John Dehlin on the Immorality of Mormonism!

[_Stem]

This reads to me as though you think most of humanity conceals or distorts historical evidence, but I don't think most people are in any position to do that even if they wanted to do it. So I'm guessing you mean something else. Can you rephrase the question?

Everyone has history to tell. That is the perspective in which my comment comes. We all use history to tell our stories and perhaps to emphasize our priorities and lessons. "once I ran away from a bear and that means this to me....you should do that.."

I'm not quite sure which test you mean, here, but I'm guessing it's the test of whether or not leaders share all their evidence with their followers.

I guess so.

I agree that if we want to sustain a charge against someone, then one way to do it is to mount a sky-high horse and adopt an impossible moral standard that no-one at all can fulfill. Then we'll have an easy time maintaining that our accused has failed to meet our high standard, but it's just dumb, because just as you say, we've rendered the whole issue moot. I'm not sure what the name of this fallacy is, but it is one.

I don't think that Dehlin has done this, however. First of all the Mormon leaders really have been in a position of high moral authority, from which the things they've said—and the things they haven't said—have strongly affected many other people's lives. Demanding a higher moral standard from people in power like that isn't just a debating ploy that could apply to anyone. Only a small number of powerful people are potentially subject to this kind of moral charge. And I really think those people should be held to a higher standard.[/quote]

I agree. But again, millions of followers will attest to the notion that following these leaders is best for their lives and for humanity, if they, but did it too. To me that brings into question Dehlin's point. If he had a point, then we'd assume Mormons would be worse off if they followed their leaders. I don't think that is necessarily true, proven, and may not really be provable.

Secondly it's not such an impossible standard that is being demanded of these leaders. The current group has gone a long way farther toward meeting the standard than some of their predecessors did, by posting the essays on the Church website. And it could probably go further still I think, without any real retreat, by acknowledging outstanding problems and then simply declaring that the Brethren still believe the Church is true.

I can agree. The Church is far better served, I'd say, by openly acknowledging the issues that many have found, over the years, to be troubling.

[_Meadowchik]

Surely the Church itself provides information within some degree of accuracy.

I think the church has a pattern of giving contradicting information at the same time to different people. I think a case can be made that this is likely deliberate.

But what we're talking about here is often debatable issues of history. As it were none of us were there, and none of us know precisely what happened in each case.

All the more reason to be more careful with information and to be more reverent about the individual's need to access relevant information.

And as it is, millions of Mormons would likely swear by the benefit of following the Mormon leaders.

That can be explained by the basic community provided within the church. Does the fact that people benefit from their participation mean that it does not cause lasting harm? I don't think so. The fact that people depend upon it so much should compel those at the helm to be more circumspect about the morality or immorality of their actions.

[_kairos]

Can the leaders of the church claim "i didn't /don't know about the information that is coming /is out
now- i was brainwashed too!"

if they know now should they become exmos?


just askin
k

[_Kishkumen]

Shall we use a less personal example then?

There are parents who have refused emergency life-saving medical treatment to their children because they say it goes against their religious beliefs, whose children have then died as a result of that inaction.

I say that inaction is immoral. Also, as an additional issue, it is criminal.

Do you want to say they have a right to believe what they do and then act on it, therefore by inaction allowing their child to die? Do they have a right to do that? Is it moral if they sincerely believe that a dead child is safer in the arms of Jesus than under the "Satanic" influence of modern medicine?

Should we refrain from calling their inaction immoral, or should we expect them to meet basic standards of decency and "not harming" that our society holds in common, that of caring for and not neglected our children?

My opinion on this is the same as it was as a believing Mormon: their court pleas betrayed their actions as inpure: if they are willing to let their child die in order to live their religious beliefs, then they should also be willing to pay the lesser price and go to jail for their religious beliefs.

We are dealing with a completely different thing here. I don't recognize enough similarity between this case and devotional or mythological history to pick this up as a line of debate.

In short, using the First Vision again, I don't see how questions regarding the date or precise content of the First Vision would be of the same urgency as medical treatments for a dying person.

[_Kishkumen]

The leadership cut pages out of Joseph Smith's letter book containing the 1832 account of the first vision and hid them in a safe, pretending they didn't exist.

