'Lazy learner'

[Teancum]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

These ideas allowed me to give up on skepticism

I think you should revisit that position. 

[Teancum]

22 minutes ago, ttribe said:

This, right here, is an extremely dangerous set of false statements.  I have experienced, and I have witnessed, wanting desperately for the truth claims of the church to be true.  The implication of your statements is that the blame for a loss of faith lies solely on the individual; it's my fault that I didn't get an answer to prayer.  In your world, I wasn't sincere enough; I didn't try hard enough.  Let me tell you this, I tried so hard, and wanted it so badly, that when it didn't come I became deeply depressed to the point of suicidal ideation.  Recently, a friend of mine who also lost his faith took his own life in the aftermath of his faith loss.  Your glib, thoughtless, posts create harmful thoughts in the minds of those who struggle with doubt.  You have every right to practice rigid adherence to your version of orthodoxy on your own, but to try to sell it to others is irresponsible and harmful.

Teedyware is a Mormon extremist.  He would fit well into other fundamentalist extremist groups. He helps me be happy to know I have abandoned such tripe nonsense and utter BS.

[Kenngo1969]

On 4/13/2021 at 11:43 AM, mfbukowski said:

... Sure.  How would you know if that was happening?  Your biases are invisuble [sic] to you ...

That's the most adorable misspelling of the word invisible I have ever seen!  Wait.   I just talked about seeing something that's invisible.  Is that any oxymoron, a contradiction in terms?    Pardon the interruption.  Carry on!

[teddyaware]

2 hours ago, ttribe said:

This, right here, is an extremely dangerous set of false statements.  I have experienced, and I have witnessed, wanting desperately for the truth claims of the church to be true.  The implication of your statements is that the blame for a loss of faith lies solely on the individual; it's my fault that I didn't get an answer to prayer.  In your world, I wasn't sincere enough; I didn't try hard enough.  Let me tell you this, I tried so hard, and wanted it so badly, that when it didn't come I became deeply depressed to the point of suicidal ideation.  Recently, a friend of mine who also lost his faith took his own life in the aftermath of his faith loss.  Your glib, thoughtless, posts create harmful thoughts in the minds of those who struggle with doubt.  You have every right to practice rigid adherence to your version of orthodoxy on your own, but to try to sell it to others is irresponsible and harmful.

You’re drastically overcomplicating things and obviously totally missed the point that I tried so hard to make perfectly clear. In fact, when mfbukowski checks in I’m fairly certain he’ll say I hit the proverbial ‘nail’ smack dab on the head.

If you find confident professions of faith so alarming and dangerous, why does it seem you’re spending untold hours contending on this board with people whose faith is strong? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay away from here than to consciously choose to live in such danger interacting with people whose “threatening” faith is bright and unshakable? Or are the people of faith supposed to just let your challenges against their faith go unchallenged because they don’t want to take the chance that you might be offended.

Let me try to make my original point as clearly and succinctly as possible: I was once a hardcore, proselytizing atheist who decided my life and outlook would be a lot better if I believed there is a just, merciful and loving God. So I said to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be great if there actually is a an all powerful God of perfect wisdom and love?” So I eventually decided to participate in an experiment by consciously choosing to think, feel and act as if there is a God and then see what happens. Low and behold, what happened is that my desire to believe gradually increased until I had living faith and not just a desire to believe.. This transformative process eventually became powerful and dynamic as evidence of God’s existence, what Christ refers to as the signs that follow those who believe , began to multiply and increase in frequency and convincing power until darkness was turned to light.

Exercising faith in the simultaneous presence of doubt is a choice that every able human being can make. Ultimately belief and unbelief are choices. I sincerely wanted to believe life wasn’t ultimately just a meaningless exercise in futility ending in annihilation and endless death. Somehow that tiny seed of a desire to believe was enough for the infinite and eternal God to work with and he was eventually able to totally change my mind and heart.

