Serious question for Mormons

[Pahoran]

lol…coming from the guy who trolled here. Coming from the guy who lied over there AND over here.

I just want to thank you. Your conduct here AND there have validated all we have said about Mormons. YOu have no idea how grateful I am

Is there an “Ignore” button somewhere? I’d really like to filter out some of the noise so that I can focus on substantive discussion, but I can’t find one.

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[SirThomasMore]

Is there an “Ignore” button somewhere? I’d really like to filter out some of the noise so that I can focus on substantive discussion, but I can’t find one.

Regards,
Pahoran

I don;t blame you. Easier to ignore to the truth if you don’t have to read it.

And again, you have my sincere gratitude.

 

[PaulDupre]

Pahoran:

Is there an “Ignore” button somewhere? I’d really like to filter out some of the noise so that I can focus on substantive discussion, but I can’t find one.

Regards,
Pahoran

Profile > Control Panel > Edit Ignore List

 

[Returning_Home]

So the “best evidence” that the Church is an institution that habitually lies is that it concealed a practice that everyone – including you – knew and knows would cause the intolerance of the neighbouring “Christians” to erupt into deadly violence?

If that’s the “best evidence” you’ve got, clearly you don’t have much.

I guess if Smith weren’t doing what he knew he shouldn’t be doing in the first place, pretending to be a prophet of God to make himself feel more important, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. In fact, polygamy is ultimately what got Smith killed because he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing and what he was lying about doing. We have the church agreeing to finally obey the law and still doing exactly the opposite until your own prophet was caught red-handed. How is that ‘following the law of the land?’

Since Jesus never provided an example of how we should be deceitful in his name, this doesn’t exactly fit the Biblical standard, does it?

And no, we have the utter lack of evidence for the fictional Nephites and Lamanites, the false prophecies of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the fall of the Book of Abraham, the constant revision of your own texts, and the creative reinterpretation or discarding of the words of your prophets as evidence.

What you practice is a whitewashed version of Mormonism, not what Smith intended.

No, it means new and everlasting. Celestial marriage is still in force. Snip more off-topic anti-Mormon jeering.

Celestial marriage is defined as one part polygamy and one part temple marriage, but since I’m guessing you’re not involved in plural marriage, your hopes for godhood are fading fast.

Jeering? I don’t have to stoop to such tactics. The way I arrive at that figure is that D&C 132 was written in July of 1843 and polygamy was ended (with a nudge and a wink) in October of 1890. That’s actually 47 years and three months’ difference. That’s assuming that people were made largely aware of the revelation at the time it was written, for which there’s no evidence. Thus, since section 132 wasn’t published until 1876 (I don’t know the year), it was actually then only 14 years between that time and the issuing of the Manifesto.

So going to “mass” is a way of “programming” people, is it?
Good thing we don’t have “mass” then. Did you not actually know that?

In the context of promoting a false gospel, yes, it is. Word games and semantics? Is that the best you can do? Call it mass, service, worship, or whatever you like, the function is to keep the indoctrinated in the fold.

You’re going to have to do better than recycled pop-psychobabble. The question is – can you? Yeah, why don’t I deny myself real spiritual blessings, just to take a dare from an anonymous Internet taunter? Actually the question rather answers itself, dontcha think?

All cults play on the feelings and desires of the people involved in it. Mormonism is no different. The church isn’t run by fools; they know how to manipulate the congregation and you’re clear evidence of that. Spiritual blessings? Is that what they call the creative reinterpretation of history? And, no, I didn’t ask a question, I made a challenge which you apparently can’t meet.

So if a Latter-day Saint is offended because his faith is subjected to scurrilous attacks, that’s evidence of “the church’s programming,” but if a Catholic reacts to the same kind of attack in the same way, it’s not?

By what kind of weird logic does that work?

You came to a Catholic forum to address point about Mormonism, not the other way around. Were I to go to a Mormon apologetics board, this would be an appropriate approach.

You react he way you do because you take this personally, which it’s not intended to be. I don’t make attacks on the person because I don’t know you, but you’ll take it all as such because you’re smart enough to know that something’s not right, but are offended that it’s not a Mormon bringing up these points. Since you’re on the defensive, you have to put on as if you’re 100% on board with everything the church teaches, but I’ve found that most have some major problems with the church’s teachings, up to and including the point of not following or even rejecting parts of it.

It makes perfect sense. God has always worked through imperfect men.

Unfortunately, no matter how many lies or false prophecies Joseph Smith told, you’re still considering him a prophet of God. How many of these equal a false prophet? And again, there’s no conditions under which I can find in any LDS literature that show how one can evaluate the words of church leaders as being right or wrong. It all boils down to whether or not something confirms the church’s current teaching on any given topic. That said, it looks like Brigham Young spoke only his opinion for just about everything recorded in the JOD but if only one person believed something he said that was false, it would show the aformentioned quote (“The Lord will never allow the President of the Church to lead us astray.”) to be untrue.

