Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

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Apologeticsislying
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Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Apologeticsislying » Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:16 pm

Mormonism Confirmed Because it is Biblical?
Book Review of Charles Harrell “This is My Doctrine”, Greg Kofford Books, 2011
By Kerry A. Shirts (The Backyard Professor)

Preface
Charles Harrell, a BYU professor, has written a significant book on the developing evolution (changing) of its biblical doctrines and is one of the truly most honest books on this subject I have ever read. In many ways superior to earlier attempts such as Barry Robert Bickmore, “Restoring the Ancient Church, Joseph Smith & Early Christianity,” FAIR, 1999; Richard R. Hopkins, “Biblical Mormonism, Responding to Evangelical Criticism of LDS Theology,” Horizon Publishers, 1994; Scott R. Peterson, “Do The Mormons Have a Leg to Stand On? A Critical Look at LDS Doctrines in Light of the Bible & the Teachings of the Early Christian Church”,Millenial Press, 2014; Noel B. Reynolds, editor, “Early Christians in Disarray, Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy,” FARMS, 2005; Hugh Nibley, “Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity,” Deseret Books/FARMS, 2005; Hugh Nibley, “Mormonism and Early Christianity,” Deseret Books/FARMS, 1987.

The difference is that Harrell is not interested in finding ideas and doctrines that support a singular preordained “doctrinally correct” and/or “historically correct” conclusion to be arrived at which casts the very best light on doctrines in Mormonism which leaders have claimed to have received by revelation thus showing Mormonism has been supported by evidence. In other words, unlike all the earlier attempts I listed, decent though some of them are, and readable, for the most part, I enjoyed them all, Harrell gets to the nitty gritty and literally compares Mormon’s doctrines and usage of the Bible to bolster those “revealed” doctrines with actual biblical scholarship in order to demonstrate how they compare. There is no attempt at defending anything in Harrell’s approach, just showing the two approaches, the Mormon on the one hand and the Biblical scholarship on the other, and let the reader see the two side by side and how each of them tackle their understanding of the Bible. In other words, this is much closer to legitimate and credible scholarship instead of dubious cherry picking apologetics.

Now I am not saying apologists cannot and do not get scholarly, for they certainly can and do so, and are, in fact, way ahead of me in this regard. But their confirmation bias appears to usually get in their way and color the glasses they put on so they arrive at more or less dubious conclusions based on dubious methods and at times astonishingly dubious reasoning, which entirely mars their enterprise. To remain good faithful Mormons is seems that they think they must end up where the Mormon leaders, “The Brethren” want them to end up in their conclusions, i.e., if their research does not jive with revelations of Mormon prophets, then they are out of line, so, their research always ends up lop-sidedly using only evidence which confirm their views they already believe, and ignoring everything else at best, and dishonestly using at worse. In Mormonism, evidence is not allowed to speak for itself, but is used in service of Mormon doctrines, or used not at all, conveniently by-passed for apostates to utilize, and them receiving the blessing of excommunication in order to maintain purity and testimony of history within Mormonism.

