Misshalfway

O....kay. I understand. :) Relief! You were scaring me there for a minute. Could we talk more about what you see as spiritual evidence then? From your point of view?

Sorry?

Really? 0% eh? no evidence what so ever? There is not one shred of evidence that compels you to continue these conversations. Whatever......

I don't think you really believe this! Sorry bud. But I am calling your bluff on this. Gravity, water is wet, fire burns, stubbing your little baby toe on the furniture hurts like ****! Give me a break! If you couldn't know something for sure then you wouldn't hang onto science like you do.

Yes. I think I know that about you. I believe that you are sincere in your desire for truth. I just see that you limit yourself from finding it because you have decided that there is only one reliable method. I agree with you. But I also agree with me! :) People do in fact get fixated on a set of truths and sometimes that can be a stumbling block. Yes science is objective. It is also amoral. In that lies a big limitation of science. IMO, science has a vital and irreplaceable place. But in my estimation, it can only measure certain kinds of information. In that way, it is limited. And the reliability of the scientific method can't change the imperfection of the humans who use it. Human's will try to know it all. And try to fit all knowledge and detection of that knowledge into a box. It comes from our deepest desires to know things. But we mistake, when we believe that this is the ONLY way to find or measure truth. In the end, when all is revealed there will be no conflict between science and religion.

And the last battle took place near this location, did it not.

This is not a big thing, but it made me stop and wonder. In Alma it refers to cities being created with large heaps of earth around the city and then timbers around the top and mote on the inside. In Ohio are the ruins of the Mound builders Indians. They put giant mounds of earth around their cities. They now have golf courses running thru the mounds. They also used the mounds to connect the different cities. One mound builder site actually had a mote on the inside of the mounds. Sounds like BofM stuff to me.

The Great Apostasy was a process of events that happened over time....lots of moving parts. Many of the gospel truths were kept. Some of them were lost. Some evolved or were eroded over time. Some were preserved. The NT and Christianity itself is evidence that some truth did survive. We believe that certain essential elements were lost. If you look at the history in the OT, you will see that mans obedience and compliance with God's commandments is an almost cyclical thing. There have been multiple, large scale apostasies. And there were many who were without the truth for long periods of time because of their own choices or because of the wickedness of the people. Again, everyone will have a fair opportunity to hear the truth in its purity, whether in this life or the next. God does allow agency, but is merciful and makes all things available to all of his children. This makes the final judgement day an absolutely fair proceeding. No one can say, ' I didn't get the gospel! No fair!"

I believe Isaiah is talking about other gods that are created by the imaginations of man. God the Father is the ONLY God we should worship, pray to, and obey. We do so thru the mediator Jesus Christ and God communicates and sanctifies us thru his Holy Spirit. They are ONE god, three separate beings with one singular purpose but different roles inside that purpose -- all working together to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. When you read mormon ideas, I think it would be helpful to understand that many of our leaders and scholars asked a lot of questions to God. Some he gave answers -- personal answers -- that can only be understood in context. They are not canonized. They are not revelations that were necessarily meant to being given from the pulpit, if you get what i mean. We do refer to other "God the Fathers" but only in that area of speculation as it may relate to a discussion about progression. It is deeper doctrine and not important to salvation. So, if you can, try not to get hung up on that. It really isn't important, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you don't understand more basic stuff. That goes with the idea of a Heavenly Mother as well. We do not pray to her or receive commandments from her. We have one or two references to her in revelation, but that is all. Make sense? The LDS church is not ancient Greece. Do we believe in more than one God? Yes. We believe in the Godhead. 3 in 1. We believe that we can progress and become like God, but ONLY thru Christ and the atonement. We are lost and damned without it. We sometimes call that becoming a god too. But that is only in the sense that we become like Him with his help. He will always be our Almighty Father and the Savior will always be our Christ. It is progression......just like a child grows into an adult and becomes independent, we will grow and develop into our spiritual adulthood IF we follow the plan of salvation as outlined. Obedience is the key to all of it. God is god because he obeys eternal law perfectly. That is why their is no sin in him. He is incapable of being disobedient. If he were to be disobedient, he would cease to be God.

Hey Ram. Just wanted to say I was touched by your post. Especially when you received unexpected testimony. The same has happened to me as well.

BTW, are you an expert on airplanes? Have you tested the planes yourself? How do you know this particular one is safe? Did you inspect it? Measure fuel levels? Check all the systems? Ask every passenger if they are a terrorist? Interview each employee of the airlines? Test all the food for poison? Interview the president of the airline? Make sure of his credentials? I hope you don't have that much time on your hands. :) You trust the people who do say they know and that, my friend, IS very much faith. Is your faith blind? No. You do have a few facts to go on. But you will never KNOW for sure.

DS. You remind me of the brother in Field of Dreams. There will be a day when you see the baseball men too. :)

No. Please don't misunderstand me. Yes use your logic. I am not telling you to lean on feelings alone. No one here is. The proof is in the pudding. You gotta live it to know the truth of it. That is where your logic and reason really can serve you. But you gotta get a vision of where you wanna go and then determine how to get there. So, really DS. What do you really want? What need is there in you to even have these conversations? Boil it down. Do you want religious truth? If the answer is yes, then you have to move yourself to a different position. Otherwise you will hover around all of it and never land. I absolutely agree with you. There are a billion and one religions and science is one of them. So, maybe you could explain why it is you are focusing on the LDS church....or Christianity perhaps. I am making the assumption that you have determined, at least to some degree, that there might be something to it all. Perhaps it would be helpful for your own searchings if you could argue the other side. Why IS religion or specifically this religion something that makes sense to you? Yes feelings can easily mislead. Thus the Spirit. Look, if God is real and he does want to talk to an individual, don't you think it is logical that he would speak to them directly in a perfectly confidential and personal way? How else would something like that work without feelings AND logic AND perceptive ability? And please remember that the Spirit is NOT our feelings. Our feelings are a response to the Spirit. Yes, we are all fallible, dang it. God uses the weak things of the world. And that is ok. The messenger doesn't have to be perfect to deliver a perfect message. God does the converting. He does the changing of mind and knowledge. I pray and practice for the very same reason! I can observe what happens when a person feels the spirit or becomes clean from sin or changes into a more loving individual. I can see it with my own eyes and feel it with my own everyday senses. I have seen it in others and I have seen it in myself. It is not just touchy feely feelings and blindness to the rest. It is so very much more!! It is logical. It makes sense. And it feels really good. I am sad that after all of this discussion, that is what you still feel like we are saying to you.

