If plates then God

[MG 2.0]

I don’t have a problem holding God responsible for a plan in which we come to earth and make real choices. Choices that matter. We are accountable for those choices. Choices do have consequences. God will reward the wicked and the righteous according to their deeds while in the mortal body. Jesus (God) loves children. He has prepared a way that all will be well for them. They will be taken under His care. They will be compensated.

I am waiting for you to come up with an alternative plan that values complete free will to choose and does not include the horrors of this world.

You’ve had a whole lotta’ pages to do so.

This whole thing is not rocket science. The plan of salvation is rather simple in some respects. But because of the easiness of the way many stumble and often fall.

You have trust issues with God. That much is clear.

Regards,
MG

Would you trust someone who entrusts young, innocent children to a child abuser that he knows will beat, rape, and torture them?

Get real.

Never mind. You do. You've told us that dozens of times.

Incorrect.

I trust no God that insists he's perfectly good yet subjects innocent children to beatings, rape, torture, and death. But, seriously, it's you, Joseph Smith, and his successors that I don't trust. Trust isn't an issue when it comes to beings people imagine.

I think this succinctly wraps up your unbiased opinion.

You are so set in your ways in regards to non belief in a creator God who loves you. Essentially it seems, figuratively speaking, you can’t see beyond the nose on your face. That’s my opinion based upon the circular path you’ve traveled throughout this thread repeating basically the same arguments/positions over and over again as if you think that if you repeat it enough it must be fact/true.

The fact is, if there is an ultimate truth it resides in God. No one man or group of men however intelligent they might come off as being. One can be ever learning and never come to a knowledge of the truth.

My goal has been to try and determine who I can trust as having that pipeline to God. In my estimation the pipeline runs into the headquarters of the CofJCof LDS.

YMMV. And that’s fine. Isn’t it wonderful we can have this conversation and express ourselves freely?

And again, I can see why you and others would be so dead set against the plates and the angel.

Those things simply don’t exist from your perspective. Cannot exist. Period end of sentence.

Again, at this point I’m jumping in to clarify and/or add to any discussion referencing something I’ve said. If I feel like it’s worth my time and effort. Anytime you folks want to wrap things up that’s fine by me.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

This is confusing.

And you are still misrepresenting what I actually said. That may be why you’re confused.

Regards,
MG

Pathetic. I quoted you verbatim and now you’re running away. I’m not surprised, your position is morally bankrupt and you simply cannot explain your way out of that.

[Marcus]

....Essentially it seems, figuratively speaking, you can’t see beyond the nose on your face. That’s my opinion based upon the circular path you’ve traveled throughout this thread repeating basically the same arguments/positions over and over again as if you think that if you repeat it enough it must be fact/true....

You have described yourself perfectly.

The fact is, if there is an ultimate truth it resides in God. No one man or group of men however intelligent they might come off as being. One can be ever learning and never come to a knowledge of the truth.

And since, in your opinion, no "group of men" (never mind a group of PEOPLE, a usage which wouldn't occur to your sexist mind) can ever hold the truth, you decide to... believe a "group of men":

the headquarters of the CofJCof LDS.

[Physics Guy]

The problem is certainly not that golden plates or even angels are impossible. Mormon angels might not exactly be extraterrestrials, supposedly being resurrected humans, but one doesn't even have to believe in God at all to consider that advanced aliens might conceivably have visited Joseph Smith and given him artefacts. And as to the plates, I for one think it highly likely that Smith had some kind of plates.

The problem is that the official Mormon story, and all the accounts we have for the "coming forth" of the Book of Mormon, fit so hand-in-glove perfectly with what one would expect from a crude but creative con job.

