For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

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_Tator
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Tator »

Tobin wrote:My point is it severely weakens your position. It is clear you don't believe anything Joseph Smith has to say since you completely ignore what he states later about it, so it is laughable that you would consider that section 10 from the D&C came from God to Joseph Smith or that God took or did not take the U&T that you don't believe in to begin with. Your whole argument about D&C 10 is complete non-sense. You have no reason to bring it up at all since it doesn't help you and by pretending you believe what Joseph Smith says in this singular instance, you only weaken your position.


Thews, it is useless.

You can lead a man to knowledge but you can't make him think.
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_Tobin
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Tobin »

Tator wrote:
Tobin wrote:My point is it severely weakens your position. It is clear you don't believe anything Joseph Smith has to say since you completely ignore what he states later about it, so it is laughable that you would consider that section 10 from the D&C came from God to Joseph Smith or that God took or did not take the U&T that you don't believe in to begin with. Your whole argument about D&C 10 is complete non-sense. You have no reason to bring it up at all since it doesn't help you and by pretending you believe what Joseph Smith says in this singular instance, you only weaken your position.
Thews, it is useless.

You can lead a man to knowledge but you can't make him think.
LOL It isn't that I don't understand him. I just look at what he's doing as pointless. Let's go with the assumption that Joseph Smith may be a fraud and test one of his big claims to see if it is true (like seeing God). If that isn't true, then anything else Joseph Smith claims is bogus and you don't need to belabor the point and go through this whole song and dance to demonstrate it. Anyway, Joseph Smith said he saw God and that man can see and speak with God. It is the theme of the Book of Mormon after all. So if that is true, then we should be able to speak with God and determine if God said any of this stuff. Otherwise, we there is no point in believing anything else Joseph Smith has to say. It is really that simple.

So don't pretend that Mormons can't think or comprehend what people like thews are saying. It is just many of us are unimpressed with the argument because we HAVE talked with God.
"You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night.... Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful." -- Judge Doom
_Chap
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Chap »

Tobin wrote:... we HAVE talked with God.


If I say 'I have talked with Thomas S. Monson', then people have a range of ways for coming to a consensus as to whether or not they are willing to treat that statement as true. If, for instance, I was seen by millions in a live broadcast conversing with Monson while sitting next to him at General Conference, it is unlikely that anybody who claimed to doubt my story would be thought to be in good faith.

The same goes (with appropriate changes in details) for claims to have spoken with any human being alive today. I am speaking of course from the point of view of the practical judgements we make every day: It is always possible to go the 'Simon Belmont' route of radical (though highly selective) skepticism, and say things like 'how do you know you were not having a hallucination rather than watching a live feed from General Conference?'. Let us leave that aside, since it applies to every claim whatsoever, and thus gets us nowhere in deciding in practical terms what kind of claim we might reasonably treat as plausible.

If however I said, in March 2012 (rather than in, say, March 1812), "I have talked with Napoleon Bonaparte" the case would be very different. Napoleon is not generally believed to be present in our universe as it is today, at least not in any detectable form capable of talking or listening to a living human being in the normal way. So the response to such a claim would, quite reasonably, be 'What on earth do you mean by that?'.

If I persisted and said things like 'I hear his voice speaking just as clearly as I do yours', then I would risk being diagnosed as delusional, possibly schizophrenic. And there would be good reason for that. Extraordinary evidence would be needed to shake our skepticism: something like, for instance, a message from 'Napoleon' telling us of a secret cache of documents buried by Napoleon in a location covered by a building erected during his lifetime and not since disturbed, a cache which excavation then located. But even then we would want to consider seriously the possibility that the person claiming to have received the messages knew that the cache was there on the basis of normal historical research rather than communications from a 'Napoleon' who was somehow still in contact with us two centuries after his death.

In the end, however, there might come a stage where the communications from 'Napoleon' were so on the button, as well as perhaps being shared by more than one person or even being publicly audible, that we would say "Well! It looks like we were quite wrong that people - or at least people like Napoleon - cease to be effectively present and able to communicate when their bodies have died biologically".

Thus if Tobin writes a sentence saying "I HAVE talked with <X>", our reaction will very reasonably determined by what he writes in the space marked <X>.

If it is something like "Thomas S. Monson", we all know how to test the truth value of the sentence, although our initial estimate of that will depend on whether Tobin is a GA living in SLC, or a non-Mormon hunter-gatherer from the Kalahari desert.

If <X> is "Napoleon', we would require much more to convince us, although we do have fairly definite ideas about what might convince us that the claim was true.

