To Jason Bourne: I have no desire to discuss this with you any further. I would explain why, but you seem to dislike things that are "offensive".
Hoops wrote: 1) That God sends anyone to hell.
If you don't believe in free will (and most Calvinists doctrines imply it does not exist, despite some claims to the contrary), and god chose to create people who will go to hell, then he is responsible for them going there. He could have chosen not to create such people, or he could have chosen to send them somewhere pleasant. Or he could have given them complete information so they could make real decisions. It is absurd to think you can escape the problem hell presents by arguing that people send themselves there by rejecting god.
2) Non Christians may certainly go to hell. What is a Christian? Was Noah a Christian?
Spare me your cheap semantics. Do you believe that people who do not think god exists go to hell? What about people are are religious but do not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior?
3) I lean toward Calvinism. 4)I'm not talking about getting "involved" with God. I'm talking about repentance so one can participate in life. That is true worship.
Your other post was obviously confused then, since what you posted there did have something to do with not running away and involving ourselves with god. If you meant you think we should just accept he sends people to hell and move on then that's sick.
5)I don't believe God tortures innocent people. What/who is an innocent anyway? Innocent of what? What does being innocent mean and why do we have to accept your definnition of that?
You do not have to accept my definition, and morality is subjective, even if god exists. But I would describe most people who have lived as relatively innocent insofar as two things are true:
1. Free will does not exist and none of us deserve any sort of punishment for anything
2. Even if free will does exist, most people do not do things that would justify sending them to hell
Calvinists like to claim any sin makes you deserve hell, which is BS.
I'm sorry, but all questions muse be submitted in writing.
Kishkumen wrote:Mormonism is either a new religious tradition or it is Christianity. It seems that most LDS people would rather be the latter than the former. MsJack's argument is that it is a new religious tradition. I see nothing objectionable about that. I think it is kind of sad that the whole reason for the Restoration is being rubbed out in favor of joining the Christian club.
Mormonism has always claimed to be part of the Christian Club. In it purest sense its claim it as the Restoration of the true Christian Club. So claiming to be Christian does not rub that out one whit. Mormons aren't trying to be orthodox Christians.
At the same time, I can understand Christians who engage in boundary maintenance by saying, "no way, buddy!"
I understand it to the extent to calling Mormonism a non Orthodox or even heretical (from an orthodox stand point) Christian sect.
If Mormons have a problem with that, then maybe they should consider welcoming Warren Jeffs as a fellow Mormon. Listen, lots of people consider themselves Christians or Mormons, but that does not obligate the majority of Christians and Mormons to accept happily just any old person who does.
Anyone in the Mormon tradition who wants to say they are Mormon is fine with me so long as they note that they are distinct from the major player in the posturing for the title of Mormon.
malaise wrote:To Jason Bourne: I have no desire to discuss this with you any further. I would explain why, but you seem to dislike things that are "offensive".
Oh whatever. I just don't like stupidity which much of your last post to me contained. I doubt dialoguing with you will gain much ground anyway. I don't know your background but based on what you post I am certain I know a hell of a lot more about Mormonism than you do.
malaise wrote:To Jason Bourne: I have no desire to discuss this with you any further. I would explain why, but you seem to dislike things that are "offensive".
Hoops wrote: 1) That God sends anyone to hell.
If you don't believe in free will (and most Calvinists doctrines imply it does not exist, despite some claims to the contrary), and god chose to create people who will go to hell, then he is responsible for them going there. He could have chosen not to create such people, or he could have chosen to send them somewhere pleasant. Or he could have given them complete information so they could make real decisions. It is absurd to think you can escape the problem hell presents by arguing that people send themselves there by rejecting god.
2) Non Christians may certainly go to hell. What is a Christian? Was Noah a Christian?
Spare me your cheap semantics. Do you believe that people who do not think god exists go to hell? What about people are are religious but do not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior?
3) I lean toward Calvinism. 4)I'm not talking about getting "involved" with God. I'm talking about repentance so one can participate in life. That is true worship.
Your other post was obviously confused then, since what you posted there did have something to do with not running away and involving ourselves with god. If you meant you think we should just accept he sends people to hell and move on then that's sick.
5)I don't believe God tortures innocent people. What/who is an innocent anyway? Innocent of what? What does being innocent mean and why do we have to accept your definnition of that?
You do not have to accept my definition, and morality is subjective, even if god exists. But I would describe most people who have lived as relatively innocent insofar as two things are true:
1. Free will does not exist and none of us deserve any sort of punishment for anything
2. Even if free will does exist, most people do not do things that would justify sending them to hell
Calvinists like to claim any sin makes you deserve hell, which is b***s***.
