Without calling each other racists?
I generally like to stay out of the political Frey but it's getting pretty mean out there again.

Feel free to bring up a topic, Phil.

Lately I've brought up quite a few.

You've started some good discussions lately. I saw four on the first three pages. They all got decent responses, and one really took off. Sometimes it's impossible to predict just which topics will be popular.

Perhaps, Phil, you can understand that many women are very upset by the recent overturning of Rowe v. Wade. Our rights have been stripped away right in front of us. And many other recent SCOTUS decisions (a number of which involve religion either directly or indirectly,) are concerning as well. Personally, I feel like I am now living in some alternate reality that I do not entirely understand. Hopefully things will simmer down for a while. But sadly, the far right insists on making their business (which again, often involves religious topics) everyone's business. So this will probably be an ongoing theme for the foreseeable future.

The Mormon church is often in overt or quiet agreement with the Evangelical agenda.

    Summer, who said you could speak?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2022 01:59PM by elderolddog.

I'm really, really bad at following rules, as you well know, Dawg. They'd better not mandate prayer in classrooms again, because they don't want to hear *my* prayers. lol

Phil, what good is it to have escaped Mormonism only to find yourself living in an even more terrible and terrifying theocracy?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/florida-dont-say-gay-rainbows-family-photos_n_62bf0f56e4b0a21d84263c06

"Orlando-area schools are apparently not taking chances. According to WFTV, a local ABC affiliate, Orange County Public Schools held a meeting between district attorneys and principals to go over the behavior that would no longer be acceptable for the youngest students.

The district’s teachers’ union sounded alarm bells to the news station. Email correspondence posted to the Orange Classroom Teachers Association website discusses how K-3 teachers and school staff were advised not to wear any rainbows and to take down any photos from their desks of same-sex partners or family members. They were also reportedly encouraged not to talk about their same-sex partner to students, and not to honor the pronouns gender-nonconforming students wish to use.

A district representative told WFTV that the guidance was only intended to protect the schools and staff ― including teachers’ licenses ― until the state clarified what sort of behavior is actually covered by the law."


Did you ever think you would wake up one day and live in a totally Taliban, Christofascist, f-word nightmare? In America?


Are you so sure that you'll never get the dreaded after midnight knock on the door? Are you so sure nothing will happen to you?

In a fascist, autocratic, dominionist, theocratic state, no one is "safe."


I had to read "The Handmaid's Tale" in high school.

It was supposed to be fiction.

It's not anymore.


Remember "there were no fence-sitters in the War In Heaven" quote?

Time for you to figure out what side you are on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2022 07:27AM by anybody.

Ive always been on MY SIDE. And will continue to be so.

Well, that’s good.

It doesn't make sense for someone to leave one cult only to join another. At least you aren't doing that.

I am a TBM. That's right a card carrying TBM with a few axes to grind.

Or do you choose to ignore reality like Trumpies do and make up your own?

Mormonism is fake. It's made up. Not only is it fake, it's a scam. 10% of your income during this life for a chance to become a God in the afterlife? Please.

It's like saying The Force made George Lucas make the "Star Wars" films to make The Force known on Earth -- a perfect tautology.

If you wish to promote Mormonism this is not the place to do it so please be courteous to others and do it elsewhere please.

This doesn’t make sense

PHIL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you wish to promote Mormonism this is not the
> place to do it so please be courteous to others
> and do it elsewhere please.


????

I'm doing the exact opposite of "promoting" Mormonism -- which might as well be named Mor(e) mon(ey) ism as it's nothing more than a cult prosperity gospel scam these days.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2022 10:06PM by anybody.

Pretty much everyone here knows where
I stand politically on things. But you have to remember there are ex Mormons who do have right leaning tendencies and you can see that from the last election when politics were
allowed on the board. The admin had to shut it down because of the rudeness and name calling..

    Yes, we're all here because of one fundamental principle we share, and which ought to guide us at a level so profoundly deep and nurturing, that the petty squabbles of politics should have all the allure of toe nail clippings . . .

    Yep, we're all going way over the speed limit towards the Great Attractor, and there's nothing we can do about it except not pay tithings.

What if you took the 100 billion bucks and split it up amoung TR holders!

    Imagine what the reaction would be if ratting out another TR holder as being unworthy increased YOUR share of the $100 billion?!!

You should be ashamed of yourself. Perhaps dementia has brought it on.
Just imagine with dementia I wouldn't
be responsible for my own actions hmmmm.

is gossiping 'rementia'?

Anal retentia.

At least you aren't asking us to go back into Mormonism...

. . . and free-thinking.
So of course interests range far and wide, discussions are diverse and often of great interest, and the freedom of being able to explore without limitation and think originally without saddle & bit is quite enjoyable (of course this free-thinking is very discomforting to Mormons who quite prefer the saddle). Mormonism may inevitably hover always in the background (because of those scars) but as a decidedly limited topic, is . . . well, boring. It's dead. Desiccated. There is no life in it.

