DiscussMormonism.com

i typed this on my phone so i don't care if there are typos or grammatical mistakes



I don't think that believing in the testimony of the holy ghost is rational, and I'm going to explain why in this thread. If you really press most Mormons they will admit that they believe because of the testimony of the Holy Ghost. They don't have historical evidence that proves Joseph Smith was telling the truth, nor do they have anything resembling a plausible account of reality. So in order to find some reason for their belief or to make people believe, the appeal to the religious experiences that they have when they pray or read the scriptures. If this proves one thing, it is that Joseph Smith was a very gifted conman; by arguing that people should trust these feelings he absolved himself of the need to prove that he was telling the truth using actual physical evidence.

I made this thread because I believe that there are good reasons to believe that the "testimony of the holy ghost" can be explained using natural causes. If religious experiences can be explained by natural causes, and we don't need to appeal to god in order to explain them, then we ought to reject the religious explanation for their existence. That follows because of Occam's Razor (the natural explantion is more parsimonious). Do not posit the existence of an entity that is not necessary to explain the data since it increases the probability that your account is mistaken. So in order to prove that accepting the testimony of the holy ghost is stupid, all we need to do is show that natural explanations for religious experiences are plausible. Can religious experiences be explained in terms of natural phenomena? Of course they can. We have the ability to induce religious experiences in people by manipulating certain parts of the brain (google artificial religious experiences) so we can know that stimulating the brain using natural means can cause these feelings to exist. From there can conclude that natural explanations for religious experience are possible, and the god hypothesis can be out back on the crazy shelf where it belongs. That doesn't mean these feelings aren't real, but it does mean they don't prove anything.


In other words

Nietzsche wrote:A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything

Of course it is rational. It is the way to find out the Truth of all things.

Thousands of l-dsinc members got a holy ghost inspired testimony of the Truthfulness of Paul Dunns stories.

Thousands of l-dsinc members had a holy ghost inspired testimony of the Hoffman provided White Salamander Letter - Even Dallin Oaks had it. He gave a big ApostleTalk about how natural it was for joethe coxman to have had a run-in with the white amphibian.

Guess we're lucky Hoffman didn't craft a letter making Cain into Bigfoot and carrying buckets of night crawlers. Oaks would have had a holy ghost inspired field day with that one.

malaise wrote:i typed this on my phone so i don't care if there are typos or grammatical mistakes

Unbelievable

Nietzsche wrote:A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything

I have a great deal of experience in the Holy Ghost vs Just Plain Crazy criticism.
Ironically, after I had been drawn to come unto Christ, acceptably, and been truly visited of God and wrought upon by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, it was returning then to my home ward in East Millcreek, Utah where I was dismissed as having suddenly lost my mind.

Not just by a couple of folks. Everyone shared that opinion. It was their only option. Either I was nuts or they were flippin' hypocrites, the church was being mislead, everyone was under condemnation and the spirit that they believed that they had was bogus. Plus I continued to prove it every week.

No one dared challenge me and nobody openly declared me insane. They just withdrew a pace to let me know I was a pariah. I was heedless of it all at first. When it became too obvious, about four years later, after a mission, it was a big deal and I was marred emotionally by it.

I was well prepared to deal with the burden of standing alone against my entire generation. And the reinforcements of spiritual validation flowed and flowed unto me without compulsorily means. Each year I was added upon with another layer of knowledge and authority and gifts and accomplishments that stack up measurably against the ages of like things.

I can wash that hypocrisy's spiritual validations are positive mental attitudes of pride and arrogance and the WE ARE NUMBER ONE team consciousness that welds people in the bonds of fellowship people crave. And there is sufficient evidence that Crazy is fully unleashed in religion.

My point is that there is a real witness of the Holy Ghost. Mormons would be shaken to their core to even begin to feel the real thing. I was. I am more accustom to it now. Would love to find another so accustomed. Or someone demanding of me how to repeat the gospel experience in them.

