Greg Trimble "You are all too confused to be religious"

[_I have a question]

In my opinion, the greatest challenge that the millennial generation will face is that of confusion. We are a generation living in the greatest state of confusion this world has ever seen. There are so many competing voices in this information age. The older end of the millennial spectrum literally watched the internet and social media become a reality. We became smarter, and simultaneously more confused. More anxious. More sad. More envious.

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900 ... hurch.html

I’ll never forget that eerie, scratchy, annoyingly loud sound our computer used to make as we’d use our dial-up landline to jump on the internet for a few minutes a day. There weren’t too many websites, or too many voices on the internet in those days. Back then, studying the scriptures, kneeling down to pray, and seeking guidance from parents and wise, older church leaders seemed much more prevalent.

But then something changed. The world began to rely on another god for answers to their deepest questions. The embodiment of this new god took the shape of a giant web. The World Wide Web.

It appears Greg is mixing up "We became more confused..." with "The internet gave more people access to the truth..." Church history for example - has the internet made Church History more confused, or more accurate?

Greg longs for the good old days, when Joseph wasn't a polygamist and used magic spectacles to literally translate golden plates and papyrus.

[_tapirrider]

That's right Greg Trimble. It just isn't cool to believe that a conman took a rock, put it in his hat and pretended to try to locate buried treasure and got himself arrested for that stunt and then he used the same rock in the hat to see words on it that wouldn't change until it was written down exactly the way they appeared and that is how the Book of Mormon was translated. And never mind the miracle of those exact words, so crucial that they be written down just as they appeared, they had to be edited and changed in later editions. Seems someone has to be confused and gullible in the 21st century to buy the bogus story of the origin of the Book of Mormon.

It was a stretch when I was told the story with the Urim and Thummim but at least that version did reference to ancient Biblical stories. I could just have faith. But all credulity was stretched beyond all limits with the rock in the hat.

[_Dr Exiled]

Come back? No thanks Greg. We are fine staying away from some 90 yr old trying to tell us that his thought to change the name of the church was somehow inspired or that it was inspired to prohibit certain children from being baptized or that it is inspiration from God that causes the church to be hyper-secretive with its finances, etc., etc.

[_Kishkumen]

Back in my BYU days, I used to haunt the local used bookstores from Salt Lake to Springville. There you could find real gems of alternative Mormon scholarship. Mind you, the scholarship itself wasn't always that great, to put it generously, but the sources the authors were pulling from were hard to gain access to. The conclusions were off the beaten path. In one of my jaunts I found a great book on Adam God that was really little more than a collection of primary source material. At a Salt Lake City used bookstore I found the zany collection of used books that came from a deceased dentist's collection. Another great resource was the Harold B. Lee Library's Special Collections. I remember reading Robert F. Smith's Oracles and Talismans there.

But my experience was a rare thing. I had access to Hugh Nibley in person. I took his courses. I had access to friends like Don Bradley who were serious Mormon historians, and students who were on the track to becoming professors in the College of Religion. I tapped into the alternative LDS underground, so to speak, too.

Was this confusing? Some people might say yes. I felt like I was tapping into currents of history, culture, and "deep doctrine" that definitely raised questions. Some of these questions took me in a much more fundamentalist direction. I was never really attracted to polygamy, but there was a time when I wrestled with Adam God. I even talked to Nibley about it very briefly. All I recall him muttering was something about Adam Kadmon. He did not like to be cornered about Adam God because, well, he believed in it in his own way.

The question really boiled down to this: given that a personal search could lead one down the road less traveled and far from where the Brethren were taking you, and that some of the things you discovered showed that anti-Mormons were not always providing false information, what was a person supposed to think about apostolic authority? When there were no answers of an official nature that really withstood scrutiny, what was a person supposed to think?

What Trimble calls confusion is only confusion for those who hold to the iron rod of LDS authority. Not an iron rod of truth, really. No, there is no monopoly of truth. Anyone who searches things out will find that the quest for truth goes so much farther than approved LDS sources will ever provide. The leaders of the LDS Church spoon feed LDS folk weak gruel twice a year at General Conference. There is so much more out there, and you can't rely on the LDS Church to give it to you.

