Mormon Infobia...

[_Drifting]

One of the difficulties the Church has in this area of information is that it cannot be seen to be wrong. The Church, it's unique scripture, it's doctrines and practices, even the leadership appointments, are all supposed to have been given directly by God.

When a historic or scientific study shows that the Church has made a mistake, has misspoken etc, the Church has painted itself into a corner. If the Church holds its hands up and says "Hey, sorry everyone. We don't know why DNA shows that Native Americans aren't descended from Nephi. Sorry about that."
Or, "Look, we handled Proposition 8 badly and we'd like to apologise".
Or, "We've found some new documentation that casts some doubt on the version of the first vision that we use. Here's the new information."

No. The Church, If I recall correctly, has never admitted a mistake and apologised for making it.

When it cones to information, the Chrch has a hard time accepting anything that doesn't confirm what it and it's leaders have previously stated unequivocally as coming from God. I think that's where the institutional fear comes from.

[_Franktalk]

He knows the Bible very well, yet rarely references LDS standard works. He just sounds like an outspoken and very devout Christian, not LDS at all. He will end up at the podium, denouncing the unChristian behavior of LDS, and walking out immediately after.

Time will tell. But so far I have seen unchristian behavior everywhere. The church is no exception. I am lucky in that both wards I have been in have some really great people. Many love God and do not go to far outside of the gospel. The few people I have met that really study scripture do just that, study scripture. They don't get to involved in what I would call fringe stuff. I find that common in other religions as well. The RCC is famous for avoiding the past. But the Catholics I have met love God not the church. The LDS are the same. I wonder if the people who lose faith had an unrealistic view of the church. My expectations are low except for fellowship.

I quote the Bible because I am more familiar with it and just see the Book of Mormon as an extension. Little is added in my view. Most of the doctrines I found in LDS are in the Bible, just hard to find. The first time I read the Book of Mormon I said so what. The history is interesting and I did not see anything changed. But I expected that if indeed it is a restored gospel. Many do not read the Bible as I do. Maybe that is why it was so easy for me. Things seemed to fit for me. But the written word is not the administration of a church. I see them as separate. The church is way more prone to the errors of man. So my expectations are low. Anyone who expects the church to be perfect is really living in a fantasy world.

[_Franktalk]

Drifting,

Well said. But you speak of men and they are weak. I do not like the way that many treat the leaders of the church. They are prone to error just like the rest of us. If the church does as you say they will pay a price. But that is separate from the core message. I pick and choose what I think is true from many sources. I have studied a bunch. I will not throw things out by association.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Obviously, on the one topic, we are going to end up continuing to talk past each other, and given that its not that significant to the OP, we should probably let it drop. Our perspectives on texts are far enough apart that we won't make a lot of headway without a substantial amount of groundwork.

It's not that big of a deal. It seems that you just don't want anyone to say that Latter-day Saints experience "cognitive dissonance"--you are offended by the term, or something like that. Fair enough.

I think that there are a couple of assumptions here Scratch. First, I will grant to you that the church discourages people from watching R rated movies. I suspect that if I look, I will also find a bunch of statements discouraging me from looking at pornography. I think that we can both agree that in the OP, the statement "The Church is permeated with a seemingly irrational fear of its members finding stuff out." probably was not intended to deal with the question of pornography (even if you think that it might be applicable).

Second, I provided a quote from another general authority which suggested quite reasonably that people ought to go outside of any proscribed list provided by the church of useful sources. That author went so far as to say: "Those who will not risk exposure to experiences that are not obviously related to some Church word or program will, I believe, live less abundant and meaningful lives than the Lord intends." There is something important and significant about learning to expand our horizons and judging between what is good and valuable and what is not.

There are a number of problems with this, though, Ben. For one thing, you use this GA talk to support your position at the same time that you dismiss a dozen or so other GA talks that don't square with your views. Elsewhere, in response to the BKP talk, you dismiss it because it was delivered to educators. The Hafen quote comes from a book that he wrote... Are you suggesting that this is more "authoratative" then something coming out of the mouth of an Apostle? (Last I checked, apostles outrank members of the Seventy.)

Another problem is that Hafen is vague. What is he talking about, exactly? He says,

We won't always have the security of knowing whether a certain idea is "Church approved," because new ideas don't always come along with little tags attached to them saying whether they have been reviewed at Church headquarters.

Well, it is probably safe to assume that the kinds of information refered to in the OP have been "reviewed at Church headquarters". He even talks about seeking out things that are "not obviously related to some Church word or program will." Can we really say that things like The Godmakers or No Man Knows My History or The Mormon Hierarchy books are *not* "Church-related"? The point, in any case, is that you can't really say that Hafen is referring specifically to controversial Church history and doctrine, or the things that cause people to feel "betrayed" and/or lose their testimonies.

