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If the church owned a building in Nevada which it leased to a company that ran a legal brothel, would that be just as easy to accept, Ray?
That depends. Is it closed on Sundays
Uchtdorf is highly revered by TBMs. My guess is that it is your interpretation of Uctdorf that he has problems with I’m a strong believe that one on one time with children individually is the most effective approach. Here are some interesting scriptures in the Book of Mormon that relate to this issue, IMO. I’m not going to try to give my interpretation – I think you can interpret them a number of ways. I will say that by the way I read these some of things cause concern and others seem to be in support. Quote:1Nephi 13:7 And I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine-twined linen, and all manner of precious clothing; and I saw many harlots.
8 And the angel spake unto me, saying: Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.
Quote:Alma 1:28 And thus they did establish the affairs of the church; and thus they began to have continual peace again, notwithstanding all their persecutions.
29 And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need—an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely ccloth.
30 And thus, in their prosperous circumstances, they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need.
Quote:Alma 4:6 And it came to pass in the eighth year of the reign of the judges, that the people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which they had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes, for they began to wear very costly apparel.
7 Now this was the cause of much affliction to Alma, yea, and to many of the people whom Alma had consecrated to be teachers, and priests, and elders over the church; yea, many of them were sorely grieved for the wickedness which they saw had begun to be among their people.
8 For they saw and beheld with great sorrow that the people of the church began to be lifted up in the pride of their eyes, and to set their hearts upon riches and upon the vain things of the world, that they began to be scornful, one towards another, and they began to persecute those that did not believe according to their own will and pleasure.
Quote:Jacob 2:18 But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.
19 And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.
Quote:1 Nephi 8:26 And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.
27 And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
1 Nephi 11:36 And it came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
@Ray As we were discussing in another thread – so here’s a perfect example of why I find the wording of a couple of the temple questions to be problematic
Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
In my opinion this is just a very poorly worded question. I believe what they are trying to ask is a “conflict of interest” question. For example if you are actively involved in a group that practices polygamy or in a group that is actively attacking the church then you have a “conflict of interest”.
It is possible that you feel these groups are inline with Heavenly Father, but if you are actively involved or officially affiliated with something that is in direct opposition to the LDS church, then I think it makes sense that you would not be attending the temple.
However, yes, I absolutely agree that the wording should be changed. The way it is worded now it makes it sound like you are supposed to shun someone who is not living the commandments or who has left the church.
Also, if you are concerned with the commitment that this requires, you definitely should understand what the promises are that you make in the temple before attending – because those are arguably as you say “kind totalitarian and cultish”.
I actually don’t have a problem with their reporting of numbers. (And there is plenty else I do have a concern with.) How else would they do it? They report based on the number of baptisms. If someone is baptized and they don’t rescind their membership that makes them a member whether then actively participate or not.
The challenge becomes those members who disappear and the church does not know where they live. In that case the church keeps their record on file until the age 110. So there are definitely some deceased members that the church is counting as still being members. This probably does inflate the number by a couple hundred thousand, but they really don’t have any way of knowing if these people are alive or not and it kind of makes sense to keep them on file until they are very confident the people are deceased.
My guess is that actual active membership is somewhere in the 3 million range – however it’s just a guess. The activity rate in countries like the Philippines & Brazil is somewhere in the range of 20% as I understand it.
I’m glad you enjoyed the links.
If you haven’t heard of logical fallacies they may also interest you. It came to mind since “appeal to authority”/”argument from authority” is one of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies” class=”bbcode_url”> I really hope this doesn’t come off as annoying – I’m not trying to put you down – it was just that your mentioning smart people believing triggered “logical fallacies” in my mind which to me is directly related with the other things we’ve been discussing.
Thank you for your explanation. As I had expected it was well thought out and enlightening.
Quote:bc_pg, Why do you want them to be specific?
I agree with everything Brian said. I would also like to add one more.
The problem I have with this is that from a practical standpoint one of two things often happen:
1) (Most likely) The member feels confused/uncomfortable about the question and asks whoever is conducting the interview – the bishop, bishopric member, stake president, stake presidency counselor. So now the member gets whatever the opinion of whoever is conducting the interview is. These opinions vary wildly and are all over the place. I’ve even seen the answer be something as crazy as – well if you are concerned about it, then something is clearly amiss in your life and you are unworthy.
2) (Less likely but problematic) The member makes a really bad personal interpretation and feels extreme unnecessary guilt and maybe excludes themselves from the temple when they should not. For example, maybe a Mom got impatient with a child that morning and decides she is unworthy. Instead of going for the temple recommend interview she would just let it expire because she incorrectly didn’t feel good enough.
For someone like you who is capable of interpreting it liberally it’s great – I suspect that you are the exception and for the majority it just creates confusion and guilt.
This question and the “associate with apostates” questions are the only 2 that I see as super problematic. A misinterpretation of the associate apostates question could easily be that the church wants you to shun such people.
I’m curious how you reconcile something.
I’m paraphrasing several of your points, but essentially you see the LDS restored church & gospel as the vehicle to the truth.
From what I’ve observed the gospel & church (as nearly all religions) is based largely on dogma. Dogma, essentially assumes “something” to be truth and endeavors to prove that “something” true instead of looking at the evidence to determine what is true. An extreme example is at one point in history the dogma was that the earth was the center of the universe. Those who endeavored to show otherwise were labelled heretics and even killed by the religious. In much the same way scientific truths such as evolution are often dismissed and take longer to spread because of religious dogma.
So how do you reconcile this? Do you disagree that dogma often fights against truth? Do you disagree that the LDS church & gospel is dogmatic?
Or as, I suspect, have you found a path through these issues? If so I am curious what your thought process has been in so doing.
Quote:I understand what you mean by appreciating the value of Santa Claus and respecting other people’s right to believe in him being more or less the same as Stage 5 from your perspective but my concern is that people that believe in God could think you are implying that it’s completely absurd to believe in God. My point is that many adults do believe in God (including me) that don’t believe in Santa Claus and there are understandable reasons why they would continue to believe in God that do not apply to Santa Claus at all especially if they are not really bothered by the idea of anything supernatural or the idea that there is more to life than what you see nearly as much as many die-hard skeptics are.
Well said.
You say 2 things in your post that come together for me.
The reason that Santa Claus is such a good model for me as an atheist it explains perfectly how the faith model applies to me. I can accept that other people have different beliefs about it – however, in the end I believe that my perception of reality is the accurate one – although not necessarily the most useful one. I can see how I can take good from the mythology and apply it to my life. To me, reality simply does not include the supernatural – just as to many reality does not include Santa Clause.
@inquiringminds Some of your thoughts are directly discussed here:
http://www.michaelshermer.com/weird-things/excerpt/http://www.michaelshermer.com/weird-things/excerpt/” class=”bbcode_url”> and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752V173e31o&feature=share ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752V173e31o&feature=share If you watch and read this you will learn some of the jargon for exactly what you are referring to. Confirmation bias makes the human world go round.
I perceive that the LDS church is increasingly focused on public relations and marketing. As such, I suspect we won’t see many if any revelations – certainly nothing that will make the church more restrictive or weird. I’d image changes will continue to be presented as policies and declarations. However I also believe that the church is constantly changing to be more mainline. Those changes just aren’t typically presented as revelation.
Also, I would suggest that the doctrine has been packaged and defined like never before – it’s much higher quality and better organized. The leaders of the church are absolutely very busy moving the work of the church forward. In the end they could be doing exactly what they are doing and be inspired and fit the bill as prophets. However, it’s hard to distinguish a prophet from a CEO.
