Jamie123

I'd agree with you on most of that.
The reason this language was chosen (yes, "chosen") was that Joseph felt that the language of the KJV was more regal or even more sacred than the common tongue of the era.  Whether it is or not is a matter of opinion.  But I cannot compare the language of Shakespeare with a careful translation of Shakespeare into modern English and somehow feel like it has lost something.
But you have not truly experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.  

I've seen this before. On the whole, I quite like Richard Dawkins, but he makes the mistake of equating God with something like Big Foot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or the Yeti - something which might or might not exist within our universe, for which evidence can be collected and analysed. God isn't like that. God is not something within creation (or the universe, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it). God is that which is separate from the universe and bestows that property of existence.
I remember years ago, as a kid, walking through some long grass early on a sunny morning and saying to myself "God exists, whether He exists or not". At the time I couldn't articulate what I meant by that, but I think I now know what I was grasping at: to say that God exists or doesn't exist is meaningless - rather He is that which bestows the very property of existence. To say "God exists" is rather like saying "water is wet". Yes in once sense it is, but in another sense it is not. Rather than saying "water is wet", it is more true to say "water is wetness"...a thing is wet if it has water on it.
On the other hand, perhaps that is not very helpful. We have simply given existence a new name: God. But I think it strikes at the root of the arguments Dawkins presents in The God Delusion. God is simply not the kind of thing that is amenable to the methodologies Dawkins uses.
I can see where he's coming from about the language of the BoM. Though I was always attracted to LDS, the "thee's" and "thou's" of the BoM have always irritated me intensely. Some people say "that is Biblical language". No, it's not. No one in the Bible ever said "thee" or "thou" or "thine". Those pronouns belong to early Modern English. As far as I can see, there's only one good reason for keeping them in the Bible - and that is that the Koine Greek had a seperate second person pronoun for the singular, which could correctly be translated as "thou" (or equally "tu" in French, or "du" in German). Using "thee" and "thou" is therefore strictly more accurate, but it has the unfortunate effect of giving the text an archaic flavour which it would not have had to its original audience.
Others insist that we should call God "thou", "thee" or "thy" when we pray, to "show respect" but this is false too. Back in the 17th Century - as well as in today in parts of the UK which still use these pronouns - calling someone "thee" would not necessarily have been respectful. When Hamlet tells Orphelia "Get thee to a nunnery!", is he showing her respect? Similarly today, a Yorkshire farmer might address his farmhand as "thee", but if he were talking to his landlord he would consider it more respectful to say "you".
Having said all that, it's not (as Dawkins insists) some knock-down proof that the BoM is nonsense. It's quite possible for a true prophet to record his messages in 1611 English, and still be a "real" prophet. It doesn't prove anything either way. 

Lewis has become a post mortem celebrity of sorts in LDS circles, being perhaps the most frequently quoted non-Latter-day Saint in General Conferences since Elder Maxwell started quoting him. I have enjoyed quite a few of Lewis' writings, but I confess I don't have the fascination with him that many Latter-day Saints do.
Lewis was absolutely besotted with allegory, such that almost everything he wrote was allegorical, certainly much of his fiction. His close friend J. R. R. Tolkien, in contrast, didn't like allegory all that much; many times in his life, he shot down the idea that his Lord of the Rings books were meant as any sort of allegory of England, Europe, World War I (or II), etc. Certainly Tolkien was influenced and even inspired by events around him, but he never sought to draw clear lines connecting this tale with that event. He wanted his writing to stand on its own feet.
I guess I tend more toward Tolkien's mindset. I'm fine with allegory, and when used judiciously, it can sometimes be very insightful. But when everything becomes allegorical, I find it tiresome. The metaphors get stretched too thin, and I find myself wishing that the author would simply tell what he's thinking instead of trying to be all clever in dressing it up in camouflage. That's how I got feeling about five books into the Narnia series. I really am fine with fiction, allegory, and parables, especially when they're skillfully used, but I guess I tend more toward clear exposition. Maybe that's why I love the Book of Mormon so much.

