Flat Earth Theories and Young Earth Creationism

[Anonymous]

I don’t think you have outstayed your welcome here:)

Gender-and-Identity Closet

Quote:

What brought me to this place was my discomfort over discovering (relatively recently) that there is a significant number of skeletons in the Church’s gender-and-identity closet. Now that I’m here, however, I guess I’m taking the opportunity to dredge up some things I increasingly perceive as nonsensical to get a second opinion. Maybe someone here will allay my concerns, or maybe they’ll just figuratively shrug and tell me I shouldn’t be so literal.

That sounds like Fowler’s Stage 4 Deconstruction themes – which is great:)

There are lots of threads here that provide additional opinions, and people are here to “shoot the breeze” on new wrinkles to old topics. Are you looking for emotional validation (you are correct to judge topics as “nonsensical”), or thought experiments (brainstorming random reasons) or both?

The biggest source of tension in the gender-and-identity closet in my opinion is that doctrinally, a person’s salvation (and place in the mortal community) depends on their biological gender-based performance (nurturing kids and husbands properly, providing and leading properly) and orientation-based performance (“stay in your biological gender lane” in terms of sexual preference, appearance, etc.).

There are tons of writings on different blogs about the intersection of LDS/Mormon and “gender” and “performance. An above average amount will be about harms and trauma that befell an individual because that individual could not/would not meet gender-based performance expectations.

I am saddened to inform you, that if anything – the church as an organization has more skeletons in the closet then you are already aware of (and you strike me as a person who is aware of a lot of stuff and becoming more aware regularly).

As a probable ASD person myself, very little is “too literal”

And my literalness has gotten me in social trouble at church.

Questions

1) I don’t think you will really find the consistency you crave, sorry. I don’t think that the consistency exists to be found. The only consistency I have found is:

[Anonymous]

AmyJ wrote:

…the church organization no longer allows women to sit on the stand as authorized leaders in meetings

Thanks, Amy. I came here with a “walletful” of questions, but now I feel like I have a “suitcaseful.”

Out of interest, how did you come to learn about women not sitting on the stand in an official capacity? I don’t remember reading that anywhere, and our stake president recently (within the past three or four months) commissioned women stake leaders to sit on the stand while visiting a unit in an official capacity. That was in place for less than a month when he subsequently retracted it, saying it should stop with immediate effect on account of instruction he received at an area-level meeting.

[Anonymous]

Carburettor wrote:

AmyJ wrote:

…the church organization no longer allows women to sit on the stand as authorized leaders in meetings

Out of interest, how did you come to learn about women not sitting on the stand in an official capacity? I don’t remember reading that anywhere, and our stake president recently (within the past three or four months) commissioned women stake leaders to sit on the stand while visiting a unit in an official capacity. That was in place for less than a month when he subsequently retracted it, saying it should stop with immediate effect on account of instruction he received at an area-level meeting.

There is a whole news cycle about it in the last 6 months (ish) and I follow blogs at the intersection of Feminists and LDS identities*. Evidently, in San Francisco (I think), there had become a recognized tradition spanning years that Stake level women leaders sat on the stand for some stake and ward meetings and were not there to fulfill an official speaking capacity. The church organization made an official decision that this was no longer acceptable and advised accordingly. It would not surprise me if your stake leader heard about the tradition, thought it was a good and felt inspired to implement it, and then got shot down at roughly the same time the San Francisco (I think it is San Francisco) group did.

I am feeling too lazy to google-search it, but “LDS women on the stand” would be a good search term start probably.

Carburettor wrote:

Thanks, Amy. I came here with a “walletful” of questions, but now I feel like I have a “suitcaseful.”

That is deconstruction at it’s best. Seriously – I think it’s worth your research and introspection to look into “Fowler’s Stage 4”.

The Suitcase

When I hit a suitcase-ful or so, I felt burdened and overwhelmed.

I felt that I could deflect and make it about “dishonesty” and “the other guy’s fault” and expend my anger that way. However, I am not hugely fond of emotion and that felt like a waste of my emotional energy (which I hoard) and attention – so I went the path of radical acceptance.

I accept that a lot of good and bad stuff happened because of the church policy, church teachings, church culture, and how it got transmuted into local teachings and culture, and family teachings and culture.

