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What do Mormons Believe?

ponderingturtle said:
Some of this feels like you are choosing the extreem to refute the majority, so it would be sort of like useing the FLDS church to refute the LDS church.

The main disagreement we seem to have is that you concider all religions to be equaly full of strange beliefs, that is not true because for example not all christians would take the opinion that god wanted him to kill his daughter. There are also ones who would take the opinion that it was just a historic record of him killing his daughter.
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No, and this is really frustrating because I have made my point clear time and time again.

Christians like Doc are not eager to agree that there are many bizarre Christians beliefs. Beliving that the bible is a moral guide is bizarre.

Again, why is the story of Jephthah there at all? A historical record of a man who is fighting on behalf of god's people keeping a promise to god serves what purpose? Your dismissal makes no sense in the light of a bible literalism that holds that God meant for ALL of the bible to have a purpose (according to literalists). Tell us of this purpose? What lessons do we learn from a story of a man who promises god to sacrifice whatever greets him at his door? What are we to learn from a story where god delivers to this man the battle? What are we to learn from the fact that Jephthah kills his daughter?

I'm waiting.

This is dirrect evidence that not all religions are equaly full of strange beliefs.
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You strain at a gnat and sallow a camel. Never mind virgin birth. Never mind walking on water. Never mind bushes that burn and are never consumed. Never mind the BS magical thinking throughout the bible and all of the stories that are contradicted by science and evidence.
 
RandFan said:
Both are works of fiction. If you think Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara are real people because the book Gone With The Wind has some historical truth then you are deluded. That there is some historical fact to GWTW doesn't make it true. You are engaging in fallacy. Christian beliefs are bizarre. Murdering one's children which is an OT commandment is bizarre. God's emissary ordering the mass murdering children is bizarre. Sacrificing one's child because of a promise to god is bizarre. There's just no getting around that. A small bit of historical basis doesn't wash away the silliness.
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So you would view claims about the historic validity of Gone with the Wind and The Lord of the Rings as equally delusional?
 
ponderingturtle said:
So you would view claims about the historic validity of Gone with the Wind and The Lord of the Rings as equally delusional?
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Entirely beside the point. If someone started a religion that held that both were books about real people and the principles and values in them were divinely inspired I would vew both beliefs as equally delusional.
 
RandFan said:
Both are works of fiction. If you think Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara are real people because the book Gone With The Wind has some historical truth then you are deluded. That there is some historical fact to GWTW doesn't make it true. You are engaging in fallacy. Christian beliefs are bizarre. Murdering one's children which is an OT commandment is bizarre. God's emissary ordering the mass murdering children is bizarre. Sacrificing one's child because of a promise to god is bizarre. There's just no getting around that. A small bit of historical basis doesn't wash away the silliness.
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Agreed. If one wants to argue that the fantasy parts are less bizarre if they're mixed in with verifiable historic fact, then the LDS Doctrine and Convenants has the Bible beat by far. When god is supposedly speaking in the U.S. less than 200 years ago, there's no need for archaeological digs or ancient texts to get the historical context--just check it all out in U.S. census records, newspapers, etc.
 
ponderingturtle
As for the claims of miracles, how many of them would leave evidence in that would be testable now?
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Noah flood
Tower of Babble
Garden of Eden
The exodus from Egypt
Life and times of Jesus
Zombies wandering about
One or more 2,000+ year old people wandering about
True Christian super powers
Bones of giants
Fulfillment of various OT prophecies (fall of Tyre, the messiah)
Fulfillment of various NT prophecies

So it is acurate saying that medical doctors believe in homeopathy then. Because there are medical doctors who do believe in homeopathy, it is a valid way to show the problems in modern medicine by attacking homeopathy?
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Ahem, you originally stated:
Then you will need to find say Christians who say that about shellfish, or that rabbits chew cud. Sure that is an argument used by some Christians but no one believes everything in the bible.
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Sorry, but you’re incorrect. There are Christian sects that believe everything in the bible. You’ve made the assumption that the reference included all Christians.

So your case is a straw-man, you are presenting a belief that is not held(the rightness of his Jephthah actions) and attacking that.
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But that belief is held by various sects of Christians.

Well please demonstrate that there are Christians who would argue that it was a moral action.
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Consult any fundy Southern Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist or Church of Christ member you can find.

My point is that the BoM is less credible than the bible because there is supporting evidence in at least broad terms for many events in the bible. Is there any archaeological support of the BoM? I am not aware of any.
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There is no supporting archeological evidence for the BoM. But that doesn’t matter. Mormons, just like other Christians, use the faith card to avoid of any question they don’t like.

