Inoculation is Overrated

[wuapinmon]

I used to feel that way. Not anymore.

So, how do you feel now....I don't know enough about you to guess.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I like and admire Sooner and Cardiac very much, as I've made clear. Their views are heresy to mainstream Mormonism. I'm not aware of any material difference between their views and mine, though they have married in the faith and elected to remain part of the community.

I see lots of differences between their views and yours. And I am very happy to have both of them in the church.

[wuapinmon]

(I am the world's worst heretic)

The actual Pelagius is one of my heroes.

[pelagius]

There is a guy in our ward who is on the stake high council. He sees it as his personal mission to keep us all on the straight and narrow. Whenever anyone deviates from the lesson manual he comes down like a ton of bricks. He gets red-faced and chews them out on the spot. Drives us nuts. Some of the instructors just chuckle and ignore him, but he does intimidate. He would have gone ballistic at AA's lesson on the first vision.

That's funny ... well in a sad sort of way. My response in general is the following to these things (at least to reasonable people, unreasonable people I would just ignore usually). The only thing the lesson manual usually states as required is the following:

"Prayerfully study the following scriptures and other materials:"

Everything else is "suggested lesson development" and there is a lot of lattitude implied by "prayerfully studying" and where it can lead you. I read that line everytime and following the instructions and it just so happens that I never have time to get back to any of the other parts in the manual. But I follow the instruction in the manual to the letter.

[Jeff Lebowski]

So, how do you feel now....I don't know enough about you to guess.

I was afraid you would ask that. That requires a complex answer that I am not sure I have the time to tackle right now. For the time being, let me just say that there are lots of belief systems that I respect and admire.

[pelagius]

The actual Pelagius is one of my heroes.

Me too ... he was great.

[wuapinmon]

Me too ... he was great.

And not because of that Arthur movie.....I read about him extensively for my dissertation....it led me to believe that Augustine was a right son of a bitch.

[SeattleUte]

Pelagius (the dead one, not ours) couldn't hold Augustine's jock strap.

[pelagius]

Pelagius (the dead one, not ours) couldn't hold Augustine's jock strap.

Ya but Jerome couldn't hold his.

[SeattleUte]

I think as soon as a practicing Mormon inside the walls of a church building starts examining the warts and/or talking about hisoricity of anything in the B of M or the P of GP or D&C he loses his virtue in myriad ways. Here's how I'd teach it. I'd say these are the stories that meant so much to our forefathers and foremothers that they risked and even sacrificed all, sometimes even their wives or husbands and children, to uphold them. In this respect they have been guided and energized in the same way as peoples have for thousands of years. (I'm not sure what I'd say to a convert.) I'd call them stories and leave it at that. They'd be like parables, and I'd always try to contextualize them. It's that context that I think potentially redeems them and even gives them power.

[pelagius]

I think as soon as a practicing Mormon inside the walls of a church building starts examining the warts and/or talking about hisoricity of anything in the B of M or the P of GP or D&C he loses his virtue in myriad ways. Here's how I'd teach it. I'd say these are the stories that meant so much to our forefathers foremothers that they risked and even sacrificed all, sometimes even their wives or husbands and children, to uphold them. In this respect they have been guided and energized in the same way as peoples have for thousands of years. (I'm not sure what I'd say to a convert.) I'd call them stories and leave it at that. They'd be like parables, and I'd always try to contextualize them. It's that context that I think potentially redeems them and even gives them power.

I am going to regret asking this I think but given this how do you explain someone like me? I think I am towards the right tail of the distribution in terms of examining these issues but they haven't lost their virture for me (not to be presumptious but I think I would throw people like myboynoah, Creekster, AA, and many others in the same category as me).

[Solon]

And not because of that Arthur movie.....I read about him extensively for my dissertation....it led me to believe that Augustine was a right son of a bitch.

Fighting words.

It's on!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[All-American]

I am going to regret asking this I think but given this how do you explain someone like me? I think I am towards the right tail of the distribution in terms of examining these issues but they haven't lost their virture for me (not to be presumptious but I think I would throw people like myboynoah, Creekster, AA, and many others in the same category as me).

He assumes that the true guardian of our virtue is not our faith, but rather our bad luck with the ladies.

[pelagius]

He assumes that the true guardian of our virtue is not our faith, but rather our bad luck with the ladies.

LOL

[SeattleUte]

I am going to regret asking this I think but given this how do you explain someone like me? I think I am towards the right tail of the distribution in terms of examining these issues but they haven't lost their virture for me (not to be presumptious but I think I would throw people like myboynoah, Creekster and many others in the same category as me).

I think you are on thin ice morally.

I can only speak for myself. Here's what I find rewarding in studying "sacred" texts of whatever peoples. 1) the cultural and historical circumstances that led to and informed the writing of the text, empirically established; 2) their inherent artistic worth, 3) how they made or infludenced language, and 4) the civilizations or subsests of civilizations that grew out of and around them.

I find efforts to prove or disprove their "historicity" a fool's errand. Archeological Troy, the ruins of ancient Jerusalem and the Second Temple, etc., and the ancient Egyptial ruins, etc., are interesting because of 1) and they corroborate the broad, macro- historical background of the events dramatized. Beyond this, however, making a case for or attacking the supernatural elements or even the circumstances on a micro scale is a fool's errand except as entertaining fiction, if it's well done.

I'm not interested in environmental factors that may have caused the Nile to turn red at the time of the Exodus. I'm only passingly interested in the various iterations of the First Vision. More than anything else I find tormented explanations of the Book of Mormon's limited geography, etc. to be sad. I find Josephus' incongruos references to Christ using Christian verbiage in his histories to be a mildly curious mystery and no more. Given the chain of custody and what else Josephus' writings tell us about him, and what we know about the Gospels' advent, their souce is really not that mysterious. I woldn't have been surprised at what the "Book of Abraham" scrolls turned out to be, and wasn't when I learned about it relatively late in life (yes, reflects absense of innoculation, but I was long gone by then).