Divine inspiration?

[smileyeagle1021]

A question that came up in the DNews discussion board that I thought I'd bounce around here.
Can something really be claimed to be divinely inspired if you need to clarify intent later?
This was in response to Elder Packer's talk last week. He made comments on (and I'm summarizing) homosexuality was a choice that could be overcome because God would obviously not make anyone that way and that like all other temptations, such as alcoholism, can be overcome and changed.
Of course everyone with common sense who knows that homosexuality is NOT a choice, was outraged and organized petitions and protests (all of which were peaceful, and the Church itself has admitted that they can understand considering the current social climate something like that could have dangerous consequences and that it was mishandled). Here though is the debate point, two days after Elder Packer gave the talk, he edited the transcripts to "clarify the intent of the message"
So, the obvious question, if the original message was divinely inspired (as is the general assumption of any official talk given by a member of the First Presidency), why would clarification be needed?
I thought it was an interesting question... I personally think that a truly divinely inspired message (as I understand it) would not need clarification. If God is perfect (as is claimed), then why would anything he say need clarification?

[HYHYBT]

Leaving out the actual contents and speaking generally: sure, why not? "Inspired" does not (at least to most people) mean that God took direct control of his mouth (or pen, etc), or even that He supplied the words used, and people are always imperfect. Put another way, God could, theoretically, inspire YOU by putting an idea in your head; that's no guarantee that you will then express that idea clearly.

In this specific case, I do believe (though others here will of course disagree) that Mr. Packer's words were inspired, not divinely, but diabolically.

[Andara Bledin]

Since the tool for passing on the information is human, it's possible for the message being passed to be done imperfectly.

Of course, I don't think that's the case at all here, but theoretically, it's possible.

^-.-^

[Ipecac Drano]

The trouble with having to clarify it after the fact is that one has to resort to post hoc ("after this") reasoning and cherry-picking.

In other words, if something, anything happens, the person who proclaims that the event is God's will can ignore the bad stuff and say that the good thing was of God's doing without being able to tell beforehand that it has God's fingerprints on it.

If someone could outline the attributes of God, provide actual evidence that he had a hand in it, and could predict that something specific is going to happen via God and here is proof in advance, then there might be something.

If God is supposed to be mysterious, we don't know all about him. If we don't know all about him, how can we make a fair assessment of something and say that he was involved? How do we know that a so-declared divinely inspired person really was touched by God or that they thought they were? How can we tell the difference?