I get that *you* interpret his comment to mean that it's a-okay to go and read about the Kinderhook Plates, or Joseph Smith's plural marriages. I wonder, though, if Elder Hafen had that sort of thing in mind when he wrote the book. I rather doubt that he did.

Later on you mention reading "faithful" histories... Well, again, isn't this a way of "controlling" what people read? Why not tell them to read *both* Bagley and Turley on MMM?

So if I didn't respond to your link, it was probably because I didn't find it too terribly relevant to the OP.

Even if it wasn't "terribly relevant" to the OP, it was a direct response to your somewhat hyperbolic statement that the Church never tells you what to "look at." The Church most certainly *does* tell people what they should or should not look at, read, etc.

Out of curiosity, have you read it?

Of course.

His caution four seems to come about as close to the charges in the OP as anything else. But, the gist of the talk seems to be aimed at dealing with what the church does teach. So let me ask you the question I have been asking drifting. If the church's primary objective is to teach religion and theology, (which of course is part of what Packer's talk was saying), doesn't that to some extent mean that those classes are not an appropriate place to dig into secular history?

"Secular history"? Or religious history? And yes: I think those classes are a perfectly appropriate place to discuss these things. Making excuses does nothing to address the problem, and your excuse here is by now a very old and hackneyed one, Ben. It does nothing.

I was listening to the "Mormon Stories" interview with Terryl Givens recently, and even he said that people have every right to feel "betrayed" over the fact that the Church has done such a poor job of educating the Saints, and of exposing/"innoculating" them against controversial and problematic history.

This is certainly true - but it brings up the discussion we have been having. Part of the challenge is that this seems like a wildly inappropriate topic for instruction in Sunday School.

Why? Why do you say that? Why would it be "inappropriate" to bring up, e.g., the dilemma of Joseph Smith's plural marriages in Sunday School? It dovetails with typical Sunday School topics like faith, obedience, facing adversity, and so on. I don't know why so many intelligent LDS insist that there is no way to talk about these things in Church. I think that it's foot-dragging excuses like this that add to the charges that the Church is trying to suppress information.

No, I think it fits with the thrust of the OP. And what do you mean "elevate"? It was delivered by an apostle. I guess I can grant you that it wasn't sent out on FP letterhead to be read by the bishops of every ward. Is that what you meant? Regardless, I think there is ample, authoritative evidence to support the gist of the OP.

By elevate, I mean this - there are lots of talks given by apostles in non-conference settings. The vast majority of them are ignored, unknown, and undiscussed. This one gets a different treatment - not because it was written by an apostle, but because of the opportunity some saw to use its content.[/quote]

No--I think the fact that it was written by an apostle is important. I also think that its content fits with many of our impressions of the Church. There are hundreds of people who do wind up feeling like information was deliberately (or accidentally?) suppressed or witheld from them. Even Terryl Givens acknowledges that this is a genuine and quite justified response. So to dismiss people's reference to this talk as mere polemics is just flat out wrong. And I'll point out again that the only GA quotation you've put up in response to it is a rather obscure quote from a book by a Seventy, and that's hardly authoritative.

Yes: you yourself are the exploratory type, and you've had no problem branching out and reading the troubling stuff. On the other hand, rather hypocritically, you insist that it's "wildly inappropriate" to start teaching this material in Sunday School.

This is what I mean. I will continue to stand by that point. The most that it does for the OP is to talk about what teachers shouldn't discuss. It says nothing about reading material, or exposing ourselves to material in our own study. It isn't a suggestion (as with the R-rated movies) that we shouldn't look at something as members of the church. (If it is, I couldn't find it when I re-read it this morning). He didn't instruct the educators to tell people not to read histories.

Yes: it's actually worse. If you don't mention this stuff at all, then people will be totally in the dark.

He did ask them not to teach histories that weren't from faithful works. He may well have been wrong in his assessment of the rewards versus risks of this approach, but it still leaves the fundamental problem of whether we can teach religion and theology and attempt to deal with history at the same time.

I don't know why you seem to keep insisting that these fields are necessarily separable. You really can't teach the story of Mormonism without including history. The Book of Mormon is supposed to be a literal history--are you suggesting that there's "no time" to mention how the events unfold? That's just plain silly.

I am teaching Gospel Doctrine in a couple hours today. Sacrament meeting will run over. I will end up with 30 minutes (or less) to teach a slice of the Book of Mormon. It is a slice I could easily spend far more time on. When I am faced with a class that largely won't even have read the short section of the Book of Mormon I am teaching, what should my priorities be for my Sunday School class?

