Posts by Qcmbr

25

Mormon leaders reach out to gays, lesbian. I,am shocked!!

by jam in

mormon leaders made their most signifcant outreach.

yet to gays and lesbians, unveiling a new website thursday.

that encourages church members to be more compassionate.

Qcmbr

Cold Steel - having read your response the langauge you are using and the juxtaposition of ideas seems to suggest that you've accepted the Mormon view on sexuality (deviant!) Hopefully you'll consider that the rule you seem to promote (homosexuals must respect your space by not making a move on you) would mean that straight people could also not make advances (who knows when a straight person might make a move on a homosexual person and so not respect their sexual space!) You cannot advocate one rule for the privileged straight people and another for the minority homosexual or bisexual.

If you wish to be homophobic thats fine. What you must own is the cause of it and the consequences. The moment you start pretending that you can discriminate against someone and it is justified and loving you are wrong. Sexual gender preferences are not sins, mental disabilities or character failings. Any church that preaches that they are is a hate filled organisation - no matter what redeeming features they display elsewhere - because it takes that which is natural and turns it into a reason for discrimination (you cannot marry, you must live in secret etc.)

As a male you also may be unaware of the blatant anti woman discrimination in the church as well. Judgemental and heirarchical thinking begets further abuses. The Mormon church - and I still have great fondness for much of it - is riddled with status and privilege - those who can and those who can't - and it is a power play dressed up in a religious story. Please, please put aside that which you have learnt about homosexuality and examine why you think as you do.

58

How many of you have lost your faith on JWN

by Most Noble in

jw
friends

just curious, if anyone had lost faith whilst on jwn and do u think it is an honorable experience?..

Qcmbr

This forum was a crucial tool in allowing me to sidestep faith based filters - I could examine ideas vicariously because they didn't directly attack Mormonism. Once I was comfortable with the idea that faith works on the same principles everywhere and all that changes are the words, rituals and dogma I could be more certain that my Mormon experiences were not exceptional. My testimony was no more special or from god than a JWs convictions, an evangelicals spiritual gifts and the Muslims fervour.

This forum toughened me up and taught me not to respect others supernatural claims. I'm much less gullible, much more skeptical and much happier now that I can see the power of rationality and facts as tools for trust v faith based woo. To those who maintain their faith despite facts evidence and common sense I give a cautious , if disappointed, 'good for you :S'.

Thanks to all who have helped me in my quest for self doubt and the fruits of questioning that faith would have robbed from me.

25

Mormon leaders reach out to gays, lesbian. I,am shocked!!

by jam in

mormon leaders made their most signifcant outreach.

yet to gays and lesbians, unveiling a new website thursday.

that encourages church members to be more compassionate.

Qcmbr

Cold Steel - I think we Mormons are responsible for lots of hate speech , we just called it 'loving guidance from the Lord.' I received the "To Young Men Only " guide when I was in youth and it contained such 'gems' as this:

“It was intended that we use this power only with our partner in marriage. I repeat, very plainly, physical mischief with another man is forbidden. It is forbidden by the Lord.
“There are some men who entice young men to join them in these immoral acts. If you are ever approached to participate in anything like that, it is time to vigorously resist.
“While I was in a mission on one occasion, a missionary said he had something to confess. I was very worried because he just could not get himself to tell me what he had done.
“After patient encouragement he blurted out, ‘I hit my companion.’
“ ‘Oh, is that all,’ I said in great relief.
“ ‘But I floored him,” he said.
“After learning a little more [his companion was gay], my response was ‘Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn’t have been well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way.’
“I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself.”

1976 General Authority , Boyd K Packer. Pamphlet for Young Men.

Edit: Just to add - as things stand he's next in line to lead the church.

317

Does God's foreknowledge take away from free will?

by Christ Alone in

just by knowing what will happen, that doesn't mean that we can prevent or cause something to happen.

my knowing that does not prevent them the free will of making the choice.. it's the same with god.

if god is not restricted to existence in the present, then the future is known by god because god indwells the future as well as the present and the past.

Qcmbr

If it is possible to know the future then we have a deterministic universe where quantum fluctuations will happen according to the starting conditions of the universe and are playing out exactly as planned/ordered. Humans are a fairly miniscule and irrelevant part of that deterministic universe and are a slave tothat determinism. With regard to the past our present fixes it into set deterministic state, what was must have been for now to be.

