So while it is clever to couch this as a problem in the “culture” because that is non-threatening, and also simultaneously strokes the brethren, ultimately it has it exactly backwards.  Until the brethren stop asserting that their words are counsel from God (never going to happen) people won’t stop treating their words that way.    This is not a problem with a solution, IMO.  It is endemic to a system that claims authority.  

Specifically:
#8 – throw out the baby with the bathwater mentality – to me, there are great passages and messages I love in the BoA, despite the details of the origin. Why throw them all out if they make sense to me and I love them?
#4 – scriptures may contain human error – any process of revelation is a mystery, they stand the test of time because they are divinely inspired.
#1 – Our current understanding of things is incomplete – fires, lost records, revelation … there are lots of things that cloud or cause doubt around the scriptures and their origin… why must we prove it is 100% accurate to accept the teachings of it? The teachings can be believed through a spiritual witness of the principles they teach regardless of intellectual or scientific authentication.

I guess, I agree with Hawkgrrrl…basically points 1-10 cover it. That was the point of the OP.
Mr. Ainsworth said it best: “one of the most needed changes in Mormon culture is to eliminate Church members’ tendency to elevate the Church, its leaders, and its doctrines to a mythical state of perfection and completeness”

All things being equal — maybe. But things stopped being equal right about the time Eve chomped on an apple. No two people are ever perfectly equal in their susceptibility to error.

Case in point: My (non-LDS) mother-in-law is one of the most credulous, unreasoning, unreflective people I know. Faced with (say) an anti-Obama chain e-mail, she will invariably glom onto it like a bass on a nightcrawler, and take it as gospel. It is not lacking in humility, but simple fact, that I (notwithstanding that I don’t think highly of Mr. Obama) have cultivated some intellectual tools that she has not, that make her more susceptible to certain kinds of errors than I am.

So no, neither humility nor intellectual honesty require me to assume that any given Church leader’s judgment is at least as reliable as mine. When I see a Church leader displaying signs that he has cultivated habits of sloppy reasoning, or of drawing conclusions that don’t follow from the premises, I do not have to ignore those signs that at least as to those matters, the leader’s judgment is likely to be unreliable.

My 13 year old “stumbled upon” this today and, I think, really benefited from it. Thank you!

MTYOD

“The Prophet Joseph Smith acknowledged that “some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil.” (B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 1:163.)”

What percentage of revelations were from God? How much was from himself and how much from Satan? These answers are quoted directly from Joseph Smith himself, so they cannot be misquoted. Joseph Smith could have had a face-to-face with Satan rather than Jesus and been justified in his own eyes to say that it was Jesus Christ. This woud have been perfectly acceptable to his early followers because of his personality, not because he was inspired by God. Open your eyes and ears, people! look at your temple ceremonies and temple garments, and their masonic symbols and influence (Joseph Smith was a Mason before he wrote the temple ceremonies), Look at your temples themselves, with signs of the masons, wiccans and other occult/Kaballah symbolism.

2 Ne. 3: 5
5 Wherefore, Joseph truly saw our day. And he obtained a promise of the Lord, that out of the fruit of his loins the Lord God would raise up a righteous branch unto the house of Israel; not the Messiah, but a branch which was to be broken off, nevertheless, to be remembered in the covenants of the Lord that the Messiah should be made manifest unto them in the latter days, in the spirit of power, unto the bringing of them out of darkness unto light—yea, out of hidden darkness and out of captivity unto freedom.

Freedom. We don’t lead from the top down, but support from the bottom up. That’s why hometeaching is so awesome. We get in the trenches and we become the communication matrix of the church. What’s the first thing you do in war? Break down communications.

Freedom is the fundamental principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without it we could not have chosen to follow God’s plan. Without freedom, we cannot choose to obey. Without freedom, we are slaves, like the dirt and trees that obey the laws set down for them, which is few, we will never obtain God-hood.

Hence the reason for the Holy Ghost. It teaches us the truth of all things. Moroni 10:5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. Hence the brilliant plan of God is complete. Without freedom it’s not religion. Allegorically, it becomes a military creed, a socialistic banding, a communistic path. That’s not religion.

