General Conference Thoughts

[CV75]

5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I fervently disagree. We're all travellers in a similar journey. The LDS journey is not that unique and definitely does not have a monopoly on truth seeking or truth finding. And it certainly should not be about limiting truth-finding to narrow sources.

It's almost like people forget how Mormonism started:

"Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraces it feels himself at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, fall at once from his neck; and his eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft… Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. … The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.” (Letter from Joseph Smith to Isaac Galland, Mar. 22, 1839, Liberty Jail, Liberty, Missouri, published in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, pp. 53–54; spelling and grammar modernized.)

This is kind of a tangent; my remarks have nothing to do with a "monopoly on truth." with or without one and secularizing my post, "Respecting a person and believing in their spiritual integrity and insight do not translate into a wise choice of counselors when they do not share your "celestial" objective on matters of faith cherished, personal philosophy and ideology (such as that which drives your fervor)." The context for the talk is about celestial objectives, but in principle it applies to secular objectives as well. 

 

[Meadowchik]

14 minutes ago, CV75 said:

This is kind of a tangent; my remarks have nothing to do with a "monopoly on truth." with or without one and secularizing my post, "Respecting a person and believing in their spiritual integrity and insight do not translate into a wise choice of counselors when they do not share your "celestial" objective on matters of faith cherished, personal philosophy and ideology (such as that which drives your fervor)." The context for the talk is about celestial objectives, but in principle it applies to secular objectives as well. 

 

The topic does have to do with a monopoly on truth. Very obviously that is an implication of the remarks to never take counsel from nonbelievers.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Leaf474 said:

I was thinking of these kinds of things

Matthew 15:31

so that the multitude wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the injured healed, the lame walking, and the blind seeing—and they glorified the God of Israel.

 

Also raising the dead.

When Jesus came, he found that he had been in the tomb four days already.

Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

He who was dead came out.

John 11

 

Definitely, but the belief didn't take place in the absence of visible evidence.

 

I clarified this earlier, but I think it was after you wrote this post. In regards to Jesus being a cult leader, he doesn't ask his *contemporaries* to believe him without hard visible evidence. Apologies for not making that clear in my original post.

 

I do see that Paul does have a "knocked off his horse" experience. He also has the eyewitness accounts of apparently 500 people.

...that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once.

1 Corinthians 

Yes I was cherry picking, to make a point. But how do you get from all this to "My sins are forgiven"?

It is a different kind of empiricism.

It is the RADICAL EMPIRICISM of William James and others. If you don't know for yourself through your own experience, "you ain't got nuthin' "  😉

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_empiricism

Quote:

Radical empiricism is a postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion, says James in The Meaning of Truth. The postulate is that "the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience." The fact is that our experience contains disconnected entities as well as various types of connections; it is full of meaning and values. The conclusion is that our worldview does not need "extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."

PostulateEdit

The postulate is a basic statement of the empiricist method: Our theories shouldn't incorporate (...Edit by Mfb... ) transempirical entities. Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that emphasizes the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. James allows that transempirical entities may exist, but that it's not fruitful to talk about them.

FactEdit

James' factual statement is that our experience is not just a stream of data, but a complex process that's full of meaning. We see objects in terms of what they mean to us and we see causal connections between phenomena. Experience is "double-barreled"; it has both a content ("sense data") and a reference, and empiricists unjustly try to reduce experience to bare sensations, according to James. Such a "thick" description of conscious experience was already part of William James' monumental work The Principles of Psychology in 1890, more than a decade before he first wrote about radical empiricism.

It differs notably from the traditional empiricist view of Locke and Hume, who see experience in terms of atoms like patches of color and soundwaves, which are in themselves meaningless and need to be interpreted by ratiocination before we can act upon them.

End Quote

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Leaf474]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

This popped up on my FB feed and at first I thought it was from a person making fun, nope, she's a friend from school who is very believing and faithful. I wonder how many on here have seen the same thing. I wasn't believing that this would become a meme or something put on a shirt, or cup or something. 😒

Interesting again 👍

[Stargazer]

On 10/1/2023 at 6:41 PM, Okrahomer said:

Sehet, ihr Völker! (Hark, All ye nations!)
 

I love this rousing hymn that takes me back to my missionary days in Germany.  

I annoy my wife in church sometimes, because I prefer to sing it in German! 

