LinuxGal

If I reply to that question, I will be banned from this forum. It's better to go out on my own terms. So, adieu. 3 Nephi 18:32 Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them. oops

Unix/Linux has a "man" command, you use it to find out about other commands. Someone suggested there should be a "woman" command as well, but nobody has the bandwidth to download it, or the disk space to maintain it.

Because of other scripture that says: John 5:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

Are there other gods to worship? If God is jealous and wants you to worship him alone, and there really aren't any other gods to worship, this would be like a wife feeling jealous of her artist husband painting a picture of a beautiful woman who does not even exist.

Because religious knowledge is presented in such a way that no third party can make a verification. In the case of the speed of light, scientists publish the prints of their apparatus and the exact procedure they used to make the measurement, and any other person can use those prints to duplicate the experiment. But religious knowledge, more often then not, boils down to verification by emotion. One has an inner feeling or assurance that it is true. The truths are laid out there with no way for a dispassionate outsider to test them. 1 Thess. 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

Even a hypothesis is a tentative theory. Newton's "law" of gravitation is a useful theory, very useful indeed, we used it to land a spacecraft on Titan and get pictures from the surface. But it was revised and extended by Einstein's theory of general relativity, covering extremes of gravity and velocity, which has been demonstrated to be accurate to many decimal places. It is an example of a superb theory. Plate tectonics and the modern synthesis of descent with variation are also superb theories. A theory is simply a model which organizes facts, like you said, in such a way that one may predict future observations. But the simple-minded will often toss the word out as a pejorative, saying something is "only a theory". Well, there isn't anything else.

In the third set we only get thirteen generations (count them up!). But Matthew says it's three sets of fourteen generations. Sometimes when Bible inerrantists assemble this genealogy they list David at the bottom of the first list and again at the top of the second list, but if they do that they only get to Josiah in the second list, and the captivity was not during his reign. And to be consistent, they would need to put Josiah at the top of the third list just like David was at the top of the second list, but then you get fifteen generations in the third list. And the whole exercise is moot anyway because Jesus isn't even really the son of Joseph. At least not genetically.

I don't know what the Word of Wisdom is, but in the gospels, Jesus eats fish and lamb. So, WWJD? (What would Jesus Digest?)

Known to Eastern Hemisphere Christians, maybe. Did they have access to Peter's vision in the time of 3 & 4 Nephi? Nevertheless, Jesus clarified things in 3 Nephi. He said the old Law was fulfilled, and set down new precepts to follow. [18] For verily I say unto you, one jot nor tittle hath not passed away from the law, but in me it hath all been fulfilled. [19] And behold, I have given you the law and the commandments of my Father, that ye shall believe in me, and that ye shall repent of your sins, and come unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Behold, ye have the commandments before you, and the law is fulfilled. [20] Therefore come unto me and be ye saved; for verily I say unto you, that except ye shall keep my commandments, which I have commanded you at this time, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

I suppose one thing that makes humans different from the other animals is that we have the ability to communicate abstract concepts. So if you set the rules of the game to be that I must personally make all my verifications to make sure they are true, rather than accept the verification of two or more other human beings, you are asking me to operate on the level of a non-human animal. I will not accept those conditions.

The speed of light can be measured any number of ways. In modern times, with lasers with Q-squelching and very fast digital clocks, you can do a simple time-of-flight measurement in an evacuated tube. In the 17th Century, they measured the difference between times in the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter (which do not vary) when the earth was close to them and when the earth was on the other side of the sun (16.67 light-minutes further away, it turns out). The cyanide milkshake one, well, that was verified by Eva Braun, I suppose, on April 30, 1945.

And a good thing they did that, too! Alma 11:42 Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death.

Yes, but you are using your mind to make that separation, which is like reading Braille with superabundantly warty fingers.

Jesus freely accepted the worst thing the Romans could do to a man in obedience to his Father's commandment. And Jesus as the Son of God obeyed his Father in full union with Jesus the Son of Man. For those six hours as Jesus suffered, he represented the whole human race, in every time and place. With the obedience of Jesus Christ unto a death on a cross, Satan's final claim against human beings for their disobedience was silenced forever. Jesus pleased God infinitely more than Adam (and all of us) displeased him.

This it is said: The path into the light seems dark, the path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long, true power seems weak.

That's why Jesus wanted it left to the professionals. "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost...We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts." -- Peter

I've asked missionaries what it is, exactly, where the Catholic Church is "apostate" and it boils down to this: In Catholicism, any baptized Christian can baptize a convert, but in the CoJCoLDS this power is held in the priesthood. And that's pretty much it.

And yet, this particular thing initiated a chain of events that led to David being seated on the throne of the whole House of Israel, rather than Saul, and David was in the line of the Messiah. So go figure.

Romans 2:29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

Apparently liability is not absolute, but malleable. One might assume liability for another's sin. Jacob 1:19 And we did magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we did not teach them the word of God with all diligence; wherefore, by laboring with our might their blood might not come upon our garments; otherwise their blood would come upon our garments, and we would not be found spotless at the last day.

France Antarctica Oblate spheroid 8 3 x 10^10 cm /sec Obummer Yes All of these things are falsifiable assertions which have withstood repeated testing. But spiritual and religious assertions are not falsifiable; in the end, the person making these sort of assertions will fall back on the book, or revelation, and that's that, end of discussion.

Mental illness has a physical underlying cause. When Jesus "cast out demons" during his ministry, he was really correcting the imbalances of neurotransmitters and such. But there has always been a stigma associated with that infirmity. Like the man born with blindness, some people attributed mental illness with the afflicted person's sin, or the sin of their parents, and there is the unspoken expectation that the person needs to reform their behavior in order to be cured, which is what you appear to be saying in your post. But the cure is medical. Even people with bad behavior can be cured. There's no moral hazard involved. In fact, the medical cure might change their bad behavior to good.

We know truth when our mind conforms with the way things are. And the way things are is not relative or ambiguous, that is why it can be shared, but an individual mind may very well be.

What was the sin of the people Jacob preached against? They had begun to search for gold and silver. And some of them were better searchers than others, so they tricked out their apparel to show off that they were more ambitious and competent that their brothers. Apparently God wants everyone to be comrades who don't flaunt their private property, but share and share alike: Jacob says, "Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you." The same process repeated in 4 Nephi: A socialist utopia came to an end when the people asserted private property again. So while it puzzles me that Mormons are mostly Republicans, it puzzles me even more to see a thread that claims that socialism leads to a dwindling in unbelief.