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was a famous theoretical astronomer, sci-fi writer, and Yorkshireman. He is well known for the theory of nucleosynthesis and was a great believer in the "steady state" theory (that the universe always existed and is in a constant equilibrium state or expansion, new matter being constantly created out of nothing), panspermia (that life on Earth and other planets originated from outer space), and for coining the term "the Big Bang" - which he did to ridicule people like Stephen Hawking who were pushing the idea in opposition to Hoyle's own theories. He once had a very famous spat with Hawking at the Royal Society: after Hoyle had presented his latest theory, Hawking - then a young and exceptionally geeky grad student (his illness had not then deprived him of his voice), lurking at the back of the lecture room - pointed out that one of the summations Hoyle needed to converge actually didn't. Hoyle demanded to know how Hawking knew this, and Hawking replied that he had "worked it out". It transpired that Hawking had been looking at papers which Hoyle's own students had left lying around the office, worked out the calculations himself, and chose the most impolitic way possible to communicate what he discovered.
It was quickly pointed out to Hawking that however right he was, humiliating Britain's greatest physicist in front of the assembled fellows of the Royal Society was unlikely to do him much good in the long run. I think we can well imagine what Hoyle was like on that occasion: he was the sort of Yorkshireman who would have given Ben Weatherstaff a run for his money. In fact, they say that his "Yorkshire manners" (what anyone outside Yorkshire would have called "rudeness") were what cost him the Nobel Prize.
Sir Michael Palin (1943-) is a British Comedian and a central member of the Monty Python team. I've always loved his "Yorkshire" impersonations. Here's one example...
 
“Eh, tha’ mun talk a bit o’ Yorkshire t' 'em then lad! Tha’ll make 'em laugh an’ there’s nowt so good for folk as laughin’ is!"

Of course.  THAT Michael Palin.  Given the nature of the topic, my mind wasn't calling up Monty Python.

I feel that many religious thinkers refuse to see that there is a forest amidst all the trees.  We learn from scriptures that there is a Father in Heaven.  Anyone that believes that there is a G-d that created the universe and all things in it; must understand that G-d is the common ancestor of all life forms.  It is obvious from simple observation that G-d intends that life creates life.  I think the scripture term for this is the "breath of life".  We know that G-d uses life to create life.  Anyway if we believe in a G-d this should be obvious.  Even Christ had a mother - Mary was his ancestor.
The Big Bang theory has a lot a problems - but until someone comes up with something better we are kind of stuck with it.  The notion that G-d created stuff via secret magic is the height  ignorance and contrary to a G-d of truth and light.   Or as Isaiah says - "reveals all things from the beginning to the end".  I am of the mind that when we do not understand things that are true it is not because G-d is hiding the truth as much as it is our personal difficulty in believing the truth.
 
The Traveler

Narratives can easily become more real to you than what you actually know...
 

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was a famous theoretical astronomer, sci-fi writer, and Yorkshireman. He is well known for the theory of nucleosynthesis and was a great believer in the "steady state" theory (that the universe always existed and is in a constant equilibrium state or expansion, new matter being constantly created out of nothing), panspermia (that life on Earth and other planets originated from outer space), and for coining the term "the Big Bang" - which he did to ridicule people like Stephen Hawking who were pushing the idea in opposition to Hoyle's own theories. He once had a very famous spat with Hawking at the Royal Society: after Hoyle had presented his latest theory, Hawking - then a young and exceptionally geeky grad student (his illness had not then deprived him of his voice), lurking at the back of the lecture room - pointed out that one of the summations Hoyle needed to converge actually didn't. Hoyle demanded to know how Hawking knew this, and Hawking replied that he had "worked it out". It transpired that Hawking had been looking at papers which Hoyle's own students had left lying around the office, worked out the calculations himself, and chose the most impolitic way possible to communicate what he discovered.
It was quickly pointed out to Hawking that however right he was, humiliating Britain's greatest physicist in front of the assembled fellows of the Royal Society was unlikely to do him much good in the long run. I think we can well imagine what Hoyle was like on that occasion: he was the sort of Yorkshireman who would have given Ben Weatherstaff a run for his money. In fact, they say that his "Yorkshire manners" (what anyone outside Yorkshire would have called "rudeness") were what cost him the Nobel Prize.
Sir Michael Palin (1943-) is a British Comedian and a central member of the Monty Python team. I've always loved his "Yorkshire" impersonations. Here's one example...
 
“Eh, tha’ mun talk a bit o’ Yorkshire t' 'em then lad! Tha’ll make 'em laugh an’ there’s nowt so good for folk as laughin’ is!"

Feeling or believing it is not necessarily correct.  It could be that what spawned life on this planet is actually quite common (from a science point of view) and what occurred, though we are unable to replicate it with our current amount of knowledge, occurs quite commonly on planets around the universe that have the same situation as our own once did. 
From either point of view (creationism or more of a scientific hypothetical view) if life being created is actually far more common than what we've thought thus far, it may be that life is abundant in many areas of the universe.  We have found evidence that there may be life on other places, perhaps at other times from the few places we've gone already.  If we can find evidence that there MAY have been possible life in the past on Mars, and that's just one of two locations we've been able to scavenge (and not very deeply at that) for these types of evidence, it indicates that whatever creates life in the universe, or the causes behind it, may not be as rare as some might want others to believe.

You're not the only one who has stated this.
Yes and no.
Yes, it does.  And this is a question that atheists will never be able to properly answer.  So, they just shrug it off on probability.  The problem is that the laws of probability say that it shouldn't have happened.  The ratio of the existing probabilities 5 billion years ago vs. the likelihood of the right combinations of amino acids forming proteins without any pre-existing proteins is more than astronomical.
So, what they're left with is infinite universe theory (which scientifically speaking is not a theory).  And that is more faith than science.  Yet atheist scientists buy into it as if it is a reality.  
Exactly.  People tend to reverse the cause-effect relationship, creating a conundrum where there wasn't one.
According to William Dembski.  It is mathematically highly improbable (to the point it is pretty much impossible) even considering the immensity of the universe.
Turtles all the way down.  Got it.
Once probability says that randomness does not explain a phenomenon, then we are only left with one alternative -- non-randomness, IOW, intelligent design.
No idea who these guys are.  But my family LOVES The Secret Garden.

I bet a lot of people misread it as "decide".

An idea has just struck me.
They say one of the central ideas of evolution is "common ancestry" - that modern humans do not only share ancestors with modern apes, but also dogs, cats, horses, snails, oak trees, cacti, mushrooms, slime molds and bacteria. Which means that just one event - one random alignment of atoms billions of years ago - led to the diversity of life we now see.
Now what has just occurred to me is that this only ever happened once in all the billions of years the Earth has existed, how unlikely must that event have been? It puts the sheer specialness of life into perspective. Perhaps with all the billions of stars in the universe, and the trillions of planets orbiting around them, it was bound to happen once - but it happened to happen here on our planet. What are the odds?
(Well actually the odds are 100%, because if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. I believe they call that the "weak anthropic principle".)
Or perhaps it happened more than once. Perhaps the evolutionists are wrong, and that different types of life did spring from multiple "proto-life" events during the Earth's early history. Or perhaps all current life did come from the same proto-life, but there were for a while rival "lives" to ours which eventually died out - our's was the one which (by natural selection) survived.
Or maybe Fred Hoyle was right about "panspermia" - that the elements of life have been drifting around the universe since forever (Hoyle didn't believe in a beginning) and dropping "like gentle rain from heaven" upon any planets they happen to meet.
Or maybe the event wasn't random. Maybe a proto-life is so unlikely that it could never reasonably occur at random however many planets there are, but that God travels around causing it to happen on planets here and there. Or maybe God only did it once, and it spread across the universe under its own steam, Hoyle-style.
Something to think about during lockdown...
P.S. I can do a good Fred Hoyle impression: "T' Big Bang theeuury is a looada o' ooold crap!"  (Well actually I can never decide if its Fred Hoyle, or Michael Palin pretending to be a Yorkshireman.) I've been reading The Secret Garden to my wife for a bedtime story for an excuse to use my "Yorkshireman" voice for all the Yorkshire characters - especially Ben Weatherstaff.
P.P.S. My wife says I don't sound Yorkshire at all, but just like I'm "talking stupid". Oh well... 
P.P.P.S. I knew there was a word for what I called "proto-life event": Abiogenesis. 

