Charity, how is LDS right and FLDS, Strangites, RLDS, wrong?

[_Sethbag]

Charity, there is so much about the church that is just flat out wrong that a member ought to be able to just stop and say "wait a minute, the church is just flat out wrong."

Well, look around you. Here we are.

The church is just flat out wrong, Charity. It's wrong. Your beliefs are wrong. You aren't going to the Celestial Kingdom. You will never be a Goddess or a Priestess. There are no angels, and no heavenly gate, and nobody is going to hold out their hand to you and test your knowledge of the secret handshakes and whether you know exactly which knuckle to put your thumb on, or whether you remember every single word of the name of the 2nd Token of the Melchezidek Priesthood. This is all wrong. It's made up. It was invented by man, and it will die with man, and there is no Celestial entity anywhere who gives a rat's butt whether you know these things or not.

Joseph Smith will never judge you. He's dead. He's not coming back. He started a religion that isn't true, and then he died, and left us to deal with it, and we're still dealing with it to this very day. The LDS church is no more a "true" church of a God who actually exists than any other of the thousands of churches and religions that men (and women) have created and nurtured along over the course of human existence.

Here's a partial list of the many things which will never happen:

Young Muslim men who blow themselves and some Israeli soldiers in a bus will not "wake up" to find themselves in Paradise, being serviced sexually by 70 virgins.

Faithful Evangelical Christians will never suddenly *poof!* up into the sky to meet Jesus Christ flying through the clouds in a Rapture, leaving a pile of empty clothes on the the ground, in their cars, or whatever.

Hindus will never be reincarnated as a cow, or whatever they think will happen. Lord Vishnu doesn't actually exist. Neither does Lord Rama, or Ganesh, or the many others.

Jehovah's Witnesses will never be restored from backup by Jehovah after the "end days" and find themselves in a paradise on earth, where they happily farm and grow vegetables and enjoy life without war and all the other happy thoughts. They are right about one thing, though: when we die, that's it, game over.

And Mormon men and women will never become Gods and Godesses in a Celestial Kingdom. There is no "spirit prison" and "paradise" where righteous members who die go on "missions" to the prison side to teach people about the LDS church, and tell them to wait in line for their temple work to be done on Earth so they can get the hell out of there. This is all just fantasy.

Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, and Sauron don't actually exist, and never did exist, except in the minds of men, starting with J. R. R. Tolkein. Likewise, the Mormon God Elohim does not exist, and never has existed, except in the collective minds of Mormons.

Your spiritual experiences are a combination of emotional responses, possibly euphoria, and possibly other mental and psychological phenomena. No invisible ghost man is dwelling within you because you do what Sky Daddy commands and because some man once laid hands on your head and told you to receive this invisible spirit. This non-existent inivisible ghost man/god is not whispering truth into your ear. There is no invisible bogeyman "the Devil" also whispering in your ear, trying to imitate the ways of Sky Daddy in order to fool you into believing in him instead.

Anyhow, this is the way it is. You're obviously free, as a human being, to live in whatever little fantasy virtual reality you want to, inside your own head, but you aren't entitled to your own reality. You live in this reality, and are subject to it, whether you want to believe it or not. In your mind you are free to believe you will someday become a Goddess, and bear spirit babies throughout all eternity with your God husband, but it quite simply isn't going to happen. Ever.

Anyhow, have a nice day, and I do wish you well in your own virtual reality inside your mind. I'm sure it's a place of great comfort and happiness, and reassurance that you're fighting the good fight, and standing up for Truth.

[_The Nehor]

Charity, there is so much about the church that is just flat out wrong that a member ought to be able to just stop and say "wait a minute, the church is just flat out wrong."

Well, look around you. Here we are.

The church is just flat out wrong, Charity. It's wrong. Your beliefs are wrong. You aren't going to the Celestial Kingdom. You will never be a Goddess or a Priestess. There are no angels, and no heavenly gate, and nobody is going to hold out their hand to you and test your knowledge of the secret handshakes and whether you know exactly which knuckle to put your thumb on, or whether you remember every single word of the name of the 2nd Token of the Melchezidek Priesthood. This is all wrong. It's made up. It was invented by man, and it will die with man, and there is no Celestial entity anywhere who gives a rat's butt whether you know these things or not.

Joseph Smith will never judge you. He's dead. He's not coming back. He started a religion that isn't true, and then he died, and left us to deal with it, and we're still dealing with it to this very day. The LDS church is no more a "true" church of a God who actually exists than any other of the thousands of churches and religions that men (and women) have created and nurtured along over the course of human existence.

Here's a partial list of the many things which will never happen:

Young Muslim men who blow themselves and some Israeli soldiers in a bus will not "wake up" to find themselves in Paradise, being serviced sexually by 70 virgins.

