But what if Mormonism were true?

[Kishkumen]

Mormonism is almost certainly not true in anything but a pale reflection or mythological sense. There may be something that it, among many other faith traditions, helps people connect to that is beyond mundane existence. In any case, I really won’t lose any sleep over the specific claims of the LDS Church.

[honorentheos]

Kev is psychologically just trying to get even with people. "Go ahead and leave, we are better off without you!" You can use that logic down to the last member. In reality, if the Church is true, God, the head of the church, is all powerful and controls every atom in the physical universe. God doesn't need any of us including kev-sim. Understanding that God is all-powerful, why does he think the Church needs him?

However, while God obviously doesn't need us, as a member, you're supposed to believe the stakes are high. You're still supposed to look at life as one of real material consequence where what you do and what everybody else does matters. And one of the most important principles in the gospel view of the world is that the worth of a soul is great.

A mission president I had gave some memorable talks. I cited one a few weeks ago, where he summarized Lehi in the Desert as if it were his own work. As a talk, it was utterly fantastic. Another talk he gave began with a Reader's Digest story about a person who had gotten lost by a river bank and there were search teams and helicopters, and he really ratcheted up the drama, with the scale of the search exploding until they finally saved this person. The point was that no expense was spared to save a life. And that was how we as missionaries were supposed to look at our work.

In my life in the Church, I have never heard anything expressed but sorrow over the lost sheep. As big of jerks as we know the Brethren really are, they play their role by the numbers -- even in an excommunication, it's supposedly with great sorrow that they administer the punishment. And it's supposed to be an opportunity for healing. That "the Church is better off" without any person is something I never, ever heard, until I met the Mopologists on the Internet.

It's the Mopologists who have fabricated this dark gospel vista where the fallen are the mortal enemies of the faithful and fit only for derision. The Mopologists' reimagining of the Prodigal Son would be something like, "Lock the gates, and if he comes back, release the dogs, we don't have bread for traitors".

It's kind of crazy how mopologist culture and mission culture are so different, because as missionaries, you're constantly dealing with insults and rejection but whereas as a missionary you try to feel sorrowful for those souls who reject the message, even unto wetting your pillow with tears at night, as a mopologist you feel resentment or anger or you feel nothing - couldn't care less. I recall a year or two after being back from a mission, a fellow missionary at the Y who kept in contact with folks halfway round the world asked me to write a letter to a member I was close to as he'd left the Church, ditched his family and friends and girlfriend and graduate school and left the country. I felt terrible about this and it was a great honor to write that letter and bear my testimony and let him know he was needed.

One possible explanation for the difference is that mopologetics selects for mean and angry people. I think Kev is all right, but it's possible that years of participating online with mopologists has afforded him ways to psychologically get even with people and he's slipping into that role unaware. At any rate, he's damned either way. If he insists on the reductionist perspective how does he justify his own value? If he opts for the gospel perspective, he's in need of repentance.

KevinSim and MG have a strikingly similar foundational view they present here. That being the existence of God is beyond question despite offering they have and do question it. The church happens to be the tissue paper this belief came wrapped in, but beyond their allegiance to the specific form of God-belief derived from an LDS upbringing, the Church is nothing more than a label for those who hold to that belief. There isn't any theological, charitable, moral, or other association made. Doctrine isn't about anything other than germinating and nourishing god-belief. It is that basic: The church is about belief in God, full stop. Everything else is ancillary and this why they imagine themselves to be open minded about issues with the church.

People who might rock that boat are better getting off or being tossed off the boat so no one else gets tipped out.

[dastardly stem]

Well, whatever happens to all those spirits and corporeal beings must happen in a different dimension or universe. I recently dipped into some youtube videos of scientists talking about grabby aliens, and assuming Elohim is a Type-IV and Type-VI-minus civilization we would’ve seen them all over the place, and there’s nothing (that we can see or detect). If god, with all them babies, were to exist in this universe it’d be entirely colonized. If god exists outside of this universe, then whatever, we’re back to nonsense rules and arbitrary judgements that any reasonable person would reject.

- Doc

Oh yeah..that'd be true to really make the conception fit, you may very well have to view things with multiple universes. Each God as he becomes god doesn't get his own planet but gets his own universe in which to play. That is our God's equal isn't in this universe but runs another one. This one is headed by but one God and as soon as any of us embryo gods make it to the top, we too will move on to our own universe. But, I also wonder about this universe itself since the space is so vast. 93 billion light years is quite a diameter. We can't show we can traverse 1 lightyear as yet. Voyager 1 was launched 45 years ago is traveling currently at 38,000 miles per hour and is about 14 billiion miles away. But a lightyear is 6 trillion miles. I suppose there could be life on or near the closest system to us, which I think they are still hoping to send cute little flight toys to coming up. That'd be some 4 lightyears. If say life is on Proxima Centauri b, maybe it's evolution is somewhere pre-dinosaurs but post life, human life may not appear there for milliions of years hence, perhaps long after human life exists here. If every 4 or 5 lightyears there is a designated space for a planet with life, then the universe might have 18 trillion life sustaining planets across the widest diameter. Or within the volume of a spherical universe there'd be that much more. And the universe is expanding. But perhaps that's trying too hard. It could be that there are multiple universes and each God gets one per. All that Mormon talk of many planets filled with people might just refer to planets in other universes.

