I agree- the essential mission of Jesus is the same in traditional Christianity & Mormonism. The views of the nature of God the Father & human destiny differ greatly, tho. AFAIK, RLDS views on God the Father & human destiny share more with traditional Christianity than with LDS doctrine.
Yes, it didn’t mention that Alicia divorced Nash, and that while he was living in her house for a long time when sick, she was having an affair with John Moore, a topologist at IAS, who adored her. It was unclear to me that Alicia ever finished MIT, and when I knew here she was not the clever woman portrayed in the movie. I thought the fact that she supported him even when she wasn’t legally obligated to shows her in an even more positive light than supporting him while still being married to him.
OTOH, the resemblance to the real Alicia in the Nobel Prize scene at the end was perfect.
That may be true. I am not familiar with the specific differences,
Mormonism has an edge here - ongoing, personal revelation. What this translates to in practical terms is roll-your-own-religion; I have observed a marked tendency for mormons to read the scriptures, come up with their own answers that feel good to them, and decide that these things are true, with the certainty of God behind them. For an example, I know a woman who has decided that the final judgement…isn’t final. You know how the mormons have three heavens (and a trash pit)? She is of the opinion that after you are placed in your final destination, that by…unclear methods it may be possible for you to continue to climb the ladder at least a little further. Maybe a lot further - she refused to commit to an answer there.
Suffice to say this doesn’t much match what I heard in the near-two-decades I attended, and as far as I know there’s not a shred of support for it in any official text that the mormons recognise; quite the opposite in fact. Yet she believes it. Why? Well obviously because it feels better to her than nice people getting eternal imprisonment in a lower kingdom. And thanks to the doctorine of personal revelation and scriptural interpretation, she can be as certain of its truth as she wishes.
It appears to me that this phenomenon is accidentally encouraged by fact that mormons don’t have formally educated preachers at the local level. Instead the teacher of the classes are selected from the laity, generally with little regard for their actual knowledge or ability. (Learning to swim by being dropped in the deep end is considered a good thing.) As a result I’ve some surprisingly odd things from the people at the front of the room - nothing that is directly contradictory to the provided lesson plan, just a few opinions being dropped in as fact. So there isn’t really a single strong clear message being exclusively sent down from above. There are official sources, of course, but they don’t completely control the discussion.
The above things are why I am personally of the opinion that no two mormons have the same religion.
I thought the ongoing revelation thing was only for their prophets - the church fathers.
Nope. Anyone can pray and get direct answers. My mom has even claimed to have had visions!
Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. Members are allowed their own “personal revelation” as long as it doesn’t contradict church norms or teachings. So if Jesus appears to you and tells you it’s okay to drink beer or have sex with your neighbor, it doesn’t count. It was clearly an angel of darkness and you should have asked him to shake hands. If he tells you something more vague or that you’re destined to become the greatest ping-pong player of all time, then sure, it could be personal revelation.
Yeah, that might be the official word in the rulebook. But if LDS is like most other religions, I’d imagine a lot of “believers” believe any number of things, yet consider themselves good Mormons. And, as a practical matter, most larger religions are happy to tolerate such diversity, even tho it may seem odd to an outsider.
Right - but what the heck is a “church norm”? I personally had thought that the finality of the final judgement and the resulting placement into kingdoms was pretty much a norm of the church, but it turns out my friend disagrees.
Not to mention that one colorful old Seventy J. Golden Kimball who was prone to swearing in his sermons, and reportedly at one point when people called for his excommunication for it had the response “They can’t excommunicate me. I repent too damn fast!” (The old coot served as a church leader for 52 years.)
In actual practice it boils down to that the people believe whatever they want to believe - with the caveat that most of them aren’t entirely delusional and prefer to have some semblance of sensibility within their understanding of their religion. So if one of them has the fleeting thought, “Hmm, maybe Jesus eats babies”, they’ll dismiss it becuase it conflict with their existing beliefs, in a way that “Hmm, maybe god wants me to keep this dollar I found” might not.
