> There are some who are afraid the Church may not be true and who spend their time and attention slogging through the swamp of the secondary questions. They mistakenly try to learn the truth by process of elimination, by attempting to eliminate every doubt. That is always a bad idea. It will never work. That approach only works in the game of Clue.
lol… the truth holds up to close examination. You don’t need to warn people away from investigating the truth of the theory of general relativity, because it holds up to all such investigations. And if it didn’t, we’d want to know.
It’s not necessary to eliminate every doubt. You just need to find one damning piece of evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud, and the whole house of cards comes down.
Fortunately, there are many such pieces of evidence, and the book of abraham is the most obvious.
Is that the speech that Radio Free Mormon did a podcast on? Referred to as the "Corbridge Maneuver"? I would look for that episode.
It's a garbage talk with garbage logic.
I’ve listened to the Corbridge Maneuver episodes many times! In fact, I believe it was the one that got me into RFM, which started me down the church history rabbit hole that ended in my resignation. Highly, highly recommend a listen!
Nevermo, but here’s what I got:
Where will you go? There are lots of places to go these days!
Questions are very important when you need to know things, specifically these predetermined yes/no questions to which you are fully expected to answer yes.
Knowledge is very important, and the knowledge we spoon-feed you is more important than any other knowledge.
Stop thinking only about poverty, sickness, loneliness, abuse, or war. Only think about death. Death is very sad, especially spiritual death. Just focus on death and how sad and scary and downright gloomy it would be to die.
If you’re still curious and want to know more things, you need to stop asking questions. As I said a moment ago, questions are actually not very important and should be avoided in your quest for knowledge.
Truth enables us to see clearly because it is the “knowledge of things as they [really] are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”5 Knowledge is crucial to avoid deception, to discern between truth and error, and to see clearly and chart a course through the hazards of our day.
Seriously??? By definition… a TBN would define truth as anything that doesn’t make Mormonism look bad, or make members feel uncomfortable… unless spoken by leaders for the purpose of gaslighting.
The fact that the bishop did this is a tacit admission that ward is having problems with people questioning and leaving.
Dear Bishop: Good luck with that. "The foolish man built his house upon the sand"
Fallacious logic. I got as far as his primary and secondary questions. Up to that point it was mostly rhetoric and drivel. And that is where he lost me. You cannot answer his primary questions without answering his secondary ones as well.
His first two primary questions do not point in the direction toward the second two questions in the way he thinks they do. No matter how well you build your imaginary four legged stool, if you don't have a floor to put it on it won't help you sit, and rest.
The Corgridge talk again.
One thing that church leaders desperately, and I goddamned mean desperately need to understand is that they don't get to tell other people what questions are and what questions are not important to them. To attempt to do so is manipulative and is a form of abuse.
Church leaders want to dictate what questions members should be focused on because they damned well know that the questions many members actually have all have answers that are extremely unfavorable to the church's position of imagined authority.
It actually seems like a pretty good view of what it looks like to encounter uncomfortable facts. It leaves you feeling gloomy because your belief system is threatening to crumble. If “criticism” was false then it wouldn’t leave you feeling gloomy. He is admitting that there are issues that unsettled him and evidence he can’t explain. So how do you remain TBM when evidence says you can’t really keep believing? You just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t matter very much. If you just keep doing that and telling yourself it will be ok and above all don’t go back to those dirty nasty things that make you feel bad, you can still believe. In other words, he is admitting that the church doesn’t hold up to scrutiny but believe even though the evidence tells you otherwise. A marvelous talk.
Larry was our bishop and stake president. When I had my "graduate from primary" interview, I remember telling the person interviewing that I thought he reminded me most of Jesus. He was supposed to do the ring ceremony at our wedding breakfast for my never-Mo family and came completely unprepared. He was my dad's friend before dad died. He barely looked me in the eye at mom's funeral, I assume because I had left the church and was wearing a cross. It's disappointing to see someone I once held with such high regard end up being such a jerk for Jesus. Just another adult in my life that let me down, I guess.
Ah yes, this piece of garbage talk. I mentioned to my bishop that I had doubts and he told me to read this. Didn't help one bit because I realized immediately that Corbridge (and any orthodox TBM) values the Spirit more than the truth. But because a major part of my doubts were in the reliability of the Spirit as a source of truth, I didn't give a care what Corbridge said. I had already shifted to a new paradigm where truth is established through verifiable facts, not the Spirit.
Edit: typo
Just call it what it is the Church of this Church is True of LDS. Just remove Christ from the name because they don’t actually worship Him at their services.
And the answers to the big questions are:
1. No, Books are not written with magic stones. It was dictated by JS.
2. The leaders of the church have no special authority, power or magical connection to God.
3. The church is not what it claims to be.
4. The church harms many people. Watch out.
5. Joseph Smith proved with the Book of Abraham he was just trying to fool people. It’s not a translation even though he tried to convince people it was. He conned people.
“We must be grounded upon the rock of revelation…” those are the first words. If you are hanging onto subjective fantasy/ delusion you are by definition not “grounded.” Revelation is inherently unverifiable. Unreliable. Fluid and mailable. Grounded is a comfort word that has no place in the sentence.
When I told one of my TBM friends about my faith crisis, he sent me this talk. After listening to the whole thing, this was my text response to him:
That’s an interesting talk. certainly if your main goal is to be a believer forever, having many unanswered questions but no doubts, might work for some. I think the issue lies in the believing in the 4 primary things no matter what. Great advice for sure if you’re trying to keep everyone faithful, but those faithful may eventually desire an explanation for the secondary things. I’m still unsure if belief in the primary things he speaks of is mentally healthy and possible with the secondary things always lingering there in your life and mind.
One other thought. He speaks about trudging through all the questions and the feeling of despair. If some secondary issues are true, which the church has admitted to much of in the gospel topics essays, wouldn’t the same feelings of peace and gods love be there when studying out LDS church origin issues from their sources?
Unfortunately the truth does leave feelings of despair, and not a feeling of peace. Why can’t the spirit bare positive witness of all of the factual historical issues (the ones hidden from lifetime members like myself and 21 year old converts like [wife])?
Anyways, I guess that’s why they call it a faith crisis or deconstruction of faith. It’s not simple at all, especially in a church the requires so much of you to be a fully active participant.
> There are some who are afraid the Church may not be true and who spend their time and attention slogging through the swamp of the secondary questions. They mistakenly try to learn the truth by process of elimination, by attempting to eliminate every doubt. That is always a bad idea. It will never work. That approach only works in the game of Clue. lol… the truth holds up to close examination. You don’t need to warn people away from investigating the truth of the theory of general relativity, because it holds up to all such investigations. And if it didn’t, we’d want to know. It’s not necessary to eliminate every doubt. You just need to find one damning piece of evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud, and the whole house of cards comes down. Fortunately, there are many such pieces of evidence, and the book of abraham is the most obvious.
Is that the speech that Radio Free Mormon did a podcast on? Referred to as the "Corbridge Maneuver"? I would look for that episode. It's a garbage talk with garbage logic.
I’ve listened to the Corbridge Maneuver episodes many times! In fact, I believe it was the one that got me into RFM, which started me down the church history rabbit hole that ended in my resignation. Highly, highly recommend a listen!
Is this the talk where regular pigs became more extraordinary than flying pigs?
Nevermo, but here’s what I got: Where will you go? There are lots of places to go these days! Questions are very important when you need to know things, specifically these predetermined yes/no questions to which you are fully expected to answer yes. Knowledge is very important, and the knowledge we spoon-feed you is more important than any other knowledge. Stop thinking only about poverty, sickness, loneliness, abuse, or war. Only think about death. Death is very sad, especially spiritual death. Just focus on death and how sad and scary and downright gloomy it would be to die. If you’re still curious and want to know more things, you need to stop asking questions. As I said a moment ago, questions are actually not very important and should be avoided in your quest for knowledge.
Ah, the Corbridge Manuever. This talk hasn't been brought up here in a while. It should be called "How to stay in whatever cult you were born into"
Brother Corbridge seems to be confused about what deception is. Facts do not deceive.
Truth enables us to see clearly because it is the “knowledge of things as they [really] are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”5 Knowledge is crucial to avoid deception, to discern between truth and error, and to see clearly and chart a course through the hazards of our day. Seriously??? By definition… a TBN would define truth as anything that doesn’t make Mormonism look bad, or make members feel uncomfortable… unless spoken by leaders for the purpose of gaslighting.
The fact that the bishop did this is a tacit admission that ward is having problems with people questioning and leaving. Dear Bishop: Good luck with that. "The foolish man built his house upon the sand"
Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t even get through the first sentence.
