Vort

Moksha: Sham KO (or KO mash) OKs ham shok Ma skam ho' am kosh mo' kash smokah hamoks HMS Oak soak h'm

Matthew 7:21-27: Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

I must admit I thought it was funny. And I didn't find it at all inappropriate, though I did cringe a bit.

Three drummers and a cymbalist fall off a cliff. Ba dum bum -- TSHHH!

At least we can all agree it's the Republicans' fault.

Now that's funny!

Why own the cow when you can get the milk for free? Not sure how that applies in your case, but surely it must.

Yeah - duh. Jospeh Smith was the first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That's not dogma, that historical fact. You think "religious truth" means who was the first president of the Church? So any "truth" that in any way interfaces with "religion" is a "religious truth" to you? This helps to explain why talking with you is so often an exercise in futility. Well, it's gratifying that you find it so clever. No, I used it perfectly. You simply don't understand how to use it correctly. My bad. I thought it was designed to make you look like a jerk. It was very effective at that. Could you be any more wrong? Sure. I could have written, "Snow is right." But of course, you originally asked about specific scriptures that people disbelieve. You asked it on an LDS discussion list. You cited Christian scripture in your original post. In your first response, you quoted an LDS article of faith. So clearly, your audience was never those who disbelieve that "the or a supernatural deity is God." Yet somehow, you can't figure this out by yourself. You ask an LDS audience a question phrased in LDS terms, then cannot understand why people answer using an LDS framework populated with LDS assumptions of common understanding. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® And how much does that tenant pay for rent? How long does the tenant plan to stay in our faith before it relocates? Do you think we can find other tenants to take its place once it leaves? Or did you mean "tenet"? THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® Snow, Snow, Snow. You just don't have it tonight, do you? 1. You cannot possibly be so dull as to think that is circular. There is nothing circular about saying "X is good, so therefore everything that X does is good." You apparently don't even know what a circular argument is. The above statement is false, but not because it's circular. It's false because even if X is good, that doesn't mean X is incapable of doing something that is NOT good. 2. You cannot possibly be so unobservant as to think that is what I wrote. Go back and reread -- slowly -- what I wrote. Hint: It wasn't that "all God's actions are good because God is good". It was that the word "good" means "Godly". Therefore, God's actions are good by definition. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® Lacking the ability to understand simple statements That's not a fact. fact Explain how this makes it non-factual. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® Prove that no one knows Nephi existed. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® Possibility 3: God is not good. Possibility 3a: Water is not wet. Possibility 3b: Air is not gas. Possibility 3c: Existence does not exist. Possibility 4a: God is a liar Possibility 4b: God is a fool Possibility 4c: God is Snow Possibility 5a: God is a liar Possibility 5b: God is a fool Possibility 5c: God is Snow Possibility 6a: Reality is illusion Possibility 7a: Up is down Possibility 8a: Good is evil Now, let's invent all sorts of new and impossible "possibilities" and introduce them into a conversation just to see how much we can obfuscate things. My, but this is difficult for some people to grasp. Let me try one more time. Please pay attention, Snow. Language allows us to construct phrases and sentences that follow correct syntactical and grammatical rules but, because of self-negation, carry no intrinsic meaning. Examples: "non-existent entity"; "This sentence is a lie." The LDS definition of "God" does not allow for a God who can sin. Thus, your construction of "sinful God" is without meaning in an LDS context. Is it clear yet? Now, perhaps you want to think that your nose is God. Be my guest. But your private definition of "God" as "Snow's nose" does not supersede the standard definition used by others. So even if "sinful God" is meaningful to you, referring as it might to your runny nose, that does not imply it's meaningful to others. Again with the private definition? (Besides, how could a human kill anyone or anything "inhumanly", anyway? And how could an animal NOT kill anything "inhumanly"? By your definition, all non-humans that kill -- animals, plants, falling meteors -- are doing murder. I don't believe any reputable dictionary carries such a worthless, stupid definition.) Let's look at a small sampling of available definitions for "murder": Wikipedia: "Murder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent..." Dictionary.com: "Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)." Merriam-Webster: "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought" See the common thread? (I helped you out by bolding the relevant words.) Murder means unlawful killing. Since God authors the law, he cannot act unlawfully. Ergo, God cannot murder, nor can God order murders. Unless we're using the "Snow's runny nose" definition of God. But we aren't.

