Flip Side of the Coin

[_Themis]

This is just another excuse. You are making crap up to protect your beliefs.

No I'm not. Making "crap up to protect" my beliefs implies that I'm making it up right not, in response to the objections you've raised. What I'm telling you is things I have believed for the 35 years since asking God my question.

No it just implies you are making it up to protect your beliefs whether done 35 minutes ago or 35 years ago.

I agree with you, to some extent. The LDS Church doesn't teach that the asker needs to be as prepared for a no answer as the asker is prepared for a yes answer.

They don't teach it because they teach God will not lie to you and since they think the church and Book of Mormon is true you can't get a no answer.

But I knew that at the time, as a 17-year-old. I knew that I wanted a yes answer, and therefore the answer I got couldn't be counted on to have come from God. It wasn't until I was prepared for either a yes answer or a no answer that I got the answer that I could be sure came from God.

BS. You are only deceiving yourself here. Either the Book of Mormon is true or not true. God is not going to lie, but somehow you need to believe this to explain why good people get a no answer. people who may be ready for a no answer can still get their body to produce those feelings they will interpret as the HG. Of course this gets difficult now to know what a no answer even is. If you get nothing is that a no, or a bad feeling. This is why it is self deception to go with such an unreliable method here.

There's no arrogance in putting two and two together and coming up with a conclusion.

I never said it was arrogant for you to incorrectly attribute a feeling you had was God telling you something. This two and two together is a bad method taught by the church that is circular and done by people in many religions who get very different results.

[_Drifting]

From the Book of Mormon teacher manual...

Mormon 9:9–11, 19. God Is an All-Knowing, Unchangeable Being
Have students read Mormon 9:9–10 and 2 Nephi 9:20 silently.

• Why is it important for you to know that God is all-knowing and unchangeable?
Explain to students that in order to “exercise faith in God unto life and salvation,” we must have “a correct idea of his character, perfections, and attributes” (Lectures on Faith [1985], 38; italics in original). Direct students’ attention to Moroni’s warning that some people “have imagined … a god who doth vary” (Mormon 9:10).

Kevin, do you not know what the Church teaches?

Drifting, I think I see what you're saying. But all I've been talking about is the characteristics of the way God talks, not about God's nature. God can be perfectly unchangeable and still talk in seeming inconsistency to make a point.

Kevin, I'm not saying anything.
I'm posting what the Church says, which is significantly different to what you are saying. If you are right then the Church isn't true, by it's own teachings.

[_KevinSim]

This is more made up crap no one is buying including LDS. God needs to be consistent and cannot be trusted if he is going to lie. You definitely don't mind the lying for the lord doctrine.

That statement was premature. You have no idea whether or not I "mind the lying for the lord doctrine," and as a matter of fact I mind it very much.

In past posts I've made a solid distinction between lying and inconsistency. Inconsistency I defined mathematically as asserting X and then asserting not X. I made it clear that technically this is done every time one asks another a yes or no question and the other answers, "Yes and no"; but I also stated very clearly that such an answer could very possibly be the complete truth.

Personally, I understand that God may very well have wanted Joseph Smith and some others to practice polygamy back in the 1830s and 1840s in an environment that wasn't ready to embrace it, so although it bugs me that Smith lied to Emma about it, I can see the necessity of lying for the Lord at the time; similarly regarding lying to the press, the government, and the general population about involvement in polygamy. Still, I think applications of the Moroni 10:4 principle resulted in God giving each asker the absolute truth. So although out of necessity Smith lied to the government, I think each of us can fully trust a Moroni 10 answer coming from God.

I also think that if there actually was a time for lying for the Lord, that time is past. In today's society the LDS Church simply isn't set up to tell lies at the level of the general population. I understand posters to this forum may think the LDS Church still does tell lies at that level, but I think that if they do tell those lies it's a mistake and it will come back to haunt them.

[_KevinSim]

Kevin, why have you ignored this post which shows that the God of Mormonism HAS to be consistent for the Church to be true?

He does it with most of what has been brought up here. Sometimes he just shots off in some other direction like his last post to me

Wow, you guys are impatient!

I'm just one man, with a wife and kids and full time job I'm trying to hold down; it's a difficult task to try to keep up with half a dozen people responding to my posts.

As a matter of fact I did respond to this post, though apparently not quick enough to meet with your approval.

[_KevinSim]

Any long term possible benefits for humans will have to be done by humans.