I accept that the church organization probably made a ton of risky choices because “it seemed like a good idea at the time” and “everyone else – including the evangelicals was doing it”.

I accept that the church organization made a lot of calls that I contest as “harmful” because in part, they harmed me. Some of those calls were going to be “calls that someone got hurt in” and they went for the “least broken eggs” effect on some demographic calculation. Some of those calls are going to be “legacy-induced” because of what leaders before them said and did.

* Commentary

The whole “gender and identity” conflict that started you down this path is beyond “sexual identity” and includes “role identity” and “core identity” work.

The moral authority of the LDS church as an organization due to doctrinal or cultural concerns does not innately play nicely with “feminists”, “scholars” or the entire non-cis and/or non-hetero populations. To a degree, there is also tension between the medical and mental health fields and church teachings as well – but that’s usually because the medical and mental health specialists are picking up the pieces of humans that got traumatized by how church teachings were interpreted “at home, at school, at play” and how religious environment expectations do contribute to self-shaming, OCD, and a host of other mindsets.

In addition, the “one size fits all” expectation of the church does not accommodate family bonding, neurodiversity and disability nearly as well as the church organization thinks it does. Whether it is the lack of organized child support for leadership meetings, not enough support for male leadership and their families, or just taking off the ward the executive functioning demand to clean the church – the church as an organization relies on the executive functioning of women and local leaders to stealthily provide whatever else is needed. This is usually in the heading of “loss of community” as mostly women are no longer necessarily available to “provide whatever else is needed” and other organizations provide “more effective” and “more

That was in part why the church leadership did the September 6 excommunications, why Sam Young’s protocol updates to invite parents into some children and teenager interviews (challenging the priesthood authority by addressing sexual safety concerns of outright sexual abuse and/or potential sexual trauma through inappropriate questions), and why other decisions have played out the way they have in terms of interactions between the church organization and its members, in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

AmyJ wrote:

That is deconstruction at it’s best. Seriously – I think it’s worth your research and introspection to look into “Fowler’s Stage 4”.

I confess I’ve had no previous reason to check out Fowler. Perhaps it’s time. I’ve heard the name — although only from Americans.

I do find it fascinating to read what you and others write. It makes me realize how culturally different non-Americans are from Church membership in Utah and the strip, if that’s what it’s called.

You speak of news feeds and stuff that do not even register with me as a thing. Outside the U.S., Church life is so relatively straightforward. There are no such news feeds; no public figures who speak out in favor of or against the organization. Our experience is swaddled in cotton wool. Our experience of Church must be like that of a child visiting a supermarket. We notice that there are sections — like where the fruit and veg sit, and there’s a place to buy cereal. Beyond that, however, we see nothing unless there’s a disturbance.

Perhaps that’s why I give the impression of being a trouble-maker when I’m simply bewildered. It may be why I feel to some extent like Dorothy who has an inkling that the great wizard isn’t all he’s making himself out to be — whereas you lot have actually seized his megaphone, and some folks have even indicted him.

“September 6 excommunications”? No idea. “Sam Young”? Never heard of him/her.

I feel so poorly informed. We live the Disney version over here.

[Anonymous]

I hadn’t heard of James Fowler or the phases until I grew into my faith transition – so that is something I can relate to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Fowler

Culture

My heritage is mostly LDS adjacent – my parents were converts to the church from Southern California. While I have pioneer ancestry (even in Utah), 2 generations of “black sheep” nonactive individuals created an environment where my grandfather was probably agnostic (if not outright atheist) and my father settled into a mostly deistic point of view – even 20+ years ago. My mother came from a standard lapsed Lutheran tradition.

Culture Notes

“Utah Mormons” – Usually have pioneer ancestry and end up with a fair degree of culture shock outside of Utah. They generally have specific cultural expectations that “the mission field” doesn’t have. “Utah Mormons” had seminary classes as a class in their high schools with paid seminary teachers (or so I have heard). I have also heard that their wards spanned city blocks (instead of state counties). You may have senior missionaries or been exposed to other leaders who might fit this category.

“Other Mormons” – This category can include “Idaho” and “Arizona” Mormons (who might act more like “Utah” Mormons). It is usually a more accurately fitting description for “California” and “Mission Field” Mormons who were the minority in their local communities. There was a fair amount of pragmatic accommodation of cultural considerations. The entire “I’m A Mormon” PR campaign 10-15 years ago ish was in part an attempt to have conversations between Mormons and Non-Mormons about what “being Mormon” could look like in a lot of diverse ways.

