Mormon Worldview

[pgm1985]

/boggle

Sexual intercourse between a woman and a man on a terra cotta plaque from Mesopotamia, early 2nd millennium BCE (photo credit: The Israel Museum)


https://www.timesofisrael.com/4000-year ... sexuality/

I stand corrected. I was thinking of video or print pornography. I have not done any research into the history of sexual imagery.

[pgm1985]

How do you define when human life begins and what is that based on?

Still waiting for your answer. As I see it, you have a few options: conception, the hint of a heartbeat, a first breath, or the ability to survive outside the womb.

[Res Ipsa]

How do you define when human life begins and what is that based on?

Still waiting for your answer. As I see it, you have a few options: conception, the hint of a heartbeat, a first breath, or the ability to survive outside the womb.

I’m waiting for the answers to several questions.

What does your question have to do with your claim to objective morality?

[Res Ipsa]

Is your failure to answer my question an acknowledgment that the Bible does not explicitly say that abortion is murder?

I already answered this question. Yes, the Bible does not explicitly say “Abortion is a sin.” The Bible also does not explicitly say pornography is a sin because it did not exist at that time, but we can easily infer it is. The Bible does not address many moral issues explicitly. That is why we infer application through understanding of the context of different verses to reach that conclusion.

Exactly. You are trying to apply a collection of 2000+ year old texts to a world the authors could not have imagined. That means you have to subjectively interpret text and use your own subjective judgment to adapt the actual text to modern times. You are picking and choosing from a host of possible interpretations at each step of the analysis. There is nothing about the objective process at all.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with choosing a single book or collection of books and grounding your moral code in them. What’s wrong is pretending that your morality is objective.

[Physics Guy]

I'm going to push the boards' collective patience by trying again to express my one point more clearly.

People who believe in the Bible as an infallible authority for truth and morality actually all believe in and use two separate standards of truth and morality. Accepting the authority of the Bible, and trying to interpret it as objectively as possible, is their Method 2. It's the one they use, or at least try to use, most of the time. Before they ever got to use their Method 2 even once, though, they had to rely, at least once, on their other standard of truth and morality: Method 1.

Method 1 is just to rely on human reason, emotion, instinct, and conscience, possibly including the best human efforts to recognise and discern spiritual prompting from God. Even people who mostly rely on the Bible, through Method 2, have had to fall back on Method 1 at least once: that's how they made the big initial decision to accept the Bible as an authority.

People who now navigate through life by Method 2, relying on the Bible, may want to forget that Method 1 even exists. They used it once, but that was a while ago, now. These people still have to agree that Method 1 can be reliable enough for individuals and even whole societies to use, though, because if it is not highly reliable, at least when carefully used, then there is a high chance that Method 1 failed when the decision to believe in the Bible was made. In that case Method 2 would be a useless delusion that does not lead to truth or morality after all. So if you use Method 2, you still have to acknowledge that Method 1 also works, because Method 2 is based upon Method 1.

Since everyone has to agree that Method 1 works, then why can't people and whole societies simply keep on using Method 1, day by day and case by case, without accepting the authority of the Bible? Why does anyone really need Method 2?

Perhaps as penance for having repeated myself like this, I can now try to bring this thread back to Mormonism. One important part of the Mormon world view is a belief in "the witness of the Holy Spirit" to confirm the authority of the Mormon scriptures and the Mormon prophets. The "promise of Moroni" is that if anyone prays sincerely to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, God will answer that earnest prayer by giving the petitioner a strong feeling that the Book of Mormon is indeed true.

This is a sort of extended version of Method 1. It amounts to relying on a human emotion, but the emotion is supposed to be an unusual and mysterious one, which is further unusual in that it comes right after praying a certain prayer. This extended Mormon version of Method 1 then supports an extended Mormon version of Method 2, in which there is an even stronger belief in the authority of the Book of Mormon than there is in the authority of the Bible.

The peculiar circumstances by which the Book of Mormon appeared—miraculous translation through Joseph Smith—then mean that if the Book of Mormon is a divinely certified true revelation, Joseph Smith must be a genuine prophet. If Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet, then since his main prophetic revelation was not the Book of Mormon but rather the Restoration of the one true church, it must follow that the LDS church is God's only true church, led by continuing prophets.

And so just as Method 1 can support Method 2, as a standard of truth and morality, the extended Mormon versions of Methods 1 and 2 quickly lead to a new Method 3 for Mormons: relying on the LDS church, and its authorised prophetic leaders, as the main practical standard for truth and morality.

This Mormon concept of doctrinal and moral authority may turn out to be right or wrong, but its general structure makes just as much sense as the fundamentalist Protestant structure that upholds the Bible-based Method 2. There is no quick-and-easy way to prove that the two-method fundamentalist Protestant concept is necessarily and inherently better than either the extended Mormon three-method structure or simple reliance on Method 1 only. You have to grapple with details to decide whether one method really does lead to another reliably.