Can you provide a religious truth or axiom that is not "based on pure dogma"? THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® In any case, the example you cite is not circular reasoning. It's true by definition: That which is Godly is good. If you disagree with this fundamental axiom, then you might as well be speaking Martian, because your arguments will make no sense in the context of the LDS faith. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® I agree that the particular bit of reasoning is not sound, but you are engaged in a much greater fallacy; you assume that you are capable of judging an action to be good or evil based solely on how it's recorded in scripture. Then, once your infallible judgment is rendered, you use your pronouncement of a thing as "evil" to argue that God, who is incapable of evil actions, cannot have ordered it. Fact: Nephi killed Laban. Now, you refer to this killing as "murder". This leads to two mutually exclusive possibilities: Possibility #1: You are correct; Nephi murdered Laban. In this case, God cannot have commanded Nephi to do the act, since by definition murder is sinful. Possibility #2: God commanded Nephi to kill Laban. In this case, you are wrong, since by definition any Godly act is good. By your absurdly biased wording, you assume Possibility #1 and preclude the existence of Possibility #2. Instead, assume for the moment that Possibility #2 is the truth. In that case, no amount of insistence by you that Nephi "murdered" Laban matters. You are wrong. Period. It is up to you to adjust your thinking and understanding to conform to reality, not the other way around. Whether or not you understand it, it's still the case, and haranguing others because of your own ignorance doesn't change the situation. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ® You keep phrasing things in impossible terms: "What is the evidence...that God ordered murder?" But of course, God cannot "order murder"; once God orders it, it isn't murder. Phrasing impossible questions, then gloating that they're impossible and that therefore you must be right, is not a valid way of establishing your point. THINK-BEFORE-YOU-POST ®

FreckleFace, I'm sorry to hear about your family abandoning you. I can't understand such a thing. If you think your sister is falling into a cult, why would you just abandon her? If it is any comfort to you, Joseph Smith spoke of his confusion at being "persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have endeavored in a proper and affectionate manner to have reclaimed me". Though he wasn't rejected by his family, it sounds like he experienced some of what you're now facing. I know you think ill of me, as you have told me in no uncertain terms. But for whatever it's worth, I hope and believe that things will work out well for you in the end as far as your family goes. You have showed great courage in pursuing the truth; surely God will stand by you.

Isn't this obvious? Why on earth would anyone do the work to homeschool their children unless they believed it was superior to public schooling? Why would you take offense at such a thing? What you are basically saying is that you are offended by anyone who homeschools -- since they obviously believe their homeschooling is superior to public schooling. Deciding whether to go to college or spend your life playing online games is also a choice, but that doesn't mean that both are equally valid. It is very obvious that those who choose to send their children off to public schools believe public schools to be superior. Otherwise, they wouldn't send their kids to them. Now, that superiority may lie in the fact that it gets the little monsters out of the house for the day, or that it allows both parents to work and bring in money, or any other trivial reason -- but the point is, the parents have decided in their cost-benefit analysis that public schooling gives them better value. That is to say, it's superior. So do you get offended by those people who send their children to public schools, thus implicitly proclaiming that public schools are superior to home schooling? Didn't think so. As I have already pointed out, this is a meaningless thing to say. Clearly, homeschoolers believe homeschooling to be superior, as public schoolers believe public schools to be. Why is this such a big deal for you? If you support both, as you claim, then why haven't you mentioned all the times you have seen parents "drop the ball" with public schooling? My sister, a public school teacher, tells me that the typical parent "drops the ball" completely, leaving almost all aspects of the child's education to her. Why didn't you bring this out as you did with homeschooling? What might homeschoolers say that would indicate the "support" for public schools that you expect to hear from them? Do you expect them to say, "Hey, I think public schools are perfectly wonderful and exactly as good as homeschooling if not better, which is why I have modified my lifestyle, cut my income, and taken huge pains in order to homeschool my children"?

