Yes, I am a former apostate (not the politically-correct “less-active”), but would be uncomfortable calling myself “one of the faithful.” I am in no way “binary.” I hardly fit in with most perennially active members. But then, I ride a Harley most tranditionalist Harley riders call the “Water Boy,” so I don’t fit in with them, either. I question everything, including the apparent difference in spiritual power manifested today vs. Joseph Smith’s day or the days of the Acts of the apostles. No one has been able to adequately explain the disparity in healing, inspiration, and faith of the general population of the Church members. And I refer to the carefully-worded, non-specific priesthood blessings given by uninspired, wishful thinkers (myself included) that leave an out for those who are eventually not healed, how Mark Hofmann was able to dupe President Kimball and the other Brethren when Peter exposed Ananias and Sapphira, and how easily people are offended and throw away their faith over silliness when our ancient counterparts were willing to die for their faith.

Anyway, I stand by my lack of comprehension of how someone could stay, given my hypothetical statements of fact. By the way, when I was on my mission in Italy in 1980, one of my fellow elders subscribed to Sunstone. Sunstone categorized themselves as Liahonas and blind-faith members as Iron Rods. Is that still the case?

I think I read somewhere some stuff on some posts somewhere that I also agree with, that keeping covenants is essential. One can certainly “opt out” and remove one’s names from the records if one wishes, and thereby opt out of covenants, and secure whatever measure of salvation will be gained by the Christian and Pagan world in general who are “good people.” Or perhaps there may even be an even higher measure of salvation gained by those who “swear by their mouth” and accept Jesus. I’ll leave that up to the Lord to sort out.

But then from the point of view of the faithful Mormon, that person who leaves has also opted out of whatever blessings that person would have gained by keeping covenants.

Then there is the point of view of some who believe that they need some time away, and so they “opt out” to sort things out, and then they come back and get rebaptized. But any way you look at it, from the “faithful Mormon” point of view, opting out is a dangerous thing with a lot of risk, that is, if the blessings that come with keeping covenants are of any importance to the person opting out of them.

Does that make sense?

My bigger bit is this: are most members of the church actively excersing faith in Christ, repenting of their sins, and striving to receive the spiritual gifts that can sanctify them and prepare them to live with God? What percentage hope that because they act the part of a good Mormon that they are living the gospel? Are many or few unaquainted with the difference? I think there is a dividing line between the wise and foolish virgins – but it might not be easy to draw that line based on the set of beliefs that are held at any given time,- as that set will always morph with the constant new light received by those who are actually progressing – but between those who are living the _gospel_, and those who are living for something else.

Guy,

Is remaining in the church always a virtue? I left the church, and, in the long term, that did me a wealth of good. I have hoenstly thought that where I was there remained no path forward for me, that I had managed to hedge myself about. My theory is that sometimes we can be so fixed on a low plateau that life can force us to hit the reset button – and that might be a better hope than hanging about with all of one’s disbelief. Each person’s mileage may vary, and I hold out the possibility that I have misunderstood my own experience.

~

Thanks for the link and the good advise…

If I were in your shoes, I would state your intention to them to submit to whatever they would require of you, and do whatever it takes to retain your membership. That’s one lesson “Sunstone Mormons” need to learn. And that is, there is freedom of belief and expression, but they need to keep quit. Seldom do Church courts realize that fact, that beliefs are not to be in question, only behavior.

Truthfully, the following quote is possibly the best thing I’ve ever found that puts everything in perspective as far as disciplinary actions go, and further, since it’s on the Church site, they can’t question it. If they drag you in for disciplinary action, give them this quote from Elder Oaks chew on, and show them that you do not fit the description, which I promise you that you wont. If they try you on grounds of beliefs or lack thereof and not behavior, then they aren’t in the right, and overstepping their bounds:

“We have the concept of apostasy. It is grounds for Church discipline. It is far less frequently grounds for Church discipline than immoral behavior. I think if you had 100 Church excommunications, 98 of them would be for immoral behavior. Two of them, perhaps, or one of a hundred, would be for apostasy.”

“Apostasy, being rare, has to be carefully defined. We have three definitions of apostasy: one is open, public and repeated opposition to the Church or its leaders. Open, public, repeated opposition to the Church or its leaders — I’ll come back to that in a moment. A second one is to teach as doctrine something that is not Church doctrine after one has been advised by appropriate authority that that’s false doctrine. In other words, just teaching false doctrine is not apostasy, but [it is] teaching persistently after you’ve been warned. For example, if one were to teach that the Lord requires you to practice plural marriage in this day, it would be apostasy. And the third point would be to affiliate and belong to apostate sects, such as those that preach or practice polygamy.”

“So, we go back to the first cause of apostasy — open, public and repeated opposition to the Church and its leaders. That does not include searching for a middle ground. It doesn’t include worrying over a doctrine. It doesn’t include not believing a particular doctrine. None of those are apostasy. None of those are the basis of Church discipline. But when a person comes out publicly and opposes the Church, such as by saying, “I do not think anyone should follow the leaders of the Church in their missionary program, calling these young people to go out and preach the gospel,” or whatever the particular issue of the day. And when you go out and begin to “thump the tub” and try to gather opposition and organize opposition and pronounce and preach against the Church — that can be a basis for Church discipline.”

