The Family Proclamation and the NHS

[MrShorty]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

I assume the "small group" you refer to here is people with a DSD.  I find it no more plausible that DSDs exist outside this mortal sphere than does any other type of disorder or affliction.  If a person is born without legs, that is a disorder that will not persist after death.  I think we will find that the same will be said of those with DSD.  This is all a matter of faith, of course.  However, I think my position comports well with the doctrines of the Church.  We'll see when we get to the other side.

This is, IMO, one of the central issues in this and similar LGBT+ issues -- this question of "disorder" (or pathology or illness or disease or whatever word we want to use for something that cannot persist after death). How do we determine what is and is not "disorder?"

You draw the parallel to a person born without legs. I think I have drawn the parallel before to a person born deaf. The reason I have used deafness is because there are some in the deaf community who adamantly believe that deafness is not a "disorder" (or disease or whatever word you might choose here), and, thus, something that does not need to be "cured" (and maybe should not be cured). I expect if such a person was LDS, that person might argue that they will still be deaf in the next life because deafness, as a normal (if rare) variation on what it means to be a normal human, will persist after death.

So much of LDS thought on transgenderism (and homosexuality) seems rooted in this idea that they are "disorders," which, interestingly, matches traditional societal beliefs. Homosexuality did not begin to be depathologized in broader society until the mid to late 20th century. Transgenderism is still in the midst of trying to decide if it is a disease or not. It seems to me that our theology around these issues depends on them being some kind of disorder (even if only in the sense that they cannot persist after death). IMO, part of settling these issues once and for all is to fully and transparently explain the epistemological process we have used to determine that they are "disorders" (being very careful not to rely to heavily on "tradition," since the history of the priesthood and temple ban shows how wrong it can be to rely on tradition).

Perhaps, as you say, we won't be able to tell until we get to the other side. IMO, if there is enough uncertainty in our proclamation to take a wait and see attitude, then change is needed in the here and now. We saw with the priesthood and temple ban that it is a problematic thing to deny people salvific ordinances and covenants based on incomplete knowledge. It won't do to continue denying people salvific ordinances and covenants (or declaring those ordinances and covenants "null and void") based on uncertain knowledge of what might happen in the next life.

[OGHoosier]

Maybe idealism is true after all. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

The reason I have used deafness is because there are some in the deaf community who adamantly believe that deafness is not a "disorder" (or disease or whatever word you might choose here), and, thus, something that does not need to be "cured" (and maybe should not be cured).

Another example is Autism is now often viewed as an atypical way of thinking, not inherently dysfunctional.  Other neurodivergent ways of thinking are viewed the same way.  There may be aspects that are beneficial to the individual and other aspects that would be at least neutral if a particular culture didn’t view them as negatives (similar to how being an introvert was seen as more of a negative label in my youth and such an inclination leading to undesirable behaviours where not so much now in my experience…don’t hear too many parents complaining about their kids quietly reading too much in their rooms these days).

Edited May 2, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Maybe idealism is true after all. 

Expand on this please….

[OGHoosier]

59 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

The reason I have used deafness is because there are some in the deaf community who adamantly believe that deafness is not a "disorder" (or disease or whatever word you might choose here), and, thus, something that does not need to be "cured" (and maybe should not be cured).

Are there people out there who truly believe that no cure for deafness should be pursued? 

I get not wanting such a cure for oneself - but to be against a cure in principle?

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

I think it's pretty clear that for Joseph "intelligence" and "spirit" were interchangeable when it comes to the individual human spirit. This is what is found in Abraham, where spirits/intelligences are uncreated and essentially adopted by the most intelligent among them.

I fully grant that Joseph's understanding was not, initially (or probably in the end) as we ought to understand it today. There is just a lot of very new information to be absorbed. Bruce R. McConkie had some nice comments about that in relation to intelligence/spirit. Setting Elder McConkie aside, for me the clinchers that intelligences and spirits can't be the same thing are 1) we are begotten spirit children (implying a beginning), 2) intelligence is uncreate (having no beginning), and 3) it makes no philosophical sense to me for an uncreate something to be anything other than its most fundamental, simplest, and indivisible form. That is to say, it has no parts.