Christ commanded us to be one, and warned, "If ye are not one, ye are not mine." Efforts to follow this commandment may perhaps at times lead to an unnecessary, perhaps even unhealthy, uniformity. Significantly, I can find no instance in all of scripture where we are commanded to avoid being like the other Saints. This observation leads me to conclude that God isn't very concerned about that matter. I do see the reverse of that, however: People so concerned with heterogeneity (or at least with their version of it) that they blast anyone who champions a traditional view. In the late, lamentable "women in pants" thread, the harsh, personally condemning words originated with those who took the view that people should wear whatever they like to Church, and not those who thought women should wear dresses and men should wear white shirts and ties. Another few definitions for the Devil's Dictionary: Open-minded: Those who agree with me. Close-minded: Those who disagree with me. Political correctness: A brilliant ploy whereby those who can't stand other opinions get to lecture everyone else on their close-mindedness. Tolerance: a virtue for those who disagree with me; a vice for us who know the truth

If we are to accept Gould at his word, then laws, which are based on moral determinations, should never be at all influenced by scientific thought. For example, laws about abortion should be determined solely by religious beliefs, certainly not by scientific ideas, which cannot and do not encroach on religion's Magisterium. I have no doubt Gould would never accept such a limitation on the use of science. Similarly, I can't imagine that any truly religious person could ever accept the idea that God himself has no authority to comment on scientific topics. The whole NOMA idea is a non-starter.

Wow. Too bad Moksha isn't the senior apostle. He has such a deep and profound understanding of Godly truths!!! He'd set things straight in short order!!!!! Oh, well. I guess we'll just have to hobble along with David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, Boyd K. Packer, L. Tom Perry, Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks... Poor us.

I'll present some ideas with a lot of overlap. I have made them discrete ideas, but in fact you will see that they bleed into each other a lot. Idea #1: You would have to ask the moderator who shut the thread down (Beefche?). I don't know that she did so "because it's causing hurt feelings". Maybe she just did it because she thought the thread had run its course. Idea #2: The sites you mention tend to have members and commenters with a higher overall education level. Such people tend not to get offended by ideas or dissenting opinions as easily as others. I would guess that sites such as this get a more representative cross-section of the population, and thus a lower overall educational level (which does not necessarily mean a lower level of intelligence). Idea #3: When the personal insults begin to fly, bad feelings ensue. Such personal insults usually result from someone taking umbrage at an opinion they don't like (as mentioned in Idea #2). The sites you mention may be populated more by people used to hearing opinions that differ from their own, so they are less likely to get all huffy because they think someone is saying (for example) that women in pants are evil. Idea #4: The members of the lists you mention are probably more "liberal" than the average poster here, both in the traditional sense and in the modern US political sense. In the traditional sense, such "liberalism" allows for expression of opinion without feeling the need to censor. Idea #5: The choking grip of political correctness is everywhere present, as has been fully demonstrated by the "women in pants" thread. But political correctness seems always to be more intense when the politically incorrect form the majority or plurality. Since those other lists also tend to be more "liberal" in the US sociopolitical sense, more traditionally minded people are not perceived to form the majority, and so are probably tolerated a bit better by those who style themselves "progressive". By contrast, such people feel outnumbered on this forum, and therefore might be more inclined to criticize and attempt to censor ideas that they don't like. Idea #6: Many (perhaps all) people tend not to think through the arguments presented, but just comment off-the-cuff. It requires mental discipline to read someone's post carefully and actually understand what they're saying. The other lists you mention might be populated by people who, on the average, are better disciplined than here. Idea #7: Discussion lists and boards develop their own personalities, to which the members then seem to adhere to some degree. Perhaps LDS.NET has developed a personality of haranguing the politically incorrect, while the other lists you mention have developed a more tolerant (and perhaps more truly open-minded) atmosphere. Idea #8: Maybe we're all jerks and they're all angels.

Interesting insight from a self-proclaimed atheist calling himself "Godless". :)

What do you mean? The constitutional right to vote for someone who is constitutionally incapable of being President, like Donald Duck, Osama bin Laden, or Arnold Schwarzenneger?

