Vort

One of them Zucker films.

(cf Moses 1:14) The Naked Gun or one of the other sequels based off of Police Squad.

"Brain cloud". (No Googling!)

That's the commonest Primary song I never heard!

No, I don't color-code at all, except I occasionally change colors I use so I can roughly tell when I marked a certain scripture. I have found colored marking to be a bit artificial and altogether too fuzzy for my use. "Should this scripture be marked as atonement or as obedience?" I wish the margins were bigger so I could have more room for notes and thoughts. I'm going blind in my old age, too, so I'm considering at some point getting a large-print edition, which I assume would also have larger margins.

No, those mean different things. Every human being is a child of the heavenly Father. Being a son of Abraham is different. But I agree, the "sons of Abraham" thing is not particularly common LDS parlance. A more likely thing would be to say that they are "of the Abrahamic covenant"or some such expression. "Sons of Abraham" sounds very Muslim to me, kind of like "people of the book". I have heard some recently baptized people voice such concerns. Those more mature in the gospel don't usually worry about such things. I figured it was from a recent convert who hadn't quite absorbed "Mormonish" yet. But maybe you're right and it was a troll. The use of "holy spirit" instead of "Holy Ghost" and "witness" instead of "bear testimony" do sound other than traditional LDS. Also, I would hope that Latter-day Saints would not look at an invitation to a friend's wedding as an opportunity to overtly proselytize the wedding guests, as some anti-Mormons seem to portray.

Do you believe in the divine right of kings? That is, do you believe that kings rule their kingdom because God put them there? The rule of the kings of England, and by extension the very existence of the pervasive and rigid hierarchical structure of English society "classes" that lives on to some extent to this very day, was justified by this thinking. "I deserve to live in splendor and collect taxes from the poverty-stricken serfs (or itinerant farmers) on my land because I was born into this landed family. That man deserves his starvation, poverty, and misery, because he was born into that poor family. You can tell we both deserved it, because we were born to our station, so God put us here." Like most Americans, I reject this thinking. There is no "divine right of kings"; that is merely an excuse made up by rich people to justify their riches and their oppressive behavior toward their fellow man. If we are born into riches and luxury, it means we have a duty to use those riches to help our fellow man, not persist in his oppression. Similarly, I tend to reject the idea that we Americans deserve the liberties in our country because, hey, we were born here, but the unwashed aliens deserve no such thing. I have absolutely no problem with the need to secure our borders, but I have a very large problem with immigration law as it stands and with the view of "illegal immigrants" as criminals. They are, for the most part, people just like you and me, people who found themselves in poverty and are trying to make something better for themselves and for their children. They do not have the education to understand all the legal niceties of immigration or the financial means to jump through those hoops. For the most part, these are hard-working, honest, scared individuals doing the best they know how, and only because of procedural technicalities do they find themselves on the wrong side of the law. They constitute the American "serf" class, working for pennies to scrape by, often exploited by those who want cheap mass labor. We who enjoy our cheap food picked by "undocumented workers" and who buy our cheap burgers to feed our obese faces at the restaurants staffed by underpaid "illegals" are the beneficiaries of this system. We live off the sweat of our fellow being, rather than by our own sweat, as we have been commanded. It is utterly unconscionable, and one of the areas I find myself in stark contrast to many other conservatives. I am pleased as punch, in fact quite proud, that the LDS Church specifically reaches out to these people to share the gospel with them. I think it is a sign of a Christ-like people.

Then I apologize.

What? You mean this is not true? Lectures on Faith, Lecture 6 section 7: Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation I dunno...sounds believable to me...

Alma 37:23 And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations. Joseph Smith on occasion used what he called a "seer stone", a pebble a couple of inches across. He named it "Gazelem".

Are you familiar with Egyptian geography and the annual cycle there? The Nile floods every year, inundating the land around it. This is clearly what is meant here. (Note: The entire earth need not be flooded by the Nile in order for the land to be "covered by water". That concept would be a modern and very obvious misunderstanding of the scripture -- perhaps not unlike the concept of Noah's "global" flood.) Or it requires understanding the worldview of the ancients and what the story of Noah's ark was intended to teach. I think this is an excellent example of wresting the scriptures through overanalysis.