Basically it means you’re free to believe anything you want for yourself (and your family if you’re a dude) but you better not start preaching anything to other people if it is controversial or contradictory to the LDS scriptures.
In other words, you’re okay unless you disturb your neighbors enough to get them to call in the authorities (so to speak) on you? I think you’ll agree with me that that’s a fair bit of latitude.
Well, considering Mormonism has an extremely controlling set of behavioral norms that aren’t open to interpretation, no, I wouldn’t agree that that’s a fair bit of latitude.
And furthermore, your example of your friend is not as outre as you seem to suggest. There are plenty of suggestions in the loose canon of General Authority statements and General Conference talks to suggest that progression between kingdoms may eventually be possible. Hell, there are even cites that say as long as your kid is born in the covenant, righteous parents can basically drag them into the Celestial Kingdom regardless of sinner status.
The point is on minor points of unsettled doctrine, sure, you are free to make up your own mind. Anything major, or outwardly visible, you are stuck with the party line.
There are maybe two exceptions that I can think of:
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The Mormon Church leaves it up to married couples to determine whether oral sex is permissible within marriage(!). And the only reason this is true is because there was such a backlash when they tried to prohibit it in the early 1980s. When even your married sex life is open to scrutiny, it’s hard to argue that they are letting members believe whatever they wish.
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Birth control. In this one area is the Mormon church more progressive than the Catholics. The Mormon leaders say birth control is bad, but they ultimately leave it up to the couples, albeit with a nice helping of guilt. That’s the extent of your latitude. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice they leave one corner of your life alone, but that’s the only one. Everything else is open to church meddling.
Behavior is fairly rigidly controlled on certain specific subjects. What you can teach is similarly controlled - though I differ with you about how minor the points of unsettled doctorine are. But none of this at all contradicts my statement that members believe that they can have personal revelations about pretty much anything and that they can, and do, believe all kinds of divergent stuff, with the only major sticking point being if they try to teach it, or exercise it behaviorally on one of the rigidly controlled subjects.
In my experience this allows rather wide divergences in belief with the believers still thinking they arrived at their conclusions through direct revelation.
I will add that many supposed revelations need have nothing to do with doctorine either way - my mother believed she had a vision where an unborn sixth child basically whined at her for not being born.
Hey, you can believe whatever you want, just don’t go mentioning it to anybody! 
Heh. I recall dancing with a Mormon date at the high school’s homecoming in Utah. A chaperone who was also a Seminary teacher looked at us disapprovingly, and she said “The Book of Mormon is on CD-ROM now.”
Catholic kids used to have to leave room for the Holy Spirit between them. Try putting THAT on CD-Rom…
Now, if someone would print it on a condom.
So, are there any Straight Dopers out there who have read a biography of Joseph Smith or Brigham Young and still have a testimony of the LDS Church?
I just got back from a week-long trip in Utah. I tried not to mock or offend my Mormon friends and family, but I lack the willpower to resist. It amazes me how few of the faithful know hardly anything about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. They know he was imprisoned repeatedly on “false charges,” but I couldn’t find a single person who knew what the charges were or why the charges were false. They know he died as a martyr, but they don’t know the principle that his martyrdom was defending. They can quote passages from the 1820 First Vison story recorded in 1838, but they know nothing of how Joseph Smith described the First Vision closer to the time when it actually occurred.
My wife persuaded her sister to read Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling, which is probably the most LDS-friendly biography ever written (disclaimer: if a story about Joseph Smith doesn’t answer the simple questions above, then it’s not really a biography IMHO). It’s not that we’re trying to convert my sister-in-law to ex-mormonism; we just want our friends and family to understand why it is impossible to believe when we know the full story.
Please produce proof that “they tried to prohibit it in the early 1980s”.
Is this credible? Jan 5, '82 anyways. May not be the best cite, though. It was the first result when I Googled Mormon Oral Sex Prohibition