It would be nice if the LDS church could admit it was wrong on polygamy, Blacks, etc. But in so doing, they'd be admitting that they don't hold exculsive claim to revelation. They'd be negating everything that prior prophets had claimed to be actual truth.

It's my guess that they will continue to obfuscate the truth as much as possible and frighten TBMs into not doing any research on non-church-approved sites until they're bleeding so much that they finally give in and admit it's all a fraud.

one can hope...

I agree. You can't back out gracefully after claiming to be God's one true church and the only church holding any priesthood authority. All of these issues will be common knowledge within the next generation. People will wonder more and more why there are so many talks, devotionals, etc... on doubt. The church is now pretending like they've never hidden anything and claim that the JS Papers project is proof that they're open and honest, but it's not hard to see through the BS. Eventually, they're going to have to openly admit that, based on all historical evidence, maybe Joseph didn't see God...and maybe the BoM isn't historical...and maybe the BoA is just made up garbage, etc... They'll try to claim that the church is still true based on some bizarro apologetic logic, but if they want to survive in ANY form, they're going to have to change dramatically at some point.

The Reorganized LDS Church leaders were faced with this
problem during the mid-20th century, and made two decisions:

1. To no longer proclaim themselves the One True Church

2. To re-define "revelation" as a very hazy, indefinite thing.

That helped the RLDS quite a bit -- but it also killed that
church's growth, financial intake, and hopes for the future.

If Community of Christ is not quite dead, it is well on the
road to being a tiny, generic Protestant sect, that could
merge into any one of a number of established denominations
and never be missed.

I think that the Mormon leaders have taken note of that
evolution and decline, with CoC, and have learned not to
try and go down the path of admitting the truth to members
and to the world at large. The tremendous loss would not
be worth the satisfaction of being honest, for a change.

UD

Who shows up for Church when the sign promoting Sunday's sermon says:

"Drop in and We'll Kick Around a Few Ideas"

The great irony is that you can't claim to be perfect, then come out with a "new improved" model.

Attrition is the only answer they have that works. Watch it working- just talk to a BIC 20-year old about The Plan of Salvation.



Kathleen Waters

Bloomberg Businessweek reported in July 2012: "According to U.S. law, religions have no obligation to open their books to the public, and the LDS Church officially stopped reporting any finances in the early 1960s. In 1997 an investigation by Time used cross-religious comparisons and internal information to estimate the church’s total value at $30 billion. The magazine also produced an estimate that $5 billion worth of tithing flows into the church annually, and that it owned at least $6 billion in stocks and bonds. The Mormon Church at the time said the estimates were grossly exaggerated, but a recent investigation by Reuters in collaboration with sociology professor Cragun estimates that the LDS Church is likely worth $40 billion today and collects up to $8 billion in tithing each year." (Ref. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p3)

Reuters reported a month later: "Relying heavily on church records in countries that require far more disclosure than the United States, Cragun and Reuters estimate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brings in some $7 billion annually in tithes and other donations." (Ref. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/12/us-usa-politics-mormons-idUSBRE87B05W20120812)

TIME Magazine reported in Aug. 1997: "With unusual cooperation from the Latter-day Saints hierarchy (which provided some financial figures and a rare look at church businesses), TIME has been able to quantify the church's extraordinary financial vibrancy. Its current assets total a minimum of $30 billion. If it were a corporation, its estimated $5.9 billion in annual gross income would place it midway through the FORTUNE 500, a little below Union Carbide and the Paine Webber Group but bigger than Nike and the Gap." (Ref. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986794,00.html as well as the full article text at http://lds-mormon.com/time.shtml)

Prior to this century, Mormonism was an increasingly successful fraud. Since the advent and huge expansion of the Internet, however, and the creation of several illuminating websites with 'faith'-busting info. about JS, early church history, and the ongoing LDS swindle, people have been leaving the Mormon Church "in droves" (see the Jan. 2012 Reuters special report at http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/uk-mormonchurch-idUKTRE80T1CP20120130 as well as http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Number-of-faithful-Mormons-rapidly-declining/rvih3gOKxEm5om9IYJYnRA.cspx?p=Comments for details).

"According to U.S. law, religions have no obligation to open their books to the public"
This fact makes religious organizations possibly a more likely hangout for fraud and maybe even criminal activity than businesses or political organizations which are highly regulated. There is also the major point about there being no taxes on religious organizations, meaning that if they engage in business enterprises, they have an enormous advantage over their for-profit counterparts. All they have to do is pipe all their profits into "overhead" of enormous salaries for top leaders and then say their religious organization is a non-proft because it generates no income above overhead.