If a god exists with the capacity to know the future they have become devoid of free will themselves. Their foreknowledgemust include a knowledge of their future actions as well. A god who knows the end state of a system they interact with is forced to perform miracles, revelations, answers to prayers, no to interact during disasters and so on. This being knows whether he will answer before you ask and cannot chose to act otherwise lest he alter the future.

Such a being negates all divine freedom turning even himself into a slave , a slave held rigidly by observation and information. Once the photon is observed itcan no longer exist as a potentiality and go through both slits in the experiment but must only go through one. This brings the whole cosmic fairytale of xianity to the level of divine farce where god pretends to offer choice , redemption, responsibility and hope but in reality offers merely a script where he plays a central part as the surprised god reacting to human choices in eden and with Jesus. Such a god is doomed by sneaking an early peek at his christmas presents and in dooming himself he also fixes the universe so it must unfold a certain way, free will and quantum fluctuations be damned. What a bast*rd.

56

A Mormon becomes a JW in the Feb 2013 Watchtower...

by cedars in

glancing through the feb 2013 "public" watchtower edition, an interesting article appears on page 8.. here is the pdf download link.... http://www.jw.org/download/?fileformat=pdf&issue=20130201&output=html&pub=wp&langwritten=e&option=trgchlzrqvnyvrxf&txtcmslang=e.

it's interesting how, in the story, the young man's jw aunt and uncle switch him from mormonism to the jw faith using third-party material (the nov 8, 1995 awake!

article), and he ends up becoming a jw after confirming on the official mormon website that the claims in the awake!

Qcmbr

Oh Cold Steel I'm itching.

40

The Nature of God

by sabastious in

i know that judaism and christianity are strongly self professed monotheistic religions.

yet, i wonder how they can so definitively say this when the word they chose to use as the deity in the beginning of their holy scripture is a plural.

genesis 1:1, and all of genesis chapter 1, uses the word "elohim" which is the plural form of "eloah" which is the prolonged form of "el.

Qcmbr

Your misunderstanding of the synergies between Genesis 1 and 2 is why you have so much else wrong.

You of course are error free ;)

Seriously - if you lived in India you could as well be trying to be too deep and mystical about the bhagavad gita, or if you existed 3000 years ago you may well have hugged a tree and asked for everyone to hear the deep earth mysteries as the ancestors whispered to you. You're as much a cultural product as the next person and you have the unfortunate position of having nothing like the original autographs in your hand , no thorough grasp of the languages and cultures that produced them and to further obfuscate meaning you then add a 2012 Western gloss to it all and try and create a new scriptural form and meaning that is alien to the 4th century onwards copy of copy of hearsay books you claim are communicating such hidden knowledge.

Now if you have another means to approach scripture that is free from the fog of culture and the impossibility of understanding an ancient civilisation as required to divine their motives and meanings, feel free to see if it has any merit or whether it simply returns to the basic - if God chooses you you'll get it and he'll whisper meaning to you secretly and subjectively and then it'll all make sense (in a non repeatable or non- testable or contradicts the facts manner).

Surely proving God shouldn't be this hard.

P.S. You're phrase about me studying religion and not living it is rather silly don't you think?

40

The Nature of God

by sabastious in

i know that judaism and christianity are strongly self professed monotheistic religions.

yet, i wonder how they can so definitively say this when the word they chose to use as the deity in the beginning of their holy scripture is a plural.

genesis 1:1, and all of genesis chapter 1, uses the word "elohim" which is the plural form of "eloah" which is the prolonged form of "el.

Qcmbr

Sab - What do you mean it is fallacious? It is not a lie. Leapt not to your conclusion before your argument - 'tis bad form.

Which one of these Gods do you wish to claim as the original and authentic and which a copy or imaginary creation akin to the imaginary paleo-american gods (or do you claim those as well!?)

Enlil (Sumerian) co-creator of humans then tiring of their noise sender of a destroying flood which one man , Utnapishtim, survived with the help of another God Ea/Enki (symbol the double headed snake - considerd the master shaper of the world.).

El (Levantine God) married to Asherah and considered father of the gods and creator of creatures, son named Ba'al (symbol for both : bull)

Yam (son of El - one of the Elohim), God of the water.

Teshub (Hurrian)- god of the weather, described as carrying a triple thunderbolt.

Ra (Egyptian) - god of the Sun, creator of life (spoken into existence by his secret words).

