Wednesday, January 6, 2016

ENTRY 50 ARE WE BLESSED OR CURSED?

Did God accept the Nauvoo temple as an acceptable fulfillment of his commandments by our Fathers?  In Doctrine and Covenants 124, there is a promise from God if they fulfilled the commandment on God's terms.  There is also a warning of the conditions to follow if they did not fulfill His commandments.  Which case occurred?  Which inheritance did we receive from our fathers?

"If the congregation will give me their attention, I will detain them but a short time. Our history is too well known to render it necessary for me to enter into particulars on the subject this morning. Suffice it to say, to this congregation, that we shall attempt to build a temple to the name of our God. This has been attempted several times, but we have never yet had the privilege of completing and enjoying one. Perhaps we may in this place, but if, in the providence of God, we should not, it is all the same."
(Brigham Young, J of D 1:277
Feb. 14, 1853.)

Sunday, January 3, 2016

ENTRY 49 WAKING UP




Remember in the movie The Matrix when Thomas Anderson (Neo) is going about his daily life and begins to discover glitches in the world around him.  Slowly he begins to recognize something isn’t right and the closer he looks into it, the more he finds that the world he believed was “real” was in fact nothing more than a program.  At one point, he is offered the Red Pill which if he takes, he will wake up from the programming and see the world for what it is.  Or he could go back to sleep in the dream world which is depicted as our own modern life if he will take the blue pill.  So he is given an invitation and of course what did he do?  What you do?  What would I do?  We’d do what Neo did and take the Red Pill!  Because we want to have a correct understanding of the world around us. 

 

Wouldn’t everyone?  Well shockingly and to my dismay, I am finding that most people do not want to increase their understanding of the world around them.  They want to keep the delusion going.  They want to stay warm and comfortable in their dream land.  

 

How am I coming to the conclusion that most do not want to wake up?  Because they are unwilling to engage in meaningful discussions with a genuine attempt to understand viewpoints that are presented which are contradictory to their own.  Let’s say someone believes that “X is True”; how would that someone act if they actually had an internal motivation to learn about True things? They would welcome and invite contradictory viewpoints.  They would say to everyone, “I am really confident that X is True.  Oh you think I am wrong, okay let’s talk about it.  Let’s use Reasoning.  Let’s examine the Evidence. Let’s put it to the Test. I am willing to discuss this as long as you would like because I am so sure in this concept that I know you will find it as compelling as I do.  However!  If you bring to me more compelling Reasoning and stronger Evidence.  And my “X” fails the test, then I will adopt your “Y”.  And I will thank you for it because you have increased my understanding and expounded my view.  I would be indebted to you for that.”  That’s how people who are sincerely interested in learning about Truth approach it.  But that isn’t how most people approach things.  Instead, they coddle their world view and protect it.  They act defensively.  They get angry.  If you can even get them to discuss it with you at all, they use Logical Fallacies to distract others away from the real issue.  Instead of examining X, they attack the person who wanted to test X  (Ad Hominin attack).  Or they misrepresent X to such an extreme position that of course it appears false (Straw Man argument). Or just as the results are beginning to demonstrate that X is indeed false, they change the definition of X to represent something else (Begging the Question or Moving the Target).  In my limited circle of family, friends and associates, the one fallacy I observe most commonly is the “Appeal to Authority”.  X is something that someone official and bonafide said therefore it must be true. When I am dealing with someone who uses defensiveness, personal attacks, and strange emotional overreactions, that’s when I suspect I am talking with someone who cares nothing for Truth but is only interested in maintaining their own world view.   Yet when people are willing to engage in thoughtful, meaningful discussions that’s when I suspect I am interacting with someone who at the heart is interested in finding Truth. 

 

Let that Truth come at whatever consequence, just let it be the Truth.

