Jamie123
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Posts posted by Jamie123
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My students are going to wonder where the aliens have hidden the real Dr Dahlia.
As a matter of interest Dahlia, what are you a professor of?
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I don't think science has any answer to the question "How did life start?" The "lightning in a mud-puddle" thing is really a kind of a strawman, rather like "man evolved from monkeys" or (more cringe-making still) "your great grandfather was a rock!" These statements are only ever used by Kent Hovind (and people like him). To the Dawkinses and Myers they have no meaning at all.Life was started by a lightning strike? Lightning strikes every day, where is the new life that it has caused? Sounds far-fetched to me. A total shot in the dark, I'm thinking. Where is the proof of this lightning strike? Where is the evidence of it? Why hasn't it happened since? Why aren't there new forms of life springing up around us as we speak?
I think there's little doubt that evolution is responsible for the diversity of life of Earth. The question for me is whether or not there is still room for God in the picture. I believe there is....
For me the disproof of materialism is not in the complexity of life - which I believe could have a materialistic explanation - but in the fact of our own conscious existence. I don't just mean our personalities. (Personality can change as a result chemical stimulus: Six glasses of wine will change your personality, as will six cups of coffee*.) But the reality of ourselves which exists beyond the "personality" level.
I first became aware of this when I was about 12, and it blew me away. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, there are no words to explain it.) I believe this goes infinitely beyond any materialistic explanation we could devise however much science we learned. It's because of this that I don't believe the "soul" (for want of a better word) is material and could exist before death and before birth - perhaps be co-eternal with the existence of existence itself.
* Not that I'm suggesting you try the experiment.
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I often wonder what happened to the missionaries who used to visit me when I was investigating the church. There were a lot of them. Some were bad tempered or ever-so-slightly crazy, but most of them were fine. Some of them were very nice indeed, though I could never quite believe that life in the Church could be quite as wonderful as they told me it was. Sounds like you're finding it is though Dahlia :)
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"Be Thou My Vision"
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"Jingle Bells, Batman Smells"
(Only joking!)
"Lo He Comes with Clouds Descending"
"How Can it Be?"
"For the Beauty of the Earth"
"Bread of Heaven"
"I know not how that He whom angels Worship" (sung to the tune of "Danny Boy")
"The Spacious Firmament on High"
"Then Sings My Soul"
Loads more!
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At the reception, on no account give the guests a glass of wine before they have greeted the bride and groom. I know it's supposed to be traditional but it's asking for trouble. You can bet your last cent that some clumsy twit will spill it all over the bride's dress.
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I am currently Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Inspector of Gravy.
I have to travel all over the country to inspect catering schools, making sure young chefs are taught the correct combination of stock, cornflour and other ingredients necessary to achieve the consistency and flavour of true gravy.
It's a very important job: I expect one day to get a knighthood.
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From her words, I knew she did not understand what is meant by being “born again” nor what is termed the second birth.
In other words, this woman didn't have the same understanding as Elder Burton. Also this wasn't a personal interpretation of her own: there's a vast tradition of Protestant Evangelicalism behind her words (stretching back to Luther, Erasmus and John Calvin) just as there was a deep tradition of Mormonism behind Elder Burton's.
In my experience, Christians of different persuasions will read the same words and interpret them very differently, and will argue till the cows come home about which one of them is right.
There were six men of Hindustan...
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When I was 16 my father bought an Atari 400 for the family, and later my brother and I bought an Atari 800XL between us. Some (very stupid) people used to say "Har Har! That's not a computer! It's a games machine!" I think they were confusing it with the Atari games consoles which were popular around the same time.
But anyway it's sucks to them, because I used both the 400 and the 800XL for actual computing. I used to program models of planetary orbits to prove to myself they really did obey Kepler's laws. And I wrote some of my own games using the (cool at the time) player-missile graphics facility, with much peeking and poking. "Astro Attack" was the one I was most fond of!
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Yep there are a lot of young men who have short hair, shave and wear business suits who are not LDS missionaries. I daresay many of them also look at porn.
On the other hand I'm sure there are some LDS missionaries who look at porn. But I very much doubt they do it in the middle of McDonalds
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Mother - as in Mother Teresa - is a title given to women in the Roman Catholic Faith who are nuns. So, yeah, nuns = mother, priest = father. They don't get to be regular mothers and fathers because they take on the vow of celibacy. So, basically, they can claim the entire parish/community/church their children.
I've noticed nuns have quite a variety of titles such as "Sister", "Dame" etc. The title "Mother" is usually reserved for the senior nun (abbess or prioress) of a community.
