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gazelam
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National Geographic disagrees with you… news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/
Galileo disagrees with you.
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Stephen168
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gazelam
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I appreciate you taking a stab at this. God bless you.
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Hatikvah
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The humor is there!
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Hatikvah
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I like how on page 10, post #136, this post was never argued against, even though it is one of the many objectives to this thread:
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adamhovey1988
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So…how did we get to Galileo? Honestly, it’s just making me want to sing Bohemian Rhapsody.
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Hatikvah
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adamhovey1988
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Oh, that old thing. So, ummm, MENDELIAN GENETICS. The Big Bang theory from none other than Fr. Lemaître, and I would advise Gazelam to read a bit about Copernicus’s personal life. So yep, anti-science.
Stephen168
New member
And the Catholic Church agreed with everything Galileo proved. The Galileo Affair is a knee jerk reaction by anti-Catholics ignorant of the history of science.Oh, that old thing. So, ummm, MENDELIAN GENETICS. The Big Bang theory from none other than Fr. Lemaître, and I would advise Gazelam to read a bit about Copernicus’s personal life. So yep, anti-science.
The Mormon Church has to reject proven science. The Catholic Church has never had to do that. It is a wonderful thing.
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adamhovey1988
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The Book of Mormon contains a lot of anachronisms, as you know. Also, “adieu”. I know some French, and ummm, so, yeah. lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/7.27?lang=eng
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zaffiroborant
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“a knee jerk reaction by anti-Catholics ignorant of the history of science.”
Also ignorant of the whole Galileo affair.
Stephen168
New member
Very true. I think this thread got off to a bad start because we can’t necessarily prove someone is wrong by proving we are right. Especially when trying to use the Early Church Fathers (ECF) to do it.
The only thing weirder than taking that approach is trying to prove Mormonism is right by trying to prove Catholicism is wrong; which is the approach used by TomNossor almost without exception.
Cardinal John Newman, in the introduction of his An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine talks about how the Anglicans use the Canon of St. Vincent to reject Catholic beliefs. The Vincentian Canon goes something like “we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.” But as the Cardinal points out, nothing is that clear and simple. He gives a few examples of things the Anglicans believe like the Trinity, Original sin, and Christ’s presents in the Eucharist which are not clearly and simply explained by the ECF. He then points out that the Catholic beliefs they reject like Purgatory, and Papal Authority are explained by the ECF just as well as the beliefs they accept.
Mormonism rejects all of it and loves to point out how Christian beliefs are not clearly and simple explained by the ECF with the assumption being: therefore, Mormonism is right. Again, this is the approach of TomNossor, almost without exception.
Mormonism is wrong about the nature of God, because they are wrong about the nature of God. God was never a human being who progressed to godhood. There are zero ECF that ever say God was once a human being. This approach can be applied to all unique Mormon beliefs: they were never believed, anywhere, ever, by anyone until the Mormon Church invented them.
The only unique Mormon belief I have had a Mormon try to claim from the ECF was their belief in eternal progression. But nowhere will you find in the ECF that God was a created being who progressed to godhood or that they were henotheists.
The Mormon understanding of the nature of God is not now or has it ever been Christian. This is why they are not Christians. The only reason I really care what they believe is because they claim they, and their unique beliefs, are Christian. And not just Christian but they claim their unique beliefs are the truest form of Christianity. Imagine that, the truest form of Christianity which cannot be found anywhere in Christian history.
My approach has alway been that Mormons are wrong because they are wrong, and stay out of the anti-Catholic tangents that always come up, because I’ve never had a Mormon prove themselves to be right about their Christian claims. See post #140.
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Tarquin
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Perceptive post, Stephen 168. Yours usually are. I realized the other day that Mormonism and atheism share something in common. In general, they both attribute an infinite past to the universe. They both believe a chronological infinite regression is not just possible, but exists and we are somewhere in the middle of it. Where else could any person at any time be, except in the middle of time, if an equal period of time (infinity) exists on either side of his point in time.
An infinite regression means there was never a beginning, and thus could never have been a plan - not even Mormonism’s “Plan of Salvation.” There was no time to make the plan, because there was no prior time in which things were not unfolding exactly as they are today. Thus, there is no reason, no purpose, no direction. Everything “just is.” Neither Mormonism nor atheism proposes a Creator. In fact, both vehemently deny there ever was a Creator. I wonder - in “eternal progression” - how small a step are we talking about? If Gods have been around “since forever” - that is, infinitely backwards in time, and here the are still “progressing” . . . Shouldn’t an infinity of time have been sufficient? Yes, I know that “progression” doesn’t really mean progression. (Try telling a Mormon that.) It just means having more babies and getting more territory. Still… it seems like static somehow, like the universe is limited by the inability of the gods to ever harmonize their creation, or to take command of the Whole extent of it at some point.
For most religions (which believe in a Primal God), God is the Creator of the Universe, not a mere component part of it. Whatever the components are, they are conditioned, and having been potentialities rather than actualities, need never to have come into existence as they now are. Sure, Mormons like some Buddhists claim that God “always existed” by virtue of the fact that he existed as a primordial intelligence with neither body nor spirit, and subject to the decisions and actions of a Being more knowledgeable, wiser, and more powerful than himself. But that type of existence is not what most people think of when they think of God. Worse, it is not just popularly unattractive, but is fundamentally untenable and absolutely contrary to a rational theological explanation of the nature of the that supreme being who or which really is held responsible for things being the way they are.
There are some atheists who believe the universe did have a beginning. A primal atom. As much as they complain about a God who did not do anything for millions of years - because they do not understand the difference between the flowing of time and that “eternal” quality of God that transcends time as well as it transcends space - they succeed in a clever gymnastic of cognitive dissonance by allowing that primal atom to have existed millions of years “without doing anything.”
Without a God but with many “Gods” and “Goddesses,” they inevitably conceive of “trinities”, dodecads, and other arrangements not just as co-existent **Persons **(manifestations, characters, qualities, however they are described) but as separate, independent individualized beings such as would exist singly and apart even if the other two did not exist. I find it odd, that having determined that gods are just men (“just” - double entendre
), neither Joseph Smith nor later Mormon leaders introduced the concept of a truly eternal and primal God above all the countless billions of god-men, and Originator of the Priesthood.For Mormonism, there is a power above the infinite number of god-men. That power is the Mormon priesthood. Somehow, without a God ever creating or instituting it, Priesthood apparently self-exists, is not subject to the Will of God nor to the will of all the gods combined, and is the source of their power and I suppose has the power to disempower the gods through some arcane quality of itself. What came first, the chicken or the egg, the Priesthood of a beginningless string of gods? Obviously the egg came first, but Mormonism is dualistic, both gods and Priesthood have been eternally co-existent, so neither the gods nor their priesthoods pre-existed the other.
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TOmNossor
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I did respond to post #138 as you acknowledged.
Post #142 and #143 have nothing to do with how the LDS claim made in the 21st century that the Early Church believed DIFFERENTLY than today’s non-LDS Christians believe, so I didn’t respond. Here is a response from elsewhere:
en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith%27s_First_Vision/Joseph_Smith%27s_early_conception_of_God
If you want to respond to that, you should take it to another thread as it is a tangent by my assessment. I may or may not participate here or there in the response as I only signed on to defend the view that the LDS claim highlighted in the beginning of this thread is true (rather than false).
The questions you ignored came before post #142 and #143. There are ones that were not tangents and others associated with you accusing me of misquoting Newman, me demonstrating not only that I had not but how you misunderstood, and then no acknowledgement of such on your part.
If you will answer, I will restate. If you do not intend to answer, I will just stay as I am.
Oh, and I stand by what I said in post #154 (the post quoted in #156). Very simplistically this can be called a double standard, but in reality it is judging Catholicism on its self-understanding. I think #154 explains this well.
Charity, TOm,
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Hatikvah
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It is my understanding that atheism actually recognizes, generally, a theoretical (though they treat it dogmatically, despite evidence to the contrary or no evidence at all) multiverse, containing different universes. It’s not like the popular TV conception with different “realities,” in which I might be a male here but a feminine-oriented candy-corn clown in another. They have different laws.
Many modern Mormons admit a multiverse, too, saying that a God would create a multiverse at the start of their godhood. They would have different laws, but it is typically noted that, for some reason, all of the inhabitants are humans or at least humanoids.
No, God (our God, that is) is said to have made a plan of salvation before He created His… I’m not sure, “sovereign territory” or something. Jesus is His literal Son, just as we are all His literal sons and daughters. How can Adam, Satan and Jesus all have the same Father and “Heavenly Mother”?
It is often proposed that our God took on a role like Jesus did – Messiah, Prophet, King – back in His mortal life on a planet like earth. There’s no classical LDS indication for that, though, so God could also be an ordinary, sinful human. “We don’t know.”
Yet another reason to prefer to steady stream of orthodoxy, affirming God’s sovereignty since eternity.
Atheism proposes that our universe is the creator of itself, somehow, some way. At least it had a beginning, even though our multiverse supposedly did not.