(http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/elder-oaks-interview-transcript-from-pbs-documentary)

You are wiser than you know. I made the mistake of talking to my bishop in an open an honest way after turning down a new calling that I just couldn’t bring myself to do. Rather than listening to understand me, I think he felt threatened for some reason and saw the need to discuss my being a heretic with the Stake President. They are now in the process of deciding if I should sit in on a church disciplinary counsel with them. That’s why I asked the question I did in post # 33 of Bruce. I appreciated Bruce’s response because it was what I was hoping my bishop would think.

Several years ago I served as a High Councilman and therefore have been on the other side of the table in disciplinary counsels. Truthfully I think I would resign first before I would let them barbecue me for my disbeliefs in that “court of love”…

I didn’t intend my full view to be conveyed here in a forum like this. I am giving examples of pompous arrogance and lack of scholarly compassion and scholarly charity and plain meanness coming from FARMS that I have personally experienced. And yes, I lump them all together into one monolith, because they all support each other in their collective arrogance, all except for John Clark, the Mesoamerican archaeologist that does have scholarly charity.

That’s all I’m expressing. I’m not going to get into specifics of Book of Mormon Geography or any other stuff here, or anything else. I’m only using these things as examples because BHodges #81 is asking for examples of bad scholarship from FARMS. So I’m naming names and giving specific examples.

I don’t intend to get into whether I have ever written a book or not, because I’m “Dude” here purposefully, because that is what you call a pseudonym. Since I have good reasons for wanting to remain anonymous, not the least of which I never want to be dragged in to some Church court over some stupid thing online, I’m not putting in any plugs for any work I may or may not have done in book form or in any other form. I’m just saying these things as examples, and don’t care to get into specifics.

Doug? What the heck are you apologizing for? I’m the one that didn’t read very carefully and called you Dude. (Not that there is anything wrong with being Dude, but Dude already has that position locked up.)

Speaking of Dude: Dude, you have to realize that you’ve studied this a lot but that a forum like this is never going to allow you to really explain your full view. You can’t expect people to necessarily follow you unless you write a full book explaining all the evidence you have collected and how you fit it all together. (Maybe you have written a book?)

Most of my impression comes from direct communication through emails over the years with John Gee, John Tvedtnes, John Sorenson, etc. John Sorenson called my Book of Mormon Geography like trying to “invent a perpetual motion machine” without so much as looking at it. John Tvednes has treated me good but dismissed my work over the years without looking at it. John Gee treated me like crap and because I believe in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and won’t answer my questions directly when I raise legitimate issues. The list goes on and on. And their work reflects these attitudes. You want examples? Try on for size everything that John Sorenson wrote on Book of Mormon Geography that rejects Cumorah in New York in a pompous arrrogance without really refuting the argument. Try on for size everything that John Gee has written on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers without really getting into the nitty gritty of them, when Ed Ashment makes him look like a bozo. And the list goes on and on. This is all personal experience, as well as tons of crap I’ve read. These men are to be otherwise praised for a lot of stuff, but there are a number of issues where they simply do not shine and are simply deserving of the harshest criticism.

My apologies, I did go back and read your post and can see what you’re saying now in light of the basic understanding of the methodology employed with the seer stone. I made this too simple and should have realized that some of you folks have studied these issues to a far greater extent than I have. You really don’t know your audience when writing here. So again, please except my apology for misunderstanding your post.

As we’re all on the same page with the seer stone in the hat and all, I reiterate my position that there are those in the church who’s concept of God doesn’t allow for believing He would give revelation in the stone of the characters on the plates but fail to give a proper translation to go with it. That would be like saying the God prepared these special interpreters for translating the plates and then took them away and told Joseph to just use his old seer stone… O wait that is what happened…

For the sake of the discussion, many people have issues with certain parts of our doctrines and still find a way to be part of the community. As you stated before, every one of us have problems with one thing or another, so in essence we are all NOMs and that shouldn’t be a bad thing. I think what actually matters are ones’ intent with the beliefs or doubts he or she has.

Giving more weight in your minds to complicated, convoluted explanations not based on weight of evidence is precisely what I define as fairly tale land apologetics, a term that I am proud to have coined myself. It is precisely what I refer to as “running with it.” There. Hows boldface for emphasis rather than caps?

Correction: I admit I’m interested in people admiting that we’re not so certain about many things and leaving their minds open to many possibilities.

For me to be interested in being right I would have had to have advanced my own pet theories as being the correct ones. Can you even tell what my pet theories are from this chain? I advanced more than one possibility. You say I am not clarifying my own position, and you are correct. Frankly, I don’t have a fully formed opinion on this subject yet.

I didn’t think Dude was shouting at me. He’s just excited over where he thinks the evidence is going. I’m not disagreeing with him.

I guess I should stop using caps for emphasis, and should withdraw myself anyway because I have a problem that I get too emotional in these things.

Stop Shouting.

Bruce,

You seem way more interested in getting people to admit they are wrong and/or agree with you than clarifying your opinion or anything else.

John Dehlin,

This thread has migrated pretty far from its original source, perhaps it’s time to shut it down. Just a suggestion, I am not an admin.

Why? It is the evidence from an Eyewitness. If you get in a car accident, and you know what happened, and some police officer who wasn’t there, but is a jerk, say, and then I say, Let’s challenge what you are saying. How about that? Would you like that? What if it affects the critical outcome of whether the fault gets pinned on you or not, and the perception of truth once the accident report is written. What if the cop gives you the ticket. Is that justice to your story when you know what happened, but because I’m the cop, I challenge it and don’t do your story justice? LET THE EVIDENCE SPEAK AND STOP TRYING TO THROW IN YOUR OWN JUNK. LET IT SPEAK.