LittleWyvern

I still think the delegates should receive credit for the Founding. When trying to understand the development of the main ideas behind the Constitution we should look to the Enlightenment, but to understand how the idealism of the Enlightenment philosophers was translated to concrete law, we should look to the delegates. The delegates did a lot of the ugly work, but their work was mostly adapting the philosophies of the Enlightenment into the real world of politics. These adaptations were the delegates' original ideas.

I make a distinction between the Founders, who I feel are the thinkers behind the main concepts and diction of the Constitution, and the delegates to the Philedelphia Convention, many of whom were sent with specific directives from their states to not allow any new theories of government that weren't proposed as amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Perhaps my wording has been vauge. Let me reword: a lot of the basic tenets of the LDS faith are denied by Deists. As divinely inspired as the Constitution was, this inspiration would be worth nothing if the Constitution wasn't ratified. I'd go as far as saying the compromises in the Constitution were themselves inspired, as looking at the ratification votes in each of the states leads one to wonder how the Constitution was ever ratified. The Founders had to face reality (and the Anti-Federalists). See my answer to Maxel's first quote in this post.

If you're talking about the religious beliefs of the delegates, they're all over the place. This is from Wikipedia: The source citied for this is "Frank Lambert. The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America. 2003." The point I was trying to make was not that all of the delegates were Deists, but many of the core ideas of the Constitution can be traced directly to Enlightenment thinkers, who were almost all Deists. Unless there are qualifiers, I always thought document meant document, not half-of-the-document.

I apologize if I have brought the thread off topic, the original intent of my first post here was simply to answer one of Maxel's questions. EDIT: Speaking of reason... perhaps I have a streak of Enlightenment philosophy myself as well, hehe.

I watched him every once in a while when he was on CNN and I enjoyed the foil he presented against the somewhat bandwagon-left-leaning news coverage that CNN sometimes gives. Ever since he's moved to Fox I've watched him less and less, as to me he seems to be getting a little more... bizarre.

I was referring to the fact that many of the things Deists deny are some of the core doctrines of the LDS faith, miracles being one of them. This was an educated guess based on what I know about Deist philosophy. The Founders were probably motivated by their God (many modern Deists still find motivation and spiritual cleansing through various forms of prayer and meditation), but since they strictly denied any forms of divine intervention, such as inspiration, they probably didn't take the true inspiration of God for what it really was. That's the beauty of seeing the larger picture through the gospel, things look even more awe-inspiring. :)

At least it wasn't an alive snake!

Just as a clarification, the Founders were mostly all Deists, as were most of the Enlightenment thinkers except the very early ones (such as Bach, he was Lutheran). The Deist God is sometimes termed a "clockmaker God," one who set up the original conditions and simply let the Earth go, without ever intervening. Rejection of supernatural events is a core part of the Deist doctrine, as they believed that one can understand God only through reason. So the founders indeed rejected many parts of Christianity at the time, and as it would turn out many of the basic tenets of the LDS faith. This, however, doesn't say that the Founders weren't inspired, they probably just didn't attribute any inspiration they received to God. They probably attributed it to themselves. In essence, there's no proof (in the academic sense) that the Founding was inspired, but the combination of just the right people, just the right events, and just the right philosophies have surrounded the Founding in an aura of legend and mystery that it has never lost.

No. We believe that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost (aka the Holy Spirit) are three separate people. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have physical but immortal bodies (otherwise, how could Joseph Smith have seen them during the First Vision?), while the Holy Ghost does not and is a person of spirit (otherwise, how could the Holy Ghost dwell in us?).

My goodness, this rumor is immortal.

You mean we don't have a thread all about beefche yet?

You didn't just compare gay people to Hitler, did you?

You get a default copyright on all published materials whether you say so explicitly or not.

Wikipedia had a big fight over this a while ago. The conclusion is mixed: the LDS Church does have a copyright by default on published materials, but they've never tried to enforce it on other published depictions on the temple ceremony. So, unless somebody tried to sue someone over it, there's really no legal precedent for this situation.

With regards to the OP, all I think this will do is throw more fuel into the fire. I think it a better idea to let the fire die naturally, as there's really no concept of water in my strange made-up metaphorical world.

Dang, I almost want to buy this and wear it at BYU one day just to see how people will react.

Perhaps the Law of Moses had a similar but differently named ritual?

I just thought of something... if the subjects of the Big Love show are members of the FLDS Church, do you think they'll show the FLDS temple ceremony?

While I understand the point of not supporting such programs, what would be the point of debating against it? Any attempt to desecrate the temple ceremonies won't do more than what has already been done.

Why isn't this in the "preserving marriage between a man and a woman" sub-forum?

Name: obscure F-Zero-GX reference. Reminds me of myself in many ways, so I keep it. Avatar: just some nice picture I found somewhere. I spend a lot of time carving it out of the background, which means the background is transparent, but on a forum like this with only one theme it doesn't make much of a difference. EDIT: I've been thinking of mirroring my avatar left-to-right so I'm not staring into the left edge of everybody's monitor, but I'm too lazy.

You have yet to explain how we can "prove," according to your definition, whether something is true, although you've given us a simple disproof by contradiction. You're not a nihilist, are you? EDIT: All of scientific knowledge, for instance, is build upon strong, repeatable evidence. If you only believe things that are rigidly and 100% logically proven, then by that definition you only know mathematics and nothing else.

This is how, at least for me: I realize this is highly figurative, so I'll try to explain this a little bit. Basically, when I receive witness of something that I believe is of God, I try living it, applying its principles, or simply believing on it. This is the experiment in the above scripture. If doing so enlarges my soul and extends my understanding, this is proof to me that the thing that I am experimenting upon is from God. It it difficult to put this into exact words, as the process and exact result may differ slightly from person to person. EDIT: Note that this is not circular reasoning as, at least for me, the exact process as given in the verse is not important. It can be put in even more basic terms: try to see if following the principle brings happiness, if so, than the principle must be from God, and not of the devil.

Oh, I was close. My guess was "an indeterminate amount. One to actually screw in the light bulb, the others to act in a manner stereotypical of the group."

Indeed. We have quite different views on "contribute", for starters. I couldn't help but post this quote after I read that paragraph: