American Idol for Gods

[_Coggins7]

I don't have to attack each point.

The requirements of philosophical rigor would tend otherwise, if you want to be taken seriously on serious subjects.

We went over this again and again some time ago, and as you really are not interested in the philosophical substance of either LDS doctrine or your own alternative, but only in banging a single drum incessantly and ignoring substantive philosophical rebuttals, I can only conclude that you are a woman on a mission, but have little interest in a reasonable give and take discussion (and debate, even if no minds are ultimately changed at the moment, can be stimulating and productive).

Your entire argument, that fallible humans cannot receive infallible communications from an infallible source, is, itself, a metaphysical axiom of yours that, thus far, you refuse to critique or question as to its possible weaknesses, weaknesses I pointed out to you at length in another thread some time ago. Your entire argument rises and falls on the naked assertion that humans, being fallible, are not so capcacitated that they can receive pure intelligence and knowledge from an infallible source, even though there is no logical reason this could not be so and no factual evidence that could be brought to the table demonstrating its implausibility.

All you know is that LDS claim this to be so, and that you have never had such an experience. Therefore, since you have never had such an experience, such experiences are impossible.

If LDS doctrine is taken into account here (less your own axiomatic presumptions), we see that, while man is fallible, he is also a literal child of God, and hence, has inherent powers and capacities, similar to God's, yet embryonic in form. These inherent capacities allow the Spirit of God to communicate directly to one who is "tuned" to receive such communications, and allows that Spirit to "burn through" the noise, distortion, and perceptual limitations of the human mind and infuse a knowledge of truth. Our infallibility can be negated, circumvented, and, as is probably more likely, our perceptions are heightened and amplified so as to be able to receive such knowledge without the fallibility associated with earthly perceptions.

Your belief that this cannot be so appears to float on a foundation of what you perceive to be formal deductive arguments from first principles that, even if logically sound, may still have nothing to do with the larger universe and the manner in which it works.

The problem, indeed, is that your first principles are not nearly as solidly grounded as you think.

[_Coggins7]

If people can fail to get an infallible witness then how is the witness infallible?

Nehor didn't say we couldn't get an infallible witness. Who on earth are you arguing with? He said that the witness must be reaffirmed through living the gospel and bearing the testimony, actions with allow us to re-experience and reconfirm the testimony. This has nothing whatever to do with the question of fallibility, but only the question of the degree to which earthy "background noise" crowds out and distorts the immediacy and imminence of the original communication.

There is a weak link in the chain. It is apparent, at least from The Nehor's description, that your god does not go out of his way to overcome your infallibility.

1. I just said that he did. Who are you arguing with?

2. Our relationship with God is a partnership. He goes out of his way all the time, but we must meet him, at some point, with our own effort.

3. Frankly, all one has to do to receive continual witness throughout one's life is to live the Gospel at ever grater levels of commitment. This guarantees continuing revelation and reaffirmation of the witness. In what manner does LDS theology not imply God's generousness in dispensing such blessings?

You have utterly lost me here.

I have no enemies here. I merely disagree with your dogma. It is repulsive and deserves to be seen for what it really is, not how the Jason Bourne's of the world wish to perceive it.

What is quite clear to me is that you have, quite literally, not the slightest idea what Mormons actually teach, believe, and think regarding these subjects, and as you steadfastly refuse to allow us to clarify our own beliefs for you, this may set into a permanent condition that no rational discussion or explanation will ever be able to dislodge.

[_amantha]

I don't have to attack each point.

The requirements of philosophical rigor would tend otherwise, if you want to be taken seriously on serious subjects.

Not if the points made make sense only to the person making them. They can be dispensed with with a single stroke as I have done.

We went over this again and again some time ago, and as you really are not interested in the philosophical substance of either LDS doctrine or your own alternative, but only in banging a single drum incessantly and ignoring substantive philosophical rebuttals, I can only conclude that you are a woman on a mission, but have little interest in a reasonable give and take discussion (and debate, even if no minds are ultimately changed at the moment, can be stimulating and productive).

You make no substantive rebuttals Coggins7. You are so mired in making your faith a rational thing, that you fail to accept that what you have is entirely faith based. There is no reason to believe the way you do except for comfort and society.