So let me see if I understand your model correctly: A spirit is an object composed of a type of matter known as intelligence, aka spirit element.This spirit, formed of intelligence or spirit element, is then animated by intelligence, aka the light of Christ or the light of truth.So a spirit is created from intelligence(1) and animated by intelligence(2). These two types of intelligence refer to completely different things.

Okay, this make sense, sort of. Not sure how I was to know that "reading the saints" meant "reading the Journal of Discourses", but I'll chalk that up to coming in late in the conversation. I don't understand this. What you say "may not be a fact as an institution, but...[it] is [still] accurate." If what you say is counterfactual, in what sense is it accurate? Do you mean that people on this thread discouraged reading the Journal of Discourses, so therefore the Church as a whole does so? I did not notice the discouragement to reading the Journal of Discourses. I'd appreciate it if you could point them out to me. I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. What attitude? Can you point to a post I made that communicated such an attitude? I hadn't thought so, until this latest post. Which term? "Reading the saints"? If that's what you mean, then you are right, that term is not popular among Latter-day Saints. At least, I have never heard it before.

This is Vanhin's (and Elder McConkie's and Pres JFSmith's) model. The other model is: A man (a spirit) consists of a physical body (spiritual body) and an animating spirit (intelligence) contained within. The physical (spiritual) body has is not a person without the animating essence of the spirit (intelligence).

Thanks for your thanks. I have read your last 20 or so posts, and cannot find anything you have written about "reading the saints". So I have no idea what you are talking about, either for Catholicism or for Mormonism. Will you elucidate?

Moksha, in all seriousness, I am shocked. Why on earth would you be linking to pictures from an anti-Mormon site? I realize you have some non-traditional beliefs, but surely even you see that linking to an anti-Mormon site is very far over the line of acceptability. Don't you?

Not quite. I am certainly unwilling to write off the flood as "allegory", but I am more than willing to entertain the idea that our account is not completely accurate, and that it was written (or more likely told) for a different audience with different expectations and for a purpose other than describing the geologic history of the planet. As I mentioned before, I do not believe there is any scripture that establishes a global flood, so my disbelief is over interpretation rather than scriptural teaching. Of course, my concern was not over a willingness to believe "the warm fuzzy stuff". Rather, it was toward the unwillingness to believe things that don't appeal to us for some reason. For example, and without pointing any fingers, various people on this forum have demonstrated an unwillingness to believe: that prophets can ever errthat prophets can be trusted at allthat Church policy might be suboptimalthat the Church is truethat God interacts in people's livesthat God would ever order someone to killthat the Book of Mormon is a literal historythat the Book of Mormon contains faulty accountsAre not we, along with Thomas, commanded to "be not faithless, but believing"? No one wants to be superstitious and believe a bunch of false things. On the other hand, in our mortal state, how can we avoid believing incomplete truths and outright falsehoods? Given that situation, would it not be wise to be rather too believing instead of not believing enough? Once we open a way to disbelieve some tenets of the gospel, we give ourselves permission to start down a road that ultimately leads to ruin. Or so it seems to me.

That way lies madness. It is the province of cafeteria Mormons, who pick and choose which doctrines they most want to believe and wave away all the others as allegorical or figurative. I can accept that histories are imperfect. I can accept that men, even prophets, misinterpret things and otherwise make mistakes (even Lehi failed to notice the filthiness of the water in his vision). I can accept that the word of God as found in our scriptures is not 100% perfectly accurate and, like all writings, must be read with the Spirit to yield benefit. I cannot and will not accept the hand-waving argument that seeks to dismiss any "problematic" teaching or passage by saying, "Well, hey, c'mon, it's all just allegory." Christ's atonement is not allegory. The Book of Mormon is not allegory. Joseph's First Vision is not allegory. The eternal nature of my soul is not allegory. These are the bedrock foundations of reality as I understand it. Explaining away everything we don't understand as "just allegory" is ultimately a cowardly act, one that says, "I am willing to believe a lot of the warm fuzzy stuff, but I am not willing to admit that there are things I don't know or just can't understand right now." I don't believe in a global flood. I think the very idea is absurd. Furthermore, I don't believe the scriptures (ANY scriptures) teach that it was global. But I am willing to admit that my perception may be off, and I expect that the believers in a global flood are likewise willing to admit that their scriptural understanding may be just exactly as flawed as I think it is. I know that this is not the case outside the Church, but at least within the Church all Saints should be at least this honest, I think.

