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Brian Johnston wrote:
Well … it sounds like you answered your own questions.There really isn’t the either/or, black/white, true/false dichotomies many of us expected, wanted and assumed. So where was the error? False prophets or false expectations? As always, the answers are inside us.
The error could possibly be both false prophets and false expectations. Maybe Joseph Smith lied for whatever reason and maybe the other LDS prophets have been defending and promoting some of these lies ever since. Maybe there really is some genuine revelation and inspiration but perhaps it’s just not as clear and reliable as many Mormons want to believe. Maybe the Church’s essential message is mostly correct but no organization managed by people will ever be perfect and critics have exaggerated any perceived flaws in an unrealistic and dishonest way.
In any case, some ex-Mormons had extremely high expectations about how great Joseph Smith and his work was supposed to be but as soon as they found some less-than-flattering information about him it was devastating to their faith and many of them have now become atheist/agnostic and feel betrayed by religion in general. I don’t know what the Church should do about this but I think scenarios like this will only increase with easier access to information and different opinions. Now there are even some “new order” Mormons who don’t believe in Joseph Smith’s claims but still attend/support the Church for other reasons.
Cadence wrote:Given what we have come to learn about the personal conduct of Joseph at times is it possible or more correctly can you still believe he was a prophet receiving revelation from God? Was he a prophet in the beginning but not in the end? Was he a prophet until he died? Was he ever a prophet? I want to believe on some level all that that he put forth has some truth in it. Does questionable personal conduct nullify a prophetic calling?
If Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet then he basically had to be a deliberate liar and possibly crazy as well. Seriously what other explanations are there? A demon-possessed occultist? One theory is that Joseph justified telling “pious” lies that he thought would increase people’s faith and strenghthen the Church. To claim personal revelation or inspiration is one thing but the Book of Mormon is something else entirely. This story is so fantastic that if you don’t believe it you can’t just chalk it off as an honest mistake or misguided delusion.
Either Joseph Smith really found and translated the Book of Mormon with some supernatural assistance or he would have had to devise a fairly elaborate hoax. A hoax would require Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer to either be surprisingly loyal co-conspirators or they were somehow tricked/hypnotized into believing that they saw things they really didn’t. Maybe they even fabricated some metal plates to trick other witnesses as well.
I think this is one reason many anti-Mormons and ex-Mormons are so opposed to the LDS Church because once you start to make assumptions of deliberate fraud it becomes really hard to sympathize with Joseph and claim that he was only human. Once you don’t trust Joseph Smith in some cases then it’s hard to trust him in other cases as well.
There’s no way to know for sure what he was thinking or what his experiences were. All you can do is consider the evidence and make your own conclusions. Personally, I don’t believe in the traditional Mormon idea of prophets as some kind of ultimate final authority where we should just trust them without question and consider all their words as literally God-given truth without fail. I’m not so sure that there have ever been any prophets like that whether Moses, Isaiah, etc.
Gail wrote:Lately, what really seems cultish is the fear to think, that seems so pervasive…At some point I have found most of my fellow mormons are not willing to even walk through my questions. On many occasions when I am calm they suddenly start yell that I am unreasonable and can not let me finish a single sentence, akin to the grad school nah, nah, nah I can’t hear you, only frightened and angry. This response always scares me to death. These are often intelligent, seemingly open minded individuals that turn psyco really fast. I really don’t get it. This is what really seems cultish to me.
The way I see it the Church is a comfortable environment and everything goes fairly smoothly as long as you agree with them but as soon as you openly disagree over some major point of dogma this is to many Mormons quite simply not acceptable. For example, if you stop believing in certain claims of the Church some Mormons will now see you as weak and sinful and start to make assumptions about your character or lack thereof. If you publish contrary opinions you could be excommunicated. It seems like most dissent has always been strongly suppressed from the top down and basically driven out of the Church for the most part.
I don’t know where this mindset came from but in my case the result is that I wouldn’t dare to openly express any doubts about the Church to most of my family and in-laws. They probably wouldn’t yell at me but I know they would be very disappointed with me. So the easiest route is to simply play along with their beliefs essentially out of tribal loyalty more than genuine faith in the Church. To me this situation seems cult-like even if similar social pressures have been fairly common in some of the largest “mainstream” religions as well. I’m not trying to claim that this means the Church is bad or harmful in general, I just wish some of the members would be a little more understanding toward people with different beliefs.