Note the use of the term "leadership" for what was likely the act of one or two people.

[_Meadowchik]

We are dealing with a completely different thing here. I don't recognize enough similarity between this case and devotional or mythological history to pick this up as a line of debate.

In short, using the First Vision again, I don't see how questions regarding the date or precise content of the First Vision would be of the same urgency as medical treatments for a dying person.

Huh. Well I must conclude that our experience with religion is much more different than I thought. I referred earlier to my own life decisions based on prophetic counsel. For me, they have included life-and-death decisions. And I would say that there are many other LDS who would say that their's have as well.

[_fetchface]

As I said, I was setting up a hypothetical and wasn't done. So I wanted to get both our heads into a similar situation, hopefully to find some common ground.

Once upon a time I had a vegan teenager. She was vegan for moral reasons, so essentially she believed in abstaining from eating animal products due to her beliefs about animal cruelty involved in their production. As her mother, I agreed to support her in her convictions and I made the effort to provide her with enough vegan food choices so she could eat balanced meals that were vegan. She was expected to cook for herself more, with the food I provided, but I also prepared vegan recipes. One day, however, I was making something that was meant for her and I mistakenly put milk in it. I might have not noticed and then served her the food with cow milk, but I remembered before I was done cooking. That was a very frustrating moment. All that effort, and I would not be able to serve this batch with my daughter. Ugh. I admit that I did weigh my options. Could I just "forget" that I realised my mistake and go along as if it was as understood?

Would it have been immoral for me to serve her cake with milk while saying it was vegan when I thought it was vegan? Not necessarily.
Would it have been immoral for me to serve her cake with milk while saying it was vegan when I knew it was not vegan? I think so.

I agree with all of that. I think where things are breaking down between us is when we try to take things to the next more complex level. Get ready for a very contrived example.

What happens when you find out that you find out that your daughter has a life-threatening disease that can only be cured by trace amounts of milk in her diet. She is totally convinced that the life-threatening disease is fake and determined not to ingest any milk at all costs. You are convinced otherwise. How immoral is it to lie to her and slip a little milk into something she eats if it means saving her life?

In the above contrived example, either the mother or the daughter could be mistaken about the facts. I'm purposely leaving that ambiguous. Does the morality/immorality of the decision hinge on who is factually correct?

[_Kishkumen]

Huh. Well I must conclude that our experience with religion is much more different than I thought. I referred earlier to my own life decisions based on prophetic counsel. For me, they have included life-and-death decisions. And I would say that there are many other LDS who would say that their's have as well.

If we were to agree to stick to the specifics of the moral implications of Mormon history, I would be happy to continue discussing that point. I am not interested in expanding the discussion to general leadership decisions or commandments in order to incorporate life-and-death scenarios. I do not view issues of Mormon history generally to be urgent, life-or-death issues.

[_Stem]

I think the church has a pattern of giving contradicting information at the same time to different people. I think a case can be made that this is likely deliberate.

You mean history? That's explainable by different people having different views of history, or mistake. What do you mean by deliberate?

All the more reason to be more careful with information and to be more reverent about the individual's need to access relevant information.

I don't disagree with that take. But I don't know that means anyone is acting immorally for favoring their version of events over another's.

That can be explained by the basic community provided within the church. Does the fact that people benefit from their participation mean that it does not cause lasting harm? I don't think so.

What lasting harm has it caused my mother? I don't really understand your take, because I know far too many healthy happy Mormons running around out there. They haven't been negatively hit by the Church's narrative of history.

The fact that people depend upon it so much should compel those at the helm to be more circumspect about the morality or immorality of their actions.

What actions? THat they think they tell the true history?

[_Meadowchik]

If we were to agree to stick to the specifics of the moral implications of Mormon history, I would be happy to continue discussing that point. I am not interested in expanding the discussion to general leadership decisions or commandments in order to incorporate life-and-death scenarios. I do not view issues of Mormon history generally to be urgent, life-or-death issues.

But that is a major point of the OP, that our important life decisions, including life or death ones, are contingent upon the conclusions drawn from information available to us. We outsource decisions to authority, and the authority is maintained with the assistance of the information. The details of narrative are continually used to define how we frame the role of and implications of authority.