Things I learned in seminary

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1smartdodog
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Things I learned in seminary

Post by 1smartdodog » Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:32 am

It has been 44 years but I have vivid memories of things that stuck with me.

The instructor was adamant that there were no dinosaurs and the earth was 6000 years old. Even when he got pushback from students he stood his ground

Not sure why that particular item stick with me. Maybe because of the conflict it created as a freshman college student taking an anthropology class

I wonder if kooky stuff like that still is taught?




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FiveFingerMnemonic
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:25 pm

Emotional epistemology and faith promoting rumor stories were prominent in the early 90's in seminary. My seminary teacher would ball his eyes out all the time talking about mundane topics and fictional stories.

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Emower
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Emower » Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm

I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.

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Yobispo
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Yobispo » Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:03 pm

Emower wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm
I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.
I was taught the same thing. Never made much sense.

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blazerb
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by blazerb » Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:49 pm

I remember one year the teacher made a big deal about the nature of the City of Enoch. Apparently too many members believed that ground and buildings were taken into heaven along with the people. The seminary teachers were instructed by someone to make sure we knew that only the people were taken up. That night, my friend shared this with his parents. They sent him back with a couple of quotes from BY and maybe some others that the people, buildings, ground, animals, and everything else around was taken up. The teacher just laughed nervously and went on with that day's lesson.

Of course we would have gotten just as much from the lesson if we had debated whether Superman has a super sense of humor.

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Just This Guy
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Just This Guy » Mon Sep 09, 2019 3:47 pm

Early Morning Seminary in a rural area sucks! On top of everything else, there were plenty of times where we would be up for seminary with bad weather, then midway though seminary, they would cancel school for weather. So not only would we have get up early for seminary, we would have to try to get home in the bad weather when everyone else would be sleeping in with a snow day or a fog delay.
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Hagoth
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Hagoth » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:16 pm

Yobispo wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:03 pm
Emower wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm
I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.
I was taught the same thing. Never made much sense.
It makes sense if you believe in a God who is a complete and utter bastard who is looking for any excuse to grind you up and throw you away, and who doesn't care that his son sacrificed himself to incomprehensible agony with the misunderstanding that he was fixing things so Dad didn't wouldn't have to be such a complete and utter bastard. Fortunately, that God is just a figment of the imagination of people like sadistic seminary teachers who get off on those kinds of scare tactics.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:19 pm

Hagoth wrote:
Yobispo wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:03 pm
Emower wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm
I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.
I was taught the same thing. Never made much sense.
It makes sense if you believe in a God who is a complete and utter bastard who is looking for any excuse to grind you up and throw you away, and who doesn't care that his son sacrificed himself to incomprehensible agony with the misunderstanding that he was fixing things so Dad didn't wouldn't have to be such a complete and utter bastard. Fortunately, that God is just a figment of the imagination of people like sadistic seminary teachers who get off on those kinds of scare tactics.
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by dogbite » Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:56 pm

I was taught

Hey Jude was about heroin
rock and roll was the devil's music
2112 by Rush was OK because it lacked lyrics
Young Earth Creationism including decietful fossils but see next item and ignore the implications
no death before the fall of Adam
black skin is a curse
Literal OT including Job as backed up by D&C
Christ's last week is most important (pay no attention to the contradictions and discrepancies and problems, especially as it pertains to the BoM}

Things I figured out

Paul disagrees with just about everything including himself
Devotionals are about candy
The scriptures are a waste of paper. You could distill actual instruction and cosmography into a small booklet. A second book of history was optional.
no one wants to talk about the book of Abraham
Joseph Smith was a jerk
Prayer doesn't work
There's a power competition going on
Women are second class but you can't acknowledge that
Everyone is secretly focused on the second coming signs so they can repent in time, but not earlier than necessary. Myself included.


Side notes. The CES employees recognized how cheese ball the church media was. After we spent the weeks before slogging through Tom Trails with dwindling attendance, we had an overflow crowd for the local satire Peter Paths.

