apolgetic strawman - the Book of Mormon as copy

[_Gadianton]

When I was in graduate school they worked hard to drum into us that correlation does not equal causation.

They had to work hard to drum that into you when you were in graduate school? That must of been one hell of a graduate program. I remember at BYU taking this general ed science class for freshmen who were to be non-science majors. The teacher spent about 15 minutes here and I think everyone pretty much got it.

No, charity, you have simply changed your tune, as Runtu noticed, when you saw that you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar

Oh yeah, I see that. Guess it's back to "graduate school" for Charity.

[_Trevor]

Full disclosure. This is such a crock. Anyone who joins the Church and says later they didn't know everything that has ever been claimed about the Church has no excuse. Can't they type "Mormon" in their google box? This is too funny for words. You would have us believe that all the former members of the Church who are now whining all over RfM and even here are the stupidest people in the world. Pretty insulting if you ask me. But I guess you know your buddies better than I do.

Good grief! How many times are we going to be treated to the old, "if the LDS Church doesn't educate you about the LDS Church, it is not their fault" bit. I have a fun idea, let's see how the FDA would function if it ran on the same principle. If the presence of certain chemicals in your food makes you sick, then it is your fault for not having a lab and a chemistry degree to figure this stuff out before you stick the food in your mouth. Surely we can't expect the FDA, or food manufacturers to take the blame on this. Get with the program people!

And let's not forget, that soon, at least if the More Good Foundation does its job right, typing Mormon into your Google engine will produce nothing other than the useless, uninformative pablum they have been littering the internet with! You might want to wait until this happens before you send people there to do research, charity. But then, of course, as long as you can send them to FARMS or FAIR, where they can be bamboozled with pretzel logic that sends them to every conclusion favorable to the LDS Church, no matter how implausible, they'll be allright.

But, if that should fail, and they should figure out in the end that they have been misled and misinformed, if not totally uninformed, then you can always blame it on them. If they weren't so damn picky about what constitutes reality, the LDS Church wouldn't have these problems, and neither would they. And wouldn't that be a happy world, indeed!

[_Sethbag]

No. Life life in obedience to men who tell you they represent God, and you will go to your grave believing that you'll become a God or a Goddess. But you won't. You'll just die and cease to exist, like everyone else. But hey, at least during your life you had the pleasure of imagining how great it would be to be a God or a Goddess, and help create entire new universes to be populated with your very own little spirit babies. Sure would be nice, wouldn't it? It's a pipe dream, Charity. Wishful thinking, fantasy, fiction, mythology, all wrapped into yet one more manmade, untrue church out of the many thousands of them that have arisen on Earth in the last few thousand years.

Okay. Say you are right. This is it. We die. We cease to exist. I have lived a life of service to others, a life of study and contemplation, a life which includes wonderfully uplifting experiences. Was that a loss?

Say I am right. This isn't it. We go on to a greater existence beyond this. You have spent years of doubt and hopelessness and bitterness. To no purpose.

Credible belief or dismissive denial.

So it really is just wishful thinking, and you're OK with that. Ok, well I suppose if you're satisfied living a fantasy just because thinking about it is more pleasant than thinking about annihilation of the self upon death, I suppose that's your prerogative.

Look at this from my perspective for a moment, if you can. If I'm right, we only have this one life to live, and then that's it. I'm trying to live it as best and as happily as I can, while remaining firmly grounded in reality. From my point of view, you're actually wasting a lot of the opportunities that you might have in this one life of yours by insisting on living in your own fantasy world instead. Thus, when you die, you never lived in "the real", and you still don't become a Goddess in the Celestial Kingdom.

And who says that the alternative to living in the Mormon fiction is living a life of bitterness and hopelessness? That doesn't describe me at all. Ask my wife, I'm actually quite the optimist. Just because I'm not optimistic about what happens to our consciousness after we die doesn't mean I lie around all day thinking that life sucks.

