Posted by:
sb
(
)
Date: March 05, 2019 02:19PM
Remember how many lives that saved? The girls that was found in his car because the home teacher had a dream about it? Do you remember when Monson told everyone that Katrina was coming? Or when Hinckley told everyone that the recession was coming?
Does anyone remember the warnings about the great depression? Or when Brigham Young warned people not to leave late in the season in handcarts? Do you remember that Lee said that African Americans should be able to enter the temple and have the priesthood?
I don’t either.
What I do remember is the Deseret costume. Joseph’s failed bank. The Mormon church morally folding like a lawn chair when their assets were being seized because of their lies about polygamy. The rebuilding of the foundation of the SLC temple. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. I remember Brigham’s Adam-God speeches, and the racist ones too. I remember the talks about gays and African Americans. I remember being told to marry as soon as possible after a mission and having as many kids as possible, without delay.
I remember that God spoke to men through a manual that was revised every few years to accommodate bad feedback and the most inspired of revelations, public backlash.
The bible actually gives a very clear and simple litmus test for prophets: By their fruits ye shall know them.
Are their prophesies accurate, is their work good. If not, they are not prophets. Simply.
Mormons prophets are in a bit of a slump. A major one, since day one. They are always wrong, always. Even when they climb on a big eternal claim, when they clarify that it is “eternal doctrine”, they still have to awkwardly climb back down and slowly bury the claim. Like a shamed cat burying it’s scat.
I find it so disingenuous that in the process of burying their messes, they bury the people who brought it up. From William Law to Katy Kelly. If you told them polygamy was a bad idea: you get excommunicated, but wait 50 years and make the same comment and you’d get approving nods. Say that African Americans were cowards in heaven and they were the cursed descendants of Cain and you’d be called to be the Sunday school teacher. Mention it now. You’ll be escorted to the bishops office and told the neither God nor his prophets ever said that.
In fact, they have an entire cottage industry called of faith promoting stories. All made up. Brigham Young was inspired to leave room for the temple elevators, although they did not exist at the time. The apostles meet with Jesus in the temple on Thursday mornings, Indians refused to kill pioneers because they recognized the garment markings as belonging to their sacred rituals. The list goes on and on.
70% of my belief in the church’s claims came from these stories being told, not by school children, but my bishops, young men leaders, parents, stake presidents and general authorities. The other 30% was based on their copyright claims of happiness and goodness.
The only way Mormonism works is if you ignore that they basic premise of infallibility, restoration and revelation.
You have to choose to believe lies.
That takes a careless disregard for facts, doctrine, science and truth AND a careful, disciplined regimen of reinforcement and indoctrination.
I am a clinical researcher. My job, over the years, has provided a treasure trove of epiphanies regarding Mormonism.
This is a recap:
A truth claim, must follow a plan, when that plan is changed, it must be done with the benefit of the participant in mind. There must be an amendment to this “protocol” and every participant must be given consent to participate, under the new amendment. You can’t for example, lift the claim that Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the Native Americans on your “most correct” document to address DNA evidence, drop all Lamanite themes and pretend it did not happen. Why? Because now the people, who based their beliefs on that claim, or worse, those who build a life around it, who maybe joined because of it, are now standing on a false foundation. It is intellectually dishonest. You can’t change the course because it changes the destination, no longer arriving at the truth you promised.
Authority comes from truth. Truth does not come from authority. Mars is there because it’s a fact, not because a professor said it was. Mormonism operates in inaccuracies, wrapped in authority, trying to pass as truth.
Legibility, clarity are essential when you are dealing with history, documents, attribution. Mormonism is an ongoing revision, making the original almost, purposely, buried. The entire concoction of the Pearl of Great Price and the claim that it was written by Abraham himself is a enough of an example that reading about it for 15 minutes will demolish a life-long testimony. The sordid sourcing of the BOM and its over 4,000 secretive edits are for those with more of a stomach for unethical sourcing.
Greece exists. Carthage exists. Roman coins, the wall of the temple of Jerusalem exists, you can get on a plane and go there. Not one claim from the book of Mormon, not a single animal, metal or wheel has been recovered. To believe it you have to infer that Satan hand-picked every single seed of wheat from the entire continent in order to prank Mormons. He was already looking for and melting the millions of metal swords, so he did save some time by multitasking. Oh, and everyone died oh and their bones and homes were removed…oh and there were no horses. There are no mountains of dead soldiers in Cumorah, but there are entire mountain ranges of evidence that the names, places and stories were plagiarized.
Not one of the Smith’s found documents, from the Papyrus to Kinderhook plates are original. Not one coin of treasure found. Not a single one. Nor original nor accurate.
I have written before about Mormonism being a cancer which passes itself as its’ own cure. But it bears repeating here: a plan of happiness, or salvation from one’s own mistakes cannot be designed to inflict those mistakes on the participant. Mormonism can only give you false hope in regards to the problems it creates in your life, being a net negative. It can only make your life worse in regards to real problems, as it drains those assets a human needs to solve problems: time, money and logical thinking.
For those who stay, the bus ride is everything. Some don’t mind sitting in the back and sleeping through it. Nelson is just making the ride as comfortable as possible. His actions, if you analyze them, are an admission that there is no protocol.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2019 02:27PM by sb.