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Emower
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Emower » Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:29 pm

Hagoth wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 4:16 pm
It makes sense if you believe in a God who is a complete and utter bastard who is looking for any excuse to grind you up and throw you away, and who doesn't care that his son sacrificed himself to incomprehensible agony with the misunderstanding that he was fixing things so Dad didn't wouldn't have to be such a complete and utter bastard. Fortunately, that God is just a figment of the imagination of people like sadistic seminary teachers who get off on those kinds of scare tactics.
I have been in a few arguments with folks about the dirt bag nature of Mormon God, and it always comes back to some sort of analogy between how as parents we show our kids tough love for their benefit as well. My response which is always, "not like that I don't!" seems completely lost on people until you start drawing real life examples. Then there is the inevitable sputtering "well that's not the same thing..."

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alas
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by alas » Tue Sep 10, 2019 10:03 am

I know there is a lot of crap that gets taught. I even had one teacher teach that Cain is Bigfoot.

But I also had one teacher, New Testament, who taught us about Jesus. It was kind of more Christian than Mormon, because it was about unconditional love, Grace, and how God gives us the atonement just because he loves us, not because we do “all we can possibly possibly do”. He gives it to just because we are his. He used the scripture about a hen gathering her chicks to compare God’s love for his children to a mother’s love for her children, and how a mother does not love her children because they are good or special or obedient. She loves her children because they are hers, unconditionally, even when she is angry with them for disobedience she doesn’t stop loving them and they don’t stop being hers. He taught us that the word Abba, that Christ uses in prayer isn’t because he respects God, he does, but he calls him “Daddy”. He taught us that we use Thee and Thou in pray the same way. Because God is family, we use the old familiar. And we talked about how it is “Your Majesty” when you address a king or queen, unless you are their child then you are allowed to get familiar with them and use the familiar. He didn’t say that our general authorities got it backwards when they say we use it to show respect. Nope, we use it to remind us he is our daddy and loves us. You almost have to speak a foreign language that has the formal and familiar to understand that our language of prayer is to show the family relationship, not for the distance we need to keep from the Queen of England to show our respect.

The whole school year would have given RMN the heebie jeebies

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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by wtfluff » Tue Sep 10, 2019 11:42 am

Are we discussing "crazy" stuff we learned in Seminary? I guess if I really wanted to exert some mental effort, I could come up with a long list of crazy things; But honestly, I think I've mentally blocked much of my childhood.

Or are we discussing "useful" stuff we learned in Seminary? Again, there was likely some useful stuff amongst the crazy, but nothing mind-blowing, and nothing I couldn't have learned somewhere else.



One thing I definitely learned in Seminary (and in LDS-Inc. in general:) How to memorize useless sh!t. I guess memorizing can be a useful life skill, but memorizing useless sh!t? Well, that's just useless...
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Not Buying It
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Not Buying It » Tue Sep 10, 2019 2:18 pm

Seminary is a veritable fountain of goofball Mormon craziness. 99% of all of the crazy ideas in Mormonism have been taught in a seminary class at one time or another. The reason is you have to have a screw loose to want to be a seminary teacher in the first place (out in the "mission field" you have to have a screw loose if they ask you and you say 'yes'). A lot of my seminary teachers growing up were either hopeless goofballs or certifiable loony toons. A lot of the teachers were guys who love to dive into questionable doctrine (in a religion where even the mainstream doctrine is pretty questionable, never mind the less well known stuff).
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph

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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by fetchface » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:32 am

The second coming was imminent (Class of '99). We talked about it all the time. I honestly believed that I would probably not live to be old enough to go on a mission or get married since I would probably be destroyed at the second coming because I wasn't pure enough.
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Newme
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Newme » Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:10 pm

Substitute taught us about compound interest.

*Anyone know why some seminary teachers get paid while some work for free for a boss (seminary director) who gets paid?

They do the same work - but only some get paid. Even if it were religious degrees that allow for credible income, why is it the GA’s get paid without having relevant educational background?