I myself just don't see how anyone can really get from Method 1 to Method 2, let alone Method 3, without tilting the scales with careless thinking or ulterior motivation. The mileage of others may vary.

[pgm1985]

I'm going to push the boards' collective patience by trying again to express my one point more clearly.

People who believe in the Bible as an infallible authority for truth and morality actually all believe in and use two separate standards of truth and morality. Accepting the authority of the Bible, and trying to interpret it as objectively as possible, is their Method 2. It's the one they use, or at least try to use, most of the time. Before they ever got to use their Method 2 even once, though, they had to rely, at least once, on their other standard of truth and morality: Method 1.

Method 1 is just to rely on human reason, emotion, instinct, and conscience, possibly including the best human efforts to recognise and discern spiritual prompting from God. Even people who mostly rely on the Bible, through Method 2, have had to fall back on Method 1 at least once: that's how they made the big initial decision to accept the Bible as an authority.

People who now navigate through life by Method 2, relying on the Bible, may want to forget that Method 1 even exists. They used it once, but that was a while ago, now. These people still have to agree that Method 1 can be reliable enough for individuals and even whole societies to use, though, because if it is not highly reliable, at least when carefully used, then there is a high chance that Method 1 failed when the decision to believe in the Bible was made. In that case Method 2 would be a useless delusion that does not lead to truth or morality after all. So if you use Method 2, you still have to acknowledge that Method 1 also works, because Method 2 is based upon Method 1.

Since everyone has to agree that Method 1 works, then why can't people and whole societies simply keep on using Method 1, day by day and case by case, without accepting the authority of the Bible? Why does anyone really need Method 2?

Perhaps as penance for having repeated myself like this, I can now try to bring this thread back to Mormonism. One important part of the Mormon world view is a belief in "the witness of the Holy Spirit" to confirm the authority of the Mormon scriptures and the Mormon prophets. The "promise of Moroni" is that if anyone prays sincerely to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, God will answer that earnest prayer by giving the petitioner a strong feeling that the Book of Mormon is indeed true.

This is a sort of extended version of Method 1. It amounts to relying on a human emotion, but the emotion is supposed to be an unusual and mysterious one, which is further unusual in that it comes right after praying a certain prayer. This extended Mormon version of Method 1 then supports an extended Mormon version of Method 2, in which there is an even stronger belief in the authority of the Book of Mormon than there is in the authority of the Bible.

The peculiar circumstances by which the Book of Mormon appeared—miraculous translation through Joseph Smith—then mean that if the Book of Mormon is a divinely certified true revelation, Joseph Smith must be a genuine prophet. If Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet, then since his main prophetic revelation was not the Book of Mormon but rather the Restoration of the one true church, it must follow that the LDS church is God's only true church, led by continuing prophets.

And so just as Method 1 can support Method 2, as a standard of truth and morality, the extended Mormon versions of Methods 1 and 2 quickly lead to a new Method 3 for Mormons: relying on the LDS church, and its authorised prophetic leaders, as the main practical standard for truth and morality.

This Mormon concept of doctrinal and moral authority may turn out to be right or wrong, but its general structure makes just as much sense as the fundamentalist Protestant structure that upholds the Bible-based Method 2. There is no quick-and-easy way to prove that the two-method fundamentalist Protestant concept is necessarily and inherently better than either the extended Mormon three-method structure or simple reliance on Method 1 only. You have to grapple with details to decide whether one method really does lead to another reliably.

I myself just don't see how anyone can really get from Method 1 to Method 2, let alone Method 3, without tilting the scales with careless thinking or ulterior motivation. The mileage of others may vary.

This is how Christian reason from the Bible. Reason, logic, conscience, etc. all derive from God that we use to understand His revelation in the Bible. I never said we don’t use these faculties, I stated those faculties should be used through the lens of scripture. the Bible reveals Gods moral standards. Any other standard that is not objectively based results in irrationality.

It appears no one wants to actually answer the question of when they believe life begins. I wonder why…

[Res Ipsa]

I'm going to push the boards' collective patience by trying again to express my one point more clearly.

People who believe in the Bible as an infallible authority for truth and morality actually all believe in and use two separate standards of truth and morality. Accepting the authority of the Bible, and trying to interpret it as objectively as possible, is their Method 2. It's the one they use, or at least try to use, most of the time. Before they ever got to use their Method 2 even once, though, they had to rely, at least once, on their other standard of truth and morality: Method 1.

