http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU1Ci ... _embedded#!

He speaks for 33 minutes in this podcast.

Any synopsis? I can't watch the whole half hour video right now, what's in it that makes you say he's a top candidate for apostasy?

In the comments section a poster commented...


Kerry responded:


He's commenting on some very difficult issues, but I'm not sure he's jumping ship.

He talks in length about Dan Barker (A Christian preacher who became an atheist) in a fairly sympathetic manner.

These are some of the things he mentions in the video:
-Many belong to a certain religion just because it's the one their parents were raised in
-Every religion believes that God is communicating with them, but every religion is different.
-As you read through the Bible you encounter the parts that are often ignored
-The more you learn the more you realize how little you know.
-We are often very critical and skeptical of other religions, but not our own.
-"If your faith can't hold up to a serious scrutiny than it's not worth holding on to."
-There are many who believe they have the truth while believing in largely different religions.

I hope I've captured the gist of the video.

Great summary Stormy.

I would add that he says very clearly at one point that he still believes in Mormonism, but he also seems to admit that he doesn't actually "know" it is true.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of it. I suppose he might have been saying that Mormonism can hold up to scrutiny while other religions can't . . . but I doubt it.

very good listen ... thanks for pointing this out.

Dan Barker has nothing on Kerry ... write your own book Kerry ...

I don't either really. It's really open ended. I don't know much about Kerry, but he just seems like someone who is willing to openly discuss difficult issues. I just don't get the impression that he's about to apostatize.

Cool, thanks for the summary! That certainly sounds inline with what I've seen him post over at MDDB.

No, I'm referring jokingly to the targets of Droopy and Schryver who instantly suspect someone is about to leave the Church the second they start showing signs of independent thought. If Kerry posted more on the MAD forum he'd likely be one of their targets.

I had a nice phone conversation with Kerry last week. He is a really good guy who is struggling with some things but probably not in the way you think. He is frustrated in the way certain Mormon writers have misrepresented the Bible in publications. But he never said anything to me about leaving the faith. He is just really interested more in what's true instead of what's politically correct from a faith promoting perspective and I get the sense he is starting to see the light in the way Mormon writers misrepresent the facts on a number of issues, and he doesn't like it.

Of course this could all mean he is trying to take apologetics in a more honest direction.

Just finished watching... I think Stormy captured his points well.

I'll be interested in seeing where Kerry is going with this...

I watched the entire video, while I didn’t learn anything new and my potatoes were rustled by Kerry’s conflation of epistemology with paradigm, it’s not a bad video at all.

What Kerry does reminds me a lot of Descartes’ project in First Meditations and dealing with the reality of skepticism and knowledge, but instead of talking about crafty demons using illusions, Kerry focuses in on humanity’s cognitive limits, and how prone we all are to falling into cognitive error unconsciously. He talks about how one is raised is going to deeply impact your beliefs and how these early foundational beliefs easily get assumed without serious scrutiny. He also spends time on how human cognition actively works against us at times, by making it so easy for us to be dismissive of evidence that runs contra our beliefs and how this can impact how you understand scriptures.

I didn’t see Kerry advocate for atheism, but merely used Dan Barker as a springboard into a meditation about spiritual experiences and how conditions and descriptions of them are nearly universal for a wide range of mutually exclusive beliefs.

The overall message I took home was that everybody needs to be very humble and cautious about what they proclaim to be God’s honest truth, and make sure you do the hard work needed to win those conclusions, instead of just waving it off.

Now this sounds like my path out of the church. I was teaching Old Testament to seminary students when it happened. I was really excited about teaching it at first because I spent the summer prior to the school year learning as much as I could about the ancient near east, about academic study of the Bible, about Israelite culture and practice, etc. I was excited because I finally felt like I was starting to understand the Bible; it was no longer a disconnected string of proof texts and stories but a coherent whole.

Then I started teaching the class and it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to share much of this with the kids. CES really isn't that interested in having the students understand the Bible, they are interested in using the Bible to bolster Mormon doctrine (such as it is) and especially support the teachings (such as they are) of the GAs. Plus, teaching kids Old Testament from the KJV is just painful, they really don't understand it for the most part. Everyday I really tried to figure out how to slip in what was excited about. I also schemed continually about how to get a comprehensible Bible into the hands of my students. I finally gave up right around the same time my testimony was really starting to slip away and quit.

