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Janadele said:
Inspirational also how a desert wilderness has been transformed through faith and effort into a garden and modern day oasis for a happy family oriented lifestyle.
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Not really, because the irrigation needed to water the Mormon lands decimated the crops and livelihoods of native tribes. When you look at the human cost of Mormon settlement of Utah, you see yet another case of an invading population displacing, starving and killing a native people.

Mark Twain has a wonderful essay in which he compares and contrasts these two populations in the form of speeches given by the leaders. The Mormon leader brags about converting the wasteland into a paradise. The Native American leader talks about tier paradise being parched into a wasteland. The essay was about unforeseen consequences, and how even good intentions can have evil results.

It's hard to see pure beauty in a thing when you know of the death and human misery that was part of crafting it.
 
Ambrosia said:
If you could distill that out of religion and dump all of the other baggage, I might sign up for that one.
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Agreed. There is much I like about Mormonism and Mormons. :)

Agatha said:
Randfan, that's admirable. I'm in awe of how much work and soul-searching you must have done to critically examine your previous faith and seen it for the con-job it is.
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Thank you. I can also tell you that there was a lot of pain and heartache. Family relations were strained. Some to the breaking point. But overall I'm better. I don't have the cognitive dissonance I once suffered from so terribly. In the Mormon church speaking your conscience can get you excommunicated. So I had to keep my thoughts about racism and the dishonesty of whitewashing the church's history to myself.
 
How perceptive of you :) and you are right. It is the pureness of heart and wholesomeness of their world. The light of Christ from within. Yes, I have been to Utah many times and spent much time there. It is wonderful to be in an LDS community and see this example in everyday living. Such a blessing.

Inspirational also how a desert wilderness has been transformed through faith and effort into a garden and modern day oasis for a happy family oriented lifestyle.
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Okay...what is 'pureness of heart', and why do you believe Mormons possess it? Do you think they have more of it then members of other religions? If so, why?

/me is Dragon. I know nothing of purity except 24k. ;)
 
Janadele said:
I have always been a Christian, was raised an Anglican, fellowshipped with the Salvation Army. Assisted with the Billy Graham Crusades at the young age of eleven. Married in the Anglican Church. At home with my first child as a three month old baby, a knock came to my door. Though not knowing who was there, when the knock came, I was overwhelmed with a desire to open the door. Two young men stood there. I had no knowledge of them or why they were there, but the desire to speak with them was overwhelming. I had never before that even heard of the Book of Mormon, Latter-day Saints or the LDS Church. I was asked to read the first few chapters and to pray to Jesus Christ and enquire as to whether it was true. On doing so, a burning within and a flood of knowledge overcame my being, there was no denying the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon and the message the LDS Missionaries had delivered to my door personally to me from the Lord. I was told I was a "golden contact" and that the Missionaries, though not even in the area, had been inspired to travel specifically to my home.
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Thanks for the answer. I must admit that I've read the first few chapters of the book of mormon and found them, to put it mildly, boring and uninspired.
Only the geanologies in the OT were duller in my opinion.
Good for you to find your personal happiness there I guess.
However, since its a personal thing, its not convincing to me at all.
The sheer amount of errors in the book to me make it just as much a human construct as every other so called holy book.

Then again, I was raised agnostic and therefore never was told from birth that Jesus christ was actually divine.
 
Janadele said:
Inspirational also how a desert wilderness has been transformed through faith and effort into a garden and modern day oasis for a happy family oriented lifestyle.
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Sort of like Las Vegas. Only with worse fountains.
 
Janadele said:
Inspirational also how a desert wilderness has been transformed through faith and effort into a garden and modern day oasis for a happy family oriented lifestyle.
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Janadele, this is confirmation bias. You are simply looking for the good and ignoring the bad to find a reason to rationalize your belief. In fact, there are many societies with less crime, less mental pathology and overall higher rates of well-being.

Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment
 
My late husband never joined, nor did he give his permission for me to be baptised. However he did not stop me from attending nor raising our six children LDS. One of our sons was on his mission in Colorado when his late father appeared to him and his companion and asked to be baptised. There was great excitement in the mission, and my son was baptised as proxy for his father in the Denver Temple.
halleyscomet said:
Janadele,

How does your husband feel about your conversion?
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One of our sons was on his mission in Colorado when his late father appeared to him and his companion and asked to be baptised.
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Do you mean his father's ghost appeared to him? And of all the questions in the universe to ask or answer, his only thought was to become Mormon?
 
Janadele said:
My late husband never joined, nor did he give his permission for me to be baptised. However he did not stop me from attending nor raising our six children LDS. One of our sons was on his mission in Colorado when his late father appeared to him and his companion and asked to be baptised. There was great excitement in the mission, and my son was baptised as proxy for his father in the Denver Temple.
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Well, it's nice of your son to want to please his mother like that, but you can't really believe that your dead husband's ghost appeared and asked for a baptism, can you?
 
Ambrosia said, "do onto others, as you'd want them to do onto you."

sackett said, "do all over others as you'd want them to do all over you."

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I have no business playing the fool with somebody's honest typo!
 
'Kay, back to biziness. Joe Smith often makes me think of John Frum, with the difference that some people still (or anyway recently) living have or had actual memories of Frum. (J. Smiff is safely in the land of legend, and the Saints can make up and believe any damn thing about him.)

Why do I bring up this preposterous cargo cult?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum

Because it makes just as much sense as LDS -- or Catholicism or Islamism or Jainism or any of the depressingly numerous religions that humans trouble themselves with.

But Cargo is my fave living religion, and I drag it into discussions of this type whenever I can. Question for Janadele: What is the essential difference between Mormonism and John Frumism?
 
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Janadele said:
My late husband never joined, nor did he give his permission for me to be baptised. However he did not stop me from attending nor raising our six children LDS. One of our sons was on his mission in Colorado when his late father appeared to him and his companion and asked to be baptised. There was great excitement in the mission, and my son was baptised as proxy for his father in the Denver Temple.
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Extreme duress and anguish over the loss of a loved one can result in a variety of hallucinations. However, your second hand recounting of a hallucination is not compelling evidence. It is however touching that your son loved his father enough to have that kind of hallucination or loves you enough to lie about it.

Then again, he could just be terrified of you of be desperately seeking your approval or attention. I don't know what your family dynamic is like.
 
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Janadele said:
Yes, I can :)
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It violates parsimony and makes a claim that cannot be verified.

When I was on my mission we had a prospective member who told us that she was visited by Jesus and told that the Mormon Church was of the Devil and to stop meeting with us. She was very upset and sorry.

Such claims can be explained though human psychology. There isn't a single major religion on earth that doesn't have millions of such anecdotes.
 
Baptism by authority on this earth, either preferably in person while in mortality, or by proxy when deceased, is a requisite to enable progression in the eternities.

Baptism by authority is a requirement for every mortal who has ever lived on this earth... otherwise their progression is restricted and they cannot inherit eternal salvation.
DragonLady said:
Do you mean his father's ghost appeared to him? And of all the questions in the universe to ask or answer, his only thought was to become Mormon?
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Janadele said:
Baptism by authority on this earth, either preferably in person while in mortality, or by proxy when deceased, is a requisite to enable progression in the eternities.

Baptism by authority is a requirement for every mortal who has ever lived on this earth... otherwise their progression is restricted and they cannot inherit eternal salvation.
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So, if God's children don't jump through the right hoop he cuts them off forever.
 
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