Vort

I assume you meant "empathize" rather than "emphasize". Since I don't understand what the term "miraculous" can mean to an atheist, I'm having difficulty understanding your point. I.e. "Jewish history is replete with examples of assaults on its leaders, so she empathized with my plight."

How about just telling them, "I sleep in the nude"? Hey, it would have been true for me.

Bizarre. If they did that in the US, someone would get sued -- ESPECIALLY if they denied someone entrance because they were "overdressed". Sometimes, the lawsuit-happy US system actually makes sense. I wish you had instructed your daughter to tell them that she WAS dressed in her "pyjamas", that that's how she sleeps. Then she could look around with a confused expression and ask, "Why are all these people dressed so strangely?" What are they going to do, tell her, "No, you don't dress like that to sleep"?

No, only if it were your nephew. </geekylinguisticjoke>

"Justice" didn't ask for a proof; he asked for my definition. I gave it to him.

I have no firm opinion on the matter, except that it is false doctrine to claim that Satan had "a plan" in opposition to "Jesus' plan". Whether or not it's true, it is not LDS doctrine as far as I have ever been able to find. Before 1978, you could have talked with any number of decent, righteous LDS Priesthood holders (and leaders) who would have confidently assured you that no man of black African ancestry would ever hold the Priesthood of God until every other man had already had that opportunity. If you had asked them why, they would have told you all about lack of premortal valiancy and such. But it's all stuff and nonsense, and any of those good men still alive today must surely feel quite silly and ashamed of their foolish beliefs at the time. Well, we all believe untrue, silly, and foolish things, so there is no great shame in that. But that doesn't mean we ought to just accept and embrace such drivel. We have scriptures, and we have brains. We ought to use both. And I know of no scripture teaching that Satan had "a plan" that counteracted "Jesus' plan". By the way, saying that the scriptures don't mention that Satan DIDN'T have a plan, and therefore we can't know that he didn't, is illogical. I could just as easily say that the scriptures don't mention that God doesn't have twelve arms, so therefore maybe he does.

That's a strange principle. My very existence is, as far as I have been taught, free. I did not earn it; I simply am. The scriptures clearly teach that salvation is free, if we will but accept it. No earning involved. Of course, I have read and pondered Alma 12 literally dozens of times, very probably more than you have. I suspect what you're really saying is that I should ponder your interpretation of the meaning of Alma 12. I realize you believe you have stumbled onto some great and deep truth, and hey, maybe you have. But you have no authority to go telling people to pray and ponder about your teachings. If indeed you have received revelation and teachings about this topic, you have no authority to share them. You may discuss them as your opinion, but when you start telling people to ponder and pray about your ideas, you have vastly overstepped your authoritative bounds. Effectively, no difference. Of course he did, when he knowingly disobeyed God and partook of the FORBIDDEN fruit. But it's a moot point, since God did not allow that to take place. Yes, we've already established that we agree on this. An interesting and even reasonable idea, but not logically necessary from your prequoted verses. Please demonstrate this from scripture. I suspect what you really mean is, "Read those verses slowly until you agree with me." Your gloss of the verses you quote is by no means the only reasonable interpretation. D&C 93:38 Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God. According to D&C 93:38, we are redeemed from the fall, and thus become again innocent before God in our infant state. But according to your doctrine, we must have also been innocent before our infant state, because we were unable to choose against God's will (i.e. sin, or become not innocent) premortally. How do you rectify your doctrine with D&C 93:38? What makes you think this would have affected anyone other than Adam and Eve? We have no evidence that (1) they would have been able to have children, or (2) if they could, that their children would have been immortal and thus denied the mortal probation. These are both speculative points on your part. This is an interesting and worthy idea for discussion, but you weaken your own position when you urge people to "ponder and pray" about your ideas. Such language is an immediate tip-off to run far away. You would do better, I believe, just to say, "Hey, here is an interesting idea I came up with. What do you think?"

Then you missed it in this scripture:D&C 29: 36 And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil—for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency; Exactly what is it that you think I "missed"? As I said: We had agency premortally. This is obvious. I take it you agree with me. But this is no contradiction, unless you believe that the first scripture somehow negates the possibility of premortal agency. I believe no such thing, so I feel no great urgency to reconcile the scriptures you mention. I prayerfully consider the scriptures I read and the doctrine that is taught to me from authorized teachers of the word of God. I rarely or never prayerfully consider ideas taught to me from other sources, such as from anonymous people on internet discussion lists. So, no offense intended, but unless you are an apostle or other authorized teacher and definer of LDS doctrine, I have not the least intention of praying about your personal opinions and scriptural exegeses.

Verchoo, Onner, and Riting Talant EDIT: My avatar is self-explanatory.