[Stargazer]

On 10/1/2023 at 9:09 PM, mfbukowski said:

And yet we spend hours on the "Gift of the Holy Ghost" which of course supposedly non-members cannot possibly experience.

I think this clarifies the point very well.

The strongest manifestations I have ever felt steered me TO the church, before I was baptized.

Yes, I feel more constantly "connected" now, but the experiences are less dramatic.

 

How differently individuals experience the HG! My being steered towards the church was so subtle that it wasn't until years afterwards that I recognized what had happened. I'm still amazed, about that. Like you, I do feel fairly steadily "connected" now, but in contrast, my most significant spiritual experiences have come afterwards.

 

[Stargazer]

On 10/1/2023 at 11:02 PM, CV75 said:

We had a missionary from our ward in the late 1990s serve there.

A member of my old ward in Washington state was sent there, and now I can't remember how long ago it was.

[JAHS]

7 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I fervently disagree. We're all travellers in a similar journey. The LDS journey is not that unique and definitely does not have a monopoly on truth seeking or truth finding. And it certainly should not be about limiting truth-finding to narrow sources.

It's almost like people forget how Mormonism started:

"Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraces it feels himself at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, fall at once from his neck; and his eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft… Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. … The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.” (Letter from Joseph Smith to Isaac Galland, Mar. 22, 1839, Liberty Jail, Liberty, Missouri, published in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, pp. 53–54; spelling and grammar modernized.)

"I do not think that means what you think it means"

A lot of things you say would make sense and I would be agreeable to them, but we are talking about what president nelson's main subject of his talk was which is obtaining the Celestial glory. 
Truth is truth regardless of who says it but how can we know it is really God's truth unless it is verified by God or one of his prophets? Otherwise we have to rely on someone else's or our own definition of what truth is.
Joseph Smith said "Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the latterday saints" and not to be influenced by what other creeds or religions say. And he said we have to have the highest degree of evidence that something is true. That evidence would have to be confirmation from God himself or one of His prophets, otherwise it is not the kind of truth that will get us in the celestial kingdom. 

Edited October 7, 2023 by JAHS

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

The topic does have to do with a monopoly on truth. Very obviously that is an implication of the remarks to never take counsel from nonbelievers.

I don't take it that way since it the principle applies whether anyone has a monopoly on truth or not. I don't know anyone who has a monopoly on truth; who do you know, believer or non-believer, that does? 

[Leaf474]

53 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes I was cherry picking, to make a point. But how do you get from all this to "My sins are forgiven"?

Well, interesting that you should bring up that connection.

Which is easier, to tell the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven;’ or to say, ‘Arise, and take up your bed, and walk?’ 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I tell you, arise, take up your mat, and go to your house.”

Mark 2

 

Jesus and his contemporaries would have had only the book of Genesis - as opposed to modern revelation - which gives the impression that death is the result of sin.

 

So if someone predicts his own Resurrection and then follows through on it, it seems reasonable to believe he has authority to forgive sins.

 

53 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It is a different kind of empiricism.

It is the RADICAL EMPIRICISM of William James and others. If you don't know for yourself through your own experience, "you ain't got nuthin' "  😉

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_empiricism

Quote:

Radical empiricism is a postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion, says James in The Meaning of Truth. The postulate is that "the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience." The fact is that our experience contains disconnected entities as well as various types of connections; it is full of meaning and values. The conclusion is that our worldview does not need "extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."

PostulateEdit

The postulate is a basic statement of the empiricist method: Our theories shouldn't incorporate (...Edit by Mfb... ) transempirical entities. Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that emphasizes the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. James allows that transempirical entities may exist, but that it's not fruitful to talk about them.

FactEdit

James' factual statement is that our experience is not just a stream of data, but a complex process that's full of meaning. We see objects in terms of what they mean to us and we see causal connections between phenomena. Experience is "double-barreled"; it has both a content ("sense data") and a reference, and empiricists unjustly try to reduce experience to bare sensations, according to James. Such a "thick" description of conscious experience was already part of William James' monumental work The Principles of Psychology in 1890, more than a decade before he first wrote about radical empiricism.

It differs notably from the traditional empiricist view of Locke and Hume, who see experience in terms of atoms like patches of color and soundwaves, which are in themselves meaningless and need to be interpreted by ratiocination before we can act upon them.

End Quote

 

Is this "knowing" done in the absence of visible evidence?

