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pakeha said:
Isn't the Book of Abraham a corruption of the OT foisted on his followers by Smith?
I think the real subject here is scamming, don't you?
In this case, pretending to translate papyrus texts or 'gold plates' to manipulate the vulnerable.
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Guess I see it as a distinction without a difference, since the key point is not that the work would be valuable historically if it was "real," like, say, a forgery of Hitler's diary. Instead, the key point is that it was supposed to be the word of a powerful god.

The damage he did by corrupting real academic research is almost nil. Even back in the day, Professor Anthon rejected Smith's translation of the papyrus immediately upon hearing that Smith claimed to translate it supernaturally, and no one but the FAIR folks use the Book of Mormon to guide actual ancient American archaeology.

So it comes down to one con man vs another. If a Methodist preacher announced, "The God I represent wrote this holy book, the Old Testament, which proves you should do what I say," and Joseph Smith announced the same thing, substituting "the Pearl of Great Price," for "Old Testament," Smith's main wrongdoing wouldn't be that he was infringing on the other manipulator's nice little con game, it would be that he was manipulating people, period.

I guess, in the sense that there's "honor among thieves," it's wrong to move in on someone else's already-in-progress con. But that just seems a trivial immorality, compared to the other three things that Wolrab mentioned.
 
Janadele said:
Immorality, evil and wickedness has always been against Eternal Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ... and always will be, and has never been condoned or accepted by God.
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When you say god, you are talking about the one you think, created immorality, evil and wickedness, right?
 
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Janadele said:
Immorality, evil and wickedness has always been against Eternal Law
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Dunno. I have always enjoyed some immorality, evil and wickedness. You should try it some time. Most refreshing. This "Eternal Law"...first cousin to your imaginary International Internet laws, is it?
Janadele said:
and the Gospel of Jesus Christ... and always will be,
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That's just made up stories from 2000 years ago
Janadele said:
and has never been condoned or accepted by God.
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I don't care what gunderscored thinks, because he doesn't think, because he doesn't exist.
 
deaman said:
Oh.

OK.

Who created the universe and everything in it?
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It's turtles all the way down deaman. There was no beginning. The passion play being played out on Earth is happening throughout the known universe and perhaps in other universes. God was once a man living on another planet. He was righteous and so he became a god. Someday Janedele will become a goddess. She will marry a man who has many other goddesses as wives. They will procreate spirits and the cycle of spirit life will perpetuate for eternity worlds without end.
 
RandFan said:
It's turtles all the way down deaman. There was no beginning. The passion play being played out on Earth is happening throughout the known universe and perhaps in other universes. God was once a man living on another planet. He was righteous and so he became a god. Someday Janedele will become a goddess. She will marry a man who has many other goddesses as wives. They will procreate spirits and the cycle of spirit life will perpetuate for eternity worlds without end.
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Oops. I forgot, the Prophet Gordon B. Hinkley, seemed to disavow the concept.

Mormon Doctrine said:
source "Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?"

"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it." - Gordon B. Hinckley, Time Magazine, Aug 4, 1997

"Don't Mormons believe that God was once a man?"

"I wouldn't say that. There was a little couplet coined, 'As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.' Now that's more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about." - Gordon B. Hinckley, San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997, p 3/Z1
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That of course is contradicted by what he earlier said.

IBID said:
"On the other hand, the whole design of the gospel is to lead us onward and upward to greater achievement, even, eventually, to godhood. This great possibility was enunciated by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the King Follet sermon (see Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 342-62); and emphasized by President Lorenzo Snow. It is this grand and incomparable concept: As God now is, man may become!" - Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, General Conference, October 1994
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RandFan said:
It's turtles all the way down deaman. There was no beginning. The passion play being played out on Earth is happening throughout the known universe and perhaps in other universes. God was once a man living on another planet. He was righteous and so he became a god. Someday Janedele will become a goddess. She will marry a man who has many other goddesses as wives. They will procreate spirits and the cycle of spirit life will perpetuate for eternity worlds without end.
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Woah. Really? I ran into some "As god was, man is; as god is, man will be" folks a while ago in AZ. I had no idea it was an actual doctrine...
 
Thanks for chiming in Randfan. I am fully aware of the brainwashing given by the mormon church, but my question is really aimed at Janadele.

Who created Satan?

How many people of color are apostles?

Why weren't black people allowed to hold the priesthood?

Does skin color determine righteousness?

