Mormonism seeks and embraces all truth?

[deacon blues]

Quote from Joseph Smith's Letter to Isaac Galland, 22 March 1839
"Mormonism is truth, and every man who embraced it felt himself at liberty to embrace every truth. Consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft fall at once from his neck, and his eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft."

A few years back I started a thread about Joseph Smith's biggest lie, which I then suggested was the one he told when he said "what a thing it is to be accused of having seven wives when I can only find one." But I think I just found a bigger lie in Joseph's letter to Isaac Galland which I typed above. Now a TBM might argue with this, but when I think of times when people are censored in Church meetings or other situations, I think a good case could be made that Mormons do not "embrace all truth."

I add a Brigham Young quote on the same topic below:

"Mormonism embraces all truth that is revealed and that is unrevealed, whether religious, political, scientific, or philosophical." -Brigham Young.

This, as I see it, is the BIG LIE in Mormonism.

[blazerb]

I have been trying to find the quote. I think it was T.B.H. Stenhouse who said something like, "In words, Mormonism is the most expansive religious system, but in practice it is most constricting." I know I did not say it as well as it was originally said. However, the point is that from the beginning, church leaders have preached a tolerance and openness to seeking that the church practices have never lived up to.

J. Reuben Clark can say, for example, "If we have the truth, then it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed." However, the instant that there is a possibility of harm from exposed facts, the wagons circle up. Courts of love are held. The PR machine revs up. The boundaries of appropriate discussion are set so that the results of investigation reach as few people as possible.

Mormonism does not embrace truth. It only embraces those things that will help it maintain and grow its power.

[Rob4Hope]

Deacon Blues.....I agree this is at least one of the BIGGEST lies Joseph Smith ever said. The church now plays a massive game of gas-lighting to protect itself, hiring legions of apologists, using ad-hominem attacks, intentionally withholding information, suppressing scholarship, and all the while taking a rather stupid stance of never offering correction to earlier apostolic and prophetic declarations that are utterly wrong.

Originally I left the church because I saw the church not taking responsibility for things it had said. In the passage of time, the church comes down squarely on both sides of any and all issues--and depending on which side happens to serve it at the moment, it then pulls out of the historical repository that which supports its cause.

A flagrant example is the concept of murder. But, Section 132 give allowance for murder, because its only murder if you shed "innocent blood". And then pulling from the New Testament, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God". Hence, no one is innocent.

Having these things in mind, I am thinking about Porter Rockwell going after Governor Boggs, Brigham Young's "destroying angels", the Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc.

Oh yes...the LDS church has blood on its hands....even to the extent that is as dark as that. And lest we forget, there is a suicide problem happening in the LGBTQ community, of which victims happen to be disproportionally LDS.

Hunh?....could that have anything to do with the LDS position on sin, hell, and the culture that swirls around that?

What a ghastly organization.

[Hagoth]

The church sets up two bookends that are not very far apart and says, "everything between those two bookends is the truth. Go ahead and embrace it," as described so eloquently by Steve Martin: https://youtu.be/aUQkbXWwJhQ

[alas]

I think this thread is not being fair to Joseph. The genius of Joseph Smith was that he could take what he saw as truth from where ever he found it and cobble it together into some semblance of religion.

But Joseph as original prophet was the only one allowed to do that. All truth that science has found after the day Joseph died has been toss in the circular file. The superstition that Joseph believed to be true, as in God can control this stick to show us where water is located underground, has been obfuscated. The really stupid astronomy in the BoA that Joseph believed to be true has been canonized.

The leaders just froze what Joseph believed and chiseled it in concrete And NOW the church is closed to any truth Joseph didn’t believe.

[Rob4Hope]

I think this thread is not being fair to Joseph. The genius of Joseph Smith was that he could take what he saw as truth from where ever he found it and cobble it together into some semblance of religion.