I leave you with this: the day is inevitability going to come when you will know God lives and all your doubts will fade away like the morning dew that evaporates before the blazing summer sun. Often God allows his sons and daughters to spend what seems like a very long time in the valley of the shadow of death, but it’s all for the best because in the end, when faith returns, the joy of reawakening will be so great as to be unspeakable. Like Peter Gabriel of the progressive rock group Genesis once said, “You’ve got to get in to get out.” For some, “getting out” takes longer than it does for others but tasting the bitterness of the fallen state is the only way to learn how to genuinely prize the good.

Edited April 15, 2021 by teddyaware

[ttribe]

8 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

You’re drastically overcomplicating things and obviously totally missed the point that I tried so hard to make perfectly clear. In fact, when mfbukowski checks in I’m fairly certain he’ll say I hit the proverbial ‘nail’ smack dab on the head.

If you find confident professions of faith so alarming and dangerous, why does it seem you’re spending untold hours contending on this board with people whose faith is strong? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay away from here than to consciously choose to live in such danger interacting with people whose “threatening” faith is bright and unshakable? Or are the people of faith supposed to just let your challenges against their faith go unchallenged because they don’t want to take the chance that you might be offended.

Let me try to make my original point as clearly and succinctly as possible: I was once a hardcore, proselytizing atheist who decided my life and outlook would be a lot better if I believed there is a just, merciful and loving God. So I said to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be great if there actually is a an all powerful God of perfect wisdom and love?” So I eventually decided to participate in an experiment by consciously choosing to think, feel and act as if there is a God and then see what happens. Low and behold, what happened is that my desire to believe gradually increased until I had living faith and not just a desire to believe.. This transformative process eventually became powerful and dynamic as evidence of God’s existence, what Christ refers to as the signs that follow those who believe , began to multiply and increase in frequency and convincing power until darkness was turned to light.

Exercising faith in the simultaneous presence of doubt is a choice that every able human being can make. Ultimately belief and unbelief are choices. I sincerely wanted to believe life wasn’t ultimately just a meaningless exercise in futility ending in annihilation and endless death. Somehow that tiny seed of a desire to believe was enough for the infinite and eternal God to work with and he was eventually able to totally change my mind and heart.

I leave you with this: the day is inevitability going to come when you will know God lives and all your doubts will fade away like the morning dew that evaporates before the blazing summer sun. Often God allows his sons and daughters to spend what seems like a very long time in the valley of the shadow of death, but it’s all for the best because in the end, when faith returns, the joy of reawakening will be so great as to be unspeakable. Like Peter Gabriel of the progressive rock group Genesis once said, “You’ve got to get in to get out.” For some “getting out” it takes longer than others but tasting the bitterness of the fallen state is the only way to learn how to genuinely prize the good.

Your presumptuous self-righteousness is duly noted.

[AtlanticMike]

1 hour ago, teddyaware said:

Let me try to make my original point as clearly and succinctly as possible: I was once a hardcore, proselytizing atheist who decided my life and outlook would be a lot better if I believed there is a just, merciful and loving God. So I said to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be great if there actually is a an all powerful God of perfect wisdom and love?” So I eventually decided to participate in an experiment by consciously choosing to think, feel and act as if there is a God and then see what happens.

This sounds interesting, have you talked about this on any threads I could read?

[mfbukowski]

12 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Well I have had other experiences too, some which basically amounted to a spiritual punch in the face. 

For me it is a starting point, not an end to itself. The realization that the same thing happens to others is fundamental to me. The acknowledgement that their "real" and my "real" can interact and the enrichment that comes from that is a major source of joy in my life. These facts and valuing myself and others then forces the uncomfortable but rewarding process of seeing how much we can grow from and contribute to this collaboration.

We could also just say it's love, and similarly choose to value it. (There is also the logical consideration that without valuing the Self in others we neglect the Self including our own and thus fling reality into something incomprehensible. But whereas we value our own perception, identify Self as the starting point of all moral action, then identify others who have a Self, too, then reality becomes semi-comprehensible and exponentially more manageable.)

I'm not convinced that a God would want people to believe in Them and I am quite convinced that belief in God--especially as an authoritarian--causes personal and relational harm to people. 