When you lend money to the mob to build brothels in Vegas you need to sit on your books.

religions have a moral and ethical obligation to open their books.

Until they do so they cannot claim the moral high ground on any issue.

I understand a desire to withold personal information, but when it comes to the general financial records I'd be inspired with more confidence in their honesty if they'd choose to self-disclose. What is it exactly they're worried about? They actually have more control of the consequences if they are the ones who disclose.

"They'd be negating everything that prior prophets had claimed to be actual truth."

But TSCC has been backing away from many of the beliefs they used to teach as doctrine. Think of BY, polygamy, Kolob, etc.

You get to a huge beef I have with Mormonism.

"Oh, we don't practice polygamy anymore, and we allow blacks to hold the priesthood!" they all whine in protest.

But see, you don't get to reinvent yourself...and it's not about polygamy being practiced... believe it or not, most relatively informed people KNOW mainline Mormons aren't polygamist.

It's about WHO they say speaks for God. And to admit these guys were wrong is to admit maybe they didn't speak for God. And if all these guys...from JS to TSM...did not speak for God... especially if Joseph Smith did not speak for God... then even those most willing to overlook trouble with church history and doctrine HAVE to see it's crap. And it's why outsiders EASILY spot Mormonism as a load of crap.

stillburned Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> But see, you don't get to reinvent yourself
>

this. if the church was so true, why does it have to keep changing? a true church would have been true in the past, and the same gospel would still be true now. the earth is round. truth. this hasn't changed; people may have believed differently in the past, but it was the beliefs that changed, not the truth.

so the church is just a nonsense set of beliefs that constantly changes - black people can't hold the priesthood, yes they can, no they can't. oh we are alright with gays attending and welcome them. but we'll turn around and do all we can to support prop 8, which is very anti-gay. coke is bad to drink, no it's not. horn dog and BY can have multiple wives, but today we supposedly ex those who try to follow in their footsteps. God change his mind on that did he, and stop sending threatening angels with flaming swords?

chop, change, chop, change. this is not what truth does. this is what beliefs do, but truth is universal, and timeless. TSCC is none of these things (true, universal or timeless).

I agree. When I said, "You don't get to reinvent yourself," I should have said that doesn't stop TSCC from trying...in all the ways you've mentioned, and more.

But, you don't get to reinvent yourself because, in this day and age--the less than 200 years Mormonism has been around--everyone leaves a paper trail. While that paper trail is indelible today, it's still fairly traceable from Joseph Smith's day.

It doesn't take much to prove the simplest explanation: Smith was a con man and a horn dog with a flair for spinning yarns. The only thing I don't know, because I can't get in his head, is whether he believed it or not. Given the power of self delusion, I'm sure he talked himself into believing his own lies.

Really interesting articles in the links, thanks, StoneInHat!

They will never admit they're wrong, instead, when they figure out they're losing members ($$$) due to issues, there will be another "revelation," about changing doctrines and they'll come up with some half-ass excuse about why.

"They will never admit they're wrong, instead, when they figure out they're losing members ($$$) due to issues, there will be another "revelation," about changing doctrines and they'll come up with some half-ass excuse about why."

I don't think they'll be able to come up with ANY excuses that people will buy for long. They might talk up the second coming and "signs of the times", but when they're still losing numbers and are noticably weaker 20-30 years later even the nutjob TBM's that bought the end-times garbage will take notice and jump ship.

Their best bet would probably be to just shut up. Stop talking about doubt so much. Ignore the BoA, stop talking about JS so much, etc... They'll continue to bleed members and lose money gradually, but if they keep pointing out the problem to TBM's they're going to destroy the "church" they're trying to save.

It's all part of the natural life cycle of sects. They start out when a mid-level leader (Sidney Rigdon) breaks away from the main denomination because he is unhappy with the accommodation of the main group to wordly values.

Such a break-away sect typically attracts people with a low socio-economic status who have nothing to lose by associating with such a group but everything to gain in terms of eternal rewards. Where else can the average Joe get his own planet?

The new movement gains traction by exchanging promises of eternal bliss for cold hard cash. Since the gods don't have a bank account, this cash ends up with the group's leaders.

The group's leaders can then use the accumulating wealth to forge ties with the outside world and gain respectability.

That introduces tensions between the leaders and the followers. The leaders now do have something to lose with regard to their ties to the outside world, and will want to deemphasize the group's distinctive characteristics (don't know that we teach that). For the followers, nothing has changed. They still want their own planet and plenty of wives to boink for all eternity.

