by Laika 73 Replies latest watchtower bible
Each of those three witnesses, incidentally, were well respected and known for their integrity and honesty.
According to wikipedia, Martin Harris is known for being very superstitious. Surely a man like that can be convinced to believe just like he was depicted in the cartoon, eh?
A lot of people were superstitious. Joseph Smith was superstitious. People are products of their environment and they don't achieve perfection or infallibility when they are called to be apostles or prophets. The apostle Paul carried with him his attitudes about women. While Jesus was very open to them, Paul never quite rid himself of his strict Jewish roots. But is a superstitious person necessarily more subject to suggestion than everyone else? How about the apostles? They all came from diverse backgrounds without the benefit of education. Do you really think none of them was superstitious? When Jesus appeared on the water, didn't Peter at first think it was a spirit?
Martin Harris was a wealthy, self-made man and he wasn't known as being an idiot. And the man saw an angel, heard the voice of God, saw the plates and other artifacts and saw the angel turn the pages of the plates. Had Joseph attempted to deceive him, he would have remembered the warnings his wife had given and most likely retreated with his money. When confronted by armed men who threatened to shoot him if he didn't recant his testimony, he opened his vest and invited them to shoot.
Believe what you wish, my friend, but very few of the early LDS leaders led peaceful, happy lives. They were imprisoned, mobbed, run out of their homes and forced to leave their property to those who ran them off. Some had their children shot in front of them, or, in at least one case, saw their children's heads bashed in. (They boasted that it saved ammunition.) The only thing that would have motivated me to stay with such a movement is that if I knew it was true. And, finally, keep in mind that Martin spent his entire wealth financing the church's interest, including publishing the Book of Mormon, which often was given away or sold well below cost.
Oh, and two others saw the angel, plates, heard the voice of God and so forth. None ever denied their testimonies, when doing so would have made them local heroes. I have some more detailed info I can send you on that if you PM me. Also, check out the following:
When you are within a worldview your ability to deconstruct that worldview is severely hampered. You are impressed by things like 8 mormon witnesses because they support your worldview but you will subconsciously dismiss any number of witnesses for events that disagree with your internalised truth. This way of thinking is how our brains work. Once we are emotionally invested we introduce staggering bias to our perception filters. Right now you literally cannot perceive the correct weight of the evidence against Mormonism. It is a similar problem to those trying to argue against evolution to preserve a creationist mythology.
Let me give you a neat little example in reference to something you frequently allude to - this Nahom. To you the presence of somewhere that has a similar name on the Arabian peninsula becomes resounding proof. The presence of a place called Comoros , east of Mozambique, with a capital of Moroni however , won't even raise a flicker of concern. As an observer it looks very much like someone choosing exotic names, slightly modifying them and then writing them. Modern day apologists then produce a straw man argument that nowhere on the coast of The Arabian peninsula would ever be expected to have a long standing river, trees for boats and ore for tools and when they find one that also shares the same letters as one of the many made up names used in the fictional account claim it is incredible proof. This is craziness. The whole story fails a basic reality check: we are ascribing ocean going boat building skills to a tiny family of farming based migrants ( if you have any experience in boat building you will know how many people and how much specialist material is needed to make a vessel , never mind one capable of crossing multiple oceans. It is well outside the resource availability, tool and skillets described in the BoM- the believers answer is always then to invoke magic. If you respond to this you will find yourself doing it!)
if you think I’m going to get in a long, drawn out discussion of your emotional problems with the church, it’s not going to happen. Your bitterness cannot be contained and you clearly have issues.
Cold Steel, this type of thing is exactly what this thread was all about! Qcmbr may have been very critical of your beliefs and church but not once has he attacked you personally in this way, where as you resorted to this almost immediately into the discussion. What does this tell you?
Return of Parakeet: It’s not helpful or correct to paint all ex-dub atheists with the same brush, as much as you would like to squirrel them all into your convenient little categories. People are just a bit more complicated than that.