I wrote this take on God recently which imo applies here:

Euthyphro's Dilemma, on Good and Evil: Is God God because God is Good, or is Good Good because God says it is Good? When I was a believing, theist youth, I believed the former, and this was consistent with the teachings of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism: God is God because God is Good. I still ascribe to the idea that if there is a God worth worshipping, that God must be Good. And I still believe in choosing Good over Evil. I think that one of the greatest weaknesses of religion and humankind is when people choose the latter, when they decide what is Good based on some authority figure or so-called representative of God, but without also confirming independently that it is Good. If people use their empathy and intelligence to figure out the difference between Good and Evil, I believe Good has a better chance at prevailing. If those of you who believe in God choose to seek out the Good, and if those of us who are atheist choose to seek out the Good, we can find common ground. Perhaps we will even find more common ground with each other than you would with some other theists or we would with some other atheists. And if there is a God who is Good, then we would be closer to God, too.

What was once real to me has been shattered into bits and blown away in the wind. It does not work for me anymore.

I am an atheist, and I still have beliefs. I have had to severely reconstruct my worldview and invent the tools to function that were long neglected as a believer. And now that I see the reality outside of the carefully-curated box that was my past life and religion, and its impact on those I love, I am grateful for the shattering. 

I don't find anything here to disagree with.

It's a shame to me that you were apparently raised to believe the church is authoritarian. I have never seen it that way, and I simply don't understand it.

And yes I commented on Euthyphro's Dilemma when you posted on it- it is clearly a linguistic confusion to me.

Your box is inescapable, unless you are no longer human. It has just changed from one box to another.

I am quite happy in mine.  I have done as much as I am capable.

All my best.

 

 

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, teddyaware said:

You’re drastically overcomplicating things and obviously totally missed the point that I tried so hard to make perfectly clear. In fact, when mfbukowski checks in I’m fairly certain he’ll say I hit the proverbial ‘nail’ smack dab on the head.

If you find confident professions of faith so alarming and dangerous, why does it seem you’re spending untold hours contending on this board with people whose faith is strong? Wouldn’t it be better to just stay away from here than to consciously choose to live in such danger interacting with people whose “threatening” faith is bright and unshakable? Or are the people of faith supposed to just let your challenges against their faith go unchallenged because they don’t want to take the chance that you might be offended.

Let me try to make my original point as clearly and succinctly as possible: I was once a hardcore, proselytizing atheist who decided my life and outlook would be a lot better if I believed there is a just, merciful and loving God. So I said to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be great if there actually is a an all powerful God of perfect wisdom and love?” So I eventually decided to participate in an experiment by consciously choosing to think, feel and act as if there is a God and then see what happens. Low and behold, what happened is that my desire to believe gradually increased until I had living faith and not just a desire to believe.. This transformative process eventually became powerful and dynamic as evidence of God’s existence, what Christ refers to as the signs that follow those who believe , began to multiply and increase in frequency and convincing power until darkness was turned to light.

Exercising faith in the simultaneous presence of doubt is a choice that every able human being can make. Ultimately belief and unbelief are choices. I sincerely wanted to believe life wasn’t ultimately just a meaningless exercise in futility ending in annihilation and endless death. Somehow that tiny seed of a desire to believe was enough for the infinite and eternal God to work with and he was eventually able to totally change my mind and heart.

I leave you with this: the day is inevitability going to come when you will know God lives and all your doubts will fade away like the morning dew that evaporates before the blazing summer sun. Often God allows his sons and daughters to spend what seems like a very long time in the valley of the shadow of death, but it’s all for the best because in the end, when faith returns, the joy of reawakening will be so great as to be unspeakable. Like Peter Gabriel of the progressive rock group Genesis once said, “You’ve got to get in to get out.” For some, “getting out” takes longer than it does for others but tasting the bitterness of the fallen state is the only way to learn how to genuinely prize the good.

What can I say?

You hit the proverbial ‘nail’ smack dab on the head!! 

I am glad we finally figured out that we agree on  virtually everything!

[teddyaware]

6 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

This sounds interesting, have you talked about this on any threads I could read?

