If plates then God

[Marcus]

I am curious why the rock, which is currently available to Mormon leadership and known to exist, (at least according to the provenance given) isn't also considered to be an artifact that proves the Book of Mormon is a 'work of god.'

It may be that Mormon leadership thought the rock would take the place of the plates and increase their credibility, especially given how badly the existence of the Book of Abraham papyri failed in that respect.

If so, it was yet another complete misfire.

An examination of Smith's plates would allow us to test Smith's claims. The rock is just a rock.

https://youtu.be/crJvnMooE-o?si=PAfhYURL_aQXhN01

No argument there. That's why i'm wondering why it's emphasized. Were they trying to draw atention away from plates to something they have but which they know can't be meaningfully analyzed? In doing so, did they miscalculate the response, and end up with an even more outrageous and less believable story?

I don't think there was any kind of master plan that Joseph or others devised from the beginning. For whatever reason, Smith decided that just having the plates as a prop was not enough for him. He decided that people other than his scribes needed to see him translating the plates. But he couldn't allow them to see the plates themselves. He had previously used the seer stone in treasure finding, and the plates were the ultimate treasure. Perhaps they were so connected in his mind that it seemed completely natural to him to use the stone when he translated in public.

[MG 2.0]

Marcus, do you agree or disagree with this statement from above:

Secularism does not give any hope to the powerless and innocent in the face of evil.

Regards,
MG

Way back on page ten I said this:

I probably don’t need to point this out, but I will anyway. Marcus, you very rarely answer questions posed to you. That’s what makes you SO uninteresting. Folks try to engage you to little or no avail. At least I’ve found that to be true.

That’s why periodically I’ll mention that going back and forth with you is literally a waste of time.

Let’s see what happens.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

…provide substance.

Marcus,

Another question of substance directly related to the response/question I made to Res Ipsa which has been reposted recently:

Are you able to come up with a plan/schema for a better world in which there is no evil? You are essentially left in a position of no hope. You cannot stop the evil. It will always exist in the hearts of some men/women.

What would your better world look like while at the same time allowing for free agents living in that world?

Regards,
MG

Way back on page ten I said this:

I probably don’t need to point this out, but I will anyway. Marcus, you very rarely answer questions posed to you. That’s what makes you SO uninteresting. Folks try to engage you to little or no avail. At least I’ve found that to be true.

That’s why periodically I’ll mention that going back and forth with you is literally a waste of time.

Let’s see what happens.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

Mg, you are apparently trying to change the subject in order to avoid responding to several conflicts in your posts and to other outstanding questions. It's a trick of yours that is well known, and completely obvious.

Here is the beginning of one of your delays:

Christ’s Atonement is Infinite and eternal. The sufferings of all of God’s children due to the wickedness of men will be compensated for and healed. One has to remember that this life is not all there is and that the sufferings and trials of this life are a small part of eternity. There will be a judgement. Those that are guilty of heinous crimes against humanity will also be compensated with appropriate consequences for their actions.

If you believe that this life is all there is, then yes, things appear…and are…a real mess when it comes to the atrocities committed by free agents upon the innocent.

War and mayhem and cruel disease and sickness have been and will always be a part of this natural world.

The power of Jesus’s atonement is the only mitigating factor that can make everything right in the long run.

Secularism does not give any hope to the powerless and innocent in the face of evil.

As I think I’ve already said, God knows full well that this is a fallen world. A natural world where there are real world consequences for the actions that people make…both the good and the bad.

That’s VERY difficult for some people to accept especially if they have no hope of God’s love and and Christ’s mercy in the eternal scheme of things.

God is not at fault for the actions and choices that evil people make. But he will judge them accordingly and all will be made right.

There is a matter of trust involved. Do we and can we trust in God’s plan which involves free agency and that all will be made right through Christ’s Infinite Atonement?

As it is, you have failed to come up with a plan/schema for a better world in which there is no evil. You are essentially left in a position of no hope. You cannot stop the evil. It will always exist in the hearts of some men/women.

God and his Son are the only one’s that have planned for and created a plan by which all we compensated and rewarded according to their works in the flesh. Some are blessed with the faith to know and/or believe that this is so. That faith cannot be forced. It is a choice.

As is the belief in the plates and the angel that are part of the restoration narrative.

Regards,
MG

*bump for Marcus.

Your response again is a non sequitur and fails to respond to Res Ipsa's question, to which you were responding.

Yes, you have. It was a non sequitur the first time you said it. And it is still a non sequitur. Beaten and raped children do not need the atonement to be saved from being victims of beatings and rape. Being a victim is not a sin.