On that last part, I reason than intelligences are not-so-intelligent. Intelligence in the sense of cognitive capacity requires both perception and memory. Any "action" undertaken without perception and memory is indistinguishable from random. What happens is that God organizes around these intelligences (the uncreate entities) a mechanism/machine/device to enables the intelligences (the uncreate entities) with perception and memory. That mechanism/machine/device we call a spirit body. Only after intelligences (the uncreate entities) acquire a body do they become "intelligent".

[OGHoosier]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Expand on this please….

Metaphysical idealism, the belief that reality is inseparable from perception. There's no steadfast structure out there which would just keep ticking regardless of whether or not it was observed. It's the polar opposite of materialism. They're both monistic schools of thought - saying that there's only one kind of stuff out there. In the case of materialism, the stuff is matter, and that which we percieve to be mind is just matter misunderstood. For the idealist, it's all mind, and our human minds are just nodes or facets of a bigger mental whole which encompasses all of observable reality - or in other words, all of reality. For a crude metaphor, the world is the Matrix but without anything (robots, human bodies in pods, computer mainframe, etc.) outside of it. Can't be a simulation if there's nothing to simulate - at that point it's just real. 

If idealism is accepted then the mind-matter or matter-spirit distinction collapses and matter just means "whatever we are." I don't think Joseph Smith compels me to accept monism (thank you Samuel Brown), but if I were to accept a form of monism it would be idealism as I think the evidence against materialism is really just overwhelming.

Edited May 2, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Calm]

3 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Are there people out there who truly believe that no cure for deafness should be pursued? 

I get not wanting such a cure for oneself - but to be against a cure in principle?

Yes, at least there were 30 or 40 years ago when I researched the issue.  There was anger among some in the deaf community that such research for a cure was being done, though I can’t remember how common it was or if I actually knew that detail.  It was treated as genocide, the destruction of their ethnic community, by those activists I was aware of.

The conflict was well know enough I saw quite a few storylines in television shows where the story centered on deaf activists, relationships between a couple were destroyed because one backed out of a commitment not to used cochlear implants for themselves or their children and similar stories.  I am trying to remember the time, seems like the 80s probably.

Edited May 2, 2024 by Calm

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

More speculations, please!

A possible extension of my reply above to the narrator concerns gender/sex.

We have two doctrinal points:

• there is something uncreate about our identity which is self-existent
• the prophets teach us that gender is an eternal characteristic

My speculation below combines those two points. It is currently not a necessary theological step. But, I kind of like it.

For me, intelligences are uncreate, self-existent, fundamental, simple, indestructible entities. Kind of like electrons are simple, indivisible, and fundamental without constituent parts (that we know of). But, the electron does have a plurality of properties. Similarly, perhaps intelligences* similarly have a plurality of fundamental properties much as other fundamental particles have (e.g. charge, chirality, rest mass, etc.). It is possible that what we call sex is an extension of a fundamental property of intelligence that simply is and cannot be created, destroyed, or changed. As a society we then created bodies for these intelligences where those with property state A we called "female" and those with property state B we called "male". Why? Perhaps the organizing of intelligences into spirit bodies requires a sameness. That is, a divine parent with property state A ("female") could put intelligences with that same property state A into a spirit body and similarly for those parents who would do the same for intelligences with property state B ("male"). Or perhaps both are required (ie yin/yang like). Furthermore, as a celestial, perfectly harmonies society, we decided that attaching gender norms to the "sex" that is fundamental in intelligence facilitated the most efficient and harmonious propagation of our trans-mortal species.

* I shan't call them "particles" because the very term may be an inadequate way of describing what they are and I don't want to set up the linguistic hedge to understanding.

[Doctor Steuss]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

Do they still teach in Primary the body is like a glove and the spirit a hand? 

Possession sure throws a rascally wrench in this.  Especially with the possession of the swine.

Unless some spirits are swine shaped?

Do sprits, in the case of multiple possessions, go within each other like nesting dolls?  "All right Aziel, you're next smallest... in you go."  I wonder if spirits can get indigestion?  No wonder they were so happy to run off the cliff.

[Analytics]

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

That is not really my position.  Per this article, "intersex individuals are not asexual, but have clear sex biomarkers that makes their sex epistemically uncertain."  See also here:

To be clear, do you believe that an intersex person is either male or female and that we are merely uncertain which it is?

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

I have no particular insights as to a specific person with a DSD and what they "know" or do not know about "the actual sex of their spirit."  In rare instances, a person's biological sex may be phenotypically unclear.  That person may join the Church and develop beliefs about "the actual sex of their spirit."  Those beliefs may or may not be correct, as there is no way to empirically ascertain or test such things.  In this mortal experience, such things can be addressed on a case-by-case basis by those in authority. 

