KevinSim wrote:God is completely willing to give someone an answer if s/he is willing to base the rest of her/his life on the answer. If the someone isn't willing to spend the rest of her/his life on the answer, why should God give it to her/him?
Says who? And is this the healthiest way to approach things generally? Say a woman received a spiritual prompting to stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship. Would you tell this woman that there is no going back from this? She's now locked in until death because God already gave her an answer that she should base the rest of her life on? This just seems like a formula for people opening themselves up to all kinds of abuse.
The huge problem with praying to find out as exhorted by Alma 32 and the Moroni Promise, or James: 1-5 is that once people become convinced or have convinced themselves that God has confirmed their convictions, they almost invariably become oblivious to any distinction between questioning the Word of God and questioning whether their deeply held convictions really are the Word of God.
I have recently been having some discussions with a devout Mormon friend of mine who sincerely believes he receives divine revelations every day. Despite his claims of being a retired scientist, engineer and mathematician, he is absolutely convinced of the reality of Noah's world wide deluge, and gets quite indignant about the fact that I give much more credence to the enormous amount of compelling evidence against that flood than to his personal, spiritual conviction that it really occurred. He seems to have the attitude that there Is something fundamentally flawed about basing one's convictions on evidence and reason, and has only disdain for the scientific approach to discovering and ascertaining truth. He also claims to have conclusively disproved Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, despite its acceptance by all the great mathematicians who have carefully examined and reconfirmed his work.
When I point out to him all the mutually contradictory religious belief systems claiming divine revelation as their basis, he still cannot acknowledge even the possibility that appeals to divine authority could be unreliable. He (contrary to most Mormons) accepts Mohammed as one of the true prophets of God, and believes the Q'ran to be a divinely inspired book, along with the Bible and the Book of Mormon and other LDS Standard Works. He does not even discount the possibility that the 9/11 terrorists might actually have been inspired by God to do what they did in his eagerness to avoid admitting that claims of divine inspiration might be unreliable!
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
KevinSim wrote:If the universe is controlled by two (or three, or four, etc.), then are those two (or three, etc.) united, or aren't they? If they're completely united, then they are one, just like traditional Christians think Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit are one; hence just one deity. If they're not, then the arrangement isn't stable, which means they're not really in control.
Bazooka wrote:Did you miss the part where I was asking you a question? How have you reached the firm conclusion, that the only possibility for the universe is that it has to be controlled by one deity and that deity has to be the Mormon version?
I note Kevin has yet to answer this....
I haven't reached the firm conclusion "that the only possibility for the universe is that it has to be controlled by one deity." I'm fully aware that the possibility exists that no deity at all controls the universe, that the universe isn't controlled by anybody. But I don't see much point in spending a lot of time worrying about that possibility; instead I take it on faith that there is one deity who is in control of the universe. I asked that deity if the LDS Church is true, and I got an affirmative response. That's why I think the deity in control is the Mormon version.
KevinSim wrote:I haven't reached the firm conclusion "that the only possibility for the universe is that it has to be controlled by one deity."
Yes, you have.
I take it on faith that there is one deity who is in control of the universe. I asked that deity if the LDS Church is true, and I got an affirmative response. That's why I think the deity in control is the Mormon version.
See?
That said, with the Book of Mormon, we are not dealing with a civilization with no written record. What we are dealing with is a written record with no civilization. (Runtu, Feb 2015)
Bazooka wrote:I don't believe you. If the Prophet stood up at Conference and said God now needed the men to take on an additional wife to allow for the single sisters to receive the blessings of having a Priesthood holding husband you would consult with your wife. If your wife gave the thumbs up then I think you would be prepared to do what the Prophet asked.
Bazooka, perhaps you're right. Perhaps my wife could convince me that she was okay with the idea of me taking another wife. But it would take more than her just saying so. I would resist it tooth and nail until I was absolutely sure she wanted me to do it.
And that would have to involve a significant transformation. She has already let me know that she doesn't like the idea of polygamy one bit. At one point she said that if she died before I did she wanted me to marry again, but she wanted me to promise her I'd marry someone who had already been married in the temple, so that (I presume) my wife would have no competition in the afterlife. I wouldn't make that promise; at the time I simply refused to set limits on who I might fall in love with, and I think I still feel that way. I did ultimately promise her that whoever I fell in love with I wouldn't marry in the temple. I don't know how much consolation that was to her.
Last edited by Guest on Tue Nov 11, 2014 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
KevinSim wrote:I haven't reached the firm conclusion "that the only possibility for the universe is that it has to be controlled by one deity."
Yes, you have.
I take it on faith that there is one deity who is in control of the universe. I asked that deity if the LDS Church is true, and I got an affirmative response. That's why I think the deity in control is the Mormon version.
See?
So when someone takes something on faith, that someone has "reached the firm conclusion" that it is true? I guess that's a possibility; maybe our disagreement is simply the result of a semantical misunderstanding. I guess the thing that holds me back is that after I have made the decision to take it on faith (that there is one deity in control), I am fully aware that I might be wrong. Can someone come to a firm conclusion that something is true, and still be fully aware that s/he might be wrong?
KevinSim wrote:Can someone come to a firm conclusion that something is true, and still be fully aware that s/he might be wrong?
Kevin, do you think you are wrong? What's your percentage of doubt?
That said, with the Book of Mormon, we are not dealing with a civilization with no written record. What we are dealing with is a written record with no civilization. (Runtu, Feb 2015)
DarkHelmet wrote:Doesn't the FLDS use the same Book of Mormon with the same Moroni's promise in it?
Of course they do. That's why KevinSim is having some serious cog dis. They have the same Book of Mormon and same claim to Joe as the Utah based church has. So, which Mormon church is the one true church? It must be the biggest one right???
Sanctorian, that's the problem. Size of the church has nothing to do with whether God endorses it or not. If a member of the FLDS Church has prayed and asked God if the FLDS Church is true, in precisely the same way I prayed and asked God if the LDS Church is true, and if both of us got the same yes answer, then I have to live with the likelihood that this person is a member of the FLDS Church for the precise same reason I'm a member of the LDS Church, and that's not a comfortable thought.
KevinSim wrote:Can someone come to a firm conclusion that something is true, and still be fully aware that s/he might be wrong?
Kevin, do you think you are wrong?
No.
Bazooka wrote:What's your percentage of doubt?
50%. When I consider the cosmos, and what it would have taken to bring it about, I think the odds are 50-50 that a deity created it, as opposed to it having come about due to natural processes.
KevinSim wrote:Can someone come to a firm conclusion that something is true, and still be fully aware that s/he might be wrong?
Kevin, do you think you are wrong?
KevinSim wrote:No.
Do you think the people receiving similar answers about their particular religion are wrong?
Bazooka wrote:What's your percentage of doubt?
50%. When I consider the cosmos, and what it would have taken to bring it about, I think the odds are 50-50 that a deity created it, as opposed to it having come about due to natural processes.
That's not what I mean. I meant what is your percentage of doubt that the answer you've received is not what you think it is?
That said, with the Book of Mormon, we are not dealing with a civilization with no written record. What we are dealing with is a written record with no civilization. (Runtu, Feb 2015)
