Scriptures & Doctrine As Parables - How Far Can This Be Extended???

[CV75]

Check this out!

Paul’s Metaphors of Salvation in Their Ancient Contexts (churchofjesuschrist.org)

 

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Vanguard said:

I guess in a layman's defense of MFB's argument, the parable of Christ might simply be how a God desires us to conceive of His relationship with us. It's not so important whether the Christ really did the things we believe He did but that by propagating this parable, we as humans can more take on the attributes of what this God desires of us. Who knows...and my head hurts. ; )

Well the strength of my position- paradigm- is that I am not doubting for a moment that the human being "Jesus of Nazareth" lived.

You can be a complete fundamentlist and take the bible literally, the historicity of the BOM and every lesson in Sunday School as being a paradigm in itself- but the IMPORTANCE of the fundamentalist position is not denegrated- it is just one paradigm along with others, which one can take or not take.

Full literalism is still a perfectly available option- it is YOURS to choose- but the point is that there really ARE other ways to see it!

That is the Kuhnian position, if you will, that we have paradigms that may replace others or later proven to be "incorrect" or unfunctional as tools for understanding.

Yes, sometimes you really DO need a pipe wrench when a crescent wrench will not do- as is the case if you have ever done some DIY plumbing repairs at home.

You need the right tool for the job- and that covers it.

The very concept, for example of the atonement is at the crux of this all- folks say it is necessary to take the atonement as historically literal to have it have salvative meaning.

YES that may be true but do you fully understand what it is that you may be requiring?  

NO ONE can explain the atonment in a way that explains it it fully in a logical way.  Fine.

No one -so far as far as I know physics, which is virtually non-existent- has yet figured out all the details of how gravity itself works either.   We still do not have ONE "THEORY"- emphasizing that word "theory"- of "everything" including gravity.

Yet we accept gravity as existing!!   We would be put in a mental hospital if we did not believe in gravity!!

Faith is about HOPE for things UNSEEN- and I think there is no human being who claims to understand the atonement perfectly using logic alone!

So I can agree with both the paradigm that the atonement is REAL and historical without needing to understand the details- in the same way, if I drop my keys- expect them to float up into the air and pop themseves back into my hand!!

So there has to be a balance-  there is more than one way to see everything- and what I am offering is simple ONE APROACH to the LDS gospel, which I personally feel is fully logical and coherent with sceince without sacrificing ANY PART of it.   YES I really am fully LDS, and at least from my perspective, fully involved in reason to the best of my abilities.

I have spent a LOT of years on both!! 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by mfbukowski
clarified double negative

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, teddyaware said:

If Lehi, Nephi Jacob, King Benjamin, King Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Mormon and Moroni aren’t real people, the Book of Mormon is a book of lies and the Church of Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ is a massive hoax. People who think they can have it both ways, with the Book of Mormon being a work of fiction and yet somehow being “true” at the same time, are  delusional and will sooner or later fall unless they repent.

So no faith is required, and all has been proven by history.

I disagree on this point- even though I think we are often perfectly aligned in belief, but perhaps not language.   Somewhere in this I believe there is a semantic error- and not necessarily on your behalf.

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, manol said:

Omigosh this is priceless!!

Thanks!  I was hoping to use the word "red" written in Chinese to make "red" become just some squiggles on a page- which is of course what folks not used to our alphabet could show us the sillyness in thinking that (squiggle) in another alphabet really WOULD BE "squiggles" to an English speaker.

Edit:

Here we go:

丹

The cool thing about Chinese is that there are different kinds of ways to indicate different kinds of emotional responses to "red" by changing the character.

Still looks like a "squiggle" to me. 

 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

56 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Should we accept historicity on faith because we never will know in this mortality if indeed said event happened or because said event really didn't happen?

Let's take the resurrection of Christ, do you believe it happened but you realize you can't ever really know this some 2000 years later?

Or am I still missing the boat here? ;o

Yes to both!

To me, it's just logically putting the doubt where it belongs.

How are you going to prove that the atonement actually happened?  Because you feel it in your heart.

But how do you know that it happened approximately 33 years after the birth of someone 2000 years ago?

If you want to doubt the atonement, to me, the history is very EASY to doubt- there is abosolutely NO WAY to prove it happeneing without first ACCEPTING that it did in fact happen!

It's like saying that aliens landed on earth in 17 BC and they changed the entire way of life of millions through the belief in....   xyz.

Forget the validity of xyz- the important fact is that it actually happened in 17 BC?

THAT to me makes no sense.

Changing the HISTORY date or idea is the EASIEST thing to doubt in my way of thinnking.

Suppose Christ returned in 300 AD and THEN for whatever reason- accopmplished the atonement.

Which is more important- that your sins are forgiven or WHEN they were forgiven?

That's just the way I see it.

[Vanguard]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes to both!

To me, it's just logically putting the doubt where it belongs.

How are you going to prove that the atonement actually happened?  Because you feel it in your heart.

But how do you know that it happened approximately 33 years after the birth of someone 2000 years ago?

If you want to doubt the atonement, to me, the history is very EASY to doubt- there is abosolutely NO WAY to prove it happeneing without first ACCEPTING that it did in fact happen!

It's like saying that aliens landed on earth in 17 BC and they changed the entire way of life of millions through the belief in....   xyz.

