The Experience of God

[dastardly stem]

Why would God want to stop T-Rex’s from existing? Ebola? Well, that’s another matter.

Anyway, the more I read these discussions about what God either is or isn’t I come back to the concept of God the Father in Mormon Doctrine as we have it in our day and time. To answer your question, He(a father) would care for humans more than an Ebola virus because we are literally His Spirit children. As far as thinking about T-Rex, Ebola, and all the other nasty things out there I would ask, “What if they weren’t?”

LDS thinking prescribes an opposition in ALL things. And that there is a long range and cosmic purpose behind that opposition/fallen world. From what we see and experience, I don’t see that ‘explanation for being’ unreasonable when held up against the alternatives.

You’re just going to keep running around in circles along with Gadianton and the other folks. I don’t think there is any way on God’s green earth you’ll EVER be able to figure out ‘god’ without that being/entity reveling himself/itself to you.

maybe not, MG. Maybe I won't be able to believe there's a god unless he gives me some reason to think he's there. If so, he may condemn me for my lack of faith, I suppose. And I'll wonder for eternity all the whys. If so, at least I won't be sitting in his stuffy heaven, seeming dreading eternity. I guess I'll just get what I want, as the Mormons typically say.

Mormonism has a firm answer to those questions that you guys run around looking for answers to. It’s right in front of your face.

I hear that and chuckle to myself. The answers you love are just a mess as I see it. They only lead to more questions and more disturbing thoughts for me.

You want proofs. Just not the kind that might be those that are readily available but also a bit difficult to wrap your mind around. Corporal God. A God who is part of a larger system/plan. A God who evolved. A God who exists inside and outside of our framework of measuring ‘reality’.

Heavy stuff. Good luck figuring it all out. In the meantime IF God has revealed Himself through ancient and modern prophets…you’re missing out.

I tried, MG. I too used to think God revealed himself through ancient and modern prophets. All the way up until I realized if he did so reveal himself, He's not much worth considering.

Agency, isn’t it a wonderful thing? And to be so smart that you think you might just be able to grasp it all without an all powerful being helping you to doing so?

Silly humans. The hubris of it all.

Regards,
MG

I can't help it. God made me that way and has only pushed me deeper to it.

[MG 2.0]

Why would God want to stop T-Rex’s from existing? Ebola? Well, that’s another matter.

Anyway, the more I read these discussions about what God either is or isn’t I come back to the concept of God the Father in Mormon Doctrine as we have it in our day and time. To answer your question, He(a father) would care for humans more than an Ebola virus because we are literally His Spirit children. As far as thinking about T-Rex, Ebola, and all the other nasty things out there I would ask, “What if they weren’t?”

LDS thinking prescribes an opposition in ALL things. And that there is a long range and cosmic purpose behind that opposition/fallen world. From what we see and experience, I don’t see that ‘explanation for being’ unreasonable when held up against the alternatives.

You’re just going to keep running around in circles along with Gadianton and the other folks. I don’t think there is any way on God’s green earth you’ll EVER be able to figure out ‘god’ without that being/entity reveling himself/itself to you.

maybe not, MG. Maybe I won't be able to believe there's a god unless he gives me some reason to think he's there. If so, he may condemn me for my lack of faith, I suppose. And I'll wonder for eternity all the whys. If so, at least I won't be sitting in his stuffy heaven, seeming dreading eternity. I guess I'll just get what I want, as the Mormons typically say.

Mormonism has a firm answer to those questions that you guys run around looking for answers to. It’s right in front of your face.

I hear that and chuckle to myself. The answers you love are just a mess as I see it. They only lead to more questions and more disturbing thoughts for me.

You want proofs. Just not the kind that might be those that are readily available but also a bit difficult to wrap your mind around. Corporal God. A God who is part of a larger system/plan. A God who evolved. A God who exists inside and outside of our framework of measuring ‘reality’.

Heavy stuff. Good luck figuring it all out. In the meantime IF God has revealed Himself through ancient and modern prophets…you’re missing out.

I tried, MG. I too used to think God revealed himself through ancient and modern prophets. All the way up until I realized if he did so reveal himself, He's not much worth considering.