About being able to save all, "that one soul shall not be lost." No, about being able to save all, "that one soul shall not be lost." Sure. He proposed that he be the chosen Savior, and that if chosen, he would see to it "that one soul shall not be lost", and therefore the glory would be his, not the Father's. It was the promise "that one soul shall not be lost." How about one sentence, repeated three or four times?

Yes, I am saying that. But I am saying more. LDS mythology (as opposed to LDS doctrine) goes more or less like this: Jesus had a plan; he would be our Savior.Lucifer had a plan; he would force us all to do what was right.We all voted on the plan. Jesus won.Satan and those who agreed with him all got kicked out of heaven.This is what I was taught as a child, and I suspect what many here were taught. I did not realize until I reached adulthood that I had been misled. (I was going to say "I had been lied to", but that would be too harsh; I'm sure my teachers were not intentionally teaching false doctrine. But intentionally or not, they did teach me false doctrine.) The facts of the above mythology are these: Jesus had a plan; he would be our Savior. FALSE: The plan was the Father's, and Jesus volunteered (or more likely was called) to be the Savior.Lucifer had a plan; he would force us all to do what was right. (We'll come back to this one.)We all voted on the plan. Jesus won. FALSE: There was no "vote". The Father said, "I will send the first".Satan and those who agreed with him all got kicked out of heaven. FALSE: Well, not utterly false, but Satan and his minions were cast out for open rebellion against God, not merely for believing or even teaching some "alternate plan".When I discovered through scripture and doctrinal study as a young adult (missionary) that #1, #3, and #4 above are false -- and I assume you won't argue that they are, in fact, false and even apostate doctrines -- I began to wonder about #2. I searched diligently through the scriptures, and found nothing to indicate that #2 was true. That was over 25 years ago, and in that time I've read the Book of Mormon dozens of times and the other standard works several times through, and have never found that elusive passage that speaks of Lucifer's "plan". I dislike being deceived, even unintentionally. I was taught falsehoods as a child. I will not continue to promulgate those falsehoods as an adult. If you believe that Satan had formulated some grand plan to replace the Father's, all I ask is that you prove it from scripture. It appears to me that the scripture is saying that Satan wanted the Father's glory [honor, power], rebelled against God, and turned away the hearts (or whatever the spiritual equivalent of "hearts" is) of "a third part" (which may or may not mean 33.3%) of the armies of heaven."Agency" is the ability and opportunity to choose one's actions and/or thoughts.God gave man his agency, so far as we know, though I acknowledge the distinct possibility that agency is an inherent attribute of human intelligence. In mortality, yes. This doesn't say anything about premortality, though we know that we had agency premortally. It's only a contradiction if you assume that #2 means man did not have agency before it was bestowed in the garden of Eden. I see no reason to make that assumption. God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. So therefore, man did not live before then. Oh, wait, but we did in fact live before then, just not as "a living soul", i.e. body and spirit. Clearly, we had agency premortally. Otherwise, there would have been no way to choose to follow the Father and the Son or to follow Lucifer. This is clearly false, based on the present circumstance of Satan and his minions. They freely chose against God's will. They are damned. Which I acknowledged from the very beginning. But this is not "the plan of Lucifer" referred to in #2 above; you know, the plan that we had to "vote on" premortally. As I have said several times in this thread, Satan's "plan", insofar as he has a plan, is: To usurp God's gloryTo destroy man's agency Interesting theory, but you have no way of establishing this from scripture. This is conjecture on your part. Even understanding it, much less establishing it, would require a deeper understanding of the nature and mechanics of agency than we have been given. That's not at all what Satan said. I agree it is your personal belief of what Satan said, but it's not what the scriptures record. You are perfectly welcome to your own personal interpretation. As far as I'm concerned, you are even perfectly welcome to tell everyone what your personal interpretation is. But you have no authority to establish that interpretation as LDS doctrine, which it clearly is not. Again, if you can simply show me scripture that unambiguously talks about Satan's "plan" that we supposedly "voted" on, please just show it to me. I'd love to read it.