What you seem to be dancing around but unwilling to admit is that Christ’s suffering and sacrifice is not sufficient for the redemption of sins. Innocent children also must be beaten and raped for salvation to occur. Beating, rape, torture, and murder of children are all necessary parts of the plan that Jesus Christ himself presented at the council in heaven, and you voted for that plan. Because mortals cannot be free agents if God does not send innocent children to earth knowing that they will be beaten, tortured, raped and murdered. Because unless children are beaten, tortured raped, and murdered, it’s so easy not to sin that you call it being handed salvation on a silver platter.

Take your own advice upthread and grow a pair: own up to the logical consequences of your own religious claims. Have the courage to admit that you sat in the council of heaven and knowingly voted for a plan that included beating, raping, torturing and murdering children. Then argue that the atonement somehow requires and makes all that peachy keen.

Please, respond to that.

[MG 2.0]

Mg, you are apparently trying to change the subject in order to avoid responding to several conflicts in your posts and to other outstanding questions. It's a trick of yours that is well known, and completely obvious.

Here is the beginning of one of your delays:

*bump for Marcus.

Your response again is a non sequitur and fails to respond to Res Ipsa's question, to which you were responding.

Yes, you have. It was a non sequitur the first time you said it. And it is still a non sequitur. Beaten and raped children do not need the atonement to be saved from being victims of beatings and rape. Being a victim is not a sin.

What you seem to be dancing around but unwilling to admit is that Christ’s suffering and sacrifice is not sufficient for the redemption of sins. Innocent children also must be beaten and raped for salvation to occur. Beating, rape, torture, and murder of children are all necessary parts of the plan that Jesus Christ himself presented at the council in heaven, and you voted for that plan. Because mortals cannot be free agents if God does not send innocent children to earth knowing that they will be beaten, tortured, raped and murdered. Because unless children are beaten, tortured raped, and murdered, it’s so easy not to sin that you call it being handed salvation on a silver platter.

Take your own advice upthread and grow a pair: own up to the logical consequences of your own religious claims. Have the courage to admit that you sat in the council of heaven and knowingly voted for a plan that included beating, raping, torturing and murdering children. Then argue that the atonement somehow requires and makes all that peachy keen.

Please, respond to that.

I did. In a rather lengthy response. And in other comments made in this now rather lengthy thread (by the way, when you guys have had enough just cry “Uncle!”). Just because you say I didn’t doesn’t mean that I didn’t. Your track record leaves me wanting in the ‘trust Marcus’ dept. in regards to the way you constantly twist words, ignore key components of what is being said within complete context, etc.

Now, please respond to my two questions that I have posed to both you and Res Ipsa. The answer to these questions may be related to a parallel track in regards to the plates. Res Ipsa seemed to think so.

I suspect, as usual, you are going to deflect and fail to answer these fundamental questions which I have asked of you.

What do YOU have to say/offer to the discussion?

You have a chance to redeem yourself.

Also, on the assumption (unfortunately) that Marcus may not respond I would like any other secularist and/or agnostic/atheist to feel free to offer your message of hope in response to the questions I’ve put before Res Ipsa and Marcus.

We have an opportunity to get back to substance rather than he said, she said.

I’ll check back later. I have some other things to accomplish and do today.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

Mg, you are apparently trying to change the subject in order to avoid responding to several conflicts in your posts and to other outstanding questions. It's a trick of yours that is well known, and completely obvious.

Here is the beginning of one of your delays:


Your response again is a non sequitur and fails to respond to Res Ipsa's question, to which you were responding.

Please, respond to that.

I did. In a rather lengthy response. And in other comments made in this now rather lengthy thread (by the way, when you guys have had enough just cry “Uncle!”). Just because you say I didn’t doesn’t mean that I didn’t. Your track record leaves me wanting in the ‘trust Marcus’ dept. in regards to the way you constantly twist words, ignore key components of what is being said within complete context, etc.

Now, please respond to my two questions that I have posed to both you and Res Ipsa. The answer to these questions may be related to a parallel track to the plates. Res Ipsa seemed to think so.

I suspect, as usual, you are going to deflect and fail to answer these fundamental questions which I have asked of you.

What do YOU have to say/offer to the discussion?

You have a chance to redeem yourself.

Also, on the assumption (unfortunately) that Marcus may not respond I would like any other secularist and/or agnostic/atheist to feel free to offer your message of hope in response to the questions I’ve put before Res Ipsa and Marcus.

We have an opportunity to get back to substance rather than he said, she said...

bless your heart, you are just precious.

You only insult so egregiously (and lie so outrageously about!) the people whom you cannot adequately respond to. I am in very, very good company.

Bottom line, you have no answer to Res Ipsa's questions, nor can you explain the multiple conflicting responses you've given that i asked about. Your attempt to add questions now to try to mask your inability to respond is just frenetic panic.