Indeed, we are faced with the same things that Lehi, Enoch, Moses, and Mahonri faced, when the controllers of the religious government were corrupt and they were inspired by the Holy Ghost to leave and seek out a new land. A land of freedom.

#
D&C 98: 5
5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.

#
D&C 106: 1
1 It is my will that my servant Warren A. Cowdery should be appointed and ordained a presiding high priest over my church, in the land of Freedom and the regions round about;

Alma 61: 15
15 Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them.

Ether 8: 25
For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out from the beginning.

The hardest thing for us to deal with is the Bossy leaders then denying us privileges. Because my friend had has multiple arguments and a couple of heated debates, he attends a different ward with his kids. Now his son is ready to be ordained a priest and the Bishop won’t let my friend ordain him because “You don’t sustain your local leaders.” How controlling! He uses that to punish my friend! The Bishop has the option of using his brain and saying, “hmmm, this man is a worthy person, he doesn’t like me but that’s okay, so to smooth the situation over, I’ll let him ordain his son.” Instead, he holds the “Office of the Bishop” like reins and a whip.

No wonder so many people leave the church. My own ward is down to 30% activity. It hurts my heart to see the people punished.

For instance, 2 Nephi 14:5 is the same as Isaiah 4:5. The KJV incorrectly translates the Hebrew word chuppah as “canopy,” when the proper translation is “defense.”

Another example is 2 Nephi 15:25, which is the same as Isaiah 5:25. The KJV incorrectly translates the Hebrew word cuwchah as “filth,” when the proper translation is “torn.”

If Moroni buried the plates in the Hill Cummorah not long after AD 420, why is it that the Book of Mormon includes the KJV translation errors which didn’t occur until almost 1,200 years later? How could the Book of Mormon contain anything from the King James Bible?

Love everybody!

Peace be with you brethren.

These two positions seem to contradict one another and the way most Mormons I know resolve this conflict is to focus on just one side of the coin while ignoring or dismissing the other side. The fallacy with this logic is that both sides are indeed true and need to be mingled together in one harmonious doctrine rather than being kept separated from one another. I noticed that many of the quotes on this blog from former prophets only cite one side of the coin. I believe it was Brigham Young who also taught that if we follow our leaders we can sleep safely like a baby in its mother’s arms. Another prophet said that we can be assured that the President of the church will never lead us astray. The moment he seeks to do so the Lord will remove him. In Primary we teach the children in song to “Follow the Prophet.” Isaiah was a fallible man as was Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Alma, and Mormon but we don’t question what they wrote, saying that we should determine for ourselves if their teaching are correct or not. I would think as Latter-day Saints we should accord our current prophets the same attitude. In fact, the Church itself has recently instituted a priesthood program entitled “the teachings of our times” whereby we use the most current GC addresses as our study text. Obviously, they don’t think these conference addresses contains errors in them.

While I agree with much that has been said on this blog about questioning what our church leaders say (and I tend to ask myself a lot of questions in that regard) my fear is that those who are looking for a reason not to obey their leaders will misinterpret such a position to justify their actions. Coming from a Protestant background (I’m the only member of my family who is LDS) I hear all the time that we should not follow man but God. In effect what they are saying is that we have no authority to depend on except ourselves. That attitude is what has led to there being over 50,000 different Christian religions in the world today with everyone thinking they are the only ones who are right because there is no one authority who can settle these differences of opinion. If we don’t have someone who we depend on as our final authority in spiritual matters, when we are too quick to dismiss the teaching of our leaders because we think this or that teaching is uninspired, we then set ourselves up as being the final authority on what’s right and what’s wrong. If that attitude takes hold in our church it won’t be long before there are 50,000 different sects of Mormonism. I feel that it is extremely important not to focus on just one side of the coin. Both sides are true and both sides need to be kept in harmony balance with one another. At least, that’s my two cents worth of opinion.

So did you. Actually, you were only quoting someone else, so I’m not sure yours counts.