Your relative reasonableness in this response doesn’t seem to comport with your position in the culture war you are waging. Consider the following hypothetical:

A deeply spiritual person believes with every fiber of her being that on the inside, she is a woman. She feels that way as deeply and and surely as you believe in any of your religious beliefs. Because she feels on such a deep, intuitive level that on the inside she is a female, she uses a female nickname, she dresses like a woman, she acts like a woman, and her friends consider her to be a woman. Her being a woman may or may not align with the plumbing in her meat suit, but she just doesn’t think that aspect of her eternal being is what’s most  important. She is confident that after the resurrection, her perfected body will align with the true nature of her spirit.

You would say that we can’t literally know what gender her spirit is, apparently because we can’t really know anything about spiritual things (personally, I would take that one step further and say that we actually do know that literal “spirits” aren’t real, and that talking about the gender of a spirit is nonsensical, but that’s off topic).

For me, I would say that if she feels like a woman and wants to act like a woman, I wish her the best, just as I wish people the best who have other false beliefs about spirits and God and such. It’s their life. If she wants to be referred to using she/her pronouns, I’ll do my best to comply with that wish of hers. And if she wants to participate in sports, whether or not her participation is appropriate for any given league is something that she needs to work out with that league, and really isn’t my concern. Using public restrooms and locker rooms are uncomfortable in all circumstances, and I hope she uses the one that is most comfortable for her and the people around her, and I hope she follows the same courtesy I’d expect of anybody and do her best not to make others uncomfortable. Regarding sharing a hospital room with a stranger, that's typically an extremely uncomfortable experience for everybody, regardless of the age/weight/sex/infirmities/hygiene practices/diseases of the person you are in a room with. There are a near infinite number of things about staying in a hospital that are worse than whether or not your gonads match the gonads of the person in the bed next to you.

You seem to have a major problem with my attitude on these things. You think that this person’s gender is solely a function of their gonads and that the sex of their spirit is unknown, unknowable, and irrelevant. On this issue, the only facts you care about are biologic facts, and you insist that there is only one way to look at those biological facts, and you insist that others only look at the biological facts in the same way you do. If a molecular biologist looks at the issues of what causes sex more deeply, you think they are wrong. And you think there must be laws about restrooms, locker rooms, sport leagues, and hospital beds based on these biological facts that totally disregard the practical aspects of what makes sense for a given individual. If a big burley individual with a thick beard has a vagina, then he legally must use the lady’s restroom, locker room, and hospital ward, regardless of how he and the people around him feel about it. Likewise, if an individual in a dress with makeup and breasts happens to have a penis, then legally she must use the men’s restroom and locker room, regardless of how it makes her and the people around her feel.

Is it rare for somebody to have complete sexual ambiguity? Yes. But it’s much rarer for a bonafide issue to arise because somebody uses an inappropriate restroom given the situation. Yet this issue is hugely important to you, and you repeatedly start threads and arguments about it, and want to enact laws to force people to live according to your black-and-white view of biology that ignores the spiritual and practical aspects of getting along in society. 

Edited May 2, 2024 by Analytics

[MrShorty]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Are there people out there who truly believe that no cure for deafness should be pursued? 

Adding to @Calm's response, I, too, am aware that this is an issue in the deaf community. My first introduction to it was a PBS documentary around 2000 or so that included extended interviews with people on both sides of the debate. A quick internet search today (search string like "deaf people opposed to cochlear implants") found a few articles, suggesting that advocates against such treatments are less strident than during the '90s, but still present. I'm not at all connected to the Deaf community, so, if you are interested in this particular issue, then you might seek out those in the deaf community who can better speak to the nuances of the debate.

@Calm also noted the example of Autism, which, having my own children who are diagnosed with mild autism, seems like another example of a condition that was traditionally viewed as a "disorder" that is gaining more and more acceptance as a different, but normal human experience.

The main point being that it is sometimes nuanced and difficult to declare something a "disorder" and we have not always done a very good job categorizing conditions. I think it would be valuable if we could explain why we think being transgender is a "disorder" and not a normal variation on being human.

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Why not, we are all made out of the same celestial stuff, just organized differently. Your chair may have some dust in it that was once a sandwich - how would I know? 🤔 

Substance theology.   Look out!

