2013-01-14

sed -i -e 's/Devil/God/g' -e 's/circumcised/uncircumcised/g' Abraham_HB_BOM.txt

sed -i -e 's/Devil/God/g' -e 's/circumcised/uncircumcised/g' Abraham_HB_BOM.txt

The title of this article is a pretend sed command. It is substituting the word "God" wherever it finds the word "Devil," and the word "uncircumcised" whereever it finds the word "circumcised" in the text file given to it on the command line.

From what I gather, I believe that Joseph Smith would not disagree that it is entirely possible that what remains of the Holy Bible, and yes, even the modern, as we have it today in 2013, Book of Mormon, have been altered from their original form by an adversary who was hell-bent on repressing the Christian uprising, renaissance, or at-one-ment. In modern times, it is certainly easy to modify a computer file, and make it say just about anything you want. You could cause it, through any gross hack you could care to compel the machine to execute, to automatically edit a book, in a flash, without even reading it first. Now that you've gone and done that, don't be surprised and turn away with blind eyes if you find that it's fundamental meaning has probably been completely reversed!

I also don't think he would entirely disagree, at least not seriously, with the assertion that some passages may have been deliberately written in a way that is not meant to be taken as literally correct, but instead should be thought over and perhaps what it really says is something similar to "the opposite" of what the words literally say. For instance, I don't think you're really expected to give away your magic underpants too when they sue your pants off... Though clearly it's not fair dinkum in contract law to swear by the hairs of your head.

In terms of the whole "circumcision" thing... I think that Doctrine and Covenants 74 could be construed as being bogus based on the phrase in verse 5: "Wherefore, for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself..." since commandments are supposed to be 'of the lord'... But what does "lord" mean? Those who have been gifted with the Lore are now "lord", past tense. It is a logical fallacy to appeal to religion, but Religion may freely appeal to logic and reason. We read scripture for a purpose; we become quite facile at reading and making citations to written works. Clearly Our Heavenly Father intends that we study other written works beyond what remains of Holy Scripture... after all, we are given to believe that Moroni abridged the whole set of works to create the plates gifted unto Joseph Smith!

You've gotta look stuff up around here! That's the kind of neighbourhood this is. Please don't ever forget that not even the Scripture is 100% accurate! It's a good thing Our Heavenly Father provided us with the gift of discernment --- the ability to divine right from wrong --- and along with that, he gave us Free Agency --- the ability to make our own choices.

In terms of the amount and kind of lore required to Choose the Right thing with regards to amputation of a boy's prepuce... All that it requires is knowledge of the true anatomy and function of the adult prepuce, along with knowledge of what the baby or boy suffers during the procedure, and what the adult man he will someday become will suffer as a result of it's loss. Imagine if the Devil was in control of whether or not that information was made available to your mother! Would the Devil tell her the truth about it? I doubt it.

What if the Devil knows how to typeset? ...or how to scour the Internet? What if you never even think to look it up, and you take the word of somebody who stands to profit in some way from your mistake?

I am very certain that whatever entity it was that demanded that Abraham submit to amputation of his prepuce, that entity was most certainly not "God." There's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that (a) God the Father doesn't yell at us; (b) nor does he demand that we submit to amputation of an important part of the mortal body that he gave us when he sent us to live on Earth! The LDS Articles of Faith, number 8, says "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." I suppose that whether it was "translated" or "subjected to gross hackery by a homo capitalis jeeper creep mobster" is a finer point for some hypothetical debate...

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.