Well, per many Mormon sites (here’s an example) the gods are not like the ancient Greek gods. If they possess the traits that we know our God to have, then they are all omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (at least as far as their sovereignty reaches).
True! Again, really every Western religion (Islam, Judaism, most of Christianity, Rastafari, we can go on and on) has the idea of God being absolute and eternal. He cannot not be. There was not a time when He was not.
All atheists today – or, at least the more modern New Atheists – believe that the universe had a beginning over 13.4 million years ago. Multiverse, remember?
But there cannot be a man who is a Trinity. That’s one reason the Trinity is rejected in Mormonism, I suppose. A man cannot be a Trinity, but our God is. That’s one of the key aspects, and a very unique aspect, of Christianity – our God cannot be paralleled because He is above definition!Without a God but with many “Gods” and “Goddesses,” they inevitably conceive of “trinities”, dodecads, and other arrangements not just as co-existent **Persons **(manifestations, characters, qualities, however they are described) but as separate, independent individualized beings such as would exist singly and apart even if the other two did not exist. I find it odd, that having determined that gods are just men (“just” - double entendre
Beats me.
Stephen168
New member
My Post #231 anticipated this part of your post.
All of us familiar with Mormonism know the claims of the Mormon Church, and they are a double standard.
Catholic Church change bad.
Mormon Church change good.
Your post #154 gave a false presentation of the claims of the Mormon Church. Any discussion at CAF or at LDS.org about the “Great Apostasy” proves you are wrong.
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Tarquin
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Fascinating. I have not met yet those Mormons.
Quite so. It is not the Christian scheme of things, but the Mormon scheme that makes a “plan” impossible, since there was no time before the application of the plan when the plan could have been conceived. It has been going on and on, without beginning hence without real planning.
Yes, for many. And yet there remain many (philosophers and atheists) who are convinced despite all reasoning to the contrary that there is an infinite past with no first cause.
Here are some who believe the universe had no beginning.livescience.com/49958-theory-no-big-bang.html
arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0204479… and all kinds of marxist publications.
Well-put. I never thought of it from that perspective.
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gazelam
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Haven’t you stated in a round about way that no one can receive Eternal Life?
John 17:3 Now this is eternal life,that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
Can something that can’t be defined be known?
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RebeccaJ
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Of course.
peterkreeft.com/topics/12-ways.htm
Twelve Ways to Know God
The final, complete, definitive way, of course, is Christ, God himself in human flesh.
His church is his body, so we know God also through the church.
The Scriptures are the church’s book. This book, like Christ himself, is called “The Word of God.”
Scripture also says we can know God in nature see Romans 1. This is an innate, spontaneous, natural knowledge. I think no one who lives by the sea, or by a little river, can be an atheist.
Art also reveals God. I know three ex-atheists who say, “There is the music of Bach, therefore there must be a God.” This too is immediate.
Conscience is the voice of God. It speaks absolutely, with no ifs, ands, or buts. This too is immediate.
Reason, reflecting on nature, art, or conscience, can know God by good philosophical arguments.
Experience, life, your story, can also reveal God. You can see the hand of Providence there.
The collective experience of the race, embodied in history and tradition, expressed in literature, also reveals God. You can know God through others’ stories, through great literature.
The saints reveal God. They are advertisements, mirrors, little Christs. They are perhaps the most effective of all means of convincing and converting people.
Our ordinary daily experience of doing God’s will will reveal God. God becomes clearer to see when the eye of the heart is purified: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
Prayer meets God—ordinary prayer. You learn more of God from a few minutes of prayerful repentance than through a lifetime in a library.
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Hatikvah
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He can certainly be defined from our mortal definitions – that’s why we have creeds like the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed that deal with theology and otherwise christology – but He cannot be fully understood. In this sense, we cannot get a complete definition of Him.
Eternity is not even the only aspect of God, but we can’t wrap our human minds around it. Just imagine something that never had a beginning. It just is. This is God, really, although He is far better. He is personal, loving, and possesses for eternity the great attributes of being the Deity.
We can know Him, too. You know your best friend, for example, and you have a unique love. But we cannot know everything about them. It is as such with God. He will reveal what He sees fit, and that knowledge certainly helps!
We also do have direct access to God nonetheless. The Holy Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16), if we follow Christ, He considers us friends (John 15:14-15), and He has immense love for us (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, on and on…)
There is a difference between knowing someone personally, as a child knows their parents or as two friends know each other, and knowing someone’s entire tale (much as a parent would know everything about their child when they are young, and we cannot do this with God right now).
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