I can't believe I'm having to argue that my religious beliefs are different then those of the insanely murderous.
Let me try a different tact here. Let's take an unreligious serial killer or a castration fetishist. How do they reach the point that they are willing to do these things without intense religious experiences? What conviction drives them? Should I assume that someone who gets some kind of perverse pleasure from doing these things has had a more intense spiritual experience then I have? Or even one of the same type?
I don't see how rewriting one's moral code requires religious experiences in the first place. I don't see how a religious experience on the types I've experienced could in any way, shape, or form lead to the kinds of madness you're suggesting. I take that back. My experiments with Satanism might compare. An interesting thought. The only time I even momentarily considered such black crimes....
Okay, I'm convinced on the point that others can gain conviction from spiritual experiences that rival or surpass mine or any other LDS believer. I would not argue that they felt any of the fruits of the Spirit of God in the process: peace, comfort, charity, etc.
I guess the conclusion I reach is this. Some of them may not have been convinced by experiences but by other things (whatever motivates the above serial killer). Those who have dark spiritual experiences may be more convinced of it then I am but they're likely morally bankrupt by that time if they can believe it totally. They will also be very messed up.
Nehor (and coggins7)
For whatever reason, neither of you have been able to grasp my point. Nehor's response above is a strawman argument, almost completely unrelated to the point I was making. I said nothing about religious experiences being required to rewrite moral codes. Nehor seems to be arguing that someone who would murder for god is already morally bankrupt, which has serious implications for Nephi and Abraham.
But rather than follow him or Coggins down their rabbit holes, I will try to restate my point as simply and clearly as possible, in the hopes that it can pierce the protective smoke their minds are blowing:
Intensity of belief has no correlation to accuracy of belief.
So just because Nehor had an
intense experience ("taste of heaven"), does not mean that his experience indicates
accuracy.
His original statement that a sham could not possibly give him the "taste of heaven" is obviously fallacious. I tried to help him understand it is fallacious by using the examples of people who have even stronger religious convictions than Nehor has had (which leads them to do the unthinkable with a level of certainty Nehor does not possess), but who equally obviously adhere to sham religious systems. It is irrelevant if Nehor thinks these people were morally bankrupt (and by their own beliefs, they most certainly were not, Nehor speaks out of utter ignorance on this point and Coggins speaks out of extreme bias, and neither appears to know anything about Heaven's Gate followers, who were decent, kind and gentle people, good members of their communities). The only relevant point is that the
intensity of their belief had no correlation to the accuracy of their belief.
I think the reason that Nehor and Coggins' minds have created smoke and fog around this fairly simple point is due to the implications it could have
for their own belief. It may open the door to doubt, and for whatever reason, neither can afford to do that.