The Internet blew all of this wide open. The Internet made my rare experience in Utah more accessible to the average person. The conclusions a person would reach with access to all of this material were bound to diverge from the LDS Church's standard narrative. That had to be the case. In a lot of cases, that was going to lead to an open exit door out of the ward building. Either people lost faith, or they found a fundamentalist or neo-fundamentalist (Snuffer) path.

The LDS Church has failed to make a compelling case for staying. What they have is a big social club with large financial resources that offers an increasingly desiccated, pre-packed religious experience. What they have is a claim of authority that looks ever shakier as it is exposed to scholarly scrutiny. What they have is a stake in the culture wars that will only appeal to a certain segment of the population. With all of the options out there, a whole lot of folks are going to opt out of what the LDS Church has on offer and fill their lives with other things.

Is that confusion? Or is that personal power? I think it is the latter. Of course those who are convinced that the LDS Church is all it claims to be would think otherwise. If you can remained convinced that this is the case, then you will buy what they are selling. These days there is a lot of information circulating that suggests the Church is not what it claims to be, or at least very well might not be. How does it remain attractive in this new environment?

I wish them the best. I think their time has passed. They will evolve into something else because they have to. I have advocated that they become more of a resource than the attempt at a holistic society (the Kingdom) that was once the goal. But they are very stubborn in their particular reading of Joseph Smith's materialist theology, and it no longer serves them well with the members as it does serve their investment portfolio well.

[_Philo Sofee]

Greg Trimble
But then something changed. The world began to rely on another god for answers to their deepest questions. The embodiment of this new god took the shape of a giant web. The World Wide Web.

Had the Mormon God actually given real information, ahead of time, such as useful scientific facts which his followers could have implemented and then told the world about, and the world checked it out and it was sound, everything would have been different. But the information the Mormon God gives is just that some old white guys in Utah would end up saying. In other words, there is nothing forward, nothing advanced, nothing useful other than the banal generic "be nice to one another, and help out your moms every now and again." Had there been information on how laser technology could have been invented and used to cure skin cancer, or help heal blind eyes, something along the line of using combustion of gasoline within metal cylinders so we could increase our locomotion in relative comfort, something along the lines of increasing availability of communication through sound in wires, or even better yet, utilizing invisible waves going through the air, I mean... how come God is not sort of, but totally silent about everything that is so significant to improving our human lives and comforts and base in order to help us help others with so much more power and ability???

How come God didn't let anyone in his church in on so many of the secrets that the rest of the world has discovered, and Mormons are so desirous themselves of having and using for the greater common good???

But Mormonism has no stick, no real actual knowedge available to improve the world with, other than little cutesy truisms such as brush your teeth and maintain health by not drinking coffee. You mean, seriously, that's it? Why no actual medical knowledge giving the upper hand at helping solve diseases, and serious ailments for the world?

The World Wide Web gives real answers, Mormonism doesn't. Therein is the clue. If need be, perhaps the prophets can take a gander into their stone they possess and find a way to possibly catch up to the real knowledge in the world? That could help out their sagging credibility. But please, something with a little more importance than a mere name change to protect Jesus's Intellectual Rights property? Is that seriously too much to ask?
Aren't Mormons just starving to death craving real knowledge?! Do ya think maybe God himself could get a clue and get the Holy Ghost on that soon?

[_moksha]

Greg is right in that the information age has been hard on the Church. Fact checking being available to the masses can be downright faith demoting.

[_Amore]

Internet does seem to be making people less social. Internet use can be addicting & regular social media involvement is linked to depression. https://www.health.com/depression/could ... depression

There is a great need to be selective in this too-much-information-age. Intelligence means to choose between to understand. Google search has been found to be 40% liberally biased. http://www.canirank.com/blog/analysis-o ... e-results/

There are various types of herd mentality - most here seem to have just switched from the Mormon herd to the liberal herd. Both have illogical, faith-based, emotional reasoning elements that the herd blindly takes and condemns anyone who dares think differently.

[_Meadowchik]

Greg Trimble
But then something changed. The world began to rely on another god for answers to their deepest questions. The embodiment of this new god took the shape of a giant web. The World Wide Web.

Oh goodness me. People have relied on thousands of different gods since time memorial. Modernity is the antithesis of that. No more need for me to rely on your version of god to survive.

That's pretty f-in awesome.

[_Meadowchik]

Greg is right in that the information age has been hard on the Church. Fact checking being available to the masses can be downright faith demoting.

Truth hurts.