beastie wrote:Obviously not. And the "magic rocks", at least the Urim and Thummim, were taken from the Old Testament, like quite a lot of the rest. They were a Jewish device. Joseph usurped them in order to give his story more believability.
I'm not sure what you're obviously not referenced. Was it towards "does the gag reflex ever kick in"? It does seem that it only kicks in with a very small minority of human beings.
Something is getting in the way of me being clear. I'll blame it on daylight savings time and that lost hour of sleep. I'll be coherent again sometime in October.
yes, the "Obviously not" referenced the gag reflex question. If by human beings you mean only the human beings alive today, then we weren't talking about the same human beings. I was thinking of human beings as everyone who has ever existed, not just the ones alive today.
Joseph Smith utilized the urim and thummim to give a biblical reference, but he was using magic rocks for treasure digging long before that time. And it's THOSE magic rocks that ought to trigger the gag reflex, in my opinion. Yes, we live in a culture saturated in Judeo-Christian thought, so the magic rocks of the Urim and Thummim aren't going to seem ridiculous. But taken outside THEIR cultural background - ie, nineteenth century folk magic of New England - Joseph Smith' treasure digging magic rocks seem ridiculous. THAT is why they are treated like "meat" and hidden behind the "milk".
And yet the U&T were ancient, so there exists a precedent for Joseph's use of magic rocks. (Please keep in mind I'm not one of those that adheres unwaveringly to the whole rock in the hat thing, so I'm not going to be able to argue effectively on their behalf). I think Joseph hit upon a device that worked to teach the concepts he (and God, in my opinion) wanted taught. That the church today takes the whole thing literally is both self-serving and simplistic.
God himself is impossible, yet necessary to man's development. But that's not what I was getting at. My point was much more shallow. We don't discuss Mormons and Mormon culture so much as we discuss atheists.
Of course I disagree with your first sentence here. I think the god concept is entirely unnecessary to man's development.
Ancient man had no access to telescopes, space satellites, algorithms, or even an abacus. Ancient man had to explain the unexplainable in his world somehow. It should come as no surprise that an unexplainable God arose from such a beginning. Even in the face of science, some concepts that evolved in connection with "God" have benefit today.
In regards to your second point, the OP was quite specifically about Mormonism. It only becomes about atheism when posters respond by saying Mormonism is no worse than any religion in general. The only response to that, for an atheist, is to say: d'uh. And then it becomes about atheism. So if theists don't want to discussion to become about atheism, they ought to avoid that train of thought altogether.
I don't know if Scottie is a theist or not. But he did not say that Mormonism is no worse than any religion in general. He said Mormonism is no worse than Christianity. Christianity is not the only religion out there, so why would an atheist immediately respond with "d'uh" and then the discussion devolve into a discussion of atheism... again? Scottie's comment did not take the discussion out of a religious context; he actually framed it quite succinctly
inside a religious context, albeit a wider context than Mormonism. We could bring the Quoran into the discussion too.
My point is, Mormonism is a subset of Christianity, which is a subset of religion in general. Rather than discussing Mormonism in any context, we devolve to discussing whether God exists at all, in virtually every single thread. The board is becoming an atheist board. I know. It was a shallow comment on my part. My bad.
*edited for clarity