=God and his Son are made of the same "substance"- Nicene Creed, but we are not". 

= "Bread and wine are different substances than flesh, but they can be changed, literally"

That kind of thinking, from our pov, caused the apostasy.   

Quick! RUN! .   Hmm.  Where did I hear that now?

 

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Nofear said:

for me the clinchers that intelligences and spirits can't be the same thing are 1) we are begotten spirit children (implying a beginning), 2) intelligence is uncreate (having no beginning),

Could just drop #1, since it has no scriptural basis. Plenty of past doctrines have been dropped for that reason.

[Nofear]

20 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Could just drop #1, since it has no scriptural basis. Plenty of past doctrines have been dropped for that reason.

LDS doctrine is not constrained by the canonized scripture. The consistency of prophetic assertion of this doctrine from Joseph Smith to today for me is easily enough for me to include it in my speculative, non-binding on anybody, theological musings.

Besides, it is in the scriptures that intelligences are uncreate. Couple that with point 3) and point 1) really is what makes for a coherent whole. You are welcome to provide an alternative speculation.

Edited May 2, 2024 by Nofear

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Maybe idealism is true after all. 

It IS, pragmatically.   We have no choice but to see the world through human ideas, so for all practical purposes, we will always be "stuck" in human perceptions.

What is a real WOW is that Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Rorty, William James, and even Plato would agree on that!

On the other hand Plato used it in a dualistic sense.   He made a gap between humans and their experiences and the "Forms or Ideas" of those experiences. you can't sit on an "IDEAL FORM" of a chair!

Unfortunately we can never GET our of human experience- to check if human experience "corresponds to reality"

THAT is the big error of the correspondence theory of truth- it is self-contradictory.   You cannot move the curtain and look and SEE what is "really there behind the curtain" because we would still see only that curtain of human experience!

So the upshot is Social Constructivism.   All we can know is the great pool of human experience in legends,poems, scientific experiments etc. but even that then is limited by language.

"What did he mean by LITERAL?"

Philosopher's prayer: 🥲

"Forgive them Father, for they know not Wittgenstein.    I experience Thee, and so do millions of others, therefore you are as real as the chair I am sitting on. What I experience is all I have to go by!"

And yes, if you kick a stone, you will still have the human experience of kicking a stone.   Like Duh, dude!  Argumentum ad lapidem.

 

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, smac97 said:

There are only two sexes: male and female.

There is no third sex, nor "multiple sexes" beyond male and female.

Thanks,

-Smac

Wrong.

If an intersex person is ambiguous what biological sex are they? In some cases parents decide which gender affirming care to give them. But what sex are they before that is done?

You can’t say there are only two when there are exceptions. That is not how anything works.

Edited May 2, 2024 by The Nehor

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

The main point being that it is sometimes nuanced and difficult to declare something a "disorder" and we have not always done a very good job categorizing conditions. I think it would be valuable if we could explain why we think being transgender is a "disorder" and not a normal variation on being human.

4 hours ago, MrShorty said:

Transgenderism is still in the midst of trying to decide if it is a disease or not. It seems to me that our theology around these issues depends on them being some kind of disorder (even if only in the sense that they cannot persist after death). IMO, part of settling these issues once and for all is to fully and transparently explain the epistemological process we have used to determine that they are "disorders" (being very careful not to rely to heavily on "tradition," since the history of the priesthood and temple ban shows how wrong it can be to rely on tradition).

I don't have time to write a full response right now, I will return to this tonight because I do want to discuss this issue seriously. I am apprehensive - this thread is likely to become a rhetorical Chernobyl - but I want to do it. But I want to start by examining how the tradition came about.  I'm a big believer in Chesterton's Fence by nature, I would like to understand the function of the tradition before discarding it. That's probably where I'll start. 

@mfbukowski I'm getting there man, I'm getting there. Sliding closer to your views each day. I just needed to get my reflexive acceptance of correspondence theory shaken up a bit.

Edited May 2, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

Possession sure throws a rascally wrench in this.  Especially with the possession of the swine.

Unless some spirits are swine shaped?

Do sprits, in the case of multiple possessions, go within each other like nesting dolls?  "All right Aziel, you're next smallest... in you go."  I wonder if spirits can get indigestion?  No wonder they were so happy to run off the cliff.