As far as horrible acts in the bible go, why limit yourself to one murder, why not go the root of showing its support for what would generally be considered crimes against humanity?
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Because this discussion was about the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter.

The main disagreement we seem to have is that you concider all religions to be equaly full of strange beliefs, that is not true because for example not all christians would take the opinion that god wanted him to kill his daughter.
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And you’re just playing the backswing in trying to justify slightly bizarre beliefs by stating that not all Christians believe the really bizarre stuff.

Ossai
 
I have to weigh in on RandFan's side here.

All the weirdness in the BOM is paralleled in the Bible, because it is derived from the Bible. A lot of the weirdnesses in the Bible seem less weird because they are so remote to us.

The journey of the Israelites to the US is obviously based on the Exodus. Like the Exodus, it never happened, but (like Exodus) it can be read as a symbolic statement about the mythological place of the US (or Egypt) in the 19th century.

The mysterious discovery of the Book of Mormon is the mysterious discovery of the Book of Daniel. Both books clearly were written with persons contemporary to their discovery in mind. Both were shaky on history, and both were out and out wrong on prophecy.

The doctrine as to whether God is flesh and blood or not is in dispute to this day, although most mainline Protestant sects say no. Catholics of course make the idea that God can become flesh a mainstay of their religion.

God lives on Kolob? How about the earth is at the center of the universe surrounded by a great black sheet with lights stuck on in, and beyond the sheet lives Yahweh and his wife Aseroth and some other Gods and the occasional sphinx-like angel and various other monsters. Both stories put God just outside the known universe, and both make wild guesses about what's just out of sight. Talk to the people who think God is on the other side of the boundary of the Big Bang for more information.

The Bible is full of what appear to be references to magic tricks, we just can't be sure what's going on because we have lost the context. Water into wine, summoning spirits, lighting altar fires spontaneously, turning a rod into a snake, drawing water from a rock by hitting hit, burning bushes, etc., etc. Ironically if we saw someone doing some of these old tricks we'd laugh it off because we'd see right away how it was done. We just assume that the people who saw the tricks would also have figured it out--but because they didn't, there must have been a genuine miracle.


Have I missed anything important?
 
Ossai said:
There is no supporting archeological evidence for the BoM. But that doesn’t matter. Mormons, just like other Christians, use the faith card to avoid of any question they don’t like.
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Much like the faith atheists have that life and eventually humans came from non-living chemicals.
 
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Sandy M said:
Originally Posted by sinclairmcevoy
I could come up with a better story than Joseph Smith. I think I'll call it the book of Moron.
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They already have the Angel Moron(i).
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Just making sure we do all realize that Mormon, Moroni, etc. were coined a a couple generations before anyone had heard of the word "moron," which was coined by Dr. Henry Goddard at the turn of the 20th Century. I mean, yes, it's funny they sound similar and all, but honestly, it seems like a cheap shot, when there's so much more to deal with. Who knows what people will be snickering at in our own writing today, when new words are coined in the future or new meanings added to old ones?
 
DOC said:
Much like the faith atheists have that life and eventually humans came from non-living chemicals.
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"Faith"?

The Earth is not the center of the universe.
The Earth is not flat.
Carbon can be synthesized.
All matter is made up of elementary particles.
(a very short list)

These were all unproven at one time. However they were important for a very specific reason. They were scientific statements that could be researched and falsified. The great thinkers from out past could have stuck their heads in the sand and accepted stone age myths but they didn't. They sought to find answers even in the face of ignorant people that felt a deep seated need not to try and find answers to the natural world.

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. [Cardinal Bellarmino, 17th Century Church Master Collegio Romano.]
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Abiogenesis is a theory put forth in an attempt to answer some very difficult questions. Science does not take it on faith. Science is seeking answers.

What is the option? Stick our heads in the sand and say "God did it". If that was humanities stock in trade for understanding our natural world then we would still not know that the world was round and that the earth revolves around the sun.

So, like the religious folks in the past that prefered to stick their heads in the sand and scoff at scientists you can scoff but abiogenesis is not dogma. If you have a better scientific theory that can be studied and tested then let us know. Otherwise you are making ridiculous claims and arguing from ignorance.
 
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DOC
Much like the faith atheists have that life and eventually humans came from non-living chemicals.
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Speaking for myself, I have no faith. What I have is trust, experience, observation, and a willingness to learn.
 
Quote from Doc

Christ also respected Moses...

