Moonfire

Thank you everyone, I think I have a better understanding of Praying now. It is pretty much what I thought it was but I wanted to make sure. The most important thing is to pray but also to keep it personal and not sound like a broken record with words that really don't have meaning.

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I am a little lost, not to mention some what new to this. But if they where suppose to eat the forbidden fruit why where the banished from the Garden of Eden and cursed? I appologize in advance if this was already covered and I missed it. If so please quote or point me to where this was mentioned. It is late and I am getting tired so my concentration is a bit weak right now.

Yes. Also with that, please correct me if I am wrong. If I remember correctly, when I studied with Mormons briefly I think we said the Our Father Prayer? If I am remembering that right. If so then why is that prayer relevant? (((I really gave a basic and incomplete run down of Catholics and Jehovas Witnesses. There is much more to it then what I mentioned.))) (((Sabran. I remember as a child doing that "Catholic Cheer." I use to get a little confused so I would wait until I saw what everyone else was doing. I can't tell you how many times I started to fall asleep or how sore my knees where from kneeling on those poorly padded minature benches (can't remember what they are actually called,,lol.) )))

I can give you two examples. Well more or less. I was raised Catholic and they had prayers like the our father prayer, Hail Mary prayer, etc. They had different prayers for different saints and so on. Also they had the Rosary,etc. Edit: Also Catholics have chants and also believe in saying the same prayer over and over again, one after the other. I studied with Jehovahs Witnesses. They believe that the our father prayer was just an example, a template if you will, on how one should pray. Edit: Jehovahs Witnesses believe that saying prayers like the Catholics do is not right. It has no meaning. When you pray it has to be personal and not repetitive. Some believe you must be on your knees when you pray, other believe you can just pray anytime you want with out holding your hands together or getting on your knees, etc. Edit: Some people feel you need to pray out loud, others feel you can just pray to yourself. Some hold their arms up, some close there eyes and so on. Some start rolling around on the floor while praying or worshipping. These are only a couple of briefly summerized examples. I think this more or less sums it up. In non Christian beliefs you sometimes have rituals and the like you need to do to (talk, pray, communicate,) with/to what ever god/godess/spirit/power you worship or believe in. Edit: In Non Christian religions/spirituality, It depends on your beliefs and how you approach certain things. Of course then you have Magick and rituals that sometimes go along with that. There are to many variations to really get into and aren't relevant to Christian beliefs. So I wont go into that here.

I know this question may sound stupid to some, but after studing with several different religions, some of them have different approaches to praying. Is there a right way and a wrong way to pray? How do Mormons pray?

A couple of more questions. 1 - Does anyone feel that forgiveness, in general, is easier for men or for women? 2 - Where and how does one start to practice to, (-A-) Forgive themselves, (-B-) Forgive others? (oh, so there are no more mistakes My real name is Ron)

I didn't even notice that, lol

All I an say is WOW! I didn't think there where any people like Mary Foley left on the planet. Edit: I just noticed more stories at forgiveness.net as well. I think these are going to be worth reading.

One of the most difficult things I know of is forgiveness. I would like to hear everyones thoughts on this. How do people view forgiveness, on a human level. How do we forgive someone if what they did was unforgivable,(I know, that is a contradiction but I hope you know what I mean.) How ever much somone has changed, or how sorry they are for what ever they did, does it really matter? Can we as humans really forgive someone and except them in general? Also, I guess another question that can go along with all of this is that can people really change in the first place and regret what they did, no matter how severe their actions where against a person (or people.) If yes then how would someone forgive that person. Forgiveness is not that easy. I know my views and thoughts on this. I would like to hear from others on the above. One thing I am lost on however. How does a person forgive themselves? Edit: I forgot to add this. Personal opinions and thoughts are welcome but I would really like to hear responses based on scriptures and spiritual beliefs as well.

Has anyone told this to some of the politicians in my country? (The USA)

Also I should add this as well. It really isn't a problem being refered to as a she, well be accident anyways, lol. One thing about forums in general is that you never know who you are talking to.

B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) B) Ok, I feel like a man again.

hee hee hee! Yaaa.. I re-read my post to make sure I didn't put you as a girl! LOL! I am SAFE! Well when I first joined this forum I had, and still have, a lot of questions. But I didn't have any gender issues until now, LOL. Not a problem. I will just have to type more like a man....... How do I do this? Should this be a seperate post? Hmmm, time to do another google search B)

Uhm, I think I need to put Mr. in front of moonfire

My turn to make some comments on the comments others made of the comments that where made with my original thoughts and comments. Phew.... I understand what you mean. But let me mention this. When I said I was not going to base things on human understand or logic alone, I should also add this. For most of my life I have studied and/or have been a part of many different relgions. From various Christian religions to various "pagan" beliefs and religions, including Satanism (Theistic and Symbolic,) as well as Atheism. Through all of these I noticed a few things. One of the things I noticed is that you always have three types of people. (These groups are in no special order) Group 1 - Blindly believe anything and everything (I don't mean this in a "faith" sort of way but in a way that goes to the unthinking extreme.) Group 2 - Always looking to find human ways and use human logic to to reinforce their beliefs. (I hope I explained that right.) Group 3 - Looking for human ways and using human logic to dispell what they believe, whether they directly know/realize they are doing it or not. So for me.... I like to know and understand. I have a major curiousty in knowing and learning, at my own pace though, lol. At one time, when I studied years ago with Mormons, I did ask if the Book of Mormon was the truth. I thought I didn't get an answer. In reality I think the answer has taken years for me to get or at least start to get. I am going by a gut instinct right now. Yes, I know that is very "illogical" and "un-scientific." I don't care anymore. I am just tired of picking apart every little thing to prove or disprove something. I know there is a God. He has been with me even when I denied him in the worst ways possible. I know Jesus is the son of God. I also know that God would not just leave us here and take a vacation, or whatever, lol. The bible itself has never made any sense to me. I tried to force it to make sense but I have always seen the human influence with the writing in plain view. Then add the problems with translating from one language to another. It just felt wrong, though I was never able to understand what I was feeling. I have also seen the bible as a "work in progress," so to speak. God seems to have always given humans what we could understand and what we needed at various times. He also seems to be teaching us to progress from what we where several thousand years ago to what we are now and what we will become. And we, humankind, are a stubborn and sometimes idiotic people, so it is not something that can just happen over night. I am glad God is patient, lol. Over the years I have learned that, as much as we try, Humans cannot do things alone. No matter what we do we eventually screw it up and many times we make things even worse. If anyone here would like to challange that statement, I welcome the challange. So some questions I ask here will have no impact on what I believe or don't believe. What has more of an impact on me is seeing how people who say they are Christian actually treat one another and others that are not of their "faith."

