Ok, I know this might be flame bait, but please be gentle.

Disclaimer: I may very well be an idiot and a complete fool. I recognize this and if any of you have any suggestions on how I can improve feel free to email me at jorsenjorell@live.com


I like Glenn Beck.

I love his passionate 'search for truth' that he seems to promote alot. He see's genuinely passionate and intelligent. He seems to promote the values that I too feel passionate about. I find that I like a whole lot of what he is about and how he seems to have friends and colleagues all across the religious spectrum.

But he's Mormon...and I often times listen to him and wish I was Mormon again...but yet...Mormonism seem's so bat%@#! at its core...how can he ignore the issues that are so obvious? He seems to be so devout and loves the Gospel and yet searches from truth seemingly daily. It's almost as though he is a New Order Mormon instead of a TBM?

He is a wealthy man...he can research and find out anything that money can buy...yet his research and position seem to indicate to him that the LDS church is true and he has hedged his supposed entire life and fortune behind this concept.

Yet it is hard for me to understand how someone in his position could remain in the church and seemingly get so many great benefits from it unless it was true (for him).

So it seem like he's a TBM...how on earth can this be?


Now I don't intend to take the ad hominem approach and throw out his arguments on 'this, that, or the other' but at the same time if he is possibly so completely wrong on Mormonism, is it fair to judge the rest of his views within the same light of skepticism?

It just makes me very confused...I seem to spiritually resonate with much of what he says (most of the time) yet at the same time it seems nonsensical to my intellectual side that someone who is deluded in one area could be intelligent and genuinely on the right track on another.

I recognize this is dancing a fine line as Glenn Beck is a politically dividing person but I am trying to keep politics out of it.

I am just trying to understand how you fellow brothers and sisters who are like me trying to find myself in a post mormon world and trying to rationalize other Mormons and their spiritual views without entirely throwing out their other non spiritual non mormon views.

Does this make any sense?

I feel similarly awkward coming out of a cult (Christian Science) and being a political conservative. This is, for a lot of my friends, a big disconnect.

So how does Glenn Beck combine an aggressive sense of inquiry and remain TBM? This issue has been discussed quite a bit on various threads here, and a commonly shared analysis comes down to this:

People compartmentalize their beliefs, especially religious ones. Then they build walls around them and guard them. They can be aggressive critical thinkers in, say, law, journalism, engineering, or just cleaning the house. But those religious beliefs are off limits.

And it's not just religion! It can be politics ("I know candidate X is a crook, but he's a Republicrat, and I'm voting for him!"), celebrity worship ("Superstar Wonderguy got arrested for giving crack to a schoolkid, but I still adore him!") or personal relationships ("Sure he beat me in a drunken rage, but he's sorry and promises not to do it again!")

Or other issues in a life. Hope this makes sense to you.

Thank You, this helps...

Is compartmentalizing things the key to not having cognitive dissonance? or is it merely putting things on the shelf and not dealing with them?

I think this is it.

People compartmentalize their beliefs, especially religious ones.
If it can be strongly tied to natural human emotion then the harder it is to let it go and be rational for beliefs.

Jorsen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I love his passionate...
> He see's genuinely passionate...
> I too feel passionate about...
> I seem to spiritually resonate with much of what he says...

think about the words you chose... are you describing a man that deals in facts or emotions?

deep down i think you know the answer

If it's a passionate search for truth you are looking for, look no further than Socrates. Brush up on your Plato. I can guarantee it will be more fulfilling than anything Glenn Beck has to offer.

Wasn't it back's search for "truth" that led to his selling the B'S that Americans were being led like lambs to a slaughter? Well that didn't happen. Wasn't it Beck that said FEMA was like concentration camps? Wasn't it Beck who was selling overpriced gold on his shows? And the list goes on. Why would you conclude that this nut has any skill for uncovering the truth. I'm not trying to be political here but you might want to consider the motives of any conspiracy theorist. And then look at his/her prophetic record. I'd say Beck wouldn't recognize the truth most times if it bit him in the ass.

I suppose he has similar blunders just as much as any other politician, corrupt business guy, unethical employer, political correct PR non-sense, on and on.


Despite his blunders I think he is more NOM pointed than a 1970 / 1980 chapel mormon. He loves God and thinks the influence is there or something that is classified as "God" helps guide him. I don't know the man personally and he doesn't enlighten too much about true beliefs in any type of media format that is recorded concerning wonkey mormon beliefs. The church is safe haven for him to mingle with people who generally have nothing to do with alcohol or drugs and want to help raise their kids "right". For whatever that means.


His other funded show For The Record might be more to your liking in researching for stories presented.

His website has 25 million unique hits per month and is considered a more trusted news source than

The New York Times
The Washington Post
MSNBC
The Guardian
Bloomberg
The New Yorker
Politico
Yahoo News
Fox News

He has some fans, ok I give him that.

But he and his website are not considered a more accurate news source than The NY Times, by anyone who actually knows what the words "news" "source" or "accurate" mean.

