MrShorty

My thoughts, for what little they are worth, as one whose children have all left the church, and who has been deconstructing/reconstructing faith for some years now. 1) "Certainty" has been a problem in my experience. The earliest stages of my "faith crisis" started decades ago as a bio-ag student at BYU within a decade of Elder McConkie's "Deadly Heresies" talk. My teenage years was heavily influenced by family and friends who agreed with Elder McConkie that evolution was a deadly heresy and that creationism (whether old or young) was certainly true. Naturally, my required evolution class shattered that sense of certainty, casting doubt on all those (including apostles like Elder McConkie) who claimed certainty in some of these truth claims. I've heard multiple people who deconstruct their faith who will say something like, "If I was wrong about X, that I thought I was so certain about, what else am I certain about that could be wrong?" I don't know how to do it, but I think there is value in figuring out how to balance certainty with epistemic humility. As part of this, I think there is value in not only talking about what we believe to be true, but also how we came to believe it. I have observed before that every "faith crisis" issue I have wrestled with really came down to "how and why do I/we believe that this is true." 2) I have a mixed relationship with Elder Corbridge's "Stand Forever" talk, but I generally accept that there is value in trying to identify core beliefs and values as distinguished from esoteric or inconsequentials. Patrick Mason once said that we LDS have sometimes packed too much into our "truth cart" (like Elder McConkie's insistence that anti-evolution was a core belief), and that has led to some people having a fragile faith. I think a resilient faith is able to identify core principles that have limited wiggle room for compromise, and less important principles where there is room for leniency. I think it will include the ability to shift beliefs between those categories without completely upsetting the truth cart. Along those lines, I would suggest finding ways to model how you want to relate to people who put different things in their truth cart. It will help your kids to see how you relate to people with different beliefs. It can also allow them to see that, if they should ever find themselves believing something different than what Dad believes, they can still have a relationship with Dad. 3) "All or nothing" is another thing that has been a challenge for the resiliency of my faith. Richard Ostler said something interesting in a recent podcast episode I listened to. Some say that "cafeteria Mormonism" is a slippery slope out of the church, but maybe "cafeteria Mormonism" is also a slippery slope to staying in the church. I would suggest that learning how to find reason to stay engaged with the church even when you have doubts or even disbelieve some of what the church teaches is a valuable skill to learn. I find that too many people who leave the church leave because they discovered a few things they could no longer believe and decided that, if the church is wrong about X, then the entire enterprise must be wrong. To be fair, we have promoted some of this ourselves (reference, for example, Pres. Hinckley saying that Mormonism is either true or a fraud). I often wonder if more people would be able to stay in the church if they knew how to let some things go without rejecting the entirety of the church. 4) Sometimes it seems to me that we LDS get a little hung up on the church being "true" and fail to learn how to find the church to be good. Jared Halverson said something interesting in a recent podcast with Teryl Givens about how some people leave the church because they can no longer find anything "good" in the church. I think another valuable skill for retaining a desire to be engaged with the church is to learn how to see the good in the church in spite of any flaws or errors.

At the risk of opening old wounds and such, I have found it interesting that the prophet-presidents of the RLDS/Community of Christ branch of the restoration continued the tradition of adding to their D&C with revelations published in the Voice of God. As I skim over their D&C, it seems that this tradition continued until Pres. Wallace B. Smith and section 160 in about 1996. Pres. Grant McMurray and Stephen Veazy seem to have stepped away from voicing their additions to the D&C as clearly in the Voice of God. Perhaps part of the answer is that anyone can write a document in the Voice of God, but such a practice does not necessarily make the alleged revelation a true revelation, as I'm sure many in this group would contest the legitimacy of sections 130ish+ of the D&C.

