Survey Results: Praying about Which Religion is True

[_KevinSim]

Let me answer with the pat reply from the online sales force of LDS Inc(a.k.a. missionaries):

Have you read the Book of Mormon?

If you have, have you prayed about it and got a confirmation that it is TRUE?

Wha?? wait, I did not hear what you said, because it was incorrect.

Well, I HAVE READ the Book of Mormon! And I prayed to God asking if it was TRUE and he told me it was true!

I'm sorry did you say something? Sorry, I am not hearing what I want you to say..

I KNOW that Joseph Smith WAS a prophet of GOD!

And, wait what?? You asked a question but it was not the right one...

I KNOW that Thommy S. Moonson is a TRUE prophet of the TRUE church on this TRUE planet of the TRUE Heavenly Fodder!

Oh? You prayed and God said WHAT??? *shock/horror/disbelief*

Well you must have not prayed EARNESTLY to KNOW the TRUTH, otherwise you would be like ME!

*all future correspondence will be ignored from you*

Bye, have terribly nice day.

Polygamy-Porter, there may be some missionaries out there that are (remotely) similar to your cartoonish depiction, but I was not anything like this, nor will my wife or I be anything like this when we serve our retirement mission.

[_mackay11]

I'm curious how many of the people who took the survey think that the only way to know if God approves of an organization is to ask God if S/He does. Or were they just asking God if God approved of the different organizations because the surveyor asked them to?

I can't imagine many people went off and prayed because a random survey asked them to. I think this a sample of people who have already done it.

[Guest]

If you look at the link, you will see that the majority of people (22) said that Mormonism was the true church. The rest did not pray enough. They are probably masterbaters

I concur, unless the non Mormons had read the Book of Mormon in advance of this survey and subsequent praying, then whatever answer they received (providing the answer was not an affirmation of Mormonism) was wrong and from Satan. They need to keep praying until they get the correct response.

*I am REALLY looking forward to KevinSims' contribution to this thread....although I predict it will be alarmingly close to what I just wrote.

Bazooka, I have never said anything to indicate I thought people who ask God a question and announce that God told them something other than Mormonism is true, got the wrong answer, got an answer from Satan, or "need to keep praying until they get the correct response."

But then Kevin goes on to intimate that they perhaps didn't ask in quite the way he did....

I disagree with LookingLooking that her/his survey proves that one can't count on God answering one's question; in order to prove that we would have to have some way of knowing that each person who took the survey really was prepared to base the whole rest of her/his life on whatever answer God provided, and we certainly don't know that.

Do you see where KevinSim has injected a KevinIsm by demanding a caveat be met by the other respondents that he (and only he) decided was a determining factor in wether God would answer or not?

He then goes on to renounce the Mormonism claim of being the only Church in which God approves....

Furthermore, is it impossible that God might want one person (like me) to be in the LDS Church, but that God might want someone else to be a Seventh Day Adventist? I don't think so.

So Kevin, do you accept that those surveyed got an answer from God that was different to yours? If not, why not?

[_LookingLooking]

Having had a look through the data I think the only thing it really tells us is:

- People of different Christian and non-Christian denominations can get a similar, but contradictory, answer to the question of which is the correct/most correct church.
- Around 70% of people are very sure. Mormons are no more certain of the truth of their religion than any other.

Thanks for the further analysis mckay11! I agree that what we don't learn a large number of things from the survey given its brevity, limited audience, etc., but I do think that the few things that we DO learn are really important when it comes to Mormonism's claim that prayer is the best tool for learning truth.

When I speak with TBMs about truth claims and we go through the evidence, what I hear them come back to time and time again is the "evidence" that they prayed and felt that it was true. This is the bedrock of the TBM testimony, because no matter what the evidence suggests, the evidence of prayer and feeling trumps everything else because it's straight from God who is the ultimate source of truth. Are there massive problems with Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Abraham, historicity of the Book of Mormon, sexual escapades with other women behind his wife's back? Nah, because I prayed and God told me the church is true, and that is the ultimate evidence that trumps all other evidence that the church is not true!

But these survey results show that this bedrock of the TBM testimony (the "evidence" of praying and feeling) is actually completely unreliable. People in many other religions have prayed and had feelings/visions/heard voices etc. which they have interpreted to be God telling them that some other religion is the most correct religion. So it's not a reliable tool for anyone, including Mormons, to rely on. Thus, it should (though I'm sure it won't) force TBMs to actually consider the evidence suggesting the church is not true, instead of just dismissing it because they have the ultimate evidence of God answering their prayer.

[_Bazooka]

LookingLooking,

That's exactly why Kevin has such a hard time accepting those other experiences.