 

And so I have begun to notice glitches in my world view.  The walls are beginning to develop cracks and I am beginning to see beyond the wall to a much wider view.  And for me that world that encased me was Mormonism.  I admit that I failed to live Mormonism as a Mormon should.  I made for a miserable Latter-day Saint, but I really BELIEVED it, all of it.  And sincerely I believed it as it was presented to me.  But some of those pesky glitches made me take a second look.  So there is the ammo for those who want to engage in the ad hominine fallacy.  They will tell me that "I didn't line up with commandments.  I didn't try hard enough.  I didn't do it right."  Sincerely I tried.  In fact I am still trying to live Mormonism the way I really believe it is meant to be lived.  Nevertheless, wanting to know the truth, the way things “really” are, I didn’t turn away from history or contradictory viewpoints, or counter arguments.   And one night, while studying another Mormon Believer’s essay on scriptures, I came across a concept I had never encountered before.  What if the Book of Mormon was written for the Latter Day church?  In other words, when the book of Mormon is talking about those of the Latter Days polluting the church of God with fine linen, gold and harlots…it was NOT referring to some other church…it was really pointing at the church that was given the book itself.  In other words, it was talking about us!  The more I thought about this, the more I searched the Book of Mormon, the more I realized, “Hey yeah!  This is referring to the church that actually publishes the Book itself.”

 

   35 Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.

 36 And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities; and your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.

 37 For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.

 38 O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ? Why do ye not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world?

 39 Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not?

 40 Yea, why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads?

 41 Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer.


It’s our church he is talking to.  It’s us.  The Book of Mormon is very succinct on that point.  It isn't referring to "those others" such as the Catholics or Protestants or the Agnostic or the Athiest.  It is speaking directly to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Incorporated. And it is speaking to me, I have been a part of it all. 

Who could be more prideful than those who believe they are “THE ONE TRUE CHURCH”.  Of all the billions of people, through all the generations of time.  This people who amount to less than .0001% of all the people of the world, is the only ONE TRUE PEOPLE who have AUTHORITY from GOD?  And they control all who can get into heaven by their ordinances.  HUBRIS! PRIDE! VANITY!  OKAY, OKAY, let’s say it IS that one and only true church….what would God want us to do with it?  Build an $8 billion dollar shopping mall at the doorstep of the temple?  Become the largest land developer in the state of Florida?  Ignore the poor and needy among us as we lift men up to the status of kings and place them on red velvet thrones and fully support them financially to fund their business prospects as the CEO’s and Board of Trustees of for-profit businesses?  How about mind controlling children by getting them to recite the same incantation every month?  Why are we programming them to be little robots: “I know this church is true.  I know that Thomas S.  Monson is a prophet of God.  I love my family.  Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”   What does a little child “KNOW” about anything?  How about teaching them to be inquisitive and humble and reasonable and thoughtful which children are naturally anyway.  Instead of flattering them that they are God’s chosen people and  coercing them through mind numbing ryhthms of songs like "Follow the Prophet!  Follow the Prophet!  He knows the way!"  Or how prideful can a group of people be who say those others aren’t worthy because they were born black and don’t deserve the priesthood.   What’s with the idea that an Alpha Dog prophet can take as many wives as he wants and that includes the wives of other men?  Why are the temple rituals including the taking of oaths before “God, Angels and These Witnesses” when the scriptures forbid swearing by the throne of God?  Why are these oaths being administered with penalties of death when the scriptures say “Thou shalt not swear by thy head.”?  That’s what God would want with his one and only True Church?  That’s the Truth?  “Oh but we fixed that now.  That’s why we have living prophets that can never lead us astray” Really?  The living prophet of yesteryear didn’t lead our grandparent’s astray?  Yet the prophet of today is contradicting that one?  That’s a foundation of Truth?  Right in the very scriptures that Mormons declare is from God, we find the warnings repeatedly that Men, including those titled prophet did, can and do lead people astray.  The scriptures themselves warn of these things.  All of these things are explicitly warned about in the very books the people say they believe are true.  Yet they do not see it.

