It wasn't meant to be reason or convince anyone of anything or make anyone think for two seconds or distract anyone from anything (as if it would even do that). I think saying it is a Sunday school effort is giving it WAY too much credit.
The right thing?
- Thread starter Hermskii
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because it's only the foundation of your entire belief system on which all premises regarding anything the Mormon church does are hinged.
but apparently it's not a big deal.
how convenient that Joe Smith was the only person who got to see them and that no one has ever been allowed to see them since... how very convenient.
you can say (very dumb) things like "WELL HOW DO YOU KNOW GRAVITY IS REAL?? HAVE YOU SEEN IT??" but the difference is that my entire belief system is not based on gravity. gravity is one small working component of the larger picture which - as theories go - happens to fit very well within the other scientific explanations of space and time. it's not a wild guess, it's an educated, observable, and repeatable phenomenon that we have defined through centuries of research on top of research.
I don't get into these discussions because I like to make fun of religious people or something. I'm not trying to piss you off or anything on purpose.
but the subject truly and deeply fascinates me.
my degree is in PoliSci and business, but whenever I had a free elective class to fill in college I chose comparative religious studies and psychology courses.
why people believe what they believe is incredibly intriguing to me.
Sir Brizz, in my mind it is absolutely stunning that you can (obviously) be an intelligent and competent adult who - at the very same time - harbors the need to believe in such utter drivel. the fact that the human mind can compartmentalize it's intellect in this manner is astonishing. you're smart enough to have a good job and a good family and apparently you know how to use a computer.
at the same time you're convinced that Joseph Smith gained access to secret knowledge regarding life, the universe, and everything because a Native American Indian Angel came to him and told him where to find Golden Plates which were (luckily) buried just down the road from where he lived. he translated these plates using magic stones and then barred them away from ever being witnessed by human eyes ever again even though revealing them would PUT AN END immediately to all the confusion and skepticism surrounding the absurdity of the story itself.
I mean... hello?
how can you do this? how can you be a relatively normal and intelligent person yet buy into this?
I literally do not understand. and so I don't bring this stuff up to agitate you.
it's an ongoing personal exploration for understanding. but so often you guys (religious people) won't comply; you just run away.
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The problem is that this, along with your other statements, just show a lack of understanding about the subject deep enough that I can't really fill it with anything substantive. You've obviously heard a few things and extrapolated those things into a whole that does not match with reality. I don't have the time or interest to correct it.
On top of that, you just come off very hostile from the outset which is counter intuitive to any kind of conversation we could even have on the subject. I only bring up "BLAH BLAH GRAVITY" type arguments because they are quid pro quo, frankly. Neither a compelling argument nor an attempt to make one.
If you want to find out more about it, that's great. You can read this page which explains what is actually in the Book of Mormon and contains the testimony of 11 people who saw the plates as well as the testimony of Joseph Smith. But like I said, I'm not interested in arguing about it.
Firefly
United Kingdom is not a country.
Firefly
United Kingdom is not a country.
Testimony is just "i swear that what I am saying is true". It doesn't prove anything. I could swear that I saw aliens last night but it doesn't prove the existence of them.
Anyway Mormons are into cannibalism:
And I will feed them that oppress thee, with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood as with sweet wine.--2 Nephi 6:18
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Firefly
United Kingdom is not a country.
How many "and it came to pass" phrases are in the book of mormon?
Also Mormons are anti-Semitic and racist.
Here the book speaks of the native americans
Also Mormons are anti-Semitic and racist.
Here the book speaks of the native americans
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Sounds like my cup of tea. Send me the coordinates via Google Maps so I can take pics.
so this is how you live with yourself?
because there's a website with the "testimony" of 11 people who claim to have seen the plates?
Brizz how absurd is this?? come on man. seriously.
if the plates exist, why does anyone have to rely on testimony?
why not bring them out and show them to the world?
wouldn't this put an end to all of these conflicts?
how many other religions have access to supposedly divine objects which would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that their prophecy is true?
the Jews don't have anything.
the Muslims say that they have the Arc of the Covenant but no one has ever seen it.
the Christians say they have the Shroud of Turin but they won't let anyone carbon date it.
the Mormons apparently have solid golden tablets which bear the inscriptions of the ancient language of the one true prophecy.
but no one can see them.
don't believe us?
here, just read this sworn affidavit by these 11 people. surely that will quell your suspicions.
this is ludicrous Brizz.
how can you subject yourself to it? I still don't understand.
Firefly
United Kingdom is not a country.
LOL... how I "live with myself"? That web page is just a reprinting of documents that have existed for over 150 years. And, yes, I have seen those many times.
Seeing something, no matter how convincing, isn't going to make people "believers" or give them any conviction. Most of the people that signed that they saw the plates left the LDS church later on but none of them ever refuted their signed testimony. Wouldn't that have been an ideal time to do so?
