long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

highly educated = highly indoctrinated

I saw this tweet and I'm sharing it here because, based on my experience with M2C intellectuals over the last few years, it's more true than I could have imagined before.

If they are highly educated.. Chances are they are extremely indoctrinated. They don't question and they don't think outside the box. They follow, because they've been following for years to become highly educated. Highly educated = Highly indoctrinated

It remains puzzling to me why so many faithful LDS intellectuals reject the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah (and the translation of the plates with the Urim and Thummim that accompanied them). But this tweet explains it pretty well.
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The M2C intellectuals at Book of Mormon Central justify their position by saying that only the "dead prophets" taught the New York Cumorah, but they follow the "living prophets."

President Ivins
By this reasoning, they were bound by President Anthony W. Ivins' unequivocal teaching of the New York Cumorah until his death in 1934. 

But then other prophets reiterated the New York Cumorah, so they were bound again. For example, they were bound by President Marion G. Romney's unequivocal teaching of the New York Cumorah, but President Romney's death in 1988 liberated them to pursue their own theory of Cumorah in southern Mexico.

It's an irrational approach that engenders confusion, but this is what passes for faithful scholarship today.

Besides, not a single prophet or apostle has ever repudiated the New York Cumorah. This includes the living prophets today as well as the "dead" prophets.

A better approach might be to accept the consistent and persistent teachings of the prophets unless and until the living prophets specifically repudiate those teachings.
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These intellectuals have "outgrown" the teachings of the prophets and want everyone else in the Church to follow them instead.

Years ago, Elder Neal A. Maxwell made this observation:

No wonder, therefore, “to be learned is good if [we] hearken unto the counsels of God” instead of setting them aside as if we have somehow outgrown them (2 Nephi 9:29).

Our M2C intellectuals have "set aside" the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah. The intellectual ancestry of M2C demonstrates that it requires indoctrination to set aside these teachings in favor of M2C. 

This is how the academic cycle works.



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