I can think of only 2 reasons why men would want polygamy


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4 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

But you'd have to condemn the early prophets.

No, there's a big difference.

48 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

It sortta kinda depends on the difference between boys and girls, too. Mary was probably 14 or 15 when she bore the Son of God.

Lehi

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3 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

What age do you consider the limit for the warning Jesus was talking about?

I think there was no "limit", per se.

But in the culture He grew up in, girls married at age 14~16, and there is evidence that Joseph was in his forties or fifties when he married Mary. I suspect it was more an issue of sexual maturity than a specific age.

Lehi

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3 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

I think there was no "limit", per se.

But in the culture He grew up in, girls married at age 14~16, and there is evidence that Joseph was in his forties or fifties when he married Mary. I suspect it was more an issue of sexual maturity than a specific age.

Lehi

But we have a 1800s example of Lorenzo Snow at age 57 marrying a 15 or 16 year old depending on the source and fathering children. He was either 41 or 42 years older than his teenage wife? Does that bother you or was it OK in the 1800s? A 57 year old and a 15 year old today would land the 57 year old in prison for awhile.

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3 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

we have a 1800s example of Lorenzo Snow at age 57 marrying a 15 or 16 year old depending on the source and fathering children. He was either 41 or 42 years older than his teenage wife? Does that bother you or was it OK in the 1800s?

That bothers me not in the least. It would not bother me today, as long as they married and both were in their right minds.

One of the big things I hate about grtf-welfare schools is that they infantilize children. Admiral David Farragut commanded his first warship at age 14. Benjamin Franklin wrote articles for a fairly large newspaper when he was less than 16 under the pseudonym Prudence Dogood. It's virtually impossible for an adolescent (which didn't even exist back then) to do anything of the sort. So they have regressed back to what we expect of them, which is, essentially, nothing.

Lehi

 

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17 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

That bothers me not in the least. It would not bother me today, as long as they married and both were in their right minds.

Not sure how old Story Musgrave's current wife is, but his oldest daughter was 46 when their youngest was born.  He would have been 71 at the time, and they were trying for another 5 years after that, (apparently unsuccessful, since Google didn't turn up any new kids) so there was almost certainly a 30+ year gap there.  He seems to have a tendency for taking "living a full life" to the extreme, though.

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1 hour ago, LeSellers said:

I think there was no "limit", per se.

But in the culture He grew up in, girls married at age 14~16, and there is evidence that Joseph was in his forties or fifties when he married Mary. I suspect it was more an issue of sexual maturity than a specific age.

Lehi

I could easily be wrong; but I think the "evidence" for an older Joseph mostly boils down to third-century (and later) authors who believed in Mary's perpetual virginity and explained the "siblings" of Jesus mentioned in scripture as being from a prior marriage of Joseph.  He most likely was several years older than Mary, but probably not much past twenty.

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3 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I could easily be wrong; but I think the "evidence" for an older Joseph mostly boils down to third-century (and later) authors who believed in Mary's perpetual virginity and explained the "siblings" of Jesus mentioned in scripture as being from a prior marriage of Joseph.  He most likely was several years older than Mary, but probably not much past twenty.

There's something to that, but the evidence I refer to is the fact that we don't hear of Joseph (alive) much past Jesus' thirteenth year. It was His mother and brothers who came to see Him preaching, and His mother alone at the cross.

Of course we have more, but this is the evidence I weigh most heavily.

Lehi

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20 hours ago, Zarahemla said:

Go on?

Another is lust.  With the current pandemic of pornography in the church, I would not trust the vast majority of men who wanted to be involved in it to be doing it for the right reasons.  Secondly, I would question the sanity of anyone wanting to be involved in it, male or female.  However, it is a moot point since it is not a requirement for making the celestial kingdom. 

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7 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

There's something to that, but the evidence I refer to is the fact that we don't hear of Joseph (alive) much past Jesus' thirteenth year. It was His mother and brothers who came to see Him preaching, and His mother alone at the cross.

Wasn't average male life expectancy back then late 30s to early 40s anyway?

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3 minutes ago, NightSG said:

Wasn't average male life expectancy back then late 30s to early 40s anyway?

No, no!, a thousand times NO!!!

"Life expectancy" is not a useful measure unless you attach an age. The assumed age is "birth", so, while a neonate could expect to live 40 years in the i, his father, presumably at least 15, would have an LE of at least 60, and his living grandfather, aged, say 45, would have an LE of 70 or so.

All life expectancy tell us is that half of the people alive at a given age will be dead at another age in the future. Since half or more of all children died before age 5 until about the mid XIX, the LE at birth was necessarily low. but when someone lived to age, say, 20, his LE wouldn't be a whole lot different for a twenty-year-old today.

Lehi

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1 hour ago, NightSG said:

Wasn't average male life expectancy back then late 30s to early 40s anyway?

 Life expectancy is a funny term. 

Yes, people generally did live shorter lives back then. But only by 10-15 years. 

Life expectancy was skewed because of extremely high infant morality. Dying in babyhood really toys with the average. Women also died in childbirth not often, but it certainly wasn't rare either. Remember too-this was a violent world, without vaccines (sorry everyone, they really do save millions of lives)  and medical care was non-existant. An infection that you or I could go to the doctors and cure would often times be fatal back then. Cancer was "treated" with basically nothing in 4 AD. Here, chemo gives you a shot to survive. 