That is the saddest part in my opinion. Here was an excellent chance for some kids to learn something about the bible, and it got steamrolled under a corporate top-down model.

I imagine Kerry has suffered from the same, the guy reads widely and I’m sure he is just exasperated with how little the Church as an institution has to offer him.

No, Will and I and others only suspect that someone may be leaning toward apostasy when they, well, start leaning toward apostasy. Kerry has been here before. Over the years, Kerry has flirted with atheism before, as well as a fixation with theoretical physics (which he once told me had essentially invalidated the entire view of the nature and structure of the cosmos as understood in the gospel), something he calls "Mormon mysticism," and what appears to be his most debilitating challenge, a kind of god complex that can frequently afflict highly intelligent and educated individuals.

Kerry has lurched and lunged between various preoccupations such as this for many years, while remaining a strong defender of Joseph Smith and the Church. However, in recent years, he has, unfortunately, become ever more judgmental and critical of the Brethren along several major dimensions, and recent posts at the MDB indicate that he perceives himself to have moved well beyond the General Authorities of the Church in his own spiritual and intellectual development, and is on the verge of some kind of, what he appears to consider a personal transcendence regarding the Church and its claim of being the authoritative organized vehicle through which the the gospel is preached, its doctrines settled and established, and the Saints organized as a people.

This is unfortunate. This is intellectualism in the form that can be the most destructive to both the spirit and the intellect.

[quote="Droopy]No, Will and I and others only suspect that someone may be leaning toward apostasy when they, well, start leaning toward apostasy. Kerry has been here before. Over the years, Kerry has flirted with atheism before, as well as a fixation with theoretical physics (which he once told me had essentially invalidated the entire view of the nature and structure of the cosmos as understood in the gospel), something he calls "Mormon mysticism," and what appears to be his most debilitating challenge, a kind of god complex that can frequently afflict highly intelligent and educated individuals.[/quote]

Ah yes two of the self proclaimed rooter outers of apostates. Modern day Orin Porter Rockwells to the rescue.

[quote="Droopy]Kerry has lurched and lunged between various preoccupations such as this for many years, while remaining a strong defender of Joseph Smith and the Church. However, in recent years, he has, unfortunately, become ever more judgmental and critical of the Brethren along several major dimensions, and recent posts at the MDB indicate that he perceives himself to have moved well beyond the General Authorities of the Church in his own spiritual and intellectual development, and is on the verge of some kind of, what he appears to consider a personal transcendence regarding the Church and its claim of being the authoritative organized vehicle through which the the gospel is preached, its doctrines settled and established, and the Saints organized as a people.

This is unfortunate. This is intellectualism in the form that can be the most destructive to both the spirit and the intellect.[/quote]


In other words he is thinking for himself. Indeed that can be a dangerous thing to one's testimony. Dangerous but perhaps not detrimental over all to ones own personal journey in life.

Be afraid...be very afraid.



Typical secularist/idolotarian drool winding its way down the apostate chin to settle in a viscous pool on the floor of the Great and Spacious Building.

The hornets are really buzzing today.

Must be Sunday.

YAAAWWN

and worse yet, a very lonely place, with no one to share with.

Yes, thinking for yourself is a huge NO NO in Mormonism. Droopy does this all the time when trying to be an apologist on Mormon matters, and the funny thing is he has relied on Kerry Shirts in the past simply because Kerry was the only Mormon who tried to address the issue. All Droopy needs is a loyalist's perspective, no matter if it is reasonable or not.

I spoke with Kerry over the phone recently and he told me he is completely out of the loop on this Book of Abraham stuff for about a decade now. He didn't even know the two ink theory was abandoned/refuted.

I used to watch him get in BofA debates 10 plus years ago and he was always quick to point out that his opponents were not keeping up with current scholarship. Kerry was so high on Hugh Nibley I thought his brain was about to pop.

Keven, have you told him that there is such a thing as the KEP? He needs to know about that kind of stuff.

Paul O