One can also very clearly even see how Mormon scientists of the caliber of Henry B. Eyring caved in to this Big Brother watching attitude of the Brethren over scholarship which might threaten their cherished revelations and doctrines they wish to remain in control of, in Eyring’s book “Learning in the Light of Faith, the Compatibility of Scholarship and Discipleship,” Bookcraft, 1999. Others also had to be in tune with the Brethren, as for example John Widtsoe, “A Rational Theology,” and “Joseph Smith as a Scientist,” “Evidences and Reconciliations,” and the selection of various papers of Mormon scientists in “Science and Your Faith in God,” Bookcraft, 1958. Erich Robert Paul’s “Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology,” University of Illinois Press, 1992, was a breath of fresh air compared to so many other Mormon texts dealing with science, as was Gene A. Sessions and Craig J. Oberg’s, “The Search for Harmony, Essays on Science and Mormonism,” Signature Books, 1993. Steven L. Peck, “Evolving Faith, Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist,” Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2015, is another great hope that perhaps the tide is changing and science is finally being given its legitimate due, when honestly looked at in relation to Mormonism, along with Trent D. Stephens, Jeffrey Meldrum, “Evolution and Mormonism, A Quest for Understanding,” Signature Books, 2001 was well informed and fair when compared to the ridiculously embarrassing idiocy spouted by Joseph Fielding Smith “Man His Origin and Destiny,” and Dean R. Zimmerman, “Evolution: A Golden Calf.” Also Neal A. Maxwell’s “Things as They Really Are,” Deseret Book, 1980, was just too disappointing on the science end, and his cherry picked scriptural eisegesis (i.e., reading his own ideas and wishes into it) was obvious. He let his biases rip roar through the scriptures in as biased an interpretation as I have ever read, unfortunately. But to get back on point here.
Harrell has other problems than these, but not because of his biases, but because of the facts as they are established concerning the Mormon methods of approaching the Bible the way they do, and because of the scholarly methods the world uses which Harrell does not warp as many apologetic approaches warp. For this Harrell is much to be preferred reading. However, it doesn’t end up good for Mormonism at all, but it appears more honest, and one ends up feeling like one can go from there on an actually realistic foundation into further studies.

That all being said, there are some brutally egregious contradictions and paradoxes in how Mormon doctrine came about, which Harrell does not shrink from presenting. It will be my task (Oh dear Athene bless me to be just as thou didst bless Orestes oh so long ago!) to look into some of this in order to give a full grasp of the fatally problematic themes of Mormon doctrine. And, above all else, this is my interpretation and understanding, not necessarily Harrell’s. He is still, so far as I am aware, in good standing in the church and teaching at BYU, something I cannot even fathom based on the truth he presented here, for which, others have been excommunicated for presenting far less! (all unfortunate, but the church has become heavily iron fisted in regard to these kinds of things in the last few decades since the excommunication of the September 6, my suspicion is due to the open access to full information on the internet) I am grateful Harrell remains in good standing for his and his family’s sake. But this book is one of the signal texts which convinced me it is utterly impossible to defend the indefensible in Mormonism. I recognize I too have my biases, as all people do, without question, and perhaps it is some of those which cause me to see things so difficult and fatal to Mormonism in Harrell’s book. I continually strive to work through my biases, as I have been doing for years. Perhaps producing this review will help me see a larger picture my biases are preventing me from seeing. At any rate, on with analyzing the excellent analysis and presentation of Harrell. This is not going to be a sweet Sunday School spiritual testimony building review, just so you know.
Part 1
Harrell acknowledges in his Preface that he has always, as a student of Mormonism, been impressed with the breadth and depth of the LDS theology. This is a valid view since it is quite accurate that through Joseph Smith’s life he rose higher and higher into exploring diverse theological and cosmological explanations of scripture, history, the cosmos and its significance, and God, that, if nothing else, truly stretched traditional Christian ideas almost all out of proportion.(1) Breadth and depth, however interesting they are, do not for truth make however.
“Few religions provide such definitive answers to so many of life’s important – and not so important – questions.” (p. vii) Again, true enough, and yet again, definitive answers may not have anything to do with what is actually, factually, and testably real in the world and the cosmos, as Thomas Riskas has demonstrated.(2) One can propose the option, realistically enough, that instead of proposing all kinds of answers to all kinds of questions in both breadth and depth, the most important thing is to give the singular most definitive answer to it all, which, according to truly thousands if not millions of sages through the centuries, the oldest scriptures of humankind, and on the planet, the Upanishads, do.(3)

Why waste time with superficialities of all kinds and manners, and more serious matters as well, including all kinds of weird, if not homey, rituals taken from earlier religion and rituals dating back into hoary antiquity, in some cases at grasping and understanding God and the universe and our place in it, when one can go right to the source, and grasp ultimate reality all together for oneself? That would, it seems to me, be quite an effective counter weight to the entire edifice of the religious West for the last 2,000 years.

Discussing the leaders of Mormonism, the prophets and apostles, he notes they are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators, and that it is generally axiomatic that their words, like scripture, are divinely inspired and thus means they “reflect a consistent and objectively true theology.”(p. vii) The argument on this point is staggeringly gigantic, far beyond what any single author can possibly explore in critical depth. In other words this has been questioned, and we shall return to it as Harrell also does later in more general ways. There is very little to suggest there is much of any Mormon theology that is objective let alone consistent. Consistent after tidying the huge mess up perhaps, but that method of changing stuff around until it becomes consistent is crucially questionable, as we shall see in quite some detail as we proceed. He is here simply giving the general member’s understanding and assumption based on a lifetime of listening to the leader’s teachings and of simple “chapel Mormon” church going activity.

It was as early as 1828 when Joseph began issuing doctrinal statements with authority from God in his own words “This is my [God’s] doctrine” (D&C 10:67). “Such divine authentication should not necessarily be taken to mean that the doctrines that followed are absolute and immune from change.” A careful examination demonstrates, in fact, “God’s word is not always static, neither is it entirely free of human input. An example is the expression of the Godhead differs in the New and Old Testaments, Book of Mormon, and later LDS scripture – “suggesting that doctrines are dynamic and change with time. This is not proof the scriptures are uninspired nor the prophetic teachings, “only that they should not be understood as the final and unalterable word of God.”(this entire paragraph on p. vii)

Lets unpack this a little bit, with more details later as Harrell himself begins to flesh it out as well. We are asked to think that an all powerful, all knowing, and singularly most important being in the universe, God, who has the absolute most loving priority goal of lovingly helping mankind become like Him, that is an immortal God ourselves, has given knowledge to mankind, but is alterable and changeable, and hence, truly, merely finite? That appears to be seriously problematic, but appearances can be subtle. We shall deal with this a lot more in this review, just a mere heads up for the moment. But in essence, as we shall see with abundant examples from Harrell:
In Mormonism, we begin to see the spectacle of absolutely pure truth can be permuted and downgraded to a man's mere opinion when the doctrine becomes inconvenient in later times than when it originated. Truth is never final and thus relative. Revelation never gives objective actuality, but only relative truth, and only for a time, whether longer or shorter, and then it may be discarded if need be, even though it came from God who is presupposed to be able to give us the crispest, most accurate truth in the universe on any subject. Absolute truth in Mormonism can be warped through the fallibility of the human receiving it, so that it is not given to the rest of the world as God intended it, but God never tries again to get it more accurate, but allows the taint of human fallibility to warp the original important truth for salvation and exaltation. In Mormonism, God the all powerful who created the entire universe, cannot help or heal fallen man enough to be able to grasp and be able to communicate his truth without distorting it. God is unable or else unwilling (any other choices to choose from?) to improve his own pinnacle of creation, which has become distorted and fallible because of the fall of man, in order to get untainted, pure truth to the world. And so an all knowing deity is thwarted from and by his own creation, of being able to tell us the truth as He would like to be able to. And therefore, apparently, as Mormon leaders try to help us believe, his later prophets say earlier ones didn’t really receive revelations as such, but merely spouted their own views instead. And God never gives a revelation to either confirm or refute that claim that earlier revelations weren’t such either! This is what we are asked to accept, though never told about in these words. It is a disaster of magnitudinal proportions of which we are unaware. Seneca’s wisdom shines through – “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”(4) Let us continue looking at Harrell’s set up in his Preface.

Harrell notices that Bruce R. McConkie indicated there is more that we don’t know than what we do about Salvation and that “the last word has not been spoken on any subject.” Whatever is revealed is never final on anything. O.K. then, would it perhaps clarify things if and when the prophets speak as God wants them to, to say the Lord commands such and such only for the time being? I also am still trying to figure out why I am being held accountable for my beliefs and interpretations if they differ from a fallible interpretation given by a prophet or apostle. Why stop when a leader has spoken?

Harrell then comes to one of the most serious issues which has caused consternation previously in church history, and continues to do so. Being a book about the development of Mormon doctrine through time, Harrell also describes his philosophy he will use throughout the book to compare it with biblical scholars. Using the dictionary, he comes to the point that doctrine is “that which is taught or set forth for acceptance or belief…accordingly, I use the term ‘doctrine’ to refer to beliefs about ultimate reality and not to ultimate reality itself. Thus it can be said that doctrines change and evolve, even if truth itself remains constant.”(p. viii)

OK, this is excellent. He has given his definition and range in the issue of his book. So “doctrine = beliefs about ultimate reality” and certainly not “doctrine = truth” with this stance. Truth doesn’t change, doctrines and revealed truths through fallible men do change. God therefore never reveals truth, but only doctrine. And those doctrines can “change and evolve,” hence, there is no doctrine that gives us to grasp what ultimate reality is. Every doctrine is simply someone else’s interpretation about what is real. Is that not the logical end of the pointing arrow of his set up? That’s not problematic at all. What is problematic is when I come up with something different, and were I to publish, I would get excommunicated. That is simply ridiculous, since it is merely my interpretation against another fallible human being’s interpretation. How on earth can anyone get into trouble for having a different interpretation? Yet it has happened and continues to happen all the time. The Brethren’s revelations and vision are merely their interpretation of what they think, not actual truth of reality, so it seems to me that there is no way for that to be binding on my mind and thinking. I don’t read the same books as they, nor have the same experiences as they, and therefore will obviously come to differing conclusions than they will. But they cannot be ultimately right because it is their mere belief of things, and belief always changes, especially under public pressure! Therefore, there appears to me to be no anchor for truth, even if it is revealed “truth.” In fact, it’s worse than that. We can, no matter how many revelations are given, ever get to the truth, but only to a doctrine, which is only a belief!

Uh, I smell problems here. Revelations in Mormonism, truth in Mormonism, doctrine in Mormonism are all relative. Morality therefore is relative as well! All things are relative in Mormonism, which isn’t bad in and of itself, it is the approach the leaders take to that relativity of truth and reality where the problems occur. They insist everyone to follow them and accept their doctrines as the truth. They teach the true doctrine. But belief can never be true, let alone be the basis for actual reality. Doctrine can never be true. It is idiotic to have to be able to accept their interpretation as truth when we now grasp that doctrine is mere belief, truth is merely relative and morality is never final. There is no anchor here. Revelation is, after all, not an anchor to acquiring truth, though you can get doctrine from it. So what? I can get beliefs about reality in my own study. In fact, does the church ever actually teach how to get to actual reality? There can be no such thing as “true doctrine” because doctrine is merely belief about something, and belief cannot possibly be in the same boat as reality and truth, it is merely what a man thinks to the best of his fallible and faulty ability. Beliefs cannot establish reality, only evidence can, and then only provisionally as we are fallible! Is there any other end I can possibly come to at the end of this reasoning set up by Harrell? Not that I am aware of. But the East in Buddhism and Vedanta and Zen does. Are we missing out because we have been somehow talked into thinking the West (Christianity and Christianity on steroids, i.e., Mormonism) is the only path to truth? What the West is certainly capable of, and is proven, is divisions of doctrines, beliefs, and theories which have led to innumerable wars, inquisitions, and positive evil against people, which have precious little evidences other than saying “God told me.” But since God cannot get ultimate truth through fallible people to everyone, what’s the point of having others’ revelation instead of our own? None that I can see. Lets keep going with Harrell however.

“Just because they [doctrines] are inspired doesn’t necessarily mean that the narratives developed to frame them are always correct.” (p. viii) In other words, perhaps the doctrines are correct, but the stories about how they came about aren’t accurate. So we have the historical context which we cannot trust, and somewhere in there is a true doctrine. Got it. It’s probably more helpful and realistic to doubt the narrative is correct is what this says to me. The church leader theme of doubt your doubts now has to be doubted as being valid. Whee! Woops, this is supposed to be a serious review, sorry. OK, back on track now.

Now then biblical scholars have for better or worse come to the realization and have finally been saying so for a bit of time that the Bible has been influenced by its environment, and, of course, now we gather the same thing about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, a truly no brainer conclusion, but one which leaders and apologists have had to be dragged screaming into accepting, though almost totally minimized. (p. viii-ix) Is Mormonism’s view of Yahweh an assimilation of earlier doctrines or is it a revealed knowledge and truth of the deity? The reason I ask is Harrell’s demonstrating from one of the premiere biblical scholars of the Old Testament, Mark S. Smith that Israel (who were just a bunch of Canaanites running around in the desert and simply split off to form their own motley crew of people after all) simply adapted and assimilated their own pagan neighbors gods as their own, and Yahweh happened to be one of them.(ix)

There never was a pristine, pure original revelation of an original God Yahweh, who created all things as Genesis declared, for Israel to worship from the very beginning, because Israel wasn’t Israel originally, she was Canaanite, and she didn’t have a single original Creator deity, but several different deities with all kinds of different functions, rites and myths accompanying them. This is Mark Smith’s picture.(5) All the later “pagan” Gods were actually early Israel’s! Yahweh wasn’t even a major player for a while until he stole Baal’s powers. And we can’t forget Asherah and El either. Just as doctrines evolve, so do the gods of all nations. The ancient Egyptian God Min, as G. A. Wainwright noted so long ago, had all the characteristics which people approved of and applauded in deities, and therefore Yahweh ended up also being a storm god, a lightning god, a fertility god, and all the rest, as eventually so many of the Ancient East deities did. They simply swapped and adapted any cool and great power they wanted their god to have from a neighboring god who had it.(6) Yahweh, of course, as did all the ancient deities had a human invented origin, so it is problematic at best that Bruce R. McConkie, to pick just one of many Mormon leaders, was adamant that Yahweh was Jesus Christ. This may be doctrine (i.e., a belief of his with scriptural connections, but historically it’s a disaster) Harrell discusses this later in his book so I am jumping the gun here. We will return to this issue.(7)

Mormonism these days, following Harrell, is certainly more systemized, but we aren’t sure what the cause of this is, whether through revelation and enlightenment, or assimilating so much from his environment, which Harrell says most definitely occurred, and realistically far more than we have previously supposed. Hugh Nibley often took the strategy of finding things he didn’t think Joseph Smith could have known, especially from his environment, with other scholars able to come bouncing back showing that such things were, in very fact, a part of his environment.(8) In Nibley’s heyday, it appeared that the ancient parallels and perspectives were overwhelming since the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi finds and various other ancient texts were being translated, as well as new discoveries in Mesoamerica were occurring, all of which in some way, no matter how tenuous, connection was made with the Book of Mormon, indicating perhaps its ancient origin after all. Today? The ancient materials have been answered for a very large part, yet the environmental factors continue to be discovered. There is no possible way to argue today that Joseph Smith lived and worked in a vacuum, which was more or less the Mormon apologetic stance for decades. Yet one major area was how Mormonism itself matched biblical scholarship, since, if there really was a restoration, the Bible would simply have to be important, and surely, in one manner or another, even Mormonism as a restoration and the magnificent prophet of that restoration and the scriptures he brought to the world would have to be somehow in the Bible. So it is to this, Harrell’s major contribution which we now turn.

