Really going to bed anytime now...

But thought I'd share this idea with you, iamjackprostrate.

If the magic pants help to constantly remind you about the covenant with god, etc., wouldn't a magic butt plug be a much, much stronger reminder? I'm mocking a little bit, but man, it'd be hard not be aware of that 24/7!

I'm sleepy, it's late, I'm irreverent...

well, lucky for me i didnt get that far in church ceremonies, for all i know, they may have butt plugs.
If thats the case, hey man, whatever floats your boat, but ill be on another ship.

Heres to going commando.

Amen, brother. I've actually been thinking of startign my own religion, where people have to "not be retards" and "give me all their money." Because then, I get a lot of retard money and don't have to send them to heaven.

hmmmm... church of the holy suppository. i'd be willing to bet, someone has already done it.

in that vein, i give you jackhammer jesus (nsfw), the crucifixion dildo.

1. start a religion
2. promise salvation for $$$
3. PROFIT!!!

sounds good to me, lets call it Scientology...

Oh, wait....

of course someone has already done it...shoulda just followed that link further.

baby jesus butt plug (nsfw)

mbrother One last thought before I hit bed myself.

I'd have to say the "Do X,Y, and Z or else burn forever" religions are the most fundemantalist ones, not the most organized ones. I did my Mormon missionary bit for 2 years in the South, so I got to see a wide range of Christianity and different denominations. I agree with you, many did do certain things simply because they were told they must or else. They were too afraid of the lake of fire and brimstone if they didn't toe the line. Most people though were apathetic, and wanted to be good, but didn't really show an effort. A few others really wanted to know the truth before acting on anything. But ya, the fundamenalist churches really fit your descriptions of being self-selecting on what they can or can't believe...and they were the most annoying and hostile and least spiritual ones I met.

For what it's worth, the Mormon church's official doctrine is more of less one of slow progression...as long as the progression is moving forward at a decent pace. Our church doctrine also has a spirit world after death, which gives some people a much longer time to do it in (in case people kept progressing forward, but didn't quite make it far enough, when they died). Also our final judgement does not classify a person to either heaven or hell, but to 4 different places (and the first 3 allow for varying degrees within them).

mbrother If the magic pants help to constantly remind you about the covenant with god, etc., wouldn't a magic butt plug be a much, much stronger reminder?

Hahaha. Heh, the garments are more of a symbolism thing than a reminder. If the purpose solely was a reminder, *gasp*, your idea would work unfortunately well.

helix400
For what it's worth, the Mormon church's official doctrine is more of less one of slow progression...as long as the progression is moving forward at a decent pace. Our church doctrine also has a spirit world after death, which gives some people a much longer time to do it in (in case people kept progressing forward, but didn't quite make it far enough, when they died). Also our final judgement does not classify a person to either heaven or hell, but to 4 different places (and the first 3 allow for varying degrees within them).

You see, this is where I have problems with Mormons. NO "orthodox" Christian church, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or any of the various Protestant rites, subscribes to these beliefs. They're pure invention by Joseph Smith and his followers.

Now, if the Mormons want to proclaim them as part of their own unique faith, fine and good, but DON'T CALL IT CHRISTIAN!

It's not.

mouser
The Voice of Reason has Spoken.

for an offshoot religion, ya'll seem rather persnickity about other offshoot religions.

rocketray

Nice pic. Bella is hot.

RingWraith, you do realize that many of the arguments you have brought up against the LDS could also be applied to Christianity as a whole? For instance, the idea that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized from Spaldings Manuscript Found (mere parallels do not prove plagiarism, or else DC Comics would long ago have sued J. K. Rowling for blatantly ripping off their Tim Hunter character to create her Harry Potter) brings up the question of why Jesus has so many parallels to such prior deities as Mithra ("He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." John 6:53-54? Nope. An inscription to Mithras), Horus, Osiris, and Krishna, among others, some of whom predate His story by thousands of years.