Faithful Evangelical Christians will never suddenly *poof!* up into the sky to meet Jesus Christ flying through the clouds in a Rapture, leaving a pile of empty clothes on the the ground, in their cars, or whatever.

Hindus will never be reincarnated as a cow, or whatever they think will happen. Lord Vishnu doesn't actually exist. Neither does Lord Rama, or Ganesh, or the many others.

Jehovah's Witnesses will never be restored from backup by Jehovah after the "end days" and find themselves in a paradise on earth, where they happily farm and grow vegetables and enjoy life without war and all the other happy thoughts. They are right about one thing, though: when we die, that's it, game over.

And Mormon men and women will never become Gods and Godesses in a Celestial Kingdom. There is no "spirit prison" and "paradise" where righteous members who die go on "missions" to the prison side to teach people about the LDS church, and tell them to wait in line for their temple work to be done on Earth so they can get the hell out of there. This is all just fantasy.

Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, and Sauron don't actually exist, and never did exist, except in the minds of men, starting with J. R. R. Tolkein. Likewise, the Mormon God Elohim does not exist, and never has existed, except in the collective minds of Mormons.

Your spiritual experiences are a combination of emotional responses, possibly euphoria, and possibly other mental and psychological phenomena. No invisible ghost man is dwelling within you because you do what Sky Daddy commands and because some man once laid hands on your head and told you to receive this invisible spirit. This non-existent inivisible ghost man/god is not whispering truth into your ear. There is no invisible bogeyman "the Devil" also whispering in your ear, trying to imitate the ways of Sky Daddy in order to fool you into believing in him instead.

Anyhow, this is the way it is. You're obviously free, as a human being, to live in whatever little fantasy virtual reality you want to, inside your own head, but you aren't entitled to your own reality. You live in this reality, and are subject to it, whether you want to believe it or not. In your mind you are free to believe you will someday become a Goddess, and bear spirit babies throughout all eternity with your God husband, but it quite simply isn't going to happen. Ever.

Anyhow, have a nice day, and I do wish you well in your own virtual reality inside your mind. I'm sure it's a place of great comfort and happiness, and reassurance that you're fighting the good fight, and standing up for Truth.

Oh c'mon. Don't be coy. Tell us how you really feel.

[_Nephi]

[H]ave a nice day, and I do wish you well in your own virtual reality inside your mind.

Sethbag, no offense, but we are all within our own "virtual realities" inside our own minds. No one knows reality 100%, and the realities we think we know are but what we create within our own heads. Her reality is no more correct nor incorrect than anyone elses, for we do not have a perfect knowledge to base our percentage "right" upon.

[_charity]

Beastie: How arrogant of you to assume that I hadn't experienced what you are talking about. I had an incredibly powerful experience, and I knew from years of listening to others talking about their testimonies that most members' experiences were more on the line of the still small voice.

Charity: The really powerful spiritual confirrmation cannot be later re-evaluated and written off as an accident of brain chemistry.

Beastie: And you're still being inconsistent. On one hand, you claim that those who compare their experiences to what they feel during a powerful movie or rock concert obviously aren't talking about what you're talking about. But then you turn around and tell me that I may have had the "small still voice" instead of thunder.

Charity: Don't personalize everything. I said that may be what is happening when some people do not recognize they have received an answer. I didn't say you specifically.

Bestie: So which is it, Charity? Do experiences that could be more equated to the "small still voice" still count, or does it have to be thunder?

Charity: Oh, for Pete's sake. Different strokes for different folks.

Beastie: Why don't you just be honest and admit that no matter what an exmormon says, you won't believe they ever felt what you feel? You are a product of church teachings. No matter how you try to cloak it to be more PC, in the end, you still believe that people leave the church because they were proud, sinful, lazy, or never really had a testimony to begin with.

Charity: If someone says, "You know I thougth I had a spiritual experience but now I know it was just a shot of epinephrine instead" then no, they did not feel what I have felt on occasion. I know the physiological responses of epinephrine and dopamine and the other 25 chemicals found in the brain. I can recognize them in my own body. And waht I felt was not an adrenaline rush or a blast of dopamine. That's why I can say that those people who say all spiritual experiences can be explained with brain studies are wrong. Maybe at some future date, that will be the case--when they figure out how to measure a spiritual experience. But right now, that is wrong. That is arrogance. That is science.

beastie: One more comment about my own experiences - when I was praying to God to let me know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, or that the church was the one true church, I didn't really feel NOTHING. I felt confused, anxious, worried, and frightened. I always wondered what a "stupor of thought" meant. I finally found out.

charity: or maybe at some future date you will re-evaluate that.