You could at least spell the god’s name right.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/bacchus.html

Dionysus, also commonly known by his Roman name Bacchus, appears to be a god who has two distinct origins. On the one hand, Dionysus was the god of wine, agriculture, and fertility of nature, who is also the patron god of the Greek stage. On the other hand, Dionysus also represents the outstanding features of mystery religions, such as those practiced at Eleusis: ecstasy, personal delivery from the daily world through physical or spiritual intoxication, and initiation into secret rites. Scholars have long suspected that the god known as Dionysus is in fact a fusion of a local Greek nature god, and another more potent god imported rather late in Greek pre-history from Phrygia (the central area of modern day Turkey) or Thrace.

Dionysus

According to one myth, Dionysus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman, Semele (daughter of Cadmus of Thebes). Semele is killed by Zeus’ lightning bolts while Dionysus is still in her womb. Dionysus is rescued and undergoes a second birth from Zeus after developing in his thigh. Zeus then gives the infant to some nymphs to be raised. In another version, one with more explicit religious overtones, Dionysus, also referred to as Zagreus in this account, is the son of Zeus and Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Hera gets the Titans to lure the infant with toys, and then they rip him to shreds eating everything but Zagreus’ heart, which is saved by either Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus remakes his son from the heart and implants him in Semele who bears a new Dionysus Zagreus. Hence, as in the earlier account, Dionysus is called “twice born.” The latter account formed a part of the Orphic religion’s religious mythology.

It does seem clear that Dionysus, at least the Phrygian Dionysus, was a late arrival in the Greek world and in Greek mythology. He is hardly mentioned at all in the Homeric epics, and when he is it is with some hostility. A number of his stories are tales of how Dionysus moved into a city, was resisted, and then destroyed those who opposed him. The most famous account of this is that of Euripides in his play the Bacchae. He wrote this play while in the court of King Archelaus of Macedon, and nowhere do we see Dionysus more destructive and his worship more dangerous than in this play. Scholars have speculated not unreasonably that in Macedon Euripides discovered a more extreme form of the religion of Dionysus being practiced than the more civil, quiet forms in Athens.

Briefly, Dionysus returns to Thebes, his putative birthplace, where his cousin Pentheus is king. He has returned to punish the women of Thebes for denying that he was a god and born of a god. Pentheus is enraged at the worship of Dionysus and forbids it, but he cannot stop the women, including his mother Agave, or even the elder statesmen of the kingdom from swarming to the wilds to join the Maenads (a term given to women under the ecstatic spell of Dionysus) in worship. Dionysus lures Pentheus to the wilds where he is killed by the Maenads and then mutilated by Agave.

A song sung in honor of Dionysus is called a dithyramb.

Thanks for flaming. I find several parts of your statement without merit and there are a few tips that you might want to consider in your (more than likely) continued trolling and inevitable flaming.

First, spelling is essential to making a good “flame” on a message board. Learning to spell lends a little credibility to your argument.

Second, there are several “facts” you mention that I fail to find any merit behind (through both library and internet searches). Your “Deyonesis,” a “Roman God,” was actually Dionysus, a Greek God (the Roman equivalent being Bacchus). He was not born of a virgin, he was fathered by Zeus.

I find no stories of Dionysus raising the dead, nor suffering in a garden, tough the changing Water to Wine fact wouldn’t surprise me seeing as how he was looked on as the god of wine.

Please also understand that much of what we know of these “gods” was from theatrical plays and oral stories, more commonly known as the imaginations of men.

In response to your first argument, that infallibility is in fact circular logic indicating that we stand for nothing, please understand that no man (prophet, pope, llama, magistrate or elected official) is perfect. That being said, I fail to understand how a recognition of our own imperfections amounts to circular logic equating us as “weak sheep.” Quite the contrary, as listed in point 9 above, we are to question our leaders (something almost unheard of in modern religion). This would infer that we are not “weak sheep” as you so imaginatively put it, but rather free thinkers with not only the right, but the encouragement to question our spiritual leaders.

I hope this post doesn’t offend you or upset you, as that was not my intention. Contention is not the purpose. I wish you well in your future flames. Take care.