Also, the testimonies aren't meant to quell suspicion. If you want to find out whether to believe it or not, read the book. Think about it. Question it. If you still don't believe it, that's fine, too. As members of the LDS church, we are frequently encouraged to question it, people with conviction rarely rely on what other people tell them is true.
It's easy for me to justify how I "live with myself" because I am convicted and that is part of what defines me.
On a side note, the Shroud of Turin has been dated.
obviously.
but the point is that... that's all you need to be satisfied?
11 people who you've never met? they just SWEAR they've seen it, huh?
and that's good enough?
this is a scapegoat type of response though.
I don't know those people or the circumstances under which they signed their original statements and how much power the church has over those statements (legally speaking).
but if the LDS is actually in possession of the plates and science could easily verify their authenticity that would be huge. everything I think that I "know" in life is based on expert analysis by people who have committed their lives to their specific area of research. I don't have the time or energy to personally study physics and biology and astronomy and chemistry all at once.
but if the people who already do those things were to publish peer reviewed research findings in a reputable journal and the headline was "Veracity of Joseph Smith's Golden Tablets Confirmed" then I would have to seriously reconsider my outlook on life. the same goes for any other relic or purported "miracle" from any other religion.
but so far, religious leaders have refused to allow their relics or miracles to be tested under controlled and scientific guidelines.
but why would I go out and read the Book of Mormon to begin with?
it has no place in my understanding of the natural world.
my education (in history, in science, in sociology) has never left me with such gaping holes in logic as to think "well there must be a higher power at work here" whose dogma I must then subject myself to. when Isaac Newton first attempted to calculate and predict the orbit of the major celestial bodies (the planets), he was unsure how they maintained their curved ellipses without eventually falling off the track, so to speak.
everyone around him assured him that it was the invisible force of God who held the orbits together and kept the balance in space. there was no need for further inquisition.
Newton wouldn't have it. he threw away his previous notes and started his research again from scratch. he disappeared from the public eye for a time and buried himself in his work. when he returned, not only had he resolved the problem of self-adjusting elliptical orbits, he had single-handedly invented the discipline of calculus.
calculus did not exist in mathematics before he defined it and showed that it worked within all preexisting models.
these breakthroughs - these incredibly awe-inspiring accomplishments of the human mind - they wouldn't have occurred if people had continually chalked their problems up to the feeble reasoning of scripture. we know by default that no form of scripture anywhere on Earth was written by men of science. we know by default that no holy book contains rigorous or peer-reviewed standardized research.
what insight can it provide?
the most good it ever did was to console a person who is grieving the loss of a loved one, comfort a prisoner on death row, or make a child molester and serial killer believe that he too can enjoy eternal bliss in heaven as long as he says the magic words with a priest nearby.
I do not see the value it provides to modern mankind.
oh.
well clearly I don't follow religious news.
but now that you've pointed it out, it only reinforces how absurd this is.
according to that article the Shroud dates from about 1260 to 1390CE.
and all the conventional accounts of Jesus of Nazareth show his birth to have occurred sometime before 10 BCE. his death is shown to have occurred sometime around 35-40 BCE.
this means that the shroud didn't exist until over 1000 years after Jesus lived and died. so clearly, even with carbon dating, the Shroud proves absolutely nothing about anything. even if we had Jesus' DNA and could match it to the shroud, it wouldn't prove that he rose from the dead or was the son of god either.
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If Brizz is feeling more talkative today he is about to tell you that fact and reality don't matter because faith and feelings and the holy ghost, or some similarly baffling tripe. At least he would have said something similar three years ago:
This is why I occasionally prod but don't debate him anymore.
On a related note, I'm trying to adopt this as my pseudo-religion, as difficult as it is:
[m]http://youtu.be/Aq5QnXShy4M[/m]
Thanks Vaskadar.
This is why I occasionally prod but don't debate him anymore.
On a related note, I'm trying to adopt this as my pseudo-religion, as difficult as it is:
[m]http://youtu.be/Aq5QnXShy4M[/m]
Thanks Vaskadar.
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLapwIoEVI[/m]
I have adopted Robert Green Ingersoll's creed as my belief. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
I am not against any of you believing in something. I am only against those of you who would wish to bring harm to other humans, or deny them the basic dignities that you claim for yourself. If you believe that your god is just, then let him, her, or it be the judge, don't bring your own form of punishment down upon those that live in the same world.
I do not believe in an afterlife, so my lack of belief gives me all the more reason to make this one meaningful.
I have adopted Robert Green Ingersoll's creed as my belief. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
I am not against any of you believing in something. I am only against those of you who would wish to bring harm to other humans, or deny them the basic dignities that you claim for yourself. If you believe that your god is just, then let him, her, or it be the judge, don't bring your own form of punishment down upon those that live in the same world.
I do not believe in an afterlife, so my lack of belief gives me all the more reason to make this one meaningful.
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Don't be ridiculous, I would never say that. Fact and reality matter a great deal, and my personal belief is that God is confined to natural laws like any other being would be.
I'm inclined to wonder if you read the comment you made in 2009, and if so, whether you thought about it at all.