(Feel free to start a new thread if you want other issues addressed. Because of course it is the discussion you crave, and not just the distraction, right? we'll see if that happens. )

In the end, the requirement to start by assuming your conclusion leaves you in a very untenable, insupportable position. Your nonresponses and conflicting responses have made that perfectly clear.

Thanks again for another very clear view into the mind of a certain type of TBM.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I am curious why the rock, which is currently available to Mormon leadership and known to exist, (at least according to the provenance given) isn't also considered to be an artifact that proves the Book of Mormon is a 'work of god.'

It may be that Mormon leadership thought the rock would take the place of the plates and increase their credibility, especially given how badly the existence of the Book of Abraham papyri failed in that respect.

If so, it was yet another complete misfire.

That’s an excellent point. The iStone is the device, according to Joseph Smith, used to generate the Book of Mormon. Period. Full stop. God literally left the most miraculous device mankind has ever actually held in their hands on earth that wasn’t whisked away, and the Mopologists are blathering on and on about plates.

What is it with all this Golden Plates talk? Everybody got something to say about the Golden Plates. I mean, what the hell? I'm sick of it.

I'm tired of these people telling me that I have to believe in the Golden Plates. I'm tired of these people telling me that the Golden Plates are the only way to know the Church is true. I'm tired of these people telling me that I'm not a real O.G. Mormon if I don't believe the Golden Plates.

I mean, what the hell? I've read the story. I know the story of Smith usin’ the iStone. I know what he said. I know what he looked in that hat. And I know that he didn’t need no plates.

So why do I have to believe the Golden Plates? Why do I have to read a bunch of mopologetic BS I don't believe in? Why do I have to read about idiots who talkin’ about plates and not the iStone?

I'm tired of it. I'm sick of it. I'm just sick of it.

I'm Allen Iverson, and I'm talking about i. STONE. Not the plates. iStone.

We talking about Plates? Not the iStone. Plates.

We talking about plates? Not the iStone. Plates.

Not a damn iStone. Plates.

We talking about PLATES?!?

We talking about PLATES?!?

Not the iStone. Plates!

Smdh.

Notice MG dismissed out of hand Joseph Smith’ iStone. We have a real Mormon artifact that is or was magical and the Mo’rons just shrug their shoulders because they know in their core that Smith’s peep stone was just a prop. They wish for sexy gold plates to be real, and that artifact, not Smith’s magical peep stone, is the thing that’d prove Mo’rons’ truth claims.



Stupid hicks.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

What you seem to be dancing around but unwilling to admit is that Christ’s suffering and sacrifice is not sufficient for the redemption of sins. Innocent children also must be beaten and raped for salvation to occur. Beating, rape, torture, and murder of children are all necessary parts of the plan that Jesus Christ himself presented at the council in heaven, and you voted for that plan. Because mortals cannot be free agents if God does not send innocent children to earth knowing that they will be beaten, tortured, raped and murdered. Because unless children are beaten, tortured raped, and murdered, it’s so easy not to sin that you call it being handed salvation on a silver platter.

Christ’s Atonement is Infinite and eternal. The sufferings of all of God’s children due to the wickedness of men will be compensated for and healed. One has to remember that this life is not all there is and that the sufferings and trials of this life are a small part of eternity. There will be a judgement. Those that are guilty of heinous crimes against humanity will also be compensated with appropriate consequences for their actions.

Your appeal to the atonement is a non-sequitur. Take any of the significant number of children before the age of accountability who literally cannot sin who are beaten or raped to death. The atonement does nothing for them. They are sinless and get a ticket straight to the CK. So, the atonement is not any sort of compensation for them. Yet, your loving God intentionally sent them to earth and chose to place them in a time and place in which he knew that they would be beaten, raped, and tortured to death.

And, unless you are willing to claim that there is a single soul who would live a perfect life if they could not beat, rape, or torture children, there is no need for the innocent to suffer at all. Those who would engage in this conduct will still sin, they will still need to be redeemed, and the atonement will still be necessary. Yet, your God deliberately places these innocent souls into times and places where he knows they will be beaten, raped, tortured and killed.

Your answer, though you lack the courage to face the consequences of what you say you choose to believe, is for some reason that you don't even attempt to articulate, this deliberate infliction of pain and suffering on innocents is somehow moral because of a future reward that the innocents don't need.

If you believe that this life is all there is, then yes, things appear…and are…a real mess when it comes to the atrocities committed by free agents upon the innocent.

War and mayhem and cruel disease and sickness have been and will always be a part of this natural world.

Hold on there. I'm the guy who believes in a "natural world." You believe in an intentionally created world by a being so powerful that he can twiddle the knobs of the fundamental variables that make the world -- in fact the entire universe -- possible. It's a world created specifically as part of the plan that includes your God knowingly subjecting innocents to rape, beatings, torture, and death.

