Mormon Profits and Lying

I once observed to a Mormon friend that Gordon B. Hinckley, late president of the Mormon Church, publicly lied when it suited him. No, I didn’t simply up and assault my friend’s faith. That would be bad manners. He and I discussed religion often; this happened to come up in the course of one of our conversations.

1. When Hinckley served as an assistant to his predecessor, Ezra Taft Benson, he repeatedly assured church members that Benson was actively engaged in managing the affairs of the church. Benson’s grandson exposed the lie: Ezra was a vegetable, and had been for years. (Curiously, the reaction of church members was to reprimand the grandson, now no longer a Mormon, for stirring up trouble.)

2. During an interview on the Larry King Show, King brought up the Mormon doctrine that humans could attain godhood in the next life. Hinckley said, “I don’t know that our church teaches that.” Attaining godhood in the hereafter is central to Mormon theology. Hinckley of all people knew that.

3. During an interview held in Australia, Hinckley unequivocally stated that polygamy is “not doctrinal.” He knew better. Section 132 of the Mormons’ own book of scripture, Doctrine and Covenants, spells out polygamy as not just a doctrine, but a commandment.

In each instance, my friend defended Hinckley with, “You can see why he had to say that,” and invoked the tired old milk-before-meat argument.

Interesting. He began by denying that his leader lied, and finished by defending his leader for having lied.

Official lying is not new to the Mormon church. In 1838, when asked point-blank if Mormons believed in “having more wives than one,” founder Joseph Smith said, “No, not at the same time.” Smith had been practicing polygamy in secret since 1831. In 1890, Smith’s successor Wilford Woodruff publicly and officially proclaimed the Mormon practice of polygamy ended. It continued in secret, and not just by grandfathering already-performed plural marriages. For decades, new ones proceeded with official, albeit clandestine authority.

Not that the Mormon church is the exception. Dig through any church’s history and you’ll find lies, scandals and coverups. It’s just that I happen to live in Utah, where the Mormon Church is headquartered, and where Mormons quite naturally abound. And I was once a practicing Mormon convert myself, so I know the church’s doctrines and practices well.

Well done

I'm sorry it was so long. The thing, is, I could have provided links to 80% of what I said, and footnotes to 15% more. I also could have written another 10,00 words on the subject. Some of the articles written BY LDS professors of history of religion on the conflict of academic honesty and being a 'loyal Saint." are fascinating.

Even more interesting is FAIR. Do you remember how PD's "stock" post warned about anti-LDS posters picking and choosing? I took him up on his offer and spent several days on the FAIRLDS website. Fascinating for many reasons. For example, there's a recent book on each of Joseph Smith's wives. FAIRLDS cites it for the premise that Smith may not have had sexual relations with one of the 14-year olds that he married. However, it then warns that the book has been criticized, and links the criticisms - all of which, if I remember, come from FARMS. I read the criticism. They consist of "well, there's not enough evidence that Smith married X, despite the sealing of them as man and wife in the Nauvoo temple records, and the author didn't filter his rewriting to making it spiritually uplifting." (in other words, we don't disagree with the facts, but some of this stuff made Smith look bad, like the fact you produced journals and other evidence that Smith went to the families of teenage girls and told them the salvation of the entire family depended on the girl marrying him, then took the girl in a room and told her that the entire family and the girl was damned unless she married him).

Then, FAIRLDS had a link to the book it had cited as evidence that Smith had never had sex with one of the 14-year old wives - a link that was a placeholder with canned text saying "its been determined this book has anti-mormon material in it and is LDS members shouldn't read it. We'll write about it when we get time."

In other words, we've cited it as authority, but we don't want you to read the authority, and we don't like the book, but we can't explain why and we've just put up this placeholder. The book, by the way, won the Mormon Book of the Year award.

There are lots of places where FAIRLDS comments that something is or isn't true, and has a 'link' or 'source' after it, suggesting that there's authority for the statement. However, if you click on the link, it takes you to a placeholder page, where FAIRLDS apparently intends to put some authority for its statement later, but there's no authority yet.

Sometimes, the authority for a statement is something like "if the reader doesn't understand the outstanding character of Joseph and Hiram Smith, then the reader had problems, because they were of sterling character and should not be questioned."

There's also a page where it says the character of the witnesses listed in the Book of Mormon cannot be questioned, and a link for each of them, suggesting supporting authority. Unfortunately, if you click on one of the links, you get a source stating that the individual was unstable in his religious views, changed them often, and could not be trusted as an individual.

Many of the other 'sources" are short papers written by FAIRLDS members.

You can see why the LDS church is not affiliated with FAIRLDS. FAIRLDS is laughable, but they are like bulldogs - deny, deny, deny, attack, attack, attack. I could write an long analysis of the site, with links, that would kneecap PD.

Thanks for stepping up to the plate and playing, but three strikes and you are out. Read carefully the text and then your responses. Your responses deal with general issues. In a case of where slander may be involved one needs to be able to go back to the actual source of the alleged slander. Not one of your links or references does that. They may or may not support the purpose of the slander (adding more “evidence” about the alleged “strangeness” of an LDS belief (Isn’t it a thrill to mock subjects that are based on faith! :)) but none of them shed light actual incidents where President Hinckley is alleged to have said something. The actual incident is important, because one of the easiest ways to produce a slanderous statement is to take something out of context.

Like I said in my qualifying statement.

It all depended on whether you would accept the sources or not.

Apparently, you chose not to.

Regardless, Hinkley is on record making the comments.

The church denies a family member’s account, as expected.

The prophets and apostles are on record making the “god was once a man, man can become a god” claims.

Simple facts that cannot be whitewashed away.

The “general issues” are; you accused a poster of slander, he did no such thing, since the comments can be attributed.

I rather enjoyed the “contextual argument”, since it’s SOP for mormon apologists to claim that anything a non-mormon, or in my case, an ex-mormon states or posts is “taken out of context” and therefore in error.

Thanks for not disappointing.

Here’s a question none of the others have been willing to answer; What qualifies as honest debate vs. being marginalized as an anti-mormon?

As to “mocking a faith”, I don’t need to do anything of the sort. The history, doctrines, tenets, rites, etc. are all the material a person needs.

Whiff, Whiff, and Whiff. Original post’s completely baseless slanderous allegations...remain completely baseless slanderous allegations, i.e.: they remain completely devoid of even the slightest attempt to provide sources (i.e. sources = articles that have actually been published (not something Joe Blow said), date of publication (the normal information that is expected from a source (If you are not familiar with this concept, you are in luck and in the right place - for further information simply see the instructions (and requirements) for posting real news articles here on Free Republic)) for any of the three specific incidents where President Hinckley is accused of lying...how many strikes do you usually get when u play?

G, yes the Alinskyites are in full throttle mode aren’t they? The blather is quite similar to a couple of others who departed us quite recently wouldn’t you say?

Scurrilous and baseless accusations that are designed to get the poster on the defensive and deny/reject any information provided in support. Alinsky would be proud of our new player, he may be a rookie, but he’s got the concepts down.

Color me unimpressed with the twisted attempts at “logic” employed by the new player. They are nothing more than baseless and peurile smears against the character of another FReeper.

How does one “slander” the dead?

HH, you should probably check in with the handlers at FARMS/FAIR to see what “tactics” have been employed previously before you take the field.

It’ll save you a lot of time and embarrassment.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.