In reference to another early topic posting, Mormonism is not one bad experience, it is the consistent pattern of abuse from the very top of the ladder on down. It is claiming members are all part of the chosen generation for five generations because it is the marketing message and treating people with less than dignity in their one on one interactions when they can get away with it. From asking children intimate details about their developing sex lives to shielding rapists, molesters and financial confidence schemes, the church offers protection to it all except its members.

It loves to watch members beg for repentance when mormons have no authority to forgive sins (even by their own doctrine), demand absolute personal honesty while offering very little in return and making families beg for food when they have paid 13-20% gross annually with all the donations and extras asked of them. You give them money to treat them like royalty. Everything else is all noise to obscure this one fact.

This is what faith is to the mormon church - believing that what you see is holiness when all real evidence is pointing to it being incontrovertibly false.

The very mind God blessed you with is probably screaming out from your subconscious that something is wrong here but you are trained to dismiss it. (That was the case for me.) Why? Faith.

If people stopped being #mormonbusy for a moment, they might think about it for a second which is what the mormon church doesn't want anyone to do. If someone told you there were people claiming to see Jesus who can neither give you anything new from what he said 1,000 years ago or tell you what happened in these interactions, in any other case you would say they were full of covid stimulus payments. Yet, the years have taught one to dismiss it. When the mind - God's warning system - finally gives up, this is mormon faith.

But only running like a hamster on a wheel can generate faith sufficient for salvation. So said the prophet with 56 wives.

You’re lucky the church is generous enough to provide toilets to scrub. Just think of all those poor souls who aren’t going to heaven because they wear the wrong underwear. They don’t even have the pleasure of groveling for help when they need back some of the money they paid.

The GAs have the most security of any church leaders. That’s because they don’t trust God to keep them safe. Being driven around in a bulletproof Audi means you’re practicing idolatry. That’s what that means. Look at the celebrity worship that Nelson gets. He can do no wrong, no matter how his direction zigzags.

I have to wonder whether this is the fate of all religions, this corruption, or if it’s just the Mormons. Being a TBM is like being in an abusive relationship. People make all kinds of excuses to stay, but the truth is that crazy b*tch doesn’t care about you.

> I have to wonder whether this is the fate of all
> religions, this corruption, or if it’s just the
> Mormons.

What about the fate of the United States of America?
Apparently USA has the highest % of Christians.
But "nonreligious" citizens are steadily increasing.
Probably won't lead to the downfall of the country.
What if the Muslims increase dramatically in the USA?
So long as the U.S. constitution is not trampled on, the USA could probably survive a surge in Muslim population. Besides, at some future time, Islam could see a big decline and mass defections.

Impossible to predict what things will be like in 100 or 200 years.

We live in an age of rationalism. Rationalism is generally incompatible with religion. Religions have had 400 years to fix the problem. Joseph Smith doubled down on magical thinking, which I think was the selling point.

Religion is losing to rationalism because rationalism gets tangible results. That’s not to say that one is better than the other. Religion provides a process of alchemical transformation (AKA ascension) that the secular world can’t replicate. If science had another method or even an understanding of it, things would be different.

Unfortunately for most of us, religion is not a viable technology anymore. We can’t just “believe” by ignoring the problems. One way around the problem is to reincarnate into a society with the proper tools. Another way is to find or invent such tools. The ascension problem will eventually be solved one way or another.

We do not "live in an age of rationalism." We live in an era of reaction against reason, when facts have become optional and truth what the leader says. Irrationality may not be manifesting in religion this time, but the boils have erupted in other places.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2020 02:04AM by Lot's Wife.

That’s an interesting parallel to the Dark Ages. I wonder if the recent mini dark age that followed 400 years of Enlightenment thinking was brought on by the computer revolution. Virtual worlds somehow became synonymous with reality. But just as the Black Death triggered the Enlightenment, maybe COVID19 will snap us out of our current insanity.

George Carlin noted that poor people are here to scare the sh*t out of rich people. That will be the thing that limits the amount of suffering, so God bless the poor.

The Dark Ages were caused by economic, political, and military upheaval. I'm not sure the years 400-500 CE were much more rational than those of 800-1000 CE: it's just that Rome collapsed and the lights went out. The crusades were certainly irrational, at least on the part of the common people who participated; and the 14th century was undeniably an irrational period as people dealt with the chaos and terror caused by the Plague. But within a couple of centuries the Renaissance was underway.

I don't agree that the western world has been more rational since the Enlightenment. The educated class, which was small, was more willing to follow reason, but the much larger classes were largely untouched. Moreover Isaiah Berlin has argued persuasively that even the Enlightenment was an irrational movement that produced, among other things, the paroxysms of the French Revolution, in which the faith in mankind was itself irrational and taken to emotional extremes. These violent delights. . .

Move forward 150 or so years and Nietzsche was accurately warning that what appeared a rational Europe was in fact highly irrational, that Europeans were an emotional people who no longer found Christianity viscerally satisfying and would leap at the next great charismatic ideology. On that basis he predicted in about 1890 that the next great religions (meant in a pejorative sense) would arise in Germany and Russia, where people were unwittingly waiting for the equivalent of a messiah.