Your entire argument, that fallible humans cannot receive infallible communications from an infallible source, is, itself, a metaphysical axiom of yours that, thus far, you refuse to critique or question as to its possible weaknesses, weaknesses I pointed out to you at length in another thread some time ago. Your entire argument rises and falls on the naked assertion that humans, being fallible, are not so capcacitated that they can receive pure intelligence and knowledge from an infallible source, even though there is no logical reason this could not be so and no factual evidence that could be brought to the table demonstrating its implausibility.

But there is ample logical reason and factual evidence. You simply refuse to see it. There is plenty of evidence that people doubt their testimonies and must resort to normal and natural process of self affirmation in order to induce special states which have evocative convincing power. Is it more reasonable to believe that what is occuring is a natural process or a supernatural one? Be reasonable.

All you know is that LDS claim this to be so, and that you have never had such an experience. Therefore, since you have never had such an experience, such experiences are impossible.

I have many such experiences. I still do.

If LDS doctrine is taken into account here (less your own axiomatic presumptions), we see that, while man is fallible, he is also a literal child of God, and hence, has inherent powers and capacities, similar to God's, yet embryonic in form. These inherent capacities allow the Spirit of God to communicate directly to one who is "tuned" to receive such communications, and allows that Spirit to "burn through" the noise, distortion, and perceptual limitations of the human mind and infuse a knowledge of truth. Our infallibility can be negated, circumvented, and, as is probably more likely, our perceptions are heightened and amplified so as to be able to receive such knowledge without the fallibility associated with earthly perceptions.

And yet, although this sounds nice in theory, it doesn't really happen. People remain open to doubting. There is much evidence of this. They must resort to affirmation modes of behavior to rekindle their biological chemistry into charging their supernatural belief.

Your belief that this cannot be so appears to float on a foundation of what you perceive to be formal deductive arguments from first principles that, even if logically sound, may still have nothing to do with the larger universe and the manner in which it works.

Mine are inductive arguments. Don't get confused. I see the evidence and the arguments follow.

The problem, indeed, is that your first principles are not nearly as solidly grounded as you think.

Okay so I played the game your way. Now stop trying to convince yourself that you are infallible.

[_Coggins7]

Mine are inductive arguments. Don't get confused. I see the evidence and the arguments follow.

Hardly. Go back and look at most of your posts, and what you will see, primariily is a long series of assertions, propositions, and premises unconnected by any detailed chain of reasoning to any conclusions that might be drawn from them.

You are confusing logical thought with the passionate intensity of your ideology.

[Guest]

Mine are inductive arguments. Don't get confused. I see the evidence and the arguments follow.

Hardly. Go back and look at most of your posts, and what you will see, primariily is a long series of assertions, propositions, and premises unconnected by any detailed chain of reasoning to any conclusions that might be drawn from them.

You are confusing logical thought with the passionate intensity of your ideology.

Whatever you say Coggins7. Go back and look at your posts and you will see a person struggling to coat his faith in the garb of reason and logic using tortured hyperbole and pseudo-intellectualism--but the emperor has no clothes. "Don't look at the man behind the curtain."

My conclusion is simple. What you describe as certainty is really faith and hope. The evidence is in the real world nature of how testimonies are created and kept through concentrated states of consciousness, intense yearning and persistent affirmation. This is logic and reason. What you have is jargon laden supernaturalism.

You are confusing faith and hope with logical thought and your passionate servility to a dead guy's archaic ideology.

[_Jason Bourne]

[quote=Truth Dancer"]Do you think God really needed to test people to see who those chosen people are? or who will pass the test? I mean seriously Jason we are talking about the God of the Universe here. While YOU may not hold to the "test" philosophy, many believers do and it is certainly taught in the church as truth.

Exactly.

My TBM brother can only understand life in terms of a "test." Why is a test necessary unless god's "plan" is to elect a certain kind of super-being, of which there are only going to be .00000000001% of the total number of humans, who will qualify for his "plan of happiness."

It's the Mormon god's eugenics program. Only the "best of the best" (according to the narrow definition designed by Joseph Smith, et al) will ultimately be allowed to procreate in the eternities. Isn't that the nature of eugenics? Disallowing the unworthy to procreate?

What a dumb idea. If this is the true nature of reality, thank the Mormon god that he gave me agency, because I want no part in it. Thankfully it is obviously not the nature of reality--obvious to those who will stop to see how ridiculous the numbers are. It's the Mormon god, Joseph Smith's version of god, playing the lotto with his children's lives.[/quote]

Calling this life a test is a simplification I think. More so this is a school and a way for humans to learn the attributes of Godliness-Mercy, meekness, love, forgiveness and so on. I believe that perhaps a mortal life and all that goes along with it is the best way for us to learn what we need to learn to progress to the next stage of our existence.

[_Jason Bourne]

You have simply reframed the "plan of salvation" to suit you.

Not really. I was just trying to give some perspective.

Be my guest if you can still believe it and take comfort from it. I just can't. Joseph Smith's "improvements" upon prior Christian notions of the after-life are devoid of any truth and grace at all.

I am not sure why you reach this conclusion. Do you prefer a God that sends most of his creation to burn and be in eternal torture forever and ever?

If you want to believe that you and your family live happily in the presence of God due to your faith and good works, then by all means believe it, but don't give any credit to Joseph Smith for it. Credit yourself, or can you not believe something unless some other guy said it a couple hundred years ago and a few million believe it today.

I have my own views on what the after life may be like and some of them include what Joseph Smith in fact presented to the world.

If you want to respect Joseph Smith for his religious creativity despite the obvious flaws in his ideas, I suppose I can understand that from a purely academic perspective. I can respect religious thought from whatever source as a human achievement in freeing brain cells from constantly thinking on death, I.e., providing comfort, but that's all the respect I can afford it. =n order to do that I have to also ignore the catastrophic implications of the numbers of people who are being consigned to hell or misery of some sort for not buying into, by virtue of absolute obedience, the religious creativity of another human being.

If that is your choice than I am happy for you. Care to share what if anything you believe about an after life?

You seem to want to defend Joseph, et al's ideas as if they still represent the last word in religious thought. Why not just consider him a piece of the overall puzzle and give him his credit for his "contributions" and start thinking for yourself.

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion for it is certainly not correct. But since you were attacking Joseph Smith ideas about salvation I thought I would address some of that topic. Can you give Smith credit for his contributions?

[_amantha]

You have simply reframed the "plan of salvation" to suit you.

Not really. I was just trying to give some perspective.

Okay you have created a perspective that suits you.

Be my guest if you can still believe it and take comfort from it. I just can't. Joseph Smith's "improvements" upon prior Christian notions of the after-life are devoid of any truth and grace at all.

I am not sure why you reach this conclusion. Do you prefer a God that sends most of his creation to burn and be in eternal torture forever and ever?

I prefer to postulate no personal god at all.

If you want to believe that you and your family live happily in the presence of God due to your faith and good works, then by all means believe it, but don't give any credit to Joseph Smith for it. Credit yourself, or can you not believe something unless some other guy said it a couple hundred years ago and a few million believe it today.

I have my own views on what the after life may be like and some of them include what Joseph Smith in fact presented to the world.

Okay. Sounds good.

If you want to respect Joseph Smith for his religious creativity despite the obvious flaws in his ideas, I suppose I can understand that from a purely academic perspective. I can respect religious thought from whatever source as a human achievement in freeing brain cells from constantly thinking on death, I.e., providing comfort, but that's all the respect I can afford it. =n order to do that I have to also ignore the catastrophic implications of the numbers of people who are being consigned to hell or misery of some sort for not buying into, by virtue of absolute obedience, the religious creativity of another human being.

If that is your choice than I am happy for you. Care to share what if anything you believe about an after life?

I have no view on the afterlife.

You seem to want to defend Joseph, et al's ideas as if they still represent the last word in religious thought. Why not just consider him a piece of the overall puzzle and give him his credit for his "contributions" and start thinking for yourself.

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion for it is certainly not correct. But since you were attacking Joseph Smith ideas about salvation I thought I would address some of that topic. Can you give Smith credit for his contributions?

I give Smith credit for his ability to move people and for his creative genius. I think he was a barbaric lecher and in all other respects a conflicted and self-deluded human being.

[_amantha]

If people can fail to get an infallible witness then how is the witness infallible?