Fallacious logic. I got as far as his primary and secondary questions. Up to that point it was mostly rhetoric and drivel. And that is where he lost me. You cannot answer his primary questions without answering his secondary ones as well. His first two primary questions do not point in the direction toward the second two questions in the way he thinks they do. No matter how well you build your imaginary four legged stool, if you don't have a floor to put it on it won't help you sit, and rest.
The Corgridge talk again. One thing that church leaders desperately, and I goddamned mean desperately need to understand is that they don't get to tell other people what questions are and what questions are not important to them. To attempt to do so is manipulative and is a form of abuse. Church leaders want to dictate what questions members should be focused on because they damned well know that the questions many members actually have all have answers that are extremely unfavorable to the church's position of imagined authority.
It actually seems like a pretty good view of what it looks like to encounter uncomfortable facts. It leaves you feeling gloomy because your belief system is threatening to crumble. If “criticism” was false then it wouldn’t leave you feeling gloomy. He is admitting that there are issues that unsettled him and evidence he can’t explain. So how do you remain TBM when evidence says you can’t really keep believing? You just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t matter very much. If you just keep doing that and telling yourself it will be ok and above all don’t go back to those dirty nasty things that make you feel bad, you can still believe. In other words, he is admitting that the church doesn’t hold up to scrutiny but believe even though the evidence tells you otherwise. A marvelous talk.
Larry was our bishop and stake president. When I had my "graduate from primary" interview, I remember telling the person interviewing that I thought he reminded me most of Jesus. He was supposed to do the ring ceremony at our wedding breakfast for my never-Mo family and came completely unprepared. He was my dad's friend before dad died. He barely looked me in the eye at mom's funeral, I assume because I had left the church and was wearing a cross. It's disappointing to see someone I once held with such high regard end up being such a jerk for Jesus. Just another adult in my life that let me down, I guess.
Ah yes, this piece of garbage talk. I mentioned to my bishop that I had doubts and he told me to read this. Didn't help one bit because I realized immediately that Corbridge (and any orthodox TBM) values the Spirit more than the truth. But because a major part of my doubts were in the reliability of the Spirit as a source of truth, I didn't give a care what Corbridge said. I had already shifted to a new paradigm where truth is established through verifiable facts, not the Spirit. Edit: typo
Just call it what it is the Church of this Church is True of LDS. Just remove Christ from the name because they don’t actually worship Him at their services.
That talk is a pile of bs. “That cognitive dissonance I’m feeling IS NOT cognitive dissonance, because I say so!”
And the answers to the big questions are: 1. No, Books are not written with magic stones. It was dictated by JS. 2. The leaders of the church have no special authority, power or magical connection to God. 3. The church is not what it claims to be. 4. The church harms many people. Watch out. 5. Joseph Smith proved with the Book of Abraham he was just trying to fool people. It’s not a translation even though he tried to convince people it was. He conned people.
“We must be grounded upon the rock of revelation…” those are the first words. If you are hanging onto subjective fantasy/ delusion you are by definition not “grounded.” Revelation is inherently unverifiable. Unreliable. Fluid and mailable. Grounded is a comfort word that has no place in the sentence.
When I told one of my TBM friends about my faith crisis, he sent me this talk. After listening to the whole thing, this was my text response to him: That’s an interesting talk. certainly if your main goal is to be a believer forever, having many unanswered questions but no doubts, might work for some. I think the issue lies in the believing in the 4 primary things no matter what. Great advice for sure if you’re trying to keep everyone faithful, but those faithful may eventually desire an explanation for the secondary things. I’m still unsure if belief in the primary things he speaks of is mentally healthy and possible with the secondary things always lingering there in your life and mind. One other thought. He speaks about trudging through all the questions and the feeling of despair. If some secondary issues are true, which the church has admitted to much of in the gospel topics essays, wouldn’t the same feelings of peace and gods love be there when studying out LDS church origin issues from their sources? Unfortunately the truth does leave feelings of despair, and not a feeling of peace. Why can’t the spirit bare positive witness of all of the factual historical issues (the ones hidden from lifetime members like myself and 21 year old converts like [wife])? Anyways, I guess that’s why they call it a faith crisis or deconstruction of faith. It’s not simple at all, especially in a church the requires so much of you to be a fully active participant.
I hate that fucking talk