Thanks. I did quick google search and I found it. You where right about the url, http://www.ldsaudio.com/

I seem to be doing more then I can handle, lol. Give me a second to respond to this. Does anyone know if I am coming or going? Edit: Ok. What I mean is with Evolution. Lets say that God created the world. Each "day" is a time period. With each "time period" it is not known how long each one was. So, going with that, on the seventh day?, God created man in his image. Could it be at that point, after thousand or millions of years of creating earth, that then the spiritual beings became human, after our spiritual pre-existence, maybe that was the last stage of our human evolution? I am not sure at all if I am understanding this or if I am even explaining this correctly. Even though I briefly studied with Mormons before, it was not for that long. Life pushed its way in and I stopped studying (twice actually.) So I didn't learn much and what I did learn I forgot much of it. I remember bits and pieces.

Does anyone know if there are websties that have digital downloads of audio books or software that is Mormon based? (hmmm.... Mormon based..... I hope you know what I mean by that, lol) I am not looking for anything specific. I just want to "browse." I have already downloaded a lot of the free audio from lds.org, including the Book of Mormon (which I am listening to as I type this ) Like I said I am looking for digital downloads, whether they are free or paid. Thanks.

Not at all. Logic is good, but I think if we focus only on that we will miss the more important things about God. A balance of Human Logic and..... I guess you could call it Spritual Logic? So a balance of Human Logic and Spiritual Logic. I am not sure if Spiritual logic is the correct wording I am looking for, but I think it is close to what I mean. I strongly believe that we will be unable to understand everything. What amazes me is this. I briefly looked into Particle Physics (I am not even close to undestanding it.) But we are all made up of energy. The same material (sub atomic particles, quarks, etc,) make up everything. A desk, computer, human, dog, etc. The further we break down an atom we see that it is more energy then matter. When we look at a wall we are not seeing the wall. We are seeing photons bouncing off of the wall. Photons alone are amazing. The wall is getting bombed by many photons but we only see a limited number, thus we see the wall, or picture or whatever we are looking at. This is very cool. (and again I am explaining this in my own limited way, I won't pretend I know a lot about this area.) The reason I mentioned the above is that we have so many mysteries in this universe it is great. We have learned a lot, and through logic we have understood a lot. But logic alone is not the answer for me. Human science is in its infancy. Our logic is tainted by our personal beliefs, so in reality many times our logic is not 100% pure. I hope I explained that right, I am busy with a few things and I am more or less typing this fast. I look forward to more discussions at this forum. If anyone sees that I explained something wrong, just tell me. I don't get offended that easily and I have no problem admiting when I am wrong.

This is a great forum. I love the way everyone discusses things, does not judge and explains things in an informative and detailed way. This is a nice change compared to the insanity of todays world. I am seriously thinking about a home study of some sort soon. So far I have seen that Mormons are definitley Christians, but also intellegent and thinking Christians that don't just follow the herd blindly. Again this is a nice change compared to other things in this world. I have a question that is more or less a part of this conversation. If I understand this correctly, we all pre-existed, correct? If so then how does that fit into all that we are talking about here? If this was already covered here and I missed it I apologize. My attention right now is split between a few things.

There is something I use to do. I have studied briefly with Mormons. I have also studied MANY other religions. I use to pick them part and I tried using human logic alone to explain godly things. I recently realized that I was trying to use human logic so much that I was missing all the important things about God. I won't do that anymore, well I will try and not do that. I still have a hard time in that area. I have to think about things and investigate. It is part of my nature, human nature I guess, to do so but not in an obsessive way. But that is just me and this would make another good post some time.

That is an excellent article. And what amazes me is the time it was written. There is so much we don't know that it out shadows what we do know. But I will still say, no matter the scientific methods involved, nothing is 100%. We know a lot but it is only a piece of a much larger puzzle that we as humans will never completely understand no matter how close we get.

So what your saying is that science is perfect and infallible? Science never makes mistakes? So the medicines they had on the market for certain diseases and health problems, they are all good because science says so. Then can you explain to me why some of those medicines where taken off of the shelves because they caused bad reactions and in some cases death? Is science really that perfect? And...... I believe in intellegent design myself, until I am proven wrong. I tried at one point to put my faith in human understanding alone. While we know a lot, we don't know everything, especially in the area of medicine. It is our human arrogance that makes us pretend we do know everything. I find it hard to believe that evolution, without the guiding hand of a supreme being, could have just happened. I believe in evolution to a certain degree, but like I said I don't think all of this could have just popped up out of no where.