Forget the validity of xyz- the important fact is that it actually happened in 17 BC?

THAT to me makes no sense.

Changing the HISTORY date or idea is the EASIEST thing to doubt in my way of thinnking.

Suppose Christ returned in 300 AD and THEN for whatever reason- accopmplished the atonement.

Which is more important- that your sins are forgiven or WHEN they were forgiven?

That's just the way I see it.

I imagine you would say something similar to those who do not accept the supernatural but instead claim science is king. In other words we all place our faith in something that cant' be proven, correct?

And thanks for engaging me. Your argument comes full circle every so often as I inch closer to the possibility of embracing what seems to be your perspective. ; )

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Vanguard said:

I imagine you would say something similar to those who do not accept the supernatural but instead claim science is king. In other words we all place our faith in something that cant' be proven, correct?

And thanks for engaging me. Your argument comes full circle every so often as I inch closer to the possibility of embracing what seems to be your perspective. ; )

Well thanks, and I have one clarification. I am not sure I understand this:
 

Quote

 

I imagine you would say something similar to those who do not accept the supernatural but instead claim science is king. In other words we all place our faith in something that cant' be proven, correct?

 

Based on what I understand of LDS thought, I do not believe in the "supernatural"- instead I see such phenomena as "natural" and part of natural law which God has chosen to use only (I believe) so that He can retain his immanence as definable as our "Father"

So for God to be our Father, I believe he has agreed- with himself- perhaps as we discipline ourselves from never drinking alcohol- to never use "supernatural powers" but DOES use scientific principles we do not understand yet.

So science cannot tell us- today- how one resurrects a dead body, yet I believe it is a "natural" process and knowable to humans- but of course we have not yet learned how to do that.

So that process is not "supernatural" but "natural" in in principle then- so I believe I straddle the question of whether or not we "place our faith in something that cannot (in principle) be proven".   Maybe we can prove it naturally- ie :scientifically- or maybe we can't.

But for whatever God's reason IS, I believe he could have chosen as well to use "Supernatural" means but does not.

I believe in some way this is how he can actually BE the Father of our Spirits- and created us from some kind of energy we now call "intelligence" but both words -intellegence and energy - are presently insufficient to describe that force scientifically.

THAT belief is an additional example of my beliefs

Does that make sense?  So God does not use "supernatural powers" in our world- though perhaps he has such powers used in other spheres of knowledge.

Ultimately the reason for this belief is that I believe that the atonement is about empathy and not about the economics of how much a sin "costs".

There is no "Bill".

Such a bill cannot be "paid" but what the Atonement is about, for me, is the belief that because Jesus has literally experienced EVERY possible pain and human feeling of loss and estrangement with God, He (Jesus) can be there to comfort us and assure us that through the atonement those sins and pain have been forgiven.   He is our Brother in all senses- a comforter- an older leader- a person in whom we can fully trust to help us no matter what our situation happens to be.

I believe for this to logically happen, the Atonment has also to be some kind of natural process which happens through empathy and love, based on   grace and a "bill" more than anyone possibly pay on their own.  WE cannot possible "pay" for such love and forgivness.

So El/Jehovah is our "Father" in a true sense- Jesus is his Son in a natural way, and the Atonement is an example of human comfort.  The organization of the earth was done in a scientific manner- perhaps big bang- perhaps some other principle knowABLE to science.

We humans either evolved naturally- with tweaks as perhaps needed made naturally, like causing environmental "tweaks" not unlike the perhaps too late attempts we now make to change global warming.

In principle, it is all science IN MY OPINION.

So I hope that that agrees with your opinion - because I think we agree on many things.

Is that roughly what you meant above?

Edited August 14, 2023 by mfbukowski

[CV75]

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Well the strength of my position- paradigm- is that I am not doubting for a moment that the human being "Jesus of Nazareth" lived.

You can be a complete fundamentlist and take the bible literally, the historicity of the BOM and every lesson in Sunday School as being a paradigm in itself- but the IMPORTANCE of the fundamentalist position is not denegrated- it is just one paradigm along with others, which one can take or not take.

Full literalism is still a perfectly available option- it is YOURS to choose- but the point is that there really ARE other ways to see it!

That is the Kuhnian position, if you will, that we have paradigms that may replace others or later proven to be "incorrect" or unfunctional as tools for understanding.

Yes, sometimes you really DO need a pipe wrench when a crescent wrench will not do- as is the case if you have ever done some DIY plumbing repairs at home.

You need the right tool for the job- and that covers it.

The very concept, for example of the atonement is at the crux of this all- folks say it is necessary to take the atonement as historically literal to have it have salvative meaning.

YES that may be true but do you fully understand what it is that you may be requiring?  

NO ONE can explain the atonment in a way that explains it it fully in a logical way.  Fine.

No one -so far as far as I know physics, which is virtually non-existent- has yet figured out all the details of how gravity itself works either.   We still do not have ONE "THEORY"- emphasizing that word "theory"- of "everything" including gravity.

Yet we accept gravity as existing!!   We would be put in a mental hospital if we did not believe in gravity!!

Faith is about HOPE for things UNSEEN- and I think there is no human being who claims to understand the atonement perfectly using logic alone!

So I can agree with both the paradigm that the atonement is REAL and historical without needing to understand the details- in the same way, if I drop my keys- expect them to float up into the air and pop themseves back into my hand!!