My memory is we (the teachers) were instructed to remember it was an analogy, but when you are teaching 5 year olds, chances are they will most likely remember it in a literal sense and if we never really discuss what we actually know later on, I can see the understanding of the spirit/body connection getting stuck at that level.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

that we actually do know that literal “spirits” aren’t real,

Maybe another thread because I would love to know how we can know this. 

[Teancum]

7 hours ago, smac97 said:

And yet, the Church will, in the end, never satisfy its critics. 

It has nothing to do with your constant whine of never satisfying its critics.  For me, I view many of the doctrinal changes (or backpedaling by saying something that was taught as doctrine really was not doctrine) fatal to the claim of being The Church of Jesus Christ and that God directs the LDS leaders as prophets seers and revelators. That is not the only issue I find fatel to the truth claims but is is high on the list. I am not looking to be satisfied. It just is pretty clear to me that the church is just another man made religion claiming divine authority that it does not have. and imposing that "authority" on its adherents.  So as a critic I am not looking to be satisfied by anything really. All that you list just seems to be humans desperately trying to fix the damage that the information age has brought upon  their church and its membership and it growth.  They were forced into it and likely never would have taken the steps you list without the internet and such.  You believe the church claims. I don't. I am pretty certain I am right. You are pretty certain you are right.  Could I change my mind?  Well never say never but it would take an awful big epiphany or revelation or something.

Edited May 3, 2024 by Teancum

[Teancum]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

The Articles of Faith were written in 1842 and canonized in 1880.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/remembering-articles-of-faith#:~:text=In 1851%2C the Articles of,Church's October 1880 general conference.

Personally I see the longer it is in active use, the more respected it will become and the greater the likelihood it will get canonized, similar to the statement of faith that the Articles of Faith are.  If it gets less used overtime, then it will be unlikely to be canonized imo.

Good point. I could be wrong. I hope they don't canonize it. But I think believers already act like it is canon.

Edited May 3, 2024 by Teancum

[Teancum]

7 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

ACCOUNT OF PHYSICAL CREATION. While it is true that all things were created 
spiritually, or as spirits, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth, this creation, 
we are informed, was in heaven. This applies to animals of all descriptions and also to plant 
life, before there was flesh upon the earth, or in the water, or in the air. 75. 12 The account of 
the creation of the earth as given in Genesis, and the Book of Moses, and as given in the 
temple, is the creation of the physical earth, and of physical animals and plants." 75. 13 I 
think the temple account, which was given by revelation, is the clearest of all of these. These 
physical creations were made out of the natural elements. 

NO REVEALED ACCOUNT OF SPIRIT CREATION. There is no account of the creation 
of man or other forms of life when they were created as spirits. There is just the simple 
statement that they were so created before the physical creation. The statements in Moses 3:5 
and Genesis 2:5 are interpolations thrown into the account of the physical creation, 
explaining that all things were first created in the spirit existence in heaven before they were 
placed upon this earth. 

We were all created untold ages before we were placed on this earth. We discover from 
Abraham 3:22-28, that it was before the earth was formed that the plan of salvation was 
presented to the spirits, or "intelligences." This being true, then man, animals and plants 
were not created in the spirit at the time of the creation of the earth, but long before. 

SPIRITUAL OR PHYSICAL, AND SPIRIT CREATIONS. The account of creation in 
Genesis was not a spirit creation, but it was in a particular sense, a spiritual creation. This, of 
course, needs some explanation. The account in Genesis, chapters one and two, is the 
account of the creation of the physical earth. The account of the placing of all life upon the 
earth, up and until the fall of Adam, is an account, in a sense, of the spiritual creation of all 
of these, but it was also a physical creation. When the Lord said he would create Adam, he 
had no reference to the creation of his spirit for that had taken place ages and ages before 
when he was in the world of spirits and known as Michael.76. 14 

Adam's body was created from the dust of the earth, but at that time it was a spiritual earth, 
Adam had a spiritual body until mortality...

From "Doctrines of Salvation" by Joseph Fielding Smith

https://archive.org/stream/JFSDoctrinesOfSalvation/JFSDoctrinesofSalvationv1-3_djvu.txt

 

 

Isn't that just the opinion of Joseph Fielding?

[Teancum]

7 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

"The power to create mortal life is the most exalted power God has given his children..." - Pres. Dallin H. Oaks

Why is that?  Every creature on earth has the power to procreate. Not really much all that special about it.

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Teancum said:

But I think believers already act like it is canon.

Not everyone.