The "I can haz cheeseburger?" website gets that many hits, and that means absolutely zero to anyone, regarding their news value or accuracy about world events.

Your point is? Human gullibility know no bounds? I'm with you there when it comes to Beck. He also prophesied that we would be the Weimar Republic. Guess what, even in Europe today they are much more concerned about deflation than inflation. So, yes Beck can be classified as a nut conspiracy theorist with lots of followers.

The point: the poster made a claim and that claim was refuted. The claim was extraordinary. It needs evidence to support it, but there is none. An opinion was expressed, another, opposing one was, too.

A correlation between many hits on a website and that number of hits equaling truth was made; there is no evidence for that to be true.

As far as gullibility goes, if you believe hits on a website equals truth, it's likely you will believe that more members make a religion more true. More magazines sold, means the editor of that one is the better of two. More hamburgers sold means that one contains the best beef, and so on.

There are ways to evaluate the quality or accuracy of a website or news source, but counting the hits it gets is not one of those ways.

Likewise, I don't assert that JS was telling the truth just because a lot of other people say he was. I don't assert that the LDS church has 15 million members just because they say they do, or assert that if they do, they have the only truth. Others do say that, and I refute that when I hear it, too.

This independent study evaluated the opinions of X amount of people and which news sources were trusted, distrusted or somewhere in the middle. I found it interesting.

http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/


Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:
◾Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.

◾Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.

◾Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.

◾Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:

◾Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.

◾Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.

◾Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.

◾Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.

Politics aside, Glenn Beck makes me cringe. His abuse of history is appalling, especially WWII. I had a terrific professor at BYU, Douglas Tobler, who specialized in the Holocaust. He was my senior thesis advisor. I wish Bro. Beck would phone him up and take history lessons from him. I think of Prof. Tobler every time I hear Beck go off on some fact-free rant about Hitler.

I think Beck has confused Hitler with Satan. Hitler was no saint, but you cannot equate every evil in the world with one man who has been dead for 70 years now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 07:36AM by axeldc.

Glenn could just be following John Larson lead over at mormon expression to always make sure that there is at least one Nazi-like reference when referring to something mormon.

Glenn just compares nazi's with evil/satan.

Beck loves comparing the US government and Democrats to Hitler.

Hitler = someone you don't like or agree with

Glenn Beck has no interest whatsoever in "truth."
His only interest is in cultivating and exploiting for personal financial gain an audience that *won't* critically examine his "truth" claims.

He sometimes blunders across "truth" in his rants. But only by accident, or by design when it suits his purpose. Not because he's interested in "truth."

As for the claim of his website being considered "more accurate" than the other sources listed...what a crock.

I spent some time with Glenn Beck articles purporting to be hard-hitting "exposes" of "truth." I'd typically find fallacies and demonstrably-false facts in the first paragraph, and things only got worse from there. He peddles a profitable *position* -- not "truth." Or facts.

Intelligence does not mean you are always rational. There are plenty of smart Mormons, Christians, Muslims, and Scientologists. I like this quote from Michael Schermer's "Why Smart People Believe Weird things":

"For those of us in the business of debunking bunk and explaining the unexplained, this is what I call the Hard Question: why do smart people believe weird things? My Easy Answer will seem somewhat paradoxical at first: Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

That is to say, most of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning (that, presumably, smart people are better at employing). Rather, such variables as genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions all shape the personality preferences and emotional inclinations that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to make certain belief choices. Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming.

All of us do this, of course, but smart people are better at it through both talent and training."

What gets me about Beck is the constant call to "do your research" and "don't trust what they tell you" and "they're twisting things and telling you the opposite of what's true" kind of rhetoric which, if he applied it to TSCC, would make him run outta there in a second. But he's married to a TBM, so....

On a side note, last week I watched him handling priceless artifacts he owns (like the bible from the Mayflower and Butch Cassidy's gun & belt, supposedly) without gloves, like rich people's toys.

OTOH, I like the juvenile humor they throw around in the studio, because I'm that kinda guy.

Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
But he's married to
> a TBM, so....

His wife might be a TBM convert. In a recorded video by Glenn Beck himself on youtube I recall him saying that they were both church shopping prior to marriage. They weren't impressed by the various congregations. It looked like it was just selling religion. After 20+ years working with his co-worker Pat Grey, was the one who guilted him while Glenn had hit rock bottom various times to Give his LDS faith a try. They were dear friends and Glenn should do the honor to really investigate (show up to a sacrament) his LDS church as one of the candidates for church shopping. Glenn, his wife, and his handicapped kids were love bombed. Sacrament is different than other churches and so that was the Peculiar thing. They went a few times, felt good. the people welcomed them to the community. The rest is history.

So love bombing and spouting out doctrines that nobody else is doing and selling certainty was and is attractive to TBMs and recent converts. As TBM I really enjoyed that I "knew" more and had unrevealed knowledge that other churches didn't understand. Little did I really know.