Nehor didn't say we couldn't get an infallible witness. Who on earth are you arguing with? He said that the witness must be reaffirmed through living the gospel and bearing the testimony, actions with allow us to re-experience and reconfirm the testimony. This has nothing whatever to do with the question of fallibility, but only the question of the degree to which earthy "background noise" crowds out and distorts the immediacy and imminence of the original communication.

An infallible witness does not need reaffirmation Coggins7. You are reinventing the language. The immediacy and imminence of the original experience is not infallible as evidenced by the need to exercise continuous reaffirmation which is no where near what you want to define as absolute certainty. You are deluding yourself. Certainty is not something you have to reaffirm. So what you have is a desired belief backed by intermittent experiences which you interpret as confirmations. And of course your bias and social pressures guide your interpretation.

There is a weak link in the chain. It is apparent, at least from The Nehor's description, that your god does not go out of his way to overcome your infallibility.

1. I just said that he did. Who are you arguing with?

2. Our relationship with God is a partnership. He goes out of his way all the time, but we must meet him, at some point, with our own effort.

3. Frankly, all one has to do to receive continual witness throughout one's life is to live the Gospel at ever grater levels of commitment. This guarantees continuing revelation and reaffirmation of the witness. In what manner does LDS theology not imply God's generousness in dispensing such blessings?

You have utterly lost me here.

You have no relationship with any god. You relate to a belief system which instructs you to believe in such a being. The need to periodically reaffirm your belief is the evidence that you are not certain about your belief that you are partnered to a supernatural buddy who goes out of his way all the time to find the select few who will procreate and then discard vast numbers of mortals in their corrupt wake.

I have no enemies here. I merely disagree with your dogma. It is repulsive and deserves to be seen for what it really is, not how the Jason Bourne's of the world wish to perceive it.

What is quite clear to me is that you have, quite literally, not the slightest idea what Mormons actually teach, believe, and think regarding these subjects, and as you steadfastly refuse to allow us to clarify our own beliefs for you, this may set into a permanent condition that no rational discussion or explanation will ever be able to dislodge.

Coggins7, you are simply a contentious advanced primate who wants to assert the superiority of his dead alpha males's belief system on other advanced primates. You are competing for your place in the stream of ideas but you are using antiquated dogma. You are so far gone that I can see that there is likely no hope for you. You will waste your mental energy defending a defunct and dying position. Sad. Happily, discussing things with you in this way at least elucidates the lengths that dogmatists will go to defend their faltering and aged creeds.

Your imaginary god is the byproduct of 19th century eugenicist thought. The natural driving force behind the rise of Mormonism was the desire of one man to dominate his tribe and to procure sexual control over as many females as he could get his hands on. The proof of the fallacy and impotency of this line of thinking for present day religious thinkers is in the fact that only a very very very small minority of Mormon adherents, were the church to be true, could possibly enjoy the promised happiness, which, if true, would be no more than a polygamy nightmare akin to the rape of the 72 virgins by radical islamists.

There is nothing in the "plan of salvation" scenario to inspire one to seek the truth of those things. No reasonable person would persist in trying to maintain a testimony of that. Your arguments are not reasonable. They drip with faith and hope for a reward which is utterly bereft of any value.

[_The Nehor]

I didn't admit that the spiritual witness does not convey absolute certainty. I stated that the witness is certain but the certainty leaves the mind of the human unless followed. The certainty is there. However it diminishes.

Why should you follow the plan? The first cause would be because it is true and works. Also because even if your obscenely high percentage (which is believe is incorrect) were accurate shouldn't you seek out the best you can find? If 99% of humanity willingly walked into annihilation or even contentment (which is what those who fail to achieve exaltation largely achieve) is that good reason to not seek out the best?

So your certainty is an uncertain kind of certainty. Whatever do you mean?

Stop twisting in the wind.

Stop twisting what I say; I consider that much worse then twisting in the wind. I explained what I meant. When the divine flows into humanity a human can achieve certainty. When they are not, they can't. If you want to insist that the human mind is in a fixed state then I don't even know where to begin with you. Look, if you're trying to convince yourself that God hates you, feel free to do so. God knows I've been there myself. Don't use fuzzy logic for it though.