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your struggle is due to the fact that you have a simplistic understanding of truth and reality.
Scanning ahead a bit because I've got to sign off again now...
I'm all for considering what the truth of these matters may be whether you view my ability to do so as simple or not, but if you want to suggest I'm missing something, please be clear and specific. These sorts of comments are nothing but efforts to dismiss thinking that is alternative to yours. A waste of time all considered and what seems an effort to prevent the focus of attention where it belongs. That's what I call simple if we're going to go the way of tossing peanuts rather than exchanging the facts, reason and logic necessary to gain better understanding whatever the topic may be, simple or complex.
I'll try and catch up on where I left off tomorrow time permitting. Thanks to those similarly interested in doing so. I appreciate the broader perspective(s).
Well, in my own experience this has not been the case. I’m sure that it’s true for some people, though. Keep in mind that for Mormons, life is all about progress. After all, we’re the ones whose prophets have said that we are “gods in embryo.” I have, for quite some time, described myself as “not your average Mormon.” I was raised by parents who would have been very disappointed in me had I not questioned things I was taught in a religious setting. I can remember coming home from Sunday School class and telling my dad what I’d learned that day. I can still picture him rolling his eyes and sitting me down to talk about it. Now he was an academic, but he was also very spiritual. He never made me feel like I was doing something wrong when I doubted something I’d heard in church. In my life, there has always been very little conflict between my belief in God and my acceptance of scientific fact. Religion and science may be entirely different in their approach, but I believe there will come a time (not in this life, though) that they will be understood not to be in conflict after all. I have never felt that my spiritual growth and my intellectual growth need to be pitted against each other.
A man by the name of Hugh Nibley, an LDS scholar who was widely respected by his peers both in and outside of the Church, once said the following: “The first rule of scholarship [is]: You are never playing with a full deck. You never know how much evidence you may be missing, what it is, or where it is hiding. What counters that and saves the day for scholarship is what I have called the "Gas Law of Learning," namely, that any amount of knowledge, no matter how small, will fill any vacuum of ignorance, no matter how large. He who knows one or two facts can honestly claim to know at least something about a subject, and nobody knows everything. So it is with the schoolmen who make the rules and move the goalposts." Now he was speaking both of religious and scientific knowledge – not just one or the other. Eventually, all of the cards will, I believe, be laid out before us.
Good point. I didn't mean that people like you individually or that anyone is not allowed to question the church, because there is no way to really prevent questioning along the lines you describe. I am referring to how church dogma is to either be accepted as is or you are simply not truly a follower of that church in the way the church wants. I know religious people who actually have explained that asking such questions is to defy God, even to be the work of the Devil. I am referring to religion from the top down, not according to you as an individual or according to any particular individual from the bottom up.
What Hugh Nibley explains is yet another very typical attempt to make a case that whatever a person chooses to believe is just as worthy as anything else, because of course we're "never playing with a full deck." There is always evidence missing, not knowing what we don't know, what anyone can claim as truth. Yes, yes, yes of course, but there are those who know how to play cards better than others, because they understand the game better than others. There is a better way to play compared to other ways to play. There is always evidence missing, but there is the right and wrong way to evaluate what evidence we do have to work with. On and on, there is better or worse, what makes more sense and what makes less sense, little or no sense. How to establish truth and/or how to hide it.
My focus is on how we do better rather than worse despite all the obstacles, challenges and problems that have retarded man's progress since the beginning. Again review world history and all the many ways we've made progress despite all the challenges born from lack of information, ignorance, and it becomes very clear there is the better way and there is the backward way.
Again, how we best distinguish between the two and pursue the better way is where I'm coming from...
Again out of time and needing to sign off, but before I do let me just point out that to encourage discussion about truth as I have always done, also by way of my ten, is not to talk about it "loosely." Quite the contrary in fact. I have a great deal of respect about how best to apply facts, reason and logic for the purpose of distinguishing fact from fiction. Call it what you like. Not sure why you have such an aversion about doing so. Of course I'm no Plato, but as your link explains; "Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years."
I'm simply an ongoing student continuing the tradition after also a fair bit of study related to religion, history and philosophy too. If you want to focus on the merit of what I explain, fine. Please do. If instead all you want to do is point at the challenges of doing so (for what seem like biased reasons), then don't bother. We all know the challenges. I certainly do, and I know this sort of discussion is not for everyone. Maybe you need something a little more gospel like. If so, a discussion like the one I prefer to promote won't be satisfying to you.
Like it or hate it,the following is only my opinion:
A Blue Collar Aprroach to the 10 truths.....
1) I believe in one reality............I am of the universe as well as you.
2) We all have the ability to know everything that exists in the universe but do not use all of our senses.
3) My first reality was being held and knowing I was loved.