“Mormons Outside America” – I know this category exists. I am not qualified to speak beyond that. I knew a handful of non-American Mormons, primarily a few missionaries, and 1 sister from Scotland. My dad actually served a mission back in the day in Scotland and I was exposed to his stories. Gina Colvin was a blogger who examined a lot of cultural stuff between Mormonism and Australian culture – but I don’t know how accurate or useful Gina’s perspective would be.

Commentary

Mormonism was founded in part because of and despite American history. And… It’s complicated.

My husband is an American historian by training, so I learned a fair about of history in self defense (not that I wasn’t interested in history in general… but still self-defense) and I can try to include more historical background context a bit.

[Anonymous]

Carburettor wrote:

AmyJ wrote:

That is deconstruction at it’s best. Seriously – I think it’s worth your research and introspection to look into “Fowler’s Stage 4”.

I confess I’ve had no previous reason to check out Fowler. Perhaps it’s time. I’ve heard the name — although only from Americans.

I do find it fascinating to read what you and others write. It makes me realize how culturally different non-Americans are from Church membership in Utah and the strip, if that’s what it’s called.

You speak of news feeds and stuff that do not even register with me as a thing. Outside the U.S., Church life is so relatively straightforward. There are no such news feeds; no public figures who speak out in favor of or against the organization. Our experience is swaddled in cotton wool. Our experience of Church must be like that of a child visiting a supermarket. We notice that there are sections — like where the fruit and veg sit, and there’s a place to buy cereal. Beyond that, however, we see nothing unless there’s a disturbance.

Perhaps that’s why I give the impression of being a trouble-maker when I’m simply bewildered. It may be why I feel to some extent like Dorothy who has an inkling that the great wizard isn’t all he’s making himself out to be — whereas you lot have actually seized his megaphone, and some folks have even indicted him.

“September 6 excommunications”? No idea. “Sam Young”? Never heard of him/her.

I feel so poorly informed. We live the Disney version over here.

I have a few points to make:

1. Amy didn’t say anything about a “feed” but she did mention a cycle. Following LDS news isn’t difficult. Regularly checking in at Deseret.com and SLTrib.com will keep one apprised of most of what’s going on in Utah and beyond in the church. No need to poke around the blogosphere unless you want. You will find that stories which are more “negative” will probably be more likely to be found on the Tribune site, and that’s where you can find several articles written about the news cycle Amy mentioned about women on the stand. It would appear that your experience with instruction from the AA was directly related to this (IOW it was not limited to Utah or the US). Google is your friend, I’m also too lazy to look it up for you. September 6? There’s a great Wikipedia summary that you’ll find via Google. You’ll have to dig a little deeper to find Sam Young because he’s old news but I’ll give you the clue that he was an ex-bishop who was excommunicated (and it was excommunication at the time). Places like this are where you are likely to hear stuff about such things. And we have a search function which I know you’ve used from seeing other posts – Sam Young and the September Six have both been discussed as have other major news points. I’d wager most members aren’t aware of any of these issues, but only because they don’t pay attention (Muggles don’t notice much, do they?) or don’t care. I don’t even think most members are aware of the essays, but you wouldn’t be unless you’re paying attention. Unless you live in the world’s wilderness areas you’re as insulated as you want to be.

2. This is not the first time you’ve sort of lumped all American members with the Mormon Corridor crowd. Outside the Corridor (mostly Utah, southern Idaho, and northern Arizona) members are far more similar to those outside the US than those in Utah. I do recognize that some areas of the church (much of South America, for example) are far more conservative than much of the US and the church there resembles the church of the 1980s much more than the modern church. Nevertheless, non-Corridor members tend to be far different than their Corridor counterparts. Where I live members are less than a quarter of a percent of the population of the county, and my wife and I are the only members in our village of ~500. We are fortunate that we only need to drive 10 miles to church, many of our ward members (the ward is larger than the county) drive upwards of 30 miles. And so you have some other perspective none of the more active admin/moderator team live in the Corridor.