Hoops wrote:I won't indulge in parsing the words of your question, since i think i know what you mean, though I would not have phrased it this way.
Of course. Just like anyone else. However, as I mentioned above, I think it is substantially more difficult to understand Grace and Forgiveness and Compassion, and everything else associated with being Christian, within a LDS Church framework. However, God can draw people to Himself within Mormonism, Atheism, ... even Baptists.
I do not believe a Christian who is a Mormon can be led astray and hence into hell. I do believe Mormonism does not teach Christian core principles and thus that person can not enjoy True freedom we have in Christ. I do believe the LDS church is not Christian. I believe LDS church is unhealthy, divisive, exclusionary in a nonreligious way (religion more often than not is exclusionary, as it should be) and snotty. Thus, why would a Christian want to be a member of a non Christian church? That doesn't make sense to me. It is on this basis that I would recommend anyone avoid the LDS church. Avoid passionately.
Just how much theology must one correctly grasped to be saved?
Just how much theology must one correctly grasped to have "true freedom" in Christ?
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
beastie wrote: I do not believe a Christian who is a Mormon can be led astray and hence into hell. I do believe Mormonism does not teach Christian core principles and thus that person can not enjoy True freedom we have in Christ. I do believe the LDS church is not Christian. I believe LDS church is unhealthy, divisive, exclusionary in a nonreligious way (religion more often than not is exclusionary, as it should be) and snotty. Thus, why would a Christian want to be a member of a non Christian church? That doesn't make sense to me. It is on this basis that I would recommend anyone avoid the LDS church. Avoid passionately.
Just how much theology must one correctly grasped to be saved?
Just how much theology must one correctly grasped to have "true freedom" in Christ?[/quote] Moreover, how can a Calvinist believe in any sort of freedom? The very idea is absurd.
I'm sorry, but all questions muse be submitted in writing.
Rather than responding to sections of your post, I’m going to try to reply to the general points you made, and hopefully won’t misstate what you said.
First, I agree that mainstreamers today do not, in general, have a grasp of early Mormon history and act within that context. But what I was trying to say is that the past interactions between early LDS and nonLDS set up a pattern, and we may be partially seeing a continuation of that pattern. But I’m just thinking out loud.
Now on to the meatier part.
When I first left the LDS church, I was angry. I felt I had been deceived and lied to. Yet, even during that phase, I could never really pinpoint whom I was angry at. I certainly wasn’t angry at my LDS family, friends, or local leadership. Nor was I particularly angry at the General Authorities. I thought it was likely that all of those people were just doing what I had done for 15 years, and particularly on my mission. They were sharing their genuine beliefs. Sure, I now had concluded those beliefs were wrong, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t genuinely hold those beliefs as I once did. If you genuinely believe that the Mormon church is The One True Church, you do what you can to encourage people to follow that path, and believe as you believe. You’re acting in what you perceive to be their best interest.
Now I could arguably be angry at Joseph Smith. Even if he had succeeded in deluding himself, I think it’s clear sometimes he just outright lied. And he obviously used his power to manipulate people to his own advantage. But he’s the only one I can justify as a target for my anger, and he lived so long ago that who knows what was really going on with him. I’ve long believed he showed some tendencies toward bipolar, as his son David later did in full-force. If his actions were influenced by a mental illness, then my anger is no longer justified.
You know I’m an atheist. I believe, if we could travel back in time to the origin of any religion, we will most likely find someone like Joseph Smith. Someone who either lied, or acted in response to internal delusions, but was still charismatic enough to get people to believe and follow.
Can I be angry at Christianity? I’ll be brutally frank, which you’ve seen before, so you’ll know not to take it personally. I think the idea of the atonement is pretty offensive and outrageous. Really? Seriously? God has to have someone endure exquisite SUFFERING – enough to bleed from every pore – and a brutal DEATH in order to be able to forgive human beings? And what makes it even more outrageous is that God is simply being asked to forgive us FOR BEING WHAT HE CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Really?
If God were a parent here on earth, I believe he would be in jail for child abuse.
I, as a mere mortal, can find a way to forgive my children for the mistakes and hurtful things they do without demanding that they pay some sort of cosmic price in suffering and pain. Would any parent ever DREAM of saying to their children the following:
“Ok, well, you kids sure do mess up a lot. You say mean and hurtful things to each other. Sometimes you hit each other, take each other’s things, and lie straight to my face. Now I know this is the nature of children, but it’s still unacceptable. I had children, knowing what children are like, but I still won’t have it. But I’m willing to forgive all this misbehavior on your part if ONE of you will be a stand-up guy and let me beat you black and blue. That suffering and pain will pay the price of everyone’s misbehaviors.”
