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wayfarer wrote:
I love hawkgrrrl’s response — it’s right on point.
As well, Joseph Smith declared, toward the end of his life, that the Latter Day Saints would have no creed (lliterally, required ‘I believe” statements), because the mere statement of belief tends to limit one’s ability to accept truth when it is presented to us from time to time. My personal ‘belief’ is that the ‘gospel’ is true: and I define the “gospel” is the Way, the Truth, and the Life as taught by Jesus and many other great saints over time.
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Can you provide the reference to the Joseph smith quote?
johnh wrote:Can you provide the reference to the Joseph smith quote?
Joseph Smith wrote:The most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein. Latter Day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles existing, as they are made manifest from time to time.
(History of the Church, v5 p215)
my blog entry “
on being an agnostic mormonI recommend reading wayfarer’s full blog, but for anyone who wants to add the quote to their library of quotables, here it is: Quote:
The most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein. Latter Day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles existing, as they are made manifest from time to time.(Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v5 p215)
Couple of questions, what was HotC’s source? Although written in JS’s voice as first person, it was written/compiled by others and then Joseph reviewed/approved it. I think that some of the later compilations were not reviewed by him due to his death. Was v5 among them?
Also, does anyone know when Articles of Faith was added to the POGP? I wonder if Joseph ever intended them to be so official. He wrote them in the letter to Wentworth. I wonder if he intended them to be later used in such a creedlike way.
Thanks for that link. It puts Alma 32 in a much more comfortable context for me. wayfarer wrote:2. You don’t have to believe or have faith in something that isn’t true. If the book of mormon isn’t historical, you don’t have to believe or have faith in the historicity of the book of mormon. But let me ask you a question — have you felt good about the Book of Mormon? If you have, then it is ‘true’ in a very different way than historical: it is of normative value to you, and you can so testify. Does the book of mormon testify of Christ? You bet it does — I can know this by reading it. So you see, the ‘truth’ of the book of mormon is not about history — it even says it isn’t historical — at least the small plates weren’t. But we can ‘know’ that the book is true for us, normatively, valuatively, and spiritually. What else matters?
I totally buy into points 1,3,4…..but point#2 raises a question for me. I don’t think that the Book of Mormon is historical although I do love many of its teachings. But the simple fact of me believing that the BOM is not history puts me out of line with the LDS Church. The Church leadership and lessons have all taught that if the BOM is true that it is all true (and by true they do mean historical), and if it isn’t, then it is a fraud. I can say that it is true as far as principles taught, I can’t say that it is true as in actual historical fact which in essence means that I am calling Joseph SMith a fraud. I could adopt a middle way easily, but I don’t think that the Church will let me… I cannot be a full fledged member while I believe that. They may let me in the building, but they won’t let me eat at the table as long as I believe that way.
Quote:which in essence means that I am calling Joseph SMith a fraud
No, it means you don’t see it the same way he did – and that can be very, very different than calling him a fraud. I mean that. I am agnostic about its historicity (although I choose to accept it, knowing it’s a toss-up in my brain), but I don’t think Joseph was a fraud in his belief concerning it.
Quote:I could adopt a middle way easily, but I don’t think that the Church will let me.
Lots and lots of members adopt their own way (and, I would argue, every member does it, to some degree). It absolutely is possible. I know WAY too many members who do it, even pretty blatantly and obviously, to believe the Church won’t let it happen.
Quote:I cannot be a full fledged member while I believe that. They may let me in the building, but they won’t let me eat at the table as long as I believe that way.
Same answer. I know LOTS of members who are full-fledged members who believe that way and “eat at the table”.
I’ve found that “the (global) Church” can overlook and even embrace members with lots of radically different views, as long as they aren’t actively trying to convert others to those views and are actively serving and living the Gospel. The (local) church can be a different story, unfortunately, but “The Church” is much less likely to exclude than many who are struggling assume, ime.
Ray: Quote:“I’ve found that “the (global) Church” can overlook and even embrace members with lots of radically different views, as long as they are actively trying to convert others to those views and are actively serving and living the Gospel.”
I’m guessing you mean “as long as they are NOT actively trying to convert others to those views” don’t you?
Like galileo, the Book of Mormon is my major question at the moment. I almost feel the whole thing will stand or fall for me on where I reach with the BoM.
I want to include ‘inspired fiction’ in the list of options… But I’m not sure I can. I need mental gymnastics to make that an option.
Did Joseph have gold plates or not? If he did, then there’s something of substance, maybe historical. Or possibly a prop to aid his inspired but non-historical dictation.
If there were no plates, then he’s a fraud, at least on some measure. What was under the blanket that people felt and hefted? What did the 8 witnesses see (not supernatural). Did he con them, or are they all in on the fraud too?
I want there to be a middle way with the BoM because I love the words, regardless. But I’m not sure that the Gold Plates claim makes that option available.
Yeah, that’s a serious typo. I fixed it. Thanks!
For me there are just too many questionable things that point to the fact that Joseph didn’t have gold plates. (That much language couldn’t fit on the described plates, didn’t refer to them during translation, etc..). I’m trying to figure this out myself, but maybe what we can do is to think of it as if we were studying the Koran or the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, or any other self-help book. It doesn’t matter if they are “true”. What can I learn from them to improve my life? I can pick out things that will help me, and ignore what doesn’t. Tim wrote:For me there are just too many questionable things that point to the fact that Joseph didn’t have gold plates. (
That much language couldn’t fit on the described plates, didn’t refer to them during translation, etc..). I’m trying to figure this out myself, but maybe what we can do is to think of it as if we were studying the Koran or the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, or any other self-help book. It doesn’t matter if they are “true”. What can I learn from them to improve my life? I can pick out things that will help me, and ignore what doesn’t. Bold mine… where do you get that from? Given ancient scripts would often have 1 character per word (not 1 character per letter) you can say a lot more with a little space. E.g. on the Chinese version of Twitter (weibo) you still only get 140 characters… but that’s a whole paragraph of text. Where does he describe the size of the plates which people interpret to be too small?
