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Mormonism & American Politics: Noah Feldman

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kaiwai Avatar
kaiwai
Posts: 1
Posted: 01.15.08, 02:52 AM
I'd love to watch this video but the bandwidth is so crappy - someone do something about it; it really spoils the video.
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observer Avatar
observer
Posts: 1
Posted: 02.03.08, 02:09 PM
False Tenant that a candidates religion should not matter
Noah Feldman tries to convince his audience that the religion of a presidential candidate should not matter to voters. This is ridiculous. A person's religious views says everything about a candidate. The fact that a man can believe what the mormon church teaches makes him a scary person to hold the office of President of the United States. This is not bigoty. This is discernment, discretion, and sound judgement.
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birdman Avatar
birdman
Posts: 1
Posted: 04.06.08, 02:41 PM
Could you clarify what makes belief in Mormon doctrine a disqualifying attribute for President? Are other Christian beliefs -- Adam & Eve, virgin birth, resurrection, atonement (and for the Catholics, transubstantiation) any less remarkable or fantastical, other than that they carry the patina of having been believed for several thousand years.

Is the argument that all religious belief is disqualifying, or only Mormon religious belief?

Finally, your assertion may not be bigoted, but absent any carefully reasoned line of argument or a clearly delineated martialing of evidence to support it, one could be excused for interpreting it as such.
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Erasmus Avatar
Erasmus
Posts: 0
Posted: 08.23.08, 09:36 AM
It's not ridiculous, and I think it's an excellent ideal, but unfortunately it can't be entirely divorced from issues that "should" matter. In the same way, contra the quotation early in the address, a candicate's views on "geometry," science more broadly, do matter because of the implications of scientific advancement.
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niatek Avatar
niatek
Posts: 5
Posted: 01.03.09, 09:56 PM
Noah Feldman ROCKS!!! ...and talk about his bio...WOW great accolades! I greatly enjoyed his thoughts and theories on the topic! I gotta go read his books! =)
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anselmiano Avatar
anselmiano
Posts: 6
Posted: 09.22.09, 07:58 PM
Noah poses a fallacious "either or" causation for Mormon secrecy: persecution or bigotry, on the part of its detractors. There's at least one other cause that is obvious to those who are acquainted with the goings on of the Mormon church, namely the desire to further your ends and your own vested interests at the expense of the truth. One instance of this is the "faith promoting" approach to church history advanced by church leaders, which seeks to conceal the less flattering (or downright shameful) episodes or aspects of the mormon experience in order to present an image attractive to prospective converts or geared to membership retention. Is it persecution for a critic to point out, for instance, that the Egyptian papiry Joseph Smith claimed to translate into the Book of Abraham (canonized as Mormon scripture) in the 1840s, once translated by egyptologists in the 1960s have nothing to do with Abraham but are rather common funeral prayers from the Book of the Dead? Mormons certainly call it persecution when this, as well as other fraudulent teachings of theirs, are exposed. On a more practical level, now that the religious right is preponderantly composed of protestant evangelicals who with some substance, as Jan Shipps will attest to, don't regard Mormon as Christians, is it possible that Joseph Smith having claimed that God revealed to him that all those protestant churches taught false doctrines and were "an abomination" in the sight of God, could be coming back to haunt our contemporary Mormon politician? Is that persecution or bigotry against Mormons? ... or just reaping what they sowed...
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