Is Mormonism any less true or sillier than other religions?

[dylan2001]

Religion comes from the hearts and minds of mankind. If they are braindead then so will their answers be.

 

[Somthing Witty]

I'm not exactly sure how any religion could be "less true" than any other; however, yes, Mormonism is sillier than Judaism and Christianity...and a hell of a lot more cultish, as well.

isn't it a Christian sect?

I think there's enough differentiation for it to be considered a stand-alone. Once you throw out the concepts of heaven and hell, introduce a parallel and subsequent history, claim the Bible is corrupt, and introduce a line of home-grown prophets...I would argue the line from sect to off-shoot has been crossed.

As religions go, I believe it's more appropriate to state that Mormonism is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism.

 

[AdMan]

The question posed is whether or not mormonism supplies a viable answer and I propose that they do not.

As do no other religions.

 

[DC]

I think there's enough differentiation for it to be considered a stand-alone. Once you throw out the concepts of heaven and hell, introduce a parallel and subsequent history, claim the Bible is corrupt, and introduce a line of home-grown prophets...I would argue the line from sect to off-shoot has been crossed.

As religions go, I believe it's more appropriate to state that Mormonism is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism.

ah thanks. i don't really know much about them yet.

 

[DC]

The question posed is whether or not mormonism supplies a viable answer and I propose that they do not.

and your religion has viable answers to it?

 

[DanishDynamite]

Religion comes from the hearts and minds of mankind. If they are braindead then so will their answers be.

I agree completely that religion comes from the hearts and minds of mankind (assuming you meant "heart" metaphorically). Glad we agree. And yes, for those minds that are braindead, so are their answers.

 

[dylan2001]

But i recently read a very good book on the subject.

 

[DC]

But i recently read a very good book on the subject.

Dyanetics?

 

[DanishDynamite]

But i recently read a very good book on the subject.

Uhhh...sorry don't see the relevance. Do you, or do you not feel that Mormonism is sillier than other religions?

 

[dylan2001]

Sorry didn't mean to end the discussion.

 

[DC]

Travis could tell us? Or not?

oh well i do hope so, he or any other mormon or ex mormon will tell us.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Sorry didn't mean to end the discussion.

End the discussion? We have hardly begun, my braindead friend!

 

[godless dave]

I think the fact that their holy book was dictated by a convicted fraudster talking into his hat and the fact that they are expected to wear sacred underpants makes the Mormons sillier than most and just as true as any of the major religions.

The person who dictated the Koran may have had a similarly shady background, and he claimed to have recited it after a visit from an angel.

We don't know much at all about the people who made up Christianity; their details are lost to time.

Ditto Judaism (I suspect an obsessive-compulsive, controlling father was involved but we'll never know).

Mormon only seems sillier because it is recent enough that we have access to more records about its genesis. Plus it was invented shortly before the advent of modern archeology. The Jewish priests in exile in Babylon could make up the Exodus story with great confidence that nobody would be able to unearth more about the history of Egypt than was known at the time. Smith probably thought the same when he made up stories about a lost tribe of Israel building a civilization in North America.

 

[dylan2001]

Its just really pathetic to sit back in judgment of earlier times and people who were not afraid to ask the questions of life. You have benefited from the best educations in world history and you bury your heads in the sand indtead of asking the real questions.

 

[godless dave]

Religion asks how can so much beauty coexist with so much pain?

No, some human beings ask that question. Religions provide what they allege to be factual answers in an attempt to answer that question and others.

 

[DC]

Its just really pathetic to sit back in judgment of earlier times and people who were not afraid to ask the questions of life. You have benefited from the best educations in world history and you bury your heads in the sand indtead of asking the real questions.

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

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

they ask the question and search for the answer instead of making up one.

 

[godless dave]

If your answers to that are easy I would like to hear them.

I don't consider it a meaningful question. "Beauty" is a subjective human perception. "Pain" is a feeling (or feelings) in the nervous system. Is there any reason they wouldn't both exist in the proportions they do now? Can we even quantify beauty, being as subjective a concept as it is?

 

[Dunstan]

Its just really pathetic to sit back in judgment of earlier times and people who were not afraid to ask the questions of life. You have benefited from the best educations in world history and you bury your heads in the sand indtead of asking the real questions.

No, what's pathetic is for you to come in here and start making assumptions about what people here have read and thought about. A person's posts in one particular thread aren't the sum total of his or her thoughts on an entire area.

 

[godless dave]

Religion comes from the hearts and minds of mankind. If they are braindead then so will their answers be.

So do music, art, and literature, but I've never had someone tell me I will be punished for eternity because I don't think Captain Ahab was a real person who hunted a white whale, or because I don't worship either one as a god, or even if I don't like the book.

Whether Mormonism answers your question about beauty and pain isn't relevant to its truth. Its truth is determined by whether or not there really is a God who will reward men who worship him in the correct way with planets of their own to be gods of.

We're not mocking Joseph Smith, or Mohammed, or Paul, or anybody else for asking questions.

We're mocking them for making up answers to those questions, providing no credible evidence for the truth of those answers, then telling people that their lives and/or immortal souls (also unevidenced) depend on believing those answers and following the instructions of whoever made up the answers.

 

[dylan2001]

Well as I said earlier, some people think not feel that the unequal distribution of beauty, plfeasure and pain to be highly relevant. The ideas of justice and evil are reasons for many to question the ability of any god being to exist at all. And when you delete that idea you end up with all sorts of problems with causality in the universe.