Br. Porter's theory may have fewer logical holes, but the holes it has seem pretty large (gaping?) to me. Shall we begin with some basic assumptions that I'm not sure he makes explicit (it's been a year or so since I watched this video). One assumption seems to be the literal historicity of the events in the Bible (in this case, Genesis 4 is key). For those of us who are less than convinced of the literal historicity of these events -- who prefer to see these accounts as more of an origin myth (using myth the way Ben Spackman uses it) for the Israelites and their neighbors -- a huge part of theories like this rest heavily on a literally historical understanding of these events. Further, he seems to assume that we can trace those ancient Biblical lineages down to the modern day, and assume that they have remained sufficiently segregated and "pure." On one hand, there is a statistical analysis that suggests that, with high statistical probability, all of us today are descended from everyone who was alive before a couple thousand years ago (or so). It seems to me that it should be near impossible to trace ancestry/lineage back 6000 years ago with any kind of certainty (especially to the "one drop" level of certainty). I recognize that Porter leans heavily into prophetic statements from Joseph Smith, but I find it difficult to tell what parts of these statements come from God and which ones were informed by the common racial beliefs of his day. (You can look up articles about the Atlantic slave trade, British Israelism, and scientific racism to get a feel for the kinds of beliefs that existed in the waters 19th century LDS swam in). I suspect that, if I could agree with these assumptions (and others that Porter makes), I, too, could find this theory logical. I find myself skeptical of these basic assumptions, which leads me to doubt the entirety of Porter's theory. I personally find myself more in agreement with Brother Reeves and others like him who see the priesthood and temple ban as the unfortunate outgrowth of commonly held 19th century racist beliefs. I believe that God is merciful and can redeem those who believed those things as well as those who were impacted by their beliefs. I believe that God wants us to learn from our history so that we can do better in the future.

Wasn't Philips also the one who came up with the "Came across someone threatening to jump off a bridge. I asked if he was Christian and he said yes. I said that I was, too. Catholic or Protestant? Me too! (drill down through denomination hierarchy) East side of town or west side of town confession? East side. Then die, heretic as he pushes him off the bridge." joke? (Obviously I forgot all of the details of the denominations, but I think you get the idea). A joke that, IMO, almost perfectly describes the divided state of Christianity today.

According to the scripture canon, the events of Star Wars occurred in a galaxy far, far away. The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters to us at only ~450 ly away, in our own spiral arm of the Milky Way. Unless of course, we want to argue that isles of the sea colonized by the people of Hagoth at the end of Alma really refers to island universes floating in the heavenly expanse. Now there's an interesting suggestion. That not only did Book of Mormon people figure out interstellar travel, but they also figured out intergalactic travel. My mind is so blown, that I may not be good for anything else the rest of the day.

That explains the difficulties we've had in finding anyplace on Earth that fits the geography described in the Book of Mormon. It was never on Earth. For those who refuse to comply with the church's request to not speculate about BoM geography, can we now start speculating about stellar arrangements? The Pleiades were the land northward, the Hyades were the land southward, figure out some "narrow neck of stars" in between, with suitable dark nebula for the River Sidon. This opens up all kinds of new speculations to fight over. Edit to add star chart of Taurus:

Is this Jacob Hansen's version, or some other? Maybe it doesn't matter, because I see the same kinds of questions no matter whose version of "aggregate across multiple prophets" model I encounter. In theory, I think it is a good idea. Questions that I think tend to muddy the waters: 1) How do we determine who is and is not a prophet? Within a given tradition, there is usually consensus, but that also usually leaves some claims to prophethood (canonized scripture) out. We LDS accept Biblical and Book of Mormon figures as prophets, but reject Muhammad's. We accept Brigham Young through Russel M. Nelson, while rejecting Joseph Smith III through Staci Cramm (presumptive). I think it is worth acknowledging that your choice of prophets to include and exclude will impact the conclusions you end up drawing. 2) Once you've decided who to include in your list of prophets, then you need to determine what they said. This gets particularly difficult the further back in history you go. Did Moses really say all those things that are attributed to him? What about the letters of Paul? Even as recently as Joseph Smith, we end up going round in circles trying to determine what Joseph Smith said versus what his contemporaries claim he said. A lot of the time when I see someone like Hansen promoting this model, there seems to be an underlying assumption that we can accurately recall across years and generations and millenia what prophets taught. 3) Then there is the ever present question of interpretation, which, like the previous point, becomes increasingly difficult across time and culture and language. I think a "collective prophetic witness" type of model can be useful in getting at truth, but only if we are also willing to recognize where it will struggle.

Sounds similar to something I have seen/heard Scott Woodward talk about on several occasions. Here's one of his youtube videos talking about his heuristic for what he calls "doctrinal confidence":

I took my username from an old Marty Robbins western ballad of the same name. I felt a particular kinship, I guess, with the titular character, as I, too, would be "judged to be about 5 foot three, but without the soft Texas drawl."