Tantalising chances to heft, but not read; nobody ever actually seen reading the plates; pillowcases and sheets to keep the important stuff out of sight; weasel-worded collective witness statements with appended names instead of independent, extensive accounts; witnesses who were all either interested parties or gullible rubes. A prophet with a record of hiring himself out to find treasure by scrying through a magical stone. All kinds of "see, nothing up my sleeve" misdirections, like the emphasis on descriptions of how Smith dictated the text on a couple of occasions that could easily have been staged, when for most of his waking hours he was unobserved and had ample time to prepare his recitation. A repetitious and rambling plot that reads exactly like what someone would invent on the fly; a bogus dialect that sounds just like a ham-fistedly inaccurate attempt by a talented but uneducated storyteller to imitate the King James Bible.

All of that could conceivably be compatible with a real ancient text that was really translated by miracle. If there were a real ancient text, really translated, however, none of those details would have been especially likely. They would all have been arbitrary circumstances that didn't make too much sense. Why did nobody transcribe several pages of the original characters, at least, or even write a detailed description of the plates? Conceivably nobody happened to think of doing that, or God forbade it, or something; who knows? How the plates got treated is nothing like what would one naturally expect, though, if they really were what Smith claimed.

Instead all the details are exactly what one would expect if the plates were fake props and the whole thing was a scam. That's the problem.

[I Have Questions]

The fact is, if there is an ultimate truth it resides in God.

No, that isn't an established fact at all. It might be your opinion, it might be your belief, but it isn't a fact.

No one man or group of men however intelligent they might come off as being. One can be ever learning and never come to a knowledge of the truth.

As Marcus has pointed out, you've just said truth doesn't reside in the Brethren. On that we can agree.

My goal has been to try and determine who I can trust as having that pipeline to God. In my estimation the pipeline runs into the headquarters of the CofJCof LDS.

Why not trust in your own personal pipeline to God, rather than abdicate your life choices to some old blokes you don't know and who you've just said cannot possibly have ultimate truth residing with them? Is there something amiss in your life such that you don't feel worthy of calling on the Holy Ghost to help guide your decisions and choices?

And again, I can see why you and others would be so dead set against the plates and the angel.
Those things simply don’t exist from your perspective. Cannot exist. Period end of sentence.

Nope, it's a simple conclusion arising from an impartial examination of the evidence which leads right-minded folk to be skeptical about their existence.

[Res Ipsa]

Would you trust someone who entrusts young, innocent children to a child abuser that he knows will beat, rape, and torture them?

Get real.

It's a real question, despite your multiple attempts to avoid it. Is your answer "no?"

Never mind. You do. You've told us that dozens of times.

Incorrect

Ah, the classic explanation-free MG 2.0 assertion. You trust your God, who deliberately sends souls to earth at a specific place and time knowing with certainty that those souls will be beaten, raped, tortured and murdered while they are without sin. You haven't even addressed that claim, let alone shown how it is incorrect. You've simply danced around it.

I trust no God that insists he's perfectly good yet subjects innocent children to beatings, rape, torture, and death. But, seriously, it's you, Joseph Smith, and his successors that I don't trust. Trust isn't an issue when it comes to beings people imagine.

I think this succinctly wraps up your unbiased opinion.

You have yet to show that you even understand my opinions correctly. I'd suggest you try to do that first before claiming that one of the many views I've expressed in this thread represents them all.

You are so set in your ways in regards to non belief in a creator God who loves you.

We haven't been discussing the general topic of a loving creator God. We've been discussing your particular spin on Mormon God, which I find inconsistent with the notion of a loving creator God.

Essentially it seems, figuratively speaking, you can’t see beyond the nose on your face.

This whole discussion is beyond the nose on my face. Neither gold plates nor angels reside on my nose. The same is true of the evidence for and against the truth of the restoration story. You, on the other hand, seem to be unwilling to even look at your nose -- the necessary implications of your claims.

That’s my opinion based upon the circular path you’ve traveled throughout this thread repeating basically the same arguments/positions over and over again as if you think that if you repeat it enough it must be fact/true.

You claimed my arguments were circular upthread, but ignored my request that you show me how they were circular. If they are circular, you should be able to show me how they are circular. As for repetition, mote and beam.

The fact is, if there is an ultimate truth it resides in God.

LOL! It's amazing that you don't know the difference between a fact and an assertion. If, in fact, there is no God, isn't that an ultimate truth?

...


[MG 2.0]And again, I can see why you and others would be so dead set against the plates and the angel.

Those things simply don’t exist from your perspective. Cannot exist. Period end of sentence.[/quote]

Examining evidence and discussing rational inferences from it is not being "dead set" against anything. This is another clear example of projection on your part. You are dead set against any inferences from evidence that don't support what you've already concluded about the LDS restoration. Rather than deal with all the evidence, you simply make stuff up about your God that you can't possibly know. The hubris involved in claiming to know what God can and can't do is pretty stunning when you step back and take a look. But that's what you do instead of grappling with the evidence.

PG has explained the evidentiary problem in great detail. Your only response is ad hoc rationalizations that you aren't in a position to make.

Again, at this point I’m jumping in to clarify and/or add to any discussion referencing something I’ve said. If I feel like it’s worth my time and effort. Anytime you folks want to wrap things up that’s fine by me.

Regards,
MG

For your entertainment: A song from the Bobs. https://youtu.be/2-y4VSHp7lI?si=OYByNbAsTjRC9wqD

[Physics Guy]

Far be it from me to try to solve the problem of evil in a post. Some bad things that happen can be blamed on the victims for being stupid, but many can only be blamed on evil perpetrators whom God could presumably have stopped. Some bad things don't even involve human agents. A few years ago there was a story in the news about a child who was killed by a falling hailstone. One would think that God could have nudged that thing a few inches aside.

Even the luckiest human life has bad limits. At some point we all die, and our friends and loved ones all die.

What we believe—or do not—about God changes none of that. Whether or not there is a God running the universe, running a universe is harder to understand than we can.

In your days, have you commanded the morning?

Even to my limited mind it seems that God must constantly face trolley problems of a worse kind than we can. Suppose that you could save a child from a painful death, but only by erasing the entire existence of someone else in the future—or of many people. Given the way that the universe works, with causality, changing even a tiny thing now could have those future consequences.

Why can't God just break causality and make all the best things happen at all times, without any constraints relating things at different times? How could we know? It's not clear that it's even a real question, though. In the only kind of time that we know, past and future are not independent. Perhaps asking God to break causality in a universe otherwise like ours is asking God to perform a logical contradiction, like making a round square. And perhaps totally different kinds of universe will only have their own problems.

I haven't commanded the morning. At least, not the real way. I can tell dawn to come, but it only obeys if I have timed my command right.

[MG 2.0]

And you are still misrepresenting what I actually said. That may be why you’re confused.

Regards,
MG

Pathetic. I quoted you verbatim and now you’re running away. I’m not surprised, your position is morally bankrupt and you simply cannot explain your way out of that.

You misrepresented what I said. That makes a difference. I’ve already mentioned that your premise which sits on a sandy foundation isn’t worth pursuing.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

Pathetic. I quoted you verbatim and now you’re running away. I’m not surprised, your position is morally bankrupt and you simply cannot explain your way out of that.

You misrepresented what I said. That makes a difference. I’ve already mentioned that your premise which sits on a sandy foundation isn’t worth pursuing.

Regards,
MG

Explain exactly how I’ve misrepresented what you said. If you can.

[MG 2.0]

....Essentially it seems, figuratively speaking, you can’t see beyond the nose on your face. That’s my opinion based upon the circular path you’ve traveled throughout this thread repeating basically the same arguments/positions over and over again as if you think that if you repeat it enough it must be fact/true....

You have described yourself perfectly.

The fact is, if there is an ultimate truth it resides in God. No one man or group of men however intelligent they might come off as being. One can be ever learning and never come to a knowledge of the truth.

And since, in your opinion, no "group of men" (never mind a group of PEOPLE, a usage which wouldn't occur to your sexist mind) can ever hold the truth, you decide to... believe a "group of men":

the headquarters of the CofJCof LDS.

I’m referring to men that are not called of God. One might expect that if they were called of God they would then receive His truth.

Regards,
MG