Agency, isn’t it a wonderful thing? And to be so smart that you think you might just be able to grasp it all without an all powerful being helping you to doing so?

Silly humans. The hubris of it all.

Regards,
MG

I can't help it. God made me that way and has only pushed me deeper to it.

I think I can, to some degree, empathize with you.

Regards,
MG

[dastardly stem]

I think I can, to some degree, empathize with you.

Regards,
MG

Great. Might I also say I too empathize with those who want to believe so badly they just know there is a god.

[MG 2.0]

I think I can, to some degree, empathize with you.

Regards,
MG

Great. Might I also say I too empathize with those who want to believe so badly they just know there is a god.

I’m assuming this is addressed to me. That’s too funny.

You really don’t know me.

Pigeon holing.

To bad we can’t just talk face to face over lunch.

Regards,
MG

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Iif we do accept a non-Mormon God do we assume God loves us more than he loves any other something out there because we are the ones who think about these things? It doesn't feel like there is any reason at all to think God would care, other than we really want him to. Does he not care about ebola or T-rex's? If not, why not? Mormons give themselves outs on these because God couldn't stop T-rex's and ebola...and even if he can intervene he can only do so minimally.

Why would God want to stop T-Rex’s from existing? Ebola? Well, that’s another matter.

Anyway, the more I read these discussions about what God either is or isn’t I come back to the concept of God the Father in Mormon Doctrine as we have it in our day and time. To answer your question, He(a father) would care for humans more than an Ebola virus because we are literally His Spirit children. As far as thinking about T-Rex, Ebola, and all the other nasty things out there I would ask, “What if they weren’t?”

LDS thinking prescribes an opposition in ALL things. And that there is a long range and cosmic purpose behind that opposition/fallen world. From what we see and experience, I don’t see that ‘explanation for being’ unreasonable when held up against the alternatives.

You’re just going to keep running around in circles along with Gadianton and the other folks. I don’t think there is any way on God’s green earth you’ll EVER be able to figure out ‘god’ without that being/entity reveling himself/itself to you.

Mormonism has a firm answer to those questions that you guys run around looking for answers to. It’s right in front of your face.

You want proofs. Just not the kind that might be those that are readily available but also a bit difficult to wrap your mind around. Corporal God. A God who is part of a larger system/plan. A God who evolved. A God who exists inside and outside of our framework of measuring ‘reality’.

Heavy stuff. Good luck figuring it all out. In the meantime IF God has revealed Himself through ancient and modern prophets…you’re missing out.

Agency, isn’t it a wonderful thing? And to be so smart that you think you might just be able to grasp it all without an all powerful being helping you to doing so?

Silly humans. The hubris of it all.

Regards,
MG

Fast and testimony time! So nuanced! Such gray area thinking! Gosh, I totally believe MG went through a faith crisis at some point in the past! And it tore him asunder - manmade fabrications n’ all!



- Doc

[Marcus]

Anyway, the more I read these discussions about what God either is or isn’t I come back to the concept of God the Father in Mormon Doctrine as we have it in our day and time. To answer your question, He(a father) would care for humans more than an Ebola virus because we are literally His Spirit children. As far as thinking about T-Rex, Ebola, and all the other nasty things out there I would ask, “What if they weren’t?”

what do you mean by that? Seriously. What?

Mormonism has a firm answer to those questions

It does not. If it does what is it? Specifically?

Heavy stuff. Good luck figuring it all out. In the meantime IF God has revealed Himself through ancient and modern prophets…you’re missing out.

but you said there is a " firm answer". What is it?

As usual, you use a lot of words to say nothing at all. No surprise, given its a false farce to you.

[drumdude]

Great. Might I also say I too empathize with those who want to believe so badly they just know there is a god.

I’m assuming this is addressed to me. That’s too funny.

You really don’t know me.

Pigeon holing.

To bad we can’t just talk face to face over lunch.

Regards,
MG

I do have hope you'll turn to the dark side again some day and realize all this Mormon stuff was just Joseph Smith's nonsense. It's never hard to believe in the truth, which is why it's so hard for you to believe in Mormonism. All the excuses and yes mental gymnastics will continue to wear you down over time. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ you don't need The Corporation.