Differing accounts of the First Vision? That has nothing on the differing accounts of the most important event to Christianity, namely, the Resurrection. Read the Four Gospel Accounts in your own Bible (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20), and ask each of the Gospel writers these questions as if you were a judge and they were witnesses brought before you to testify of this event:Who, if anyone, accompanied Mary Magdalene to the Tomb?What time of the morning did she / they come to the tomb? Before or after the Sun had risen? (This one is vitally important, as even with the most liberal interpretation imaginable, it's not possible to fulfill Jesus's own test, which He Himself said was the one and only sign to be given to the world at large of the truth of His Resurrection: the Sign of the Prophet Jonas. Jesus had to have been in the earth for three days [daytimes] and three nights, and none of the accounts allow this. Two of them don't even allow for three days, since a daytime in the Jewish calendar was held to begin at sunrise, therefore any time prior to sunrise is part of the preceeding nighttime)Was the stone already rolled away, or did Mary and her companion(s) see it rolled away miraculously, by an angel, with an earthquake?How many angels were there at the Tomb when she / they arrived the first time?Where was/were the angel(s) relative to the Tomb entrance? Inside the tomb? Outside? Sitting on the stone?Did she leave and come back again?If so, were angels present then, and if so, how many?If so, who, if anyone, accompanied her to the Tomb the second time?Were any of the Apostles involved at the Tomb? If so, who?When and how did the Apostles find out?What did the angel(s) say to Mary? This need not match verbatim, but do they even agree in the general gist?External evidences? There is a lot less than you might think. And don't even bring up Evidence that Demands a Verdict - it has been very thoroughly refuted. Don't bring up Josephus either: the "Jesus Paragraph" in his Antiquities of the Jews has been proven to be a forgery, and we even know who the forger was: the Catholic Bishop Eusebius, who proudly called himself "God's Forger."

Then there are the historical problems: Matthew and Luke both describe events surrounding the birth of Christ, but they differ irreconciliably, including on why the Holy Family was in Bethlehem at the Nativity, but later lived in Nazareth. Matthew says that they lived there all along, and only moved to Nazareth after the Return from Egypt (to which they allegedly fled to avoid King Herod's massacre of the infants [an event of which there is no historical record - you'd think a whole town having a two-year gap of zero males would've been noticed], and turned aside from Bethlehem to Nazareth when they found out that Herod's son Archelaus, who was even worse, had succeeded him). Luke says that Mary and Joseph had lived in Nazareth, but that they had to come to Bethlehem for the Census of Quirinius, because Joseph was of the line of David. Luke has no mention of Herod or Wise Men or any of that stuff, and Matthew has no mention of shepherds or hosts of angels in the sky.

It gets worse: the Wise Men incident had to have happened some time after the Nativity. Tradition says it was twelve days (Epiphany aka TwelfthNight, The Twelve Days of Christmas, etc.), but it takes longer than that for camels to travel from the Orient to Palestine. Matthew's account implies as much as two years, because Herod based his massacre order on how long ago the Wise Men said that the star appeared. At any rate, it would have to be after the Nativity.

Problem is, Luke says that they came to Bethlehem during (and in fact because of) the Census of Quirinius, Governor of Syria. That happened just before the Nativity. Why is this a problem? Because very detailed Roman historical records prove beyond any doubt that Quirinius didn't become Governor of Syria, let alone institute his Census, until over ten years after Herod died! And no, there is no way to claim that the dates might be wrong here: there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the death of King Herod and the naming of Quirinius as Governor of Syria. That cause was none other than the reign of Herod's son Archelaus, who, you will remember, Matthew mentioned!

Now, even if Herod was as monstrous as Matthew portrayed (the history doesn't back him up on this), Herod was a competent ruler. He got things done. He made the camels run on time. The economy worked under his regime. Rome let Judæa be a semi-autonomous kingdom with Herod as an actual King, since he got the taxes (tributes) paid. But, he apparently wasn't much of a father, because his son Archelaus was a spoiled brat who had no idea how to run a kingdom. He ran it into the ground. After a decade of his disastrous rule, the merchants had had enough, and appealed to Cæsar Augustus. Cæsar dissolved the Kingdom of Judæa (there were no Kings of the Jews after this, which is one reason why the Jewish leaders' charge that Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews was such a big deal to Pontius Pilate), and reduced it to a mere province, and brought the whole region (including Galilee and Samaria as well as Judæa) under a single Governor, based in Syria. Quirinius was the first such Governor of Syria, and he was charged with cleaning up Archelaus's mess. Once he got there, he realized that the financial records of taxes and tributes were a mess and woefully incomplete, so he decided to start from scratch with a Census to find out how many people there were, and so decide who owed what.

