Comments on: Repentance and Revisionist History [now disclaimed]

By: John C.

John C. — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:08:03 +0000

Ok. I’m done. Ya’ll go spill your bile somewhere else (you should know who I mean). I’m closing comments.

By: Clair

Clair — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:06:06 +0000

“…Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth.”

There is a lot of demanding going on here all around, especially for a thread on repentence.

I demand that it stop.

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:04:48 +0000

Nick, you’d best move on, I think, from this line of discussion.

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:02:38 +0000

I liked the Goldwater quote!

By: Nick Literski

Nick Literski — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:02:29 +0000

Steve, Adam basically said that he didn’t doubt the “baked boy” story, because Al Qaeda was evil enough to “slaughter every man, woman, child and animal in a village.” Not only is the reasoning laughable, but it appears Adam conveniently forgot that precisely the same action was taken by ancient Israel, presumably the followers of the same deity as LDS-ism. What’s more, the record left behind emphatically states that deity commanded them to do it. I was merely pointing out to Adam that his comment was a major case of “pot calling the kettle black.”

By: Chino Blanco

Chino Blanco — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:01:09 +0000

Chino,
Neither BCC or T&S is an oppressive dictatorial regime. They are blogs. However, if you keep this up, I might be willing to change my stance thereon, at least as regards your commenting.

Take it easy, I’m fully aware of how annoying this can be …

I get criticism, with some of it being thoughtful and interesting commentary on stuff I’ve written, but much of it is of the “what you should do with your blog” flavor. That is, people who insist that their priorities should be my priorities, that their interests should take precedent over my own.

…

There’s also the time spent trying to manage a community, which is actually a rather complex task that takes a lot of time even though it really benefits a relatively small number of readers. I love the comments community, and I’d be bored without it, but the fact is that the vast majority of people who read this site neither read nor participate in it.

Ban me for pasting a Goldwater quote into your comments section, whatever, it’s just words on a screen, which should be the easiest things to forgive in my book, but maybe I’m just weird that way …

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:57:53 +0000

Oh Nick. Are you really going to walk down the road of comparing ancient Israel to Al Qaeda? This may be the thread of outrageous comparisons, but even Adam and John C. have limits.

By: John C.

John C. — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:56:45 +0000

That’s the thing. Leaving it it out there implies continued assent to its ideas. Erasing it implies denial that it ever existed, which could lead to easier repetition. Obviously, what we do will come done to what we, with God, decide. And we will have to live with that.

By: Nick Literski

Nick Literski — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:51:46 +0000

You just have to know that a religious group that would kill “every man, woman, child and animal in a village” is made up of complete lunatics. Any reasonable person knows that a deity which would direct such a thing couldn’t be a deity at all.

Nevermind that according to the Bible, the ancient Israelites were commanded to do exactly that when it came to villages of Caananite infidels, and that the Isrealite deity punished them when one Israelite thought it would be best to save a few animals for sacrificial offerings….

By: J. Nelson-Seawright

J. Nelson-Seawright — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:48:01 +0000

…the retraction of ill-begotten speech acts is probably part of the repentance process…

This is really the difficult issue, isn’t it? Surely, retraction is necessary. But does retraction entail deletion of text copies of the speech act? Or does retraction instead entail the performance of additional, countervailing speech acts? Retraction can of course be most directly and unambiguously achieved by sincere and public repudiation of the speech act by its author. Such repudiation does not necessarily entail, and is not necessarily enhanced by, sending the speech act down the memory hole. Obviously, there is a responsibility to make sure that future audiences for the act are made aware of the repudiation — and if that somehow isn’t possible, then destruction of records of the speech act may be advisable.

There is scriptural guidance in favor of not trying to take our sins out of the public sphere:

…when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves… (D&C 121:37)

It seems to me that it is probably quite difficult for one to be sure that one’s own motives in removing a public record of a hurtful speech act do not involve some aspect of attempting to cover sins, to remove the record of them. There’s a tricky balancing act between this motive and the positive motive of not repeating the speech act itself.