wenglund wrote:
I would say that for the most part what you suggest above is true. However, it dependant upon people accepting the new evidence as evidence, as well as people accurately interpreting the evidence.
Yes which can be affected by how badly one must maintain a particular belief.
For example, when the Savior's body was not found in the sealed tomb, many scoffers misinterpreted the evidence as suggesting that the body had been stolen with the intent of commiting fraud. Many others refused to accept the eye witness evidence proclaiming that Christ had risen and had appeared to many, who had felt the wounds in his resurrected hands and side.
You're kidding right. This shows a clear lack of understanding about evidence, which is common for most people whether in the church or out. Your trying to use an event which we have basically no evidence about. We Hardly have any evidence that Jesus was a real person. I think this is why many people are a little skeptical of some people's hype about Will's presentation.
Quite to the contrary, and this if for no other reason than were none-believers to be right about the after-life, then the non-believers have nothing more to gain or lose than believers--with the exception that the beliefs of the believers may have increased the quality of their mortal life; whereas, if the believers are right about the after-life, they have much to gain, whereas the non-believers have much to lose.
If you really believed this you would not be LDS. Belief in an after-life may make some people happier, but is not necessary for happiness in this life. Also non-believers have nothing to lose if their is an after-life. Lets face it, if belief in some afterlife or God is a requirement then you would want to leave the LDS religion and join one that has the most severe punishment for non-belief. You also ignore all the other possibilities.
Understandably, I see the evidence as suggesting just the opposite--and that is because I interpret the evidence differently from you, and I am willing to accept as evidence, various things that you may not. And, yes, one can selective look at the "bleeding membership" as evidence in support of their position, though others can also look at the continued growth of the Church as evidence to the contrary.
When one want to believe a certain belief more then they want the truth or are already certain they have the truth, then their bias is usually to much to be able to accept or interpret the evidence correctly. Don't worry I have been where I think your are. What little I have read seems to show growth is slow to non-existent in industrialized countrys, and stronger in less developed ones. Lets face it, these people almost never have the full picture and are usually less educated and magical thinking, and a lot of people join based on emotional or social reasons.
If your religious faith was blind during the whole course of your membership in the Church, then that, to me, is clear evidence of a lack of agility on your part to grow in faith. From my experience, members who have accurately grasped the intent of the gospel, and who have appropriately applied the revealed and perscibed epistemic methodologies, have grown in saving faith towards becoming more like Christ, unto a fullness of joy and love and divine familial relations. That is as the restored gospel is designed. I am not sure why you missed out on all of this except perhaps as a consiquence of your self-admitted persistent blindness.
It's the same blindness you now suffer from. I understood very well what the gospel was supposed to be about. I just think I understand the value and reliability of the epistemological experiences better then I did as a believer.
True--that is, as long as the right and wrongs are relevant to growth and happiness, and the rights and wrongs are actually right and wrong, respectively, and understood accurately in the way they are right and wrong.
Whatever the case, we apparently agree that understanding right and wrong is but one of multiple means to the end that is happiness and growth. As such, the means of being right ought Old Testament be subordinate to end of becoming happy and growing. That was my point.
This is just an argument against any need for LDS beliefs, and I would agree.
I think it important to remember that the notion of "wrong belief" is in the eye of the beholder. In matter of spirituality/religion, we aren't talking about differences in fact, but rather differences in faith. One may confidently believe that one is right and others are wrong, but one may be wrong in that belief. While in mortality, there is no definitive way of establishing who or what is right and wrong.
That's why we should depend on the evidence more and be willing to change our beliefs.
The importance in understanding this rests in the realization that because what one may believe is right may actually turn out to be wrong, one may be better served in focusing on growth and happinees (two things that one can be erlatively sure they are right about), rather than on being right.
This is why LDS beliefs, Christian beliefs, etc are not needed to focus on these things, and I think may even be a detriment, but their can be worse things:)
I say this because I have personally witnessed many families and friendships and other close relationships unnecessarily and tragically destroyed because oppoing parties were intent on being right (and they may not have been) rather than being happing and growing together in love.
One of the detriments of many religions including LDS. These kinds of relationship are far more important then any religion.