3. There is tons on info on the internet about Fowler, and as fate would have it, we have our own pinned discussion of Fowler’s stages right here in the support section. https://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?t=557” class=”bbcode_url”>https://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?t=557 Not everyone subscribes to Fowler’s ideas, and I don’t fit neatly into any one stage.

4. This is where I’m going to be very blunt. We have had an ongoing discussion about some of your posts for some time in the moderator’s only sections. I wouldn’t say we see you as a troublemaker. We do find some incongruities (contradictions) in some of what you say and that does raise some red flags for us. Mostly though it’s not what you say, it’s how you present it. We value the more conservative/orthodox church viewpoint because most of us are much more heterodox at this point (although all of the moderators and regular contributors were once orthodox). What we have trouble with is strict black & white interpretation without room for those viewpoints which might be more gray or even full living color. We also frown on confrontational posts/statements. We understand the written word can be hard to interpret because of the lack of inflection, etc. But an example might be your challenge to Old Timer regarding his membership status. I’m not going to answer that question for OT, although I do know the answer. What I am going to do is point out that you come off very much holier than thou in that point, and believe me you are not.

5. Lastly, in that moderator discussion we have talked about how we can help you. Until today, I was unaware you had a wallet or suitcase full of questions. I see lots of statements but few questions and the one main question you seemed to have when you came here was answered, although the answers seem to have been wholly rejected. That in itself is fine, it happens. If there are other questions you have please go for it. The caveat here is that the questions need to be related to how we (as a group) can help you StayLDS (or move on if that’s the best course and your choice). Discussion for discussion’s sake is fun, but the truth is our active participants and management team have dwindled to the point where we just don’t have the time or energy to do that any more and there are many other forums where those discussions can take place. But if it’s something that affects your membership or activity, that’s what we’re here for. In some context, if this thread were about “My ward is filled with literal 6,000 year believers and I am having difficulty participating because of this” we might be able to offer some viewpoints or advice that could help you cope (or maybe not but we’d try).

OK, I’ve probably said way too much and I have some gardening to do. (And I was typing at the same time as Amy.)

[Anonymous]

You said to me:

Quote:

Perhaps I’m coming at this from an entirely different angle from others. Are you an active member, Old-Timer? And, if so, do you attend all your meetings week-in-week-out? A simple yes or no will suffice.

Not that it matters, seriously, but, yes, I am and I do.

I am not going to stop there, because a simple yes or no usually doesn’t suffice in these sort of conversations.

I also have held ward and stake leadership callings, multiple times for many years. I have studied and taught history, generally, religious history, generally, and Mormon history, extensively – for many years. I am nowhere close to orthodox in many ways, but I am “faithful” in the purest senses (I attend and participate actively, and I continue to hope for things I can’t see, including continued change). I have absolutely zero expectation for long-term individual organizational consistency, since I see no evidence of it throughout history. Rather, I have faith in improvement and reformation and growth and change over time, since I see lots of evidence of that throughout history (along with the opposite corruption and regression). Do I have a surety of such positive change within individual organizations? No. My study of history deems that to be illogical, pointless, and frustrating. I therefore choose my own faith, even if that is the classic “evidence of things not seen” in some cases. Fortunately, I have seen evidence of positive changes in many important ways in the Church over my lifetime, including in some of the areas that you have identified as bothering you.

That, however, is my own experience. We don’t try to force anyone to have the same experience or view as any of us have, but helping others almost always includes helping them accept organizational imperfections and see things in less black-and-white views.

Fowler’s Stages of Faith are fascinating in that regard.

You need to decide what to do relative to participating here – but I simply would advise you to own whatever decision you make based on a site’s stated purpose and whether or not you feel it can help you. If you stay, great; if you leave, fine. It is your choice. You are not being banned by us, since you haven’t crossed those lines. We want to help – but we also want to know if we can help – which is why I asked what you want from the Church and from us.

[Anonymous]

Wow, I missed a bunch in this discussion.

I relate this to my self through the lens of the stillbirth of my third child. This issue was the catalyst for my FC.

One of the things that I did in my period of mourning was to research and compile every statement that I could about church doctrine and children. I wanted reassurance for myself and my wife that we will have our baby again in the millennium/eternities. Unfortunately, the church does not take a position on whether or not stillborn children “count.”