This can be shown to be the case, because some people actually believed Adam was God, as taught by Brigham Young.

 

[Returning_Home]

Are you this obtuse in real life, or only when it suits you? I am not “trying to play both sides of” anything at all. If you really don’t understand current LDS scholarship on questions of Book of Mormon geography, then maybe you ought to drop out of attack mode long enough to actually learn something about your target.

Thinly veiled insults now? You can do better than that. You’re playing games because you know you have a major problem here. Yes, I’m well aware of the fact that the church has revised its current stand on the location of the Hill Cumorah, but this then goes to credibility and honesty; if they were wrong before about this, what else could they wrong about now? And why are you willing to risk your soul on an organization that can’t get its story straight, which is based on a man who couldn’t get and keep his story straight?

The church clearly stated that the Hill Cumorah was in New York over and over again, and statements by its leaders prove that this was what was taught. Now, it seems to have backed away from that stance, even though my BOM student manual takes both sides in the argument, that the Hill is in New York, but that no attempt should be made to locate any BOM site.

You made up that “One and only.”

And that’s based on neither the BOM nor any other LDS-produced work I’ve ever seen referring to the Hill Cumorah in the plural sense. Quite the opposite; they are always of the position that there’s one and one only.

So what? Do photographs of Dublin routinely mention that it is one of several known Dublins in the world, or do they refer to it in the proper and singular?

So what? You don’t get the implications here because the church, the one supposedly lead by Jesus Christ Almighty allowed this to be published. If the church is what it claims, this doesn’t make sense and is clearly just your opinion based on an utter lack of evidence to support your own position.

If you see a picture of Dublin, chances are that there’s a specific location noted, be it Dublin, Ireland or Dublin, Ohio. Since we have no such clarification with the Hill Cumorah, the obvious implication is that it’s the same one identified by your church leaders as the one located in New York.

 

[Returning_Home]

And so to “fool” people, he quoted the Stephens book in the article!!??

The church itself has long maintained that Smith had no education. Maybe he’s wasn’t as intelligent as I gave him credit for.

Everyone.
Knows.
That.
Joseph.
Changed.
His.
View.
Of.
Book.
Of.
Mormon.
Geography.
Because…

(are you ready for this…?)

He came right out and said so.

Read the above as many times as you need to until it finally sinks in.

It doesn’t matter how creative you get with your responses, the result is the same. And no, he didn’t say that he was wrong before and right with his new opinion. He took what he read and used it as ‘proof’ of what he claimed, but in a different place. This is the reason you’ve had to bend the laws of nature to put the BOM events in Meso-America while the church has made a clear stand on certain places in the past.

It also doesn’t stand to reason that Zelph (HOTC pp 78-79), with an arrow between his ribs, would’ve ridden all the way from Belize to Florence, Illinois, over a thousand miles distance. What sense does that make? It’s already hard enough to believe that he’d have done so with the Hill Cumorah being in New York and some 700 miles away.

Neither scenario fits because, according to Mormon 6:15 and 8:2, the fictional Nephites escaped southward. Here, however, you have your choice of northwest or west.

No doubt your amazing mind-reading skills are equal to the task of imagining a motive for Joseph to “change his mind” about this, but the fact remains that the most parsimonious explanation is that he was open to new information about a subject that was important to him.

None of which contradicts anything subsequently revealed.

Since we know that Smith wrote the BOM, his stance changed many times under the guise of being a prophet and all.

You think so?

“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also…” (D&C 130:22)

“Holy, holy God; we believe that thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy, and that thou wast a spirit, and that thou art a spirit, and that thou wilt be a spirit forever.” (Alma 31:15)

A clear contradiction, but the argument can be made that the speaker here was wrong in his assumption, though, if he were, it makes no sense that he wasn’t corrected for it.

Further, the BOM states: “And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, which is one God. Amen.” (BOM introduction, statement of the three witnesses)

Smith stated some 10 years later, however: “I have always declared God to be a disctinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit was a distinct personage and a spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p 370, 1976, Joseph Fielding Smith)

There are many LDS-distinctive doctrines in the Book of Mormon; your attempt to cherry-pick a few does not negate that fact.

And incidentally your list is defective. There is a rather distinct “mention” of one of the items in your list. I’m not going to tell you which one; you can go and look it up.

Now you’re right and I’m wrong, but you’re suddenly coy as to the reason why? That’s odd; if the answer was so obvious, I’d think you’d delight in pointing that out instead of telling me to go look something up, as if there were something out there that I didn’t already know about and own.

The empty gun makes the most noise, they say, but if I’m wrong, I’ll admit it here for all to see. It’s happened before and it’ll probably happen again.

IOW, it’s just your opinion.

It’s actually not: “…convince us of our errors of doctrine, if we have any, by reason, by logical arguments, or by the word of God…” Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, Jan 1853, p 15)

Pratt threw down the gauntlet and I simply picked it up; it’s to your advantage for me to use LDS standards for evaluating Mormon claims. Funny how you want to keep moving the bar, though.