I don't know how to measure religious experience on a global scale. I can't jump into the minds and hearts of others. All we really have in order to evaluate spiritual experience is personal accounts -- whether they come from a living prophet or scriptures or any of us here or someone who is driving a selfish agenda. We can use our logic and gut feelings to discern that truth, but without the spirit, we can't really know. I will be an educated guess at best. I personally point you to scripture and prayer and obedience because they are the places I find the spirit. I know that is where I have found truth. It is like inviting you to the party. I guess I am not sure about what kind of evidence you want. Testimony and scripture passages seem to be unsatisfactory for you. If it is truth you want as to whether or not there is a God, then the best place to find that knowledge are the scriptures and testimony and prayer. Science and scholars can talk all day long and try to measure all of it. But to what end? They can't give you the knowledge. They can do what they can do.....but in the end you will end up unsatisfied as well. DS. Believing is a choice. I have said it before. So is disbelieving. So is skepticism. Neither side is determined by 100% predictability. You can't prove that God never at anytime answers prayers. Some say prayer works. Some say it doesn't. Only you can decide for yourself. And you can't get the answer any other place than on you knees. You may want everything to fit nicely into a predictable and familiar way for you to discover the truth. If you want cake, you gotta follow the recipe for making cake. If you want really good cake, then you follow my recipe for cake! :) Little joke. The same is true for spiritual things. God made the rules. Man didn't. You can't tell God to do it your way and then wonder why he doesn't comply. With regards to faith. We all believer or non, use faith. We don't have 100% guarantee that the plane will function perfectly, but we get on the plane. You believe a certain way. And you exercise a lot of faith in your line of thinking. I hope that you can see that faith isn't as far away from you as you may think. I don't think it is that some of us don't have the ability for faith. I think it is where we put our faith that makes all the difference. Because even though I don't have a 100% guarantee, I can still fly!

So glad to have you with us. Looking forward to your perspectives! :)

On my mission, the President decided we all needed to lose weight. So he told us to go on the hotdog/icecream diet. Now, that is what I call promoting good health!! Perhaps it was one of those things that looked good at the time.....but something he may have done differently! :)

I am kinda....how shall I say.... obsessed with movies! Just love 'em. Can't get enough. We just watched this little French movie called My Best Friend. It is about a man who only thinks of himself. He has lots of contacts but no friends. Thru a chain of somewhat painful events, he learns the lessons of real friendship. It was charming. And I highly recommend it!

That is awesome skinnymama! I am glad you experienced such profound take-aways.

I think parenthood helps me, at least a little with this one. (For the sake of the analogy, lets pretend I am a perfect parent. Talk about a stretch! ) I don't always answer my kids. I don't always give them everything they want exactly when they want it. Sometimes, I let them sit for hours at the dinner table with homework or in the timeout corner while they try to figure stuff out. I give them what the need when they need it. I don't explain myself to them every time. I tell them to trust me, or do it because I said so. I don't take any lip. And I don't compromise just because they don't see what I see. They can't see around the corners that I can. They do trust me. They sometimes have little tantrums when they don't get what they want. But I don't compromise when they do. I listen to them and give them gifts. But most of all....They must learn!!!! Capeesh???

Just for fun...... (if this is repetition ya'll will forgive me, right?) 2 Nephi 2 11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. 12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. 13 And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away. 14 And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon. 15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. 16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

Hmmm....... I am gonna tease you here a little, DS. Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

Falling down laughing on the floor!!!!:lol:

So just humor me cuz I am tired and my back hurts sitting here in this stupid chair. :) Let's say that their is no God. How do we all just know what is good and what isn't? I know that there is lots of gray in the middle ground. But most of us agree on the extremes. How do we just know that rape is wrong and feeding the homeless is right? How do we know that steeling the gum from the Walmart is wrong? Not all of us have been taught. And some of us have been taught too much. But our insides somehow know. Is that a process of evolution too? Why is it that when we meet people we can sense goodness or evil? Altruistic behavior doesn't exactly feel like survival of the fittest. How is the process we have all outlined for you NOT logical, reasonable, and repeatable? And Yes, people do allow feelings and preference to decide on truth. Just because 30 million people believe in an idea, that alone doesn't make it true. I see that.

OH totally! I can't help myself. Whenever I see him I have to laugh! So, wish I could quote him right now!

Loved Waterhorse. Kids ate it right up. Watched Juno and saw some real charm in it. Loved the writing style but it was kinda crude. As far as teaching girls? It did have a prolife message, it didn't IMO make it seem like everything turned out fine, and completely failed at teaching any sort of sexual responsibility other than contraception. Beyond that, I so wanted to like Jason Bateman. But, he ended up being a poop! Bummer! I am Legend -- took me two days to get over it. Disturbing!! And I hated the film makers after they killed Samantha, the perfect dog!!! We also watched Dan in Real Life -- Loved it. Dear Frankie -- Loved it even more!!!