Endnotes
1. Joseph Smith will always be an enigma, I have come to realize, after reading among many others, two stellar texts and the attempts to get some bearing on him. Bryan Waterman, editor, “The Prophet Puzzle, Interpretive Essays on Joseph Smith,” Signature Books, 1999; John W. Welch, editor, “The Worlds of Joseph Smith, A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress,” BYU Press, 2006.
2. Thomas Riskas, “Deconstructing Mormonism,” American Atheist Press, 2011.
3. Two excellent translations with commentary I have used recently are Swami Prabhavananda, Frederick Manchester, “The Upanishads, Breath of Eternal Life,” Signet Classics, 1957; Eknath Easwaran, “The Upanishads,” Nilgiri Press, 2007.
4. As found in George Seldes, Compiler, “The Great Quotations,” Pocket Books, 10th printing, 1977: 827.
5. Mark S. Smith, “The Early History of God, Yahweh and the Other Ancient Deities in Israel,” William B. Eerdmans, 2nd ed., 2002: 7.
6. G. A. Wainwright, “Some Celestial Associations of Min,” in The “Journal of Egyptian Archaeology,” 21 (1935). Frank Moore Cross, Jr., “Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic,” Harvard Univ. Press, 7th print, 1997, showed the same thing, with further extensive backgrounds and updates, while William Dever, “Did God Have a Wife?,” William B. Eerdmans, 2005: 263-265 showed how Yahweh overtook and defeated the earlier ancient Father God, El.
7. Bruce R. McConkie, “Mormon Doctrine,” Bookcraft, 1958: 358-359 under “Jehovah.” Harrell, p. 173-175.
8. My personal favorite for a long time was Hugh Nibley, “An Approach to the Book of Mormon,” while perhaps one of the staunchest discussions of the Book of Mormon as model of environment adaptation is Dan Vogel, Brent Lee Metcalfe, “American Apocrypha.”
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Fri Oct 18, 2019 8:47 am

Good review. This is one of my favorite books in my journey of discovery because Harrell does a good job of laying out in a systematic form all the ways the doctrine has evolved and I found a few jaw dropping gems I had never considered.

I love how he discusses the development of the satan character among the ancient hebrews and my jaw dropped when I realized the church did not figure out the identity of Jehovah until the 20th century with Talmage's attempts at synthesizing the Godhead with earlier statements.

I like that I can share Harrell's book with believers as he has the respect of being a current BYU professor and his book was once listed for sale online at Deseret book. Much less threatening intro to the rabbit hole than others.

It is a great reference book that I find myself going back to in order to refresh my knowledge on several controversial topics of doctrinal evolution.

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by græy » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:02 am

Very good review. I agree with FiveFingerMnemonic, this is one of my favorite books. I love the way he systematically, unemotionally, and unapologetically unravels our current understanding of LDS doctrine; how it has evolved and how it has been (mis)interpreted over the years. I too go back to this one often to brush up on why our current understanding is the way it is.

Harrell does a great job at pointing out the church's wide use of proof-texts to support doctrinal truth claims. As often as we're told not to take historical quotes out of context, I have to say that our modern church is built on taking things out of context.
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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Hagoth » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:30 am

Thanks for this, Kerry. Great stuff.