Some Anglican priests are also addressed as "Father [first or last name]" within their parishes, though "Reverand" is more common.
(By the way, In England it's usually considered wrong to call a priest Reverand [Last name]. It should be Reverand [First name] [Last name] or Reverand [initials] [Last name].)
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Well, since we're coming out of the closet, so to speak, and admitting unpopular likes, then let me just say:
I enjoyed Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, I thought they did a moderately-ok The Golden Compass movie out of the first book!
I also think there's really nothing wrong with Pullman's work that isn't also wrong with the Harry Potter series.
LM
OK - I'm shamelessly hijacking this thread for give you my opinionated views on Philip Pullman...
I've mixed feelings about His Dark Materials. Pullman is a wonderful writer, but his stories suffer from bad planning. Northern Lights (the book you Yanks call The Golden Compass) was a wonderful opening, but it spreads the canvas so wide that the ending was never going to be satisfactory. The eposodes of Cittagaze and the "Tower of Angels", Lyra's "death", the underworld, the Mulefa are all wonderful in themselves, but tied together with very unconvincing storyline.
I agree the Golden Compass movie was good. It's a pity they didn't finish the trilogy though. I blame the Catholics...
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The first attempt at Dune was undoubedly the biggest movified atrocity I've ever encountered. Watching dood sit there forcing one eye bug out while we hear the "my name has become a killing word" whisperover, just sort of killed any depth the movie otherwise might have taken from the book.
But my daughter (a short preemie who looks 4 even though she's 7) does a pretty good Alia impression, after a bath, all wrapped up in her hoodie towel, pacing around the house whispering "The spice must flow!"
LOL - the idea that David Lynch's Dune is "a horrible movie" has become a sacred cow amongst movie (and Dune) fans. Though I wouldn't call myself a "Dune fan", I am fond of the original book, so I'm going to commit the unpardonable heresy of saying that I like the 1984 version of Dune!
[There I've said it. Now beat me to death with sand-trout!]
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The movie version of Jaws was very different from the original novel by Peter Benchley.
When the movie came out I was only about 10, and though I wasn't allowed to see it my parents oddly enough did allow me read the book (so long as I kept out of the chapter where Ellen and Hooper....well if you've read the book you'll know the chapter I'm referring to!)
When I finally did see the movie a couple of years later, that became the definitive version of the story in my mind...until last year when I finally re-read the book and I was astonished at how different it was. The film makers took little more than the basic premise from the book and wrote a totally different story around it.
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I don't know, I thought the movies were only marginally worse than the book.
I totally love the original book Dune, though I find Dune Messiah and Children of Dune rather tedious. I don't know if I'll ever get round to reading God Emperor of Dune and the however-many books that follow...
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DUNE Oh my, what a horrid piece of useless celluloid.
Are you talking about the David Lynch version, or the later TV movie?
I actually quite like David Lynch's version, though I agree it doesn't do to compare it too deeply with the book.
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LOL - this problem was addressed quite correctly in the 1963 comedy movie Mouse on the Moon, sequel to the famous Sellers movie The Mouse that Roared about the tiny wine-producing nation of "Grand Fenwick" that declares war on the USA. In Mouse on the Moon (which sadly does not star Peter Sellers) Grand Fenwick intends to beat the USA and Russia to the moon using a space vehicle powered by Grand Fenwick wine. Before the launch, skeptical visiting scientists inspect the space-ship:
Visiting Scientist: (Pointing to what appear to be shower-heads attached to the side of the rocket) Surely these will tear off long before you reach escape velocity.
Grand Fenwick Scientist: We're not going to reach escape velocity.
Visiting Scientist: (Perplexed) Well if you don't reach escape velocity you won't escape the Earth's gravity!
Grand Fenwick Scientist: Not correct! If you have enough energy to escape you can travel at any speed you like!
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I am a Aquarius.
"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, The Age of Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius."
Seriously though this isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference to horoscopes. I think these astrologers just write the first thing that comes into their heads.
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[Deleted message]
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Evidence can confirm and support divine revelation. The minute is supplants it, the power of faith disappears.
There may be some truth in this, though I can't honestly say I understand it. Like when Jesus said to Doubting Thomas "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
LOL - A quote from Douglas Adams also springs to mind:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.
P.S. I always cringe at the name of your website: "Prevention of Anti-Mormonism" sounds a little too much like "Prevention of Free-Speech". Perhaps "Exposing the Flaws in Anti-Mormonism" would be better, though it doesn't form such a nice acronym.
