Fundamental Mormon Claims

[_Analytics]

Once again that is nice for you and me now but the prophet of God and the LDS apostles taught it from the pulpit and stated it as doctrinal. Fundamentalist Mormons still view it as such.

Apparently, the claims of Fundamentalist Mormons aren't fundamental Mormon claims.

[_Daniel Peterson]

So? This distinction between translation via revelation or translation via conventional means, is really a just an apologetic side show that has nothing to do with what anyone has said. As best I can tell, it is just a straw man.

I don't agree even slightly.

modern apologists . . . try to keep everything in the realm of unfalsifiability.

That's not my motivation, and I've picked nothing like that up from any of my colleagues.

That is what spawned the modern-day catalyst theory, after all.

I disagree.

And that is the official position of the Church, so why not just say "translation" to begin with?

You're making a notable effort to read disingenuousness into what I wrote, but that, in my opinion, says considerably more about you than it does about me.

I happily declare that I believe that Joseph Smith translated an ancient record into the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith's ability to translate has been thoroughly falsified.

Again, I disagree.

Is translation by divine inspiration done only by holding the correct priesthood keys and having the right priesthood authority?

I don't believe that I can limit God in that way.

What does this mean? You have an unmistakable testimony of something but you don't know what?

You know that some propostition is true but just don't know what proposition?

I am going to go out on a limb and say that I don't think this makes sense.

In my life, at least -- and maybe I'm just weird in this regard -- not everything has been as clear and unambiguous as, say, an axiom in Euclidean geometry or in symbolic logic.

To take a non-religious example: I have often had hunches that I could not exactly define, senses that there was "something to something" that I could not precisely articulate, inklings that I ought to pursue something for reasons that I couldn't really spell out.

(How many of us, I wonder, chose to marry our spouses only after toting up a list of positives and negatives, assigning precise numerical values to each of them, and performing some sort of rational calculation in order to arrive at our decision?)

If you've never had such an experience, there's probably no way I can explain this to you. In any event, I'm not going to try. I've said what I was going to say on the subject, and I'm not going to say anything more. Not here, anyway. And in no comparable place.

Apparently, the claims of Fundamentalist Mormons aren't fundamental Mormon claims.

On a number of matters, I think that's very true.

[_Tarski]

In my life, at least -- and maybe I'm just weird in this regard -- not everything has been as clear and unambiguous as, say, an axiom in Euclidean geometry or in symbolic logic.

To take a non-religious example: I have often had hunches that I could not exactly define, senses that there was "something to something" that I could not precisely articulate, inklings that I ought to pursue something for reasons that I couldn't really spell out.

(How many of us, I wonder, chose to marry our spouses only after toting up a list of positives and negatives, assigning precise numerical values to each of them, and performing some sort of rational calculation in order to arrive at our decision?)

If you've never had such an experience, there's probably no way I can explain this to you. In any event, I'm not going to try. I've said what I was going to say on the subject, and I'm not going to say anything more. Not here, anyway. And in no comparable place..

I know what a hunch is. I also know what an inkling is. I even know when it is difficult to explain something.

But I don't know what it is to have a strong testimony that something is true without also being able to say what that something I am referring to is.
To be convicted of the truth of something entails having a concept of what that something is.

Otherwise, how do you know that what you have a testimony of isn't that Brigham Young was God the Father?
How would you finish the sentence "I have a strong conviction that----".

[_Daniel Peterson]

I have a strong conviction that that there is something powerful and true in Brigham Young's Adam-God teaching. I'm just not sure, exactly, what it is.

(I have a vague sense of the outlines, but this is one of the last places in the galaxy where I would share any details about that.)

[_Wisdom Seeker]

I have a strong conviction that that there is something powerful and true in Brigham Young's Adam-God teaching. I'm just not sure, exactly, what it is.

(I have a vague sense of the outlines, but this is one of the last places in the galaxy where I would share any details about that.)

In this galaxy it may be safer to simply say that BY was speaking as a man.

[_Tarski]

I have a strong conviction that that there is something powerful and true in Brigham Young's Adam-God teaching. I'm just not sure, exactly, what it is.

(I have a vague sense of the outlines, but this is one of the last places in the galaxy where I would share any details about that.)

OK, leave it at that.
Next:

Aren't you somewhat in danger of being reprimanded by someone like the late BR McConkie?

Next:

Does your inkling tell you that in this Adam God doctrine there is a solution to the problem of how a person's physical form is both the result of genetics and a result of being spiritually begotten of God the Father?
(hope I am not giving away an old rationalization of my former self).

[_Doctor Scratch]

I have a strong conviction that that there is something powerful and true in Brigham Young's Adam-God teaching. I'm just not sure, exactly, what it is.

(I have a vague sense of the outlines, but this is one of the last places in the galaxy where I would share any details about that.)

Right, since secrecy is the best policy.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Aren't you somewhat in danger of being reprimanded by someone like the late BR McConkie?

I doubt it. I've never preached or taught anything on the subject, nor sought to persuade anybody of my view.

How could I?

Does your inkling tell you that in this Adam God doctrine there is a solution to the problem of how a person's physical form is both the result of genetics and a result of being spiritually begotten of God the Father?

No. It has no obvious bearing on that question.

****

Right, since secrecy is the best policy.

I don't think it's "secretive" to be unwilling to share one's every thought, including those about subjects one regards as deeply personal and sacred, with often hostile strangers on a public message board.

In any event, you -- conducting your five-year-long campaign of smears and character assassination against me anonymously, from behind a wall of virtually impenetrable secrecy, disclosing nothing about yourself -- are pretty much the last person in any position to demand that I hold absolutely nothing back, as if it were somehow your moral right to know.

[_Nightlion]

I think it's possible that he was right. I won't publicly comment on Adam-God to any extent because I don't have a clear bead on it, but I will go so far as to publicly say four things:

1. I cannot reconcile usual understandings of Adam-God with my understanding of Mormon doctrine.

2. I'm pretty sure that usual understandings of Adam-God have misunderstood what Brigham Young was saying. (Perhaps he himself didn't fully understand it.)

3. I have, thus far, been unable to work out a significantly superior understanding. Which is to say that I think I see problems in the usual reading, but can't see a totally satisfactory way of fixing them.

4. That said, and much to my surprise (at least partially because I was absolutely not seeking it), I have received a strong and unmistakable testimony of something, at least, in Brigham Young's Adam-God teaching. I just don't quite understand what it is. I know that something is there, but can't articulate it.

I believe I may have worked out something that might interest you in this regard, Dr. Peterson, and which I have reduced to manuscript form.

Just PM me if you should have any interest and I can send it to you via e-mail.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

P.S. It is not Elden Watson's Two-Adam Theory. ;^)

And I have something for you if you would like to read through the first (1983) comprehensive scriptural based LDS theology that settles everything about exaltation and who God is and who is not God in a nifty roll of one eternity to the next. Caution: It drastically alters LDS speculations. With an update as recent as two years ago.

http://www.fireark.org/wonders_of_eternity.pdf

[_Doctor Scratch]

Right, since secrecy is the best policy.

I don't think it's "secretive" to be unwilling to share one's every thought, including those about subjects one regards as deeply personal and sacred, with often hostile strangers on a public message board.

In any event, you -- conducting your five-year-long campaign of smears and character assassination against me anonymously, from behind a wall of virtually impenetrable secrecy, disclosing nothing about yourself -- are pretty much the last person in any position to demand that I hold absolutely nothing back, as if it were somehow your moral right to know.

You don't have to comment further on your heretical belief in Adam-God if you don't want to, Dan. All I'm saying is that secrecy here seems a rather convenient excuse.