An idea has just struck me.
They say one of the central ideas of evolution is "common ancestry" - that modern humans do not only share ancestors with modern apes, but also dogs, cats, horses, snails, oak trees, cacti, mushrooms, slime molds and bacteria. Which means that just one event - one random alignment of atoms billions of years ago - led to the diversity of life we now see.
Now what has just occurred to me is that this only ever happened once in all the billions of years the Earth has existed, how unlikely must that event have been? It puts the sheer specialness of life into perspective. Perhaps with all the billions of stars in the universe, and the trillions of planets orbiting around them, it was bound to happen once - but it happened to happen here on our planet. What are the odds?
(Well actually the odds are 100%, because if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. I believe they call that the "weak anthropic principle".)
Or perhaps it happened more than once. Perhaps the evolutionists are wrong, and that different types of life did spring from multiple "proto-life" events during the Earth's early history. Or perhaps all current life did come from the same proto-life, but there were for a while rival "lives" to ours which eventually died out - our's was the one which (by natural selection) survived.
Or maybe Fred Hoyle was right about "panspermia" - that the elements of life have been drifting around the universe since forever (Hoyle didn't believe in a beginning) and dropping "like gentle rain from heaven" upon any planets they happen to meet.
Or maybe the event wasn't random. Maybe a proto-life is so unlikely that it could never reasonably occur at random however many planets there are, but that God travels around causing it to happen on planets here and there. Or maybe God only did it once, and it spread across the universe under its own steam, Hoyle-style.
Something to think about during lockdown...
P.S. I can do a good Fred Hoyle impression: "T' Big Bang theeuury is a looada o' ooold crap!"  (Well actually I can never decide if its Fred Hoyle, or Michael Palin pretending to be a Yorkshireman.) I've been reading The Secret Garden to my wife for a bedtime story for an excuse to use my "Yorkshireman" voice for all the Yorkshire characters - especially Ben Weatherstaff.
P.P.S. My wife says I don't sound Yorkshire at all, but just like I'm "talking stupid". Oh well... 
P.P.P.S. I knew there was a word for what I called "proto-life event": Abiogenesis. 

Narratives can easily become more real to you than what you actually know...
 

You misunderstand me. It's lack of courage that's the mistake. The mistake is to take the easy way out - to convince yourself that black is white, and then kid yourself that you're showing courage by joining the braying mob. As (I'm ashamed to admit) I have often done.
I know you LDS are rather fond of a hymn by a certain Scotsman...
If only it were easier to "stem" a "tide of lying tongues". But if more of us tried instead of adding our own tongues to the lying ones (for fear of meeting a "traitor's doom" of our own), the world would be a better place.

Back when the first movies (silent) came out there was a movie about a corrupt sheriff (of course taking advantage of a young good looking lady).  When the movie showed in one little town - it so reminded the town folk of their own sheriff that at the end of the movie, they went and lenched their sheriff.   The media is not always the innocent bystander - often it is the catalysts. 
 
The Traveler

You misunderstand me. It's lack of courage that's the mistake. The mistake is to take the easy way out - to convince yourself that black is white, and then kid yourself that you're showing courage by joining the braying mob. As (I'm ashamed to admit) I have often done.
I know you LDS are rather fond of a hymn by a certain Scotsman...
If only it were easier to "stem" a "tide of lying tongues". But if more of us tried instead of adding our own tongues to the lying ones (for fear of meeting a "traitor's doom" of our own), the world would be a better place.