But Joseph as original prophet was the only one allowed to do that. All truth that science has found after the day Joseph died has been toss in the circular file. The superstition that Joseph believed to be true, as in God can control this stick to show us where water is located underground, has been obfuscated. The really stupid astronomy in the BoA that Joseph believed to be true has been canonized.

The leaders just froze what Joseph believed and chiseled it in concrete And NOW the church is closed to any truth Joseph didn’t believe.

Hi Alas.

How do you feel about JS and the Egyptian Papyrus? The catalyst theory is all there is...and so I see JS as a complete Fraud. But I agree that from him forward, there certainly has been a refusal to allow others to accept truth.

[alas]

I think this thread is not being fair to Joseph. The genius of Joseph Smith was that he could take what he saw as truth from where ever he found it and cobble it together into some semblance of religion.

But Joseph as original prophet was the only one allowed to do that. All truth that science has found after the day Joseph died has been toss in the circular file. The superstition that Joseph believed to be true, as in God can control this stick to show us where water is located underground, has been obfuscated. The really stupid astronomy in the BoA that Joseph believed to be true has been canonized.

The leaders just froze what Joseph believed and chiseled it in concrete And NOW the church is closed to any truth Joseph didn’t believe.

Hi Alas.

How do you feel about JS and the Egyptian Papyrus? The catalyst theory is all there is...and so I see JS as a complete Fraud. But I agree that from him forward, there certainly has been a refusal to allow others to accept truth.

I see him as a fraud with some belief that God was actually leading him, dishonesty, lies and all. He was just narcissistic enough to believe his own crap. Like Trump honestly believes he is a great president instead of the guy who will go down in history as the absolute worst. I am not sure whether I would call what he was doing with the Egyptian papyrus catalyst.... more like “channeling.” But his own subconscious mind just making it all up. But I think that he put his head in that hat and went into a trance state and words came into his mind, that he believed were from God and I think was just story telling.

There were people who could go into a trance and very accurately describe life 200 years earlier, or specifics about life in some other age and time. Some were very wrong with what they came up with, but others were surprisingly accurate. The theory they believed was that some dead person contacted them and told the story, but personally I don’t know what they were actually doing. Going into a trance and then their subconscious just makes up this stuff? Most likely, but often the person doing it didn’t know what they were doing in their semi hypnotic trance. They honestly believed they had lived another incarnation, were channeling a dead person, or some other occult belief. There is REALLY good evidence that Joseph believed some of the occult stuff he used as a money digger. So, going by the fact that he honestly believed some of the occult stuff, that kind of makes him a pious fraud.

[alas]

PS. And with channeling, quite often the person did need an object, maybe something that belonged to the dead person or something as sort of a focus object. So, yeah catalyst theory. The object is sort of the trigger for channeling. But I don’t think it really involved dead people or came from God. I think it all came out of Joseph’s head.

[Rob4Hope]

So......what about the changes in tongues speaking? There is a historical record that BY did some of this. I personally believe the historical record was doctored on this.

And now the whole tongues thing has been changed to foreign missionaries learning the language.

[1smartdodog]

It is always hard to stick with the truth when it threatens the flow of money or power.


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[Mackman]

After 6 years of my faith crisis I see no honesty or truth seeking from the church. Joseph Smith was a complete fraud to include the BOM . As already pointed out looking for the truth would impede the flow of money and power. The church seeks only truths that promote its own self interest and survival. I believe they hoard money example $100 billion to survive as long as possible . A few generations from now their will not be any members left to prop them up the fall will be great !!!!!

[Hagoth]

So......what about the changes in tongues speaking? There is a historical record that BY did some of this. I personally believe the historical record was doctored on this.

And now the whole tongues thing has been changed to foreign missionaries learning the language.

They did speaking in tongues exactly the way Evangelicals do it today. One person would stand up in a meeting and start speaking gibberish and another would stand up and "translate" it back into English, and both were completely making up what was coming out of their mouths. In Brigham's day a lot of the speaking in tongues was done in the Adamic tongue, which is incredibly convenient, since you can't fact-check something spoken in an imaginary language.