I would argue to some degree with Harrell’s awe at the breadth and depth of Mormonism. Breadth, absolutely. It is a magnificently broad religion, but too many aspects don’t allow for much scratching beneath the surface. The depth is sometimes more like layers in a cake. They are there stacked on top of each other, but good luck finding a reasonable golden chain between them. The nature of God is a great example. Sometimes God is an exalted man. Sometimes he is an intelligence, parallel to us, who got a head start. Sometimes he is Adam. Sometimes he is pretty much the same as the mainstream Christian God. When we say “God” are we talking about Jehovah, Elohim, or Jehovah-Elohim? Sometimes it’s hard to say.
When you read Harrell’s book you can almost feel yourself blushing at how shallow and self-serving Mormon Biblical proof texts are, and that’s a major thrust of this book, as you point out. Just as astounding is how clearly he demonstrates the evolution of doctrine over the life of the church. Yikes.
Absolute truth in Mormonism can be warped through the fallibility of the human receiving it, so that it is not given to the rest of the world as God intended it, but God never tries again to get it more accurate, but allows the taint of human fallibility to warp the original important truth for salvation and exaltation.***
What Harrell does, intentionally or not, really makes it clear that the entire system is set up so all that matters is what the guy in charge is saying today. EVERYTHING in Mormon doctrine has changed! But it doesn’t matter because the man in the high tower has a hotline to God right here and now. I guess if you are completely onboard with that it doesn’t matter how we got here.
I also am still trying to figure out why I am being held accountable for my beliefs and interpretations if they differ from a fallible interpretation given by a prophet or apostle. Why stop when a leader has spoken?
Revelations in Mormonism, truth in Mormonism, doctrine in Mormonism are all relative. Morality therefore is relative as well! All things are relative in Mormonism, which isn’t bad in and of itself, it is the approach the leaders take to that relativity of truth and reality where the problems occur. They insist everyone to follow them and accept their doctrines as the truth. They teach the true doctrine. But belief can never be true, let alone be the basis for actual reality. Doctrine can never be true. It is idiotic to have to be able to accept their interpretation as truth when we now grasp that doctrine is mere belief, truth is merely relative and morality is never final. There is no anchor here.
If every doctrine has been wrong (i.e. in need of change), as Harrell illuminates, and all Prophets, Seers, and Revelators are fallible it seems like the best version of Pascal’s wager in Mormonism would be to trust your own compass and take a pass on the pronouncements of authority figures. Of course, consequences will be suffered.

Harrell did a Mormon Stories interview and you get to hear his testimony. I’m sure it is structured in a way that dogwhistles the right things in a recommend (or faculty) interview, but it is extremely nuanced, like those of Bushman, Givens, and their ilk. He is careful, as all of these guys are, to give proper respect to the High Sheriffs. He’s a smart guy and he knows that’s what really counts.
I just ordered Mark Smith’s book. Oh boy.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Apologeticsislying » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:56 am

Hagoth, Mark Smith is absolutely ESSENTIAL reading. You won't regret it.
I actually got to converse with Harrell for a little bit before I got the boot off of Facebook (I was trouncing a Mormon apologist and he lied about my site and turned me in as a Fisching site, and Facebook got all mad at me, oh well) and he said he agreed with my critiques! I was astonished. But his book is essential reading and he obviously put his whole heart into it. He hasn't apostatized, and probably no reason for him to, but his outlook is quite informed and due to understanding and having a larger grasp of things and how they work, he is nuanced. He has to be. Things in Mormonism are just not all that easy or clear and crisp and straight going.
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Hagoth » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:01 am

Apologeticsislying wrote:
Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:56 am
... turned me in as a Fisching site...
No dirty trick is too low when your doing it for God.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Corsair » Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:06 am

Apologeticsislying wrote:
Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:16 pm
Book Review of Charles Harrell “This is My Doctrine”, Greg Kofford Books, 2011
By Kerry A. Shirts (The Backyard Professor) as model of environment adaptation is Dan Vogel, Brent Lee Metcalfe, “American Apocrypha.”
Thanks for the review, Apologeticsislying. This book has been on my list of books I probably ought to read and your review has confirmed it.

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Re: Book Review of "This is My Doctrine" Part 1

Post by Apologeticsislying » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:09 pm

It is a book that will open your eyes even further than they are now. At least it did for me, and apparently quite a few others around here as they have said.....
The same energy that emerges from the fountain of eternity into time, is the Holy Grail at the center of the universe of the inexhaustible vitality in each of our hearts. The Holy Grail, like the Kingdom of God, is within. -Joseph Campbell-

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