But in Tobin's claim, the space marked as <X> is filled by the common English term for the deity formerly known as Yahweh (TDFKAY). We have absolutely no way of knowing how to assign a likely truth-value to that claim. Indeed, it is not even clear how Tobin can be sure that any communications that he believes have been addressed to him come from that source rather than (say) from the entity commonly known as 'Satan'. Quite a few people who say they get messages from TDFKAY are commonly held to be either insane or self-deceiving, or intent on deceit - Tobin himself does not, I suspect, take Warren Jeff's claims in that regard very seriously.

So when Tobin says:

Tobin wrote:... we HAVE talked with God.


I think it is reasonable to respond by asking not only:

1. How can anyone else tell whether that claim is true? We have no way of knowing how to test a communication so as to tell that it is really from TDFKAY, unlike the case of Napoleon.

but also:

2. How do you, Tobin (or anybody trying to repeat your experience) know that you are not simply deluded in your belief?

Assurance claimed by Tobin that he really is talking to TDFKAY is not admissible evidence here, since such assurance is also claimed (and claimed very strongly) by people Tobin and the rest of us would agree are insane.
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_thews
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _thews »

Tobin wrote:LOL It isn't that I don't understand him. I just look at what he's doing as pointless. Let's go with the assumption that Joseph Smith may be a fraud and test one of his big claims to see if it is true (like seeing God). If that isn't true, then anything else Joseph Smith claims is bogus and you don't need to belabor the point and go through this whole song and dance to demonstrate it. Anyway, Joseph Smith said he saw God and that man can see and speak with God. It is the theme of the Book of Mormon after all. So if that is true, then we should be able to speak with God and determine if God said any of this stuff. Otherwise, we there is no point in believing anything else Joseph Smith has to say. It is really that simple.

So don't pretend that Mormons can't think or comprehend what people like thews are saying. It is just many of us are unimpressed with the argument because we HAVE talked with God.

It is that you don't understand Tobin, because you don't understand. If you choose to place belief in Joseph Smith's truth claims, that really doesn't have anything to do with the argument you're making. I understand why you're confused, as the truth has been kept from you your entire life. Let's make this simple and break it down into three parts:

1) Nephite spectacles.
2) Urim and Thummim.
3) Seer stones.

Per the D&C the Nephite spectacles were taken back as punishment for losing the 116 pages. Once they were taken back, Joseph Smith used his seers tones to translate the Book of Mormon. Three years later is when seer stones were conflated with Urim and Thummim. In other words, the urim and thummim was not in the supposed box that contained the golden plates.

Whether or not you choose to believe in Joseph Smith's truth claims is moot when it comes to the argument you present. Just because Joseph Smith called his seer stones the urim and thummim doesn't change what they are, which are seer stones he owned before any angel visited him. He found his first seer stone by looking through the green stone of Sally Chase, and the brown stone in a well. These stones were used for hire to find lost objects, or buried treasure. In order to obtain the treasure, rituals had to be performed to appease the treasure guardians.

These are all facts, and if you choose to believe in Joseph Smith's seer stones placed in his stove-pipe hat, it doesn't negate the fact that they have always been seer stones, no matter what you choose to call them.

From Fair: http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Seer_stones
2 Tim 4:3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.
2 Tim 4:4 They will turn their ears away from the truth & turn aside to myths
_Themis
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Themis »

Tator wrote:
Tobin wrote:My point is it severely weakens your position. It is clear you don't believe anything Joseph Smith has to say since you completely ignore what he states later about it, so it is laughable that you would consider that section 10 from the D&C came from God to Joseph Smith or that God took or did not take the U&T that you don't believe in to begin with. Your whole argument about D&C 10 is complete non-sense. You have no reason to bring it up at all since it doesn't help you and by pretending you believe what Joseph Smith says in this singular instance, you only weaken your position.


Thews, it is useless.

You can lead a man to knowledge but you can't make him think.


Not necessarily. Tobin started with thews to say he was confused about the U & T. Thews showed more information to show that he was not as confused as tobin thought. You now see tobin making a new senseless argument that it is pointless since thews doesn't believe Joseph. I think it's hard for us to admit when we are wrong, so we sometimes attack from a different direction to try and draw attention away from or mistakes. So ignore his ignorance and now concentrate on testing Joseph seeing God.

I find it interesting that on another thread he is arguing against the church in regards to man being able to become God. Even Joseph taught this, yet why is tobin getting it right but Joseph and all leaders after him getting it wrong. Is tobin the only one seeing God, or was his experience something else. From his posts I only get that his expereince was a one time thing, so I wonder where he gets all this information.
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_Tobin
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Tobin »

Themis wrote:Not necessarily. Tobin started with thews to say he was confused about the U & T. Thews showed more information to show that he was not as confused as tobin thought. You now see tobin making a new senseless argument that it is pointless since thews doesn't believe Joseph. I think it's hard for us to admit when we are wrong, so we sometimes attack from a different direction to try and draw attention away from or mistakes. So ignore his ignorance and now concentrate on testing Joseph seeing God.

