NeuroTypical

And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." This account was so important, it's included each of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It doesn't make things as clear as we might hope, Trinitarians can still talk about a single God being present in different forms at the same time, etc. But it's most certainly there - Jesus was sitting there wet, and a voice that was not His came down from the heavens, where he wasn't, specifically calling Him "Son". It doesn't make any sense to me, to believe God was pleased with Himself. If my arm does something my brain wants it to, I may be pleased, but I'm not exactly happy for my arm and pleased with it... As for your opening question, I find so much in scripture supporting both positions, that whenever a believer comes to me with supposed contradictions in the BoM, I really don't need to do anything besides point to the fact that we're both in the same boat, and if one of us sinks, the other does too.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "bust". Could you clarify please? Are you saying anyone who gets a divorce won't make it to heaven?

No problem jinc, I've posted it here.

Honestly, the world is so full of people peddling salvation and God, that the only way I had to finally determine which one (if any) was right, was to receive clear, direct revelation from God on His thoughts about the whole thing. Without that testimony, I wouldn't be a mormon, or probably anything else either.

"Curfew violation - deactivating Citizen." Oh man! Love it. This one looks like the Chinese decide to seize our country in repayment for debt. I'll have to Netflix it when it comes out. Welcome to the forums, threadkiller. I've been a connoisseur of end times/apocolypse/meltdown fiction for a long time. We have a few preparadness-minded folks on the forum, including me lol. There's some LDS-themed Armageddon fiction books out there by a guy named Chris Stewart - The Great and Terrible series. Totally worth it, despite it's questionable doctrinal value . Welcome!

Halloween. As I tell the people with dropped jaws, "It's not that I let it out on Halloween, it's that the rest of the year, I gotta hold it back."

Things are getting better: Evangelical visits to BYU signal a new evangelical-Mormon detente

So, human fallible folks wrote stuff down, as best they could, given their human fallible condition. Later, another fallible human abridged the other fallible human writings. A long time after that, another fallible human dug up the writings, and, through the power of God, translated it into English. Here's how the translation worked: * God put thoughts or words into the mind of Joseph. * Joseph tried to move the thoughts out of his mouth as best he could. (Did he ever make any mistakes? Probably.) * Scribes tried to hear the words as best they could, and tried to write them down as best they could. (Did he ever make any mistakes? We're sure of it - we can point to some of them in the extant original documents.) * Later, someone else took the original manuscripts and copied them into a printer's manuscript. (Mistakes crept in here too, as well as attempts to correct earlier mistakes.) * The printer took the printer's manuscript, and used it to set type, and start printing. (Mistakes and corrections here too - if you take the first book from the first printing, and the last book from the first printing, you can spot differences.) * The imperfect and error-prone typesetting process continued every time they ran a new print run. * We humans added chapter and verse numbering later. If people are going to get all conversational about a certain change between the first edition and the current online stuff, they might as well start the conversation at step one, with the original fallible, error-prone, human author.

Totally agree.

We can only speculate. We don't know.

I believe I am literally what the Bible says I am - a child of God, joint heir with Christ, who inherited all the Father hath. I am of the same species as my Father in Heaven. Yes, this sort of thinking sets us apart from most of mainstream Christianity. But I don't think in terms of "rule my own planet" - that's a phrase our critics came up with. (Critics also came up with "eternal sex with endless wives who are eternally pregnant". I've never heard a mormon think in such terms.) The only thing I believe about a Mother in Heaven, is that it makes sense to believe I have one. I'm not a created being, I'm a child of God. Children have parents.

There are few people on this site who would argue with this point. But there are millions of people elsewhere who would indeed be very happy to argue the point all day.We're light on Atheists on this site, but I've argued with enough of them to be able to channel their response: The supernatural claims of both the Bible and the BoM have pretty much exactly the same weight of evidence behind them. It's silly to believe that because we can point to Jerusalem on a map, but not Zarahemla, that you should believe Joseph Smith less than anyone else trying to explain God.

When my wife was in high school, she was close to some guys who respected her and were protective of her. They were extolling the virtues of hooters, saying the place had been unjustly maligned. She said "Sounds like a great place - I think I'll go apply there." You never saw such light-speed backpedalling. It's a good question to ask defenders of the place: Would want your wife/daughter/close friend/Young Women's advisor to work there? If you don't care, then congratulations, you're being consistent. If you find yourself caring very much, then there may be cause for some further reflection on the matter.

Ugh. What a nasty, horrible, incorrect bit of false doctrine that was. It's still held out today by our critics to prove we're a church full of blind brainwashed fools who unthinkingly go wherever we're pointed.The full quote is even worse: What nonsense. It's an embarrassment this thing ever saw print, even if it was only in a "Ward Teacher's Message". When this came out, it caused much concern among many inside and outside of the Church. Dr. J. Raymond Cope of the First Unitarian Society in Salt Lake City, sent a letter to President George Albert Smith in November of that year. The letter was cordial, expressing concerns that the article was "doing inestimable harm to many who have no other reason to question the integrity of the Church leaders... this cannot be the position of the true leaders." President Smith's letter back (bolding mine):

Hi Carolear,Your story sounds quite tragic. But I'm not exactly sure what you're reaching out for. Sympathy? You have mine. A safe place to vent? Well, this forum isn't really a good place to talk about how the church isn't true. A friend? You might find one here. What can we do for ya?

