I would suggest there is a difference between obtaining high degrees of education as opposed to innovative, original, critical thought.

As Apple's Steve Jobs once mused, companies hire the smartest people they can yet do not allow them to think for themselves.

"It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

To take it a step further, if LDS Inc were to put a person that actually gave more credence to critical thought rather than blindly following corporate governance and decorum, there would be a huge security risk of that executive going rogue.

The top 15 have impressive looking resumes, as well as pedigrees in most cases.

However, they are not intellectuals.

This is why we do not see them in unscripted Q & A sessions, and why all media releases are either carefully staged, or if not, generally retracted.

None of the top 15 could last minutes in an open debate with the likes of Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or for that matter Bill Maher or Penn Gillette.

There's also a big difference between different kinds of higher education...MBAs are more like high level trade school than PhDs. I notice only one of them has a PhD in the humanities or social sciences...and that was from BYU, so no.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2015 06:37PM by woodsmoke.

Holland does have that PhD in American Studies from Yale, but that's about as insubstantial as a PhD can get. His dissertation was on Mark Twain's religious sense, and it was very difficult for him to finish. He used to endlessly quote Huck Finn saying "you can't pray a lie," which apparently was all he could remember.

I think Holland's Master of Religious Education degree from BYU gives you a better sense of where he's coming from intellectually. His thesis was a 'defense" of the Book of Mormon, full of bluster and fallacies. He feels thoroughly at home in that territory. Those were his glory days, 50 years ago at BYU.

One thing I've got to grant Holland: he does know how to write a good speech. He's very articulate when he gets to read his remarks. Not logical, not scholarly, but articulate, persuasive, and seemingly sincere. But in interviews, not so much. lol

I could care less what degrees the cult leaders (or anyone for that matter) have. What matters are competancies, and ethics. The cult leaders have neither. If one is competant then reasong and science are the guides. Science and reason lead to rejecting faith and faoth-based conclusions. Ethics requires that one evaluates reality and does the most to promote the well being of the self and others, and reject any action or belief that imposes harm on oneself and others. Faith inevitably leads to accepting that is it okay for the "other" to be harmed if they stay "other" (hell, purgatory, cast out, kill the infidel. etc).

Rational belief based upon the method of science is the only way to find what is true. All other ways are unjusitified and irrational. The Cult leadership promote irrational and unjustified conclusions. Therefore they are worthless or malevolent, and reject the very roots of thier academic training.

I dont think itis so much being stupid and uneducated, but being educated in the wrong things. None of them have degrees in Biblical studies,theology, Biblical languages,ancient history,humanities or counseling. Thesenare things religious leaders generally know.Mostly they are businessmen. In addition, they are old, conservative to the point of being reactionary,living in the past and out of touch. I suspect their law firm and PR firm consist of people who think like them and tell them what they want to hear.All in all a disaster

Intellectuals are people who are deeply educated, creative, innovative thinkers. In my view, none of the Q15 fit that bill.

Law school, business school, medical school are trade schools. They teach people to run procedures that are basically already established. Any innovation tends to be around the margins.

The Q15's educational backgrounds are those of functionaries and managers. Even Holland has a second rate Ph.D. from a second rate university (at least BYU as a graduate school). None of those men is trained in truly creative thinking or even global thinking.

That is why they are capable of such stunningly stupid things as the recent attack on the children of gay people. I do not believe that the church adopted that policy in order to protect itself legally, as some among us have opined. But the hand of lawyers is present nonetheless. The people who crafted that policy were thinking about procedures, definitions, and exceptions. They were analyzing and responding to a problem like lawyers do. The public relations of the LGTB problem totally escaped them.

I get the same sense whenever Oaks gets up and speaks. The man thinks people find legal reasoning and jargon persuasive. He simply does not understand that legal sophistry is not what members care about; he doesn't comprehend the human element of social issues. That, frankly, is a huge weakness in the church: it has become so dominated by functionaries and legal sophists that it can no longer understand how the members feel.

God needs more intellectuals and fewer lawyers, MBAs and MDs.

Jesus, in the New Testament accounts, went out and found a bunch of fishermen to fill his quorum of the 12. Aside from one that didn't work out exactly like the others (Judas, of course) any one of the remaining 11 in my book gets credit for a more miraculous and instructive ministry than the entire top 15 combined that have been "dispensed" to us "in the fullness of times" mostly from American business schools.

This isn't about whether I believe in the New Testament, by the way, which I don't in any literal sense. It's just too easy, now, for me to see that the "current" 15 and the ones depicted from back then don't seem to be cut from the same cloth. Read a biography of a current GA recently?

Jesus' name is still on the building. If things continue like they are maybe the church should take a hint from the apostle-selection part of the Bible and start over. In a more categorical sense it might be time to bring the fishermen back to power...

These are easier times to be a Christian, anyways. Long ago a Christian "severance package" could mean a visit from a lion or worse! The job of apostle isn't that complicated, anyways. You repeat what God wants you to say in public and you maintain a level of faith equivalent to a barely visible seed, something made much easier for you at least if you happen to make "the boardroom" by the fact that when you call God generally gets back to you. He does, doesn't he?

For me this is all another aspect of the "How did I ever believe that?" file... Years later and it's still growing!

edit: spelling error



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2015 10:37PM by masonfree.