Try PM. He doesn't post every day.

Likewise, Wade, I am still waiting for you to show up in my thread and explore the thriving reasoned-based world-view that you say you want to have. It looks a whole lot like you still don't have the humility or the courage to join in, but I am patient. I'm trying my best not to leave everyone with the impression that you're a passive-aggressive coward, but at some point you've got to throw me a bone, Wade.

I think he's already seen your silly offer to help him with his lack of faith and he's not impressed. You however, may reconsider answering my questions and if you can validate Joseph Smith's translations of Facsimile No. 3 there is little doubt in my mind that Kevin will be forced to have to respond.

I think however that your faith is wholey misplaced.

Paul O

Bump

Wade - quick question. Does your method for restoring faith involve convincing people to stop asking certain questions?

Why do Mormons call Anubis a slave? What does President Monson (prophet, seer, revelator, and translator) have to say about this authoratative claim contained in Mormon canon?

Surely, Kevin Graham isn't being asked to have faith in this ridiculous truth claim from the Book of Abraham, is he?

Paul O

Apparently you can't ask these sorts of questions and retain faith.

Welcome back to high school. It hasn't changed a bit since you've been away. The chance of receiving even the slightest serious response to the OP is, as one would guess, zero.

Welp. I tried.

Also, would you mind answering Paul's question?

- VRDRC

If one ever decides they desire a reasoned and rational, yet sophistry-free worldview grounded in an integrated balance of revelation, faith, reason, logic, and critical thought, but without making reason itself one's religion (with all the severe limitations and distortions of perception that implies), there will always be faithful members of the restored gospel to help you, and help you avoid the alternative (and poor substitute for the real article) religion of people like EDelusion.

I have no intention of answering any of Paul's questions.

Didn't you just contradict yourself?

- VRDRC

The chance of receiving even the slightest substantive response from Droopy is, as one would guess, zero.

Leaving aside the yawning abyss of problems this kind of statement excavates and brings to the surface, I've seen very little evidence, over the years, that Kevin has any real commitment to any of the above intellectual ideals. He uses them, or rather, deploys them, for polemical purposes, across a narrow bandwidth of issues to which he has a deep emotional and psychological commitment, but I've seen no evidence that he values logic, rationality, critical thought, or "science" above or even equal to most of the apologists he regularly abuses.

The very idea that he thinks that a committed, faithful LDS, and especially one who defends the church upon intellectual grounds, must be, by the very fact of that commitment and faith, irrational, illogical, uneducated, stupid, and intellectually dishonest, is a clear indication that Kevin neither understands nor actually appreciates these qualities.

If he cannot or will not see them in others for whom similar intellectual ideals are matters of core principle, then I have severe doubts that he really understands what these qualities are and would actually recognize them in himself even if he possessed them to any substantial degree.

As an apostate from and as one in open (at least here, in anonymity) rebellion with respect to that very gospel and church, for you, they would not need to cohere at all, would they?

Yeah, right. Blixa talks a very good game, but the fact of the matter is that I've never actually seen here debate anything. All of her time is usually spent talking about how smart and educated she is, and very little if any, in actual demonstration.

Now Elder Droopy has joined Elder Wade as his comp, I am sure Kevin will be rushing to open the front door and invite them in to teach him.

(Wonderful, by the way, how quickly Droopy punctured Blixa's shallow intellectual pretensions. That put her in her place all right!)

I've never said Blixa was shallow. She has always presented herself in such forums as this as an insufferable, condescending, textbook leftist intellectual snob, but I never said shallow.

I've just never as yet actually seen her do much more than point out - much like Graham - how smart she is, but have yet to see the pudding in which resides the proof.

She usually just drives by, and doesn't do much debating.

Droopy's boiling yet tangle-footed assaults on Kevin strike me as somewhat disingenuous. I think most of the hostility comes because the Atlas-like Graham fills Droopy with thoughts he's been trying very hard to suppress, just as Wade has.

I often wish I could go back to the way it was when I had a simple and pure knowledge of the truth of the LDS Church. I was much happier then.

But then, I also know that my happiness was founded upon a host of incorrect assumptions, partial truths, and even flat-out lies.

It was a happiness grounded in ignorance.

Oedipus refused to stop his search for truth, even when it was becoming abundantly clear that what he was finding out was leading him to misery.

Oedipus was brave enough to choose misery based on truth rather than happiness based on falsehood.

I'm not saying somebody has to be a Greek hero to follow truth wherever it may lead and whatever the consequences.

All you have to do is follow the Mormon hymn, "Do what is right, let the consequence follow."

Or, "O say what is truth, 'tis the fairest gem to which mortals or gods can aspire."

There is no going back to simple knowledge for me, anymore than I can return to the simplicity and innocence of my childhood.

And really, it would not be wise to try to go back. Childhood has been transcended, as has my initial "knowledge" that the LDS Church is true. It is time to put away childish things.

As I continue to go forward in my spiritual journey, I find my "knowledge" barometer has fallen and my "belief" barometer has increased.

I went from faith to knowledge to doubt to belief.

Belief is okay for me. In belief, I can be intellectually honest and spiritually questing.

Knowledge led to nothing but stagnation, supercilliousness and contempt.

But that's just for me.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri