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I hate to break it to you, but every denomination of Christianity has said that with the exception fo the Roman Catholic Church (which argues that it's the original, therefore the best). No Christian denomination has ever broken from the Church arguing that it's moving FURTHER from Christ's teachings. They ALL said that they were either going back to the originals, or were at least going closer to them than modern theology allowed (whenever "modern" was for that sect).Janadele said:
When was that, exactly? We can trace the Bibles origins via archaeological evidence, and I somehow doubt that where it ends up is where you think it should. And the concept of a single pair of humans starting the species is, from a scientific perspective, nonsensical. We know there was at least one bottleneck, but there was never a time when there were only two humans. The term "Mitochondrial Eve" is, in my opinion, a misnomer--it doesn't mean that she was the only woman in the tribe, merely that she was the last common female ancestor to all living humans. SOMEONE is ALWAYS the last common female ancestor to all members of ANY sexually reproducing species, and frankly it's mostly statistical trickery to generate funding due to increased publicity.
The Mormon Church believes that the Church established by Jesus had fallen. And that the Protestant Reformation prepared for and ushered in the restoration. A return to a Church that was headed by god and not a man (the Pope). For the first time since the death of the apostles the full gospel had been restored through revelation to Joseph Smith.
If I put a gun to your head and tell you that if you don't do what I tell you then I will shoot you, then you still have the freedom of choice. You can choose to die. Mormons can choose to be punished by god.
Not really. You can trace the Book of Mormon that way, but anything else relies on archaeology of the Middle East. Mormonism is, as are all human organizations, in part a product of the culture it was formed in, and that culture included a strong influence from the Bible.Loss Leader said:
Only in the most pedantic, twisted, and perverse sense of teh term "choice". By any rational definition, credible threats negate the concept of choice. If you want to argue otherwise, okay, let's take it to the logical extreme: Every woman that's ever had sex while concious did so willingly, by your logic. After all, she could have chosen to kill herself--so she CHOSE to have sex. So rape isnt' real! No, I'm not saying that you're arguing that rape isn't real--I'm posting a necessary result of a consistent application of your logic that's so vile that I can be reasonably certain no one here will defend it. Still, when you see the flaw in my example (and it IS flawed, and I assume you know it), you'll see the flaw in your own statement.RandFan said:
Eh, why not? I'm honestly curious as to how LDS members will answer some of the challanges that will be presented to them. Like I said, most (but not all, it turns out!jasonpatterson said:
) religions that broke from Catholicism, and most if not all of the sects within Catholicism and the various Protestant religions, argue that they are attempting to bring a fallen Church back to Christ. I'd like to see what Mormons think makes their claim any different.
Hang on, I agree with you. If you knew god was going to punish you if you did not do as he says, is it a rational choice to not obey?
I'll be honest, I can't open the video just yet. I may have misread your post, and if I did I apologize for it. I kind of thought I might have, which is why I put in the caveats saying I was only picking an extreme example because extreme examples are less likely to be believed.RandFan said:
To be fair the video isn't relevant to that point. It's to counter the idea that consensual sex outside of a marriage between a man and a woman is per se a sin.
I tend to be bad at catching inflection in written language.