Well, are you sticking to the manual? And is this a spot in the chronology of the manual where it would make sense for you to touch upon something controversial? If so, then why not take the opportunity? Maybe you've read some of Consiglieri's posts, where he talks about the various ways that he's tried to deal with some of the controversial stuff in Church settings. In any event, I don't think that endless excuses are helpful to anyone.

I think that its easy for us to be critical of the church for not teaching everyone everything, but in the long run, its going to be a more complicated issue.

It is easy. It's also valuable and important.

I think that the church is making progress. Opening up the archives, publishing documents (for free) for everyone to get their hands on original sources. Requesting members to write more complete (if faithful) histories. RSR is one of those histories. It is something we might have seen come out of the church a hundred years ago (but not so likely perhaps forty or fifty years ago). The Turley book on the MMM is another.

If we are interested in a fuller disclosure, I think that we should work to praise the church and commend its efforts while at the same time we keep asking for more. Be just as critical of the equally flawed works (if they exist) put together by critics. Suggesting vocally that RSR is a problematic account in its very best scenario won't encourage the church to respond in such a way in the future. My personal experience is that the Church responds far better to criticism voiced from the perspective of the faithful than the same criticism leveled by those that are not believers. (Just my two cents at the end here).

Ben M

The thing is, who is any of this meant to benefit? Change will only benefit the Church--it does nothing, really, for critics or anti-Mormons. As Mopologists are so fond of saying: the critics will find something to pick on regardless of what the Church does. So the Church can do nothing, and dig in its heels, and it will continue to hemmorhage members. It will continue to seem like a "cult-lite" institutions that--whether accidentally or on purpose--does a poor job of exposing members to troubling history and doctrine, which just compounds the problem. Trying to talk the critics into being nicer, or to not pick on RSR...what is that supposed to accomplish?

[_Tarski]

"We need to develop the capacity to form judgments of our own about the value of ideas, opportunities, or people who may come into our lives. We won't always have the security of knowing whether a certain idea is "Church approved," because new ideas don't always come along with little tags attached to them saying whether they have been reviewed at Church headquarters. Whether in the form of music, books, friends, or opportunities to serve, there is much that is lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy that is not the subject of detailed discussion in Church manuals or courses of instruction. Those who will not risk exposure to experiences that are not obviously related to some Church word or program will, I believe, live less abundant and meaningful lives than the Lord intends."--BH

In other words, we (the church auithorities etc.) don't want to have to tell you what material to avoid and we don't want to have to tell you what counts as anti-mormon lies.

Just assume the church is true (in a simple childlike sense) and if anything you hear or read doesn't quite fit with that, well then denounce it and run from it! Don't continue reading or listening if you get that feeling (that we set you up to have).

The beauty of this is that we don't have to deny anything that is true such as secret polygmamy with teenagers, polyandry, Book of Abraham problems etc. We (the GA's etc) are off the hook.
We leave it up to the "sensitive" member to "realize" that these things must be lies.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Doctor Scratch writes:

It's not that big of a deal. It seems that you just don't want anyone to say that Latter-day Saints experience "cognitive dissonance"--you are offended by the term, or something like that. Fair enough.

Not really, I just think we get back to this basic misunderstand that you seem to have.

Cognitive Dissonance causes changes - either in beliefs or in behaviors. If and LDS member encounters new information and nothing changes (there could be lots of different scenarios here) then there was no cognitive dissonance. To suggest that someone could easily shelve an issue suggests that they had no cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, if you encounter new information and something changes (beliefs or behaviors) then cognitive dissonance may have been experienced and that triggered the change. I think that its safe to say that many people in this forum have encountered cognitive dissonance at one point or another - and in some cases, it may have contributed to their current views on the LDS Church. So, clearly some LDS experience cognitive dissonance (I have in the past - I am not experiencing it right now).

As you pointed out in your comments, talking to you accomplishes nothing. So I think I will add a couple more remarks here and then be done with our discussion.

Your insistence on the BKP talk is amusing. I bet that you cannot remember the name of any other talk given that year by an apostle. There were dozens in General conference. It is the fact that it is a controversial talk that makes it of interest to you. The fact that it was made by an apostle simply allows you to aim it where you want.

I think that there will be no coming together for us over the issue of Sunday School class material. I disagree with you over the need to insert controversial information of the stuff you want to see in them. I think that the Church has an idea of how they want these classes to function that seems to be escaping you.

At any rate, its been a pleasure.

Ben M.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Doctor Scratch writes:

It's not that big of a deal. It seems that you just don't want anyone to say that Latter-day Saints experience "cognitive dissonance"--you are offended by the term, or something like that. Fair enough.