So there has to be a balance-  there is more than one way to see everything- and what I am offering is simple ONE APROACH to the LDS gospel, which I personally feel is fully logical and coherent with sceince without sacrificing ANY PART of it.   YES I really am fully LDS, and at least from my perspective, fully involved in reason to the best of my abilities.

I have spent a LOT of years on both!! 

 

 

I think Romans 14 offers a great discussion on the range of saints' paradigms and how they can manage them within the same body of Christ.

[mfbukowski]

45 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I think Romans 14 offers a great discussion on the range of saints' paradigms and how they can manage them within the same body of Christ.

Certainly agree!

[Kenngo1969]

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

These are great questions.

... I think it's important for a believer to accept that God can act in history. A God that never intervenes in human affairs may as well not exist. Certainly there wouldn't be much point in placing one's trust in, or in entering into covenants with, such a being. ...

Quoted for Truth.  +1. 

[sunstoned]

On 8/13/2023 at 4:05 PM, teddyaware said:

If Lehi, Nephi Jacob, King Benjamin, King Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Mormon and Moroni aren’t real people, the Book of Mormon is a book of lies and the Church of Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ is a massive hoax. People who think they can have it both ways, with the Book of Mormon being a work of fiction and yet somehow being “true” at the same time, are  delusional and will sooner or later fall unless they repent.

I agree with you, except for the repent part.

[teddyaware]

14 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

I agree with you, except for the repent part.

What a surprise response! 

[mfbukowski]

On 8/14/2023 at 11:44 AM, Nevo said:

These are great questions.

Personally, I extend the idea of "parable" (allegory/metaphor) in scripture and doctrine pretty far—farther than I'm comfortable sharing in Sunday School. For example, I'm not convinced that the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham or the Book of Moses depict historical events (although I regard them as inspired texts). That skepticism extends to many of the stories in the Bible as well.

However, I think it's important for a believer to accept that God can act in history. A God that never intervenes in human affairs may as well not exist. Certainly there wouldn't be much point in placing one's trust in, or in entering into covenants with, such a being. 

I believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead. So, logically, I must allow that the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and Book of Moses could be historical. (I'm just not, at this point, persuaded that they are—or need to be—for the restored gospel to be true.)

Agree- every spiritual experience and testimony to me, can be seen as an "intervention".  It is direct communication imo.

This is how we know God is "real".  Those feelings are as real as other reactions to our environment, as interpreted by our minds/spirit/brains, like color.

A red car really IS red, even though that color only "exists" as a brain interpretation of an environmental condition.  So too, I believe, can be communications with "God".  There is actually some scientific evidence that humans have genes which cause us to seek out a "God" just as we create color in our minds.

The philosophical name for these phenomena, is "qualia".

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

Edited August 15, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 8/13/2023 at 5:27 PM, Anonymous Mormon said:

1) How far do those on the board who consider yourselves 'faithful' or 'active' members of the church extend the idea of parable in scripture and doctrine? Are there things that you consider to be parable that you would be hesitant to say in Sunday School, for example, because it would be more than most members would want to hear?

No, I am pretty much willing to say anything. Sometimes people disagree with me.

On 8/13/2023 at 5:27 PM, Anonymous Mormon said:

2) And what is your opinion on how far an active member of the church can extend the concept of parable before it damages his/her testimony? Are there certain doctrines or scripture (BoM, the NT Gospels, Genesis, the endowment, the atonement, the first vision, resurrection, the pre-mortal existence, etc.) that a faithful member must believe as literal and not parable in order to truly be a 'faithful' member of the church?

To get a temple recommend, you have to answer 15 questions (or 13 for a limited use recommend) - yet there isn't anything in here that dictates how we should believe, or how we should understand these ideas. Many years ago, I had a discussion with a member of this forum about whether or not Joseph Smith used a seer stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon. They suggested at one point, that if they could be convinced that Joseph did use a seer stone in the hat, they would leave the Church. At some point they were convinced. They left the Church.

I think that it is much worse for us to believe too much rather than too little. Part of what I mean by that is that for the person who believes that scripture is relevant regardless of whether or not it is history will not find their testimony shaken to the core if they find out that it is in fact history as well as scripture. But the person who has a rigid belief system that grounds that belief in a specific sort of model of understanding, and a specific interpretation - their testimony can be significantly damaged when they find out that their assumptions and beliefs are misguided or are completely wrong. Dogma is much more dangerous to faith than is Skepticism. One of my favorite discussions on this subject from a non-LDS member comes from Richard Rohr:

Quote

When I was young, I couldn’t tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it’s all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe — I’ve counseled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures.

Whenever I think there’s a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say “only” or “always,” someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like “principles of uncertainty” and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of “faith”! How strange that the very word “faith” has come to mean its exact opposite.

Multiple views and opinions do not weaken our collective faith - they make it stronger.

[mfbukowski]

39 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No, I am pretty much willing to say anything. Sometimes people disagree with me.

To get a temple recommend, you have to answer 15 questions (or 13 for a limited use recommend) - yet there isn't anything in here that dictates how we should believe, or how we should understand these ideas. Many years ago, I had a discussion with a member of this forum about whether or not Joseph Smith used a seer stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon. They suggested at one point, that if they could be convinced that Joseph did use a seer stone in the hat, they would leave the Church. At some point they were convinced. They left the Church.