I guess, knowing how terrible some parents are, that maybe some parent, somewhere, has said or done something similar. But if they’re caught, they’ll be charged with child abuse and their story will be headlines and every decent person will be outraged.
But when it’s claimed that this is the behavior God engages in, we’re supposed to not only be ok with hit, but actually worship him for it? We’re supposed to say “Hey, I’m so glad I’m not the one who got beat black and blue. Yeah, I know that my brother or sister did, but I’m just so glad it wasn’t me that I’m going to flat-out worship my parent who did the beating.”
I know this will sound objectionable. And someone will claim the analogy is flawed, but I think it’s close enough.
So I think someone lied. It’s just too fanciful and horrific to believe. Someone lied. Someone made something up and then convinced other people to believe it was factual.
Who should I be angry at?
I think all religions have lies somewhere at their root. I also think all religions probably look a heck of a lot like a cult at point of origin. But then they mellow, become powerful, and start behaving like the mainstream. And too much time passes for people to know where the lie started.
So, for me, I have to lay aside the lying and deception issue, because I believe it’s universal in religions. All I can do is just look at the teachings and ask myself:
Does this religion teach that Jesus is the Son of God, and through Him, and uniquely Him, through His atonement, that mankind can be saved?
If it does, I think it’s a Christian religion. And I think, no matter what other odd teachings the LDS church has, it does teach that.
Moreover, I think the only reason we all don’t think HEY that teaching about the atonement is really weird and creepy is because we’ve heard it all our lives.
I really don’t mean to offend you or any other believer. Most of the human species believe in some sort of godbeing, so obviously extremely intelligent, decent, and moral people believe in God. I’m not saying people are stupid or evil to believe. I do believe that all religious beliefs have odd elements, and the only reason we don’t perceive our own religious elements as odd is because of a lifetime of enculturation.
I think religion can be a force for good as well as bad. I think that Mormonism is a good example of that. There is good in Mormonism. They are a people. Not always, but much of the time, they’re there for one another. They may have to be told to be there for one another, as in a calling, but, in the end, they’re there. I have a nephew who is in the National Guard. He joined in a fit of patriotic duty after 9/11. He has a wife and four young kids. He’s served in Iraq, and when he was gone, the members of his ward, and his LDS coworkers (they live in Utah) really stepped up and helped take care of that family. I was so grateful for that, because other family members didn’t live nearby. They became his wife’s family. It was Mormonism that made them family.
Yeah, sometimes Mormonism is toxic. I think that their treatment of women, minorities, and homosexuals is toxic. I think the worst thing in the world would be to grow up as a gay Mormon. And their meddling in politics is wrong, in my view.
But the same could be said about any religion. There is some good, and some bad. Religion is part of life. People seemed wired to believe, with some odd exceptions that end up atheists like me. Maybe they’re wired to believe because something, some divine being, really is out there. I don’t know. But one thing I concluded years ago is this:
If there is a divine being out there, based on the myriad of different religious ideas and expressions that have existed throughout the history of mankind, I think that divine being wants only one thing. I think that divine being wants human beings to reach out to it. With the myriad expressions of religion, I can’t believe that divine being expects human beings to know and believe the ONE RIGHT THING. It just ain’t possible. And I think that divine being would accept anyone’s genuine expression of faith.
Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is a divine being, and it is willing to make people suffer throughout eternity if they don’t believe the right thing. Maybe it is willing to forcibly divorce loving couples and families in the next life if they didn’t get married in the right place. Maybe that divine being will condemn everyone except one small group of people to be eternally digested in the belly of a worm. I don’t know. When we’re talking about supernatural beings outside our scope of comprehension, anything is possible.
But if such a cruel divine being exists, I think it would be a good thing if every human being had the courage to say “Screw you.”
Boy, I went off on a tangent there. Not sure how much is really related to this thread, but oh well.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
beastie wrote:Do you dispute that both the symbol of the cross and the fish had been used in pagan religions, and were gradually assimilated into Christianity?
Sort of. Sort of not, beastie. If what you mean by religious 'influence' is the presence of similar iconography across religious traditions, I concede the point.
Obviously, cruciform and fish iconography gained gradual acceptance among the larger Christian community. I see no reason to term the process "assimilation." I don't find that description to be apt. You seem to be mistaking the ramekin for the custard.
Symbols are, well, symbolic. Iconography flows across and between cultures. But religious symbols are invested with fixed meaning and significance by their originating (or, arguendo, adoptive) communities.
But, it would seem, on your logic (if similar iconography is indicative of influence), that German National Socialism was influenced by Hinduism and/or Buddhism.
I assume that strikes you as a superficial analysis, but I'm not sure how yours above fares much better.
I don't wish to deny cross-cultural resonances with regard to religious iconography over time, but I also would hope to eschew too simple connections based on them.