Thus, either Matthew or Luke (or both) has to be wrong. There is no way for both to be right, or else the Wise Men saw a star, and came and gave gifts, and Herod killed a bunch of toddlers, over ten years before Jesus was even born!

And this isn't even getting into the contradictory genealogies the two give (and no, Luke's was not of Mary, unless you're calling Luke a liar, because he himself said it was of Joseph! A better, though still inadequate, explanation would be to invoke the Old Testament custom of a brother having intercourse with his dead brother's wife to raise up seed unto him).

False prophecies? How about Ezekiel Chapter 26? Tyre is to be completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, who will loot the town and find great riches. It is never to be rebuilt. Well, Nebuchadnezzar did siege it, but was unable to take it, and lost money in the process. Tyre still exists to this very day. Ezekiel himself admitted that that one failed, and so issues another prophecy for Nebuchadnezzar in Chapters 29 and 30, this time against Egypt. It flopped, too. None of it happened, ever. Not one aspect of it.

How about Proverbs 23:13? Real children have died horribly at the hands of their parents over this one. Recently. That should be flatly impossible. Is that or is that not a promise of God? Is it or is it not true that God's promises never fail? With apoligies to Gilbert & Sullivan, "never" does not mean, " well, hardly ever!" It should be completely and utterly impossible for a parent to beat a child to death with a rod, ever, even once, at any time in history, anywhere on the planet. I leave it to you to check with child abuse agencies to see just how many times that particular promise has tragically failed in this nation alone, in recent years alone. Some of these cases even involved Bible-believing parents who beat their children to death specifically because they believed this promise!

Oh, and how about that Mark 16:17-18, huh? If you are a true believer in Christ, drink some Liquid Drano^® while wearing a live coppermouth around your neck. If you don't dare do this, then you are not a true believer in Christ!

Even Jesus Himself made false prophecies, especially that bit where He describes the events of the End Times, and then says that the rising generation of that time would not entirely pass away before all of those things would be fulfilled. In another Gospel writer's account of the same incident, He is even more specific: "There be some standing here who shall not taste of death before they see the Son of man come in His glory." Do you know of any of those people who are still alive? And Jesus Himself doesn't count: He "tasted of death" big time!

Who claimed that there was no revelation that came true. D&C 87 foretold the civil War. What now nubian.


1 VERILY, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls;

2 And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place.

3 For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations.

4 And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war.



oh and fark all of your gods cuz there ain't no farking god

I used to hang out with a mormon girl. I ditched her after the third time she tried converting me to her polygamist faith. Last I heard, she shaved her head and converted to Wicca.

I'm gonna go read "A Study in Scarlet" now.

Red Space Dragon

If someone writes a short story about a puppy that likes playing with an empty can, sometimes it's just a story about a puppy playing with an empty can! It's not a mirror for the lost childhood of the author, it's not satire on the empty promise of material possessions, and it is not a modern version of MacBeth. It's just a puppy playing with a can!

Totally!

Way back in my University days, I would write as a way to pass the time. My girlfriend at the time loved my stories and bugged me, quite frequently, if she could get a copy. Eventually I relented, and gave her a few. About a month or so later, she comes to me and says that she wanted me to join her for a "reading" in which pretentious English majors would meet in a coffee shop to read poetry and other crap. I didn't want to go, but she pressured me into going and I finally accepted.

I found out why she was so insistant, one of the pieces read was one of my stories (written under the pen name of Richard Baldwin). There were several murmurs of approval and the pretentious chick that was presiding over the meeting then went on to describe what the authour was actually *trying* to say. She went on about this symbolising that and how he meant to say this when he said that and how it was all a metaphor for the over-mechanisation of society and the loss of human feelings.

I at that point stand up and tell her that she's wrong, and that she's probably reading too much into it. After all, it could just be a story without a message and the authour just pulled it out of his head. She then finds out that I was a Comp Sci major and because of that was unworthy of actually understanding what the authour meant. She goes and "proves" her point by reading passages from the story and how they prove her point.