I think that it is much worse for us to believe too much rather than too little. Part of what I mean by that is that for the person who believes that scripture is relevant regardless of whether or not it is history will not find their testimony shaken to the core if they find out that it is in fact history as well as scripture. But the person who has a rigid belief system that grounds that belief in a specific sort of model of understanding, and a specific interpretation - their testimony can be significantly damaged when they find out that their assumptions and beliefs are misguided or are completely wrong. Dogma is much more dangerous to faith than is Skepticism. One of my favorite discussions on this subject from a non-LDS member comes from Richard Rohr:

Multiple views and opinions do not weaken our collective faith - they make it stronger.

The key to it all, is honesty in the recommend interview, without mental reservation.  These questions are designed to define the intellectual boundaries which perfectly and pragmatically define our beliefs and doctrines.

We often ask about what is "doctrinal" and these questions focus directly on the behaviors required to be within the accepted boundaries of what it is to be LDS.

It's quite clear where we stand, imo,  when we see these as our measures of how we are doing in the Lord's eyes REGARDLESS of what language we use to describe the theory.

Were Adam and Eve "real"?

Whatever that means to you personally, it becomes irrelevant if we can honestly live within the boundaries set by that interview.

Again, the church is pragmatic!

How you act is more important than the nuances of how you interpret scripture. 

That leaves us space in interpretation, imo.

[pogi]

20 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No, I am pretty much willing to say anything. Sometimes people disagree with me.

To get a temple recommend, you have to answer 15 questions (or 13 for a limited use recommend) - yet there isn't anything in here that dictates how we should believe, or how we should understand these ideas. Many years ago, I had a discussion with a member of this forum about whether or not Joseph Smith used a seer stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon. They suggested at one point, that if they could be convinced that Joseph did use a seer stone in the hat, they would leave the Church. At some point they were convinced. They left the Church.

I think that it is much worse for us to believe too much rather than too little. Part of what I mean by that is that for the person who believes that scripture is relevant regardless of whether or not it is history will not find their testimony shaken to the core if they find out that it is in fact history as well as scripture. But the person who has a rigid belief system that grounds that belief in a specific sort of model of understanding, and a specific interpretation - their testimony can be significantly damaged when they find out that their assumptions and beliefs are misguided or are completely wrong. Dogma is much more dangerous to faith than is Skepticism. One of my favorite discussions on this subject from a non-LDS member comes from Richard Rohr:

Multiple views and opinions do not weaken our collective faith - they make it stronger.

19 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

The key to it all, is honesty in the recommend interview, without mental reservation.  These questions are designed to define the intellectual boundaries which perfectly and pragmatically define our beliefs and doctrines.

We often ask about what is "doctrinal" and these questions focus directly on the behaviors required to be within the accepted boundaries of what it is to be LDS.

It's quite clear where we stand, imo,  when we see these as our measures of how we are doing in the Lord's eyes REGARDLESS of what language we use to describe the theory.

Were Adam and Eve "real"?

Whatever that means to you personally, it becomes irrelevant if we can honestly live within the boundaries set by that interview.

Again, the church is pragmatic!

How you act is more important than the nuances of how you interpret scripture. 

That leaves us space in interpretation, imo.

For those who hold scripture, the Book of Mormon specifically, as inspired parables/myth rather than a historical document, how does one reconcile that with the history of the church without resulting in cognitive dissonance.  

The difficulty is that we are dealing with not one, but two narratives that need to be reconciled, 1) the scripture itself, and 2) the church narrative about the scripture, including its origins, etc. 

To accept that #1 is an inspired narrative based in myth rather than actual history, it leaves us in a difficult situation regarding the documented history that is narrative #2.  We have the signed testimonies of the witnesses.  We have reports of Nephite angels visiting Joseph.  Narrative #2 was very much intended to solidify narrative #1 as an actual history and the church has ever sense treated it as such, to the point of trying to fulfill the prophesies about the Lamanites (they see as historical figures).  

I fully support and accept what everyone has said about narrative number #1 (the Book of Mormon) and how one can be a legitimate believer without viewing it as a historical document, but what then are we supposed to do about narrative #2?  What are the possible conclusions we can make about narrative #2 to make narrative #1 work as a non-historical record?

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 minute ago, pogi said:

I fully support and accept what everyone has said about narrative number #1 (the Book of Mormon) and how one can be a legitimate believer without viewing it as a historical document, but what then are we supposed to do about narrative #2?  What are the possible conclusions we can make about narrative #2 to make narrative #1 work as a non-historical record?

Well ... let me ask you a question - here is a part of the Church narrative about the production of the Book of Mormon. This comes from Joseph Fielding Smith's Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, pp. 225-6:

Quote

While the statement has been made by some writers that the Prophet Joseph Smith used a seer stone part of the time in his translating of the record, and information points to the fact that he did have in his possession such a stone, yet there is no authentic statement in the history of the Church which states that the use of such a stone was made in that translation. The information is all hearsay, and personally, I do not believe that this stone was used for this purpose. The reason I give for this conclusion is found in the statement of the Lord to the Brother of Jared as recorded in Ether 3:22-24.

