Do Maklelan, BC, MG & Co Ever Have Doubts?

[_Bazooka]

When you say "a few selective historical quotes" you mean "all current Church teaching manuals and extensive and consistent quotes from General Authorities of the Church across every generation since the Resoration".
But don't let stop you having a different personal interpretation of what is and what isn't officially doctrine.

I'm not talking about the flood, I'm talking about the Church and the membership's conceptualization of its doctrine. By all means, continue to pretend to lecture me about what I am and am not supposed to believe. It's so very convincing.

The memberships conceptualisation?

What do you personally consider as being the criteria a Church teaching needs to meet for it to be considered doctrine?

[_Bret Ripley]

If you are implying that I am speaking for you ... that was not my intent.

I did indeed misread you, which was uncharitable of me. My apologies.

As to labeling someone an "apologist" -- after attending basketball camp, my 10-year-old niece recently challenged me to a game of HORSE (she beat me, by the way). I played basketball, so technically I could correctly be labeled as a basketball player. However, I do not play basketball regularly and it is just not a very useful label to apply to me. Worse, it would actually be misleading in most contexts.

I am at least a little familiar with maklelan's scholarly work. Even if maklelan does engage in some soft apologetics here, in the context of his overall body of writing I think "apologist" is probably a rather misleading label. But for all I know he may play a mean game of hoops.

[_EAllusion]

Not necessarily.

The third way is thinking it is Ok to be irrational, which is a self-refuting position.

And when people started asking not to be called "critics" I was happy to try to use other terminology.

I have no problem being called a critic - at least when I'm acting as such - and I don't see the label as inherently malicious. The word "anti-Mormon" is consistently used in LDS circles in close association with nasty implications, so it is loaded. I would take issue with being called an anti-Mormon.

If you don't want to be called an apologist, others can abide by that out of being diplomatic. But if you want people to accept your assertion that you don't do apologetics, that's a different matter as you don't get to own the language.

I don't think you get lumped in with BCSpace and co. out of the desire to rhetorically associate you with idiots. It's because there are very few posters here who take up defending the LDS Church and people are attempting to just name them as a group. I'm pretty darn sure that's the inspiration for this thread title, for instance. The content and tactics employed in apologetics - not LDS apologetics, but religious apologetics in general - is so frequently bad that the term carries with it a negative connotation. I understand that and I get why someone might want to run away from the word because of that. "Critic" isn't similarly affected. But the labels are either apt or not.

[_maklelan]

The third way is thinking it is Ok to be irrational, which is a self-refuting position.

Numerous aspects of human nature are not rational, and that's long been accepted.

I have no problem being called a critic - at least when I'm acting as such - and I don't see the label as inherently malicious. The word "anti-Mormon" is consistently used in LDS circles in close association with nasty implications, so it is loaded. I would take issue with being called an anti-Mormon.

If you don't want to be called an apologist, others can abide by that out of being diplomatic. But if you want people to accept your assertion that you don't do apologetics, that's a different matter as you don't get to own the language.

I nowhere said I unilaterally don't do apologetics, and I have never challenged that description of specific arguments I've made. What I said is that I'm not an apologist, and you know very well why I say that.

I don't think you get lumped in with BCSpace and co. out of the desire to rhetorically associate you with idiots.

I disagree.

It's because there are very few posters here who take up defending the LDS Church and people are attempting to just name them as a group.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22601&p=804483

I'm pretty darn sure that's the inspiration for this thread title, for instance.

I have no trouble with the title of the thread. My comment about the title on this thread was catalyzed by this comment:

I did this very thing you think Makelan is doing. There are few reasons to get involved in Mormon apologetics including wanting fame within the community, actually hoping to defend the Church, and lastly and I think is the most common reason - an exercise in quieting one's own doubts.

The content and tactics employed in apologetics - not LDS apologetics, but religious apologetics in general - is so frequently bad that the term carries with it a negative connotation. I understand that and I get why someone might want to run away from the word because of that. "Critic" isn't similarly affected. But the labels are either apt or not.

I've never been accused of being an apologist of anything in my professional and educational careers.

[_EAllusion]

Numerous aspects of human nature are not rational, and that's long been accepted.

You are confusing something being non-rational matter with something being irrational. Saying what you think is reasonable to hold is equivalent to saying it is not irrational. It is Ok to have non-rational mental states - for example thinking a flower smells good - without being irrational. It is reasonable to think a flower smells good to you. That is to say, the statement isn't false and it isn't arrived at through improper means of reasoning. It's also true that human nature is sometimes irrational, but asserting that is distinct from asserting that to be Ok. Once you clear up that confusion, what you are saying makes no sense. If something is irrational to think, it is by definition violation of sound thinking. Once you abandon the imperative to be reasonable in one's thinking, then you have no basis to assert that it is Ok to be unreasonable.

If you want to argue that your religious faith is a non-propositional matter akin to aesthetic preferences, you are way out of left field in comparison to your religion and would be excommunicated if you got strident enough in trying to preach that view. But you'd still be thinking your belief is reasonable to hold.