I can't make heads nor tails of this claim. What does "reading the saints" mean? LDS authors, both general authorities and more ordinary Saints, are often best-sellers in LDS circles. I have never even a single time heard an LDS authority discourage reading "the saints". If you mean Catholic "saints", I likewise have never heard any LDS authority discourage reading of works by canonized Catholics, though I'm sure this is far less common. Btw, many of the people I talked to during my mission to Italy had been told very specifically by their priests not to read the Bible or scripture commentary, so I wonder if your criticism above might rather apply to Catholicism.

Wow. Jenda is so mean, not even Heather will be his friend. Is this like the old joke, "Will Rogers never met So-and-so"? (I'll be your friend, Jenda!)

I don't understand the petty machinations of political intrigue in the Church. Paint me naive, I suppose, but I am aghast at the idea that a man's efforts could be sabotaged by fellow Saints simply because they think he's...well, I don't even know what. I can't tell from your description what it is they didn't like or why they had it in for you. The trite old saying is that there are three sides to every story -- theirs, yours, and the truth. Since I haven't heard theirs, I'm left to believe that yours represents the truth. I have no reason to disbelieve that, except that it's so incredible to me that such a thing would even happen. But though I may be aghast, I'm not quite naive enough to think it's impossible. Don't know what to say. When we set out to help build the kingdom and other "Saints" impede our best efforts, I guess we just keep on trying to build the kingdom as best we can. I have no other insights or words of wisdom to offer. I'm just speechless at the whole situation.

This is plainly incorrect. I'm really struggling to see how you can even maintain this belief in the face of the scriptures you yourself are quoting. "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was" Which intelligences was Abraham being shown? Not all of them, only that subset consisting of intelligences that were organized. What does it mean for an intelligence to be "organized"? I can think of at least two possible meanings: Organized means dressed in spirit; i.e. those intelligences were put in spiritual form. I assume this would not be unlike our spirits being put in bodily form, as we are now.Organized means divided into hierarchical ranks; i.e. the intelligences were divided into groups for some purpose.I have always assumed Meaning #1, but I see no reason why Meaning #2 might not be correct. In either case, I cannot see how you maintain that this verse shows that "intelligence" is synonymous with "spirit". "for he stood among those that were spirits" Again, which part of the group of intelligences did he stand among? Those that were spirits. If we assume Meaning #1 from above, it probably means "those who had been organized into spiritual form." If we assume Meaning #2, is probably means "that subset that had already been clothed in spirit and divided from the rest." I think that these particular verses can be used to buttress my interpretation of things at least as well as they can yours. This does not mean that I am right and you are wrong, but it does mean that they don't prove your point. EDIT: On rereading, I think I understand your inference. I agree that "organized intelligence" might be synonymous with "spirit", assuming you agree with Meaning #1 above. But that's still different from saying that "intelligence" is synonymous with "spirit", which is how I understand your claim.

I'm doing the best I can, Vanhin. I am attempting to understand and characterize your viewpoint correctly. If I am not doing so, you can correct me. Or you can just tell me that I failed and that you're going to wait for me to get it right before engaging in conversation. I guess that works, too.

So if it's a degree colder, do you bother to specify the scale (F/C)?

Amazing. How many things in my life are exacerbated because I fail to recognize cause and effect? My kid is acting up. Time to vacuum. Brilliant. But a part of me despairs from ever being able to make sense of my own life actions, if outrageous dependencies like these are common (which they are).