Mormonism

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For the last time, I am not defending how the majority of Christians (way more than half of them) think. I'm only letting you know what their position is. I DON'T EVEN AGREE WITH IT! Now, for those arguing that there are lots of Christians who don't believe in Trinity, I reccomend checking here and here.

I actually research before I post, you know.

[ May 14, 2007, 22:37: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Drew, I am not saying that you believe whatever. I am simply trying to state that I think it is a bunch of And I don't care who believes it or doesn't believe it.

One person can start an avalanche, Luther did. Just stand in the right spot and yell loud enough.
Major Religion of the World

So 84% of the world's population believe in some sort of divinity. Does that make the rest of us wrong?

I am not arguing merely expressing an opinion that is at variance with the majority.

 

Ragusa really has mellowed in his old age.

 

Ha! That statement implies that the other 3-4 sacrament meetings of the month are *not* boring! While I agree that Fast Sundays were overly boring, I have to point out that every aspect of religious meetings are boring.

 

Ah Drew, there is nothing funnier than watching someone who's main agenda has been the systematic slander of a particular religion trying to tell members what the chruch actually believes. It is a form of Contextomy in and of itself. It takes the words, but leaves out the spiritual context. Without that spiritual context, no religion can be properly understood.

From my examiniation, the passage in 1 Peter was not adjusted with the Joseph Smith translation, and therefore is to be assumed correct.

Where the hell do you get that from? Assuming that God is the one who decides how these ordinances are to be performed, would he not require that His only begotten be baptized in the propper manner? He wouldn't have allowed the ordinance to be performed any other way than as He required.

Duh, I know that, but you missed my point. The one version had God being a spirit or ghost, the other version simply referred to another part of the Godhead, specifically named The Holy Ghost. This is the Scripture that tends to describe the Trinity, but a different translation defends the concept of the Godhead instead.

God has become divine through perfecting himself, overcoming the flaws of mortality. We have yet to do this, and as such, we can follow his example to perfect himself. Again, without the spiritual perspective, you lose the context of our beliefs.

Not all research can be done through the internet. I have actually tested the promises made in scripture and verified many of the results promised on a personal scale. AS such, I have my own observations about this. I will value this over the hack job of the doctrine that you seek to present.

Thank you! I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one...

T2Bruno: I would advocate someone looking into the church to hear the testimonies of the members. It's not "exciting" in the traditional sense, but the spiritual experience can be tremendous.

Kitrax: At least you didn't have a calling requiring you to be in meetings like PEC, Ward Welfare and Ward Council. In my ward, that's an extra meeting on Sunday morning--8 am start so that some of them can go home to get their families.

What you get out of a religion is proportional to what you put in. There are blessings that outweigh the requests placed upon you but the more you put in, the more the Lord gives back. When you gave up 3 hours on the Sabbath (closer to 5 by the time you count getting ready for church, travel, socializing and returning home), didn't you get a sense of being part of a community? Did that not give you a chance to make friends? Granted, from the experiences that some have described, if I had felt the same peer pressure, I may have followed Bruno's example when i was younger and didn't truly feel the Spirit for myself...

 

The bible was not originally in English and the KJV was actually translated from Latin because they didn't have access to the original Greek. That aside, the KJV was also translated in 1640. Gnarff, how well do you understand Shakespeare? Do you read it with perfect comprehension and flawless interpretation? In 1640, Shakespeare had only been dead for 24 years....so the language was that radically different from modern English. Perhaps, in 1640, a reader of the passage stating:

would have interpreted it correctly. However, every modern translation available (which is taken from an earlier copy of the original Greek, rather than a late Latin copy) translates it differently....making it more clear that the passage isn't banning preachers from earning a living wage. I'm sorry, but if you think a 1640 translation of a late copy of a document which has been hand-transcribed several times and is in a different language from the original is going to net you a "correct" translation, you have a lot to learn about how linguistics work. When translating a work, you always want the earliest copy possible in its original language. The KJV had neither.

Whatever. I actually agree that immersion is implied in the Bible. It is not, however, explicitly stated anywhere in the bible that immersion was absolutely necessary (which is what you were trying to argue). Further, dating back as far as 70 AD, liturgical handbooks were already spelling out a baptismal procedure which did not require immersion. In other words, the early apostolic church was doing baptism without immersion (one thing people often forget is that, at this point in history, baptism by immersion wasn't always possible or practical). This is significant, since the early church didn't even compile the bible until around 300 AD and Peter was running the Church until his death around 67 AD. It's highly likely that Peter and the other disciples had a hand in the establishment of the baptismal ritual as it is today. Perhaps they were wrong in doing so, but they did allow baptism without immersion in the early Apostolic Church.

No, Gnarff, I understood that just fine. Mormons believe that it is possible for man to perfect himself and attain Godhead. Non-LDS Christians do not. They believe that there is only one God who created the universe and who is far greater than man can ever be. To the mindset of a non-LDS Christian, Godhead is unattainable by any except God....who never actually attained Godhead to begin with. God simply is in non-LDS Christian theology.

[ May 15, 2007, 08:59: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

And yet there is evidence of more than one universe....

Drew, I thought the real acceptance of baptism by sprinkling basically coincided with increased infant baptisms (which was actually discouraged by early Christians). Adults were usually baptised by immersion (except the extremely ill -- which is where 'pouring' was originally considered acceptable). As the Catholic church started to baptise more and more infants, sprinkling became more dominant. I believe it was the 1300's that the Catholic church eventually abolished the practice of immersion baptism.

I believe the Catholic stance is that baptism is really in 'internal baptism' or cleansing of the spirit. The symbolism used is not as important as the mentality and spirituality of the person involved.

Alright Drew, you've been playing devil's advocate quite well (and I actually mean that, it's been enjoyable). Here's a question for you: where did God come from? The Mormon church actually answers that question, a very basic question that is asked often by children. My answer is, of course, mythology; that God exists only in the minds of men and women. But how about a religious answer that does not go 'he has always existed', or 'God cannot be confined to human reasoning'. As man's understanding of the universe expands, the concept of an origin of the universe becomes more accepted and Genesis is looking more like a metaphor or parable.

 

I can't answer the question "Where did God come from?" because if God had a beginning what came before God?

So I'll go out on a limb and toss out the following:

God is. God is the Universe, the stars, planets, moons. God is the oceans and lands, the plants and animals, all of mankind. God is all that exists in all of its infinite manifestations.

 

According to liturgical manuals dating back as far as 70 AD,the procedure described used "pouring" rather than immersion. There could be several reasons for this. Since Christians were persecuted and killed more or less on sight at this point of their history, they couldn't exactly go to the river to perform their baptisms for fear of being caught. Men did not always live near a river or lake, either, depending on ground water instead. In that type of situation, baptism by immersion may have simply been too impractical, wasting water they need for drinking and washing themselves. Whatever the reason, we know that the early church didn't require immersion (although immersion was also acceptable in the early church) for their baptisms.....even while the apostles were still running it.

There is no cogent answer which can be provided by religion or philosophy which does lead to another question without resorting to one of your banned rhetorical devices or a fallacy of some sort. Suppose I do successfully answer the question of where God comes from without resorting to some form of circular logic or mysticism. Wouldn't the answer, itself, simply beg the question of where [whatever it was I said God came from] came from?

That said,assuming that the Pantheists and Jainists are wrong and there really is one separate entity which created the universe and all things in it, it would stand to reason that said entity exists outside the confines of time. Simply put, if something created God, what is it that created that something? Trace it back far enough and the only possible answer left is that whatever created the universe (or, if you'd prefer, whatever created whatever it was that created whatever created God) must exist outside of the confines of time and, unlike everything else in existence, never had a beginning.

This idea of God existing outside of time is scripturally supported by the fact that the God of the old testament referred to himself simply as "I AM" and never refers to himself in the past or future tense. Further support for the idea that God simply is can be also be found in the New Testament, since Christ refers to himself using the same appellation (I AM) on several occasions throughout the Gospels.

[ May 15, 2007, 22:47: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

"God is all that exists in all of its infinite manifestations." Nakia, sounds like what we were discussing in the FAI

The problem in the context of this argument would be how to substantiate that using Christian scripture; and furthermore it does not invalidate the question of where "all that exists" came from, unless God is an ouroboros - a self-creating entity. That comes with its own logical problems, half of which I probably couldn't understand if I tried!

Or, outside a specifically Biblical interpretation, we could just say it was the Big Bang and call it quits with all those painful chicken-and-egg questions...

 

Before there was an earth, there was matter unorganized. The Big Bang could habe been the scattering of the unorganized matter. Genesis chapter 1 takes over from there (albeit overly simplified)...

As for Chicken and egg, if Evolution of the Chicken would have occured during the fifth creative period, then some creature that was an earlier attempt at a chicken that laid an egg, from which eventually emerged a chicken...