I have had a long interest in textual criticism, though it hasn't been intense or deep. The most interesting to me are sections like the long ending of Mark or the woman taken in adultery in John's gospel, where large blocks of text seem to be later additions. In my experience listening/reading those who have struggled with their faith because of textual criticism, it often seems that they started with a very fundamentalist, inerrant, univocal view of scripture. As they studied the textual history and variants of the Bible, they found significant conflict with their fundamentalist view of scripture, and sometimes just couldn't hold on to their faith. I don't know if we LDS are really any more resilient than other Christian groups in this regard, as I find that some of us do expect scripture to be univocal and quasi-inerrant. IMO, those whose faith will benefit from studying textual criticism will be those who have a realistic understanding of what scripture is. Let's not forget that textual criticism is not just for the Bible. The Book of Mormon has its own textual criticism project exploring the history of our own founding scriptural text. The history is a lot shorter, but there are textual variants nonetheless -- such as the never ending discussion over whether it should read "pure and delightsome" or "white and delightsome." (FAIR page:https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Book_of_Mormon/Textual_changes ) Personally, I've found the study of textual variants to be interesting, but not challenging to faith. The parts of scripture that have been the most challenging to my faith have been those where scripture attributes something to God that I struggle to believe came from God. The genocides of the OT are a go to example. It is difficult to attribute these problems to some kind of textual variant problem or a translation problem. The authors of the Bible put those stories in there, and they challenge my sense of who God is and what His nature is.

Just saw this on a news feed (using KSL, since I generally trust them as a news source): https://www.ksl.com/article/51298343/pope-francis-first-latin-american-pontiff-dies-on-easter-monday

A few things stood out to me, in part because I personally find them troubling, and, in part, because I'm not sure the 21st century church agrees with some of the older comments. The statement you use from Joseph F. Smith about a father being the highest authority in the family is going to fall flat for someone who holds a more egalitarian view of family authority being equally held between father and mother. You could pull out your best Boyd K. Packer and talk about how feminism is one of the greatest threats to the church, but I would encourage you to replace quotes like this with more recent, more egalitarian quotes from church leaders that express the idea that husband and wife are equal in authority in leading the family. As it relates to fathers providing for the family, I have long found that this discussion at BCC has been one of the most thought provoking for me. In short, the question is basically asked how we would view a scenario where a couple decides that, because mom has better earning potential or something like that, dad will be a stay at home parent while mom goes out into the world to be the primary breadwinner. As one who leans more egalitarian, I have no problem with the SAHD + breadwinner mom scenario, but I'm also fairly confident that there are those who lean more strongly complementarian who would find that scenario problematic. I don't know that it changes anything in your talk, unless you think through that same thought experiment and decide that something needs to change. edit to add link: https://bycommonconsent.com/2019/07/28/a-quick-query-about-the-proclamation-on-the-family/ Overall, my impression as someone who leans egalitarian is that you're coming from a more complementarian angle. My impression from recent years is that the church is struggling a bit to decide which side of the complementarian/egalitarian divide to come down on. Some of that struggle is because there are definitely many within the church who, like me, lean more egalitarian than complementarian. One overall critique I would make of your talk is to consider how those who lean egalitarian are going to respond (internally even if they never say anything to your face) to your talk and see if any of those considerations cause you to change anything.

How about this random prediction for conference? With Sunday being Apr. 6, how many references will get for the 195th anniversary of the official organization of the church in 1830? I'm going to predict 3 such references on Sunday alone. I might even suggest that some of your conference bingo cards need a "On this date in 1830, the church was organized" square. Along the same lines, will any of the speakers follow Elder Bednar's example of 2014 and mention Christ's birthdate?

@Erick At the risk of urther TMI, after my own bout with a different cancer, I do the same thing -- regular underwear underneath garments. Like @NeuroTypical, I recall days when there was believed to be much more rigidity around how garments were intended to work with other undergarments. It's often difficult to know which directives were top down and which were bottom up. I'm just glad that we have reached a point as a people where we don't worry so much about how people choose to wear their underclothing.

A quick internet search leads to Isaiah 34:5, where the phrase is also used. From Biblehub's commentary (note that many translations translate "bathed" from the KJV as drunk or even inebriated.) Seems consistent with how Joseph Smith is using the phrase here. ETA: it appears you've already seen something like this.