The reason I think shelving could become an issue is that it highlights a problem that we are not willing to deal with, when we could appropriately approach it. Kinda like a weakness, we push it back because we do not want to deal with it. I think if we have tried then that is ok, but just saying I do not care is maybe dangerous.

But I should say that I do not necessarily think that apathy and laziness toward these things is all bad, I have the same approach to many issues. This is all might seem a little inconsistent.

I would disagree I don’t believe that “Shelving” issues is due to laziness, I feel this is an unfair judgement on the many who do shelve issues.

I don’t think that shelving issues is necessarily a bad thing.

I agree with your experience of shelving issues that don’t have a definitive answer. JST’s in the Book of Mormon come to mind, in my experience the JST that is in Matthew but not in 3rd Nephi is puzzling, without a satisfactory solution I choose to shelve the issue.

#7 – Shelving issues might be laziness, it might just be that they could get one answer. I have shelved issues, not because I would not look at them, but that my looking did not give me a definite answer either way, in fact most things don’t. But i am sure that there are many people who do take this approach.

#8 – I agree that this is possible. although they ahve probably read sunstone and dialogue to leave and may well still be readers. However, I do take your point. my surprise was that there was ot more down the list.

#9 – Good point. I am a sociologist (in training) and so my engagement with history or literary analysis is different from that of sociology. Perhaps it might be interesting for Dialogue to include their type of training in the future.

Just FYI, FAIR isn’t Church sponsored. FARMS, perhaps, as part of BYU, but not FAIR. Splitting hairs for those who lump them together, perhaps.

With attitudes like yours, we’ll NEVER have dilithium crystals.

For some reason, nobody ever gins up intellectual respectability using a token lawyer.

And Thomas (#10) – #9: Good point. And of course engineers will believe anything, which is why creationists like to trot out Ph.Ds in engineering to dress up their pseudoscience with some kind of degreed respectability.

I’m sad to hear that you find myself and my colleagues so incapable of rational thought. Not all of us should be lumped together as pseudoscientists.

What the ability to design a dam has to do with qualifications to pronounce on geology and biology, I’ve never quite understood.

FireTag

Rico#2

“I would have thought that there would have been more scepticism among dialogue readers exactly because they are well-educated”

I don’t that analytical/critical training is automatically attributed to spiritual reasoning. During a discussion with a SP who is also a lawyer he told me that he “shelves” the issues that he is uncomfortable with, I believe this method is used very often by most members, some make a very conscious decision and others perhaps subconsciously “shelve” issues that would otherwise lead to a crisis of faith.