 

I began to wake up.  Once I saw it, I could never un-see it.  In a way, it doesn’t even matter if Joseph translated gold plates or completely made up the Book of Mormon.  Reading the Book of Mormon and comparing the LDS Church to its own Book completely exposes the falsehoods within the religious structure itself.  If the Book of Mormon is a Fiction then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is False and the leaders of the church have said just that themselves.  If the Book of Mormon is True then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is REALLY FALSE because it completely contradicts its own scriptures.  And that my friend, is the kind of red pill logic that shatters forty years of mind control and manipulation of a member who really, truly bought into it all.  That is how Neo wakes up.

 

But having woken up, now what is the real world?  What is true?  What is really real?  That’s where you currently find me.  I’m teachable.  I’m willing to learn.  And I have started with digging down to the bare bone definitions of words.  Language.  I am starting to realize that people are using words in a way that is completely different than the common definition of the word.  They do this all the time.  They hijack the word and turn its meaning into something that is more suitable to their purpose.  I won’t give a lot of examples here because most of my blog is my attempt to show how the original words within the Mormon religion are actually defined.  Not how most people use them today, but how the Mormon scriptures are using them.  The reason for this is because it is how I woke up.  Looking at how the word was used in comparison to how it was written.  These are different.  And the differences matter. 

 

To give you an idea of how far I am willing to go to find “Truth” (please use whatever definition suits you), I will tell you what I have studied this year in addition to LDS Church History.  I read the Koran and two other books about Islam from “insiders”, one apologetics for Islam and the other completely opposed to it after having been raised in it.  I have been studying the origins of the Bible.  I have been studying Evolution.  I have been studying Atheist reasoning.  I have also been considering the Reincarnation viewpoint as presented by Edgar Cayce.    A lot of what I do is find some documentary on Youtube about one of these topics and listen to it while I drive to or from work or when I am stuck in some hotel somewhere with a little time alone to eat a microwave dinner.  To truly study anything would require immersion in the culture and no one has time for that.  But the point is that nothing is off the table.  It’s open season and everything is worthy of consideration.  Naturally, I have some theories about each of these and recognize that these are theories only, nothing conclusive.  I enjoy having my world view challenged.  And I am now of the opinion that only those who won’t allow their world view to be challenged are those who would rather stay asleep.

And yes, my dear fellow Mormons, I have prayed about.  It has been constant prayer and continues to be so.

So we come to the question of defining Truth.  As you said, my definition is bordering on circular reasoning.  I recognized it as I wrote it. It is actually the definition straight out of Doctrine and Covenants.  I like it because it is simple and the intent of the definition is not circular in reasoning.  Though our approach to it might be. 

 

“Truth is the way things really are, the way things really were and the way things really will be.”

 

The circular reasoning trap could be sprung upon us if we try to define really.  What is “really” anyway?   If I turn to the dictionary and find the word “Real” will it say “Truth”?  And if I look at "Truth" will it say to turn to the entry on "Real"?

 

Realactually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed”

 

Truth “in accordance with fact or reality”

 

Well, there are the two definitions.  And somewhat they do in fact point to each other. In fact, they both point to the word "FACT".  Now we're going to have to define "FACT"  and we are still right back at the heart of the argument.  What is FACT?  How do we know if it is actually a "FACT"?  What is the test to measure the validity of something called "FACT"? 

The goal I hope is that we determine an agreeable definition, so that we are all speaking the same language.  Once we get beyond that, we still haven’t solved the deeper problem, however are then able to place each other on an equal playing field. 

So putting aside the definition game for a moment, let's just start with the assumption that whatever word you want to define TRUTH, FACT, REAL, NOT IMAGINED, NOT SUPPOSED, whatever that might be, lets start with the assumption that you and I are BOTH interested in discovering it.  My belief in your sincerity allows me to consider your viewpoint.  Your belief in my sincerity allows you to consider my viewpoint.  We don't shake our heads at the other and say, "How deluded!  How short sided!  How Unworthy!"  And by "You" in this context, I really do believe that has been your approach.  If you have read this far without turning your head in disgust, there is a level of willingness to forgo the "I'm right-Your wrong"  in favor of the "What piece did you bring to the puzzle table?" 