"These stones, the Urim and Thummim which were given to the Brother of Jared, were preserved for this very purpose of translating the record, both of the Jaredites and the Nephites. Then again the Prophet was impressed by Moroni with the fact that these stones were given for that very purpose. It hardly seems reasonable to suppose that the Prophet would substitute something evidently inferior under these circumstances. It may have been so, but it is so easy for a story of this kind to be circulated due to the fact that the Prophet did possess a seer stone, which he may have used for some other purposes.

Is this an accurate statement?

I bring this up because you ask about cognitive dissonance. To quote Vizzini, "I do not think it means what you think it means." One of the problems that we have with the Book of Mormon is that the LDS narrative doesn't simply stand alone, does it. We have other narratives about the Book of Mormon. We have difficulty placing the Book of Mormon in the material historical record. We do not know where Zarahemla was. We cannot identify with any reliability modern descendants of the Nephites. I could make a long list - and the list itself isn't all that important other than to illustrate a point. Why does reading the text in a way that is indifferent to its historicity cause any more or less cognitive dissonance than reading the text in a way that demands its historicity? It isn't merely the text and the way that we read it that matters, it is how we contextualize everything else. In a discussion I had a long time ago, I first asked a question related to the Joseph Fielding Smith quote - which is harder to believe. That 1) an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him gold plates that he translated using a set of spectacles that the angel provided, or 2) that an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him gold plates that he translated by looking at a seer stone in a hat? I think that the hard part is accepting the idea that an angel appeared.

It isn't all that different from my suggestion that despite all of the claims about the text of the Book of Genesis, the Eden narratives are figurative stories, not literal histories. As Mark would note - does either belief make it harder to live gospel principles?

Perhaps the most interesting idea to me personally is that our way of reading literature (this modern sort of view of literature) is focused on genre. What genre is the Book of Mormon? If we read it as history, doesn't that being to determine the meaning we find in it? Can we get greater meaning if we don't limit our view of the text? I think that in general, I am personally indifferent to the question of the historicity of the text. It is meaningless to me in much the same way that Isaiah was problematic for Nephi's children (2 Nephi 25:1):

Quote

For behold, Isaiah spake many things which were hard for many of my people to understand; for they know not concerning the manner of prophesying among the Jews.

Nephi's solution was to help his people "liken" the text unto themselves - to recontextualize it, and in doing so to find relevant meaning. We are worse off than the Nephites reading Isaiah when we read the Book of Mormon. They at least had some context. We have none. So should we pretend that we can construct a historical context from the text from which to understand the text? Or should we liken it unto ourselves and become indifferent to the questions of historicity? There isn't necessarily a wrong answer, but I think that the demand that we should understand the text in a specific way of necessity is misplaced. Further, I think that the indifference (which doesn't reject a historical context - just its relevance) is going to generate far less cognitive dissonance than any attempt to place the text into a specific historical context will.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, pogi said:

For those who hold scripture, the Book of Mormon specifically, as inspired parables/myth rather than a historical document, how does one reconcile that with the history of the church without resulting in cognitive dissonance.  

The difficulty is that we are dealing with not one, but two narratives that need to be reconciled, 1) the scripture itself, and 2) the church narrative about the scripture, including its origins, etc. 

To accept that #1 is an inspired narrative based in myth rather than actual history, it leaves us in a difficult situation regarding the documented history that is narrative #2.  We have the signed testimonies of the witnesses.  We have reports of Nephite angels visiting Joseph.  Narrative #2 was very much intended to solidify narrative #1 as an actual history and the church has ever sense treated it as such, to the point of trying to fulfill the prophesies about the Lamanites (they see as historical figures).  

I fully support and accept what everyone has said about narrative number #1 (the Book of Mormon) and how one can be a legitimate believer without viewing it as a historical document, but what then are we supposed to do about narrative #2?  What are the possible conclusions we can make about narrative #2 to make narrative #1 work as a non-historical record?

 

The way I see that is so much a part of my life that it is not possible to see it otherwise.

I really DO KNOW that people are not educated in the philosophy of language to see that language itself and human thought, TODAY, says there is a fixed and unchangeable world out there represented by language.

Others with a different view see postmodernism as the answer; that there CAN BE NO "representation" of the world in words.

This view is that "truth" is not about the world, but about what linguistic approximations work to accomplish specific goals, and that some people have learned this, and some have not.

It is @Kevin Christensen and his understanding of the Perry Scheme, saying that the "highest" level of human understanding is about relativism in language.

I live in a world KNOWING, if I am right or wrong, that language itself does not capture "truth".

Everything linguistic is myth.

Period. 

Language itself is symbolic of human experience, and human experience cannot represent the world; it, if anything, it interprets the way our bodies are made to interpret to keep us alive on this planet.

Color is the great example people may understand.

Nothing "in the world" has color!

Do we really understand that?

The IDEA itself that "The car is red" CANNOT BE TRUE if truth represents the "real world" because there IS no color outside human experience.

It is the Rorty quote below, in my siggy, from day 1.

Some people who take language literally, now 99% of people walking down the street (now, today, but I think not in the future of postmodernism) believe that what they sense is "truth" BUT IF TRUTH IS REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT HUMANS, HUMANS CANNOT PERCEIVE IT!

So all words are human inventions and cannot be otherwise.

All language then is human invention.

No human language CAN represent "truth" if and only if truth speaks about a world independent of human understanding.

