Faithless

I really liked this thread, and am sad to see it die.

Thanks Mute and Ram. That summed up my question.

Well, it was my belief that the people who were teaching me as a child the faith that was to help me through my life were telling me things that were written in a manual by an inspired man/woman of god. However, any of the lessons I have paid attention to could have been made up on the spot, and I would not have known it. I know it's a stupid thing to believe, but I did at one time think that all of the lessons would be perfect, and that everything that came out of a priesthood holders mouth was law. Now I don't believe that, but having that crash don upon me just helped me leave the church.

Thank you. I am, however, thinking of taking my name out without telling my mom, and asking the bishop to not inform her of it. Either that or I wait till I move. And, in all honesty, if she finds out, it won't be that big of a deal. She's not going to blow up at me, she just might be saddened at being reminded of my beliefs.

Oops, I'm wrong on that. Sorry. In the evolution thread by Tyler90Az some people were saying how some prophets believed in evolution, but it was never confirmed. I do not know the church's official, current view on evolution. Sorry for the mess up.

I guess I am asking about everything here. For example, in the story where Lot and his wife are leaving Sodom. Lot's wife looks back, and turns into a pillar of salt. Did she literally look back, and did she literally turn into a pillar of salt? Was there an actual arc? Was Jesus actually born of a virgin mother? Like you mentioned, did Moses really part the Red sea?

The church's official stance is that evolution, for animals, is true, but they made no comment on human evolution.

It also depends on how you look at literature. I mean, technically, isn't the bible anti-atheism literature? And isn't anti-religion literature just pro-atheism literature (some, not all)?

I mainly left because I felt like this faith wasn't what I wanted. If anything, it just didn't feel right. I used to go to church every week, go to seminary every school day, and follow the church's teaching. But then I started questioning things. I started asking myself why I believed in god, but couldn't come up with a legit answer. All I could think of was faith, and because everything in the world looked like it was designed by him. Everything seemed to fit together so perfectly. But, I knew then about evolution and science, which was and still is a passion of mine. For me it wasn't a leaving of the LDS faith, it was a leaving of religion in general. I looked at religion in a skeptical point of view, and it all seemed so fake to me. Even the translation of the Book of Mormon seemed like it was a scam. I already don't believe in psychics, homeopathic medicine, or chi. I look at those things and need proof of why they are true. All they can do is use human emotion to try and prove they are real, but they show no evidence. I decided I would use skeptical thinking for pretty much everything in life. To me, there was no evidence for a god. The things that people used for evidence for a god were pretty much all explainable by science. To sum it all up, I guess I left the church because it wasn't fulfilling to me, and it didn't bring me the answers I was looking for. It didn't make me happy. It really did take me a long time to leave the church. Technically, my names are still in the records. I just haven't taken them out yet to make my mother happy.

Ok, at the risk of striking up an argument of some kind, what is it that the LDS faith believes about the Bible? What parts of it does it take literally, and what parts does it take symbolically? If you read the bible, and you happen upon a certain story, how do you know what to believe about it is true, and what isn't?

This is actually one of the many reasons I left the church. I had a Sunday school class dedicated to saying why evolution is false, and how we should all not believe in it. It really bothered me that someone who was supposed to be teaching me lessons of life was attempting (might I add poorly) to prove why a scientific theory was false.

Well, I originally wanted it to be about anti-religious books, but someone somewhere got us off topic, and now we're talking about something else. It's still a good thread (in my opinion), but the title is kind of misleading.

I know that people weren't just sitting there saying "I think I'll believe in a God now." I view religion in an evolutionary perspective. Religion evolved. It started with someone trying to explain the world, and evolved from there. People took ideas from other people, and changed them to fit what they wanted it to fit. Now, religion isn't under the same laws as evolution (natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, etc.) However, it did change over a long period of time leaving us with what we see today. Some people do believe in a god in the absence of evidence. I've talked to plenty of people who, after asking them why they believe in god, come back with saying "It's just faith." Faith, by definition, is believing in something with the absence of evidence. (Sorry, I'm kind of talking about your comment in a reverse order here) You can come to the conclusion that there is no god in the absence of evidence. I mean, technically, you should be agnostic about everything that has no evidence. There isn't any proof that dragons exist, for example. Really, we should all be agnostic about dragons; however, I do not believe in dragons, nor will I believe in dragons, until I see actual evidence.

That actually is really, really interesting. I read the article at it amazed me. Thank you for showing it to me.

Actually, there are plenty of transitory fossils showing one species becoming another. However, if you have any comments, questions, or arguments about evolution, please state them on this thread: http://www.lds.net/forums/general-discussion/37267-evolution.html You didn't give me any evidence that god exists, other than give me random bible verses.

So are you saying it's illogical to believe in god, but it's reasonable not to?

