diana - Please know that I, and probably most of us, look at the religion of the person who is posting. Therefore, a person with “Catholic” listed as their religion is most likely not going to be viewed as an expert on LDS religion, even if they provide information in that area.
Your observation makes perfect sense, lax, and I applaud your reasoning! However, from it I’m going to assume that you are new to internet debates and new to religious sites. I’m certainly going to assume that you haven’t read the posts on THIS forum very often. In fact, it seems to be the rule that people tend to assume that those who share their own religious preferences are more likely to be experts on other religions than the believers of those other religions. In fact, I am almost unique on this forum in the last year in my absolute insistance upon going only to believers for information on their beliefs. Everybody else prefers to ask ex-members (like Rebecca) and non-members. The idea, I think, is that a believer is biased.
Of course he is. But then so are the non-believers. The difference is that the believer’s bias is known, and there is no logical reason to assume that he or she is going to be decietful about what the doctrines are; beleivers tend to tell the truth about what it is they actually believe. Non-and ex- believers, however, are also biased, and there is no such comfortable idea that they will not deliberately mistate, misinterpret or out right lie when they present information about a religion they want no part of, and which they want to see defeated or proven false.
…oh, and that’s a general observation, not specific to Mormonism. I have seen it proven true for Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, you name it, the principles hold true. Just because you have a clear head and can see the obvious doesn’t mean that everybody else can.
I look to the LDS posters for their answers to the questions that non-Mormons present to them. If a non-Mormon wants to weigh in with their opinion/research/experience, it is to be expected and viewed accordingly. Both are very important and, I believe, are viewed differently.
Indeed they are. Your problem is that you assume that the believer is given more credibility when it comes to explaining what his beliefs ‘really’ are. In actual practice, it’s the other way around. Stick around awhile. You’ll see.
Give some of us a break, please, when you claim we are trying to embarrass you with the JoD. Many of us would have NO WAY of knowing the current LDS stance on the JoD or even what the JoD is/was/will be to Mormons. We (I) have been informed. I know I will proceed accordingly.
I’m glad. Here’s an experiment for you to perform, though, that will illustrate what I’m talking about. Now here we are, every Mormon who has responded about the JoD and it’s value to us; how it is and is not used. It is NOT, and never has been, a primary source of doctrine. Not even a secondary source of doctrine. It can be a CONFIRMING source…and an illustrative source, and is used as commentary, but it is not now, never has been and never will be canonized as scripture, nor used by any Mormon as a source of core doctrine.
Over the next weeks and years, see if you can count how many times some poster will say that Mormons believe this thing or that thing, and qoute the JoD to prove it. Some Mormon will say no, we don’t believe this, we believe that…and explain why we believe this rather than that, and the response will be,
every single time, “no you don’t. It says RIGHT HERE IN THE JoD that …” and they take some qoute out of context to prove that we
really believe this, not that.
We will explain about the JoD and how doctrine is established within our belief system…and the same old argument is off and running. It never ends and is endlessly repeated–often by the same people who keep trying it over and over again as if we had never responded in the first place.
Believe me, I know the steps to the dance very well.