Your God created it all. Anthrax, guinea worm, yersinia pestis, etc. And he created them all knowing the consequences. He deliberately created ever single disease knowing when it did it what the consequences would be to his children. Because otherwise it would be too easy to believe in God, right? Each and every source of torment and suffering was necessary for this good, kind, and loving parent.

The power of Jesus’s atonement is the only mitigating factor that can make everything right in the long run.

So you say. But your statement is false in the case of those who die before the age of accountability.

Secularism does not give any hope to the powerless and innocent in the face of evil.

I never claimed it did. You're off on a tangent now. Mormonism gives no hope to the young innocents who spend their short lives being beaten, raped and tortured, largely by the people who are supposed to love and protect them. "I'm really sorry that you have to be beaten to death as a child but, trust me, it's a comparatively short period of time and it's necessary that we give your tormentor the chance to commit this specific sin -- otherwise he'll have nothing to repent of and some other adult's suffering and torment will have been a complete waste." You think that's a source of hope and comfort to the six year old whose father violates her with a broomstick handle every few days?

Oh, wait. You mean it gives hope to you. Well, that makes it okay.

As I think I’ve already said, God knows full well that this is a fallen world. A natural world where there are real world consequences for the actions that people make…both the good and the bad.

Your God knows this is a "fallen world" because he created it. Jesus our brother, kind and good, devised a plan that required a fallen world. There was nothing "natural" about it. God started with a plan that you voted for and went to war to make sure it was implemented. The creation if the world as it exists was according to the plan. The fall was according to the plan. Your God isn't some helpless bystander. It is all his plan. He created it all.

That’s VERY difficult for some people to accept especially if they have no hope of God’s love and and Christ’s mercy in the eternal scheme of things.

You don't have the faintest idea why people find "that" very hard to accept. I don't accept your religious claims because they are, at bottom, both irrational and morally bankrupt.

God is not at fault for the actions and choices that evil people make. But he will judge them accordingly and all will be made right.

So you say. Your God is just as responsible for his intentional placing of innocent souls into specific circumstances where he knew they would be raped and beaten as Bin Laden was responsible for adopting and implementing a plan that took down the towers. It's his plan, and he executed that plan with full knowledge of the consequences. That the child abuser didn't know in advance that he would beat and rape the child and so has the experience of free will, does not lessen the responsibility of your God, who exercised his own agency to send the innocent into harm's way, knowing the specific harm that would result. If you leave your child with a babysitter with absolute knowledge that your babysitter will rape, beat, and kill your child, you don't get off the hook for your decision to leave the child with the babysitter in the first place.

There is a matter of trust involved. Do we and can we trust in God’s plan which involves free agency and that all will be made right through Christ’s Infinite Atonement?

I don't trust anyone who would deliberately subject innocent children to beatings, rape and torture and then disclaim all responsibility for the resulting harm. And I don't trust anyone who tries to convince me that this is all morally acceptable because reasons.

As it is, you have failed to come up with a plan/schema for a better world in which there is no evil. You are essentially left in a position of no hope. You cannot stop the evil. It will always exist in the hearts of some men/women.

This is where your reasoning goes completely off the rails. It's a 100% non-sequitur. My entire argument is counterargument to yours. I have no obligation to help you improve your argument. It's you who is making claims about your God's plan of salvation. I don't believe that your God, let alone your plan of salvation, is real. I see no reason at all to believe that there is a plan. So it's completely off the rails for you to demand that I present you with a plan that I don't believe exists for a God that I don't believe exists. The question itself is a risable attempt to change the subject and avoid taking about the horrific aspects of what you, as you put it, choose to believe.

Does it suck to believe that there's no plan -- no one driving this bus? Sometimes. What sucks worse is to believe there is a plan that necessarily causes children to be raped, beaten and tortured. Morally bankrupt.

God and his Son are the only one’s that have planned for and created a plan by which all we compensated and rewarded according to their works in the flesh. Some are blessed with the faith to know and/or believe that this is so. That faith cannot be forced. It is a choice.

As is the belief in the plates and the angel that are part of the restoration narrative.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One ... rom_Omelas


"The city's constant state of serenity and splendor requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery.

Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce to this one injustice that secures the happiness of the rest of the city. However, some citizens, young and old, walk away from the city after seeing the child. Each is alone, and no one knows where they go, but none come back. The story ends with "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One ... rom_Omelas


"The city's constant state of serenity and splendor requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery.

Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce to this one injustice that secures the happiness of the rest of the city. However, some citizens, young and old, walk away from the city after seeing the child. Each is alone, and no one knows where they go, but none come back. The story ends with "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

Ha, I saw that Star Trek Dis. episode. At the risk of outing myself as a stupid hick like MG, would you mind explaining this?

-Doc