From an earlier post on this same thread:

The miraculous thing about it all is once you decide you want to believe sincerely enough (because you realize your life will be so much more wonderful, meaningful, worthwhile and enjoyable if it turns out that the gospel actually is true) the signs of its truthfulness miraculously begin to appear all around you and multiply in number, scope and power of intensity until you no longer merely hope the gospel is true but become thoroughly convinced that it is true. Even if some can only get to the point where he or she wishes or hopes the gospel is true, and then adjusts their attitudes and live their lives as if it is true (because they realize they’ve got nothing to loose and everything to gain if it is true) God rewards their sincere leap of faith with confirming signs at every hand until the whole of their existence becomes an dazzlingly bright testimony that God lives and the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.

The Lord knew whereof he spoke when he promised us that convincing signs will follow those who make the conscious choice to believe. This is how I was able to evolve out of atheism: I wanted the gospel to be true and reformed my thinking and life accordingly, and low and behold a new life of joy and positivity, affirmed by living faith, hope and charity, marvelously transformed my life and my world until belief became as natural as breathing.

Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that the gospel, at very least, ought to be true, and God is so wonderfully merciful and kind that he allows even the dimmest spark of hope to be the starting point in the wondrous journey of faith that will consummate in a heaven that only exists because their are enough people who fervently want it to exist. Yes indeed, without faith and hope heaven could not exist.

Edited April 16, 2021 by teddyaware

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, Teancum said:

I think you should revisit that position. 

I think you should change your political party, to something you would see as nonsense, just to see how ridiculous that idea is.

I was where you are now,  40 years ago, and I am never going back to a self contradictory view like positivistic dualism.

I don't believe in worlds which cannot be experienced

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

23 minutes ago, Douglas Avans said:

Perhaps the Holy Spirit powered by the LIght of Christ fashions a nexal consciousness basis a type of unity for us all that allows us to escape that box you're talking about?  Just thinking inside of my box.  best i can do.

Oh no, usually we share boxes in our communitiies- at least to some extent.   LDS folks say the church is "true"- correctly in my opinion, because they at least partially share the same experiences from the same sources.

Everyone who looks up at the sky and calls it "blue" shares the same world view (another term for "box" in this context) at least.  But then there are blind folks who know the word "blue" but have no idea what it is.

I am convinced there are folks who are spirit-blind just as there are folks who are color blind.  They use the words but do not understand what they are

Science has its own context/box/world view which by primary assumption-states that life and the universe HAS no purpose.  Or at least they ignore the question.   And because that is the assumption, that is their question-begging conclusion.

On this view truth is agreement between a community of believers in a particular paradigm- it's a way of seeing the world- until a better paradigm develops.  Newton gives way to Einstein, etc.

What's next?  It will be based on another model

But this side of the veil all we get are models seeing through the mirror of our own perceptions, darkly.   We only see the mirror of our own perceptions.   But across the veil, it is said we will see "lface to face"

Welcome to the board!

[Hamba Tuhan]

16 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Everyone who looks up at the sky and calls it "blue" shares the same world view (another term for "box" in this context) at least.

A very recent development in most cultures, by the way!

Quote

Geiger looked to see when “blue” started to appear in languages and found an odd pattern all over the world.

Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a colour to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the colour of blood and wine.

After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colours to appear in every language is blue.

The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.

 

[Meadowchik]

20 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I don't find anything here to disagree with.

It's a shame to me that you were apparently raised to believe the church is authoritarian. I have never seen it that way, and I simply don't understand it.

And yes I commented on Euthyphro's Dilemma when you posted on it- it is clearly a linguistic confusion to me.

Your box is inescapable, unless you are no longer human. It has just changed from one box to another.

I am quite happy in mine.  I have done as much as I am capable.

Actually it was simply the church that taught me that it is authoritarian. My parents are much more moderate in that regard. 

I agree that we're all in something that we cannot escape, but some "boxes" are more fearful and some are more expansive. Compared to what it once was, mine is more expansive now.

20 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

All my best.

Thanks, and likewise.

[jkwilliams]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

Actually it was simply the church that taught me that it is authoritarian. My parents are much more moderate in that regard. 

I agree that we're all in something that we cannot escape, but some "boxes" are more fearful and some are more expansive. Compared to what it once was, mine is more expansive now.

Thanks, and likewise.