4) The second reality is knowing all that exists in the universe I can seek out and choose of my own free will.
5) Anything that man can think of is eventually created.
6) We are all one with the universe and God is in all of us just under different names.
7) There are common questions we all ask. There are even more questions we do not share.
8) The race is over when one no longer desires to question. The fortunate earn inner peace.
9) As many as the stars in the sky all work to keep their distance while belonging to each other.
10) The light at the end of the tunnel is the same one that brings us into existence only from the other side.
I commend you for making the effort. Yes we are both of the same universe. That's a universal truth vs some of your personal "reality" you go on to describe (reference my truth #1). Yours remind me a bit of the lyrics to "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles...
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy
[Verse 2]
Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
[Chorus]
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
My only comment to this would be to say that we should all consider it our responsibility to accept truth wherever we may find it. There is an LDS passage of scripture (found in section 93 of our “Doctrine and Covenants”) which says, “The glory of God is intelligence.” Mormonism teaches us that God wants us to gain as much knowledge as we possibly can in this life. Much of the knowledge we have can be attributed to the findings of science. I will personally accept every last fact that science can provide me with. But as the German poet, Goethe, once said, “Human life divided by reason leaves a remainder.” I believe that faith deals with the remainder, and I am not ashamed to have faith.
Fair enough, but if you can help me understand how what we learn about truth establishes that "remainder" to be God or anything supernatural, I remain interested...
Ashamed? Pride should not be a part of how we come to understand truth.
Goethe is an interesting story. Do you know much about him? "The great heathen." Something of a naturalist as well, who rejected all Christian churches and their teachings?
As an aside, this is one of my favorite quotes that has a long history with me. Often credited to Goethe, but I later learned he may not be the original author...
"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming." -- Goethe
That is truly the negative side of religion, but I don’t believe it’s fair to paint all people of faith with that same broad brush. I personally know many people (both LDS and non-LDS) who seem to feel that they cannot question what they’ve been taught for fear of either incurring God’s wrath or His profound disappointment. That’s not my position and never has been. I am not afraid to doubt nor to question, but if I ever come to the conclusion that I have all the answers, I hope someone will just remind me (kindly, if possible) that it may just be that I’ve decided to stop thinking about the questions.
Lastly, I was too tired to proofread either of these two posts. Please excuse any typos or other dumb errors. Generally I try pretty hard to not make mistakes of that kind, but sometimes it happens anyway.
You're probably long gone by now, but if you should happen to loop back here, I thank you for perhaps the most extensive, straight-forward, honest and civil evaluation of my Ten Truths yet...
I too try to minimize the typos (and there is a thing or two I wish I could correct in my Ten Truths here as well), but no matter the small stuff. Your thoughtful responses seem pretty darn well written far as I read them anyway.
Please also understand, I know a good many people personally like I mentioned before; friends and family who are Mormons, Catholics, Jews, not religious, agnostic and atheist. Needless to say no one group of people are all the same. I don't mean to "broad brush" other than in terms of commonality that most anyone can easily recognize about organized religion or any group as a whole.
Though I know a "good Catholic" who also supports pro-choice, for example, I think it's fair to "broad brush" the Catholic Church as pro-life. The exceptions don't make the rule kind of thing. My focus is on those sorts of facts and acknowledgements we can easily agree upon, much like the universal truths no one tends to argue about.
Hope to hear from you again here or wherever. Obviously this discussion leaves plenty room for continuation, but time such as it is, I could barely manage getting back to you on all truths since you went into the night addressing them more than a few moons ago. Hope the exercise was worthwhile for you too, one way or another!
I accept the point of confusion about universal truths and how discussion (or referencing savants outside) might resolve that.
As a starting -point. Natural laws that would operate even if C19 swept all life from the planet would still work just the same. One Universal truth.
Another are those basics agreed by all humans and indeed animal species. Survival, reproduction. arguing about whether Picard is real Startrek or not. All these things are social universals. Apart from the evolved basics you can put these down as human conventions and the universe couldn't care less.
Hope that clarifies matters.
Not sure, but I appreciate the effort...
Not sure arguing about whether Picard is real Startrek is a "social universal" either, but I know the series did well in most parts of the world...
You're probably long gone by now, but if you should happen to loop back here, I thank you for perhaps the most extensive, straight-forward, honest and civil evaluation of my Ten Truths yet...
[snip]
Though I know a "good Catholic" who also supports pro-choice, for example, I think it's fair to "broad brush" the Catholic Church as pro-life. The exceptions don't make the rule kind of thing. My focus is on those sorts of facts and acknowledgements we can easily agree upon, much like the universal truths no one tends to argue about.
[snip]
Am I to understand that "universal truths" are widely agree-upon facts?
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