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Reconciling bruce r. McConkie


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7 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I served a mission, which led to a lifetime of faithful service and devotion to the church...all based on the premise that the church was true.  Now I wonder what my life would have been. 

The premise that the church is true is not one of the things you listed.  I think more than McKonkie taught that, and the premise, for me at least, is a good one and has borne much fruit.  

Edited by pogi
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10 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I served a mission, which led to a lifetime of faithful service and devotion to the church...all based on the premise that the church was true.  Now I wonder what my life would have been. 

So you believe one of his false doctrines was the Church is true?

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1 hour ago, Bob Crockett said:

last time I checked

When was that?  Last time I checked, they had removed most of his quotes from the Gospel Principles manual….but that was a number of years ago and I would have to check again to make sure my memory is accurate and not a false recreation built on expectations as we are all prone to do. 

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3 hours ago, bluebell said:

I'm not being snarky but only asking so that maybe you can look at it from a different perspective....

But, when you have taught something that ended up being not true, how did you expect people to be able to accept anything else that you taught?  Sincere question.  

Does one have to be infallible in their teachings before any of their teachings are believable?

Fair question. I think it comes down to credibility. Elder McConkie taught his Truths that flew in the face of all the counter evidence. I wasn’t mature enough to know better and trusted him over conflicting voices.  Now I know that many of the things he taught was not true nor could be true. 
 

He was clearly brilliant but had a blind spot. An inability to think critically especially on matters of faith 

All the evidence to correct his thinking was readily available but his blind spot wouldn’t allow him to even consider that his neatly knitted belief structure was deeply flawed 

 

Edited by Fair Dinkum
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37 minutes ago, Calm said:

So you believe one of his false doctrines was the Church is true?

Many of the foundations of HIS beliefs in the church being true were built on falsehoods. I could say that same about Joseph fielding smith and kimball too. It undermines their credibility at least in my mind

Edited by Fair Dinkum
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54 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I served a mission, which led to a lifetime of faithful service and devotion to the church...all based on the premise that the church was true.  Now I wonder what my life would have been. 

The Church is true.  Which one of his errors in belief stopped the Church being true?

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1 hour ago, JLHPROF said:

Goodness knows I have my own issues with his teachings (such as deadly heresies that happen to be true).

But I have no issue reconciling the things you listed because 1. I agree with him on most and 2. The ones I disagree with were his beliefs, not mine. 

There's no need to reconcile one's personal beliefs with another's.  Even when that man is a prophet or apostle.

The issue is when you say "In fact so many of the teachings of Elder McConkie have turned out not to be true."

Just because you or I disagree with him that doesn't have to be an issue.  You seem to have a very hard time with any authoritative pronouncement on Adam/Eve/creationism.  I would suggest that's for you to get past, not for anyone to renounce.  Some of us still believe that way.

Yeah I believe that Adam and Eve are a myth. My POV is evidence driven and supported by that overwhelming evidence. To conclude otherwise would be impossible at least for me

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12 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Yeah I believe that Adam and Eve are a myth. My POV is evidence driven and supported by that overwhelming evidence. To conclude otherwise would be impossible at least for me

It is near impossible for people who live by empirical and physical evidence alone to believe in anything religious. This makes it also near impossible for people of faith to even have a conversation with them. If truth is not in the Church of Jesus Christ then where is it? Whatever you want it to be?

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23 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

The Church is true.  Which one of his errors in belief stopped the Church being true?

I respect your view. None of McConkie’s false teachings inherently make the church not true. For me it’s just one more thing to place on the scale. 

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4 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I respect your view. None of McConkie’s false teachings inherently make the church not true. For me it’s just one more thing to place on the scale. 

What kinds of things would you put on the positive side of the scale?

Edited by Rivers
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2 minutes ago, JAHS said:

It is near impossible for people who live by empirical and physical evidence alone to believe in anything religious. This makes it also near impossible for people of faith to even have a conversation with them. If truth is not in the Church of Jesus Christ then where is it? Whatever you want it to be?

Perhaps you are correct. At one point in my life I held the same view as you. Now not so much. I’ve followed the empirical evidence,  it’s taken me to where I am today. Trust me when I say it’s not where I ever expected nor wanted to be. But I’m at peace 

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5 minutes ago, Rivers said:

What kinds of things would you put on the positive side of the scale?

The people

the service

the culture 

the standards (some of them)

the promise of eternal life with family (although I no longer believe the church can actually deliver on that promise)

there’s more but those come to mind

Edited by Fair Dinkum
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1 hour ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Many of the foundations of HIS beliefs in the church being true were built on falsehoods. I could say that same about Joseph fielding smith and kimball too. It undermines their credibility at least in my mind

Again, I am asking you if you believe it is false that the Church is true (what it claims to be)?

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1 hour ago, JLHPROF said:

Which one of his errors in belief stopped the Church being true?

My favourite quote from the King Follett sermon:

Quote

 If I had not experienced what I have, I should not have believed it myself.

I've never been able to wrap my brain around basing beliefs on what other people may (or may not) have said or done when we have the ability to know for ourselves by means of our own experiences.

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9 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

My favourite quote from the King Follett sermon:

I've never been able to wrap my brain around basing beliefs on what other people may (or may not) have said or done when we have the ability to know for ourselves by means of our own experiences.

I think reliance "what other people may (or may not) have said or done" is perhaps a separate issue from reliance on what other people have seen and experienced.  Virtually all of what we believe has come to us through the experiences of others, and then ratified "by means of our own experiences" (the Spirit, "by their fruits"-style testing, etc.).

Thanks,

-Smac

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If one has left faith in Christ behind , then one swings on the pendulum to empirical evidence and towards scientism. Scientists become one's prophets and one, in my opinion, has built  beliefs on shifting sands. Review the " beliefs " of science over the last 200 years and you will see massive adjustments. But, you say, science is self correcting .Sometimes yes, but more often than not it has to be dragged kicking and screaming towards new ideas. Lets take the recent finding of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. The scientific community dog piled on the discoverers with vitriol. Can't be that soft tissue would survive for 65 million years. They fought it because it implied that the bones were considerably younger than ' everyone ' knew. Only after many more examples were found did the scientific folks admit it was true that there was soft tissue. Guess what conclusion they stuck with. Yup, soft tissue CAN survive 65 million years. Sure Fred, if you say so. We don't want to admit it but scientists are fallible humans too. They are subject to temptations like greed, professional jealousy, fudging the data etc. 

 

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3 hours ago, bluebell said:

How would one check something like this?  I looked through the footnotes of the Saturday sessions and Mormon Doctrine wasn't cited even once.  I don't expect the Sunday sessions to look that different.

I’ve noticed Bob tends to go off of outdated information. 

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47 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

The scientific community dog piled on the discoverers with vitriol.

You're right, of course, about scientism in general, but you may want to re-check the facts surrounding the person who discovered soft tissue in dinosaur fossils:

Quote

Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”

This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

 

Edited by Hamba Tuhan
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2 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

I know the church is true to millions of members 

I don’t get why you are refusing to share your own belief about the truth of the Church considering what else you have shared.  What matters in the end if others believe, but you don’t? Or if instead your choice is you don’t know, why not just say that?  Why go where you have, but not here?

Edited by Calm
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11 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

And I consider human development.  So the Perry Scheme of Cognitive and Ethical Growth.  I discussed that at the most length here.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/sophic-box-and-mantic-vista-a-review-of-deconstructing-mormonism/

Which, may I add, destroys Riskas' alleged "Deconstruction ".

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