Rescuing The LDS Church

[_moksha]

Empty rhetoric will not calm members who seek concrete answers to the questions posed in the recent New York Times article and elsewhere. We need to abandon apologetics and seek equilibrium with the unvarnished truth. Chapel members need to receive this before they are caught up in the storm of the actual. Members need to be thrown the faith preserver of hearing this truth in a sympathetic forum. Wish BYU Studies or FAIR could rise to that challenge.

Your thoughts?

[_Quasimodo]

Empty rhetoric will not calm members who seek concrete answers to the questions posed in the recent New York Times article and elsewhere. We need to abandon apologetics and seek equilibrium with the unvarnished truth. Chapel members need to receive this before they are caught up in the storm of the actual. Members need to be thrown the faith preserver of hearing this truth in a sympathetic forum. Wish BYU Studies or FAIR could rise to that challenge.

Your thoughts?

The choice is between empty rhetoric or unvarnished truth. Either one will eventually kill the Church. It's only a matter of which one is the quicker death.

[_bcspace]

I've found most criticism against the Church to be empty rhetoric so the Church responding to it won't kill it. The unvarnished truth is available for anyone to parse which is why most who do seem to understand that the criticism is indeed empty rhetoric so that won't kill it.

What I think will kill the Church is Godless liberalism, or Godlessness in general.

[_subgenius]

why do bitter critics consider themselves as the only ones who have access to the "truth"?
and an echo of bcspace's sentiment.

that being said...i have yet to read a valid argument that determines the value, at any rate, of varnish with regards to the truth.

[_Albion]

You mean as opposed to the Mormon Church which believes that it alone has a corner on all religious truth to the extent that it alone is "the one true church"?

[_moksha]

In regards to Hans Mattsson's four questions, is the Churches response adequate? Has the Ensign Magazine ever featured a cover with Joseph's face in the hat? I know why black men were excluded, but do we have an answer from the Church besides, "I don't know"?

■ Why does the church always portray Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon from golden plates, when witnesses described him looking down into a hat at a “peep stone,” a rock that he believed helped him find buried treasure?

■ Why were black men excluded from the priesthood from the mid-1800s until 1978?

■ Why did Smith claim that the Book of Abraham, a core scripture, was a translation of ancient writings from the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, when Egyptologists now identify the papyrus that Smith used in the translation as a common funerary scroll that has nothing to do with Abraham?

■ Is it true that Smith took dozens of wives, some as young as 14 and some already wed to other Mormon leaders, to the great pain of his first wife, Emma?



Must we fear the members will leave when they hear truer words? Don't you think the truth will set us free to be better Mormons?

[_Natsunekko]

You mean as opposed to the Mormon Church which believes that it alone has a corner on all religious truth to the extent that it alone is "the one true church"?

You mean as opposed to Christianity which believes that it alone has a corner on all religious truth to the extent that only Christ guarantees salvation?

You mean as opposed to Islam which believes that it alone has a corner on all religious truth to the extent that only submission to Allah will allow one to enter paradise?

You mean as opposed to Scientology which believes that it alone has a corner on all religious truth to the extent that only Dianetics can show us the way to the Bridge to Total Freedom?

You're overlooking the fact that ALL magical belief systems suffer from similar problems. It's wrong to single out Mormonism.

[_Albion]

Valid points except in the context of the discussion in which a poster argues that critics of Mormonism apparently criticize because they think they have a corner on the truth.

[_Natsunekko]

Valid points except in the context of the discussion in which a poster argues that critics of Mormonism apparently criticize because they think they have a corner on the truth.

So...you're upset because I derailed your attempt to derail the OP?

[_Albion]

You flatter yourself that I am upset. My point was perfectly in context with what the poster stated. Yours is the derail attempt.