Cold Steel: "Of course they are, but most of our disagreements on this forum stem from the fact that you don’t carefully read what I’m saying. I said: “Some who fall away from the JWs become atheists....”
And you did not carefully read your own words, Cold Steel. What you wrote was, "Some who fall away from the JWs become ATHEISTS AND REJECT ALL RELIGION, HAVING BEEN BURNED. [emphasis mine]"
"Some" refers to a portion of those who leave the dubs. Regarding that "some" who become atheists, you describe them ALL as rejecting religion and being under mind control and hating the Bible.
I can only think from this deliberate misunderstanding of your own words that either you do not have a strong grasp of the English language or you're trying to prevaricate. Either way, it stinks of desperation.
Keep on stamping out these little Mormon brushfires, Cold Steel. It's entertaining to watch you try to defend the indefensible.
Believe what you wish, my friend, but very few of the early LDS leaders led peaceful, happy lives. They were imprisoned, mobbed, run out of their homes and forced to leave their property to those who ran them off. Some had their children shot in front of them, or, in at least one case, saw their children's heads bashed in. (They boasted that it saved ammunition.) The only thing that would have motivated me to stay with such a movement is that if I knew it was true. And, finally, keep in mind that Martin spent his entire wealth financing the church's interest, including publishing the Book of Mormon, which often was given away or sold well below cost.
Jews were persecuted during the holocaust, Christians are reportedly persecuted in many places, even Jehovah's Witnesses faced persecution. As much as I hate to see people hurt for any reason (especially for their beliefs and their convictions), I cannot use that as a basis for judging that their religion is the correct one. Can you?
Green Eggs and Ham is written with numerous chiastic forms.
Once you get a handle on what treasure digging was it all makes sense. http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V36N04_37.pdf (sorry iPad - hard to make clickable links)
The above article , using fully referenced sources, shows how treasure diggers ,in America , in that region and specifically the Smith family were often looking for Captain Kidd's buried treasure. The stories of Kidd that they were steeped in ( it is reported as a favourite of Joseph as a child) contains references to Comoros and Moroni.
The Book of Mormon is available online at lds.org. Anyone looking to see changing lds thought and the historical issues would also do well to look at mormonthink.com as well which is very approachable.
I pass on the book of Mormon, I like other kind s of fiction.
The airstreams off the coast only allow for a comparitively
small strip of lush, green vegetation. These strips are pretty much due east of Nahom. Coincidence?
If someone (like say, Joseph Smith), completely makes up a bunch of stuff, writes a biblical sounding book, throwing around a lot of impressive sounding terms, invent things, and pretends to have some divine authority, it will always be possible to find "proof" of his delusions if that's what you want to do.
You should really practice my religion, it's so much better. I call it Apostatiany. It was started by me, I found some sacred scrolls on the internet, in a place called JWD, which when translated from the language of Apostatiany means "The place where truth overcomes lies" . There are some, true, that say it means Jehovah's Witness Discussion, but they are disgruntled former members, who just make things up. JWD has lots of wisdom from the Gods. There is a God called Simon, who comes from the place Canada, which means "place in the North" (Northip). In Apostatish. The sacred scrolls were originallly made by Simon at the North pole, the North pole is also North, coincidence? If you notice, the name Simon starts with the Letter "S". The Sun, the sacred symbol of our religion also starts with the Letter "S". Those who practice this religion will go to the sacred place in the sky (seohrap) when they die . Sky and Sacred BOTH begins with the Letter "S" . Coincidence? I think not
There, I invented a religion. You cannot prove its not the one true religion, so it must be so. Those who refuse to acknowledge this is the one true religion will not go to the Seohrap.
Well, I told you you're beyond truth and reason. Everyone else I know has moved on to much better things. If you can dismiss what I've told you, then by all means I'm sure your own choice of paths will serve you well.
did you get a chance to read the article?