Nightlion wrote:

malaise wrote:i typed this on my phone so i don't care if there are typos or grammatical mistakes

Unbelievable

Nietzsche wrote:A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything

I have a great deal of experience in the Holy Ghost vs Just Plain Crazy criticism.
Ironically, after I had been drawn to come unto Christ, acceptably, and been truly visited of God and wrought upon by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, it was returning then to my home ward in East Millcreek, Utah where I was dismissed as having suddenly lost my mind.

Not just by a couple of folks. Everyone shared that opinion. It was their only option. Either I was nuts or they were flippin' hypocrites, the church was being mislead, everyone was under condemnation and the spirit that they believed that they had was bogus. Plus I continued to prove it every week.

No one dared challenge me and nobody openly declared me insane. They just withdrew a pace to let me know I was a pariah. I was heedless of it all at first. When it became too obvious, about four years later, after a mission, it was a big deal and I was marred emotionally by it.

I was well prepared to deal with the burden of standing alone against my entire generation. And the reinforcements of spiritual validation flowed and flowed unto me without compulsorily means. Each year I was added upon with another layer of knowledge and authority and gifts and accomplishments that stack up measurably against the ages of like things.

I can wash that hypocrisy's spiritual validations are positive mental attitudes of pride and arrogance and the WE ARE NUMBER ONE team consciousness that welds people in the bonds of fellowship people crave. And there is sufficient evidence that Crazy is fully unleashed in religion.

My point is that there is a real witness of the Holy Ghost. Mormons would be shaken to their core to even begin to feel the real thing. I was. I am more accustom to it now. Would love to find another so accustomed. Or someone demanding of me how to repeat the gospel experience in them.

I imagine that you're not so different from ancient prophets in your comportment and some of the far out things you say. Contemporary people, even religious ones, have very little tolerance for crazy visionary men anymore. They like the crazy religious stories to be safely locked in the past, even in a church that claims modern revelation.

Buffalo wrote:
I imagine that you're not so different from ancient prophets in your comportment and some of the far out things you say. Contemporary people, even religious ones, have very little tolerance for crazy visionary men anymore. They like the crazy religious stories to be safely locked in the past, even in a church that claims modern revelation.

Thanks, somehow, but anyway, crazy is just a throwaway dismissal of what is strange or unacceptable to you. I think that was my point. Everyone does it.

And to address the OP better, let me just say that mentalism of any sort cannot substantively add to a person by way of abilities, talents, knowledge and power that simply did not exist before God put them there. Mental intent can account for window dressing feelings......sure. Filling an empty bucket with unbounded treasure that keeps multiplying of itself without so much as taking thought for it......no. This second sort of Spirit is not of your own making. Impossible. Saying that the first mental/social spirit is the same thing as the second is where people lose their way in forbidden paths and stumble exceedingly in the dark and are lost. Then they curse God and die.

NightLion wrote:Ironically, after I had been drawn to come unto Christ, acceptably, and been truly visited of God and wrought upon by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, it was returning then to my home ward in East Millcreek, Utah where I was dismissed as having suddenly lost my mind.

Not just by a couple of folks. Everyone shared that opinion. It was their only option. Either I was nuts or they were flippin' hypocrites, the church was being mislead, everyone was under condemnation and the spirit that they believed that they had was bogus. Plus I continued to prove it every week.

So the very God who loves all his children and wants each and every one of them to return back to him anoints as his one true prophet a man who convinces everyone he meets that he is insane?

Sounds like God doesn't want any of us back.

beefcalf wrote:

NightLion wrote:Ironically, after I had been drawn to come unto Christ, acceptably, and been truly visited of God and wrought upon by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, it was returning then to my home ward in East Millcreek, Utah where I was dismissed as having suddenly lost my mind.

Not just by a couple of folks. Everyone shared that opinion. It was their only option. Either I was nuts or they were flippin' hypocrites, the church was being mislead, everyone was under condemnation and the spirit that they believed that they had was bogus. Plus I continued to prove it every week.