Mercury: Charity, as one who is familiar with the academic process I am skeptical of your claim that you are trying to advance truth. Truth stands on the basis of its evidence. Could it be that you are unclear on the concept of evidence and thus have false ideas on what makes something true? I suspect you bifurcate the "truth" of Mormonism with Truth that actually delivers.

charity: I know what truth is. As one who is also familiar with academic process I understand that often times people think they "own" the truth and they don't like it when anyone else comes along with a different idea. And they fight it. Think of the Ptolomy-Copernicus debate.

harmony: This does not make sense. [referring to my statement that the Holy Ghost was not limited to LDS] There would be no reason to give the gift of the Holy Ghost to newly baptised members, if the Holy Ghost can act within nonmembers. They would have already had it. They wouldn't have had to join the LDS church to get it.

charity: The gift of the Holy Ghost is different from the witness of the Holy Ghost. The witness can be given to anyone at any time and witnesses a specific truth. Then if the person who receives that witness acts on it, he/she is given more witnesses to truth. This witnesses is transitory. The gift of the Holy Ghost means the person is entitled to the continued presence of the Holy Ghost, conditioned on worthiness.

See, I just advanced truth, at least for harmony.

beastie: The vast majority of us here were members. Why do the beliefs we held as Mormons not count?

charity: They do if they were true. Not every LDS has a perfect understanding. I don't know everything, either, and I am sure I will get things wrong now and then.

beastie: by the way, your God is a strange character. He restored the "one true" church on the earth, and gave it the only true priesthood power, the only way to be with not only one's family, but God himself, our Father, in the next life. Yet he bestows powerful spiritual experiences on people, without regard to the fallacious nature of their current beliefs. It's almost as if he wants people to believe the wrong thing.

charity: God wants us to believe the truth, and He gives us many opportunities to recognize it. Life is a test. A passing grade means you get to be a god. The powers of godhood are absolute. A person who would not use them properly should not have them. Do you want every yahoo who enters medical school to get a degree so he can operate on you? He ought to prove that he knows how to do it before he aims a scalpel at you.

the road to hana: Example, please. And please start a new thread to do it.

charity: Okay. Later today I will start a thread on the Holy Ghost.


Polygamy Porter: You replied with a vague answer. Two forces eh? Which force answered your prayer and which one answered the other non-SLC-LDS Mormons prayers?Figured out an answer to my simple question yet? Which force answered your prayer and which one answered the other non-SLC-LDS Mormons prayers?

charity: The Holy Ghost has given me many witnesses to the truth. I don't know what prayers of non-SLC-Mormons were. I can't speculate. If they were given a "witness" that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were not prophets, then it was Satan who answered their prayers. That definite enough for you?

Zoidberg: I have a hard time imagining a God who gets annoyed that easily. To answer a logical question this statement would provoke, I think most, if not all of the Old Testament is BS.

charity: Your opinion.

Zoidberg: You keep thinking of these evil antis on message boards as an organized group with a strategy who make it their goal to sway the faithful. In reality, it's just a bunch of people talking. Sometimes new people show up who are just discovering these issues; this is why it might sound "rehashed" to you.

charity: If the anti-s were an organized group they might have a chance at accomplishing the true purpose of the anti-Mormon. But no, I don't think anti-Mormons are organized. There are some little pocket groups, ULM, Concerned Christians, that IRRC, etc. with a stated purpose of destroying the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, persuading members to leave and persuading non-members not to join. But they aren't very effective.

I am sure most ex-members, exed-members, and critics who never were members are acting singly. But there is a sort of "playbook." Tactics and strategies which are observed and learned and then used.


Zoidbert: Not to mention that I consider the most popular TBM answers, like "It will all work out in the afterlife" or "Does it affect my slavation?" a bit rehashed. As well as their mantras about "ignorant antis" who keep protesting the word "adieu". Perhaps that's why people are forced to repeat their opinions to finally make it known to the organized apologetic front what it is they have a problem with.

charity: Fair enough.

[_beastie]

Charity -

How much have you read either about the spiritual experiences of people in other faiths, and about the science of the brain in creating numinous experiences? Have you read any books on the subject, like James' Varieties of Religious Experiences? Have you read any of the recent books that delve into how the brain constructs reality, like Why God Won't Go Away, or Phantoms in the Brain?

I'm wondering because you are so consistently dismissive of the powerful experiences people of other faiths have. Oh, you don't deny they have experiences, but not like yours - because yours came from the TRUTH. Theirs comes from partial truths, maybe preparatory truths.

