Storm over the Mormons - for Non-Mormons

[Watchmen]

Edit: What I meant to say this this:

You did misinterpret may response to autoD as demonstrated by your post #75.

 

[Magic Man]

I don't think he misinterpreted it at all as evidenced by your mistatement in post #75 of my position.

OK, let's try it this way.

The Mormon church will accept gay marriage as OK after it becomes legal.

Do you disagree with that?

 

[Watchmen]

OK, let's try it this way.

The Mormon church will accept gay marriage as OK after it becomes legal.

Do you disagree with that?

Sorry - they don't hand out crystal balls at Church anymore and the answer to the question is irrelevant to my point. Again - you demonstrate that you don't "get it."

I refer you back to Phil.

 

[McBell]

OK, let's try it this way.

The Mormon church will accept gay marriage as OK after it becomes legal.

Do you disagree with that?

I get the distinctive impression that he is going to avoid this question like the plague.

 

[Magic Man]

Sorry - they don't hand out crystal balls at Church anymore and the answer to the question is irrelevant to my point. Again - you demonstrate that you don't "get it."

I refer you back to Phil.

I was trying to get past this and make it simple. Look, my original point was that the Mormon church will make gay marriage OK, only after it's made legal. That's it. I believe Autodidact was simply trying to make that point in her original post. She may have been mistaken about the process, but I think the idea is true, even if it comes about through different means. I will watch your LDS discussion thread for further information on how that might happen.

I apologize for my part in the miscommunication in this thread.

 

[Watchmen]

I was trying to get past this and make it simple. Look, my original point was that the Mormon church will make gay marriage OK, only after it's made legal. That's it. I believe Autodidact was simply trying to make that point in her original post. She may have been mistaken about the process, but I think the idea is true, even if it comes about through different means. I will watch your LDS discussion thread for further information on how that might happen.

I apologize for my part in the miscommunication in this thread.

Fair enough.

I realize auto's point was (essentially) to argue that the Mormon church "will make gay marriage OK." My response was simply to draw a distinction between the polygamy example she used and gay marriage. It was never about whether the Church would make it OK or not. I guess we could say you and auto focused on the end result while I focused on the means.

I hope the LDS discussion thread gets some responses - it could easily descend into the gutters of the RF - but I hope people can have a serious, and thoughtful discussion about the topic.

And - I too apologize for any miscommunication.

Cheerio.

 

[Apex]

For those saying the Church will say gay marriage will be OK when it is legalized, do you mean the Church will say it is no longer immoral or that it will simply accept gay marriage as legal and stop resisting?

 

[Autodidact]

Watchmen is leaving out a key part: the political situation that will cause the Church to have a revelation, change its doctrine, change its practices, or whatever you want to call it. When the world is such that it benefits the Mormon Church more to change its whatever than not, it will happen. It follows, we need to focus on making that happen.

 

[Autodidact]

For those saying the Church will say gay marriage will be OK when it is legalized, do you mean the Church will say it is no longer immoral or that it will simply accept gay marriage as legal and stop resisting?

Probably both. When there is a situation where the Church wants to use a tax benefit or government service and cannot because it discriminates against same-sex couples, they will change. (after years of pressure from its membership.) If they keep losing out some other benefit, such as decent basketball players and public acceptance, they may even one day start performing same-sex marriages in the Church. At least, that's what I think. Probably none of us will live long enough to find out, but from my perspective that's the historical pattern.

 

[Magic Man]

For those saying the Church will say gay marriage will be OK when it is legalized, do you mean the Church will say it is no longer immoral or that it will simply accept gay marriage as legal and stop resisting?

I mean that I think the church will say it's OK, not just accept it because it's legal. I don't think it'll be in the very near future, but at some point.

 

[Katzpur]

I mean that I think the church will say it's OK, not just accept it because it's legal. I don't think it'll be in the very near future, but at some point.

I don't personally think that the Church will ever say it's "okay," but it will probably eventually stop pursuing an active role opposing it. (Not to mention the fact that I think that Mormons -- regardless of their personal stance on the issue -- probably have a better feel for how things are going to go in the future than do non-Mormons.)

 

[DeepShadow]

I get the distinctive impression that he is going to avoid this question like the plague.

Considering how the question requires knowledge of the future, I can hardly blame him.

 

[Katzpur]

Well, one day it was allowed, and then the next it wasn't, just because someone decided it was.

That's how you define magic?

 

[DeepShadow]

Watchmen is leaving out a key part: the political situation that will cause the Church to have a revelation, change its doctrine, change its practices, or whatever you want to call it. When the world is such that it benefits the Mormon Church more to change its whatever than not, it will happen. It follows, we need to focus on making that happen.

Post hoc fallacy: the political pressures that are commonly cited as causes for changes in the church are cherry-picked from a long list of such pressures. There's nothing to say that one was stronger than another, rather the winners are always the things that happened right before the change.

National Organization for Women has been trying to exert such pressure for about three decades now to get women the priesthood. If you really want to do this, I'd study them first.

 

[Katzpur]

National Organization for Women has been trying to exert such pressure for about three decades now to get women the priesthood. If you really want to do this, I'd study them first.

And if two or three hundred years down the road, a revelation was received granting the priesthood to women, you can just count on certain people to say, "Yup... that's the way it always happens. The LDS Church always receives a new revelation when the pressure becomes intense enough. How convenient for them."

