gdemetz wrote:Of course I did. Why was it brought up? Why else? To attack the church, as usual!
For myself I avoid attacking the church. That does not mean I cannot legitimately question it's claims just as I can for other religions such as Scientology. I am not knocking on your door so you certainly don't have to discuss it with me.
Of course not!
This is more to the point. The church claims the HG is the only legitimate way to discern truth, yet here we have an example of people believing they were receiving strong signals from the HG while listening to the lies of this GA. You bring up another possibility below.
Perhaps an evil spirit.
Of course this makes things worse since now you cannot be sure if what you have received is from Satan or God. many Christians actually believe it is Satan that is guiding LDS this way. Now below you bring up feelings
I don't believe that it was. I think many were touched by his story and were confused by those feelings.
This I think is more accurate. The body is capable of more then we want to give it credit. The problem I see is that many like you want to believe others are confused but not them. This is very typical with emotionally based experiences and the interpretations we create from them. As a missionary if they were emotionally attached to experiences they interpreted for their religion that would interfere with LDS claims then there was little chance they would convert.
You probably wouldn't know, but I think I would. "Without faith it is impossible to please God!"
Here we see you giving an example of they might be confused but I'm not(they had faith as did I, but not sure why you thinking you had more is going to ensure your experience must be from some divine being), and you have emotional ties to your interpretations of those feelings/emotions/spirit. It's from this I know you will not really evaluate in any way the possibility of being wrong. Most did this with Paul Dunn as with other spiritual experiences that have not always worked out well. I can see many examples in my own life of these kind of things.
An interesting point which you brought up is the idea that many are confused, which suggests that you believe the HG is close to what the body can create. The church itself has said the same thing. I wonder why if the body can create experiences close enough to confuse that the body cannot create the experience they believe is the HG? I think in the end it is just as you did where others may be confused but not me. This again I think is because we get so emotionally attached to our interpretations.