Not really, I just think we get back to this basic misunderstand that you seem to have.

Cognitive Dissonance causes changes - either in beliefs or in behaviors.

Per what definition, Ben? Maybe you can cite a passage from Festinger or something. The thing that immediately strikes me as being problematic with your assertion here is the notion that "beliefs" change. How is something like this measureable? And isn't "shelving" a difficult issue a form of change, arguably?

As you pointed out in your comments, talking to you accomplishes nothing.

Oh, come on, Ben. That's not what I meant and you know it.

Your insistence on the BKP talk is amusing. I bet that you cannot remember the name of any other talk given that year by an apostle. There were dozens in General conference. It is the fact that it is a controversial talk that makes it of interest to you. The fact that it was made by an apostle simply allows you to aim it where you want.

This is an awfully weak rebuttal. Argumentum ad hominem doesn't really help you in your quest to prove to everyone (including yourself, evidently) that the Church hasn't historically been repressive in regards to intellectual inquiry, controversial history, and so on.

I think that there will be no coming together for us over the issue of Sunday School class material. I disagree with you over the need to insert controversial information of the stuff you want to see in them. I think that the Church has an idea of how they want these classes to function that seems to be escaping you.

The rubes and mooks at Sunday School wouldn't be able to handle it, eh? Like I said: if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And really, I think that you of all people ought to be more proactive. To do nothing and to make excuses is pretty weak, in my opinion.

At any rate, its been a pleasure.

Ben M.

Runtu's right: you're always cordial, even if your arguments are terrible. So cheerio, old chap.

[_Themis]

I think that there will be no coming together for us over the issue of Sunday School class material. I disagree with you over the need to insert controversial information of the stuff you want to see in them. I think that the Church has an idea of how they want these classes to function that seems to be escaping you.

The church has every right to put in what it wants, and to be dishonest about it. I think they have been on a number of things, so when members find out, we should not be surprised that it bothers many members. When you are taught to be honest in everything and see the church not being, that can cause problems. Lets face it, church teaches are inseparable from history, and considering that there is so much that shows the church is not what it claims, I can understand why the church either is dishonest or just avoids some things.

[_Drifting]

I think that there will be no coming together for us over the issue of Sunday School class material. I disagree with you over the need to insert controversial information of the stuff you want to see in them. I think that the Church has an idea of how they want these classes to function that seems to be escaping you.

The church has every right to put in what it wants, and to be dishonest about it. I think they have been on a number of things, so when members find out, we should not be surprised that it bothers many members. When you are taught to be honest in everything and see the church not being, that can cause problems. Lets face it, church teaches are inseparable from history, and considering that there is so much that shows the church is not what it claims, I can understand why the church either is dishonest or just avoids some things.

I think Themis hits on the exact point.
The fact is that the Church pretends to be historically accurate in all of its teaching programmes: Primary, Sunday School, Seminary, Institute, Gospel Doctrine, Investigators.
The Church teaches the restoration of the Gospel as a historic event. It teaches specific historic elements such as the significant things that Joseph did, said or which happened to him. The infobia is evidenced by the things the Church leaves out of the materials of these teaching programmes.
The translation method of the Book of Mormon is one such example. The Church, when teaching about how it was translated, exclusively uses the Urim & Thummim method. Not only is that not the only method used, it's not the main method used to produce the Book of Mormon.
The Church teaches about the historic practice of polygamy, but it doesn't teach an accurate history.
The Church teaches about the historic events culminating in Joseph's death, leaving out specific but materially important elements of the tale.

The question is not wether or not the Church avoids teaching an accurate history - that much is conclusively proven. The question is why it doesn't? The Church has an article of faith exhorting people to be honest and true. Dallin Oaks has articulated honesty to include deliberately leaving bits of information out. I don't think it is wrong to expect the Church to lead by example.

[_Franktalk]

The Church teaches about the historic events culminating in Joseph's death, leaving out specific but materially important elements of the tale.

The question is not wether or not the Church avoids teaching an accurate history - that much is conclusively proven. The question is why it doesn't? The Church has an article of faith exhorting people to be honest and true. Dallin Oaks has articulated honesty to include deliberately leaving bits of information out. I don't think it is wrong to expect the Church to lead by example.

This is just junk at its best. Please name me one organization that teaches the entire truth about its past?

Science in its history is ripe with hoax and deliberate distortion. Yet I never heard a single instance of this while I was in science class. Theories are presented as facts and indoctrination happens. The peer review process is full of agendas where truth takes a back seat. Why is it that you are trying to place on this one organization what man has not achieved anywhere else?