I turn it around, repeat the same passages *verbatim* and say, "the authour just wrote a story because he felt like it and any proof you give will ultimately be wrong."

She, with all the authority she can muster asks how a "computer geek" (which she meant as an insult, but I take as a compliment) could know more than an English student working towards her PhD?

I just shrug and say, "I wrote it."

Needless to say, that shut her up very quickly.

helix400

The coins are referenced in the texts, but not have been found. No, the Book of Mormon doesn't mention coins at all. It metions a system of weights that can be used for currency though, but definitely different from coins. (The measurements do match up nicely with ancient Babylonian weighting systems). This is the only chapter that discusses the weights in detail http://scriptures.lds.org/alma/11

First off, there appears to be some confusion within the LDS church on this point:

http://nowscape.com/mormon/momoney.htm

And way to miss the larger point ENTIRELY. That point being that no iota of evidence has been found to support the existence of any "history" locale in the BoM, etc. END OF STORY, despite the millions poured into "Mormon archaeology". They keep attempting to claim Mayan and Incan ruins as lost Mormon cities, only to have the temple friezes translated by legitimate archaeologists. What appear to be happy Mormon stories are, generally, about pagan sacrifice rituals, etc.

Joseph Smith was convicted of con artistry using his "magic stone". No he wasn't, he wasn't convicted of anything. His enemies sure brought him to court many many times on trumped up charges, but there was no convictions.

If you're going to argue, please do your homework first. Not only was he convicted, but there is a written record of it that exists to this day. Hard to argue with that kind of hard evidence, so Mormons tend to ignore it or "blame the church's enemies". Keeping in mind that this was BEFORE his "First Vision", he didn't even have a church yet.

These scrolls were later PROVEN BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT to have been "translated" from Egyptian scrolls detailing pagan rituals for the after-life What!? No. Not at all. The issue is far from settled,current evidence narrows down some explanations, but many other explanations are still plausible. It's far from proven. http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Abraham.shtml#source.

So we have: (1) Large portions of the original scrolls that have now been properly translated. (2) A transcription drawn by Joseph Smith himself (minus offending mail sex organs, as they didn't fit into HIS vision) (3) Completely implausible translation theories (25 to 1 compression ratio, multiple meanings for common symbols, etc.)

And you still argue this and believe this to be the word of God as translated by Joseph Smith.

Hey, it's your soul.

I can't believe you brought up the Kinderhook plates...that argument is so old and useless. A full answer is here http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMProblems.shtml#fooled To sum up, some guy make fake plates, and claimed Joseph Smith translated them as ancient records. Well, if Joseph fell for his trap in 1843, why did he wait 36 years to announce it? Why did he wait until after the deaths of the other 8 men he claimed to work with on the Kinderhook hoax? The guy made up the story, waited until all the other witnesses were long dead, and then came out and said he fooled Joseph Smith long ago.

http://www.xmission.com/~country/reason/kinder.htm

Ok, let's assume that these plates, which everyone outside the Mormon church knows to be faked, WERE authentic, as you claim. Let's assume that the rest of the scientific and theologic world outside the LDS is wrong. Then why would Moroni not visit the next prophet in succession (or some later one) to translate them?

I don't have time to deal with all the others. Just a sample. Seriously, if you spent "3 years" researching it, and you're "truths" have so many holes and misconceptions, I would guess that you did do any balanced research.

You ignore half of what I say, believe insane and unproven theories about cold hard facts that have already been disproven (i.e. not theology). You either lie or are completely unaware of the fact that Smith was even convicted. You ignore the fact that there is a written history of Joseph Smith's life and his abuses.

And I haven't even touched on the obviously racist basis upon which the church was founded. A tradition that, like bigamy, was "abandoned" after it became illegal to do so.

But *I'M* the uninformed one.

Keep in mind that I haven't even STARTED in on the aspects of the Mormon doctrin in favor of examining more easily proveable secular facts!

In short, keep readin', junior.

I swear, if they found a message written in Joseph Smith's blood and in his own handwriting saying "I can't believe these people believed I was the prophet of God" with DNA and handwriting evidence to back it up, they still wouldn't buy it.

