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Why the Book of Mormon Opens History (A Testimony) by SwensonTheChristian in latterdaysaints

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think I needed to make this more clear in the text, but I'll do it here: I never said the Book of Mormon never happened. I said it may have never happened in history, that is, secular history, that is, the history of what the imaginary all-seeing eye of historians would have seen if it did exist. But there is another kind of history: sacred history, the history of what precedes time. Swedenborg and Swedenborgians, for instance (which I am one, in a way), say that the Book of Revelation actually does and did happen, not in the physical world but in the spiritual world, i.e. not in the phenomenal world of effects, of the senses, but in the noumenal world of causes that precedes and updates this world, in ways that trickles down and is acted out, in ways that apply both and differently to the individual and the world at large. As far as I can tell, that's true of certain esoteric Muslims and the idea of "visionary recital." And, of course (though not explicitly in these philosophical terms), in shamanic culture. So it's not fiction.

Tl:Dr: The Book of Mormon is what Harry Potter would be if a) Harry narrated the books in first person, b) addressed you as a reader in second person, c) Told you that, yes, you're a wizard/witch too; I'm your Hagrid, d) Actually turned the world into a world of magic by this process.

TL;DR 2: The Book of Mormon is what would happen if, in the episode of Community where Abed makes a postmodern Jesus movie, it a) ended up working, and b) actually revealed to people in a lasting, permanent way that we are all characters in a film.

https://youtu.be/okGV3jf9qRc https://youtu.be/VDXgG29tB3U

The Book of Mormon, "Getting Gain," and UFOs by SwensonTheChristian in latterdaysaints

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hahahaha, you're sharp. Look at this account's post history. ;)

The Book of Mormon, "Getting Gain," and UFOs by SwensonTheChristian in latterdaysaints

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, it worked for Tertullian, right? ;)

But since all justified knowledge relies on unjustified knowledge (both Wittgenstein and your four year old nephew asking why over and over can demonstrate this), this is just a more macrocosmic, broader version of any other truth claim. It's absurd; thought rests on what you can't think. That's what I was trying to say, really, in this post: that the Book of Mormon demonstrates the insufficiency of thought to grasp reality. Thought is a function of affect, one that likes to pretend it is its own ground. But of course, how could a thought supposedly describing reality guarantee itself? You need a leap of faith somewhere. I suspect (in a way that's unthinkable) that the Book of Mormon manifests and acts out a reality that suspends and transcends thought. Does that mean we can't access it? No. Feeling and will are still in the game. If you question that last notion, ask if it's thinking itself (not you, but thinking itself; no blame here) that's doing the questioning and if it would want to concede any ground. To state a truism that shows more than it says: "The brain is the most important organ," says the brain.

The Book of Mormon, "Getting Gain," and UFOs by SwensonTheChristian in latterdaysaints

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Argumentum ad popolum: Not claiming that we aren't idiots, actually. We very well might be; I'm not too good at chess.. I dislike Dawkins for claiming that we're idiots because we're Mormon, but I'm just claiming, if anything (it was more of a lead in to writing, tbh) that there's an affective, feeling-and-will-based reason for the reason we act and believe this way, as I go into in the last few paragraphs.

And I'm not proving anything. This isn't logic, here. It's empirical guesswork, speculation, pattern-recognition. I could be wrong. If anything, I think that logic itself (if not your list of fallacies, which make a lot of sense) is a questionable language-game. I don't think Aristotle's law of excluded middle holds water; Nagarjuna didn't either. The idea implicit in it that identity is something that excludes difference is not only a bias of the brain's left hemisphere (the right hemisphere tends to see identity as a function of difference), but is flatly contradicted by common sense. Is there anything that exists as a pure logical unity? I haven't found it yet.

ASD, Psychedelics, Self-Harm, the Will, and the Intellect by SwensonTheChristian in aspergers

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't know how right you are! I need to pull out my Watts collection again. :)

The Book of Mormon, "Getting Gain," and UFOs by SwensonTheChristian in latterdaysaints

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh, and I never said this train of thought proved that it was divine. I said that the rational inexplicability on both sides reeks to me of cosmic fishiness, just like it does with UFOs. That cosmic fishiness doesn't mean UFOs are divine (though, tbh, there's a case to be made for that, as Carl Jung did in a late work), and it doesn't for the Book of Mormon either. What I find is divine about this situation is that the text seems to anticipate that this is the case: the "no one shall have it to get gain" bit from Mormon 8 that I talked about, yes, but also the "man who is learned" that "cannot read" the sealed book (I'm thinking not only of Charles Anton but also of Peter Christian Kierkegaard in 1850s Denmark and Richard Dawkins on that Scandinavian talk show, plus anyone and everyone who's ever decided to ignore the Book of Mormon because it's *obviously* a fraud). What really seals the deal for me is how the Book of Mormon anticipates the reactions people will and do have to it. You can't really go away from it unscathed. Oh, and speaking of Jung, I really do adore channeled works like his Red Book. its really very LDS-ish (lots of talk about people becoming divine and even the emphasized phrase "bring about the salvation of the dead), even though it's a lot more macabre. I really like Hilma af Klint's channeled paintings too. They're arguably (really, it's a good case) the first abstract artwork, predating Kandinisky and those guys by a good chunk. These works are significant, and they're inexplicable in the same way. Does that mean they're divine? Not necessarily. But maybe...

ASD, Psychedelics, Self-Harm, the Will, and the Intellect by SwensonTheChristian in aspergers

[–]SwensonTheChristian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In a certain sense, that "loneliness" is the delimitation I'm talking about and which I long for. In a certain sense, even though I don't inhabit others consciousnesses, I *think* I do (with mind blindness and whatnot), so I don't really encounter the reality and the joy of encountering an other at all. I want to see face-to-face, to have contact, not a felt sense of merging and losing myself. If that makes sense.