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While mainstream Christians have something to gain from strong evidence of a historical Jesus, Mormons tend to downplay it because (presumably) they want to show everyone else sitting on the same branch of faith they are. You wouldn't expect the atheists' agenda to support either side, yet even Richard Dawkins accepts that there probably was a historical Jesus Christ.It is all word of mouth. The closest thing we have for proof of Christ's mortal life would be some of Paul's epistles, written about 20 years after Jesus' death.
[And before you tell me that "Dorkins" is a fool, let me point out this is quite the opposite kind of "foolishness" than you'd normally expect from an avowed atheist.]
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Beyond Josephus, there are potentially brief mentions of Christians by Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius in the early 2nd Century AD, but not directly of Jesus (that I'm aware of).
I don't entirely agree: Here's a quote from Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome (1956 Penguin Classics Edition, p.365):
To suppress this rumor [that Nero was himself responsible for the burning of Rome], Nero fabricated scapegoats - and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator Christ, had been executed in Tiberius' reign by the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this setback the deadly superstition had broken out afresh...
Now you're right in a way - this isn't a direct memoir based on personal contact with Jesus, but it does record the impact of Jesus' life on the society of that day, in a way which agrees closely with the Biblical account.
But like you say, we can't prove for certain that this account wasn't doctored in later ages.
Just one other unconnected point: Tacitus is obviously treading a fine line when he wrote this - condemning Nero's unjust actions while at the same time making it clear he didn't approve of the Christian religion. The political/religious situation must have been so volatile in those days, people had to be so careful what they said or wrote. It makes me so glad to live in a society which protects the freedom of speech.
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I've just posted elsewhere regarding logical debate (Prove it first! - Page 2 - LDS Social Network Forums), and I think the same thing applies here in many ways.
If someone is convinced that the church in its entirety is true because of the feelings they have upon investigating, then they may, as many members do, ignore any evidence which appears to be contrary. However, neither missionaries nor anyone else can know what the person actually felt, and it may have been fleeting but enough to convince them at the time that what they were being told was true. Later, they may discard such feelings in the light of evidence, or lack of it, for the truth of church claims. DNA evidence being one major bugbear as far as I can see, along with archaeological, too.
I can understand someone saying, "Well, I feel the church is true, and the lack of obvious archaeological does bother me, but it doesn't shake my testimony". No problem. What we have there is someone who has fervent beliefs, or knowledge as they'd call it, built upon testimony of the spirit. But also, a person who isn't brain dead, but considers other matters as still relevant and important. From a non-member's point of view though, and certainly one who's going to look for more earthly 'proof' first, they want evidence that seems impartial and accurate.
I don't worry too much about archaeological evidence of Christ in America, because as far as I know there's none of him in Israel either. But to say that looking for, or having, hard evidence of might "take away from their agency to seek divine revelation of their own" makes no sense to me. It seems completely illogical and erroneous for us to think things have to be extremes of either one thing or the other, don't you think?
Yes...I'm afraid I do tend to look at things in black and white, and take people's words more literally than perhaps I should. (To give you some idea, I still believed in Santa Claus when I was 10!) I remember years ago getting very irritated with a fellow student who said something like "Where we came from depends on what you believe. If you're a Christian we came from Adam and Eve. If you're not then we came from the apes!" (????) Complete gibberish of course - but only if you take it literally.
Having said that though, I'm not actually sure I understand the concept of "divine revelation" anyway. (And from what I gather, not all LDS members do either.) But those Mormons who swear by it make it sound so strong and compelling that one wonders quite what physical evidence they would need after receiving it. And if that's an oversimplification, perhaps that means this "revelation" isn't everything it's advertised to be. But like I say, that's just my own naive view.
Just one other point: You may not find any direct physical vestages of Christ in the Middle East, but he is mentioned in so many secular histories of the time that it's hard to believe there wasn't a real man behind the stories. The difference with America is that there are (as far as I know) no secular documents of that period which did not come to us via Joseph Smith.
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My highest was "Liberal Christian Protestant" (100%). My lowest was Jehovah's Witness (28%).
My LDS rating was 52% (in between Neo Pagan at 56% and Scientology at 51%), so I'm 1% less Mormon than PC
Ran into the first missionary who knocked on my door
in General Discussion
Posted
Cool - You sound very like many of my own colleagues on the IS side. I find that stuff interesting, and I do do some teaching on information management. I don't think I have much aptitude for it though - my real love is for statistical analysis and simulation of networking behaviour.