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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by wtfluff » Fri Sep 13, 2019 1:56 pm

Newme wrote:
Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:10 pm
*Anyone know why some seminary teachers get paid while some work for free for a boss (seminary director) who gets paid?

They do the same work - but only some get paid. Even if it were religious degrees that allow for credible income, why is it the GA’s get paid without having relevant educational background?
I believe the paid seminary teachers are only in the Jello-Belt, as there are enough students to make it a full-time job. (Where Release-Time is a thing?)

In the "Mission Field" there are not enough students to make it a full-time job, so that's where they get the "volunteers" to teach early-morning classes. (No Release-Time seminary.)
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. -Frater Ravus

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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Corsair » Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:59 pm

Emower wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm
I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.
I have also heard this explanation which is supposed to ratchet up the guilt so you keep the commandments with exactness. The logical implication is that you should definitely wait to repent until you are just about to die so that you only have to repent once.

My seminary teacher was a Young Earth Creationist. Combined with the "imminent" Second Coming, I got the distinct impression that hoping for long term space travel, technology, and future advancements in engineering also implied that you clearly lack faith in God and the church. Obviously the Second Coming would come around long before my dreams of Star Trek would ever come true.

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1smartdodog
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by 1smartdodog » Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:22 pm

Corsair wrote:
Emower wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:30 pm
I remember quite vividly a lesson in which I was taught about sin, and the fact that sin is not actually forgiven in the sense that Isaiah talks about. I was taught that even though sin may be forgiven, if you sin again the weight of the current sin as well as the weight of all the former sins of the same type come back upon you. So, its kind of like this conditional forgiveness, which is like everything else in this church. Its all conditional. Even Gods love, according to the current prophet.


My seminary teacher was a Young Earth Creationist. Combined with the "imminent" Second Coming, I got the distinct impression that hoping for long term space travel, technology, and future advancements in engineering also implied that you clearly lack faith in God and the church. Obviously the Second Coming would come around long before my dreams of Star Trek would ever come true.
I recall that feeling now. Being disappointed in a way that Jesus was going to come and eliminate the need for space travel

What a waste of young brain energy, dealing with all this nonsense that you have to sort out as you get older


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Who Knew?
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by Who Knew? » Thu Sep 19, 2019 8:09 pm

blazerb wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:49 pm
I remember one year the teacher made a big deal about the nature of the City of Enoch. Apparently too many members believed that ground and buildings were taken into heaven along with the people. The seminary teachers were instructed by someone to make sure we knew that only the people were taken up. That night, my friend shared this with his parents. They sent him back with a couple of quotes from BY and maybe some others that the people, buildings, ground, animals, and everything else around was taken up. The teacher just laughed nervously and went on with that day's lesson.

Of course we would have gotten just as much from the lesson if we had debated whether Superman has a super sense of humor.
That's nothing. I had an institute teacher for the "Doctrines of the Gospel" class who taught that the City of Enoch was actually orbiting the Earth opposite the sun. It would then eventually splash down in the Gulf of Mexico and become part of the huge, 1500 mile in diameter, City of Zion.

This teacher also had a collection of seer stones, which he claimed one of his students had "started" to see something in one of them.

Best doctrinal course I ever took. HAHA :lol: :lol: :lol:

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blazerb
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Re: Things I learned in seminary

Post by blazerb » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:57 pm

Who Knew? wrote:
Thu Sep 19, 2019 8:09 pm
That's nothing. I had an institute teacher for the "Doctrines of the Gospel" class who taught that the City of Enoch was actually orbiting the Earth opposite the sun. It would then eventually splash down in the Gulf of Mexico and become part of the huge, 1500 mile in diameter, City of Zion.

This teacher also had a collection of seer stones, which he claimed one of his students had "started" to see something in one of them.

Best doctrinal course I ever took. HAHA :lol: :lol: :lol:
So the City of Enoch is sitting at L3. We need to send a probe.

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