 

[McBell]

Considering how the question requires knowledge of the future, I can hardly blame him.

If he does not want to give his opinion that fine with me.
However, it seems to me that all he needs do is just flat out say so.
Instead, he is avoiding the question.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And if two or three hundred years down the road, a revelation was received granting the priesthood to women, you can just count on certain people to say, "Yup... that's the way it always happens. The LDS Church always receives a new revelation when the pressure becomes intense enough. How convenient for them."

But by itself, why would that be a bad thing? I think that adapting to changing times can still be reconciled with divine inspiration for prophecy. For example, maybe God in His infinite wisdom felt that His will was better served with Utah receiving statehood than it would be served by plural marriage in a territory.

I remember hearing stories about people who have almost drowned but say they were saved by an angel or the voice of God telling them which way to swim to escape the boat or the car they were in. While I'm personally skeptical of these accounts, my first reaction isn't to say, "yeah, sure... God spoke to you and told you what to do just when it was most beneficial for you. How convenient."

Part of the theology in many religions, including the LDS Church AFAIK, is that God sometimes intervenes to protect or help people in all sorts of ways. I personally think it's quite easy to reconcile this with the idea of a God who intervenes to help people with matters of doctrine and practice.

 

[DeepShadow]

But by itself, why would that be a bad thing? I think that adapting to changing times can still be reconciled with divine inspiration for prophecy.

So do I. But for it to be actual divine inspiration, the causal relationships have to be kept in order. Saying A caused C cuts B out of the equation. Saying A caused B caused C keeps it in.

More to the point of this discussion, if people want the LDS church to change, they can't just look at the pressures that succeeded. They have to look at the ones that failed. Doing the former is confirmation bias.

This is why I believe respectful dialogue is so important: in my experience, the only pressures that make any difference in revelation come from within the church. If people approach Mormons like some have on this thread, they can actually change minds and thereby contribute to the change they want to see. If they behave like others on this thread, they will actually impede that change.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So do I. But for it to be actual divine inspiration, the causal relationships have to be kept in order. Saying A caused C cuts B out of the equation. Saying A caused B caused C keeps it in.

I don't know. In terms of looking at it as a "black box", you can say that input 'A' results in output 'C' without making any statements about the internal workings of the box, which may include 'B' or not... kinda like drawing a Karnaugh map, if you're familiar with that. The problem is that if you can't monitor both 'A' and 'B' for correlation with 'C' as well, then your map will be incomplete... but you can still say that when 'A' changes, 'C' changes, which implies causation even if it isn't necessarily the whole story.

More to the point of this discussion, if people want the LDS church to change, they can't just look at the pressures that succeeded. They have to look at the ones that failed. Doing the former is confirmation bias.

You definitely have a point there. Through most (all?) of their history, Mormons have stood in opposition to the commonly-held positin on all sorts of issues. If we had to describe the LDS Church one way or the other, it'd probably be more accurate to say that it typically holds its ground on divisive issues rather than to say it changes with public opinion.

In fact, if Mormon doctrines were as flexible as some people are portraying them to be, then I doubt there'd ever have been an LDS Church in the first place. I mean, it would have caused a lot less heartache and suffering for everyone involved if Brigham Young had received a revelation to get all the Mormons to just give up and join, say, the Presbyterians instead of trekking to Utah.

This is why I believe respectful dialogue is so important: in my experience, the only pressures that make any difference in revelation come from within the church. If people approach Mormons like some have on this thread, they can actually change minds and thereby contribute to the change they want to see. If they behave like others on this thread, they will actually impede that change.

Well... yes and no. I agree that Mormon doctrines come from within the church itself, but this whole thread is about the interaction between the LDS Church and community at large, especially secular government. Pressures from both sides will affect that relationship, and while external pressure may not affect the doctrines that the LDS Church and individual Mormons hold to be true, it may affect how relevant those doctrines are to non-Mormons.

Personally, I don't take issue with Mormon doctrines themselves; I take issue with how some of those doctrines have resulted in effects outside the Church that I think are wrong. If the LDS Church drops the practices I personally see as harmful, great. But the harm is averted just as much if the Church keeps the practices but simply becomes irrelevant in secular terms. However, I don't think this would be a positive change for the Church, since I don't really see how it could become irrelevant on this one issue without becoming irrelevant generally.

 

[darkendless]

More to the point of this discussion, if people want the LDS church to change, they can't just look at the pressures that succeeded. They have to look at the ones that failed. Doing the former is confirmation bias.

This is why I believe respectful dialogue is so important: in my experience, the only pressures that make any difference in revelation come from within the church. If people approach Mormons like some have on this thread, they can actually change minds and thereby contribute to the change they want to see. If they behave like others on this thread, they will actually impede that change.

I think a major problem is the way mormons went about blocking homosexual unions. Those who backed the LDS churches move to fight change should cop the backlash on the chin. The position taken up by the church deserves no respect. They're fighting something that doesn't affect them, and since then, have whinged about being targeted. Respect will be given when they stop imposing their beliefs upon others, especially when the decision they make has no bearing on them at all.

This shouldn't be an issue at all, civil rights should never have been mixed with religion in the first place.