Mormon apologists will go to any lengths to cast any doubt on any proof that doesn't fit their beliefs.

Oh what I wouldn't give for a few years in BYU's vaults.

culbeda

The point is, that for any argument one side pulls up, the other side pulls out other arguments. You seem very satisfied in believing that all anti-Mormon arguments are correct, and yet you never allow for any pro-Mormon ones. You mention that Smith was convicted before the first vision. He was convicted before he was 14? The only debated conviction occured in 1826, 6 years after the first vision, and this written document is of questionable authenticity. Unless you have proof that he was convicted before, I'd like to hear it. If not, don't go out and say he did. With the Kinderhook plates, you didn't even take the time to read my own reubuttal. You thought I said they were authentic. Did I not say "To sum up, some guy make fake plates..."? What's amazing is that you still hold to the Kinderhook plates as an attack on the church, even though its entire premise is based on a guy who claimed he set up a sting on Jospeh Smith...and then said he succeeded in fooling Jospeh Smith 36 years after the event, long after any other witnesses were dead. You'd think if he succeeded in fooling Jospeh Smith, that he and his buddies would run out the next day and tell everyone...instead of waiting 36 years when he's the only witness left.

The others I don't even care to touch (not that I couldn't, I just don't want to waste my time in an endless back and forth argument). I just don't care for these mudslinging debates. One side runs out and digs up as much mud as they can find, without first checking if this mud is accurate...he or she just hope something can stick to the wall. The other side offers counter explanations. The first person then goes back to dig up more mud. My problem with your "proofs" is that they rely more on faith that all anti-Mormon arguments are correct, even though the arguments are far from having conclusive proofs. On top of that, you show little interest in being fair and researching the other point of view. You can believe we're false and wrong all you want. But don't be so biased and one-sided in supporting anything that attacks us.

Good job, Helix.

What is the deal with 1/4 of this whole comments page being dedicated to "magic" or "funny" underwear? Don't these guys have a clue that these are sacred items that we use to be closer to God and our covenants?

Why are atheists the first guys to come forward saying "My beliefs are right." while thinking that we, as a human race, just came out of nowhere, the universe just happening to make us, and that we die and URK! that's it?

Are mormons crazy? No. Brainwashed? No. Do they wear "Magic underpants"? No, they are simply garments.

Do any other churches believe that God still lives and guides us with a prophet?

I'll let you answer that.

AfroSpatula

You have to remember, this is Fark. People like to just poke fun at everyone. If it was a JW thread, they'd mock them. If it was a Scientology thread, they'd get ripped apart. Athiest threads aren't so bad, since Fark has so many defending them. Just because they laugh at us doesn't mean they're viciously anti-Mormon. If you look, many of those who laughed at "magic" underwear also ended up being tolerant about it.

Heh, and its a good thing you brought up athiests so late in Fark thread. Had it been earlier, instant flamewar. But ya, I find it funny when some athiests act as if they know they are right, even though they have no way to confirm it...which means, they believe athiesm on faith.

Dammit, why are the agnostics always ignored?!

I really know for a fact that I don't know shiat! And I'm willing to put that faith up against anyone's and win.

About Mormonism Unvailed: its author wasn't the first to go around getting people to sign affidavits that he wrote to the effect that the founder of a new religion was a fraud and of low repute. Another guy did that somewhat earlier. He did the same thing, getting the townspeople of this religion's founder to sign affidavits to the effect that the founder tried to fool people with magic tricks he had picked up while living in a nation known to have magicians, that the founder's parents and family were the lowest of the low, etc.

But this guy wasn't talking about Joseph Smith. He lived his life, and wrote his book, nearly 1¾ millennia before Joseph Smith. His name was Celsus, a Jewish writer in the Second Century. The new religion he was attacking was Christianity, and the townspeople he was interviewing weren't from Manchester or Palmyra, but Nazareth. The founder he was denouncing was Jesus Christ. But he used the same sort of tactics that Eber D. Howe used in Mormonism Unvailed.

heap
"then you might want to take a window shopping trip to SLC. mormon chicks on average are hotties. its like the catholic school girl thing, but all over town."

