John Dehlin on the Immorality of Mormonism!

[_honorentheos]

Kish, you're being inconsistent. The issue is you are trying to defend the indefensible for reasons not related to principle but instead your feelings toward the subject of how this board treats religion. It's that simple and that's fine if you want to carry on with that so be my guest to take the last word. It isn't your finest moment, though.

[Guest]

Kish, you're being inconsistent. The issue is you are trying to defend the indefensible for reasons not related to principle but instead your feelings toward the subject of how this board treats religion. It's that simple and that's fine if you want to carry on with that so be my guest to take the last word. It isn't your finest moment, though.

Color me shocked that when I say things that don't comport well with criticism of the LDS Church I am suddenly viewed as irrational, arguing through my feelings, and being inconsistent. I can't say that I am at all disappointed by your reaction. It is exactly what I would expect, and I feel (oh my!) entirely exonerated by it.

[_honorentheos]

Is this discussion about Mormonism or Alan Dershowitz's argument in the U.S. Senate trial last week about what is okay for a president to do?

Exactly.

[_fetchface]

During a period of being a poor student I lived next to a couple who were, frankly, criminals. They were supporting a drug habit and spoke about crime as if it were just another job a person might have. They had a son who was about 5 or 6 and he spoke of being a criminal as if they were his heroes and he was clearly being raised with a moral foundation that didn't match one that society as a whole would get on board with let alone find sympathetic. I felt bad for the kid but no degree of sympathy changes the facts that what he was being exposed to and taught to value was unethical. His upbringing was unethical. Everything about that situation left me wondering about how parents can be such screw ups.in their kids lives and made a lasting impression on me. But one of those impressions included the fact his story is hardly unique. And while I feel sympathy for the kid, the law is all the more important for being both a constraint as well as a disincentive acting against those forces.

Put bluntly, at some point you have to pick a lane or be a dangerous driver yourself.

I fail to see the relevance that an example of conscious wrongdoing without even a perceived higher benefit has to any argument I have made.

Look, if you think that LDS leaders are just conscious deceivers then you are attacking this problem from a very different angle than I am and you are going to come to a very different result. That is okay. I can respect that. But don't pretend you are engaging my argument with examples like this.

[_kairos]

The Mormon church/leaders attempting and succeeding for decades perhaps a century in controlling the Mormon history so it is faith promoting seems to be only one but a key pillar in the authoritarian control of what members are to know, believe, and what is expected (eg mission, white shirt, dresses, no facial hair, seminary, BYU, temple marriage, number of kids to have, role of the woman in the home and church and society,sex, tithing, genealogy, callings, temple work, ward cleanup,bishop interviews, etc). That stuff in brackets can lay a guilt trip on the most dedicated member, can put some into depression, and can apply tremendous pressure for young men and women especially to live their lives the way the church leaders, and their TBM parents expect them to on this earth. All of the above is what John has called out as immoral. Pick another word or phrase but to me the Mormon way usurps agency and gives members a restricted number of paths to choose as a life's journey. I am amazed by the number of exmormons who admit it took years to take action and leave the Morg. One lady continued to believe the "new name" given in the temple was some how sacred and should not be divulged even after she had left the church years before. And the number is high of those saying their time in the Morg was a waste often of many years of life- yet in being out, they claim to have found an exhilarating freedom!

k

[_Kishkumen]

Lots of folks feel liberated by conversion. I don’t know that proves anything about the thing they are converted to. It does say something about the experience of conversion.

[_Kishkumen]

Look, if you think that LDS leaders are just conscious deceivers then you are attacking this problem from a very different angle than I am and you are going to come to a very different result. That is okay. I can respect that. But don't pretend you are engaging my argument with examples like this.

Bingo.

[_Meadowchik]

The religion as a system places revelation at the foundation of its epistemology.

I seem to remember a blurb on the church website that stated explicitly that spiritual confirmation is more sure than information we gather with our 5 senses. I can't seem to find it at the moment but I'll keep looking.

ETA: Not the one I was looking for, but interesting:

What can we learn about balance from the recent fuss about historical documents? The lessons on straying off center are vivid. Would the discovery of any document, no matter how contradictory to what you believe to be true, destroy your testimony? It may raise some intellectual questions, but it need not destroy your testimony. There is an avenue to truth greater than intellect and more certain than the five senses. The most glorious of all avenues to truth is direct revelation from heaven. A saving testimony will never come from a spectacular historical or archaeological find, and a testimony need never be lost on the basis of such a find.

2nd ETA: Found it!

We can receive a sure testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ only by the power of the Holy Ghost. His communication to our spirit carries far more certainty than any communication we can receive through our natural senses.

What was it Elder Holland more recently said about the Book of Mormon?

"I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit. In that sense the book is what Christ Himself was said to be: “a stone of stumbling, … a rock of offence,”11 a barrier in the path of one who wishes not to believe in this work."

What about all those people who prayed about it and got s spiritual answer of rejecting it? Does Holland even hint at the validity of such a conviction? Furthermore he emphasizes the Book of Mormon as being not just evidence through spiritual means but materialistically.

By the way, is there a personal attribution to the "church website" quote??

[Guest]

What was it Elder Holland more recently said about the Book of Mormon?

"I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit. In that sense the book is what Christ Himself was said to be: “a stone of stumbling, … a rock of offence,”11 a barrier in the path of one who wishes not to believe in this work."

What about all those people who prayed about it and got s spiritual answer of rejecting it? Does Holland even hint at the validity of such a conviction? Furthermore he emphasizes the Book of Mormon as being not just evidence through spiritual means but materialistically.

By the way, is there a personal attribution to the "church website" quote??

The quote is under the "Holy Ghost" topic without attribution.

[_Lemmie]

Kish, you're being inconsistent. The issue is you are trying to defend the indefensible for reasons not related to principle but instead your feelings toward the subject of how this board treats religion. It's that simple and that's fine if you want to carry on with that so be my guest to take the last word. It isn't your finest moment, though.

Color me shocked that when I say things that don't comport well with criticism of the LDS Church I am suddenly viewed as irrational, arguing through my feelings, and being inconsistent. I can't say that I am at all disappointed by your reaction. It is exactly what I would expect, and I feel (oh my!) entirely exonerated by it.

No. When your posts are inconsistent, they are viewed as inconsistent.

You implying that another person’s considered assessment of your statements is really and only just an attack on you, solely due to you backing the LDS church, is just irresponsible and lazy. You flip flop regularly on your feelings about the LDS church, and have done so for a while. It’s not pretty to watch, and certainly isn’t a good representation of academic methodology.

Specifically, rationality is not part of your assessment when you can say that the suppression of an extremely relevant document by a significant leader of a church absolutely happened, but it doesn’t really constitute an example of a church suppressing relevant information. There is clearly something else underneath your posts in this thread, but I’m done too. You are welcome to the last, irrational word. Other commenters are at least being consistent.