Philo Sofee, why can't we ask God whether or not the Bible tells the truth about Her/Him?
Why not just ask God to talk to you in person, and forget about a mere book? Who gives a flip about anything written or said if you can get a one on one podcast with God? I may have to ask him to come on my live show...
I’ll have questions for your guest.
"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” Jude 1:24
“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7 ESV
In my research for my ongoing podcasts on God in Mormonism, I am finding it is fiendishly and cleverly worked out, not poorly. What is poor is actual knowledge about God at all in Mormonism. It keeps changing.
Interesting. Seems like a contradiction, but I will have to see when your podcasts drop.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
In my research for my ongoing podcasts on God in Mormonism, I am finding it is fiendishly and cleverly worked out, not poorly. What is poor is actual knowledge about God at all in Mormonism. It keeps changing.
Changing god isn’t a Mormon thing. It’s ad hoc work to make god into something more and more palatable or understandable over time. Changing up what god is, on the fly, has always been. Today mainstream views of god are so extravagant god basically has turned into nothing. That’s what the god of classical theism amounts to. It’s what the god of philosophers is. Mainstream views consider god, in some peoples words, as a bodiless mind who transcends space and time. All perfect descriptions of nothing.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Of course Mormonism replaces that atheistic fear with the fear that if you are not good enough you will lose your family for eternity, and that (speculatively) they will forget all about you so that they can be blissfully happy.
Malkie, I have been exposed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the 54 years since I was baptized, and I've never heard any Latter-day Saint voice that speculation. In fact I have heard (what might be equally apocryphal) that the only sadness that celestial beings experience is sorrow for all the people they have known that didn't make it to the Celestial Kingdom.
The original post was made as a spinoff from KevinSim’s thread Why Do Biblical Christians Think God does Not Inspire TCoJCoLDS. I was hoping to see if KevinSim understands why Evangelical Christians would see the teachings of the LDS church as opposed to the gospel as understood by EV’s, and why EV Christians would view the GA’s as not being inspired by God.
So Evangelical Christians believe God doesn't inspire Latter-day Saint General Authorities because those GA's teach a different gospel than those Christians believe in? Didn't Jesus have a different message from the one most Jews thought their prophets and rabbis taught? Did it follow that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hadn't inspired Jesus? (This is ignoring the LDS belief that Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Either way doesn't change my point.) The bottom line is that just because a messenger gives a group of people a message that's dramatically different from messages that previous messengers gave, does not mean that God didn't inspire the later messenger.
Whatever one thinks of any number of wishful theories that exist for the continuation of the spirit, the body 100% dies and that includes the consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain, and further in our limbic system.
Doc, since when has anybody figured out what the "consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain" even are, let alone discover with certainty that they die 100% when the body dies?
Of course Mormonism replaces that atheistic fear with the fear that if you are not good enough you will lose your family for eternity, and that (speculatively) they will forget all about you so that they can be blissfully happy.
Malkie, I have been exposed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the 54 years since I was baptized, and I've never heard any Latter-day Saint voice that speculation. In fact I have heard (what might be equally apocryphal) that the only sadness that celestial beings experience is sorrow for all the people they have known that didn't make it to the Celestial Kingdom.
Most of the parents within the church that I'm familiar with have all, at some point, voiced a fear that their kids won't make it.
I can't think of a single family unit (Grandparent - Parent - Children - Grandchildren) that will be together forever in the Celestial Kingdom. They will all have at least one of their number missing for eternity. And, let's not forget, there are 3 degrees of separation within the Celestial Kingdom itself (the top tier being reserved for, I think, those living the true order of marriage, polygamy). It's impossible for families to be together forever under the Mormon version of God's plan.
Whatever one thinks of any number of wishful theories that exist for the continuation of the spirit, the body 100% dies and that includes the consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain, and further in our limbic system.
Doc, since when has anybody figured out what the "consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain" even are, let alone discover with certainty that they die 100% when the body dies?
Whatever one thinks of any number of wishful theories that exist for the continuation of the spirit, the body 100% dies and that includes the consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain, and further in our limbic system.
Doc, since when has anybody figured out what the "consciousness mechanisms taking place in our brain" even are, let alone discover with certainty that they die 100% when the body dies?
The god hiding in our unknown spaces is, again, all theism and religion has—this need to play gotcha with a comment of “well, we don’t really know…therefore we stuff our god there”. This illustrates nicely that science and religion aren’t the same. Everything unknown in science leaves us with hypotheses ready to be adjusted upon further investigation. Religion simply plays a game of make believe and then hides in every unknowable space it can find. It leaves absolute, often, “truths” wherein reasonably what we have is that’s not likely given the data. This difference is stark. Its rational vs irrational. Consciousness carries on beyond the grave on religion, not because there is any actual reason to think so, but because faith—used here as belief without reason.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
