Aquinas wrote:Marg, if you require reason based on empirical evidence to take anything seriously, how do you take yourself seriously?
This quote alone helped me further articulate just how little you understand our material existence. True empirical evidence is the basis for which we derive everything we do, you just don't realise it. Day to day operations like driving, putting food on the table, etc are full of empirical evidence. Where the disconnect occurrs in any situation is an incongruity between observation and belief. See where im going?
To say one can map the observable world based on unobservable/unmodelable constructs is, quite frankly, insanity. Whether the insanity is accepted insanity in the case of religion or schitzophrenia and other cognitive diseases.
One little thing. I hate to be nit-picky, but do you really think garments are expensive? They cost about 3.50 per piece and I'd say they are about as well made as any other clothing sold in stores. Nothings' really very well made compared to manufacturing standards of the past. Of course, I can understand you being annoyed at having spent good money on something only to have to throw them away once you no longer believed.
I'm not sure what could make me lose my faith. However, I doubt any of the history stuff could do it. I've been studying "church skeletons" my entire adult life and I'm still a believer.
I had my "trial by fire" many years ago and I've never doubted the truthfulness of the gospel since that experience. But because of what I went through, I can empathize with those who lose their faith or who struggle with doubt or to live the standards.[/quote]
You are truely brain washed without a doubt. How could the "history" stuff not bother you? What you are saying is NO DIFFERENT than when the Iranian President said the other day that the Holocaust (sp?) never really happened. I guess you are convinced that the United States never had a civil war, slaves were just someones imagination gone bad, and we living on a flat planet. I would go on, but clearly you won't listen anyway.
smitty wrote:...What you are saying is NO DIFFERENT than when the Iranian President said the other day that the Holocaust (sp?) never really happened...
It's funny that you say that. About a week ago i was thinking of starting a thread here called:
"The Holocaust Never Happened"
And then list a bunch of crappy reasons in defense of it.
If someone can come up with reasons to not believe in the holocaust, then anyone can come up with just about anything to believe in and defend anything.
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...
Marg, your drivel is getting very tiring. You came on this thread and attacked my claim that Aquinas proved that there is one God, without even reading the argument, which was addressed to a Mormon who claimed to agree that God exists. The argument wasn’t addressed to you and you still don’t even know what the argument is. I tried to humor you and challenge you to read Aquinas, but you refused. I am not going to respond to you any further, because you are not interested in truth; you are only interested in perceiving yourself as being right. May God bless you.
Aquinas wrote:Marg, your drivel is getting very tiring. You came on this thread and attacked my claim that Aquinas proved that there is one God, without even reading the argument, which was addressed to a Mormon who claimed to agree that God exists. The argument wasn’t addressed to you and you still don’t even know what the argument is. I tried to humor you and challenge you to read Aquinas, but you refused. I am not going to respond to you any further, because you are not interested in truth; you are only interested in perceiving yourself as being right. May God bless you.
I haven't refused to read Aquinas. I do know though that one doesn't create the existence of something solely through reasoning. Whether there is an argument for one god , two or more is not really relevant if there is no evidence of a god. It's just one claim versus another, wiht both no more warranted or relevant to reality.
When I have time I'll look at Aquinas, and determine what sort of argument it is for a God. I have taken a religious philosophy course and none of the arguments ever presented have ever proved a God exists. The sort of God you believe in is a man made construct, one you most likely inherited through early indoctrination by the Catholic church. Your beliefs are no more right than Mormons..since both systems make god claims absent transparent evidence.
The problem is, to the critics it looks like the answers/non-answers from God are perfectly explainable by the hypothesis that God doesn't even exist, and that the "answers" one believes they receive from God are in fact self-induced and self-invented, or else suggested by 3rd parties.
This is why you'd have to experience it yourself to verify it. This is why a testimony cannot rely on borrowed light.
