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Roy wrote:
Quote:Have you ever read Bennion’s book….”Religion and the Pursuit of Truth”?
I did! Lowell Bennion has a number of books with similar themes. I believe he was teaching institute classes at the time (60’s or 70’s) and his books seem geared towards young people leaving their parents homes and discovering in University information that contradicts their earlier religious understandings.
Bro. Bennion advises a degree of compartmentailisation and an effort to stay well rounded. Religion can be like music or art – he argues. Science has it’s truths and science can provide many useful methods for descirbing and deconstructing a masterpiece – but at the core, a masterpiece is a masterpiece because of how it is felt by the human heart. So learn and become successful in secular pursuits but do not allow that portion of your life to completely smother the more spiritual side of art, music, and religion. Those too are needed for a “balanced” and well rounded life.
Good summary, Roy. The balanced, well-rounded life is what spoke to me as I read it. I think I am not so inspired by art as maybe others are. But I don’t dismiss it and do find I can work harder to further appreciate it, even if it is not natural to me. I have been influenced by Joseph Campbell, Eckhart Tolle, and others who suggest there is a good place to embrace the myths and religious perspective…but accept them for what they are, and realize there is a place for other types of approaches too, like science, for things in the scientific realm.
Wisdom comes from knowing when to apply the different approaches for a fulfilling life. There is still a place for religion in my life, even if I disagree with others at church on how far to take it.
Secular knowledge has helped us a lot…I don’t know why people in church want to minimize or attack it unnecessarily. Maybe because it is more difficult to balance things than to just make it black and white.
Heber13 wrote:
Dkormond wrote:
From his work he defined what a cult is. His definition burrows deal into my soul.1.) Cults control information.
2.) Cult Leaders are chosen by God and considered infallible.
3.) Cults demand purity
4.) Cults demand confession of imagined sins.
5.)Cult doctrines are inflexible.
6.) Cults Load the language
7.) Cult doctrine trumps experience
8.) Cult doctrine trumps existence
I think that is an interesting list. I have not read Robert Lifton, but that sounds interesting. I may have to check that out and put it on my list.[…]
Regarding cults…I wonder how many religions are described by that list, and perhaps there is a
sliding scaleon some definitions of those things. I can see shades of it in the LDS church, but also not necessarily to unhealthy extremes.
You might be able to check a lot of boxes by using a cult checklist to evaluate your family or certain companies.
To even approach being a valid psychological instrument, they would have to use a
Likert scaleAnother reason they’re not good science is that “a lot of checked boxes” hasn’t been shown to correlate with any other traits or outcomes.
At best, you can use them as a tool for introspection. At worst, you can use them as pseudo-scientific evidence to back up your claim that a group you don’t like is harmful. Roy wrote:
Bro. Bennion advises a degree of compartmentailisation and an effort to stay well rounded. Religion can be like music or art – he argues. Science has it’s truths and science can provide many useful methods for descirbing and deconstructing a masterpiece – but at the core, a masterpiece is a masterpiece because of how it is felt by the human heart. So learn and become successful in secular pursuits but do not allow that portion of your life to completely smother the more spiritual side of art, music, and religion. Those too are needed for a “balanced” and well rounded life.
Is this a different sort of compartmentalization than what President Oaks advises? This is how I read Oaks:
1. All truth is self-consistent.
2. Scientific truth and religious truth are independent.
3. If science seems to be in conflict with religion, it’s actually not because they’re independent. Science must be overreaching.
The kind of progressive compartmentalization I’ve seen the most goes something like this:
1. There are many ways of reasoning about the world, many of which are enriching. Two are science and religion.
2. Reason about each using its own epistemology. Use each where it makes sense.
3. If there’s a conflict, resolve it by erring on the side of goodness and compassion.
President Oaks’s claim of independence is a much stronger form of compartmentalization. I imagine it as a big circle (drawn by a compass, perhaps?) with a line separating one half from another. The progressive believer would draw a lot of overlapping circles. A nerdy one might color-code the resulting regions by application area.
Independence affords religious belief the most protection, so I can see why it’s attractive to him.
Reuben wrote:
The progressive believer would draw a lot of overlapping circles. A nerdy one might color-code the resulting regions by application area.
I like it!
Some people pursue and construct intellectual or secular knowledge / understanding around their emotional or religious foundation; others pursue and construct emotional or religious knowledge / understanding around their intellectual or secular foundation. In other words, most people “study it out in their hearts and in their minds”, but the order they use in the process can differ.
I am a thinker-analyst first, who then determines how I feel about what I analyze; my wife is a feeler-analyst first, who then determines how she thinks about what she feels.
The dominant, but not exclusive, orientation for top religious leaders is feeler-analyst. It is what it is.
Tell you what I find incredibly secular. Gender roles and gender essentialism that are lifted right out of Fox News (not to mention the Handmaid’s Tale). That’s mixing secular views with religion.
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