Yes, to me, the traditional christian conception seems even less likely. A God who is a brainless mind, a spaceless, timeless immaterial whatever doesn't seem like anything at all to me. It's the perfect explanation of nothing whenever one tries to describe God from that perspective. But He'd be one who is outside the universe. The brainless entity that imagined material. Imagined on scale a vast space with a tiny spec, which if zoomed in upon also contains a tiny spec which is earth. This God imagined some billions of years ago oustide time, this existence wherein intelligent thingiess that got named humans would exist for a short time until they "died". Afterward this spaceless, timeless non-entity would decide to save some or torture or murder others out of existence, while the saved would end up eternally singing praises to his name for conceiving of their pitiful existence.

They're both kind of silly ideas...but I suppose since there is plenty we don't know, they are each possible.

[dastardly stem]

If it were, the deity that created all of this would have some serious 'splainin' to do.

Yep. The joint quesiton ought to be, "what the hell were you thinking?"

"uh...I mean not much...Just wanted something around to worship me and figured this would be a good way to do it."

[KevinSim]

If he opts for the gospel perspective, he's in need of repentance.

You have a good point, Gadianton. I shall repent. Despite the bizarre nature of my Seattle friend's ideas, I do feel bad for him and wish he would return to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I shall try to have the same charitable attitude for anti-vaxxers who think Russell Nelson is leading the Church astray. I do not think though that the LDS Church should try to accomodate them by adopting a position that opposes Covid vaccinations.

[IHAQ]

If Mormonism is true then people have a much better chance of achieving a higher kingdom if they avoid the Church in this life and let some poor dweeb pay ten percent of their income for life for the privilege of doing your temple work for you after your dead.

[dastardly stem]

I do not think though that the LDS Church should try to accomodate them by adopting a position that opposes Covid vaccinations.

I can't remember did Bednar deny vaccinations? I recall he was upset when they said people shouldn't try and get together in churches during the pandemic.

While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, never again can we allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply nonessential. ...We can no more disregard the valid claims of religious freedom in a time of crisis than we can disregard the valid claims of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. A health crisis should not become an excuse for a religious freedom crisis.

That was some terrible reasoning perhaps along the same lines as that from anti-vaxxers. No one's religious freedom was in jeopardy. I think they still have their heros in the Church even if they feel Nelson is trying too hard to accommodate people who have views similar to you.

I can hear anti-vaxxers today saying something like "Yeah...we can't allow them to stop us from going to Church again. If we spread it, too bad. Church is way more important. Plus only old people are dying."

[malkie]

If Mormonism is true then people have a much better chance of achieving a higher kingdom if they avoid the Church in this life and let some poor dweeb pay ten percent of their income for life for the privilege of doing your temple work for you after your dead.

^ ^ ^
This is a message that should be widely disseminated.

[huckelberry]

In another thread, our good friend KevinSim suggested the Church is better off without many of it's members, and is better off, perhaps, without former members (he descirbes one as an example).

I have a friend up in Seattle who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints back in the 1980s. My friend has a lot of bizarre ideas, and in many ways his life has gone to pot since he left the Church. I really think the Church is better off without him. Similarly, if people feel so strongly that vaccinations are dangerous that they're willing to ignore Russell Nelson's advice over them, and are concluding that because of that advice Nelson must be a fallen prophet, then again the Church is better off without them.

This does support the pull out your metaphorical muskets and end many of our members idea that a dear prophet, seer, and revelator has advocated. So surely in the context of Mormonism it makes sense. But you'd hope religions had more of a desire to accommodate people.

I thought "bizarre ideas" would have to include things like defending polygamy, but apparently there is something more bizarre. You would think if Mormonism were true it should learn to make room for many to all people-- not making excuses to refuse people and push people out.

Stem, I am partially surprised that I read Keven comments rather differently than you and other people on this thread. I thought he meant some people are on a different enough path that it is clearer and less conflicted if they separated and journeyed on a separate path. That does not require some broad or final condemnation. An analogy might be folks playing basketball when three individuals change the play to football. It is better to separate and pursue different games.

Like Kevins friend I thought it would be better for me to leave the LDS church than to try and stretch its boundaries. I think that works for both me and the LDS church. I do not see ultimate or complete condemnations in this arrangement.

[dastardly stem]

In another thread, our good friend KevinSim suggested the Church is better off without many of it's members, and is better off, perhaps, without former members (he descirbes one as an example).



This does support the pull out your metaphorical muskets and end many of our members idea that a dear prophet, seer, and revelator has advocated. So surely in the context of Mormonism it makes sense. But you'd hope religions had more of a desire to accommodate people.

I thought "bizarre ideas" would have to include things like defending polygamy, but apparently there is something more bizarre. You would think if Mormonism were true it should learn to make room for many to all people-- not making excuses to refuse people and push people out.

Stem, I am partially surprised that I read Keven comments rather differently than you and other people on this thread. I thought he meant some people are on a different enough path that it is clearer and less conflicted if they separated and journeyed on a separate path. That does not require some broad or final condemnation. An analogy might be folks playing basketball when three individuals change the play to football. It is better to separate and pursue different games.

Like Kevins friend I thought it would be better for me to leave the LDS church than to try and stretch its boundaries. I think that works for both me and the LDS church. I do not see ultimate or complete condemnations in this arrangement.

Well he reported he repented and I won't presume to be as ornery as his God over it, so all is forgiven.