Mak - if the church brings you joy - great. If it brings you spiritual witnesses - great. But you do realize that this says absolutely nothing about the truth of the church. Like Seth said, millions of people experience these sorts of things in various religions. Do you really think they provide even a shred of evidence for any sort of truth regarding religion? Sure, it may be 'true' for that individual, but saying it's somehow universally true is just plain wrong.
Like I said - if it makes you happy - good for you - just so long as you know that it means absolutely nothing in terms of real/universal truth.
Let me anticipate macs response:
"its all relative"
I keep hearing assertions about generalizations and reductions. What part of the gospel do any of you feel contradicts absolute truth?
That God exists, for starters. Everything else pretty much flows from there.
A second assertion, is that a God who did exist would use human beings on this earth as his representatives, and speak to the world only, or primarily, through these human beings. And that he would make it nearly impossible, if not downright impossible, to tell the difference between those hundreds or thousands of imposters who claim to be God's chosen mouthpiece, from that one guy who really is. I could go on and on.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
VegasRefugee wrote:Who introduced you to Mormonism?
No one introduced me to it, really. I had a friend who occasionally talked about it, but she lived in another state. I was always out on a drug binge when she was around and she didn't bother trying to teach me anything abouyt it. After a brush with death when I ODed I decided I needed to find out what I was doing with my life. I started to read all of the sacred literature I could find. I read the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, The Lao-tzu, the Bible and whatever else I could find. I thought the Book of Mormon would be a fun way to remind myself of my friend, but I thought the story was hard to follow and the names were stupid. When I wasn't reading it I wanted to be reading it, though, and the lessons of the story started to jump out at me and my life started changing. I would rush home early from work so I could read it. I got to a part about baptism and decided I needed to take the next step if I was going to continue having this force for good in my life. I found out from a friend who I had to talk to and I went to church one Sunday in jeans and a t-shirt to look for the missionaries. I found them and walked up to them and said, "Hi, I'm Dan. What do I have to do to get baptized?" They told me to pray about the Book of Mormon. Up to this point I hadn't prayed about it, but I figured it was important enough to try. I had a few very spiritual experiences verify for me that I was doing the right thing, so I got baptized. Best decision I've ever made.
Well, good for you. Mormonism is definitely a step up from drug addiction. That doesn't make it God's Truth, however, and I hope you'll be open to further progression in this world.
Even better than that, I've actually read the book for myself.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
Even better than that, I've actually read the book for myself.
As have I (although I haven't read the review yet).
I'll give you the cliff-notes version (from what I remember from reading it a year ago):
Religion is not pseudoscience!
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...
Who Knows wrote:I'll give you the cliff-notes version (from what I remember from reading it a year ago):
Religion is not pseudoscience!
Funny. What I got out of it (just now) is that Mormonism emphasizes the experential nature of our faith--something that Sagan did not adequately consider.
Believers recognize the source of their belief as experiential—based on direct involvement with the sacred. Among Latter-day Saints, the traditional arguments for God are practically nonexistent. However, we find in the writings of Joseph Smith an argument for the existence of God—he obtained that knowledge from direct experience.
Faith is a concept that is highly misunderstood by skeptics and believers alike. Many people seem to have in mind some kind of passive cognitive or emotional assent to a proposition in the absence of any evidence for that proposition
This experimental aspect of religion, highly emphasized in Mormonism, is neglected completely by Sagan and by many scientific thinkers. Sagan seems to think that religious belief is only supported by emotion, that we persist because it feels good, and we wish it to be true. To the contrary, the results of experiments of faith provide the same kind of rational basis for belief as science. This point is made clearly in James''s Varieties of Religious Experience. As an empiricist philosopher sympathetic to religion but not personally religious, James argues that an emotional state or appeal to the origin of a proposition is not a sign of its truth.[45] Just because an idea was revealed to me in an amazing transcendental experience does not make the idea true. For James, the pragmatist, it is the result of experimenting on the idea that marks truth, the change in the believer's life. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20) applies to truths as well as to people. Henry Eyring, a leading physical chemist in the early twentieth century, made this comment about his Mormon faith: "I have often met this question: 'Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?' The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth. The same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion. Try it. Does it work?"[46]
That's General Leo. He could be my friend if he weren't my enemy. eritis sicut dii I support NCMO
I wasn't really trying to be funny - i was serious. The quotes you provided basically say that.
Religion is not pseudoscience - it can be tested.
So let's test it. Let's get 100 random people in a room, have them read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, and see what kinds of answers they get. What do you say?
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...
Believers recognize the source of their belief as experiential—based on direct involvement with the sacred. Among Latter-day Saints, the traditional arguments for God are practically nonexistent. However, we find in the writings of Joseph Smith an argument for the existence of God—he obtained that knowledge from direct experience.
What total BS. What's the difference between the claim of Joseph Smith's first vision and people who claim to have been picked up by flying saucers? This review is just a special plea: "Our religious belief is different, in just IS! Okay?"
This experimental aspect of religion, highly emphasized in Mormonism, is neglected completely by Sagan and by many scientific thinkers. Sagan seems to think that religious belief is only supported by emotion, that we persist because it feels good, and we wish it to be true. To the contrary, the results of experiments of faith provide the same kind of rational basis for belief as science.
Sorry, that's more garbage. If experiments of faith provided a basis for rational belief, then Jason Bourne wouldn't be wondering what use it is to pray for confirmation when the test is loaded with only one right answer.