Then step up and take God's place. The work of God must go forth; who better to carry it forth than you yourself? Themis, are you ready to take the place of God?

[_KevinSim]

In fact, many people have gotten a literal "no" when asking god whether or not the LDS Church is true, and it would be absurd to insist every single one of them was hoping the answer would be "no."

If there are many, then I think it would logically follow that there is at least one. I would like a chance to talk with that one.

Additionally, if the question must be asked the way you did, prepared to accept either a "yes" or "no," you must also admit that many millions of other Mormons' spiritual affirmations were nothing more than wishful thinking.

Yes I do. I think it's totally possible that many Latter-day Saints may have asked God a question without thinking about why God would be motivated to answer.

Regardless, it's nonsensical that a god would be bound by how the person asks the question, as long as the question was asked sincerely. This just gets more bizarre with each explanation.

God isn't bound "by how the person asks the question"; it's just that God by His nature would answer the question if it would do long term good in the asker's life, and if the person isn't prepared for a no answer then I don't think an answer would do long term good in the asker's life.

[_KevinSim]

Drifting, I think I see what you're saying. But all I've been talking about is the characteristics of the way God talks, not about God's nature. God can be perfectly unchangeable and still talk in seeming inconsistency to make a point.

Stop the BS. Again consistency is required by me and others so God is not exempt. It's that you have to deal with a man-made inconsistent God who you think will now lie and tell people the opposite of what is true.

I'm not talking about God lying and telling "people the opposite of what is true." I'm saying that sometimes the best way to describe something that is true is to make a statement that, mathematically analyzed, is inconsistent.

The example you gave didn't fit. You talked about a debt, and you wanting the person who owed you money to consistently pay you back what s/he had agreed to pay you. That's apples and oranges. Of course you want someone who owes you to meet the terms of the contract. That does not mean someone who is trying to make a point is not going to make a statement that is technically inconsistent in an attempt to get you to stretch your thinking.

[_KevinSim]

Kevin, Themis has asserted this to me many times in many threads. I've yet to see him produce any credible evidence that God doesn't exist (Mormon or otherwise).

I and many others have shown tobin lots of evidence against the LDS God but he, like I was at one time, is not open minded enough to accept it. Kevin just because you don't like some of their beliefs does not provide any direct evidence against them. There is plenty of direct evidence against LDS truth claims that we don't have in then same amount or quality of the other groups you brought up.

Themis, this was in response to a post Tobin made that looked like this:

Let me just be sure what you're saying here. The God of Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, and Methodists has the power to cause souls to cease to exist, right? That God also chooses not to use that power to put the unsaved out of their misery, right? According to Biblical Christianity the souls of the unsaved will suffer unbearable agony from the point of their death for the rest of eternity, right?

And you're saying that there's more evidence against the LDS God than there is against the God I've just described?

Correct me if I'm wrong; what I've said up above is just what I've been led to believe after hearing a lot of people talk about Biblical Christianity.

Kevin, Themis has asserted this to me many times in many threads. I've yet to see him produce any credible evidence that God doesn't exist (Mormon or otherwise).

Themis, are the assertions I made true about the God believed in by Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, and Methodists?

[_Chap]

Any long term possible benefits for humans will have to be done by humans.

Then step up and take God's place. The work of God must go forth; who better to carry it forth than you yourself? Themis, are you ready to take the place of God?

And until at least one deity decides to make it unambiguously clear that he, she, or it is really and reliably there, the human race had better proceed on the assumption that there aren't deities around to help.

The question is, rather, whether it makes any sense to wait for a deity to take the place that humanity has to fill. The work of humanity has to go forth, and who better to carry it out than the people who will bear the consequences of it not being done?

[_Themis]

This is more made up crap no one is buying including LDS. God needs to be consistent and cannot be trusted if he is going to lie. You definitely don't mind the lying for the lord doctrine.

That statement was premature. You have no idea whether or not I "mind the lying for the lord doctrine," and as a matter of fact I mind it very much.

Yet in the same post you say you are ok with Joseph and God doing it. You see why I think you are being inconsistent.

In past posts I've made a solid distinction between lying and inconsistency. Inconsistency I defined mathematically as asserting X and then asserting not X.

Asserting x and not asserting x have no meaning and unless you give more specifics it has nothing to do with inconsistency. The subject though is really about behavior, and lying is a part of that. You were the one to propose God would give a no answer in relation to the Book of Mormon or church bring true.