Jamie123

If you want to know if people in the LDS community agree violence against those who mock or criticize religion, look at the huge backlash against the South Park creators.
Obviously, they're still walking around. Matt Parker and Trey Stone have not been shot despite writing 'The Book of Mormon: The Musical'.
In the end, God wins. Their mocking doesn't mean anything.

Thanks for the reply Vort - it's good to hear from you :)
 
 
This is sort-of what I was driving at in my second point. Sometimes saying that someone has been wronged (or even misquoted) while at the same time not appearing to support what that person stands/stood for is often a very narrow bridge to cross.
 
You can of course quote Voltaire about something like "you are wrong but I defend to the death your right to say it" (I forget the exact quote) - but that gets old very quickly.

People come onto LDS.net to talk about LDS matters and light topics, not usually to talk about world topics or heavy news items that dominate the headlines. The Charlie Hedbo disaster leads to a conflict in the minds of many Mormons. On the one hand, it's undisguised murder, as reprehensible as tongue can tell. On the other hand, few Mormons will be willing to proclaim "Je suis Charlie Hedbo" any more than they would say "Je suis Vladimir Putin" or "Je suis Playboy magazine". So how does one convey sorrow and outrage for the murder without implicitly providing solidarity for the cause in which the murdered were engaged and, truth be told, for which they were murdered? But Americans are famously self-interested. I am sure your point about the terrorism taking place overseas does indeed play some part in explaining why a mostly American discussion list such as this one has scarcely any mention of the event.

Crime and sin are not the same thing. Stealing is a crime, yes, because the statute books (which are imperfect) define it as such. But sin is based on a less easily defined standard of what is right and wrong.
 
For example, Oskar Schindler was a criminal. He broke the laws that existed in his country in his time. Do we regard him as "a sinner" because of it?
 
It's no answer to say that the laws of Nazi Germany were themselves criminal; if they were, then it is only the judgment of history which makes them so. Oskar Schindler had no such historical consensus to guide him; he had only had his own sense of right and wrong. He knew he had a duty to uphold the law, but that he had other duties besides.
 
And even "crime" is not absolute; to take an axe to someone's front door and smash it to pieces is in normal circunstances "criminal damage". But if the house is on fire, and people are trapped behind that door who will otherwise burn to death, will the person who breaks the door be prosecuted?

Edward Gibbon certainly blamed Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire, but I don't think this was ever more than "his opinion". Whatever religion it practiced, the Empire was under pressure from nations arriving from Eastern Asia in Europe, who were themselves being driven by peoples such as the Huns and the Mongals. By the 5th Century the Western Roman Empire had lost control of the British Isles and the Hispanic peninsula, and maintained a nominal soverignty over Gaul by cooperating with chieftains of the Germanic tribes who had settled there. In 451 the Roman general Aetius defeated Atill the Hun, but most of his army was not Roman but Visigothic. Eventually the tribes Rome relied upon became so powerful they pretty much controlled the Empreror and and in the end abolished him altogether. The Eastern Roman Empute - fully Christianized and centred on Byzantium flourished beyond the Middle Ages.
 
(Sorry Jerome - I rushed this off yesterday, but I realize now I misread your original post - you said it "wasn't" caused by its conversion to Christianity.)

This is an assumption that many like to make...  But they can't an anyway prove from the Text that he was not a priesthood holding faithful leader of the Church.  Not any more then we can prove that he was...  But let give some context...  By the time of Samuel the Lamanite there had been a conversion among the Lamanites and churches (with the relevant authority given)  established among them... therefore its quite possible he was indeed authoritative.
 
Samuel was right and prophetic, clearly called of God.  So the question becomes how does a person become called of God to do so.  The LDS believe that God is a God of order, and if God has a Church and that church has a mortal leader then God will work through that mortal leader to give is word to the entire church.  Anything else would be chaos.  Since we believe we are God's church and that God has given us a mortal leader then the God's direction for the church as a whole will come top down through the leaders, and not bottom up through the members agitating change.

I was not serious in my use of the word "bickering". We are - I hope - having a sensible and mature discussion :)

Indeed, but if you are in harmony with God then being true to yourself and lovng God more than yourself become one and the same thing. Maybe Kate Kelly has some insight which at the present time the "official" church leadership lacks. I can't help but think of Luther standing up against the Catholic Church, or John Bunyan against the established protestant church which claimed he had "no calling". Both these men are revered today. Of course, if you think Mormon leadership is infallible then neither of these comparisons apply, but the principle remains that there is no either/or about being true to yourself and being true to God.
 
Afterthought: I can't help comparing this to people who beat the phrase "...they did what was right in their own eyes..." around the heads of those with different moral or theological positions. What they are really saying is that their opponents should do what is right in their eyes instead of their own.

Jamie -
Yes and no. The sum and essence of Mormonism is that you love God more than self; and that if God asks you to change yourself--you do it.

For many years now we have been plagued with the absurd idea that best way to ensure tolerance, diversity and mutual respect is to punish anyone who thinks his or her opinions are more correct than anyone else's. This is utter nonsense because:
If I voice my disagreement with the position that all opinions are equally valid, the those who do hold that position are bound by their own philosophy to consider my views as correct as their own. In punishing me they are breaking their own rules. If I don't believe my own opinions are truer than anyone else's, in what sense are they my opinions anyway? Banning me from believing in the superior status in my own opinions is tantamount to banning me from having opinions at all. And that would include holding the opinion that all opinions are equal. Anyone who holds such an opinion cannot hold such an opinion - or any other opinion either. The position implodes. It is nevertheless the received wisdom which is assumed and taught to children. Even when I was a kid I was taught - at as supposedly Christian school! - that it was is wrong to believe that people of other religions were wrong. "We're not right and they're not wrong," they would say. "They are just a different religion from us." I was by no means "top of the class", but even I could see that this was garbage. But any attempt to disagree was met with an angry repetition of the same nonsense statement.

For many years now we have been plagued with the absurd idea that best way to ensure tolerance, diversity and mutual respect is to punish anyone who thinks his or her opinions are more correct than anyone else's. This is utter nonsense because:
If I voice my disagreement with the position that all opinions are equally valid, the those who do hold that position are bound by their own philosophy to consider my views as correct as their own. In punishing me they are breaking their own rules. If I don't believe my own opinions are truer than anyone else's, in what sense are they my opinions anyway? Banning me from believing in the superior status in my own opinions is tantamount to banning me from having opinions at all. And that would include holding the opinion that all opinions are equal. Anyone who holds such an opinion cannot hold such an opinion - or any other opinion either. The position implodes. It is nevertheless the received wisdom which is assumed and taught to children. Even when I was a kid I was taught - at as supposedly Christian school! - that it was is wrong to believe that people of other religions were wrong. "We're not right and they're not wrong," they would say. "They are just a different religion from us." I was by no means "top of the class", but even I could see that this was garbage. But any attempt to disagree was met with an angry repetition of the same nonsense statement.