I have received and deleted your spam. Kindly don’t send me any more.

To the reader: I sent Pahoran half of the parallels between the BOM and the KJV, clearly showing that the BOM quotes the KJV Bible 2,200 years before it was published.

I guess he isn’t really interested in the facts of the matter after all.

Pahoran: spam? I went though each and every one of those citations and even invited you to do the same, giving you the opportunity to prove me wrong on your own terms and you simply deleted it? Are the facts too much for you to bear?

 

[ParkerD]

Since we know that Smith wrote the BOM, his stance changed many times under the guise of being a prophet and all.

“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also…” (D&C 130:22)

“Holy, holy God; we believe that thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy, and that thou wast a spirit, and that thou art a spirit, and that thou wilt be a spirit forever.” (Alma 31:15)

A clear contradiction, but the argument can be made that the speaker here was wrong in his assumption, though, if he were, it makes no sense that he wasn’t corrected for it.

RH,
This statement shows how little you have read the Book of Mormon or even parts of it. Alma 31:15 is recounting the actions of a group of people who had started a unique and different religion and were praying in a unique and different way using a “holy stand” called the “Rameumptom”, and they were visited and encouraged to change their ways (including change the way they believed about God) in Alma 32-34, by Alma and Amulek, Nephite prophets.

 

[SirThomasMore]

STM,
To be consistent with the other board, this post of yours is a great example of why I often find you to be rude and manipulative in your communication.

lol…I respond to a rude comment by another Mormon and you tell me I am rude. This is why people here find you rude and dishonest.

Like telling people over there that Catholics do not know their doctrine when we clearly not only know our doctrine but the LDS doctrine your church tries to hide

 

[SirThomasMore]

I doubt it. It’s right here;

scroll down to Post #4.

Followers of the True God understand that false prophets will come. Followers of false prophets like Joseph Smith don’t care, of course

 

[SirThomasMore]

I want to thank Parker for proving that Joe copied much of his text from the Bible.

 

[Todd520]

I want to thank Parker for proving that Joe copied much of his text from the Bible.

Your quips and debate skills, remind me of ‘boys’ in the junior high locker room.

I pray you mature into High School some day

 

[twopekinguys]

Your quips and debate skills, remind me of ‘boys’ in the junior high locker room.

I pray you mature into High School some day

Pot meet kettle.

 

[Todd520]

Since the OP is long gone and the OP questions answered long ago, I would suggest this thread be closed.

 

[SirThomasMore]

Your quips and debate skills, remind me of ‘boys’ in the junior high locker room.

I pray you mature into High School some day

Todd, it is this kind of comment that has people here talking about how rude you are.

This is a debate board. It is not a place for your name-calling and insults. Over on the LDS board, you were terribly dishonest about over here.

Now, I understand you are new to the LDS faith. I understand you, by your admission, never truly knew the Catholic Doctrine. I understand that new Mormons are full of fire, but don;t really know their doctrine. Don;t let your ignorance of your doctrine get you so frustrated that you need to call names and be dishonest, then run to an LDS board for help.

I wish you luck in your church. I pray that you learn how false it is like many of us here did.

Peace

 

[Todd520]

STM Yes, I’ve critiqued your methods of debate, as have numerous other posters here and on the other board.

I am blunt with you but that is different than rude.

 

[twopekinguys]

STM Yes, I’ve critiqued your methods of debate, as have numerous other posters here and on the other board.

I am blunt with you but that is different than rude.

So, you don’t think this post, that was directed at another poster was not rude, or uncalled for?

So Jesus 123 has mastered ‘cut & paste’ but has yet to prove reading comprehension or the ability to think and reply in his own words

Jesus 123, if this thread offends you, then I urge you to stick to the numerous Catholic doctrine forums and avoid the Non-Catholic Religions forum

Hmmmm

 

[Todd520]

Hmmm yes, i can be a bit snippy on people using bully methods in their debate

However, I have always debated the topics with full respect

 

[SirThomasMore]

STM Yes, I’ve critiqued your methods of debate, as have numerous other posters here and on the other board.

I am blunt with you but that is different than rude.

you have not critiqued anything. I have not been debating for a competition. The folks who seem to dislike my debates are the ones I keep proving wrong. I am usually pleased when an opponent does not like my style. By the same token, I have received numorous compliments from people on this board who like my style. Funny how only those I have bested dislike my style and feel the need to go elsewhere to whine about me.

If you want a real debate, not some debate board stuff, go to law school, pass the bar, and come see me in court. I will try to be gentle.

And yes, you have been incredibly rude. But, then again, you are LDS

 

[SirThomasMore]

Now, Todd, if you are done with your insults, how about adressing the OP?

 

[Todd520]

Since the OP is long gone and the OP questions answered long ago, I would suggest this thread be closed.

I still think it’s a good idea