rcrocket wrote:What is the explanation for God excluding Moabite converts until the 10th generation, and then inconsistently letting Ruth in, with her grandson David, into the congregation?
What is the explanation for God excluding bastards until the 10th generation; castrated men?
It seems that God was rather ambiguous about this stuff. Why is it?
Can you really not see it? It's easy to understand this stuff when you realize it's all made up.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
Personally I think the worst thing for Mormons to defend is Joseph Smith approaching and propositioning women who were already married, behind their husband's back, and behind his own wife's back, and telling them that God commanded him to do it.
I think the Book of Abraham also is up there as one of the worst things to defend, because the whole thing is so patently obvious. Joseph Smith made it up, period. It's so obvious to just about everyone in the universe who becomes aquainted with the evidence, except a Mormon apologist, who is obliged to defend it on principle.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
Sethbag wrote:Personally I think the worst thing for Mormons to defend is Joseph Smith approaching and propositioning women who were already married, behind their husband's back, and behind his own wife's back, and telling them that God commanded him to do it.
I think the Book of Abraham also is up there as one of the worst things to defend, because the whole thing is so patently obvious. Joseph Smith made it up, period. It's so obvious to just about everyone in the universe who becomes aquainted with the evidence, except a Mormon apologist, who is obliged to defend it on principle.
Apologist claim that he did not make it up, rather he was inspired by *booming echo effect* "the power of god!"
And as far as the difficulty and absurdity of defense, I think the crown is shared by Noah's Ark and the whole "no death on Earth before Adam's Fall" doctrine. The idea that nothing died on Earth until a few thousand years ago is contradicted by an entire world of evidence. Attempts to change tack and argue this as just metaphor make it obvious that past generations of LDS prophets and apostles who wrote about this doctrine were in fact just blowing smoke, and they didn't know what they were talking about. Their credibility is blown. The whole Noah's Ark story is likewise contradicted by an entire world of evidence, and yet it's still taught as fact right up to this very day in the church.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
I have always thought the Church's very weakest point was financial reporting. The strange this is, it doesn't have to be this way. I assume they could survive an independent audit intact, if my assumption is correct, then they would have much to gain by clearing the air. Equally strange, is the implicit assumption inherent in many apologetic arguments that this would either destroy the Church through revealing misdealings or provide incalculable fodder for its critics.
ozemc wrote:Somehow I really don't think God, if there is one, actually cares what goes on on this little planet that is not even in the center of its own galaxy.
You know, it's been said (Sagan, maybe? I don't know, just heard it somewhere), that there are more planets in the universe that are exactly like this one than there are grains of sand on this planet.
We're not that special.
When did somethings worth start associating with size or position or uniqueness?
I do hate the word special though. For the life of me I can't figure out why we insist on telling kids they are special. Some of them end up believing it into their adult lives. Is anything more obnoxious than spending time with an adult that thinks they're special (almost always under delusions of grandeur).
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
I think the Apologist's biggest problem is defending ground God never claimed.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo