by Cold Steel 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
CS: "Look at those who were derided for their belief in continental drift (which anyone with a global map could figure out) and their questioning of the scientifically cherished Siberian Land Bridge theory, which excluded every piece of evidence that backed up the claims of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica."
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LOL.
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Mark Twain, after reading it [ The Book of Mormon], called it "Chloroform in print!"
http://www.opednews.com/Diary/A-MEMORANDUM-ON-MORMONISM-by-Douglas-A-Wallace-090413-319.html
...the scientifically cherished Siberian Land Bridge theory....
Nevertheless...it's been completely and unequivocally discredited. But before it was discredited, every piece of evidence that ran counter to the Siberian Land Bridge Theory was automatically thrown out. And that included any and all evidence that supported the Book of Mormon. Thus, anyone (LDS or not) who criticized the theory was automatically ostracized.
Yeah, you know who ELSE poo-poohed the value of washing hands (as well as standard sanitary practices like washing dishes/pots/pans, utensils)? Jesus. You know who else didn't believe in germs, either? Jesus thought he was curing via forgiveness of sins, since Jesus lived in the age LONG before Pasteur's 'germ theory of disease', and that's what all humans believed.
How do you know he didn’t believe in germs or that he “poo-poohed” the value of washing hands? And what difference would it make whether he believed in them or not? Jesus wasn’t omniscient at the time he lived on Earth as a man. Remember when he spit into some dirt and put it on a blind man’s eyes? The man had been born blind, yet instead of giving him an eye infection, it restored his sight. The concept of germs came well before microscopes. The Greeks knew through experimentation that something was causing the breakdown of both fruit and flesh. But they could see nothing, so they theorized that the breakdown was being caused by something so small that they couldn’t see it.
And you’re correct about the correlation between healing and the forgiveness of sins. It’s not based on science but theology. As the Son of God, he had every right and power to forgive sins.
YOU claim God exists, so YOU have to present existence of God to convince skeptics. It's called "burden of proof," and believers bear it if they claim God exists.
Look, it’s not us who needs to prove it. I never said that I or anyone else had proof that God exists, but there is evidence. The scriptures are consistent, prophecy is spot on, and the Hebrew God unchanging and wise. The prophets give consistent testimonies and there are hundreds of near death experiences. When one considers the distance from the sun to the earth, the distance, mass and orbit of the moon (which many astronomers believe is foreign to both the earth and the solar system) and the complexities of life, you’re damn right it’s an “appeal to personal incredulity.” Like the Greeks who couldn’t see the germs, but who surmised they were there, I see God throughout the universe. Intelligence and order are invariably connected, and one cannot, in my view, exist without the other. Even given everything else in the solar system, if we didn’t have a stabilizing moon the precise distance and mass from the earth, intelligent life could not exist. Our tides would be erratic, our equator would change so often crops would not grow and our climate also would be erratic. And to think it all happened with a roll of the dice.
Regarding near death experiences, I have found no inconsistencies of experiences based on peoples’ belief systems. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Of course I don’t believe every account I read. Some are silly and entirely inconsistent with scripture. Like religion, people can just make things up, which is why there is the law of witnesses. But also like religion, the truth can be ferreted out.
Atheists can believe whatever they like. But they hijack every discussion of scripture and religion and turn it into an attack on religion.
This thread was about how Jehovah’s Witnesses and other soul sleepers would react to finding out that their consciousness continued after death. Suddenly we’re treated with their opinions about religion in general, the Book of Mormon, how ridiculous and unbelievable, and unconvincing all spiritual belief systems (except their own, naturally) were and how noble and honest science has been through the ages in searching out the truth while they have been persecuted by exposing the fables of religion. The truth is, science has about two whores less than Babylon had in its heyday. Just look at how many threads the atheists have derailed here. Some hurl just one or two lines of insult (hi, Cofty!) while others insult in greater detail. Then there are those who see Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses as being equally as bizarre and ridiculous, so differences in doctrine are merely the topics of fools and the gullible. And what bothers them the most, I think, are former Jehovah’s Witnesses who remain Christians and who find more productive spiritual pursuits than the bitter path they themselves tread.
(And BTW, I don’t have anything against atheists believing as they do; I am just stunned at times about the surety of their convictions, which is very similar to the surety that exists among the religiously-minded.)
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The scriptures are consistent, prophecy is spot on, and the Hebrew God unchanging and wise.
The scriptures were written by ignorant goat herders and your special book was written by a fraud. There are no fulfilled prophecies and the Hebrew god is a moral monster.
Then there are those who see Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses as being equally as bizarre and ridiculous
That would be everbody apart from you Cold Steel.
Daddy tell us the story of the Nephi crossing the ocean in a tube.....
Look, it’s not us who needs to prove it.
That's because it cannot be proven as illustrated in the next comment.......
I never said that I or anyone else had proof that God exists,
Well that's a shame.
but there is evidence. The scriptures are consistent,
Which scriptures? Where have they been consistant as can be easily evidenced today?
prophecy is spot on, and the Hebrew God unchanging and wise. The prophets give consistent testimonies and there are hundreds of near death experiences.
Is this circular reasoning? IE. Using the book to prove the book? How is prophecy spot on? What have you witnessed first hand with your own eyes?
CS: Even given everything else in the solar system, if we didn’t have a stabilizing moon the precise distance and mass from the earth, intelligent life could not exist. Our tides would be erratic, our equator would change so often crops would not grow and our climate also would be erratic. And to think it all happened with a roll of the dice.
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This is such a silly argument. To say that the existence of god as a creative force is proven by the exact distance of the earth from the Sun is an empty argument.
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Tell me- couldn't a god, if he created whatever he wanted the way he wanted it, have parked the earth a million miles closer to the Sun and simply made humans to withstand daytime temperatures of say, 10,000 degrees and be perfectly fine? So how does the existing distance from Sun to Earth prove a god made it that way? All it proves is that it is possible for a variety of life to exist with the conditions that exist right now, that's all.
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I'd imagine that theists living on that million-miles-closer-to-the-sun Earth would be saying, "see, we're the perfect distance from the Sun. Any farther away (say, a million miles?) and no life could exist. This proves god did it. It couldn't have happened with the roll of a dice."
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CS: if we didn’t have a stabilizing moon the precise distance and mass from the earth, intelligent life could not exist
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How about unintelligent life?
PON, thanks for pointing out how CS self-refutes his own claims: I don't suppose CS can accuse himself of straw-manning himself, can he? Sounds like something CS should do in private!
It's always nice when someone torpedos their own arguments like that, as it saves alot of work of rebuttal for the other side (who needs only to highlight their own internal contradictions for those readers who cannot remember what the person just said, only a sentence or two back, and fails to detect the logical flip-flops).
So much meat on dem' bones, so it's a target-rich environment, but on this:
CS said- The Greeks knew through experimentation that something was causing the breakdown of both fruit and flesh. But they could see nothing, so they theorized that the breakdown was being caused by something so small that they couldn’t see it.
Greeks knew TONS MORE about basic science which Jesus didn't know: that's kind of the point.
In 30CE thanks to prior experiments conducted by Alcmaeon of Croton (circa 500BC), a minority of Greeks knew it was the brain, and not the heart, that was the center of thinking and cognition. That fact had been known for over 500 years in 30 CE!
Unfortunately, Jesus was not an educated Greek citizen as the son of an elite, but an uneducated (home-schooled) male Jewish child who typically was taught the family trade by the patriarch (where Jewish tradition demanded as much), raised in backwater Palestine (a territorial conquest of the Roman Empire). Hence Jesus didn't know much about biology or human anatomy, which he'd likely known if he'd been the son of a Greek physician.
Believers want Jesus to be both Divine origins (i.e. present at creation, and privy to details that only the "intelligent Designer" could know) AND an uninspired mortal to excuse his obvious ignorance of fundamentals of human anatomy that any modern child knows today (ask a kid to point to where they think, and they point to their skull, NOT the torso; Jesus would point to his heart, as all but a few educated elites outside of the medical colleges of Greeks knew at the time). It's called flip-flopping, and you're doing it again....
The problem with Mormonism's claims (and I suspect all faith based ideologies) is that they normally assert things that they cannot possibly know about and are then shown to be wrong (often many years later) and that which they stated (normally with some God's blessing') ends up being plain wrong so discrediting the whole structure. Science is a different thing - it is a methodology to evaluate observed phenomenon and create a model to describe it - it requires skepticism, rational thought, peer review, tests and so forth. It doesn't attempt to answer every question nor does it place a marker in the ground that cannot be moved ( no one gets put to death for questioning dark matter.)
Mormon prophets have stated some absolute howlers that completely negate their ability to claim truth. A non Mormon prophet who completely fooled me was Paul H Dunn. When I listened to his stories I was filled with the 'Spirit' and was amazed by the truth I was learning about God's dealings with mankind. When I found out he was lying all along and making money from his books and talk tapes I had one of many mini faith crises that ended up on the shelf. The spirit confirmed teh truth of something that wasn't. There is a lengthy list of Mormon failed truth statements such as the age of the earth, the global flood, the animals on the American continent, the nature of light and how the Sun shines, Egyptian alphabets, interpretations of a Greek Psalter, Hoffman forgeries, how to cure homosexuality, the need to marry polygamously to get to the Celestial Kindom, the status of non-whites, ancestors of American Indians, how dinosaur bones got there, organic growth of Gold and Silver, monogamy causes society to fail, we will never get to the moon, Indians will become white etc.
He sticks his fingers in his ears, sings lalalalala, and types lots of text that includes the oxymoron "mormon scholars...".
What, no 'celebrated' mormon scholars?! At least the WT has is celebrated WT scholars. Well according to scholar.
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What if the, "hey-I-found-some-golden-plates-hidden-by-an-angel-and-only-I-can-read-them-with-my-magic-spectacles", doctrine is false?
