Dropped most of their (silly, inane) policies & procedures, focused almost completely on

Love for God & Neighbor

Honesty, Kindness, Caring & Compassion

etc.

Then it would be less unpleasant.

But still untrue. And equally distasteful because it is built on lies.

If they dropped the lies and weird practices, it would be like any other church, but one that is existing with a very shady history.

LJ12 Wrote:
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> Then it would be less unpleasant.
>
> But still untrue.


Exactly.

Don't you think it's more likely that the movie E.T. Will be proven to be a documentary than such as this would happen?

Yes. And that will certainly be more interesting too.

(As an aside, I’m far more likely to believe in aliens than in god).

They would lose control of their members. They would be compelled to reveal their financial transactions and that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

on the basis of extracting more tangible wealth (typically converted into cash flows) from the general membership than it produces for the benefit of the general membership.

Obviously, this basic operating principle works quite well for a few elite families and especially the highest echelons of leadership. It made Brigham Young a very, very wealthy man.

The general membership operate on the basis of the delusion that all of their contributions are going to God's "Church" and that this makes God happy.

In reality the "Church" and all its corporations are nothing more than figments of the imagination. Abstractions. The money and wealth is money and wealth that is moved out of the control of the ordinary members who comprise the general membership of the church and is moved into the control of a small group of old men whose business operations are mainly run out of Salt Lake City.

The organization has been successful in achieving its primary purposes year after year for almost two centuries. More for the "owners and operators" and less for the "owned and operated upon."

With those hard facts in mind, it's easy to see that dropping all of the manipulative techniques that the organization uses to extract wealth from the general membership and instead focusing on simple honesty, kindness, caring and compassion DOES NOT COMPUTE.

What motivation would the leaders have for doing something crazy like that?

Let's start with honesty. If the leaders were to be completely honest, they would have to admit that there is no justification for them to be held up as "authority" figures. There is no foundation for their authority. The priesthood is bogus gimmickry. They are not prophets, seers and revelators. They are often men of lower moral character and rectitude than the majority of the ordinary members of the church, so there is no justification for them to be lecturing the general membership on righteousness and morality.

You can't even get past the "honesty" component without putting the organization and its leaders out of business.

Then what do you have left? Nothing. Just a bunch of people formerly known as Mormons, some of whom may want to do nice and charitable things. But they don't need the leaders or the organization formerly known as the COJCOLDS. They can organize on their own as they see fit.

Very well said. The mormon members don’t need TSCC to do kind charitable things. In fact if you want that for your life, you’re better off leaving.
It’s just a business, designed to make money.
What does COJCOLDS stand for?

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The official name of the church is so ridiculously long that they have no one to blame but themselves for the "Mormon" nickname sticking the way it has. Two syllables will win out over 11 syllables every time.

COJCOLDS is just another way of avoiding the inconvenience of saying or writing out the whole official name.

Of course, thanks. The acronym looks like some terrible new disease.

COJCOLDS is a terrible disease.

Word

Church of Latter-day Saints (COLDS.) COLDS are easy to catch when you are vulnerable and they play upon your grief.

what I'm thinking about is change in FOCUS / emphasis, not abandoning the weird stuff, but not bringing them up anymore...
For a While at least...

I think they are already making the pretense of doing that, frequently giving much lip service to all the nice things and using all the nice buzzwords, like "compassion", "fellowship", "service", etc.

And they've always done this to some extent. There has never been a time when the church leaders have not frequently CLAIMED to be all about honesty, kindness, caring & compassion.

But the other part of your question, where you suggest that they focus on those things and DROP THEIR POLICIES AND PROCEDURES, is where it falls apart. The policies and procedures are what maintain the hierarchy. Without the hierarchy, there is no reason to have "General Authorities" presiding over and directing the members of the church. Most of these guys have more difficulty with genuine honesty, kindness, caring & compassion than 99% of the ordinary members. These guys are the sociopaths and narcissists who rose to the top of a highly competitive hierarchy that was for the most part designed and established by two lying sociopaths: Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young.

GNPE Wrote:
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> ....not abandoning the weird stuff, but not
> bringing them up anymore...
> For a While at least...


They're already TRYING to sweep most of the weird stuff under the rug. They really don't want the members talking about "Heavenly Mother" for example.

Similarly, they would rather that NOBODY talk about Mormonism's history with polygamy. They've always wanted Mormons to go to the temple, but not talk about what goes on in the temple. The temple thing is just a gimmick to extort tithing out of the members. They're gradually trying to make it less weird, but that's a difficult task considering that Joseph Smith put so much weird into it that if you take out ALL the weird the only thing you'll have left is a building with nice carpets, plush chairs and a large room that looks like the lobby of a hotel trying hard to be posh.

Hinckley and others have been trying to downplay controversial doctrines, like the notion that God was once a mortal man and mortal men may become gods, as encapsulated in the Lorenzo Snow "couplet." They certainly wish that Brigham Young's teachings about Adam being God would disappear completely and forever down the memory hole.

Their problem is that the church has always loved printing and publishing conference talks and sermons, and long ago made the mistake of canonizing the Pearl of Great Price and the D&C as holy scriptures straight from God. The Book of Mormon was promoted so heavily as the "keystone" of their faith, that they can't get rid of it, even though it is chock full of weird and is more of an embarrassment than anything else at this point.

If they could wave their magic priesthood wand and make all of the members forget the weird stuff and instantly and completely forget about the BofM, D&C, PofGP and the embarrassing past of Mormonism in general, they probably would wave their priesthood wands furiously and frequently to work that magic.

But to keep their business going, the leaders will still always need some "weird" stuff that makes their church seem unique.

You can't charge people 10% of their gross annual income for life as the going rate to be a "member in good standing" without a selling point that makes it seem like a good deal. In the case of the COJCOLDS, the selling point is that you can ONLY get to the highest level of heaven through full participation in the COJCOLDS program, as implemented and managed by the "General Authorities". The COJCOLDS program therefore has to be different from the programs and beliefs of the Baptists down the street or the Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, etc.

If they turn the COJCOLDS organization into just another generic "let's be nice and do good deeds" organization, people will shop around and compare with other organizations. Inevitably, they'll choose those other organizations that do more good while imposing fewer burdens on volunteers and participants. The leaders of the COJCOLDS would have to actually be unselfish, humble, honest people to even attempt to compete with those types of other organizations....and we know that is not going to happen.

GNPE Wrote:
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> Dropped most of their (silly, inane) policies &
> procedures, focused almost completely on
>
> Love for God & Neighbor
>
> Honesty, Kindness, Caring & Compassion
>
> etc.

What would happen if fairies flew out my butt?

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
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>
> What would happen if fairies flew out my butt?


That happened to me about 6 months ago when I was walking under a full moon down a road in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. It was quite an exhilarating sensation.

As they were flying off, I asked them where they were headed.

They said they were going to go clean themselves up in a nearby waterfall...and they suggested that it wouldn't hurt me to follow suit.