Chances are that there will be a major schism in the LDS church at some point in the future and the whole cycle will begin anew. I don't see it happening anytime soon, though. Even under the Hinckster, Mr Mainstream par excellence, Mormons were still considered weird by 99% of the world's population.

They would, indeed, have to walk the same path as the RLDS did, giving up all their distinctively Mormon teachings, while at the same time maintaining their secular clout and improving their public image and influence.

because of the Foolproof "Chain of Command"

Yes, they have painted themselves into a theological corner. Now they cry for understanding. Their salty crocodile tears sustain me. How delicious is their desperation compared to that of a young teen asking to be left alone with his thoughts. A teen who was bullied by "men of God." I will piss on their graves, and that includes you, Daddy. I will poison the ground over you so that you push up sh!t daises. Let that be your legacy.

The reason the church can't outright say that it's wrong about something is because if they do, they fear that the membership will start thinking "If they're wrong about that, maybe they're wrong about this too". They want the members to obey strictly to the rules, so they can't say they're wrong about things.

Also, the church won't ever say they were wrong about polygamy. Although they don't practice it at the moment, they still believe in it, so they won't say they were wrong about it.

However, with blacks and the priesthood, that is feasibly something they could admit they were wrong about. The best way would be to take the "Brigham Young was speaking as a man, but we all wrongly assumed he was speaking as a prophet" route.

I think the LDS will survive but their numbers will drastically decrease. Even when faced with the truth, cognitive dissonance is alive, well, and rampant in the USA.

Somehow they think by making the statement that they no longer teach something all is forgotten.

Google never forgets.

And that's the real miracle & revelation, isn't it? That Google never forgets.

You all should remember their biggest loophole is continuing revelation. One doctrine may be good today but they claim to be up to date. They change because the times change and new information requires new doctrine. That is one of their biggest selling points to prospective converts. They don't have to stick to those old Biblical doctrines, so they say. They are keeping up with the times....Of course, Christians see this for what it is-a fraudulent religion.

Not just Christians see it as a fraud, anyone does. Catholics, especially, can't believe Mormons would be so dumb, with the prophet thing. They wonder why Mormons would try to recreate Medieval Catholicism with their infallible Pope thing. Trying to say, "speaking as a man," didn't work for the Pope either. So Catholics came up with a formalistic process of when the Pope was the Pope, and avoided, meticulously, the Pope ever being Pope. He's just a guy, mostly. This severely undermines the authority of the Church. TSSC leadership is trying to do that too. Now they're trying to confront the issue: "How is it that God's prophet is slipping into senility. How does that work?" Trying to make it work is a fool's errand.

"Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind"
-Billy Joel

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints"

If Joseph was wrong then the BoM is wrong and the whole house of cards comes down.

Exactly. Missionaries have been pushing this for decades...if the BoM is true, then JS was a prophet, the church MUST be true, and you HAVE to be baptized. Someone just quoted TSM in conference using this exact line. However, you can prove that the book isn't true, that Joe wasn't a prophet, that there was no priesthood restoration, etc... Break the church's stupid logic train anywhere along the line and the whole church falls apart.

It's also why there are Bible literalists. If one part of the Bible is only allegorical, then any and all parts can be mythical.

The church has already said Brigham Young and other past leaders were wrong about the priesthood ban. I know that the prophet is not the same thing as the church, but it's a step in the right direction.

When picking is still ripe?
As long as there are gullibles around they will keep masquerade.

A long time ago, the promises that the prophet made did not come true. people went on different directions. BY came up with the solution: we will build the church around the leader, forget revelation or doctrine. That's why the LDS are commonly referred to as Brighamites. They saw him as the most believable.

This model of Mormonism continues, but it must be built on one pillar: the prophet can never be questioned.

The LDS buffoons with their recent "dynamic leadership" have unwitting opened the door to the possibility that prophets (they sohuld not have started with BY) can be wrong.

This pulls the chair from under themselves, but it does open the door to apologies. I have said for years that they will go the way of the community of Christ, it is the only way to survive once it becomes obvious that god is not talking to tommy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2014 11:54AM by sb.

The Morg has always been about strict obedience, at least for the masses. Once it starts to admit it's batting average would get it cut from any baseball team, then how can they ask for obedience?

The idea that they speak for the "Lord" can pretty much be discounted with any thought process at all.

Combined that with anonymous boards, which allow people to say out loud (well, type) what could never have been whispered before means that more and more people will come forward.