Your belief isn't credible, either. How anyone who knows the kinds of things Joseph Smith did can credibly still believe he was a Prophet of a loving and just and kind God who actually exists, is astonishing. It is a testament to the level of self-deception you not only practice, but continuously seek to improve upon, in the name of "strengthening your testimony".

It's not credible belief or dismissive denial, it's more like wishful thinking and self-deception, or optimistic realism.

[cacheman]

Honestly, I have held back from addressing some of the amazingly pathetic points you so often fling about.

This utterly foundationless opposition you have constructed: that a life of belief = a satisfying, useful and beautiful existence and a life of nonbelief = "doubt, hopelessness, bitteness and purposelessness" speaks not just of a lack of imagination but a lack of human kindness, understanding, generosity of spirit and charity.

Not only does this statement suggenst a complete inability to put oneself in someone else's shoes, to imagine a different perspective from one's own (for example, could not a lack of belief in an afterlife make someone more devoted to serving their fellow man, more desrious of obtaining knowledge through hard struggle and contemplation and more completely astonished and amazed at the wonderfully uplifting experiences life so often throws one's way?), but its completly insulting to those whose lives are so profoundly different than yours you can't even imagine them.

Was I ever offended by a member? I sure am now.

I doubt very much that charity is trying to be offensive, but that's the end result of such belief. The idea that is pounded into our brains from early on in Mormonism is that we are "different" and "special." Why, if it weren't for the church, we'd be aimless and devoid of morals, and it goes without saying that we would have no hope for our lives. Charity is doing nothing more than repeating the mantra she's absorbed since she was 19.

Today I attended Gospel Doctrine. The instructor, a nice enough BYU professor, was talking about Ephesians, and the theme was (surprise!) that we have great benefits from the gospel that nonmembers don't have. He spoke of giving a lecture at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and he talked about how wonderful and faithful the people he met were. But all the class wanted to talk about was how sad it is that these men, who were studying to be priests, were wasting their lives in a "false priesthood" and would never know the blessings of the true church.

Lack of imagination and human kindness, indeed.

Hinckley said it best: the kingdom of God or nothing. They really believe we have nothing.

[_Polygamy Porter]

Charity has very little experience outside of the LDS church and her home. Her idealistic outlook on LDS theology is evidence of this. Her arguments at times are much like talking to an 11 year old daughter of TBM parents.

Like I have said before, either she truly is this deluded or a damn good sock puppet.

[_beastie]

Sethbag's argument wasn't for an EV view of an afterlife. He said that there is nothing. You die. You're dead, you don't rise again. I was responding to that. You should read both the question and the answer before jumping in.

I was fully aware of Sethbag's argument. Your response was simply Pascal's wager. Hence, I thought it pertinent to point out that you may still be placing a losing bet, a la pascal.

[_charity]

Charity has very little experience outside of the LDS church and her home. Her idealistic outlook on LDS theology is evidence of this. Her arguments at times are much like talking to an 11 year old daughter of TBM parents.

Like I have said before, either she truly is this deluded or a damn good sock puppet.

No experience outside my home or the Church? I spent 3 years of graduate school at a public university, not BYU. I taught at a public community college for 10 years full time, and part time for another 3. I have served on the board of an educational institution, not LDS. I have been on school district steering committees, not in Utah. I currently teach courses in various locations in the county I live in, also not in Utah.

Care to take back that sophomoric assessment of my insularity?

[_beastie]

No experience outside my home or the Church? I spent 3 years of graduate school at a public university, not BYU. I taught at a public community college for 10 years full time, and part time for another 3. I have served on the board of an educational institution, not LDS. I have been on school district steering committees, not in Utah. I currently teach courses in various locations in the county I live in, also not in Utah.

Care to take back that sophomoric assessment of my insularity?

It's strange that someone with a degree in psychology and experience in the world would make the simplistic comments about human beings that you do.