Making Covenants

[MG 2.0]

Yes - I concede that I was being too harsh.

I don’t know what changed but the tone of the arguments here lately has been so much better than before.

I hope it continues! And thanks for sticking around MG, we need more faithful voices here. Even if we disagree.

Thanks! Sometimes I need a shot in the arm like that.

Regards,
MG

[malkie]

Yes - I concede that I was being too harsh.

I don’t know what changed but the tone of the arguments here lately has been so much better than before.

I hope it continues! And thanks for sticking around MG, we need more faithful voices here. Even if we disagree.

Well, I've been more active on the board lately, ...

(just an observation - not exactly claiming a causal relationship )

[MG 2.0]

I don’t know what changed but the tone of the arguments here lately has been so much better than before.

I hope it continues! And thanks for sticking around MG, we need more faithful voices here. Even if we disagree.

Well, I've been more active on the board lately, ...

(just an observation - not exactly claiming a causal relationship )

I’ve been WAY to active. I think it may be time to take another break.

OK, let’s find something else to do…………………hun?

Until later. Thanks for all the conversations. It’s enjoyable.

Regards,
MG

[honorentheos]

My impression of MGs position would be better stated as,

MG: Religion then is something that I look at with a closed mind, knowing that a loving God exists.

Not quite sure what your meaning is behind “religion is something I look at with a closed mind.” Care to elaborate? As it is, if I’m not misunderstanding you, you’ve got it wrong. But I’d like you to flesh this out a bit if you would.

You are not capable of looking at religion any other way than through the assumption the LDS creator god exists. This establishes a closed framework within which you operate under an illusion of open eyed curiosity. But that supposed curiosity only functions to figure out how something may fit within your closed framework.

MG: Knowing God's omnipotent wisdom, I do not need to question when God does not intervene in the world as He knows best what we are ready to receive.

Sure, I can question it. I would ask you, “For what purpose?” and “What would I hope to accomplish by challenging God?”

So...you can't question the basic assumption about the existence of God in order to investigate how the world would look differently if your assumptions are put aside. Check.

[Dr Exiled]

He is here to preach.

[msnobody]

MG 2.0, I want to add to my response (p. 33) to your question about God enabling persons, the following food for thought.

It is my opinion that Latter-day Saints should carefully consider the following, as contrasted to Be Ye Perfect Eventually.

Matthew 5:48
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.— KJV

Hebrews 10:14
For one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified.—Greek Interlinear

Hebrews 10:10
By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.— KJV

[ghost from the past]

If we define Abraham to mean any person named Abraham who existed at that time with no relation to the stories, then the probability is 100%.

If we define Abraham to mean a specific person who exactly matches every story in the Old Testament and Book of Abraham, the probability is the same as flat earth.

You can take your pick in between. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Mormons believe in the exact match Abraham (insofar as it is translated correctly ).

Out of interest what are some of the stories in the OT and Book of Abraham that you believe have little or no correlation with a historical Abraham?

And can you show through evidentiary means that they don’t?

Regards,
MG

And also the following thought posted by MG:
...the ONE over riding possibility/probability that I’ve accepted as an axiom is that, for me, the evidence seems to allow for and even demonstrate the existence of a creator God. All else flows from that.

Sure. In which book do we find the story of Abraham? Genesis.

In the book of Genesis God creates light before creating the source of light upon the water covered Earth.
Translation: The author of Genesis does not comprehend that daylight is the result of scattered sunlight.

God divides the light from the darkness.
The author does not comprehend that darkness is merely the lack of the presence of light. In the case of the planet Earth, (more on the concept of planets shortly), darkness is the result of the Earth's shadow from the as yet non-existent Sun.

God creates a firmament to divide the waters from beneath the firmament from the waters above the firmament.
In fact there are no waters above the firmament. If there were such waters lurking up there, they would block out the light from the (as yet) non-existent Sun. There would be water vapor in the atmosphere but there is nothing dividing that water from the waters of the oceans under which the dry land is as yet lurking. They are in fact in contact with one another.

God gathers the waters into one and makes the dry land appear. He creates grass and fruit trees.

Next God decides to create the source of the light that is already there at this point in the narrative, the Sun. He creates a nightlight as well, the Moon. But the Moon is not really a light as stated in Genesis. The author did not comprehend that its light is due to reflected sunlight. The author did not comprehend that the Earth was a planet and that night was the result of the shade of the planet Earth. God creates the stars as well.

But where are these lights located according to Genesis? They are located within the firmament. The same firmament that divides the waters from the waters. So the waters "above" the firmament are very far away indeed! Translation: The author of Genesis did not comprehend in the slightest the vastness of the Universe in which the stars are located. Also the author did not surely comprehend that when we view the stars we see them as they were eons into the past. Many of these stars up for view no longer exist and have long since passed away.

And now back to planets. Why is there no mention of these? The author was not aware of them. They were presumably confused along with the meteorites as stars. The stars are fixed but some wander and others fall to the Earth from time to time. Neptune was first discovered with the utility of math as existing of necessity by the effect it had upon the motion of Uranus. So the author of Genesis can hardly be faulted for failing to understand that the Earth itself was a planet (unless he were claiming his narrative to be a "revelation" from a creator).

Light energy from the Sun is generated within the core and is absorbed and re-emitted in a random walk before escaping from the surface where it takes a bit over eight minutes to reach our planet.
But that random walk has a curve associated with it that represents the statistics of the time involved for that light to escape from within the sun to the surface. On the short end the very few and fastest escapes require about 10,000 years. On the longer end of that curve it is closer to 200,000 years.

[huckelberry]

ghost from the past, I new voice who is willing to type out their thought is welcome here to my mind and others here. So welcome.

I might wonder if you underestimate the poetic strengths of the author of Genesis. Still there are a wide variety of ways to point out its distance from literal historical process some of which you have noted.

[ghost from the past]

ghost from the past, I new voice who is willing to type out their thought is welcome here to my mind and others here. So welcome.

I might wonder if you underestimate the poetic strengths of the author of Genesis. Still there are a wide variety of ways to point out its distance from literal historical process some of which you have noted.

Hi huckleberry, Thanks for the greeting.

Whether or not it is poetic is an argument that falls for the most part along the dividing line between fundamentalists on the one hand and old earth Christians and or Jews on the other. But the fact that the proper interpretation is up for debate is evidence that the so called revelation is anything but. It means that the account conveys no useful knowledge. How do we verify that the author had any knowledge beyond what was generally believed for the time period in which he lived?

It's similar to psychonauts that claim tripping on mushrooms unlocks the "real" reality to allow contact with multidimensional beings but there is never anything revealed to these experimenters that they didn't already know.

[drumdude]

It's similar to psychonauts that claim tripping on mushrooms unlocks the "real" reality to allow contact with multidimensional beings but there is never anything revealed to these experimenters that they didn't already know.

Excellent point. There’s a growing, and in my opinion, dangerous secular movement to glorify psychedelic experiences. Joe Rogan and others like him seem to believe that the “machine elves” are real. Most proponents really highlight the positives and benefits, and rarely mention that a bad trip can result in permanent serious mental damage.