From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Oaths & Fervor (and Golden Rules)
Summary: Let's take it again, slowly this time.
Keywords: zeal, znake, zloth, zailfish, zalamander, zcorpion, `Zoof!'
Date: 10 Apr 92 18:12:17 GMT
Organization: Glassboro State College
Disclaimer: Brandy the WonderDog is always amazed by the net.


My previous article created a bunch of replies, many of which misread what I
wrote.  I'll skip the potentially-interesting but irrelevant side comments,
and I won't make any comment on Mr Windley's later elaboration of temple
ceremonies -- I have the feeling that an innocent lighthearted remark might be
unspeakably offensive to the LDS, and I don't want to make anybody apoplectic.

In an earlier article, Jay Windley produced what appeared to be an argument
with these two points:

 1) The ex-LDS who talk about the ceremony are not trustworthy because they
    are breaking a promise to keep silent.

 2) Those ex-LDS do not care about the humans involved because what they do is
    horribly embarassing to current LDS.

I believe that both of these points are defective, and that Mr Windley's
argument is invalid.  I am not making any argument of my own, and I don't
really care what goes on in the LDS temples as long as it doesn't involve
unwilling participants.


On Mr Windley's first point, I wrote that if you swear to keep silent and
later find that your silence permits immorality, breaking the promise may not
be improper.  This is _not_ a claim on my part that the ceremony is immoral,
merely an observation about ethics in general.

If the ex-LDS truly believe that keeping silent will allow something bad to
happen, then breaking the promise of silence is not necessarily improper.  I
hope that they would think carefully about any decision on such a matter, but
if they decide the danger outweighs the promise of silence then they may feel
morally _compelled_ to spill the beans.

If they think that keeping silent will allow lots of people to fry in Hell,
then the hope of helping avoid even one such cooking far outweighs the
problems of breaking the promise.  On this point, Mr Windley replied that this
kind of thinking leads to all kinds of horror -- with which I agree, and I
even drew the obvious parallel to the Spanish Inquisition.  But the statement
that "Yours is the logic upon which is based all that is ugly about religion"
is both uncalled for and silly: I'm the local Universalist, remember?


On the hypothetical example of human sacrifice, Mr Windley said that he would
go to the police station and break his promise of silence in such a case, but

> I would most certainly not go back to the temple.  The authors in question
> were temple workers.  [...]  They viewed the ceremony and took the oaths
> many, many times.  If they were so scandalized, why did they keep going
> back, time and time again?

Maybe they didn't see anything wrong the first hundred times.  Suppose you
thought the sacrifices were symbolic and involved only Cabbage Patch (tm)
dolls, but later found they were real humans?  Would that affect your decision
to go visit the police?  (I certainly hope not.)  Would your testimony be
untrustworthy because you were misled for the first 25 years?

I have no idea what goes on in a temple ceremony; I suppose I could go get one
of these books and see what they say, but I don't really care.  Also, you guys
seem to like keeping the secret and I don't want to spoil anybody's fun.


My point is this: if one believes that Mormonisms is dangerous, and believes
that revealing the ceremony specifics will help keep innocents from falling in
with the LDS, then they are not (in their own minds) acting out of malice.
You may feel that they are only hurting people, but you made a claim about
_their_ motives -- a claim which (I have tried to show) is an unjustified one.

Even if they are correct, I can agree that their methods are not very good
ones; but that is only a reflection on _what_ they do, not _why_ they do it.
Your claims about other's motivations simply do not follow from the facts that
have been presented.

-=-=-

One interesting aside:

> Making people feel like dirt is a very poor way of helpig them, especially
> if there's another way.  As I said before, if Mormonism is so inherently
> evil, and if the Mormon temple ceremony is so inherently immoral, why can't
> our authors simply display a more pleasing alternative?

Not too long ago, you wrote several articles on homosexuality, concluding that
"It is incompatible to be homosexual and Christian.  God has forbidden it".
If being homosexual is so inherently bad, why didn't you simply display a more
pleasing alternative?  Why did you attack the considered beliefs of people
like Michael Siemon and Steve Adams, instead of just presenting your own
beliefs?

Do you think that posting those articles was a good way to help others?  Why
then do you condemn those who act in similar ways to you?  Remember, just
because the ex-LDS are not so polite as you are, their main idea (disputing
ideas considered false to help others) is basically the same.


kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu      Darren F. Provine      ...njin!gboro!kilroy
"Kindness, n.  A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction."
                                -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc