Angel said: Louis Midgley has done more with his comments to make me want to run away from the LDS Church screaming than all the anti-LDS material in the world could ever do.

Craig is at least willing to accept that he is responsible for his own decision to leave the Church. Why do you feel you have to blame someone else?

-Allen

My approach is essentially the Joseph Campbell one, which I realise is completely out of sinc with “TBM” belief. I don’t view religion as an either/or proposition (notwithstanding the strong Mormon emphasis on this), and therefore I don’t see them either as “frauds” or “only true beliefs”. There are many LDS revelations in which I see truth, but which are, for me, unconnected to “only true” claims. In other words, I’ve become well imbued with “the philosophies of men”, such as Campbell. (Who, I might add, was no idiot.)

I don’t know where you’re going with the catholic question…but I give no validity to any religion built on a foundation of unsupportable faith claims.

The personal improvement I get from living the gospel is only one aspect of my testimony. There are many layers and dimensions to what I know and am a witness to and I continue to learn spiritual truths with time. The knowledge that matters is the first-hand knowledge we receive from God. The constant invitation in the Church is to ask God and get your own witness. There is no compartmentalization in my gospel understanding. There are things I know and things I believe, things I hope for, and some things I don’t have answers for yet; it is a connected continuum. We worship with both knowledge and faith. (My emphasis)

It seems to me that Keyes was wide open to misunderstanding, and it’s not at all difficult for me to understand how Bachman with his either/or approach could read things into his statements that were not there. “Knowing”, in the testimony sense, doesn’t mean knowing all the answers. The scenario Bachman presents is if a man who “knows” it’s all a “fabrication” and, essentially, lives a double life because it makes him a “better husband and father”.
This makes no sense to me, as a former very liberal believer in the latter years of my sporadic activity in the Church. I certainly wasn’t active in a Church I thought was a fraud or a fabrication, even though I would have been sympathetic to Bachman’s views as well.

Do you believe that the Catholic Church, which claims to be the “only true Church”, with the only authority on earth to speak for God, with singular apostolic authority bestowed by St. Peter - is a fraud? (I’m coming from a different angle than Dr. Midgley here.)

Don’t just opine. Instead, try to identify what exactly I have written that is for you all that confused, inaccurate, or wrong? Please, don’t merely opine or emote sloppy sentimentality.

Craig Paxton, in response to my insistence that he provide evidence that faithful Latter-day Saints admit that the historical foundations of their faith are bunk, while also holding that it does not matter, since doing everything that Latter-day Saints do has some utility despite the bunk, cited no literature in which this opinion is set out.

Craig’s Response:

Come on Brother Midgley…Hope and Faith ARE the only foundation in Mormonism…there is little else a truly believing Mormon CAN build a belief system upon, since its real history is a manufactured myth…It is a history of masterful fiction that has been taught as Mormon authorities wish it had occurred rather than how it actually did occur. (Some on this thread have admit such, but somehow justify the fraud) Thus Mormonism remains nothing more than the false hope sold by the snake oil salesman. Of course the snake oil salesman is NOT publish literature admitting to his “Marks” the fraud. The myth MUST continue.

Louis Midgley Says:

Instead, he claimed that his wife, as well as former Bishop, Stake President and one of the Brethren, presumably called in by his desperate wife in an effort to revive his faith, appealed to the utility of faith rather than its truth. Of course they must have mentioned the fruit of repentance, which is here and now valuable for the believer.

Craig’s Response:

Yeah crazy huh. Don’t stand for anything…merely go on faking it since the utility of the faith has value.

Louis Midgley Says:

Craig hears from his wife and others what Talmage Bachman charmed him into believing is the standard LDS response to the question of whether the foundations of the faith are true.

Craig’s Response:

Oh Brother Midgely…it would be so simple if only I had been ‘Charmed” by Tal. But that conclusion discounts my path. I would love to be able to pass off responsibility for my loss of believe to Tal, but I’d prefer to lay it squarely were it belongs, I lost my faith in Mormonism when I discovered that the church had not been honest in its foundational stories…that they had changed so called scripture, had manufactured foundational stories, had enhanced and edited its history. I lost my faith when I concluded that Mormonism’s antagonist were more credible than Mormonism’s defenders.

The rest of your post is merely your attempt to gift wrap this thread up in a pretty summation with fancy wrapping paper and an attractive bow. It would be nice if loss of belief were as simple as “hostility, born of guilt”. Oh that we “apostates” were as shallow as you make us to be.
Isn’t it wonderful for the Mormon Apologinista’s to have the RFM’s of the world to point “down” to?

Louis Midgley Says:

The common observation that those who leave the faith simply cannot leave it alone seems sound.

Craig’s Response:

Oh that is such a tired assumption. Speaking only for myself (but feel it is a common sentiment among non-believers) we will leave Mormonism alone and believe me we want to leave it alone…WHEN it leaves us alone. But I accept my fate that as long as I live in Utah, I will always be a Mormon Project, despite my very frankly stated pleas to be left alone…

Louis Midgley Says:

Instead, they may even insist on justifying or rationalizing their hostilities as a form of therapy for the pain that they experienced when they were–shudder–MORGBOTS

Craig’s Response:

Yeah funny huh…that an abused individual might need therapy to recover from an abusive relationship. Reclaiming one’s life after Mormonism IS a difficult process, but it is possible. Removing oneself from the collective, thank goodness is possible.