To the believers, the answers received or not received by God are explained as God testing our faith, or God operating based on what he knows best for us, and that our ways are not God's ways.
Some use those reasons, but I'm saying that the proof (or disproof) will be experienced by those who sincerely keep the commandments after a few months. I think there are many TBMs who haven't properly verified things--perhaps I'm one of them. However, I think there are also many who have even though I have no way of proving it or determing which category anyone would belong to.
I would certainly have to disagree with your hypothesis that God does not exist and that man only believes he can communicate with HIM. I was once asked a question about a contradiction between Brigham Young and Joseph Smith: Joseph Smith saying (D & C 88: 17-25) that this earth would become the celestial kingdom while Brigham Young, on the other hand, said that our sun would become the Celestial Kingdom of heaven. I told the Rabbi that I would try and find the answer to his query. I prayed and fasted to find the answer wtih no results but finally after fasting for 3 days without food or water and then praying to find the answer I happened to be reading in the doctor's office, (where my wife had to go to have a skin cancer removed) I was reading the March issure of the smithsonian magazine of a super nova that occured in the galaxy Tarantula Nebula in February of the year 1987. It states that a Red Giant Sun caved in on itself and exploded so violently that the sun was divided into three parts. The Holy Spirit had me read that statement over and over again until finally I recalled some scriptures that fit that discription.
Revelation 21: 10 And God took me up unto an exceeding great and high mountain and shewed unto me that Great City descending out of heaven from God.
I felt I had the answer I was seeking which was that the remains of the Sun is mostly made up of the type of Carbon Atom that is capable of creating pure Diamond, or that the Pulsar would be constructed of pure diamond. That it totally seemed fit the discription of the great city. However, as I lay sleeping that evening the Holy Spirit came into my dreams and said, "Before a sun changes into a Super Nova, it would first have to change from Nova to Red Giant."
Now because I had no idea what a Red Giant was; I had absolutely no doubts that the information came from the Holy Spirit. I had to go to the College Library and look up a Red Giant in a book of astronomy. I looked through several books until I was finally satisified I knew more about the subject than I was asked to answer since both a Red Giant and Super Nova are prophesied in our scriptures.
I attended the Jewish Synagogue the following Saturaday and had a discussion with the Rabbi after their meeting was over. I don't really know if the Rabbi was impressed, but I most certainly was.
grampa75 by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of ALL THINGS
The information I have written down is only a small part of what I could write over the 18 years I searved as a Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ. I don't mean a General Authority. Seveny's used to be just missionaries not GAs.
grampa75 wrote:I would certainly have to disagree with your hypothesis that God does not exist and that man only believes he can communicate with HIM.
I would certainly have to disagree with your assertion that I stated any such thing. In fact I stated that, "I think there are also many who have [properly verified that the church is true and God exists] even though I have no way of proving it or determing which category anyone would belong to."
That's General Leo. He could be my friend if he weren't my enemy. eritis sicut dii I support NCMO
Hi Gramps 75, you have had some interesting (& tragic) experiences. Thanks for sharing them... You said:
I prayed and fasted to find the answer wtih no results but finally after fasting for 3 days without food or water and then praying to find the answer I happened to be reading in the doctor's office, (where my wife had to go to have a skin cancer removed) I was reading the March issure of the smithsonian magazine of a super nova that occured in the galaxy Tarantula Nebula in February of the year 1987. It states that a Red Giant Sun caved in on itself and exploded so violently that the sun was divided into three parts. The Holy Spirit had me read that statement over and over again until finally I recalled some scriptures that fit that discription.
Do You think "the Holy Spirit" revealed that knowledge to the person whose idea/information was published in 'Smithsonian' that You read? What part did/would the HS play in the transfer of this knowledge to other readers? The public in general?
Do you think/believe there might be a connection to your wife's "skin cancer" and to your 'revelation' in the Dr's office?
What effect does belief, or disbelief in "God", have on life's quality, as it is experienced by individuals?