When two different ideas and gods got merged (Elohim - many gods and Yahweh single god) you get very obvious contradictions and purely mystical interpretations as the plain words simply contradict. We have two Genesis accounts, two Golden Calf stories with the ten commandments mixed in, two David and Goliaths, two flood stories, a global flood killing all but Noah then a few generations later Giants and so on. It, the books of the bible, are so inconsistent that trying to draw a straight line through teh narrative fails and clearly the poor attempts to mash multiple stories and multiple Gods into one god and then by the NT a further effort to cram Jehovah into Christ burst at the seams many times. Modern day westernised Christians then go back and add another God on top of all this and start to describe the Jesus they expect would walk these streets (the one who is against slavery, likes women's equality and thinks gays are OK).

40

The Nature of God

by sabastious in

i know that judaism and christianity are strongly self professed monotheistic religions.

yet, i wonder how they can so definitively say this when the word they chose to use as the deity in the beginning of their holy scripture is a plural.

genesis 1:1, and all of genesis chapter 1, uses the word "elohim" which is the plural form of "eloah" which is the prolonged form of "el.

Qcmbr

Just some examples:

(Proverbs 22:17-18):"Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, And apply thine heart to my doctrine; For it is pleasant if thou keep them in thy belly, that they may be established together upon thy lips"

(Amenemope, ch. 1):"Give thine ear, and hear what I say, And apply thine heart to apprehend; It is good for thee to place them in thine heart, let them rest in the casket of thy belly; That they may act as a peg upon thy tongue" [49]

(Proverbs 22:22):"Rob not the poor, for he is poor, neither oppress (or crush) the lowly in the gate."

(Amenemope, ch. 2):"Beware of robbing the poor, and oppressing the afflicted." [49]

(Proverbs 22:24-5): "Do not befriend the man of anger, Nor go with a wrathful man, Lest thou learn his ways and take a snare for thy soul."

(Amenemope, ch. 10): "Associate not with a passionate man, Nor approach him for conversation; Leap not to cleave to such an one; That terror carry thee not away." [49]

(Proverbs 22:29):"[if you] You see a man quick in his work, before kings will he stand, before cravens, he will not stand."

(Amenemope, ch. 30):"A scribe who is skillful in his business findeth worthy to be a courtier" [49]

(Proverbs 23:1):"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, Consider diligently what is before thee; And put a knife to thy throat, If thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties, for they are breads of falsehood."

(Amenemope, ch. 23): "Eat not bread in the presence of a ruler, And lunge not forward(?) with thy mouth before a governor(?). When thou art replenished with that to which thou has no right, It is only a delight to thy spittle. Look upon the dish that is before thee, And let that (alone) supply thy need." [49] (see above)

(Proverbs 23:4-5):"Toil not to become rich, And cease from dishonest gain; For wealth maketh to itself wings, Like an eagle that flieth heavenwards"

(Amenemope, ch. 7):"Toil not after riches; If stolen goods are brought to thee, they remain not over night with thee. They have made themselves wings like geese. And have flown into the heavens." [49]

(Proverbs 14:7):"Speak not in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of thy words"

(Amenemope, ch. 21):"Empty not thine inmost soul to everyone, nor spoil (thereby) thine influence" [49]

(Proverbs 23:10): "Remove not the widows landmark; And enter not into the field of the fatherless."

(Amenemope, ch. 6): "Remove not the landmark from the bounds of the field...and violate not the widows boundary" [49]

(Proverbs 23:12):"Apply thine heart unto instruction and thine ears to the words of knowledge"

(Amenemope, ch. 1):"Give thine ears, hear the words that are said, give thine heart to interpret them." [49]

40

The Nature of God

by sabastious in

i know that judaism and christianity are strongly self professed monotheistic religions.

yet, i wonder how they can so definitively say this when the word they chose to use as the deity in the beginning of their holy scripture is a plural.

genesis 1:1, and all of genesis chapter 1, uses the word "elohim" which is the plural form of "eloah" which is the prolonged form of "el.

Qcmbr

..except that the Torah is derived from multiple human sources and is not divine in origin.

40

The Nature of God

by sabastious in

i know that judaism and christianity are strongly self professed monotheistic religions.

yet, i wonder how they can so definitively say this when the word they chose to use as the deity in the beginning of their holy scripture is a plural.

genesis 1:1, and all of genesis chapter 1, uses the word "elohim" which is the plural form of "eloah" which is the prolonged form of "el.

Qcmbr

sab - by what standard do you elevate the gods of the ancient semitic tribes to the creator as described by Roman orthodox christianity?