[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]super saiyan wrote:
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]super saiyan wrote:<<< But the Trinity isn’t taught in the Bible. My belief has just as much merit as yours does if taken solely from the Bible. [/quote]This is so tough to do online. Listen man. I have no ill will toward you. Truly I don’t. My hand is out to you, I take no delight in tearing down your religion. Frankly I’d much rather talk about the grace and glory of the exalted risen Christ, but no matter what I do God puts me in positions to defend His name and truth. Forlife is right though. I didn’t even mention the book of Abraham which anybody could say said anything in the early 1800’s because ancient Egyptian had not been deciphered yet. The Rosetta stone had just been discovered. Once the hieroglyphs were understood Joseph was shown to be a red handedly caught con artist. This is recent friend. Joe got revelations on cue at the most opportune times like Forlife said. For instance when he wanted bed the wives of people who believed in him. Can you imagine a man saying to you that God has told him to have sex with YOUR wife!!!
Let’s not forget when Lucy found out about his divinely inspired philandering and quite rightly went off about it, he got a quick revelation right then too wherein God threatened to DESTROY poor heartbroken Lucy if she did not give her blessing to her husband’s whoremongering right in her face. Please man. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on for a couple hours. This guy was an astonishingly talented con man and I do mean talented. What he lacked in formal education he made up for an hundredfold in imagination, charisma and manipulated influence over others. Don’t even get me started on Brigham either. TOTALLY different man than Joseph, but brilliant manipulator as well nonetheless.
Yes, the bible most definitely DOES teach the trinity. That’s why centuries and centuries of faithful scholarship keeps coming to the same conclusion. I am NOT against YOU. Quite the contrary I promise you. You are being deceived and sometimes my passion is misguided into words sharper than I realize when I’m typing them. I don’t want to see people die. You cannot worship false gods and have the true God shrug His shoulders and blow it off. Read Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel. The holy one of Israel breathed fearsome burning wrath on His own people for doing just that and guess how he did it. He sent idolatrous pagan nations to destroy them out of pure ironic disdain.
[/quote]
Your previous posts have made it abundantly clear that you do in fact enjoy tearing down my religion. I’m not going to pretend I understand everything that Joseph Smith did or everything that occurred in the early days of the church. But the critics will never even begin to comprehend it without an understanding of sealings and adoption. They ignorantly assign lust as Joseph’s primary motive.
Here’s what you don’t understand; I know there are things in LDS church history that are difficult to understand. But I have read the Book of Mormon. Each time I read it the Spirit testifies to my soul that it is true. And if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith was a true prophet. You can’t have one without the other.
The reason the witness from the Holy Ghost is so strong is because Book of Mormon clearly testifies of the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon contains a reference to Jesus Christ or His work every 2.7 verses on average. It starts with a testimony of Jesus Christ, it is filled with more testimonies of Jesus Christ and His role as Savior, Judge, Creator, etc.
“For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” (2 Nephi 25:23)
“And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.” (2 Nephi 25:26)
“And he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam.” (2 Nephi 9:21)
“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.” (Mosiah 3:17)
“Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. Amen.” (Mosiah 5:15)
“Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.” (Moroni 10:32-33)
Listen Trib, I have no interest whatsoever in fitting into your definition of what a Christian is. If you want to claim I am not a Christian because of differences in LDS theology, fine. But neither you nor anyone else can deny that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Your opinion doesn’t matter. You won’t be the one judging me at the end.
The fact of the matter is that the central and single most important doctrine of Christianity and the gospel of the LDS Church is the atonement of Jesus Christ. Period. If you want to deny me the title of Christian according to the gospel of Tribulus, that’s OK. I know who I am. I know who I worship. And I know that salvation comes only through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.[/quote]
Tiribulus claims the Spirit has confirmed the truth of his beliefs. Who is right?
That’s the pivotal question in all of this. If a believer really has been told by god that he belongs to god’s church, nothing else matters. So what if Joseph Smith told faithful priesthood holders that god wanted them to give him their wives? So what if the Book of Abraham doesn’t actually represent what was written in the scrolls Joseph claimed to translate? None of it matters if god has told you Joseph Smith was his prophet.
The same can be said of any other believer. No amount of evidence makes any difference, if god really has revealed the truth to you.
The spiritual experience can be so powerful, so personal, and so real, that most people literally cannot question whether or not it really came from a divine source.
Tiribulus can no more question the source of his testimony than you can question the source of yours. God has told him Mormonism is a non-Christian cult, so it must be true.
That is the peril of faith…it allows you to believe literally anything, by ascribing it to a divine source and refusing to consider it may not actually be from god.[/quote]
Forlife even though I adamantly and fundamentally disagree with your assertion that no one can be certain about anything(which you seem to espouse with so much certainty which I find ironic) an example would be the statement “something exists, rather than nothing at all” which I challenge anyone to cast doubt upon.
On purely probabilistic grounds(which I assume is the foundation you work from) how can you champion yourself as a proponent of reason when you deny the very foundation upon which all rational discourse is built upon just to avoid the conclusion of a deductive argument. Have you even tried to do a thought experiment considering the laws of logic, philosophers can try to design arguments to deny the laws of logic but all they end up doing is affirming them. Nor do I see any consistency in your skepticism, being extremely skeptical about theism yet not naturalism. Naturalism isn’t a neutral point of view and is highly improbable(I have arguments for this point if you want them otherwise this would be a mega post). Given this one should be far more skeptical about naturalism than say Christian theism.
Now I will admit you have somewhat of a point, the fact that many people experience different revelations which are many of which are contradictory and gotten in different methods than explained in the bible does give a defeater for most peoples beliefs, which means most people are wrong(as long as you hold to the law of non-contradiction which if you dismiss you can say all people are right lol.) But in no way is this a defeater for all peoples belief being wrong much less theism. The first commandment which Jesus gave in the New Testament says “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” Now I can’t ignore not loving him with all my mind while doing the other two. With my mind I understand that there is only One God who is utterly non-contingent whom sustains the whole totality of our contingent reality, who is love in his being in and of himself express through the trinity. The bible says that the testimony of the Holy Spirit would be in convicting people of their sin not in the burning of the bosom or heart, in fact the bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”. I would be a fool to trust it alone on that basis ,so while I do have an experience of the Holy Spirit which is entirely properly basic to me; it is warranted considering I don’t only believe on that basis for which you brought a defeater against.[/quote]
I disagree that philosophers have challenged the assumptions of logic, only to subsequently confirm them. There are many philosophers who recognize that logic itself may not always hold. For example, the law of non-contradiction appears to be violated by a man standing in a doorframe. The point that he is outside the room is both true and false. Another example is statements like, “this sentence is false”. If it is true that this sentence is false, then it must be false; and if it is false that this sentence is false, then it must instead be true. Some propositions may in fact be both true and false, violating the universality of non-contradiction.
As to your perception of my bias toward naturalism, I apply the same criticism to naturalism or to any other belief system. All belief systems are ultimately based on unprovable assumptions.
I respect your recognition that the heart can deceive, but keep in mind that it does so not only through our emotions, but also through our cognitive processing. You may claim your beliefs are based on objective analysis and reasoning, but confirmatory bias is so insidious, you would never know otherwise. The best defense is to simply admit we don’t know everything, and recognize that our current beliefs could very well be biased.
