Mormon theology begins with Joseph Smith’s modern (post-Enlightenment) Pelagian heresy in Puritan disguise: “a Judaic-like community religion grounded in the Puritan moral doctrine that the vocation of man is to create the kingdom of God.” It is literal like much of Protestantism but heretical in denying original sin. It reflects 19th century liberalism both corporate and individual. It ant
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Heaven and the Heavenly Father are monetized like the time value of money--the present value of a future sum.
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I live in Cincinnati, where I'm a retired academic. After bailing out of the Mormons over a half - century ago, and resiging, I've found a fabulous Episocpalian parish where we're members. Highly educated members discuss the most advanced scholarship on the bible and theology (eg, John Spong's writings that begin with massive 19th century scholarship and Jewish mysticism). These are not top-d
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I've read a lot of apologists in my half century of apostasy before formally resigning, beginning with Hugh Nibley at his prime, and I've read three of Given's books. He's far more sophisticated than Nibley, for he's an English professor apologist with all kinds of magic jujitsu from hermeneutics and stuff of his own alchemy. He can't kid this goldfish! This is my first comment of my ninth de
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The most thorough discussion of the philosophical and theological arguments of the finitude of the Mormon God in comparison with Christian theological history is: Sterling M. McMurrin, "The Theological Foundations of the Mormon REligion" (1965, Univ. of Utah Press), especially Part Two "The Concept of God" from which I quote: "Mormonism is a radical departure fro
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My rebel father would tell us as we grew up (in Salt Lake City many years ago) that "empty wagons rattle the most."
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It's not being Mormon but being from royal Mormon corporate leadership that shaped his worldview. His manner as stake president in Boston, used to being obeyed, as Governor of Massachussets directing legislators he never knew as human, his vapid understanding of substance, but competence in technical and souless efficiency, his faux folksiness, his emptiness of religious substance--all these exe
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My question is on his theological position on Apostacy and restoration. I should not have indicated that this was the reason he left Massachussetts. That is clearly wrong. He left the Baptist church partly for that reason. I do think he believed that divine authority was required to restore the church, having been corrupted by the Roman Empire and other states. I found a quote in Wikipedia that e
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Thanks. Nationalism certainly did--as in the Spanish Kings using the Inquisition to centralize control, booting out the Jews and Muslims. But even before the Protestant Reformation, as far back as Augustine, the war against heretical movements - Arians, Manichaeism, Pelagianism, Donatism etc. was brutal. The Church would anathematize heretics (ones who changed from orthodoxy) then send to the sec
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You were very kind to me when last fall I showed you a copy of my request for name removal after 50 years of de facto resignation. I did finally get notice. I'm writing a scholarly article for publication on the liberty of free conscience. In working with material on Roger Williams I've noted that he withdrew completely from any organized religion after fleeing from the Puritan theocracy in Bo
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Please forgive in advance the length of this entry! Every so often I tune in here for a drift of what the apostate discourse is considering. I get a big lift in perusing the conversation. Fifty years ago I bailed out and haven't attended since, nor has my wife or my children who are now in their forties and fifties. I've posted before how I had to make my decision quite by myself and it too
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That is what I went through sixty-one years ago in examining with care the foundations of myth, epistemological leaps, Descartes' Discourse on Reason and the green baboon on the other side of the moon to ask how do you know what tells you the truth. How does one know that those feelings that are supposed to validate your will to belief as knowledge come from God instead of evolved biological feel
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I don't remember standing naked only that I had a flimsy gown open at the sides through which they anointed your various parts.
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Every time I visit you all, I've wanted to write something like this (forgive its length): It was sixty-one years ago, I was 19, and I experienced two thoughts at the time I went through the Temple to get married: 1) It was a way for dirty old men in Nauvoo who did the washings and anointings to get the best new wives. 2) Its secret blood oaths, dress and rituals reminded me of the fraternity
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