So, now I'm probably preaching to the choir.  Let's move on...

What ideas can we include in the category of Real or Truth?  And I think that is what you are saying…it isn’t so simple and it can’t be taken for granted that just because I think it is fact today doesn’t mean that new evidence won’t change my paradigm again tomorrow.    How certain can we be in our defined Truths?  We can’t be certain without risking the complete shut down of our ability to learn.  Once we are sure in our own “Knowledge”, we begin to use those fallacies that we recognize in others.  We begin to ignore new knowledge in favor of the warm cocoon of our dream land.       

 

Well, in defining the word, there needed to be some basic answer.  Some word that hasn’t been hijacked to mean something else.  Is there such a word?  Maybe not.  As soon as we say that Truth is that which is fact or reality and then we say that fact/reality is that which is not imagined or supposed…now we have to solve the question of what is fact?  What is not imagined or supposed?  It’s ALL IMAGINED and it is ALL SUPPOSED on some level!  And just as soon as we decide that this thing is a FACT we find out that in another circumstance it is not a FACT.  So then context is a consideration too…and I know that is another aspect you just pointed out. 

 

So what is the basis of comparison?

 

Well, the ultimate basis of comparison would be knowledge of all things.  What or who could know all things?  Only that which created all things and has power over all things. ...Drat!  Now we are talking about God.  But that definition of God is not the religious definition.  That definition could be a scientific or philosophical definition…no really, it could.  Is it electrical energy, gravity, anti-matter, quark string theory (what did you call it?)  Maybe it is.  There is SOMETHING that put the universe together and granted, it looks like whatever that force or intelligence is, it did it by Evolution on this planet.  Evolution is far more believable then the fairytale version of ADAM and EVE.  Evolution...That’s still God by the bare bones definition of God…a force or intelligence that created all things and has power over all things.  What’s that force?  What is it?  Science wisely avoids calling it God because the word God has been hijacked by hundreds of years of abusive religions seeking to gain control over people.  Religion turns the word God into a Holy Book or a Holy Man or Holy Ordinance…religion sells you A God, but they can never give you THE GOD.  THE GOD … the force that created all things and has power over all things….well that’s going to do what it has always done…and if it (whatever it is) has any interaction at all, its going to be on it’s own terms.  Maybe those terms are not warm and loving and fatherly.  Maybe they are simply “factual” and do not interact with us on a human level that we can relate to.  I say maybe to acknowledge that scientific viewpoints have a lot of validity to me and yet I don’t see science as contradictory to someone maintain a worldview of God at all.  I do have experiences that lead me to believe that there is something that is greater than human beings that is willing to interact with us on our level coming from a higher level, that is something we could refer to as "God" or we could refer to it as "The FORCE" or "Einstein's Theory of Everything" or "The Answer was 42, wait, what was the question again?"  Fine, call it what you want, but does it have anything to do with me?  Does it matter to me? I personally find that it does, despite religions' failures.  And I would hope to say more about why, but that would go beyond the bare bones definition I am trying to establish for the moment here.  Especially as you pointed out previously, how would I even know that what I was experiencing was the real God…if that God appeared as a father figure….well, who is his father….and his father…and his father…because if that God had to answer to another God then that is no God at all, is it?…because by definition, that God isn’t the ultimate source of knowledge and power of all things.  But something is, whatever it is.  Something made all things, because all things are here.  Well if it …whatever it is…is it willing to interact with us, what would be the cause or reason for the interaction?  What form would it take?  How would I validate the experience?  What would I measure it against?     


How many layers of waking up like Neo did would you have to go through to get to the ultimate source of Truth?  How many apparent Gods would you have to shatter to find the one that is the real McCoy?

Hell, I don’t know!