_________________

Now, I'm not sure if I was following everything you're saying... did I make a satisfactory response to your post?

 

Also, are we still on topic for the thread, or is there a way to bring this around to the thread topic?

[Stargazer]

On 10/2/2023 at 8:53 PM, blackstrap said:

If God can change a mortal body into an immortal one with a particular glory , does that preclude Him from being able to change that body's glory to a higher one ? 

God cannot do otherwise than act in a just manner.

Would it be unjust to "promote" one from a Telestial to a Terrestrial body? I believe it would be, since the primary qualification of entry into the Telestial kingdom is having rejected Christ and suffered (resurrected) body and spirit for one's own sins. Once judged and resurrected, one is no longer living in faith, but in knowledge. By then it is too late to back up and repent. Repentance can only be done by one who is still behind the veil of forgetfulness. Once brought past that veil, there's no going back.

Would it be unjust to be promoted from a Terrestrial to a Celestial body? This seems more possible.

But if we are to accept prophetic authority, in this very conference we have President Oaks saying:

"During this mortal life you get to choose which laws you are willing to obey—those of the celestial kingdom, or the terrestrial, or the telestial—and, therefore, in which kingdom of glory you will live forever." 

He mentions "forever" twice in this connection. He doesn't seem to be allowing for the possibility of a "promotion."

But perhaps there is such a possibility, from the Teres to the Celes. And if there is, perhaps we're not being told about it, so as to avoid us being complacent? I can't say, despite arguing strongly in this thread against the notion of "promotion." It's possible I'm wrong, or, at least not completely right.

[Meadowchik]

34 minutes ago, JAHS said:

"I do not think that means what you think it means"

I lot of things you say would make sense and I would be agreeable to them, but we are talking about what president nelson's main subject of his talk was which is obtaining the Celestial glory. 
Truth is truth regardless of who says it but how can we know it is really God's truth unless it is verified by God or one of his prophets? Otherwise we have to rely on someone else's or our own definition of what truth is.
Joseph Smith said "Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the latterday saints" and not to be influenced by what other creeds or religions say. And he said we have to have the highest degree of evidence that something is true. That evidence would have to be confirmation from God himself or one of His prophets, otherwise it is not the kind of truth that will get us in the celestial kingdom. 

Among the things it is saying is that while Mormonism is Truth, Truth is Mormonism.

Is the celestial glory a real thing and is being valiant now in mortal life real? If so, both are relevant to everyone. 

Personally, I will say that even as an atheist I agree with parts of those concepts and aspire to them actively and intentionally. 

Second, whatever is true is true regardless of what church leaders say, regardless of what President Nelson says. 

That he is encouraging such a narrow approach is yet another way religion fails people. And if there is a God, this is another way religions fail God 

That said, simply put, it hurts my relationships with people I love and it hurts them too. 

Any arguing that his words were about a particular thing that only interest particular people that nonbelievers don't know about, that just flies directly against all the claims of Mormonism being the Truth for everyone and Truth being Mormonism.

 

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Meadowchik

[CV75]

35 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

A member of my old ward in Washington state was sent there, and now I can't remember how long ago it was.

I believe it opened up in the early 1990s (92, 93). This young man, though in 1997-ish, was one of the first young missionaries to go there with one or two older couples, and there were extremely few missionaries, half a dozen as I recall.

[mfbukowski]

36 minutes ago, JAHS said:

Truth is truth regardless of who says it but how can we know it is really God's truth unless it is verified by God or one of his prophets?

Self contradictory 

[mfbukowski]

19 minutes ago, Leaf474 said:

Also, are we still on topic for the thread, or is there a way to bring this around to the thread topic?

You decide.

You ask questions about what I wrote and then you imply it is off topic.  Whatever. Do it here or somewhere else, or not at all.

Edited October 7, 2023 by mfbukowski

[blackstrap]

I just think that eternity is a really long time to be going around in circles with one foot nailed to the floor.

[JAHS]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

Among the things it is saying is that while Mormonism is Truth, Truth is Mormonism.

Is the celestial glory a real thing and is being valiant now in mortal life real? If so, both are relevant to everyone. 

Personally, I will say that even as an atheist I agree with parts of those concepts and aspire to them actively and intentionally. 

Second, whatever is true is true regardless of what church leaders say, regardless of what President Nelson says. 

That he is encouraging such a narrow approach is yet another way religion fails people. And if there is a God, this is another way religions fail God 

That said, simply put, it hurts my relationships with people I love and it hurts them too. 