RandFan said:
Respecting serial child murderers is bizarre. It pales in comparison to the messed up beliefs of Mormons.
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So I guess Harry Truman was a serial child murderer also because of all the child deaths in Tokyo from incinerating bombs and the 2 cities where the atom bombs were dropped.

Life was extremely difficult back in the time of Moses. How would you like to be the leader of at least 20 thousand people who were wandering homeless in a harsh desert. Moses first responsibility was the survival and spiritual non-contamination of his own people. War was a way of life back then and when you won a war what are you to due with hundreds or thousands of your enemies children. You probably can barely feed your own children in the harsh desert much less having to cart around and feed the children of your enemy who probably don't even speak your language. Moses was successful in assuring the survival of his people or we might not be talking about him thousands of years later. If they had condos, cable TV, supermarkets, and air conditioning back then maybe Moses might not of had to worry so much about the survival of his own people. Moses got the job done, that's why were talking about him.
 
DOC said:
So I guess Harry Truman was a serial child murderer also because of all the child deaths in Tokyo from incinerating bombs and the 2 cities where the atom bombs were dropped.
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No, that would be "mass murderer," and that would be a matter of opinion.

Some argue that it was done as an act of war, in wartime, and prevented more deaths than it caused.

Others see it as mass murder of innocent civilians, period.

There are surely other opinions, as well.



Life was extremely difficult back in the time of Moses. How would you like to be the leader of at least 20 thousand people who were wandering homeless in a harsh desert. Moses first responsibility was the survival and spiritual non-contamination of his own people. War was a way of life back then and when you won a war what are you to due with hundreds or thousands of your enemies children. You probably can barely feed your own children in the harsh desert much less having to cart around and feed the children of your enemy who probably don't even speak your language. Moses was successful in assuring the survival of his people or we might not be talking about him thousands of years later. If they had condos, cable TV, supermarkets, and air conditioning back then maybe Moses might not of had to worry so much about the survival of his own people. Moses got the job done, that's why were talking about him.
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If your god can't get his will accomplished in any better way than by primitive, barbaric rapine and murder, then what makes him any different from or holier than us? And if he's no different, why worship him?
 
DOC said:
Quote from Doc

Christ also respected Moses...



So I guess Harry Truman was a serial child murderer also because of all the child deaths in Tokyo from incinerating bombs and the 2 cities where the atom bombs were dropped.

Life was extremely difficult back in the time of Moses. How would you like to be the leader of at least 20 thousand people who were wandering homeless in a harsh desert. Moses first responsibility was the survival and spiritual non-contamination of his own people. War was a way of life back then and when you won a war what are you to due with hundreds or thousands of your enemies children. You probably can barely feed your own children in the harsh desert much less having to cart around and feed the children of your enemy who probably don't even speak your language. Moses was successful in assuring the survival of his people or we might not be talking about him thousands of years later. If they had condos, cable TV, supermarkets, and air conditioning back then maybe Moses might not of had to worry so much about the survival of his own people. Moses got the job done, that's why were talking about him.
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1) Why couldn't god feed the children, he fed the people in the desert?

2) What else do you do with children? Slaves.

3) Hundreds of thousands of children? sounds like the kids alone could have over powered the 20 thousand following Moses, let alone their parents. Oh wait, are we arguing about a post hoc account of a fictional event? Oh there is the problem.

So the morals of Moses's actions reflect a later author, and not the harsh realities of Moses's supposed lifetime.

As for spiritual non-contamination, any Egyptian refugees were a mixed group that did already possess many different faiths. This is a completely anachronistic outlook.
 
RandFan said:
You strain at a gnat and sallow a camel. Never mind virgin birth. Never mind walking on water. Never mind bushes that burn and are never consumed. Never mind the BS magical thinking throughout the bible and all of the stories that are contradicted by science and evidence.
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So what physical evidence is lacking for these things that if they happened would be expected to exist?
 
RandFan said:
Entirely beside the point. If someone started a religion that held that both were books about real people and the principles and values in them were divinely inspired I would vew both beliefs as equally delusional.
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And this is the core of our disagreement.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So what physical evidence is lacking for these things that if they happened would be expected to exist?
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Walk on water. Turn water into wine.

If I say that I once flew around the world simply by flapping my arms and with some mystical power would you believe me?
 
ponderingturtle said:
And this is the core of our disagreement.
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What is? What are you talking about?

BTW, let's make something clear here. The bible is more like Star Wars or Harry Potter in that it is full of magical thinking so it is not simply stories about fictional people set in historical times. It's about fictional people who have the force with them (the power of god).
 
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