Other than that question, there's little left to say to you on the matter. You are so inconsistent in your statements that it's hard to break through. You act as if NO ONE could ever re-evaluate the meaning of their own numinous experiences, as if they are so beyond any other experience there's no comparison, and then in the next breath assert that people ought to listen to the "still small voice" as well. I'm not taking it personally, I'm trying to make sense of your inconsistent statements.

You know, for someone who decries pride and arrogance in others, you are one of the most proud, arrogant people I've ever encountered online. I noticed that about you long ago on MAD, and nothing you've done here has changed my mind.

[_beastie]

On second thought, I did think of another question that might help. You seem to be asserting that people can't change their minds about what a testimonial experience meant - so, in a way, you're saying that people who lost their testimonies never had one to begin with. Yet this contradicts what your leaders say, because they often warn members to engage in certain behaviors, at the risk of losing their testimonies.

Can you explain the apparent contradiction?

[_beastie]

Here's an example of how leaders view testimonies as easily lost:

“Lesson 27: Strengthening Testimony through Obedience,” Young Women Manual 2, 101


“Testimony isn’t something you have today, and you are going to have always. A testimony is fragile. It is as hard to hold as a moonbeam. It is something you have to recapture every day of your life” (Harold B. Lee, in J. M. Heslop, “Directs Church; Led by the Spirit,” Church News, 15 July 1972, p. 4).

If a testimony cannot be re-evaluated and re-interpreted, then how is it lost? President Lee not only thought it could be lost, but it was fragile.

This really does not mesh well with your statements about how, supposedly, if someone ever had a real testimony, they could not possibly change their minds about what it meant.

[_Polygamy Porter]

You replied with a vague answer. Two forces eh? Which force answered your prayer and which one answered the other non-SLC-LDS Mormons prayers?Figured out an answer to my simple question yet? Which force answered your prayer and which one answered the other non-SLC-LDS Mormons prayers?

The Holy Ghost has given me many witnesses to the truth. I don't know what prayers of non-SLC-Mormons were. I can't speculate. If they were given a "witness" that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were not prophets, then it was Satan who answered their prayers. That definite enough for you?

With that and the sheer numbers of the BILLIONS of members other religions around the world, I'd guess that you believe that the world is firmly in the grasp of Satan?

Ask yourself this, why would a loving father allow his evil older son(Satan) to drag down the rest of his children?

If my oldest son is caught coercing my other child to do something wrong I stop him and punish him not the younger kids.

So Elohim the almighty, allowed his older evil son to drag down an initial 33% of his other kids down, and today 99.999% of Elohim's kids on earth are being pulled down by this bad son while our FATHER stands idly by?

That makes no sense. If we men are to strive to be like god, like what I just described, I want nothing of it. That god is a dead beat father who is such a pussy that his own son pushes him around, to the point that god goes into a violent tirade and kills his own children for following this supposed evil son instead of kicking his son's ass.

I stand up for my own children, even against my own children if need be.

[_beastie]

The Holy Ghost has given me many witnesses to the truth. I don't know what prayers of non-SLC-Mormons were. I can't speculate. If they were given a "witness" that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young were not prophets, then it was Satan who answered their prayers. That definite enough for you?

This is such a perfect demonstration of what I said earlier: LDS only believe in personal revelation when it supports their beliefs.

According to the formula of the LDS church, God told me that the Joseph Smith was not a prophet, and the LDS church is not the "one true church". I felt anxious, frightened, worried, upset, whenever I prayed and asked these questions. This, according to LDS teachings, constitute a "no" answer.

Yet, according to Charity, satan answered my prayer.

Why would God let Satan answer my prayer?? I had spent over a decade of my life living faithful to the LDS church. I let my testimony of the Book of Mormon alone be sufficient for me to believe in the church, up until the time I began to read about the "other" church history. I had given my life to the gospel - transferred to BYU, served a mission, married in the temple, donated thousands of dollars and hours to the church. I was absolutely sincere in my prayers.

And God let Satan answer my prayers???

Man, that is some kind of messed up.

[_Polygamy Porter]

Yet, according to Charity, satan answered my prayer.

Why would God let Satan answer my prayer?? I had spent over a decade of my life living faithful to the LDS church. I let my testimony of the Book of Mormon alone be sufficient for me to believe in the church, up until the time I began to read about the "other" church history. I had given my life to the gospel - transferred to BYU, served a mission, married in the temple, donated thousands of dollars and hours to the church. I was absolutely sincere in my prayers.

And God let Satan answer my prayers???

Man, that is some kind of messed up.

There is a space problem in the CK and rather than Elohim(dad) be honest with us all and admit he had waaaaay too many kids he shifted the blame by bumping up the entrance standards via obfuscation. That way, if we don't make it back to the CK, it is our fault and not his.

I hope charity enjoys watching her husband having CK sex with other women.