You're kidding me right?!

...debated conviction...

I'll have to review the dates. I may have been off on those. (I stopped researching this some years ago, and unlike you, I'm willing to admit the possibility of being wrong.)

There is this, however: (And more if you care to look for it.)



If you are right about the date, then Smith had his vision telling him the true path and he was still running around putting a magic stone in his hat to help people find buried gold on their property? Sounds like one heck of a role model, let alone a prophet.

As for the "other items", I'd really like to hear your answer on the three drastically different tellings of the same vision by Smith. I'm sure there is an official apologist answer to this out there for you to quote.

And as for your earlier claims about their being some dispute over the nature of the Book of Abraham, please enlighten us.

And perhaps you'd care to explain "Baptism by proxy" to the nice folks. Or why a "supplement" to The Bible is so intent on regularly superceeding it with rules/laws that are in direct contradiction to those in the original two testements. Or maybe you'd like to dispute the obvious ties between the early church and the masons?

Or... forget it. It's like talking to a brick wall. Your mind is closed. Go ahead and marry a good Mormon girl (they are usually quite attractive, so on that I can't fault you) and have 18 kids, be baptised for your dead relatives, practice your secret rituals, wear the underware, and try to convert as many people as possible so that you can go to the highest tier of heaven and become a god unto your own world.

Of course, if I'm wrong, I get another shot at it. If you're wrong, you go to hell or just plain die.

Just out of curiousity, to those Mormons out there:

1) Have you ever seriously considered the possibility that Mormonism is not the true faith?

2) What, short of God speaking directly to you, would convince you of same?

3) Why would God, who The Bible says is "all-knowing" and who, in Genesis, created Heaven and Earth from nothing keep changing his mind continuously on earthly matters? (Bigamy, racism, sexist descrimination to higher positions within the church, etc.)

culbeda

Well, like any good argument, I look at both sides (yes, I do research the other side, and often find they pose questions that we cannot yet answer well enough). The best anti-Mormon authority I've seen is the Utah Light House Ministry (you linked to them earlier). The best consolidated pro-Mormon arguments on the web are found here: http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/. Of course, there is much more written in detail in various books that aren't consolidated, but these two do a good job for quick debates on almost any topic. For all your questions about the Book of Abraham, the debated 1826 conviction, the ties between the Masons and temple ceremonies, peep stones, etc, it provides excellent counter arguments. (Not that it's perfect, but they are definitely very good counter arguments.) Give it a read, it's very insightful, and pretty much every single question you raised is covered well. The web definitely does a much better job explaining topics than we ever could in limited Fark flamewar arguments.

As for your 3 questions

1) Yes
2) No, I consider God to be the least biased, most honest, and best direct source for answers. In a debate between God and man, I'd trust God. (But I believe God expects us to do research first before inquiring on answers. It's not like you can be completely ignorant and then ask God answers to everything).
3) Because God has changes commandments all the time to fit particular time periods. Look at the differences in gospel teachings before and after Jesus Christ in the Bible. You had the Mosaic law compared to gospel Jesus Christ preached. The commandments members of the church had to follow were very different between those two time periods, but the overall message was the same (a savior, repentance, etc.) My favorite is the church council in Acts 15 on whether or not to do away with circumcision. It was decided after that meeting that Gentile converts did not need circumcision. Commandments change, but the gospel remains the same.

Someone *please* tell me where these mormonette nyphos are.

I'm affraid I have to take culbeda's "side" on this one. I've studied mormonism until I was blue in the face; and beleive me, I've read every apologist literature on the planet.

There is just too much damning evidence against mormonism. Apologists try to explain, but it'd require some pretty serious liquor for me to buy their excuses. I mean, it's like a kid getting caught red-handed, and being told that their hands are red because of a rash. Maybe the first excuse is plausible, but by the 100th excuse you can't help but to laugh

culbeda, re: your #3, good question. Why would God change His mind? You do believe that Jesus is God, right? So why did He spend much of His ministry saying things like, "Ye have heard it said, [insert Old Testament law here, given by God to Moses and other prophets], but I say unto you, [insert new commandment which is flatly contradictory to the Old Testament law Jesus just quoted]." Is that not changing His mind?