You just pointed out why I don't want to argue with you. You just said that you will never accept my point of view. I am more than willing to believe that there is a god, so long as you show me proof. Evidence. You also never presented me with an argument. You told me to prove god doesn't exist. Ok, here's the proof against an intelligent designer: The fossil record, vestigial legs, murder, rape, genocide, radioactive dating, heck even the stars in the sky show that the universe wasn't Intelligently designed. Like I said before, give me evidence that there is a god, and we'll continue this further. Don't answer back with words like scriptures, or arguments like "you can't see air, so how do you know it's there". Arguing with you is like playing a game a chess with someone who thinks we're playing checkers.

But each side of the coin is different in its own way. Saying that something exists without evidence of it is very different than saying something doesn't exist when there is no evidence to support it. If I say that I believe dragons exist, but you can prove that they don't, then I am crazy. If I say that I believe dragons don't exist, but that I will start believing in them when evidence is found, then I am sane.

Ok, firs off, there's no hypothesis about the habitable zone. The habitable zone is just a term used to define a place with water. Secondly, life didn't just start by random chance. I said that to you earlier, and you just ignored it. Thirdly, the scriptures are not a witness of god. They are not enough proof to hold up in any court of law as evidence for anything, and flaws are found in the scriptures because they were written, copied, and translated over a vast amount of time by humans. Lastly, nothing in space testifies of god, or Jesus, other than humans telling other humans that they believe.

Ok, the scriptures are a witness of god, however a flawed witness of god. Let me put it this way: If the scriptures are true, then god exists. However, if god doesn't exist, then the scriptures must be false. You are using the scriptures as evidence of an existing god, but that evidence is only sound if you are correct. You have yet to convince me that god exists, so the scriptures cannot be used as evidence to support god. If we could use text to prove that god exists, then the flying spaghetti monster would be allowed into this argument. Godless' rebuttal does not prove that god does not exist. In fact, it is nearly impossible to prove that a god does not exist. But, does that really mean he does exist? What you're doing is called the 'flying teacup' argument. Let's say I believe that there is a teacup orbiting the sun in our solar system. It is too small for any telescope to see it, and it's in an unknown location, and you cannot prove that it is even there. However, you can also not prove that it isn't there. So, do you believe in the flying teacup? Lastly, I said that it is nearly impossible to prove that a god doesn't exist. While that is true, there is still proof that an intelligent designer doesn't exist. I am basically arguing with evolution here, but certain parts. If someone had designed the earth and all life on it, then they did a poor job. They left vestigial parts all over the place (even in the human body), let wars, famine, genocide, rape, and murder onto the face of the earth, and left a large mess of fossils that just so happen to look like a record of the history of life itself just lying around.

Wow. I love the argument that everything proves that god does exist. Anyway, amino acids randomly arranging in the right order isn't mathematically impossible. Improbable, yes, but not impossible. But in life, they don't randomly arrange in the right order. DNA being transcribed into RNA, then moving over to the ribosomes to be translated into the amino-acid sequence is what makes proteins. The fact is, amino acid arrangement is a planed, preset process that occurs because of the DNA. The moon is NOT the 'perfect distance from the sun' to to cause a total eclipse. The moon is larger than the sun, but because light bends, a small, yet bright ring of light escapes from behind and you can still see light coming from the sun hitting the earth. Also, it does happen on other planets. Namely, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, partial eclipses on Mars, and even larger ones on Pluto (if that even counts). Godless talked about the distance from the sun in comparison to the earth.

I agree, that was sexist of me. I promise you that I didn't mean it in that way. I was assuming everyone here knew what pornography was, and what people did with it, so I gave a basic, quick, and obviously flawed definition. The real definition is writings, pictures, films, etc, designed to stimulate sexual excitement, whether that be for male, female, or trans-gender. Thank you for pointing that out.

Explain your argument, please.

And Hitler not only began, but almost completed his Christian only, anti-homosexual, Polish, Soviet, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political and religious opponents campaign. The elimination of all things imperfect was his goal. We can point out people who've done bad things all day, whether their religious or not, but it doesn't make the belief in either side worse.

Wow, a lot of things to tackle here. Evolution doesn't create more than we use. We are only using a small percentage of our brain at one time. Also, if we stop using something, it doesn't go all the way away. Snakes still have what are called vestigial legs, or legs they don't use, in their bone structures. The human even has organs we don't use anymore (the appendix), teeth that were left over from our vegetarian diet (the wisdom teeth), and loads and loads of what is called "junk DNA". I'm sorry, but evolution does leave things behind. You mentioned life being started by a lightning strike. I'm not really familiar with this "lightning strike" hypothesis, by I can assure you that evolution states that life was started by a highly energetic chemical process that produced the first replicating molecule. I do agree, however, that lightning strikes causing life are VERY far fetched. However, your comment on scientists not creating life even though we've gone to the moon and back is false. Lastly, life did come from somewhere. It didn't come from other life, or an Intelligent Designer. Science has, can, and does prove that. Repeatedly.