Any arguing that his words were about a particular thing that only interest particular people that nonbelievers don't know about, that just flies directly against all the claims of Mormonism being the Truth for everyone and Truth being Mormonism.

 

 

I sort of doubt that most non-believers are not even going to listen to his talk or care about what he says. I still have to ask though who or what is the authority of what the definition of truth is?
If church members are hurting you because of their beliefs they will be judged for that. I didn't know you were atheist so I guess everything I have said has been a waste of time.

[Meadowchik]

41 minutes ago, JAHS said:

I sort of doubt that most non-believers are not even going to listen to his talk or care about what he says. I still have to ask though who or what is the authority of what the definition of truth is?
If church members are hurting you because of their beliefs they will be judged for that. I didn't know you were atheist so I guess everything I have said has been a waste of time.

I didn't say members are hurting me. I said that counsel harms relationships between myself and members I love, and it can also harmful to them.

I don't see the conversation as a waste of time just because I am atheist.

[Leaf474]

3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Among the things it is saying is that while Mormonism is Truth, Truth is Mormonism.

Is the celestial glory a real thing and is being valiant now in mortal life real? If so, both are relevant to everyone. 

Personally, I will say that even as an atheist I agree with parts of those concepts and aspire to them actively and intentionally. 

Second, whatever is true is true regardless of what church leaders say, regardless of what President Nelson says. 

That he is encouraging such a narrow approach is yet another way religion fails people. And if there is a God, this is another way religions fail God 

That said, simply put, it hurts my relationships with people I love and it hurts them too. 

Any arguing that his words were about a particular thing that only interest particular people that nonbelievers don't know about, that just flies directly against all the claims of Mormonism being the Truth for everyone and Truth being Mormonism.

Very interesting. I didn't realize you were an atheist, so that's another new thing I learned today 😀

[Leaf474]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

You decide.

You ask questions about what I wrote and then you imply it is off topic.  Whatever. Do it here or somewhere else, or not at all.

From my point of view, I was asking about whether you felt this was on-topic enough or not, because you have more experience on this forum than I.

[Meadowchik]

41 minutes ago, Leaf474 said:

Very interesting. I didn't realize you were an atheist, so that's another new thing I learned today 😀

Yes I was a believer all my life until six years ago. My earliest posts in this forum  were from that perspective.

Anyway it is interest having a Mormon identity while also being atheist.

[Leaf474]

So now having read Nelson's talk (as opposed to just reading what others have said about it 😄), I was struck by the amount of time he spent talking about putting effort into thinking celestially.

 

Assuming that we begin at consumption,

and knowing that the majority of pregnancies end in a miscarriage,

and that people who die before they are old enough to understand go to the Celestial Kingdom,

the majority of humans - possibly the vast majority - enter the Celestial Kingdom without any testing or trials on Earth at all.

 

It just seems to me like a strange situation.

 

"Yes, better than them both is the one who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 4

[JAHS]

8 minutes ago, Leaf474 said:

So now having read Nelson's talk (as opposed to just reading what others have said about it 😄), I was struck by the amount of time he spent talking about putting effort into thinking celestially.

 

Assuming that we begin at consumption,

and knowing that the majority of pregnancies end in a miscarriage,

and that people who die before they are old enough to understand go to the Celestial Kingdom,

the majority of humans - possibly the vast majority - enter the Celestial Kingdom without any testing or trials on Earth at all.

 

It just seems to me like a strange situation.

 

"Yes, better than them both is the one who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 4

A new life begins at conception but we don't know when the spirit enters the body and becomes a soul.

Joseph Smith said:
"The Lord takes many away even in infancy that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world--they were too lovely and too pure to live on earth. (The Words of Joseph Smith, pp. 106-109)

President Joseph Fielding Smith once said:
“Satan cannot tempt little children in this life, nor in the spirit world, nor after their resurrection. Little children who die before reaching the years of accountability will not be tempted.” (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:56-57.)

So for some reason that only God knows, these children don't need the test of temptation for their salvation; they only need a body.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, blackstrap said:

I just think that eternity is a really long time to be going around in circles with one foot nailed to the floor.

I don’t know. Some of the most famous people there have been nailed to things.

[Calm]

18 minutes ago, Leaf474 said:

It just seems to me like a strange situation.

You are not the only one.