Old-Timer wrote:Admin statement: We have been very patient with this post and thread. There has been good discussion. However, even veiled or soft charges of brain-washing will bring this conversation to a screaching halt. I will shut it down quickly.
We had this conversation already in a different post (
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=208&start=0 http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=502 Seriously, drop that topic or this gets shut down.
Sorry, I didn’t see this earlier thread and wasn’t trying to offend people. I mostly brought it up because these accusations are out there and spreading (there are whole books on the topic) and I wasn’t really sure what to think about the idea and wondered what other members thought about it. Rather than thinking absolutely not or “yes for sure the LDS Church is definitely a cult” I suspected that the real answer was actually somewhere in between.
It seemed to me that some members occasionally do exhibit some cult-like behaviors whether intentionally or not and this can easily create a mildly cult-like environment but I think the actual overall harm done by this is not really that much compared to any other religion or lack of religion. Personally, I think the LDS Church is mostly good for people and the members are some of the nicest and happiest people around.
As far as the us-versus-them mentality and claims of being exclusively right, divinely approved, etc. it seems like many different church leaders make similar claims whether Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, etc. It just seems like Mormons are more likely to believe ideas like this rather than just ignore them. I guess this makes sense with the official doctrines of continuing revelation and priesthood restoration whereas other churches will probably just try to claim that they somehow understand the Bible better than others.
mormonheretic wrote:I am reminded that early Romans referred to Christians as a cult. After all, they were practically cannibalistic–Christians claimed to eat the body and blood of Christ as part of a ritual called Communion, or the Sacrament.
This type of rhetoric isn’t acceptable today, but it was fair game back then. Perjorative words like cult seem to change over time, though there are some hard-line Evangelicals that refer to Catholocism as a cult as well. Are you comfortable with referring to all religions as cults? The Crusades seem to be much worse than anything Mormons have engaged in.
It almost looks like some of these “cult checklists” were created from the start to single out Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, Moonies, etc. to try to claim that these groups are more like each other than the majority of “mainstream” Christians. Maybe this cult label is really mostly just name-calling and an attempt to portray the LDS Church as somehow sinister and scary.
Sure the early Christian church was relatively small and must have looked very different and radical to the existing Jews or pagans and all religions could be considered a cult by some definitions. However, what concerns me more than the actual LDS doctrines being significantly different than many popular Christian churches is mostly the idea that the LDS Church relies on mind-control techniques and peer-pressure to manipulate people. Ideally, it seems like the truth should sell itself without the need for mind games or psychological tricks.
When I see Church leaders make comments like “when the Prophet speaks the debate is over” or “not everything that is true is useful” it makes me wonder. It gives the impression that we are expected to just trust everything they say without question and sometimes it sounds almost like they want us to basically stick our heads in the sand and ignore the outside world as much as possible. What happens if what they say is wrong for whatever reason?
I understand that many Mormons are perfectly happy with the LDS Church and if they believe in the assumption that the LDS Church is essential for salvation then it makes perfect sense that they would be disappointed with people around them who reject it. But at the same time it seems like the Jehovah’s Witnesses are similarly convinced that they are absolutely right and everyone else is wrong.
My point is that it’s fairly easy to make claims like this that we are special and right but as far as everyone else out there, not so much. Personally, I just don’t think it’s very realistic to expect everyone to believe the same thing and to assume that if they don’t agree with us then they are completely wrong to think that way. Maybe different people have perfectly understandable reasons for believing what they do.
Cadence wrote:We have gone from “Thus Sayeth the Lord” to a warm fuzzy. Personally I think there has not been a significant piece of revelation in 150 years in the church. There has been nothing that any competent leader could not come up with on their own.
I have noticed that Gordon B. Hinkley basically answered “I don’t know” to a lot of basic questions in interviews and acted almost as if he wanted to pretend some of the real history and traditional doctrines of the church do not exist. Lately it seems like Monson and other top Church leaders mostly tell cute little inspirational stories and refer back to specially selected existing scriptures rather than trying to present anything original or ground-breaking.
Maybe it’s just a case where they have learned their lesson after seeing Joseph Fielding Smith claim that men would never travel to the moon and Bruce R. McConkie make all kinds of claims about dinosaurs, the supposed racial inferiority of blacks, “no death before the Fall”, etc. in Mormon Doctrine. Given the choice, I’d much rather see them remain silent when they’re not sure about something rather than just act like they know everything and have all the answers.
