A thunderingly obtuse question...

[_keithb]

Bumping for the believers

[_moksha]

It exposes the loop that closes your mind into the faith programming and preserves belief.

It is our Kobayashi Maru. It works wonderfully with a little reprogramming.

[_NorthboundZax]

I like the way keithb posed it.

I've tried a variation of this over the last couple of years:
If Lucifer had won the War in Heaven, told people on Earth that He was all good, Jehovah is "the Father of all lies", and that we need to worship Lucifer or forfeit eternal reward, how would we be able to recognize if was telling the truth?

[_huckelberry]

Bumping for the believers

I am not a Mormon believer but am a believer in God so I do react to the question. I would definitely stay away from the Alfredo Bertha church.

God is the source of all being and is our ultimate concern because he is the source of our being. I have no possible choice but to seek God.My very act of desiring anything is pointed that way. However I am quit capable of making mistakes in direction. The only way I can imagine seeing when the path is wrong is by realizing when it is corrupting my inmost self , soul.

[_keithb]

Bumping for the believers

I am not a Mormon believer but am a believer in God so I do react to the question. I would definitely stay away from the Alfredo Bertha church.

God is the source of all being and is our ultimate concern because he is the source of our being. I have no possible choice but to seek God.My very act of desiring anything is pointed that way. However I am quit capable of making mistakes in direction. The only way I can imagine seeing when the path is wrong is by realizing when it is corrupting my inmost self , soul.

I am not really sure that I follow your answer, Huckleberry. For instance, how would you know if you were making a mistake with your beliefs in God? What if you turning away from God is actually at the behest of another, more powerful God that this God serves? Or, what if this God is a false God and Lucifer is the real God? What if Jesus is a false God and Allah is the real God? How would you know without having "faith", which basically means that you've decided ahead of time?

[_Alfredo]

If faith is so respected and essential, it shouldn't be so difficult to answer the question.

How do you take your very first step of faith into one supernatural paradigm and not another?

By what method can one supernatural explanation be compared to another, before faith?

After faith, you've accepted only one sort of paradigm and so, as keithb said, have already decided ahead of time. Any comparison is derived from interpretations your new paradigm defines and provides. Your answer is moot.

So, it's no wonder that your supernatural paradigm seems correct rather than any other. It only makes sense because you accept interpretations from only one. It doesn't settle the question of which paradigm you should have trusted in the first place. The loop can't interpret itself clearly. You have to remove yourself in order to see your circular paradigm for what it is and the question as unanswerable.

[_madeleine]

So, I asked this question in another thread, but I don't think it got the attention or understanding it deserved. It's a work in progress, so any input is appreciated. I'm trying to make the argument as simple as it can be. It's designed to subvert any faith-based response and force faith to be considered without any fallacious appeal to itself. I think it demonstrates pretty clearly that faith can powerfully distort and bias your paradigm. It exposes the loop that closes your mind into the faith programming and preserves belief.

And here's the question...

Considering which is ruler of the universe, if you had the choice to put your first act of faith in God or the Devil, how could you choose between them?

In choosing between the God or the Devil as ruler of the universe, you're choosing between two possible worlds. A world in which it's possible God saves souls and another in which no God exists and the Devil deceives every soul.

If you're a believer, you're likely to have trouble paying attention to the "first" qualifier. I mean the very first act act of faith, as in, from the starting point of zero faith in either choice. You can preach your heart out but I defend that there is no reason to prefer one being over the other as, in fact, ruler of the universe from this "first step of faith" position. Choosing between them requires faith.

But if you believe you have found an answer, ask yourself this question: Does it require faith to believe it?

If it requires faith, then your response doesn't support your first act of faith... it presupposes faith.

This is the loop in the programming. You'll never free your mind if you fail to provide a way to take your first step of faith without presupposing faith.

The question isn't just about God vs. The Devil. It's just an easy example to demonstrate that by presupposing faith to take your first step of faith, you can fallaciously justify faith in anything. You can construct the same loop but with a different subject.

For each response you give in favor of God as ruler of the universe, an equally valid and consistent explanation can be made for the Devil. Just presuppose faith that the Devil is ruler of the universe, and any evidence or faith for God (personal revelation, historical, scientific, philosophical argument, etc.) is the Devil's trick. Each conflict is reduced to whether you put your first act of faith in God or the Devil.

But only after you see the two worlds without the bias of faith will you recognize that to choose between them is a choice which, again, I argue can't be made.

For a Christian, it is a simple answer, "God, in some way, should enter human history", which ultimately, is an encounter; the Answer to unbelief.

[_Alfredo]

For a Christian, it is a simple answer, "God, in some way, should enter human history", which ultimately, is an encounter; the Answer to unbelief.

The point of my question is to argue that you can't know whether you've encountered God or the Devil by using an interpretation you only accept because it fits with the answer you chose ahead of time.

[Guest]

Black River Falls Badger State Journal Feb. 13, 1869

Lyman Wight was a severely alcoholic early Mormon, but well respected in Nauvoo. He was a co-leader at the logging operation in the pineries in Wisconsin.

Old Paul Knight, the millwright, who subsequently became well known to everybody living on Black River, had that summer, in his wanderings up and down the earth, struck the river, and the
prospect of business in his line seeming good, he stayed; one pleasant Sabbath morning while pretty
strongly under spirituous influences, he found his way into the Mormon sanctuary where Elder Lyman
White [Wight] was vigorously dispensing the word to the Faithful and unraveling Mormon mysteries in
a manner that soon gained the undivided attention of our friend Paul, who, in his then somewhat
mellow condition, was very impressible and open to conviction.-- The Elder, in the course of his
remarks, made use of the following language: “[I] would rather go to Hell willingly than be forced
into Heaven.” The originality of the remark struck Paul at once so forcibly that he burst out, “You
would, would you?” The moment the Elder recovered from his astonishment at the unseemly
interruption, he replied... “[I] most certainly should.” “Bully for you, by G-d,” shouted Paul, who,
rising with an effort, and making one step forward, fell sprawling amid the assembled multitude,
completely overcome with his emotions, a frightful example of the effect of new and strange
theological ideas, suddenly developed in men of Paul's sensitive nature and impulsive temperament.

Of course, Mormonism was in its full flower as a speculative Gnostic religion at the time, so it must have made perfect sense to Wight's followers-- although other Mormons would have been appalled. Correlation had never been dreamed of. On the other hand, Wight himself may have been drunk at the time, and misspoke-- he was breaking the WoW.

The author had problems with the indirect quotation prefaced with "that", versus the direct quotation with appropriate punctuation. This was also present in other places in the series. I edited.

I went into 15 minutes of hysterical laughter yesterday as I was reading it.

[_madeleine]

For a Christian, it is a simple answer, "God, in some way, should enter human history", which ultimately, is an encounter; the Answer to unbelief.

The point of my question is to argue that you can't know whether you've encountered God or the Devil by using an interpretation you only accept because it fits with the answer you chose ahead of time.

My answer is to your point, really, directly. Jesus is God, which makes the encounter of God, that of a Person, not an ideal.