Ugh. My post about Jamie's joke came across much nastier than I had intended, which I see as I reread it. I would delete it, though since at this point it's already been quoted in its entirety, deletion would be a futile gesture. Sorry, Jamie.Humor is personal and situational, so my declaration that the joke "wasn't funny" is a case of poor judgment, and not just because the statement was offensive. Who's to say it wasn't funny? Heaven knows I've posted many supposedly "funny" observations that haven't exactly caught the list by storm, like my recent crack about non-existent galactic epicanthic folds.Calling the poem "obscure" was likewise a poor word choice. Many Americans have been enchanted by Milne's sweet stories and read them to our children; for about a year, he was my children's preferred author for bedtime stories.All in all, an unfortunate posting from Vort. Apologies all around.

Not if the bishop says it isn't.

Is this what you tell your child? "My relationship to you is so special, private, and intimate, that I could not possibly share it by having any more children. Spreading that out between multiple children would cheapen the sanctity of such a personal, important, and sacred thing." Most parents of multiple children will confirm to you that this idea is utter hogwash; you don't love your first child less because you have a second. It changes the nature of your relationship with that first child, but not the substance or the intimacy. NOTE: This is not a defense of polygamy, but an identification of flawed reasoning. Polygamy cannot be wrong because marriage is "special, private, and intimate" or "personal, important, and sacred".

This may be because the original NASA footage was not archived, but taped over.

It's always surprising and a bit baffling to find that people don't agree with us. This exhibits an incorrect understanding of the ideas put forth. Actually, it does indeed negate that. I know of no physical observation that would even suggest such an idea. Of course, if you're married to ex nihilo creationism, I guess you can think up whatever ideas you like to keep it viable. I'm not, so I don't. No, this is not correct. Modern cosmological theory suggests that the laws of physics were established at the "Big Bang", and therefore physics cannot tell us what lay before that point. In this cosmology, spatial extent and time itself is not well-defined "before" the Big Bang. But "not well-defined" does not mean "non-existent". Your "repeating expansion and contraction" vs. "steady-state" question is apparently asking about the so-called "oscillating universe". "Steady state" was an idea abandoned many decades ago, which postulated that matter was evenly distributed throughout the universe, resulting in a static distribution of matter. I don't think that idea has been current since the 1920s. I personally don't see that aligns any better (or worse) with LDS theology than any other 20th-century physics cosmology. As for the "oscillating universe", the question is whether there is sufficient mass in the universe to overcome the initial expansion force from the Big Bang. I have no opinion on the matter, since I'm not a research astrophysicist. My understanding is that calculations based on observations of visible matter suggest there is only a fraction of the necessary mass to "close the system", but other observations suggest that there is an immense amount of matter that cannot directly be observed, more than enough to close the system. This invisible matter is called "dark matter", and I believe it's the most generally accepted model these days. Check back in 2020 to see if they've come up with something new. The "curled-up dimensions" thing seems to indicate ideas that are part of string theory. String theory has been around a long time and is quite durable, in part because it makes very few testable predictions. Some physicists therefore consider "string theory" to be non-scientific by definition (not falsifiable) and purely a mathematical game. Again, I have no dog in the fight and no opinion on the matter.

bigguy, I pray for you. I hope, and believe, that God will lead you through this morass. I second anatess' suggestion: Go talk to your bishop. Let him know exactly what is going on. Whether and how your wife handles her actions is up to her, but you are not honor-bound to keep her behavior from your Priesthood leaders if it's affecting you and your children (which it clearly is).

Hope things went better today.

One of the main reasons we homeschool is one you don't hear much: We like the idea of our children learning things from us. And if in teaching them those common areas of math and reading, we also get to know them better, how can that be a bad thing? Homeschooling totally rocks. I don't consider myself an evangelist for it, but if you have an idea that it might work for you, I strongly encourage you to give it a shot. We don't have a strict "now we're in school, now we are not" system. I think my kids spend somewhat more time in actual learning activities per week than do their public schooled friends. They also continue during the summer. Kitchen table or living room floor, or wherever else. The kids generally store their school supplies on their bedroom shelves. You don't. You teach the eight-year-old her math, helping her out for ten minutes, then while she does her worksheet, you help the twelve-year-old with his writing assignment. We have never used preset curricula, but we do buy workbooks and other scholastic items to use for homeschool.