Method 1 is just to rely on human reason, emotion, instinct, and conscience, possibly including the best human efforts to recognise and discern spiritual prompting from God. Even people who mostly rely on the Bible, through Method 2, have had to fall back on Method 1 at least once: that's how they made the big initial decision to accept the Bible as an authority.

People who now navigate through life by Method 2, relying on the Bible, may want to forget that Method 1 even exists. They used it once, but that was a while ago, now. These people still have to agree that Method 1 can be reliable enough for individuals and even whole societies to use, though, because if it is not highly reliable, at least when carefully used, then there is a high chance that Method 1 failed when the decision to believe in the Bible was made. In that case Method 2 would be a useless delusion that does not lead to truth or morality after all. So if you use Method 2, you still have to acknowledge that Method 1 also works, because Method 2 is based upon Method 1.

Since everyone has to agree that Method 1 works, then why can't people and whole societies simply keep on using Method 1, day by day and case by case, without accepting the authority of the Bible? Why does anyone really need Method 2?

Perhaps as penance for having repeated myself like this, I can now try to bring this thread back to Mormonism. One important part of the Mormon world view is a belief in "the witness of the Holy Spirit" to confirm the authority of the Mormon scriptures and the Mormon prophets. The "promise of Moroni" is that if anyone prays sincerely to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, God will answer that earnest prayer by giving the petitioner a strong feeling that the Book of Mormon is indeed true.

This is a sort of extended version of Method 1. It amounts to relying on a human emotion, but the emotion is supposed to be an unusual and mysterious one, which is further unusual in that it comes right after praying a certain prayer. This extended Mormon version of Method 1 then supports an extended Mormon version of Method 2, in which there is an even stronger belief in the authority of the Book of Mormon than there is in the authority of the Bible.

The peculiar circumstances by which the Book of Mormon appeared—miraculous translation through Joseph Smith—then mean that if the Book of Mormon is a divinely certified true revelation, Joseph Smith must be a genuine prophet. If Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet, then since his main prophetic revelation was not the Book of Mormon but rather the Restoration of the one true church, it must follow that the LDS church is God's only true church, led by continuing prophets.

And so just as Method 1 can support Method 2, as a standard of truth and morality, the extended Mormon versions of Methods 1 and 2 quickly lead to a new Method 3 for Mormons: relying on the LDS church, and its authorised prophetic leaders, as the main practical standard for truth and morality.

This Mormon concept of doctrinal and moral authority may turn out to be right or wrong, but its general structure makes just as much sense as the fundamentalist Protestant structure that upholds the Bible-based Method 2. There is no quick-and-easy way to prove that the two-method fundamentalist Protestant concept is necessarily and inherently better than either the extended Mormon three-method structure or simple reliance on Method 1 only. You have to grapple with details to decide whether one method really does lead to another reliably.

I myself just don't see how anyone can really get from Method 1 to Method 2, let alone Method 3, without tilting the scales with careless thinking or ulterior motivation. The mileage of others may vary.

This is how Christian reason from the Bible. Reason, logic, conscience, etc. all derive from God that we use to understand His revelation in the Bible. I never said we don’t use these faculties, I stated those faculties should be used through the lens of scripture. the Bible reveals Gods moral standards. Any other standard that is not objectively based results in irrationality.

It appears no one wants to actually answer the question of when they believe life begins. I wonder why…

The reason why is obvious. It’s an attempt to change the subject.

[Morley]

It appears no one wants to actually answer the question of when they believe life begins. I wonder why…

I'll bite. Life is present in both the sperm and the ovum, long before fertilization. Unique DNA is found in both. There is little that is innately precious about either. Life is also present in a fertilized egg before it implants into the uterine lining. The way God (or nature) treats this suggests that there's little that's innately precious about this, either.

[huckelberry]

It appears no one wants to actually answer the question of when they believe life begins. I wonder why…

I'll bite. Life is present in both the sperm and the ovum, long before fertilization. Unique DNA is found in both. There is little that is innately precious about either. Life is also present in a fertilized egg before it implants into the uterine lining. The way God (or nature) treats this suggests that there's little that's innately precious about this, either.

asking google one finds:
"The earliest life forms we know of were microscopic organisms (microbes) that left signals of their presence in rocks about 3.7 billion years old. The signals consisted of a type of carbon molecule that is produced by living things."

That is certainly not exact but presents a ballpark idea.

[pgm1985]

It appears no one wants to actually answer the question of when they believe life begins. I wonder why…

I'll bite. Life is present in both the sperm and the ovum, long before fertilization. Unique DNA is found in both. There is little that is innately precious about either. Life is also present in a fertilized egg before it implants into the uterine lining. The way God (or nature) treats this suggests that there's little that's innately precious about this, either.

So you agree the life of an unborn human begins at conception. Why do you say there is nothing precious about that life? When does life become “precious”?

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭139‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