Talk about dead -- they even have this fetish about baptizing dead people, go figure.

I figure the mods have demonstrably learned to herd cats quite ably and I trust their judgment

The mantle is greater than the intellect. The emperor's invisible clothes are greater than the mantle.

If you don't like being called a racist then stop being a racist !

Held a funeral for the religion a long time ago. Its been dead in my mind for a while now. I mainly just like to read ziller's posts to get a good laugh.

A part of me is just like people still haven't figured out that the religion is false yet? Jesus christ I figured it out when i was a kid waaaaaaay back in the day.

we could all talk books sports and weather?

Well PHIL, since it's your thread and you're a TBM apparently tripping balls on LDS, what do you see in the church?

To me, the church is a cultural hallucinogen. It gives you all the answers, their answers, stunting your emotional growth because you don't have to work out your own morality. Vedic tradition has four paths to moksha. Devotion is one. As a devotee religion, TSCC works. But you have to be all in. That is a huge problem in the modern age. Most Mormons are lacking in strong, simple faith. Their wealth is their curse. Their faith is strong only when fighting for survival. But now the church is fat and happy, led by authoritarian gutless jackasses.

The BoM is a synthesis of 19th century scripture. It was good for its time. Is it true? 3 Ne is a retelling of the fall of Atlantis and older civilizations. There are themes from Sufism and Islam as well as folk wisdom. I would say that whoever wrote the BoM did a good job. I seriously doubt it was Joseph. For the 19th century, it was "true enough". Not so much for the 21st century. Plus, the modern church is the Brighamite sect, which was and is considered heretical by the Smith family.

Mormonism has problems that are intractable because it a cult. In a cult, nobody knows how and why their practices work. How do you make a cult back into a church? Has it ever happened before?

The real problem the church faces is its (often literal) demonization of apostates. When the inconvenient truths of church history make it impossible to play dumb on the devotee path, the member loses everything. Their identity, their tribe, their friends, maybe their spouse and kids and house. Does the church even pay for a therapist? What happens to these people? Usually they become atheists. That's right, Mormon missionaries spread atheism. They would be better off spending two years playing video games and smoking dope.

People leave the church for good reasons, not because of some character defect. Yet they are treated as pariahs. The fallen ones. I wouldn't want to belong to any club that engages in such victim blaming.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2022 10:59PM by bradley.

I for one think the Church has lost its way. I'm not talking about it changing its doctrine to satisfy public opinion but changing its attitude.

If you believe the mormon church is true, how is it possible it could lose its way?

As one GA that I heard in person said
"Anything we do we can do better".

“It can do better” is rather different to “lost it’s way”.
You have some cognitive dissonance going on here.

"changing its attitude."

I would be interested in what you mean by this

PHIL said: >>I'm not talking about it changing its doctrine to satisfy public opinion but changing its attitude.

Phil, your church has a male priesthood. It's doctrine. There are no women in charge in your church, just the way they like it. Women just had rights removed in the USA. If you don't see a growing problem with this, you are frankly contributing to misogynism and civil rights suppression and should kindly sit down. Attitude is not enough to repudiate doctrine.

Mormonism took 19th Century ideas of human origin and racism a step further and incorporated them into Mormon theology.

This is very different from contemporary slavers and colonizers interpreting Christianity to suit their purposes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comments/5f0n44/is_2_nephi_52123_racist/

Is 2 Nephi 5:21-23 racist?
21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. 22 And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities. 23 And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.

I find it entertaining that a thread asking if we can go back to discussing Mormonism has devolved into a discussion of LGBT rights, Roe v Wade, and racism.

I guess you got your answer, Phil.

Yeah I noticed. I tend to think politics can also be a cult religion with its share of inflexible fanatics.

If feeling the spirit of contention puts you into a religious mood.

Mormonism makes a very big deal about opposing LGBT rights.

It makes a medium to large big deal about opposing abortion rights.

Mormonism's foundational documents, the BoM and BoA, are deeply racist.

Discussing those issues IS discussing Mormonism.

Unless, of course, you share the church's views on those topics. In that case the church's positions are not political but "correct" and should not be questioned.

Ten years ago the RfM anti-politics rule was sustainable because the country's politics had not yet converged with Mormon doctrine as they have now.

PHIL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Without calling each other racists? I generally like to stay out of the political Frey but it's getting pretty mean out there again.

Sure - when we can go back to a time when Rowe v. Wade was the law of the land. And a time when a high school coach wouldn't think to exclude students of other faiths and beliefs in his very showy, 50-yard line prayer. How about it, PHIL?