Are the words of all general authorities sacred truth, if not, why not?

How come god approved of plural marriage, but buckled under the weight of the US government? Is the government more powerful than god?
 
I completely understand deman. BTW, you should see my other post where I show that the prophet establishes that we can become gods and then disavowing it.
 
Janadele, the bible (Isaiah 45:7) is quite clear that God created evil. Is the bible wrong?
 
Pup said:
Guess I see it as a distinction without a difference, since the key point is not that the work would be valuable historically if it was "real," like, say, a forgery of Hitler's diary. Instead, the key point is that it was supposed to be the word of a powerful god.

The damage he did by corrupting real academic research is almost nil. Even back in the day, Professor Anthon rejected Smith's translation of the papyrus immediately upon hearing that Smith claimed to translate it supernaturally, and no one but the FAIR folks use the Book of Mormon to guide actual ancient American archaeology.

So it comes down to one con man vs another. If a Methodist preacher announced, "The God I represent wrote this holy book, the Old Testament, which proves you should do what I say," and Joseph Smith announced the same thing, substituting "the Pearl of Great Price," for "Old Testament," Smith's main wrongdoing wouldn't be that he was infringing on the other manipulator's nice little con game, it would be that he was manipulating people, period.

I guess, in the sense that there's "honor among thieves," it's wrong to move in on someone else's already-in-progress con. But that just seems a trivial immorality, compared to the other three things that Wolrab mentioned.
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"So it comes down to one con man vs another. "
No, Pup, it doesn't.

We aren't comparing religions here.
If you want to get into that, why not start a thread on the subject?
What we're discussing is the LDS and specifically the scam of the 'translations' Smith foisted on his followers.
'Translations' the LDS continues to support even to this day.



RandFan said:
It's turtles all the way down deaman. There was no beginning. The passion play being played out on Earth is happening throughout the known universe and perhaps in other universes. God was once a man living on another planet. He was righteous and so he became a god. Someday Janedele will become a goddess. She will marry a man who has many other goddesses as wives. They will procreate spirits and the cycle of spirit life will perpetuate for eternity worlds without end.
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Does this mean the LDS believes in re-incarnation?
 
pakeha said:
Does this mean the LDS believes in re-incarnation?
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No. Spirits are born in the pre-mortal existence. The are sent to live a mortal existence to be tested. If they are obedient they can go to the top level of heaven known as the Celestial kingdom and become gods. If not they go to one of the other two levels. Those who become gods perpetuate the cycle by having new spirit children.
 
pakeha said:
"So it comes down to one con man vs another. "
No, Pup, it doesn't.

We aren't comparing religions here.
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We are, if we're talking about whether one man "corrupted" another religion's Bible by writing his own books--and I'm not the one who first brought that up.

What we're discussing is the LDS and specifically the scam of the 'translations' Smith foisted on his followers.
'Translations' the LDS continues to support even to this day.
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It seems to bother you any time I point out that other religions do similar things as the LDS church. I don't understand it. There's no requirement that posters in this thread must make the LDS church look uniquely worse, by avoiding any comparison that puts other religions in an equally bad light.

There are lots of faithful Christians who charge the LDS Church with doing exactly what Dinwar said: corrupting the Bible. It seems on-topic to point out that that's an accusation which is only valid if one believes the Bible to be sacred.

If you think that corrupting the Bible is morally wrong, well, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Non-LDS Christians, however, will sometimes get more upset at that point than anything else, which seems ironic because the founders of their faith did exactly the same thing--corrupted another religion's Torah with their own new books.
 
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Funny thing, I was brought up Christian by some very nice and very wise people, some quite liberal and some less so by old time standards, but all would be appalled at the reactionary tone of politics these days. One of the reasons I do not regret my lack of faith is that Christians these days seem so overwhelmingly to believe that religion and right wing politics are identical. I wish I could believe Janadele and her ilk are the exceptions and the Quakers the rule, but I'm afraid it's not so. What the hell is that all about anyway? How did Jesus end up as the advocate of jealousy, greed and exclusion?
 
bruto said:
How did Jesus end up as the advocate of jealousy, greed and exclusion?
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His followers claim to be right while everyone else is not only wrong, but will burn in eternal agony for being wrong. How could that kind of belief NOT lead to this?
 
Pup said:
It seems to bother you any time I point out that other religions do similar things as the LDS church.
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My immediate reaction is, so what if other religions do similar things?
 
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