Yet the Bible says that language is confounded =story of Babel

The bible says that the Word created all things ( as we know them, linguistically, imo) John 1

Moroni 10 teaches us to ask God for truth directly.  James 1:5 also. And more.

The world as we see it CANNOT be the world as it is, because seeing it involves human perception.

On the other hand, pragmatically we get along just fine.

Our perceptions of the world keep us alive BECAUSE THAY WORK.

What works for humans can be the only truth FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES.

And that IS Postmodernism.

But today our gospel runs into problems as you mention Pogi, because I believe our gospel and what we mean by "truth" has yet to mean "what works".

Cognitive dissonance is therefore inevitable in our days.

We need prophets who understand the advantages of postmodernism 

"Your "truth" is ( literally) not "my truth"

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by mfbukowski

[pogi]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Well ... let me ask you a question - here is a part of the Church narrative about the production of the Book of Mormon. This comes from Joseph Fielding Smith's Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, pp. 225-6:

Is this an accurate statement?

I bring this up because you ask about cognitive dissonance. To quote Vizzini, "I do not think it means what you think it means." One of the problems that we have with the Book of Mormon is that the LDS narrative doesn't simply stand alone, does it. We have other narratives about the Book of Mormon. We have difficulty placing the Book of Mormon in the material historical record. We do not know where Zarahemla was. We cannot identify with any reliability modern descendants of the Nephites. I could make a long list - and the list itself isn't all that important other than to illustrate a point. Why does reading the text in a way that is indifferent to its historicity cause any more or less cognitive dissonance than reading the text in a way that demands its historicity? It isn't merely the text and the way that we read it that matters, it is how we contextualize everything else. In a discussion I had a long time ago, I first asked a question related to the Joseph Fielding Smith quote - which is harder to believe. That 1) an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him gold plates that he translated using a set of spectacles that the angel provided, or 2) that an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and gave him gold plates that he translated by looking at a seer stone in a hat? I think that the hard part is accepting the idea that an angel appeared.

It isn't all that different from my suggestion that despite all of the claims about the text of the Book of Genesis, the Eden narratives are figurative stories, not literal histories. As Mark would note - does either belief make it harder to live gospel principles?

Perhaps the most interesting idea to me personally is that our way of reading literature (this modern sort of view of literature) is focused on genre. What genre is the Book of Mormon? If we read it as history, doesn't that being to determine the meaning we find in it? Can we get greater meaning if we don't limit our view of the text? I think that in general, I am personally indifferent to the question of the historicity of the text. It is meaningless to me in much the same way that Isaiah was problematic for Nephi's children (2 Nephi 25:1):

Nephi's solution was to help his people "liken" the text unto themselves - to recontextualize it, and in doing so to find relevant meaning. We are worse off than the Nephites reading Isaiah when we read the Book of Mormon. They at least had some context. We have none. So should we pretend that we can construct a historical context from the text from which to understand the text? Or should we liken it unto ourselves and become indifferent to the questions of historicity? There isn't necessarily a wrong answer, but I think that the demand that we should understand the text in a specific way of necessity is misplaced. Further, I think that the indifference (which doesn't reject a historical context - just its relevance) is going to generate far less cognitive dissonance than any attempt to place the text into a specific historical context will.

Thanks,

I agree 100% with your approach to the Book of Mormon - the question of historicity as far as the text itself goes, shouldn't affect how we view or live the principles/gospel.   That is great, but then there is the other narrative I have to face and the potential implications. 

The cognitive dissonance I am talking about is not derived from "the difficulty of placing the Book of Mormon in a historical record".   It is easy to be indifferent as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon when taken out of context of early church history and the metanarrative surrounding the plates.  It is less easy to be indifferent when we are faced with the narrative regarding Moroni (a Book of Mormon prophet) visiting Joseph Smith, showing him where physical gold plates containing the history of the ancient people of America is buried; or when faced with the witnesses testifying as to the veracity of the existence of the gold plates, which serves to persuade people to believe in the existence of Moroni, a historical prophet, along with other narratives surrounding the plates, the people in them, the existence of their lineage today, which all exist for the purpose of causing us to believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon/gold plates.  That purpose seemed to be of central importance when you look at the context surrounding the plates. 

 It is easy to be indifferent to the words of the Book of Mormon in isolation from the larger context of the plates.  But when faced with the larger metanarrative of the plates, how can one remain in indifference as if to willfully ignore the possible implications?  It is so much easier to accept (in the context of the metanarrative) that the Book of Mormon is a historical record.  One cannot be indifferent as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon, without being indifferent about the larger metanarrative.   It is the narrative and context that surrounds the Book of Mormon/gold plates that we are fed throughout our lives in Sunday School and other church contexts that becomes increasing difficult to just be indifferent about.  At some point one has to ask themselves, do I believe this narrative or not, otherwise being fed the narrative for the rest of my life gets to be unbearable if one is trying to maintain indifference.  The church doesn't seem to make room for indifference when it comes to the angel Moroni, the gold plates, or the witnesses - these are core tenants and narratives that our church is founded upon.  What context can one create for these core narratives while allowing for a comfortable indifference and existence within this larger church narrative?   One cannot so easily dismiss the gold plates (with the witnesses) and its origins through Moroni, as Joseph Fielding Smith dismisses the use of the seer stones as "hearsay". 

Edited August 16, 2023 by pogi

[Kevin Christensen]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

The way I see that is so much a part of my life that it is not possible to see it otherwise.