I would feel more comfortable with it being like the Koran or Bhagavad Gita if it was presented as those two are… their own revelations… not the miraculous translation of someone else’s.
mackay11 wrote:Like galileo, the Book of Mormon is my major question at the moment.
I almost feel the whole thing will stand or fall for me on where I reach with the BoM.
I know it’s hard to control our emotions, but by falling back into this you’re accepting the black and white view of things. I know such has been expressed by many (such as Elder Holland) on more than one occasion. But it’s just not true. I just don’t think we can say that all stands or falls based on any one thing.
Quote:I want to include ‘inspired fiction’ in the list of options… But I’m not sure I can. I need mental gymnastics to make that an option.
Did Joseph have gold plates or not? If he did, then there’s something of substance, maybe historical. Or possibly a prop to aid his inspired but non-historical dictation.
If there were no plates, then he’s a fraud, at least on some measure. What was under the blanket that people felt and hefted? What did the 8 witnesses see (not supernatural). Did he con them, or are they all in on the fraud too?
I want there to be a middle way with the BoM because I love the words, regardless. But I’m not sure that the Gold Plates claim makes that option available.
I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. There just isn’t enough evidence to prove or disprove the plates existed. So each of us will make a choice as to which way we want to believe. Myself, I’ve chosen to believe the plates existed for the sole reason that it makes stayingLDS much easier. Why not? If intellectual means can’t prove it one way or another then I must make a choice about which way to believe. So I choose to give JS the benefit of the doubt and that he was not being fraudulent but they actually existed as he said. That being said I choose not to believe they are 100% historically accurate. Again, the evidence may be inconclusive but I feel currently leans that way. I absolutely don’t believe it’s a word for word translation of the plates and feel that such is supported by the evidence.There’s a saying that a bad tree can’t bring forth good fruit. It’s often used to prove the idea that we can judge something (or someone) by its fruit. I reject this premise when using it as analogy about people. I think even bad people can do good things. I think of the presentation of the garden in the temple when Satan (presumably evil) led Eve to do that which was necessary and therefore good. Regardless of this being literal or not it makes the point that even someone totally evil could actually advance the plan of God. So, even if JS was evil and fraudulent in all he did (I don’t believe that he was) there’s no reason to rule out God using him to do a great work regardless and that he actually did restore lost truths necessary for our spiritual growth.
Using the same story, we see that Adam and Eve were placed in the garden in order to give them an opportunity to use their agency. In some ways I see similarity to a faith crisis where we are stripped of our perfect knowledge (or blind faith). We are placed in a metaphorical Garden of Eden. We are now in place spiritually where we can make a choice, use our agency to choose for ourselves what we will do and what we will believe. Where before we had a world view that threw out opposing views, thus limiting what we could or would really choose, now we have expanded our world view to see the opposing views as valid options. What do we want out of life? Do we want to believe that this is all random chance and frame all our choices in this way or do we want to believe in a higher power that has a plan for us and use this as our lens for making choices? (Highly recommend reading The God Who Weeps) Intellectually I have made the choice. I choose to stayLds. I choose to believe (even if in a somewhat unorthodox way). Now I’m waiting for the emotional and spiritual side to get on board.
mackay11 wrote:
Bold mine… where do you get that from? Given ancient scripts would often have 1 character per word (not 1 character per letter) you can say a lot more with a little space. E.g. on the Chinese version of Twitter (weibo) you still only get 140 characters… but that’s a whole paragraph of text. Where does he describe the size of the plates which people interpret to be too small?
I’ve actually done a study on this by looking at how much space various language translations (including Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, and even Ancient Egyptian) of the same sections of the Old Testament took (used the Rosetta Stone for Ancient Egyptian) and fit it onto a 6″ x 8″ MS Word Document, compared the “compression ratio” of one language to the other along with the smallest “scribable” english font to compare how many words could fit. The plates were described by Joseph and other witnesses as about 6″ x 8″ x 6″ thick and weighing between 40 and 60 lbs. 2/3rds of the stack was sealed, and of the unsealed portion 116 pages were lost. Based on this there is a good article done by a SHIELD author here:http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/Tumbaga.htm Tim wrote:mackay11 wrote:
Bold mine… where do you get that from? Given ancient scripts would often have 1 character per word (not 1 character per letter) you can say a lot more with a little space. E.g. on the Chinese version of Twitter (weibo) you still only get 140 characters… but that’s a whole paragraph of text. Where does he describe the size of the plates which people interpret to be too small?
I’ve actually done a study on this by looking at how much space various language translations (including Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, and even Ancient Egyptian) of the same sections of the Old Testament took (used the Rosetta Stone for Ancient Egyptian) and fit it onto a 6″ x 8″ MS Word Document, compared the “compression ratio” of one language to the other along with the smallest “scribable” english font to compare how many words could fit. The plates were described by Joseph and other witnesses as about 6″ x 8″ x 6″ thick and weighing between 40 and 60 lbs. 2/3rds of the stack was sealed, and of the unsealed portion 116 pages were lost. Based on this there is a good article done by a SHIELD author here:http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/Tumbaga.htm Yes, I’d be very interested to take a look at that. Thanks. If this is the case it makes it seem even more likely that this is ‘inspired dictation’ but not ‘direct translation.’
If a single symbol like an ampersand were used for “and it came to pass” then most of the plates would be empty.
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