You misunderstand me. It's lack of courage that's the mistake. The mistake is to take the easy way out - to convince yourself that black is white, and then kid yourself that you're showing courage by joining the braying mob. As (I'm ashamed to admit) I have often done.
I know you LDS are rather fond of a hymn by a certain Scotsman...
If only it were easier to "stem" a "tide of lying tongues". But if more of us tried instead of adding our own tongues to the lying ones (for fear of meeting a "traitor's doom" of our own), the world would be a better place.

On the matter of UK vs. US justice, it's worth noting the case of William McCaffrey: he was convicted of the rape and torture of Biurney Gonzales in New York in 2006 and sentenced to 20 years. The jury chose to put 100% trust in the word of an innocent-looking girl from the Dominican Republic, despite there being no other evidence, and the fact that the rape kit administered by the police had returned negative!
Just like in the Day/Bryant case there was a grassroots campaign to prove McCaffrey's innocence. They turned up evidence that the bite marks on Gonzales were not only not those of McCaffrey, but they had not even come from a man (the DNA was female). The authorities were going through the usual bluster of denial when in 2009 - quite out of the blue - Gonzales (now married with kids) admitted that she had made the whole thing up. She confessed it first to her priest, but he (quite properly) refused her absolution until she had told the authorities. Even then the police tried to hold things together, claiming Gonzales' confession had been somehow "coerced", but the conviction really was beyond saving. McCaffrey was freed, and Gonzales got 3 years. (Only her marriage saved her from being deported from the US on release.)
McCaffrey of course shouldn't have been convicted at all, any more than Bryant should, but there's no denying the US were a lot quicker than the UK to punish the real villain once she was identified.
I must say though, I can't help admiring Biurney Gonzales. However belatedly she did do the right thing, despite enormous cost to herself and her family. 

On the matter of UK vs. US justice, it's worth noting the case of William McCaffrey: he was convicted of the rape and torture of Biurney Gonzales in New York in 2006 and sentenced to 20 years. The jury chose to put 100% trust in the word of an innocent-looking girl from the Dominican Republic, despite there being no other evidence, and the fact that the rape kit administered by the police had returned negative!
Just like in the Day/Bryant case there was a grassroots campaign to prove McCaffrey's innocence. They turned up evidence that the bite marks on Gonzales were not only not those of McCaffrey, but they had not even come from a man (the DNA was female). The authorities were going through the usual bluster of denial when in 2009 - quite out of the blue - Gonzales (now married with kids) admitted that she had made the whole thing up. She confessed it first to her priest, but he (quite properly) refused her absolution until she had told the authorities. Even then the police tried to hold things together, claiming Gonzales' confession had been somehow "coerced", but the conviction really was beyond saving. McCaffrey was freed, and Gonzales got 3 years. (Only her marriage saved her from being deported from the US on release.)
McCaffrey of course shouldn't have been convicted at all, any more than Bryant should, but there's no denying the US were a lot quicker than the UK to punish the real villain once she was identified.
I must say though, I can't help admiring Biurney Gonzales. However belatedly she did do the right thing, despite enormous cost to herself and her family. 

It's an overstatement, but there's an element of truth to it. And it applies to societies in general, not just the Brits. Everyone wants to belong to the battalion of white knights, fighting the dragons and ogres on the other side. And when deciding who's the white knight and who's the dragon, its much less trouble to go with the crowd - otherwise they might decide YOU'RE one of the dragons! I've made that mistake myself many a time.

It's an overstatement, but there's an element of truth to it. And it applies to societies in general, not just the Brits. Everyone wants to belong to the battalion of white knights, fighting the dragons and ogres on the other side. And when deciding who's the white knight and who's the dragon, its much less trouble to go with the crowd - otherwise they might decide YOU'RE one of the dragons! I've made that mistake myself many a time.