For a long time this question frustrated me. If the church president doesn’t know the answer could he pray about it and get a revelation on the subject? It seemed like JS could go to God on almost any subject and receive a revelation, why not now?

I looked at this church position/non-position from a number of different angles. I understand the difficulty of drawing a line in the sand. If stillbirths count, then do miscarriages also count? The difference between miscarriage and stillbirth is rather arbitrary for doctrinal purposes. Could giving me and my wife the answer that we crave do harm to somebody else? For example, could it ever be harmful to tell a woman with many miscarriages that all these children will be resurrected at the same time and she will be tasked with caring for them? If a fetus is fully human from a doctrinal position, does that mean that abortion is murder?

Over a process of many years, I have come to a point where I am at peace with the church’s not taking a position. Maybe stillborn/miscarried/aborted children count when the parents want them too and don’t count when they don’t want them too.

In fact, this has given me room to grow into the place where I now occupy. I get to decide what my family looks like in the afterlife. My eternal family is not determined by the power of the sweet elderly man that officiated my temple wedding.

Carburettor wrote:

It may be why I feel to some extent like Dorothy who has an inkling that the great wizard isn’t all he’s making himself out to be

Maybe, like Dorothy in the story, I didn’t need the great wizard to take me and my family (as I define them) back to my heavenly home. Maybe, I held the power within me all along.

I make no claims that my perspective is right and true for anyone else. However, it does seem to be true that our journey to StayLDS sometimes includes making decisions for ourselves about our own knowledge/belief/perspective and not waiting for the church to tell us what we should believe. I know very well that such a process can include much pain and anguish. To me, it feels like a holy path, purified by the tears of those that have forged/walked it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, all. I have much food for thought.

[Anonymous]

I have my own theory on creationism and evolution.

I believe that God doesn’t know exactly how to create things perfectly the first time He does it. Instead, he uses his ability to control time to try the creation of whatever He wants, speeding up time to see the results of different variables in the species as they interact with their environment. Through these actions, He sees what worked, and then goes back to the drawing board with that new knowledge, trying again until He gets it right.

Where am I getting this from?

I teach Monte Carlo simulation at university. I was working on a simulation in Excel where I simulated the operating of a manufacturing facility over 100 days. This was to determine optimal production and inventory levels given uncertain and fluctuating demand, according to historical probability distributions. I realized that in doing this, I was manipulating time to my advantage — in a somewhat Godlike way, through technology.

At roughly the same time, I watched a show on the development of homineds and related species leading to the development of modern homo sapiens. I learned there were many species who lived, procreated, and then eventually became extinct. This had me thinking that these evolutionary lines, which eventually petered out, may well have been God experimenting with different biological “configurations” of human-like beings until He came up with the current configuration of man (person) kind. The current version of humanity is capable of surviving for the long term as an apex preditor, and subduing nature to his own advantage as humanity currently does (albeit, with the risk of destroying the planet. Maybe this is the next phase of our evolution in God’s simulation — to create humans who are capable of advancing technologically without destroying the planet in the process?).

I shared this ONCE privately to someone in priesthood meeting as an aside to a lesson, and he rejected the theory out of hand. But He was a traditional believing Mormon, and you know how that goes amidst people like us here at StayLDS.

Anyway, that’s my current theory of creation.

[Anonymous]

One of the 4 human “core fears” is “loss of identity/uniqueness” and it comes up at random intervals.

While you were looking at the model you were designing from a creator standpoint (creating and refining a model to meet up with parameters), I suspect that your listener clued in on the “being devalued to a parameter to be manipulated/a pawn to moved around” aspect and assumed it was personal instead of abstract.

Shifting the scientific community to a sun-centric instead of earth-centric paradigm had the same problem. It was “debasing humans from the center of the universe” in a literal way. There is still some pushback to this as scientists write the narrative that “we are in a minor side spiral way out from the center of the galaxy – which is one among many, many galaxies out there”.

In my family, whenever I point out that “their problem is likely to have been faced by others and they can research what others have done and make the best decision possible”, I get a lot of pushback – in part, because my family members want to wallow in their experience uniquely rather then potentially have fallen in to a trap like many others who have similar characteristics to them. I also get looks and comments that imply I am very heartless in treating their problems this way. The thing is, I want to reassure my family members that this problem can be overcome (others have done so), and empower them to do so sooner rather then later.

[Author]

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