[Skepti-Cal]

Any ideas for additions to the list?

[Skepti-Cal]

hawkgrrrl wrote:

Skepti-cal – Packer gave the talk on “little factories.” Tying your arm to the bedpost was Mark E. Peterson.

Thanks for the correction. I’ve seen it attributed (apparently in error) to Packer, but I’ll take your word for it.

[Skepti-Cal]

Old-Timer wrote:

Personally, I think masturbation should be mentioned in the general standards and simply not emphasized anywhere else – especially in interviews. That’s my two cents’ worth.

Ya, masturbation is about as sinful as picking your nose. Its a private behavior, but sometimes you just gotta do it, just like getting boogers out of your nose. Ok, not a perfect analogy but I think it still makes a point.

The castigation and shame mormon boys in particular are subjected to is psychological abuse in my opinion.

Packer used to actually suggest boys tie their arms to the bedpost at night so they wouldn’t touch themselves. Geeeez.

[Skepti-Cal]

It does indeed feel like mourning, I also identify with the feeling of loneliness. Things were especially hard for me during a period where I had told my wife but she hadn’t accepted that I really had changed my beliefs. We finally reached a point where we respect eachothers beliefs and it is much better now. But that was a very difficult time in the interim and nearly ended our marriage. Thankfully when it really came down to it the love was still there.

The thing that has helped me the most wrt church is part of John Dehlins advice to try and shift perspective from whether the church is “true” to what about it is “good”, family, friends, positive influences.

Whether you decide to stay active, inactive or partially active, you can still choose to emphasize aspects of being part of the mormon clan that are good, and withdraw from aspects that make you uncomfortable (the “buffet” philosophy). I personally choose to go to sacrament and sit through sunday school with my wife most of the time, but generally skip priesthood.

Teaching classes can be hard after coming to certain realizations. One way I cope is to present things as “the church teaches…” or “the scriptures say…” or “the message from the prophet is …” e, I don’t feel obliged to try and give personal testimony or state things as if they were my personal belief.

[Skepti-Cal]

I would tend to agree with hawkgrrrl on this one. I personally don’t believe in a literal satan.

In one sense, the existence of a literal satan is irrelevant. More important is that evil *does* exist both internally and externally to our selves.

Admittedly even the definition of evil is somewhat subjective for many things (opposing religious sects being a prime example), but most rational folk can agree on a lot of behaviours being inherently bad, some deriving more from weakness and others more from malevolence.

I see little value in personifying evil in satan as it leads to cop-outs others already touched on, or creates fear of some mystical being that gets focused on when there is ample evil to be battled in the “real world”.

However, if it helps some people behave better or motivates them to do good of various kinds to spite “the devil” then I suppose it also has some utility.

Despite having this stance, and having transitioned to being a stealth agnostic mormon, I have to say I have discerned palpable evil that I can’t explain. When I was in the MTC umpteen years ago, the elders in my room got into a discussion about evil spirits, etc. just before bed time while the lights were out. We decided we should stop after a while. Shortly after, I felt this oppressive force that seemed external to me but didn’t say anything. My comp in the upper bunk burst out and said “it feels WEIRD in here!!” all four of us jumped out of our bunks and got out of that room. We all felt it, and it was very strong. We went next door with other elders in our group and prayed with them, which dispelled the feeling.

Was there some external force in action? Or did we all feel simultaneous guilt for doing something we knew was wrong?

Something like mass hysteria? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria” class=”bbcode_url”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria

I don’t know.

Skepti-Cal

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