[Gadianton]

All I'm trying to say right now is that I've often heard the idea that a transcendent God couldn't possibly have any interest in us puny humans, and I just don't think this idea makes sense. I'm interested in atoms, which are an awful lot simpler than me, so maybe a God could be interested in me. I think that it's an absolute measure of how limited human intelligence really is, that we can't concentrate on more than a few things at once. If you're going to take the concept of a transcendent God at all seriously, you can't just assume that such a God would have our kind of mental limits.

If we're working within human mental categories, I don't think the problem is interest, but relatability. I can be interested in spiders, I can love spiders, but I can't relate to spiders. I think a bigger problem than mental "limits," however, for a transcendent God, is the very mental categories we're ascribing. Can we really assume a transcendent entity (?) is governed by "interest", "love", "empathy" and so on?

All of these categories of human thinking exist because of evolutionary pressures. I can relate to people better than I can dogs, but I generally love dogs more than people. There's 15,000 years of history behind my dog hijacking a part of my brain that is supposed to bond me with other people. God's "thinking", if we can call it that, isn't a product of embodiment nor embodiment in an evolutionary context.

What seems like an analogy to me: I'm not very interested in the possibility that there might exist some kind of elementary particle with spin 7/2. That's a hypothesis within an established framework, and within that established framework, it's a weird and far-fetched hypothesis, for which there is no evidence of the kind that the established framework defines. Even if there actually is such a particle, it can't be very important, or we would already have noticed it by now. If you ask instead, though, about whether the axioms of quantum mechanics could be approximate statements valid in certain regimes, within a larger structure, then I'm quite interested, because that's a discussion about the framework itself. It's a difficult discussion because one is groping blindly for concepts, and most of the ideas that one tries to frame are likely to be nonsense, but it seems worthwhile to me nonetheless.

Do you mean QM is like theism in the analogy, and a particle with spin 7/2 is like proposing an ad hoc God?

[MG 2.0]

I’m assuming this is addressed to me. That’s too funny.

You really don’t know me.

Pigeon holing.

To bad we can’t just talk face to face over lunch.

Regards,
MG

I do have hope you'll turn to the dark side again some day and realize all this Mormon stuff was just Joseph Smith's nonsense. It's never hard to believe in the truth, which is why it's so hard for you to believe in Mormonism. All the excuses and yes mental gymnastics will continue to wear you down over time. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ you don't need The Corporation.

This is where you and I differ. I think that the gospel requires water baptism by one holding proper authority. I would think that you can come up with a myriad of examples where you would not place your trust in someone or some organization that was either not qualified or lacked legal authority to administer their wares/product/services.

I know this might now sound somewhat foreign to you and that you are now more eclectic in your views, but I think it can be shown…and it just makes sense…that God would require His authority to perform saving ordinances rather than letting things run amok.

If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ or you don’t see the logic in a God who’s house is a house of order then I suppose I’m simply blowing hot air.

And the truth is, since my faith deconstruction period and the road back to faith through asking MORE questions and looking for more answers I’ve found my life path easier to travel. I find I’m not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine that you might find on a board such as this and elsewhere.

Another poster has again done the pseudo psychology thing again and stated why, according to them, I spend time here now and then. At other times when this person has made false accusations I’ve explained my REAL reasons for being here, but to no avail.

It is what it is.

I hope others can see through the false innuendo and twisted logic of some of these players.

You tend towards being somewhat more civil even though we are pointed different directions. That’s as it should be. All the donkey stuff and MG has issues stuff is a sideshow.

I like discussion although at times I don’t have answers that folks demand. They then see that as a ‘win’. I see it as an impasse with hopes of learning more, even if it is at a later date.

In the meantime, I feel very comfortable and at ease staying on the covenant path.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

I do have hope you'll turn to the dark side again some day and realize all this Mormon stuff was just Joseph Smith's nonsense. It's never hard to believe in the truth, which is why it's so hard for you to believe in Mormonism. All the excuses and yes mental gymnastics will continue to wear you down over time. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ you don't need The Corporation.

Amen. Well said.