Brother Midgley, you may find this hard to believe…but I respect you. I believe that you are a very good, well meaning man, confident in your belief that Mormonism is all that it claims to be. But what I have also discovered by participating here at FAIR is that as a church apologist, you cannot concede a single inch of ground to someone from my camp. My perspective will always be out of focus to your view. I will always be wrong…you will always be right. For you to compromise ground would to be to concede defeat and that can never happen in the Mormon mind set. There will never be a middle ground. The church will always be true no matter what conflicting information may be discovered. It is impossible to nail Jell-o to a wall. There is NOT a single historical or scientific fact that can overturn Mormonism’s claims in your mind. I dare say that even if Jesus Christ himself were to appear and state it was all a fraud, you would question His validity.

So I would like to ask you a simple question, by what standard could someone know that Mormonism was not true? Or is that a question in futility? In the real world, truth claims can be tested and scrutinized. Truth claims must stand up to the most rigorous of examinations. Yet on that standard Mormonism has failed completely. So many of its claims have been demonstrated to be nothing more than wishful fantasies. Adam and Eve, universal flood, death being introduced 6,000 years ago. The Mormon shelf of questions unanswerable in this life are too numerous to mention. And as more and more years pass, Mormonism will face ever growing Tsunami of conflicting, unbelievable (except to Mormon’s) information.

I mean if it is not even possible to know if it is not what it claims to be…if it is true no matter what the conflicting evidence may be…If there is NO TEST to know that it is not all it claims to be then Mormonism has failed completely…for its message should be overwhelmingly accepted by those “sincerely” seeking truth. And yes I’m aware that you have an “out” with this argument, narrow path… few find it blah blah blah…but I want a real answer.

The circular reasoning truth test found in Moroni 10 seems to place all blame of negative confirmation on the seeker. The truth seeker didn’t ask sincere enough, they didn’t seek long enough, they weren’t worthy enough…it’s always the seekers fault…never the message’s. And Mormonism message is being rejected by truth seekers ever single day.
for the seeker to conclude that the Book is NOT true…is never a possibility in Mormonism…

But what if it is “Not True”

There are, however, those who make the kind of argument that Craig attributes to his wife and others. For example, one employee of Signature Books has made quite a public fuss about how he has ceased to believe, but still attends Church meetings, listens to prayers, hears sermons and lessons, even perhaps takes part in what others believe are sacred rituals, while not believing a thing except that it is pleasand to attend Church meetings. He enjoys, for example, the Boy Scouts activities. He does so because his Ward provides a nice environment in which to raise his kids, allows him a pleasant social experience, gives him something wholesome to do and so forth. But the faith is, he thinks, merely bunk. He sees some utility in going through the motions despite not submitting all aspects of his life the Jesus as Lord, and not seeing Jesus as his Redeemer and so forth. His is a version of a cultural Mormonism that one can find on the fringes of the community of Saints. Faithful Saints, of course, tolerate such antics in the hope of winning such a one back to Christ. They become Ward projects. Bishops and many others hope, exactly like Craig’s wife, Bishop, and Stake President that this fellow will somehow allow the Holy Spirit to revive whatever faith he may have once had.

A merely cultural or nostalgic attachment to a faith no longer genuinely held is, of course, very common among Christians, Jews and, in some places, Muslims. But it is to this point not common among Latter-day Saints except among those I label cultural Mormons. This is an expression I fashioned from the Protestant liberal movement found in Germany that sometimes went by the name “cultural Protestantism.” The label has caught on. The most extreme manifestation of this kind of limp religiosity can be seen in the pastors who helped form the secular humanist movement. Many of those folks were blatant atheists who had not yet gotten out of the habit of going to church. The Church of Jesus Christ remains vital primarily because it has to this point avoided these lapses. Instead, what we see is a remarkably high level of hostility, born of guilt, among dissidents and apostates, rather than a mild cultural attachment or indifference one now commonly found among all brands of Christianity in Europe.

When we find, as we have seen expressed by a few on this thread, the same kind of hostility towards the faith of the Saints that is commonly displayed by those on RfM, what we have is solid evidence that those folks fear that they might have made a terrible mistake and that Jesus understood as the Messiah or Christ is actually the Way, Light and Truth. We certainly do not thereby find indications that the faithful are not concerned with the truth of the crucial historical foundations of their faith. And the Bachman-like claim that they do, is merely one curious way of dealing with dissonance. The common observation that those who leave the faith simply cannot leave it alone seems sound. Instead, they may even insist on justifying or rationalizing their hostilities as a form of therapy for the pain that they experienced when they were–shudder–MORGBOTS (or whatever other silly, disgusting, pejorative, mocking label they choose to use to describe the hated Other).

Part of this dynamic, as we have seen, is the demand that the Saints validate their apostasy by granting that it was honest, rational and hence fully justified. As we have also seen, they may even insist, even though they have become atheists, that God does not now and will not beyond the grave find their rebellion against him at all offensive. And they insist that their atheist friends are nice people, and being nice, whatever that means, is what really counts. They sneer at efforts of the Saints to place a broken heart and contrite spirit on the altar in an effort to find favor with God. They are likely, instead, to reinforce their malevolent passions by constantly telling lurid tales about those they saw as the worst Mission President, Primary or Sunday School teacher, Bishop, parent, Stake President, or Apostle they ever encountered. But, for these very nice folks, the very worst of the worst are those dreaded apologists and the consummate embodiment of evil and stupidity is none other than Daniel C. Peterson. And of course, those who defend the faith, are so clumsy that they are actually driving away thousands each day with their perfectly ridiculous efforts. So take that Fair.

It should be noted that Talmage Bachman, a veritable star of unrecovered hostility towards his former faith, who highly recommends Grant Palmer’s notoriously bad book, will not discuss its merits with me either in private or in public. Why? Well, of course, I am not concerned, he is certain, with truth but merely with the utility of what he believes on the basis of Palmer’s book is bunk. So much for Talmage Bachman’s credibility, which has been, despite all the drifting, the focus of this thread.