So yes, people DID live shorter lives back then. 100% true. But it's a bit more complicated than one might think. 

Edited by MormonGator
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On 8/18/2016 at 5:21 PM, Zarahemla said:

After that whole episode where it seemed like I was obsessed with polygamy, I realized in men's minds there's usually only 1 of 2 reasons why men would want polygamy in the first place. These reasons are:

1. More women to open your heart to. This was the reason for me thinking about it. You love all your children equally and all your family equally hopefully, and having multiple spouses means you'd open your heart to love many different people and be showered with love. As someone who's never had a girl love me it would seem like bliss to have so many people show love and be in your heart.

2. More sex partners. This is the bad reason to want polygamy, but it's the other reason I thought of why men would want to live polygamy. Brigham Young, Heber C Kimball, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F Smith all had like 40-60 children and they had many partners. I know sex isn't supposed to be super important, but to men more wives means more different people to have sex with and have children with.

So those are the only 2 reasons I came up with why men would even want polygamy in the first place. Can you think of any other reason why a man would want it? And because God commanded it is not a want.

1.5 to afford women protection and support. this can vary on how it's done... in times where women have few rights sometimes marriage can offset that.

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3 hours ago, LeSellers said:

That bothers me not in the least. It would not bother me today, as long as they married and both were in their right minds.

One of the big things I hate about grtf-welfare schools is that they infantilize children. Admiral David Farragut commanded his first warship at age 14. Benjamin Franklin wrote articles for a fairly large newspaper when he was less than 16 under the pseudonym Prudence Dogood. It's virtually impossible for an adolescent (which didn't even exist back then) to do anything of the sort. So they have regressed back to what we expect of them, which is, essentially, nothing.

Lehi

Here is another example I enjoy. I'm not sure what Moroni was up to at age 14-16, but I highly doubt he was only playing kick the can (toucan) and catching tadpoles at the pond to prepare himself to be the "chief" captain by age 25:

"16 Now, the leader of the Nephites, or the man who had been appointed to be the chief captain over the Nephites—now the chief captain took the command of all the armies of the Nephites—and his name was Moroni;

 17 And Moroni took all the command, and the government of their wars. And he was only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites.

Edited by NeedleinA
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3 hours ago, Zarahemla said:

But we have a 1800s example of Lorenzo Snow at age 57 marrying a 15 or 16 year old depending on the source and fathering children. He was either 41 or 42 years older than his teenage wife? Does that bother you or was it OK in the 1800s? A 57 year old and a 15 year old today would land the 57 year old in prison for awhile.

FAIRMormon Link: "Historical and cultural perspective: Plural marriage was certainly not in keeping with the values of "mainstream America" in Joseph Smith's day. However, modern readers also judge the age of the marriage partners by modern standards, rather than the standards of the nineteenth century.

z.jpg

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26 minutes ago, NeedleinA said:

FAIRMormon Link: "Historical and cultural perspective: Plural marriage was certainly not in keeping with the values of "mainstream America" in Joseph Smith's day. However, modern readers also judge the age of the marriage partners by modern standards, rather than the standards of the nineteenth century.

z.jpg

Is our society in 2016 so prude then to not socially accept this today?

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37 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

Is our society in 2016 so prude then to not socially accept this today?

Perhaps?
Here is another chart I think you might enjoy @Zarahemla. It is easy to perhaps see where global marriage ages are headed and perhaps where they have been.  There is a very clear age increase globally. Perhaps in another decade or two, the world will look back upon 25yr old men & women and say they were just "babies" when they got married.

a.jpg

Edited by NeedleinA
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5 hours ago, LeSellers said:

Benjamin Franklin wrote articles for a fairly large newspaper when he was less than 16 under the pseudonym Prudence Dogood.

That was "Silence Dogood".  Just taking care of a nit for you.

Edited by Guest
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9 hours ago, Zarahemla said:

Is our society in 2016 so prude then to not socially accept this today?

As evidence by the watching MTV or E!, the answer is no.  The correct answer is as Lehi said we have infantized children 12-18 and trained them to be completely incapable of making their own decisions.  Evidence this by how many children after graduating high school (or even college!!) come back to live with their parents-that just defies logic that a fully formed adult would want to come back home and live under his parents roof after being completely capable of taking care of himself.

Is it any wonder why society looks down upon 16 year olds getting married?

A 16 year old in the late 1800s had a completely different mindset and maturity level than a 16 year old today. I'd say 16 year olds in the late 1800s were more mature than many 26 year olds today.

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10 hours ago, NeedleinA said:

Perhaps?
Here is another chart I think you might enjoy @Zarahemla. It is easy to perhaps see where global marriage ages are headed and perhaps where they have been.  There is a very clear age increase globally. Perhaps in another decade or two, the world will look back upon 25yr old men & women and say they were just "babies" when they got married.

a.jpg

In fairness,  I don't think you can project the above graph backwards through time and show a smooth rise in marriage ages since the 1800s.  My understanding is that average marriage ages diminished significantly around WW2, and then started creeping upwards again.  "Underaged" marriages certainly happened in the 19th century without legal consequences and at a higher rate than now; but even then they weren't exactly the norm.

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