I really DO KNOW that people are not educated in the philosophy of language to see that language itself and human thought, TODAY, says there is a fixed and unchangeable world out there represented by language.

Others with a different view see postmodernism as the answer; that there CAN BE NO "representation" of the world in words.

This view is that "truth" is not about the world, but about what linguistic approximations work to accomplish specific goals, and that some people have learned this, and some have not.

It is @Kevin Christensen and his understanding of the Perry Scheme, saying that the "highest" level of human understanding is about relativism in language.

I live in a world KNOWING, if I am right or wrong, that language itself does not capture "truth".

Everything linguistic is myth.

Period. 

Language itself is symbolic of human experience, and human experience cannot represent the world; it, if anything, it interprets the way our bodies are made to interpret to keep us alive on this planet.

Color is the great example people may understand.

Nothing "in the world" has color!

Do we really understand that?

The IDEA itself that "The car is red" CANNOT BE TRUE if truth represents the "real world" because there IS no color outside human experience.

It is the Rorty quote below, in my siggy, from day 1.

Some people who take language literally, now 99% of people walking down the street (now, today, but I think not in the future of postmodernism) believe that what they sense is "truth" BUT IF TRUTH IS REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT HUMANS, HUMANS CANNOT PERCEIVE IT!

So all words are human inventions and cannot be otherwise.

All language then is human invention.

No human language CAN represent "truth" if and only if truth speaks about a world independent of human understanding.

Yet the Bible says that language is confounded =story of Babel

The bible says that the Word created all things ( as we know them, linguistically, imo) John 1

Moroni 10 teaches us to ask God for truth directly.  James 1:5 also. And more.

The world as we see it CANNOT be the world as it is, because seeing it involves human perception.

On the other hand, pragmatically we get along just fine.

Our perceptions of the world keep us alive BECAUSE THAY WORK.

What works for humans can be the only truth FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES.

And that IS Postmodernism.

But today our gospel runs into problems as you mention Pogi, because I believe our gospel and what we mean by "truth" has yet to mean "what works".

Cognitive dissonance is therefore inevitable in our days.

We need prophets who understand the advantages of postmodernism 

"Your "truth" is ( literally) not "my truth"

 

Succinctly put in the Gospel of Philip, at least in one of the translations,  "We enter into truth through despised symbols".  Edited to add, that is not the same thing as saying "we can never find anything about truth ("knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come" because the symbols are always in the way."

I've worked most of my tech writing career in Computer aided simulation industries, which build things spiritual before building them physically.  And as an English major, my tools is language, which involves the manipulation of symbols to communicate.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited August 16, 2023 by Kevin Christensen

[pogi]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

The way I see that is so much a part of my life that it is not possible to see it otherwise.

I really DO KNOW that people are not educated in the philosophy of language to see that language itself and human thought, TODAY, says there is a fixed and unchangeable world out there represented by language.

Others with a different view see postmodernism as the answer; that there CAN BE NO "representation" of the world in words.

This view is that "truth" is not about the world, but about what linguistic approximations work to accomplish specific goals, and that some people have learned this, and some have not.

It is @Kevin Christensen and his understanding of the Perry Scheme, saying that the "highest" level of human understanding is about relativism in language.

I live in a world KNOWING, if I am right or wrong, that language itself does not capture "truth".

Everything linguistic is myth.

Period. 

Language itself is symbolic of human experience, and human experience cannot represent the world; it, if anything, it interprets the way our bodies are made to interpret to keep us alive on this planet.

Color is the great example people may understand.

Nothing "in the world" has color!

Do we really understand that?

The IDEA itself that "The car is red" CANNOT BE TRUE if truth represents the "real world" because there IS no color outside human experience.

It is the Rorty quote below, in my siggy, from day 1.

Some people who take language literally, now 99% of people walking down the street (now, today, but I think not in the future of postmodernism) believe that what they sense is "truth" BUT IF TRUTH IS REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT HUMANS, HUMANS CANNOT PERCEIVE IT!

So all words are human inventions and cannot be otherwise.

All language then is human invention.

No human language CAN represent "truth" if and only if truth speaks about a world independent of human understanding.

Yet the Bible says that language is confounded =story of Babel

The bible says that the Word created all things ( as we know them, linguistically, imo) John 1

Moroni 10 teaches us to ask God for truth directly.  James 1:5 also. And more.

The world as we see it CANNOT be the world as it is, because seeing it involves human perception.

On the other hand, pragmatically we get along just fine.

Our perceptions of the world keep us alive BECAUSE THAY WORK.

What works for humans can be the only truth FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES.

And that IS Postmodernism.

But today our gospel runs into problems as you mention Pogi, because I believe our gospel and what we mean by "truth" has yet to mean "what works".

Cognitive dissonance is therefore inevitable in our days.

We need prophets who understand the advantages of postmodernism 

"Your "truth" is ( literally) not "my truth"

 

Thanks, and I agree! 

How do you personally contextualize all of this within the metanarrative of the Book of Mormon/Gold plates/witnesses/angel Moroni?  That narrative is currently causing me some discomfort while trying to maintain indifference as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  It is not working for me currently.  That leaves me in an uncomfortable position to be in as a member of a church who pushes that narrative as a foundational story.

