EdGoble wrote:I have never been the least impressed by people that maintain their Church membership, but who divorce themselves either from loyalty to the brethren, or from belief in general, who deconstruct their reality, when they have been commanded not to do that kind of thing, but they have been commanded to keep on track until the perfect day, and a mental deconstruction manifests a lack of desire or willingness to enduring to the end in a state of faith and belief. Sorry, but I'm unimpressed by the fact that you are still a member of the Church technically.
I'm not worried about what you are impressed about or not. I don't have a binary mind like you do here. I don't see the problem if one no longer believes Core truth claims of the church but still keeps certain connections to the church. It's quite common for members of all religions to have those who are literal believers all the way to non-belief but wanting to be apart of the group(for various good reasons). You make a lot of ignorant assumptions about how I think about things like church leaders. I would suggest you ask more questions and listen to other to find out what they really think.
You can choose to deconstruct anything you want to logically, and yes, it is a logical pathway if you want it to be. Indeed, it is true that the logic pathway does indeed lead where you say it does if it weren't for other information that you don't consider information, but I do.
Some want what the believe to be true more then they want to know the truth. I just want the truth if I can find it. I never said what people view as their spiritual experiences was not information. Of course it is. I am just asking how one knows their interpretation of that information is accurate.
It was a mistake for me to use the word "science" with regard to this subject. I did it without enough thought. It was something that I used in a sense of imprecision, without meaning that it is secular in some way, or that it resides in some secular domain of some sort. In this sense, what I really meant was to say that it is a certain spiritual realm of inquiry.
Choose what ever words you want. Spiritual realm, spiritual mind, Supernatural mind, supernatural information/sensations/manifestations. They are all still part of what we experience by our mind, or spiritual mind, or whatever you want to call it. These sensations still need an interpretation, and it's a wise person to ask how they know if an interpretation is accurate. You have said you are not interested in such with your religious beliefs. That is your choice.
There are so many people that I waste time talking to on message boards that think that I owe them secular proof for ontological things, which I don't. It always devolves back to that. Go tell God that you want proof of something ontological, like Korihor or Sherem, and if he doesn't give it to you, that's his problem, not mine. That's his realm over which he is in control, not me. These things come according to his will, not mine.
I'm asking how one knows this is true. I am not asking for you to prove it to me. I am asking how you know it for yourself. You keep avoiding this, and that is your choice, but it always come back to how we know things. These are good question whether about secular things or religious ones. Whether an alien is communicating telepathically to you maybe viewed as secular, but when it comes to a divine source it is religious. Both are really still the same problem of how we know what the source of communication is, and what the communication means.
However, I don't sympathize with people that have made a choice to not be faithful, regardless of their claimed reason for it. People stand responsible no matter what they claim forced them into something. An alcoholic is responsible for his own choices, regardless of how hard his life is. The fact that I'm overweight is my own choice, and nothing forced me to overeat, in spite of my anxiety caused by day to day stress, and eventually I will choose to lose it, I hope. But if I die because of it, then it will be sad, but nobody can be blamed but me, and people can be sad for me, but it is the result of the choice, and I alone stand responsible.
I sympathize with lots of people. Like those who lost faith in their religion and joined Mormonism and have lots of family problems for doing so, or those who lost faith in Mormonism and moved on somewhere else. People are good and I don't think a good God is going to punish people for honest choices, or rewards for blind faith. I hope you can lose the weight you want and get healthy, and can sympathize with the problems of why that can be hard to do.