So perhaps the only period in modern history that could be described as "rational" were the years from the end of WWII through the early 2000s. I submit that the rationality of that period, if such it was, reflected the economic stability, robust growth, and rising living standards that characterized the West. What has happened subsequently is that the global economy has faltered, the wealth gap expanded, and people all over Europe, North America, and parts of Asia grown disenchanted. The ground was thus prepared for irrational movements of the atheistic/nationalistic sort that Nietzsche saw unfolding over a century ago.

My point is that faith in the Enlightenment and human rationality is often overwrought. Much of humanity is often, perhaps usually, receptive to emotional and irrational movements be they religious or political. What has occurred over the last decade and will likely continue to occur for years to come, is merely another convulsion of irrationality in a species that is nowhere near as logical and intelligent as it thinks it is.

“My point is that faith in the Enlightenment and human rationality is often overwrought. Much of humanity is often, perhaps usually, receptive to emotional and irrational movements be they religious or political.”

Isn’t that a good reason to have movements like Mormonism? They fit human nature so well. Maybe there’s a reason that humans are so irrational.

I have to agree with you about the overblown belief in rationality. The smartest, most educated Mormons will throw rational thinking under the bus for their religion.

I meant rationalism in the sense of Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am” is yet another belief system. If you are religious, you had better not think too much. In the modern world, thinking is popular. That means religion has to jettison its BS and come up with something compatible with thinking.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2020 12:43PM by bradley.

> Isn’t that a good reason to have movements like
> Mormonism? They fit human nature so well.

I would think that human irrationality is not a "good reason" for Mormonism. It is an explanation for why crazy religions and political movements flourish, but that is not a "good reason."


--------------
> Maybe
> there’s a reason that humans are so irrational.

Perhaps. Perhaps at some point in human history irrationality served a positive function. That may still be true, but by the same token it may be that we have reached a point technologically and economically where irrationality is a net negative for the species and the world.


------------
I meant rationalism in the sense of Rene
> Descartes. “I think therefore I am” is yet
> another belief system.

I may agree with that. A Hindu philosopher would say, "I think, therefore I am delusional" since there is no material reality. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche agreed that the belief in human rationality was itself irrational. But it all depends on what you mean.


--------------
> If you are religious, you
> had better not think too much. In the modern
> world, thinking is popular. That means religion
> has to jettison its BS and come up with something
> compatible with thinking.

Two points. First, it's too narrow to assume that irrationality only manifests in religion: it also appears in political philosophies (Marxism, Nazism, cults of personality) and in other ways. You can repress religious irrationality only to see political irrationality arise years or decades later.

As for whether too much religion is harmful to the individual, I don't think there is a steadfast rule. In a religious or irrational society or time, being very religious is often a great strategy both for leaders and sometimes for followers. Sophocles, Galileo, and people who stood up against Joseph Stalin or even some of our contemporary political leaders fared a lot worse than those who eagerly drank the Kool-Aid.

So you want to reform Rome while I’m saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans”. You’re freaking out now that Rome is burning.

The problem is that if you offer someone a firehose, they will refuse it because it doesn’t fit their preconceived notions about the nature of fire. Squirt water on a fire? How can that work? No thanks, we’ll do it our way.

As Billy Joel said, we didn’t start the fire.

I got burned by Mormonism, but that goes back to the necessity of evil. What would my personal development be like if there were no evil? What if the evil of Mormonism is supposed to be a catalyst for human evolution? In a perfect world, it would not exist. That gives us something to work towards.

There is a good side to Mormonism, but it’s so overshadowed that it’s not worth the abuse. Something happened to the fruit of the tree, ironically best described in the allegory of the olive tree, where it went bad. Mormonism can’t be reformed because then it wouldn’t be Mormonism. It will always be broken. That’s where the allegory falls apart because no amount of work will fix it.

My earlier remark about alchemical transformation relates to moksha, which can’t be achieved through the ego. Maybe in earlier times Mormonism was a viable pathway, but the wheels have since fallen off.

To summarize my incoherent rambling, we don’t really know what is best for us so how do we know whether something is a good thing or a bad thing? We judge based on what? Inherited cultural values? What if we were bonobos, rabbits, or garden slugs? The ego could be just an illusion. You have plans, God has other plans. Everything that happens could be divine perfection that we can’t see. Consider the huge space of events that don’t go through the formality of actually occurring. Only the best possible things can cross that event horizon. We may not like them.

> Everything that happens could
> be divine perfection that we can’t see.

Yes, or they could be complete chance. There is no evidentiary basis for asserting that the God hypothesis is more credible than randomness.

----------------------
> Consider
> the huge space of events that don’t go through
> the formality of actually occurring. Only the best
> possible things can cross that event horizon.

One of those paths, or many of them, might include not child molestation or no pandemics. Is the path you are on preferable to those potential paths? Is this path somehow "better?"

--------------------
> We may not like them.