I find it interesting that on another thread he is arguing against the church in regards to man being able to become God. Even Joseph taught this, yet why is tobin getting it right but Joseph and all leaders after him getting it wrong. Is tobin the only one seeing God, or was his experience something else. From his posts I only get that his expereince was a one time thing, so I wonder where he gets all this information.
Themis, thews is picking and choosing what he wants and he completely ignores the JSH and HC. He insists that Joseph Smith in this instance was saying what God told him but then ignores further clarifications that Joseph Smith makes about it later. It's just stupid.
"You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night.... Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful." -- Judge Doom
_Polygamy-Porter
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Polygamy-Porter »

Tobin wrote:
Themis wrote:Not necessarily. Tobin started with thews to say he was confused about the U & T. Thews showed more information to show that he was not as confused as tobin thought. You now see tobin making a new senseless argument that it is pointless since thews doesn't believe Joseph. I think it's hard for us to admit when we are wrong, so we sometimes attack from a different direction to try and draw attention away from or mistakes. So ignore his ignorance and now concentrate on testing Joseph seeing God.

I find it interesting that on another thread he is arguing against the church in regards to man being able to become God. Even Joseph taught this, yet why is tobin getting it right but Joseph and all leaders after him getting it wrong. Is tobin the only one seeing God, or was his experience something else. From his posts I only get that his expereince was a one time thing, so I wonder where he gets all this information.
Themis, thews is picking and choosing what he wants to believe. He completely ignores the JSH and HC. He insists that Joseph Smith in this instance was saying what God told him but then ignores further clarifications that Joseph Smith makes about it later. It's just stupid.

Am I correct in assuming that Thews is a believer?

It is evident in his posts that he has a need to believe, which has nothing to do with the history or theology; rather it is most likely his familial situation.
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_Kittens_and_Jesus
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Kittens_and_Jesus »

I have a song written for the next time missionaries come to my door. Its based on my view of the church and also about my discovery of Aikido, which is part of the wacky belief system I've crafted for myself over the years. The lyrics are as follows:

You say to take a look in your little black book,
And I'll find myself the truth,
I've read that book from cover to cover, but I still couldn't find the use.
It says some nice things on how to be a human being,
But the rest I could do without.
Cause I found me the Art of Peace and I'm gonna get it figured out.

You say your man's a prophet and he walk it like he talk it,
Well, we'll just have to disagree.
He's real out of touch,
And he don't seem much like the Man from Galilee.
He's really much more like a CEO,
Then he is the King of Kings.

Wait a minute now.

Ole Joe Smith wasn't looking very slick,
Diggin treasure with his hat and stones.
Then he got clever and decided they'd be better,
For makin up sacred tomes.
One came from Abe of the Bible days,
Called the Pearl of Great Price.
Now we know the Book of Breathings,
Ole Joe was just full of lies.

That's what I said now.

You say if I pray then I will be saved,
And you know I'll see the light.
I find it kind of odd I didn't hear from your god,
Though I prayed with all my might.
The Art of peace is the thing that saved me,
And I'm on the budo path.
Its the way of the warrior and now I'm movin forward,
Ain't no way I'm ever lookin back.


Here's a video of me playing it. Not my best performance as I was distracted by my daughter, but you'll get the gist of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pifWKWWTY4w
As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you. - O'Sensei
_Themis
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Themis »

Tobin wrote:Themis, thews is picking and choosing what he wants and he completely ignores the JSH and HC.


Instead of just asserting show your evidence. You may gain more credibility this way.

He insists that Joseph Smith in this instance was saying what God told him but then ignores further clarifications that Joseph Smith makes about it later. It's just stupid.


I think he showed that the term U & T was not used until later, and that both the seer stones and interpreters were called by that name. If we are looking at whether Joseph claims are true, why is it wrong to look at all the evidence available.

Ill repeat this as well

I find it interesting that on another thread he is arguing against the church in regards to man being able to become God. Even Joseph taught this, yet why is tobin getting it right but Joseph and all leaders after him getting it wrong. Is tobin the only one seeing God, or was his experience something else. From his posts I only get that his expereince was a one time thing, so I wonder where he gets all this information.
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_Tobin
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Re: For the critics... what do you say to missionaries?

Post by _Tobin »

Themis wrote:
Tobin wrote:Themis, thews is picking and choosing what he wants and he completely ignores the JSH and HC.

Instead of just asserting show your evidence. You may gain more credibility this way.
I've already quoted both the JSH and HC. Read the thread!!!
"You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night.... Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful." -- Judge Doom
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