There's not a damn Mormon on here worth engaging with...

[_Coggins7]

Hey Beastie

Did you get a load of Coggins's falsifiability tests?

He's kind of helping me with my case here...

The only falsifiability test that's been successfully passed today is that we have clearly falsified the following proposition:

Tal Bachman is interested in serious rational debate

You had a chance to put your money where your mouth is and you came up with an empty wallet.

No surprise there...

[_Coggins7]

I can only take coggins in small doses. I haven't read that one carefully yet, not sure I have the stomach for it tonight.

But I do have to concur that coggins really isn't worth engaging. As other posters have pointed out, however, there are some believers here (who possess varying degrees of belief) that are worth engaging.

I retract the retraction of the "dork" and "dolt" portions of my post.

[_beastie]

I retract the retraction of the "dork" and "dolt" portions of my post.

LOL! Now that was a funny bit. Don't know if you intended it to be, but it was.

[_Tarski]

The bare fact that the Gospel is not, per se, amenable to that kind of analysis

A bare fact huh? Maybe you could explain what a bare fact is and then you can try explain why this is a bare fact.

..... the Gospel is not, per se, amenable to that kind of analysis

How convenient. I suppose after accusing Tal of stacking the deck you are now going be allowed to invent whole new rules about how to determine the truth of existential propositions about the furnature of the universe. My guess is they will be suspiciously unintelligable or manifestly silly to scientific minds.

I for one would like you explain how a feeling can provide warrent for a belief about what exists in the concrete world (like angels, gold plates or prophets).

How about if someone calls you on the phone and says they will give you 1000 dollars if you temporarily lend then 10,000 dollars? They want you to do this without ever seeing them. You can't really go for it right? Now they add "oh and I am telling the truth". Does that work? How does Mr. HG do it?
Now lets say this saleman can transmit this message directly to your brain and then even tweak your "feel good centers" so to speak--sertonin rush-- whatever. You think, Oh I feel good! It must be true. Really?????
Now do you know? Do you now have a testimony that the guy is honest?
So how do you know where spiritual feelings come from??? (I know what your answer is going to be by the way)

All, my life it has boiled down to this "I felt the Holy Ghost" thing. I felt something too many times but now I realize that it is just a spiritual feeling (a thing my brain does) together with some deep seeming thoughts that I mistakenly credit to an invisible but outside source. This stuff happens all the time in everything from religion to multilevel marketing scams and many other settings. It just can't be a good reason for believing anything.
How could it?

"I felt good about it" is a very human reason for believing something but not really a reliable way to pick beliefs.

On the other board we have TBM's claiming they know how old the universe is and that atomic particles have spiritual vibrations of intelligence etc. We have people claiming to see Jesus and know his hair color etc. Do you buy all that? They rely on the same feelings that they call the Holy Ghost.
I have heard all sorts of poppycock that people claim came from the spirit. But everyone thinks they have they real hotline to God.

[_Jason Bourne]

---Well, this might be an excellent starting point for a fruitful discussion with you. Why don't you tell me which things you've never heard were changed, and I'll give you evidence that they were? Then, presumably like other church defenders on here, you can refuse to acknowledge my points, resort to red herrings like talking about a song I wrote once, and then announcing that you find my posts "naïve" (oh wait - nevermind). That's a lot easier than actually acknowledging you got something wrong, isn't it?

It's like all the Mormons on here have been coached by the same half-wit...I don't get it. I had some big, deep conversations while I was a Mormon with people...I can't believe they were this bad...I don't get it.

Well there you go. On the thread where you made your list I respondended briefly to each one.

But I understand how difficult this is. In a Church that teaches pretty much black and white it is hard to be an in betweener. And often, after one reaches a point where for them the Church is just not what they thought it was they often end up where you and many others are at. Few seem to be able to be a NOMer sort of like I have chosen.

---Only the special few, no doubt :P[/b]

No need to get snotty about it. I have just learned that there is little black and white in the world in most things.

[_Mercury]

BCSpace sounds like a total pothead, spontaneously inventing pure nonsense and believing it as though it were a collection of the most profound insights ever.

Gawd, that sounds like how I used to be.

[_solomarineris]

Where are the Mormons you can have a rational conversation with about Mormonism?

How very nice for you... you're so high above us all. Is this a preliminary thread to you high-tailing it out of here again? Or has MAD banned you permanently, so there's really not that many places left where just about everyone isn't just like you?

A lesson in manners: one must first be what one wants the other to be. Only at that point can one complain about what the other is not.

I think your perception of Tal is wrong. This morning as I was having a long distance conversation with my Swiss cousin who is a super hotshot in Asian playing field, I was lamenting that over 50% of planets population consists of useless people who do nothing but consume & live in mediocrity. His answer was; "I'd go much higher 60, or even 70% of people probably belong to this category, have no intention of taking the initiative, happy to live without even thinking how far they could go.
I think MADd, CARM like boards boards represent starkly my sentiments about that part of humanity that I loathe. They trickle here and there too.
I don't see Tal as arrogant guy; he has talent and uses his brain. What I wonder is; what took him so long to wake up?

[_bcspace]

There's not a damn Mormon on here worth engaging with...
You are about to read my most unbecoming post ever (and that's really saying something :P).

There doesn't seem to be one damn Mormon on here worth engaging with seriously about the church.

Nehor seems like a nice enough guy - but that's probably because he doesn't seem to take the church all that seriously. Moksha (edit: this should be Harmony) likes to imagine she's a Mormon even though she rejects Mormonism's most fundamental authority claims. BCSpace sounds like a total pothead, spontaneously inventing pure nonsense and believing it as though it were a collection of the most profound insights ever.

Coggins sounds like one of those older inactive guys who just sits around reading church books, fancying himself a real expert on everything, a guy who's gotten just to that point where Mormonism seems to make sense, but hasn't taken that next step of analysis, which would reveal that it makes no sense at all. Schryver kind of reminds me of myself as a Mormon, though I'm sure he would snort at that. He says many of the same sorts of things I used to.

For reasons of charity, Wade's comments probably shouldn't even be responded to, ever. I've never seen Ray A produce one original, thought-provoking comment on Mormonism, ever. Charity - 'nuff said.

Where are the Mormons you can have a rational conversation with about Mormonism?

Better yet, where are the antiMormons or exmos who don't begin conversations with insults like our good buddy Tal here?

I think you can have a pretty rational conversation with Jason Bourne. And Doctor Stuess. And Cinepro. And, I think, Asbestosman. Note that each of these people I think would admit to disbelieving quite a few things that most chapel Mormons would claim is ironclad truth.

So a certain level of disbelief is required to have an engaging conversation? Interesting.....

[_Jersey Girl]

Better yet, where are the antiMormons or exmos who don't begin conversations with insults like our good buddy Tal here?

Well, I'm usually respectful to LDS folks on these boards but I don't consider myself "antiMormon", a label that is much over used on boards like these and inaccurately so.

[_Coca Cola]

MY comments were not about Moniker--DORK--but about coca cola, who authored the original post to which I was responding. Moniker came to her defense, and I was speaking to coca cola's lack of depth regarding Mormonism, not Moniker. I think its you who'd better start paying attention.

DOLT.

Lack of charity, kindness, holier than thou attitude, inability to appreciate other points of view, rude, not Christian --- see my point?