> On a side note, last week I watched him handling
> priceless artifacts he owns (like the bible from
> the Mayflower and Butch Cassidy's gun & belt,
> supposedly) without gloves, like rich people's
> toys.

When you own something are you under any obligation to handle your own personal property to somebody else's standards or opinions? Sure, gloveless handling of a priceless item could devalue the item to a potential buyer if you intention is to sell it. We all want to FEEL something, that is real, that is right in front of us every now and then.

He is an entertainer , that is , dont take him serious , he complained about the indoctrination of young adults in the universities , and of course he sent his daughter to a Ivy league school.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/j2tjle/the-golden-rage


making fun of rape


http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/28/glenn_beck_program_rape_skit_the_blaze_and_stu_burguiere_mock_rape_on_college.html

that guy is a joke

His philosophy is driven solely by one motivation: The pursuit of wealth.

He formulates his ethos based on what will attract attention.

Bonus for him: this lust/pursuit for money and attention doesn't allow time for him to fall back into a drunken stupor.

When the arc of his career is pointing downhill and picks up enough speed, he will find friends in Jack Daniel, et al...

John Stossel asked Beck why he joined the Mormon church. Beck's reply was:

"I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is, like, hot, and she wouldn’t have sex with me until we got married. And she wouldn’t marry me unless we had a religion."

Stossel says he confirmed it with Beck's wife Tania, and that she replied, "He's not joking".

As for him being in search of truth, Beck himself has answered critics of his dishonesty by saying that he's an "entertainer". I would suggest doing your own research with credible, non-partisan sources on just about anything he says--the history of WWII, for example, as another poster suggested, to get a clearer picture of his credibility before taking anything he says as fact.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 01:37PM by inmoland.

Maybe in 10 years Glenn Beck may have a different belief system or just go to the I love and serve God by serving people with no institution behind it mantra.


Who knows how much he tithes to the church. Mabye it's just a club tax. He seems to give a lot money to a charitable organization under his control operating with multiple charitable groups that help people of all kinds of belief systems and politics. The fact that he can direct actions and see real benefits come from those donations makes him feel far better than any money he gives to the church.

GB the entertainer could change. Just like all of us have over the years.

I also liked Glenn Beck. I was a subscriber to his web tv channel. With time I became disalusioned and realized he didn't offer anything. He wasn't giving me truth he was just wasting my time and money. When I would listen to him I felt like I needed to get my year supply and get to the temple because America's days were numbered. I stopped listening to him and all that crap went away. It wasn't truth.
My advice to you is give it some time and things will clear up for you. Or just stop listening to him and spend your time doing things that you want to accomplish in your life and see if your world improves or gets worse. Mine improved and I have no desire to waste any more time listening to Glenn.

For me, it works to filter out all the end of the world / food storage marketing garbage. His web channel still has to get paid by sponsors and subscribers in order to operate.

I find that $100 dollars a year provides more tidbits of "truth" information, news, and interesting topics than paying for a full cable subscription with 100s of channels that waste my time as well. Sports are not important to me. So the internet fills in the gaps for all other things to learn or discover.

Just like the liberals have to their base and rah rah chants in order to beef up the base and turn support into dollars, GB and the conservatives are no different.

The polarization of politics is morphing to be less Blue/Red and more of a mixture. Just look at the book sales of Hillary or Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Pretty dismal.

I think the American minds are realizing more and more that political views have divided people into lots of different groups. Rush and GB cater to a certain group of people and beliefs and turn others off. Some from the other side become fans some dont.


I think it will interesting to possibly hear GB speak of his changing religious views as the knowledge of world history is just more accessible.

First of all, Glenn Beck is not a reliable source for truth. He does have some good observations, but that may be random luck. His output is sometimes ridiculously exaggerated or false and perverse.

And he's not really a TBM. Chastity and WOW, selective readings of latter-day prophecy, and that's about it. In many ways the LDS church goes against his strongest beliefs. High-level conspiracies, lack of freedom, suppression of historical facts...I'm sure he tries to avoid thinking about it.

I left a comment on the BLAZE comment site about six moths ago in regard to some Taliban radical religious stance and my part of my response was that North America has its share of radical cults and I cited www.cesletter.com and no shit it was taken down in an hour, but not before almost every Mormon west of the mason Dickson line was on me. hundreds of lurkers however have read it .....lololol

yeah, the moderators can be douches. I suppose they think religious comments should be kept to the Faith / Christian posts and no Islamic / LDS cult comparisons are allowed.

He's a fake and an ass. That is all.

He's a funny guy. I take it as entertainment. A Colbert but his fans don't know its a parody.

I've noticed his liberalism is seeping thru - like his recent mea culpa on the Iraq war.

Hahah this OP is one of the most witty satires I've seen on this site! "Search for truth" and "Glenn Beck" in the same sentence! Brilliant!

You couldn't have been more ironic if you said something like "Cleon Skousen was an important political philosopher".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2014 12:43AM by generationofvipers.