor thing as the church saying there wasn't much of a demand for caffeine beverages at the BYU campus.

But one that struck me was the church essays. They are now not as accessible as they once were. https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints?lang=eng Am I missing something, or has the plural marriage in Nauvoo period, gone? 

ETA: trying to save posts...here is a shelf item or not. This shows that Joseph Smith borrowed from other sources in his writings. It's not how I use to believe that it came from God necessarily. 

 "A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation"...http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296

Edited April 28, 2018 by Tacenda

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

https://www.postmormonmentalhealth.com/blog/mormons-crazy-gaslighting/

Sorry for this old thread, I'm unable to start threads. HappyJack posted a topic awhile back about gaslighting and when I found it, it was closed. So hopefully it's ok if I use this thread. 

When I read this, which is btw from a post Mormon, it did have some information that do steer toward the church gaslighting. Such as the minor thing as the church saying there wasn't much of a demand for caffeine beverages at the BYU campus.

But one that struck me was the church essays. They are now not as accessible as they once were. https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints?lang=eng Am I missing something, or has the plural marriage in Nauvoo period, gone? 

ETA: trying to save posts...here is a shelf item or not. This shows that Joseph Smith borrowed from other sources in his writings. It's not how I use to believe that it came from God necessarily. 

 "A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation"...http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296

No, it's still there.

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

[MormonMason]

5 hours ago, Tacenda said:

ETA: trying to save posts...here is a shelf item or not. This shows that Joseph Smith borrowed from other sources in his writings. It's not how I use to believe that it came from God necessarily. 

 "A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation"...http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296

The set of books containing Clarke's commentaries did not exist in either the Manchester Library or the Nauvoo Library.  I checked the lists.  If he had access it wasn't from those locations.  There's no evidence Smith owned a set.  I don't know about Kirtland.  It's contained in 8 volumes published between 1810 and 1826, reissued complete in 1832, and reprinted many times after that.  Maybe Rigdon had the original 8-volume set? They worked together on the translation.  One problem I see, though, is that no one who witnessed the translation process seems to have mentioned the use of such kinds of books during said process.  I suppose it's possible.  Anyone here have a list of the books Sidney Rigdon owned?

Edited April 28, 2018 by MormonMason

[Kenngo1969]

10 hours ago, bluebell said:

No, it's still there.

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

Oh, come on, Bluebell!   What're you doin' lettin' silly little things like facts get in the way of conspiracy theorizing?!  After all, that's way more fun!  [I miss the old emoticons!  Sigh!]