The principles in the Book of Mormon work for me.  I fully accept them as truth.  This has implications for how I live my life and the principles I follow.   The narrative surrounding the golden plates are not working for me.  This has implications for how I feel in a church that is built upon that narrative.  You see the turbulence that might cause...    

 

 

 

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Thanks, and I agree! 

How do you personally contextualize all of this within the metanarrative of the Book of Mormon/Gold plates/witnesses/angel Moroni?  That narrative is currently causing me some discomfort while trying to maintain indifference as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  It is not working for me currently.  That leaves me in an uncomfortable position to be in as a member of a church who pushes that narrative as a foundational story.

The principles in the Book of Mormon work for me.  I fully accept them as truth.  This has implications for how I live my life and the principles I follow.   The narrative surrounding the golden plates are not working for me.  This has implications for how I feel in a church that is built upon that narrative.  You see the turbulence that might cause...    

 

 

 

I do, but can't respond until tomorrow at least.

Part us your perception of a change in the way it is seen as "true".

I never thought it was historical, because I have known that no "history" is true in the old sense of the correspondence theory, so I took it for it's own revelational value from day 1, and took the "truth" of Moroni 10 on it's own level as spiritual truth, not as objective scientific data as to " what really happened".

ANY manuscript allegedly 500 years ago will include the presumptions and observations of the time in which it was written, and the question becomes does that mean 19th century or 5th century?

Suddenly Middle English redactions actually look interesting!

And I was used to Catholic stories as well and took them at their spiritual value.

Bread becomes flesh?

Suddenly lost civilizations look pretty credible!

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Edited to add, that is not the same thing as saying "we can never find anything about truth ("knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come" because the symbols are always in the way."

Agree totally, including the simple undebatable observation that we can NEVER have knowledge of things as they are because we can only see them as our minds and devices will allow us.

Thing as they are- for us- are things as our minds let them appear to be.

And for us that has to include revelation or there is no such thing.

Logically there is no middle ground.

Our "reality" INCLUDES inescapable symbols and mental creations like colors; do we really want to say that color is symbolic?

There goes love and beauty and burning in the bosom with it!

These are some of the qualities that make life worth living 

[Benjamin McGuire]

15 hours ago, pogi said:

The cognitive dissonance I am talking about is not derived from "the difficulty of placing the Book of Mormon in a historical record".   It is easy to be indifferent as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon when taken out of context of early church history and the metanarrative surrounding the plates.  It is less easy to be indifferent when we are faced with the narrative regarding Moroni (a Book of Mormon prophet) visiting Joseph Smith, showing him where physical gold plates containing the history of the ancient people of America is buried; or when faced with the witnesses testifying as to the veracity of the existence of the gold plates, which serves to persuade people to believe in the existence of Moroni, a historical prophet, along with other narratives surrounding the plates, the people in them, the existence of their lineage today, which all exist for the purpose of causing us to believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon/gold plates.  That purpose seemed to be of central importance when you look at the context surrounding the plates.

Cognitive dissonance forces us to change things. Sometimes it is a change in behavior. Sometimes it is a change in belief. One of the most common ways in which people alleviate cognitive dissonance is to change the weight that they give to cognitions. You are suggesting that we should give a certain amount of weight to an interpretation of history. Being indifferent to the question of historicity simply reduces the weight that gets assigned to that historical narrative. It isn't any different (except in the relatively closeness of the narratives) for us to discuss the narratives of the Old Testament production and authorship than it is to deal with early Mormon narratives of the production and authorship of the Book of Mormon. That you may not understand how someone can take this position on it doesn't mean that it isn't rational from their point of view. This isn't to say that there isn't value to the discussion you are bringing up - I am just pointing out that such a suggestion isn't all that meaningful in a broad non-individualistic fashion under the topic of cognitive dissonance (and this is why I find discussions that want to try and invoke the idea of cognitive dissonance so frustrating). Cognitive Dissonance isn't something that people generally have. Cognitive Dissonance is merely a principle that helps us understand why people change the things they change.

16 hours ago, pogi said:

It is easy to be indifferent to the words of the Book of Mormon in isolation from the larger context of the plates.  But when faced with the larger metanarrative of the plates, how can one remain in indifference as if to willfully ignore the possible implications?  It is so much easier to accept (in the context of the metanarrative) that the Book of Mormon is a historical record.  One cannot be indifferent as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon, without being indifferent about the larger metanarrative.   It is the narrative and context that surrounds the Book of Mormon/gold plates that we are fed throughout our lives in Sunday School and other church contexts that becomes increasing difficult to just be indifferent about.  At some point one has to ask themselves, do I believe this narrative or not, otherwise being fed the narrative for the rest of my life gets to be unbearable if one is trying to maintain indifference.  The church doesn't seem to make room for indifference when it comes to the angel Moroni, the gold plates, or the witnesses - these are core tenants and narratives that our church is founded upon.  What context can one create for these core narratives while allowing for a comfortable indifference and existence within this larger church narrative?   One cannot so easily dismiss the gold plates (with the witnesses) and its origins through Moroni, as Joseph Fielding Smith dismisses the use of the seer stones as "hearsay". 

I disagree with this almost entirely.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

disagree with this almost entirely.

How do you deal with the Moroni teaching and delivering the plates to Joseph’s story and what place do you see it as useful for it in the Church?