So the very God who loves all his children and wants each and every one of them to return back to him anoints as his one true prophet a man who convinces everyone he meets that he is insane?

Sounds like God doesn't want any of us back.

Well, YEAH? Ya think?
No natural men [humans] will be allowed into his presence. Only those willing to lay down their lives in this world (as signified in the ordinance of baptism where you symbolically lay down your worldly life to rise up unto a life in the kingdom of God) and make a connection (baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost) with God to realize a new creation where they are given a new heart, to love God, knowing God, having charity or the love of God put into them by power and a newness of soul will be acceptable unto God and capable to build up a real and true Zion society.

If Jesus could not escape the label of insane by his generation what would you expect of a dry graft against the most arrogant people of the whole world, as judged by Christ in prophecy among the Nephites. 3 Nephi 16

Nightlion wrote:No natural men [humans] will be allowed into his presence. Only those willing to lay down their lives in this world (as signified in the ordinance of baptism where you symbolically lay down your worldly life to rise up unto a life in the kingdom of God) and make a connection (baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost) with God to realize a new creation where they are given a new heart, to love God, knowing God, having charity or the love of God put into them by power and a newness of soul will be acceptable unto God and capable to build up a real and true Zion society.

Not my kinda God. On so many levels.

malaise wrote:I don't think that believing in the testimony of the holy ghost is rational, and I'm going to explain why in this thread. If you really press most Mormons they will admit that they believe because of the testimony of the Holy Ghost. They don't have historical evidence that proves Joseph Smith was telling the truth, nor do they have anything resembling a plausible account of reality. So in order to find some reason for their belief or to make people believe, the appeal to the religious experiences that they have when they pray or read the scriptures. If this proves one thing, it is that Joseph Smith was a very gifted conman; by arguing that people should trust these feelings he absolved himself of the need to prove that he was telling the truth using actual physical evidence.

The point regarding historical evidence is more than they don't have it, they have contradictory evidence that proves he was lying. Ignorance of the truth can be explained away using arguments from silence if one chooses to buy into the LDS versions of the evidence that exists. The Book of Abraham, for example, proves that Joseph Smith's translation of the papyrus was wrong. If the translation is wrong, then Joseph Smith was lying when he claimed to translate it; it's that simple. Cryptic theories that attempt to make the obvious factual evidence seem to be something it isn't, is required place belief that critical examination of the evidence is wrong.

malaise wrote:I made this thread because I believe that there are good reasons to believe that the "testimony of the holy ghost" can be explained using natural causes. If religious experiences can be explained by natural causes, and we don't need to appeal to god in order to explain them, then we ought to reject the religious explanation for their existence. That follows because of Occam's Razor (the natural explantion is more parsimonious). Do not posit the existence of an entity that is not necessary to explain the data since it increases the probability that your account is mistaken. So in order to prove that accepting the testimony of the holy ghost is stupid, all we need to do is show that natural explanations for religious experiences are plausible. Can religious experiences be explained in terms of natural phenomena? Of course they can. We have the ability to induce religious experiences in people by manipulating certain parts of the brain (google artificial religious experiences) so we can know that stimulating the brain using natural means can cause these feelings to exist. From there can conclude that natural explanations for religious experience are possible, and the god hypothesis can be out back on the crazy shelf where it belongs. That doesn't mean these feelings aren't real, but it does mean they don't prove anything.

You exist to contemplate your existence and your experiences. If you chose to believe that the God hypothesis is out back on the crazy shelf where it belongs, then your null hypothesis must buy into nothing creating matter, the matter (chemicals) mixed together to magically make the brain you're using to contemplate it, and this makes logical sense. If the foundation for your logic is nothing can become something, then it's easily rejected using your own logical argument regarding the truth claims made by Joseph Smith, as it's based on a feeling.