Okay, Justice, I will go through your post, though I expect you and I are the only ones who will bother to read this. Unfortunately, your promise was not realized. Not the case at all. There are innumerable possibilities. For example: 5. He wanted some third party's plan, not his own or God's, to succeed/fail. 6. He wanted to cause havoc, irregardless of whose plan succeeded/failed. 7. It was all just an honest misunderstanding; Lucifer was simply trying to help Adam and Eve get some good eats, having misunderstood God's injunction as a musical injunction against the "forbidden flute". Absurd, you say? Perhaps, but certainly no moreso than claiming that Lucifer actually believed he could outthink and outplan the Almighty. Illogical. You are assuming that, had he personally not deceived Eve into disobeying God, she never would have eaten of the fruit. This is neither logical nor true; the endowment presentation demonstrates this to be false. And you are free so to suppose, but that's not a logical argument. Your conclusion is based on a faulty premise. But didn't you just get through saying that destroying God's plan WASN'T his whole purpose, but that he had another Satanic plan he wanted to implement instead? Your argument is not self-consistent. We established no such thing. Your conclusion was based on faulty logic; you simply stated the above to be the case, then said you had demonstrated it. Asserting a thing is not the same as demonstrating it. Indeed, you may safely conclude anything you wish. That doesn't make it logical, or even true. This is illogical. God is just. Giving "opposing commandments" and forcing a being to choose to be disobedient to one or the other, then punishing that being for disobedience, is unjust. I disagree. Again, you may safely assume anything you wish. No one will blow your head off for so doing. But you would still be wrong. You may believe whatever you wish, but you have established none of this -- not even the most basic point you claim, that Satan had a well-defined plan for humanity beyond usurping God's glory and, later, seeking to destroy the agency of man. Untrue. We need a lot more than these two things; otherwise, I am like God right now. Please logically demonstrate this. You are already claiming that "the third part" (which may or may not mean 1/3, as you erroneously imply) followed a being in open rebellion against the Almighty, merely on the strength of his supposed "plan". If we are going to accept such an outrageous proposition, why would we balk at thinking that maybe he convinced them that such things weren't necessary, as the Almighty had said? After all, they already disbelieved that God's plan was better than Satan's supposed "plan", so why not believe the other, as well? What makes you think so? You haven't established this. So we're supposed to give you extra credence because you have some secret revelations that we aren't privvy to and that you can't share, but that make you wiser than the rest of us? Uh-huh. Sorry, Justice, but that doesn't wash. You may propose whatever you wish. Unfortunately, you haven't established any of this yet. So far, you have demonstrated neither scriptures nor logic pointing to your conclusion. <Vort raises hand> How is this Satan's grand premortal plan? "None shall be lost", because -- what? Eve partakes of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and then of the tree of life, so therefore no one shall be lost? But, as surely even the premortal Lucifer fully realized, immortality != redemption. So your idea above is not internally cohesive. Getting Eve to do as you suggest would not result in her redemption, much less that of her children. It's a complete non sequitur. It's like saying, "Satan wanted Eve to eat of the fruit because that way all of her sons would have long black beards and be rich." Of course, the other possibility to consider is that Satan was lying. That idea works for me.

But, Justice, here's the point: YOU are making a claim, so YOU must establish that claim. Your claim: Satan had a plan in opposition to God's plan. Not merely a "plan" to usurp God's glory for himself, or a "plan" to destroy the agency of man, but a plan specifically in opposition to God's plan. Please demonstrate this claim from scripture. I say it is not there, though I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong. It won't be the first time.

This is bad logic, and insufficient data to draw that conclusion with.Not at all. There is plenty of evidence for this. For example, if such a thing could be done, then God is not all-powerful, since he's not doing it. I assume you reject the premise that God is not all-powerful; ergo, it cannot be done. Simple logic. True enough. So show me in scripture where Satan's "plan" is discussed. No, "they" didn't. That was marketing hype. "They" did design the Titanic with features that were supposed to lessen the probability of its sinking. This is much different from your claim, though. True enough. So I've been asking for someone to demonstrate the claim that Satan had some great "plan" that would supersede God's plan -- that is, a "plan" beyond simply usurping God's glory, as the scriptures state. Please provide the relevant scriptures. Again: Please provide scriptures illustrating this "altered version of God's plan". The scriptures say only two things on this matter: Satan wished to usurp God's glory, andSatan promised that "not one soul shall be lost".Beyond this, I have never noticed the least implication of a premortal Satanic "plan" of any sort. I eagerly await your elucidation. Excellent. Please show me where. I did indeed read your last post. It was far from irrefutable. I felt it not worthwhile to respond laboriously, point by point, to what seemed to be rather obvious deficiencies in your arguments.

Satan offered no "proposal" premortally. He wished to be the chosen one and usurp God's glory for himself. To that end, he promised something he was powerless to do -- namely, exalt all God's children. He had no "plan" to do such a thing, because it could not be done. He was lying. But those who wished to believe him did so, not unlike the situation we experience today.

Black is an ex-Mormon.Black wrote the screenplay for a movie about the murder of a homosexual activist.From (1), we may deduce that Black is not a friend to the LDS Church. From (2), we may deduce that Black is a friend to the pro-homosexual lobby. Given points (1) and (2) above, and given that the LDS Church is an outspoken opponent of many of the goals of the pro-homosexual lobby, it seems entirely likely to the intelligent and unbiased mind that Black might be taking the opportunity to desecrate and cast aspersions on the LDS Church. Thus, bringing up Black's affiliation with "Milk" is entirely reasonable, for what I would have thought were obvious reasons.

I surely tire of the male-bashing that many (often men) in the Church enjoy engaging in. I try to teach my sons to ignore such drivel, but sometimes it gets very hard. Thank God my wife and most of the men in my ward don't entertain themselves with talk about how spiritually inferior they believe men to be. For the OP: Many Latter-day Saints believe that Paul was giving counsel specific for his cultural region. We no more believe that women should keep silent in Church at all times than we believe that women should never cut or braid their hair. Paul was a product of his cultural milieu, as are we all. It's worth noting that Joseph Smith recast those verses that you mention by saying that women should not rule in Church, rather than that they should not speak. This fits in well with the LDS understanding of the Priesthood and the patriarchal order.

What makes you think Lucifer's station was particularly exalted? He was a "son of the morning". What does that mean? Maybe you and I were sons of the morning, too, you think? As for his intelligence level...well, any being who would come out in open rebellion against the Almighty can't be as intelligent as all that. If "intelligence" means "light and truth", as the Doctrine and Covenants indicates, then Satan is a being without the least glimmer of intelligence. I have to think that openly rebelling against God Almighty is pretty much the ultimate expression of rash behavior. I'll take you up on that bet. I'll even give you 3:1 odds. As do many other Latter-day Saints. But the only Satanic "plan" the scriptures mention is that of destroying the agency of men and usurping the glory of God. If you know of another "plan" of Satan, perhaps one to force everyone to do what's right, please let me know the scriptures that tell of it. Thanks in advance.

Do you have any scriptural evidence of Satan's "plan"? Btw, there was no "plan of Jehovah". Jehovah's only plan was to do the Father's will.

Where in holy writ are we told that Satan "had a plan"? Satan's only "plan" was to destroy the souls of men. He had no other "plan". Consider: What "plan" might he have implemented? A "plan" to "save" people without agency? That's a contradiction in terms; those without agency cannot be saved. Maybe a "plan" to "force" everyone to do "good"? Only if you believe that Satan had intent to "do good", and even then, the phrase is meaningless. Satan desired to usurp God's glory for himself. That was his one and only plan. To that end, he made absurd, false claims, like "one soul shall not be lost". In other words: He lied. Wow. Satan lied. What a concept! And that, my friends, is the complete extent of Satan's "plan" for us.

As far as I know, there has never been an official, First-Presidency-approved explanation for why those of black African descent were denied Priesthood and temple blessings beyond baptism and confirmation. I have never found any teaching of Joseph Smith on the matter, or any idea that such a restriction was enforced in his day. That doesn't mean I disbelieve the divine nature of the restriction, just that I don't understand its genesis. But whatever the reasoning was and is, it's now moot. As of 1978, the restriction no longer exists and is but a historical artifact. Some day we will know the whys and wherefores; for now, we can simply rejoice in the blessings we enjoy today.

If you're a minor, you need your parents' permission to be baptized. If they won't give it to you, don't even worry about it. Just keep doing your best and pray for help. Either you will get permission, or eventually you will become an adult and can do what you like. If you're not a minor, but living at home or otherwise closely involved with your parents, my opinion is that you need to decide what's important to you and then follow your heart. Your father is not likely to disown you for being baptized, but if he does, you need to decide if following your beliefs is worth that price. I believe it is, but only you can make that decision for yourself. Your dad likely doesn't know much (or anything) about the LDS Church, and is afraid of his precious child getting brainwashed by some cult. As a father, I can understand that. I'd suggest you invite him to meet the missionaries and talk with them, and maybe give him some literature that tells about the Church. When he sees that Mormons aren't some brain-dead, groupthink, Kool-aid drinking cult (though we do like our green jello...), he might soften his stance. Good luck, Tyler, and God bless you and your family in this journey.

Not so, at least not in LDS theology. The marital covenant I made along with my wife was made to God. She and I each covenanted with God, not with each other, for our marriage. So how does a Biblical "literalist"** decide when a condition (adultery, abandonment) has been fulfilled "egregiously enough" that the divorce is allowed? This is a non-problem in LDS circles, of course; but if the written Bible (in English translation, I presume) is the highest authority, how is the judgment justified? ** I disagree with the term, but you know what I mean.

If your aim is true, that means you shoot straight. If a timber is true, that means it's straight, not warped. If an item or belief is true, that means it points straight toward Jesus Christ. Many beliefs are factually correct but, considering their presentation, untrue.

Not sure of your point, Charley. How does what you say differ from what I said?