Hi and welcome lurchk

It's not a Mormon phenomenon, It's a human one. And it's not all mormons, just some mormons. Folks raised athiest, or to be scientifically minded, are just as prone to this fear as anyone. Anytime any of us close our ears to "the other side" because they're so obviously wrong, we do ourselves a disservice.

Hi Feta, Here's a website you may find interesting: Mormon Scholars Testify Lots of higher-degreed folks have managed to gain and keep a testimony. Take a look by specialty, there are more than a few science/math/engineering folks. I'm not an egghead at all, but you may find some of their stories interesting and relevant. It doesn't really rise to the level of controlled experiment, but my story comes fairly close. I've written about it here. Oh absolutely. Everyone has a bias, and anyone claiming otherwise is either blind to it, or trying to sell it to you. Oh, I certainly believe that! I started with them and FARMS a decade ago, searching out criticisms of my faith and seeing what the answers were, and if I believed the answers or not. Then I moved on to interacting with critics on message boards, and here I am.It's interesting how we could encounter the same stuff, and have such a different reaction to it, don't you think? Here you are, teetering on the brink of athiesm after just brief introductions to certain topics, whereas I have resolved just about every single bit of outlandish history and criticism that anyone has to offer. A testimony, and a genuine impactful spiritual experience seems to make quite a difference. I wish you well.

It's important to know what you believe, and why you believe it. A lot of mormons (and people in general), well, just don't. I don't understand this one. Nobody ever told me to avoid it at all. In fact, when I was Execuitive Secretary for my Bishop, I was also attending the "are Mormons Christian" class at our local mega-church. The Bishopric was very interested to hear what was being taught there, and I gave updates as part of Bishopric meeting.When we're kids, the influences in our lives (parents, church leaders, teachers, etc) all try to mold and shape us to become what they want us to become. But when we are all grown up, we make our own decisions about things. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. In a science class textbook, there was a painting of Galileo trying to get the Pope to look through the telescope. The pope and his consorts were drawing back, their hands up in shock, as if defending themselves from an assault by demonic forces. Well, they figured they knew what they believed, but they didn't know why, and such things were a threat to their world. Critics think they've got telescopes, but after I looked through them, most of them seemed more like kaleidoscopes or funhouse mirrors.

You've taken a really interesting path here, Feta. Consider an analogy: If we were a chess club, you are a member of the club who is reevaluating membership. We suggested some books on the history and nobility of the game. Instead, you went and read some books by chess critics. One written by someone who believes checkers is a superior game, one who believes that board games in general are stupid. The books you read highlight, magnify, and in some cases just plain make up stuff about the game of chess and it's history. They cherry-pick sources, evidence, and history, pushing the best to the back, bringing the worst into the foreground, and sometimes distorting both out of shape. If you are ever interested in why people actually like chess, our book suggestions stand. Setting aside the analogy and coming back to reality, books are of secondary importance to one's personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I'm guessing from your comments about atheism, that you either never had one, or thought you did but realized you didn't. So, wherever your path takes you, I would suggest that you at least give the gospel a try, and seek to resolve your doubt about whether there actually is a God or not. I wish you the best of luck.

Hi Feta, Did you read any of the books we suggested?

Heh - actually, Orson Pratt's publication "The Seer", was repudiated by formal action of the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles of the Church. Elder Pratt himself sanctioned the repudiation. The Deseret News 8/23/1865 published an article signed by the First Presidency and Twelve, saying the Seer and some of Elder Pratt's other writings were inaccurate.

I love to gather stories of extreme reactions to Halloween. There was a mormon guy a few years back who would plaster his door and windows with a sermon/rant against the holiday. The Baptists in the south who throw haunted houses as a way of learning about the dangers of hell and abortion are a hoot. This year, my evangelical Facebook buddy went on a rant about how Halloween isn't Christian, and how he was going to do a Harvest festival instead. Then my witch/pagan buddy gave him the lowdown on the utterly pagan roots of the Harvest festival, letting him know that pretty much the only thing that would be more closely related to paganism would be a full-fledged fertility dance. Good times!

Try Jesus the Christ by James Talmage. If you want something that causes controversy in LDS circles, you can also try The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball. Some LDS love it, some dislike it intensely.

I can't speak for "some members", but I think it may be the case because we're having a real hard time finding any biological offspring. Nookie made babies back in those days. Joseph made babies with Emma, but we don't really have much in the way of evidence for offspring with the other wives. I suppose such a notion may also help ease our minds when we hear about Joseph getting sealed to other men's wives, or getting sealed to them as young as 14, but it's hardly like we're grasping at straws to hold our shaky testimonies together in the face of overwhelming evidence of [insert horrible thing here]... Again, I can't speak for "some members", just myself. For me, it's not about acceptable and unacceptable, it's about offspring. Brigham's children (more than fifty of them) are well documented and findable. Out of the list of nine potential children from Joseph's sealings, five of them have been proven via DNA testing to not have Joseph as the father, and the rest remain unconfirmed. I'm thinking here, that the issue isn't so much a mormon's bizarre and strange demanding that BY had sex and JS didn't. Instead, the issue is why so many folks (most of them critical to the faith to one extent or another) won't admit the plausibility. Maureen, you tell me: With the evidence supporting the notion that something is going on, why are some critics so unwilling to consider the possibility that Joseph's sealings didn't involve sex? I mean, it doesn't really mean much to me one way or the other. If I find out tomorrow that the last four possible offspring from Joseph and someone other than Emma are from Joseph, ok - that's fine with me. The potential mothers were sealed to Joseph in their 20's, there's hardly any scandal there. Why is it such a big deal to you that they might not be his?