I was always taught that what was restored was authority, so it’s odd that anyone would say the church isn’t authoritarian. Maybe it’s just that for some the term connotes evil dictatorship, which doesn’t describe the church, but yes, it fits.

[mfbukowski]

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Maybe it’s just that for some the term connotes evil dictatorship, which doesn’t describe the church, but yes, it fits.

If that is what your beetle tells you.

[Calm]

13 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I was always taught that what was restored was authority, so it’s odd that anyone would say the church isn’t authoritarian. Maybe it’s just that for some the term connotes evil dictatorship, which doesn’t describe the church, but yes, it fits.

But there is authority and then authority. 
 

Parents have authority over children, but they may not be authoritarian, for example. 
 

Priesthood is authority, but scripture says persuasion is what should be used to motivate people, not force. 
 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2011/06/youth/doctrine-and-covenants-121-41-43?lang=eng

Edited April 16, 2021 by Calm

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

But there is authority and then authority. 
 

Parents have authority over children, but they may not be authoritarian, for example. 
 

Priesthood is authority, but scripture says persuasion is what should be used to motivate people, not force. 
 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2011/06/youth/doctrine-and-covenants-121-41-43?lang=eng

I agree.  Having authority over someone, and being authoritarian, are not the same thing.  

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

But there is authority and authority. 
 

Parents have authority over children, but they may not be authoritarian, for example. 
 

Priesthood is authority, but scripture says persuasion is what should be used to motivate people, not force. 
 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2011/06/youth/doctrine-and-covenants-121-41-43?lang=eng

For me this is a question of degree. Certainly the church is more authoritarian than, say, an anarcho-syndicalist commune. In my experience, force is as likely to be used as persuasion in certain situations. 

[bluebell]

17 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I was always taught that what was restored was authority, so it’s odd that anyone would say the church isn’t authoritarian. Maybe it’s just that for some the term connotes evil dictatorship, which doesn’t describe the church, but yes, it fits.

The definition of authoritarian is to "enforce strict obedience to authority."  A person can have authority over someone, and not be authoritarian.  They are two different things.

 

[ttribe]

22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

The definition of authoritarian is to "enforce strict obedience to authority."  A person can have authority over someone, and not be authoritarian.  They are two different things.

 

Uhhh...jkwilliams is a professional writer. I think he knows this.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Uhhh...jkwilliams is a professional writer. I think he knows this.

As I said, for me it’s a question of degree. 

[ttribe]

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

As I said, for me it’s a question of degree. 

I am in agreement with your assessment.  There is a reasonably detectable level of authoritarianism in the administration of the church.  Punishment (via excommunication) of public criticism of church leaders is as close to prima facie evidence of that as possible, in my opinion.

Edited April 16, 2021 by ttribe

[Meadowchik]

36 minutes ago, bluebell said:

The definition of authoritarian is to "enforce strict obedience to authority."  A person can have authority over someone, and not be authoritarian.  They are two different things.

 

The decisions are made top down. Sure, local leaders are given discretionary powers but are still subject to the rules from the top. Functionally, the rules can be made and altered by the top without  checks and balances from the membership, and top leaders are not made accountable to any constitution by the general membership.

 

It has some complexity and has room for limited variety, but the church is still ultimately an authoritarian power structure. 

 

 

 

[CA Steve]

36 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

For me this is a question of degree. Certainly the church is more authoritarian than, say, an anarcho-syndicalist commune. In my experience, force is as likely to be used as persuasion in certain situations. 

The connection within the church between authority and authoritarian is clearly seen in its peculiar definition of apostacy being: 

Quote

Repeatedly act in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its leaders.

 

[bluebell]

7 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

The decisions are made top down. Sure, local leaders are given discretionary powers but are still subject to the rules from the top. Functionally, the rules can be made and altered by the top without  checks and balances from the membership, and top leaders are not made accountable to any constitution by the general membership.

 

It has some complexity and has room for limited variety, but the church is still ultimately an authoritarian power structure. 

 

 

 

I don't have a problem with that explanation of how the church works.  The same can be said for you and me as parents though, but that doesn't make us authoritarian parents. 

Authoritarian has a very specific definition.  It's not just about having the authority but using it in a specific way.