This is just another example of what I said before; almost every argument that the Christian anti-LDS (as opposed to those anti-LDS who are atheist and are anti-LDS because it is a religion, and they are anti-any-religion) can bring against the LDS faith can be turned right around and used against Christianity in general.

helix400

Well, we agree on one point. UTLM is probably the best place to research the anti-mormon argument. I actually relied fairly heavily on their materials early on because the internet wasn't really an option at the time. I've had a couple nice conversations with Sandra Tanner. I think very highly of her.

COMALite J

Changing the rules for living over the course of several centuries or millenia can hardly be compared to the massive changes over the course of 50-100 years.

(For the record, this is exactly why I avoid the Theology side of the argument in favor of the more secular/historical one.)


Please remember. I have Mormon friends, I generally think Mormons are good people. My fault is with the church. I do, however, find fault with a church that STRONGLY encourages people to have more children than they probably should. Friends of mine have had absolutely miserable lives because of this practice.

I also take issue with the church's racist and sexist past, not that this is particular to Mormonism, but at least the racism part was actually doctrinal.

And lastly, I fully understand the need for faith. At some point, however, you have to reconcile or renounce faith in things that are in direct contradiction to the physical / scientific record. (Ex. Evolution, the age of the earth, the great flood, etc.)

Ignoring the physical world entirely in favor of the spiritual one is both foolish and extremely dangerous in the long run. (All religions.)

Ah, yes, Sandra Tanner. The woman who, by her own admission, gained her testimony of the LDS faith because she liked a particular hymn, and lost it when she found out that the Baptists, etc. sing the same hymn as well.

I wanna read an anti-LDS book by an ex-LDS convert who claims to have truly followed Moroni 10:3-5, got an answer from it that caused him/her to truly believe and follow the LDS faith for many years, then left it by some reason that caused him/her to renounce the experience s/he received from following that passage, and who went on to become a Christian of another denomination (or so-called "non-denominational" [usually a euphemism for "Dispensationalism", a variety of Christianity that should more properly be called "Paulianity" as they come right out and say that where Paul appears to contradict Christ {and boy howdy does he ever! Compare his whole saved-by-grace-alone, works-need-not-apply thing to Christ's description of the Final Judgement, and who will be saved and who will not and why, in Matthew 25:31-46, just as a for-instance - albeit a particularly important one, as the very nature of salvation itself depends on which one is right on this matter}, we are to believe Paul over Christ, since Paul is allegedly the Head of this Dispensation, the so-called "Dispensation of Grace"]). I have yet to find one. Now, someone doing that to become an atheist or agnostic or Deist or some totally non-Christian religion, and thus writing anti-LDS literature from that PoV, that I could see happening.

From your last two paragraphs, culbeda, I take it that you have doubts about Christianity as a whole? Why stop with those three that you mentioned? There are much more serious contradictions between not only the LDS but almost all of Christianity, and real-world things that anyone can observe for him or herself, not relying on any scientific record. See my post to Ringwraith.

One very simple thought experiment based on real-world experiences that almost everyone has directly experienced for him or herself, and absolutely everyone has seen happen to at least someone they know, for instance, will yank the rug right out from under the most important belief of almost all of Christianity: the belief that the mind, personality, memories, etc. reside in the soul or spirit, and not in the physical brain. This absolutely devastates the concept of any sort of afterlife as believed by traditional or LDS Christianity (though some Christian faiths generally considered "cults" by more mainstream Christians can survive this, as they don't believe that the spirit is anything more than a "life force", that the dead "sleep" and are unaware of anything between death and the physical resurrection of the body, and that at judgement day, the resurrected evil dead will be cast into the Lake of Fire, which will not torment them, but totally annihilate them: body, soul, spirit, mind, personality, memories - the works!).

The LDS are particularly vulnerable to this one, as they go farther than most Christians in their belief in the spirit as something real, that contains not only the mind and personality, but also a "spiritual matter" perfect version of the person's physical body at young-adult age.

Mormons rock the house.

I find it silly that the people who claim mormons are trying to cram religion down the throats of the unsuspecting end up ranting about how they will not rest until all mormons are proved wrong.

I'm secure in my beliefs. How about you?