BennyLava

I do not seek to go around and degrade people's beliefs. My rejection of them - or rather the part of them they gotten to by prayer - comes from the fact that I think knowing truth by personal revelation is a logically incongruent method. Meaning that I can't honestly start seeking God this way unless I am proven that my reasoning is wrong - by discussing with believers. Without civil discussion one can't hope to get outside one's "bubble". So people who do not belive because they haven't had contact with religion are not punished - fine. But what about those that had? Surely you agree that pairs of statements such as: God is immarterial / God has a body - good deeds are what matters most / faith is what matters most - love thy enemies / punish the infidels - there is hell / there is no hell - are mutually exclusive, meaning only one of each pair can be true (if any). These are statements supposedly revealed by God to adherents of different religions. But if they are, then even the words of God do not lead to knowing truth, and cannot be regarded as pinnacle of moral guidance - how can they, if we don't know which one of us has actually got it right? You might say there is no absolute truth in this world. But what is God for, then? Just to straighten things up after we die? How can I start believing if I am unable to receive reliable moral guidance from religion?

That is the answer every worshipper receives in their religion. This is my point. Again, simply stating that I will know the truth when I pray earnestly doesn't lead anywhere, for reasons I proposed in my first post - in short: people of mutually incompatible religions say they know the whole truth from prayer; all of them can't be right at the same time; therefore, even if I am personally *convinced* of God's answer, I can't really know. It is honestly great that you are tolerant towards other viewpoints. However, even though there is no hell as such in LDS' beliefs, you do believe there are some - am I right? - eternal degrees of communion with God in the afterlife, with the highest level only accessible to LDS. This means that - if God indeed also replies to people in other religions - he knowingly hides from them some amount of truth vital to achieving that highest level. This would be blatantly unjust and evil.

So as far as I understand: if I do what the Bible advocates, I will then see that such teachings must have come from God because of their moral value. There are of course, some good teachings in the Bible that I agree with - the golden rule, be generous, do not be a hypocrite, etc. However, these teachings are not in any way limited to the Bible, nor is the Bible the first religious source to advocate them. This way, we again encouter the problem of multiple claimed revelations in the world: how do we know which one is true, if all of them contain morally sound advice? You might say that the Bible contains only moral advice, as opposed to other sources containing also obviously immoral advice. However, there are many teachings in it that I don't agree with (and don't "feel" right about advocating them): I don't agree that no marriage can be cancelled (regardless of what trauma the marriage turned out to be), I don't think that everyone should sell all their possessions and give to the poor, since that would just make everyone poor and unable to actually alleviate poverty, I don't agree that I should abandon my care for family and friends just because they are of different religion/viewpoint than me (Luke 9:60), I don't believe that homosexuals deserve hell because they were born with sexual inclinations towards their own gender (if even if it wasn't inborn - so what?), etc., etc. Moreover, moral teachings such as the golden rule can be arrived at by reason alone: of course it is good to treat other people as you would like to be treated - it enables mutual respect, dissemination of thoughts, and most of all - a stable, non-anarchistic, and therefore happy and prosperous society.

The passages that you have quoted only state the problem that I'm arguing against: personal revelation can't be a valid way of discerning truth, since almost every religion advises to seek personal communication and each of them has believing "personal communicators" and that would mean every religion is true - an impossibility. Perhaps I should have mentioned that I'm a non-believer - I wish to learn and discuss the faith-based viewpoint. Does that mean that belief in scripture is primary to belief in personal revelation? Meaning that I can't hope to just receive an answer from God if I don't already believe in scripture? That would pose another problem: why should I start believing in this holy book and not any other (Quran, Sutras, Vedas, you name it...)? And please note that if you proceed now to give me reasons to believe in your particular scripture - such as that the Bible contains prophesies that came true - then this will mean that reason-based arguments have priority over belief in scripture which has priority over personal revelation. At least in my opinion :)

Hello :), I've heard from members of LDS that to know that one's beliefs are true, or to determine the right path (religiously speaking) to follow, and should "ask God" in their mind and they will receive an answer. To put it short - one knows that Mormonism is true because of personal contact (or personal revelation) with God. However, I would like to discuss whether this is indeed a proper way of knowing which religion is true. Here are my points and conclusions: 1) there are people in other religions/denominations that are convinced they have spoken with God and thus received a confirmation of their beliefs 2) these claims can't all be true at once (God wouldn't give contradictory information to different people) therefore 3) personal revelation is not a valid way to determine truth, as I can be convinced of having been spoken to by God and still be wrong What do you think?