It's important to remember what was going on in the UK at the time of the original case. In October 2011 Jimmy Savile died, and some people began to allege that he had abused them as children. At first they were brushed off, but there were eventually so many such reports that the authorities had to sit up and take notice. It transpired that there had been many complaints about Savile during his lifetime which had been hushed up. BIG EMBARRASSMENT!! There was soon a nationwide inquiry into the matter ("Operation Yewtree"), and senior police were appealing for victims of Savile (or anyone else) to come forward. They said they were sorry that victims had not been taken seriously, but NOW they WOULD BE BELIEVED!
What more fertile ground for the likes of Carl Beech and Danny Day to plant their poisonous seeds? The nation was so disgusted with the Savile affair that anyone accused of anything similar wouldn't stand a chance. Police and prosecutors were too terrified not to bring charges. And it was the same with people in general: you should have seen the comments on the Bournmouth Echo website (mostly now deleted) reporting Bryant's conviction: a few brave posts daring to suggest that there was "no real proof" were heavily down-voted, shouted down with "If you think that, you must be a pedophile yourself!" (all heavily up-voted). I can only imagine the abuse the one dissenting juror in the Bryant/Day case must have received from the other eleven.
In short, this all started with a genuine concern which needed to be addressed, but was not addressed in a sensible or proportionate manner. But if you think this is a peculiarly British problem which would "never happen in the "good ol' US of A", think back to the Red Scare of the 1950s. The threat of communism was real, for sure, but did it really warrant all the excesses of McCarthyism? 

It's important to remember what was going on in the UK at the time of the original case. In October 2011 Jimmy Savile died, and some people began to allege that he had abused them as children. At first they were brushed off, but there were eventually so many such reports that the authorities had to sit up and take notice. It transpired that there had been many complaints about Savile during his lifetime which had been hushed up. BIG EMBARRASSMENT!! There was soon a nationwide inquiry into the matter ("Operation Yewtree"), and senior police were appealing for victims of Savile (or anyone else) to come forward. They said they were sorry that victims had not been taken seriously, but NOW they WOULD BE BELIEVED!
What more fertile ground for the likes of Carl Beech and Danny Day to plant their poisonous seeds? The nation was so disgusted with the Savile affair that anyone accused of anything similar wouldn't stand a chance. Police and prosecutors were too terrified not to bring charges. And it was the same with people in general: you should have seen the comments on the Bournmouth Echo website (mostly now deleted) reporting Bryant's conviction: a few brave posts daring to suggest that there was "no real proof" were heavily down-voted, shouted down with "If you think that, you must be a pedophile yourself!" (all heavily up-voted). I can only imagine the abuse the one dissenting juror in the Bryant/Day case must have received from the other eleven.
In short, this all started with a genuine concern which needed to be addressed, but was not addressed in a sensible or proportionate manner. But if you think this is a peculiarly British problem which would "never happen in the "good ol' US of A", think back to the Red Scare of the 1950s. The threat of communism was real, for sure, but did it really warrant all the excesses of McCarthyism? 

It's important to remember what was going on in the UK at the time of the original case. In October 2011 Jimmy Savile died, and some people began to allege that he had abused them as children. At first they were brushed off, but there were eventually so many such reports that the authorities had to sit up and take notice. It transpired that there had been many complaints about Savile during his lifetime which had been hushed up. BIG EMBARRASSMENT!! There was soon a nationwide inquiry into the matter ("Operation Yewtree"), and senior police were appealing for victims of Savile (or anyone else) to come forward. They said they were sorry that victims had not been taken seriously, but NOW they WOULD BE BELIEVED!
What more fertile ground for the likes of Carl Beech and Danny Day to plant their poisonous seeds? The nation was so disgusted with the Savile affair that anyone accused of anything similar wouldn't stand a chance. Police and prosecutors were too terrified not to bring charges. And it was the same with people in general: you should have seen the comments on the Bournmouth Echo website (mostly now deleted) reporting Bryant's conviction: a few brave posts daring to suggest that there was "no real proof" were heavily down-voted, shouted down with "If you think that, you must be a pedophile yourself!" (all heavily up-voted). I can only imagine the abuse the one dissenting juror in the Bryant/Day case must have received from the other eleven.
In short, this all started with a genuine concern which needed to be addressed, but was not addressed in a sensible or proportionate manner. But if you think this is a peculiarly British problem which would "never happen in the "good ol' US of A", think back to the Red Scare of the 1950s. The threat of communism was real, for sure, but did it really warrant all the excesses of McCarthyism?