subgenius wrote:unspoken condition??? what are you talking about? my post was clear and concise and without condition. What motivates you to impose statements which i have clearly not made?
You're being difficult. I was referring to thoroughly supported and official Mormon doctrine, to which you are bound if you accept the Church as an authority. I've only reimposed statements that have been made by Mormon deities, prophets, and scripture. I did so because I strongly suspect you mean Drifting's disconfirmation was "valid" in the disingenuous, lowercase t sense that poorly dodges the question of whether official Mormon doctrine can actually be "confirmed" in an much more relevant capital T sense.
i have never accused him of being lost, nor did i even imply it here. that is an idea of your own creation....i can't help but wonder why?
If you ever implied that you accept the Standard Works as true, then he is lost for having denied Mormon doctrine. That God would give a dis-confirming answer to his own doctrine is never suggested but
explicitly denied as possible in the Mormon paradigm.
what an incredibly immature and amateur statement for you to have made. First you fabricate statements that i obviously did not make, and then condemn me for them.
i think we know who is lost my friend...and it ain't me or Drift.
It's of no significance how sharply we disagree because it's an expected result of comparison between two extreme perspectives. You accept a paradigm which is undeniably black and white in the propositions it unquestionably accepts and denies, so of damned course I sound ridiculously black and white when I reject it...
From your twisted and narrow perspective, I am accusing the white of being black. The accusation is not so striking from outside the Mormon paradigm, but as long as you accept the Mormon paradigm uncritically, you'll never bring yourself to consider it without the "black and white" tinted glasses that distort the criticism.
Again, profound clashes in perspective are
expected between a know-it-all paradigm and the ideas which question its epistemic elitism,
especially when that paradigm can do nothing but serve its own elitist perspective.
Subgenius, you thoroughly underestimate and distort why I reject religious experience as the foundation of the Mormon paradigm. You've
imagined that I am a slave to reason. I understand that it's not the answer to every question. I accept that not every decision in life can be reduced to a logical analysis.
I love my family. I love my friends. I love my girlfriend. I love her dog. I love experience. I'm a human being and I don't behave like a damned robot.
Oh yea, I
love debate... but it would be unfathomably obtuse of you to continue to suggest that I don't understand the twist in logic in you're proposing and haven't already thoroughly considered it. You want me to love and accept God like I accept the love for my family. You want me to take the first step beyond what I can determine rationally with the tools of logic and accept what I
know irrationally with the tools of soul.
What you fail to understand about me is that I don't reject religion because I reject that you can know something irrationally.
-----> I reject religion because I reject
revelation.
There
are no tools of the soul which can show any one of wild conclusions revelationists offer to be more reliable than the next. They
all appeal to the incomprehensible, irrational, and transcendent. They
all fail to distinguish their revelations because their foundations appeal to the same unfathomable definitions, yet come to incompatible conclusions.
As we are discussing in my other thread, there is nothing about Mormon qualia or tools of the soul which are unique to Mormon revelation. As far as anyone--
even Mormons--can tell, they are the
same qualia and the
same tools used to defend incompatible revelations.
Before I take that first step of faith
in revelation, there must be reason to believe that the qualia and tools proposed are actually reliable for this purpose.
Unfortunately,
everything we know about humanity's history, culture, science, reason, and even common sense shows us that there are only two things we should expect when taking that first step of faith:
1) The
extreme likelihood that you will be
profusely convinced you've discovered the
most important revelations.
2) The
extreme likelihood that you've secured your faith in the
wrong revelations.
That's the clear and evident success rate these tools have concerning revelation. And you find it convincing to suggest that I should forget all this and simply accept revelation actually exists without critical thought?!??
“F” that. Even if I
accepted revelation, you haven't shown me a single reason to
even believe myself.
It doesn't matter that the paradigms revelations found are imaginative and profoundly influential. Human beings
spend all their time imagining and they
spend all their time being influenced by imagination. We should always expect to be extremely convinced by the wrong things.
This is exactly what I mean when I claim that if revelation deceived all men, in all cultures, at all times with limitless imagination... the result would be no different than exactly what we observe: limitless and incompatible convictions concerning unique disagreements for which there are no unique explanations.
But no, the Mormons have found the exceptions. The true revelations. They
are distinct.
So, if Mormonism provides everything I need to know to be saved, why can't it show me why I should accept revelatory tools
only when they seem to serve the Mormon paradigm, but not when those
same tools seem to deny the Mormon paradigm?If Mormon revelations are unique, then prove to me that I won't be deceived by accepting them just as others are deceived by accepting their contrary revelations.