Then what would make those events "the best possible?" Voltaire's Pangloss was meant as irony.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What has occurred over the
> last decade and will likely continue to occur for
> years to come, is merely another convulsion of
> irrationality in a species that is nowhere near as
> logical and intelligent as it thinks it is.

It is the stories of us.

Lovely sentence. Methinks it worthy of cross-stitching and framing. But I would have to make it an aphorism suchly.

What occurs convulsively in human irrationality striving for rationality is thinking instinctively that logic and intelligence are its birthright. But human nature always delivers prematurely.

EB, if you transform it into an aphorism and frame it, I will gladly be your first (and probably last!) customer.

Alternatively, we could gather some of my other rants and publish them in the middle of a book called something like "Beyond Sense and Taste." I would then promptly go insane.

Although many would argue that I have already arrived at that state.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Alternatively, we could gather some of my other
> rants and publish them in the middle of a book
> called something like "Beyond Sense and Taste." I
> would then promptly go insane.

I'd read it. I would love it.

Books that push my limits of stability enthrall me.

This one nearly made me go insane.

"A Short History of Decay"

Some highlights.

As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad.

Try to be free: you will die of hunger.

You are forgiven everything provided you have a trade, a subtitle to your name, a seal on your nothingness.

Philosophy: impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran

> Although many would argue that I have already
> arrived at that state.

I am not among those many, manly, or their meritocracy.

And to keep on topic another Cioran quote.

"Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun."

Interesting subject MML. Promoting faith as a good and virtuous thing to have as the Bible, BOM and other scriptures does is part of the trickery of religion. All you need is faith, not evidence and reason, they don't work in this form of epistemology. It's only through faith or "a desire to believe" that you can hear the "still small voice" and enjoy the "burning in the bosom" experience. That is the only way to know if something is true. Pr. Thomas Monson in endorsing the counsel of President Stephen L Richards said "My faith did not come to me through science and I will not permit science to destroy it."

The whole quote; " ' Just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts, ' I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God's word. I wasn't with Joseph but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science and I will not permit science to destroy it. When I change my mind about God and his work, only the inspiration of God will change it. '

Notice that "those skeptical, disturbing rebellious thoughts" in the quote above are equated to questioning the foundational Truth claims which could certainly lead to doubt.

I believe that the concept of faith is a logical fallacy. Wrong?

One time at an LDS social event, a really nice lady asked me why I didn't believe in TCOJCOLDS anymore.

I gave a simple 60 second answer.
The Noah's Ark story seems impossible to me. Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden seems like an obvious fictional story. Same for Tower of Babel and much of the Bible. If the Bible includes lots of fictional stories, the BOM also contains people and places and events that are fictional. I know there's possible social benefits in the LDS church, but I'd rather not be a member if I simply can't believe the religious things.

Her response: well . . I believe because of faith . . and you could try believing based on faith and not science.

I had nothing further to say.

'faith' (beliefs) are the Magic Bullet of religions in general but in the Hyper - Uber sense in Mormonism, it trumps each & every doubt or objection or even hard evidence of the scam Mormonism really is..

Agreed. Even if an angel actually did come down to Russell Nelson and said if he didn't come clean he would cut off his head with a flaming sword, a mormon state of faith would still persist.

Nelson could tell them members worldwide how it was all a scam and didn't they notice when he didn't say anything about a pending virus or members immediately losing their jobs and no one would have any ability to do even a precious minute's worth of temple work? Didn't they notice how he couldn't warn them about interruptions to even God's holy work?

But the members would just view it as a test of their faith - simply more facts of contrariety to dismiss.

It is really amazing and perverse at the same time but the human mind is seen adapting to any mormon challenge in front of it. This is why no fact can be given proper credit, no effort can be deemed a failure and no enemy against one's self can be any stronger.

The primary concern of all institutions is the continuation of the institution. It outranks whatever else the institution does or claims to do. Institutions that don't do that cease to exist.

Of course the church wants members' loyalty and dependence. It's at the root of "I know the CHURCH is true."

And it's why Elder Poelman's October 1984 General Conference was edited to remove the idea that as members grow in the gospel (which is what the church is supposedly all about) they become less dependent upon the church (which is supposedly only the vehicle for the gospel). He said they become GOSPEL centered rather than CHURCH centered. Oh no no no no no, can't let the members know that.

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/elder-poelmans-most-famous-speech/

Very insightful.

If you want you sins forgiven call me. I'll forgive them and it will have just as much effect as if a Bishop did it.
That is: None whatsoever

DING DING DING!

This is one of the biggest problems facing the church and is one that not a lot of people are talking about. The church is all about the church.

If the church was about love, charity, kindness, helping members meet real world problems, being welcoming, worshiping Jesus, etc. then people would more readily overlook the fact that it is demonstrably a con. It would at least do something positive in their lives. All religions have warts and problems.

Mormonism, however, doesn't do those things...it exists to worship itself, and to make rock stars of its leaders. Members are afterthoughts, they are there to serve the corporation, not the other way around.

You would think that you wouldn't need to be a religous zealot to understand this. Most business leaders understand that if you don't make a product the customers want at a price they are willing to pay then you are on your way to going out of business.