DigitalShadow

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Everything posted by DigitalShadow

  1. Of course I have emotions, maybe not to the same degree as most people, but logically I can attribute them to the chemicals being released in my brain as programmed response to certain stimulus. Logic doesn't apply to every aspect of my life, but it does apply to all things in my brain accepted as "probably true."
  2. Just so you know, I would best be described as agnostic, so saying the church is like all others does not really help my belief in it. Also, I do attend church with my wife and I've seen the good the church does which is why I'm even investigating in the first place. I love my wife more than anything and would do anything for her. I will follow the moral teachings of the church and even give up things like alcohol (not that I was a big drinker in the first place) because it makes her happy. The only problem is that I will not lie and say that I believe when I simply don't have faith. My wife knows this and hopes I come around eventually but wouldn't want to force her beliefs on me any more than I want to force my lack of belief on her.
  3. You distrust science because of its uncertainty but you trust "spiritual knowledge" despite its uncertainty (why do so many different people have different spiritual knowledge revealed to them as the truth?). I have not experienced spiritual knowledge so scientific knowledge is all I have to go on for now. By the way... I am reading the Book of Mormon (yes, it's kind of slow going) with my wife which led to me asking her questions which she admitted to not knowing the answers to which led me to the bishop who didn't really get what I was asking which led me to here.
  4. Going back as far as I remember, I can't remember thinking any other way. I was a very odd child as you can imagine.
  5. If there were indeed that much scientific evidence, I would gladly accept the Jesus-God theory. But as to whether I'd have faith in it, you're right, I still wouldn't. I don't see the benefit in closing your mind to other theories through faith. If it's true, you shouldn't need to close your mind to other ideas. Faith has always seemed like a convenient catch-all for religion to me. As much as I explored it so far, I haven't found anything more to it. It works for some people and that's great, but I haven't been able to get it to work for me. I've tried to look "inward" but when I do, all I find is more layers of logical thinking. I figure that if God wanted to communicate something to me, with Him being omnipotent and all, He wouldn't have any trouble getting the message across.
  6. I know that the BoM is much more than a historical account, but that doesn't change the fact that it also claims to be a historical count. My question was whether it would change your faith if the historical aspect of it was shown to be false and how much it would take for that to happen for you. I am married and I do not have kids. I know that my wife loves me, but that is not to say I know that with unquestioned certainty in the face of evidence to the contrary. For instance if I were to catch my wife cheating on me, I would understandably question her love for me and possibly rethink that assumption. I was just wondering if there is a similar breaking point for religious faith and what it might be.
  7. Just to clarify to everyone, in my original post I did not claim that I have personally found evidence AGAINST the BoM, I simply stated that I haven't personally found any evidence FOR the BoM. There is a big difference. Also note that the questions are entirely hypothetical so please don't draw any conclusions on my opinion from them. They merely represent my thoughts lately about the strength and reasons for faith.
  8. I was not saying that there exists evidence AGAINST the BoM, I was simply saying that I haven't found any emperical evidence FOR the BoM. In the hypothetical question I was asking IF there were overwhemling scientific evidence specifically against the BoM (there is not, hence the hypothetical part) if it would change your views. Interesting, but you did not answer my question. To answer your reversal of my question, I wouldn't be shocked, I would simply say, thank you God, there is the evidence I've been looking for to believe in something. So how would you react to my original question? My true intentions of being on this forum are nothing more or less than I have stated before, to seek the truth.
  9. Yes, you are wrong. Maybe you only skimmed my posts or heard what you wanted to hear from them but I have only ever been in search of the truth. Failing to see evidence is not the same as unquestioning certainty that something is false. And how does God talk to you if I might ask? Feelings? Voices in your head? How are those distinguishable from all the other people who God tells conflicting things to? Those people "just know" it is for real, yet some of them obviously have to be wrong. I've only ever claimed that I haven't seen or felt evidence for God and that I'll remain skeptical until I receive ANY kind of evidence to base my faith on. Without that it would simply be blind faith.
  10. I've been thinking about this recently after reading some posts on this forum and other forums I frequent, so I figured I would discuss it here. Feel free not to answer if this topic makes you uncomfortable or you are offended by it. I'll start off by saying that I like to think that I've got an open mind. I'm not a member, but I'm not from another religion either. I have no vested interest in the BoM being true or false. I've been investigating the historical aspects of BoM lately at the urging of my wife and neighbors. I've looked at both sides and read a great deal of arguments and from my perspective the stories in the BoM are completely unsubstantiated by genetic and archeological data. This is not to say it proves they didn't happen, just that I (personally)haven't found any convincing evidence that they did happen. That is beside the point though, it is only what inspired the question. I don't want to discuss evidence, lack of evidence, or counter evidence, there are plenty of other threads for that. What I do want to discuss here is the question of "how deep do you believe?" Is there anything that could convince you that the BoM is not true? If so, what? If not, why? I'll give a couple hypothetical examples to elaborate on the question. If there were convincing scientific evidence (convincing to you, whatever that may take) that the BoM did not happen, would it change any of your beliefs? If a machine were invented that allowed you to view events that happened thousands of years ago and you found out there was no trace of the Nephites or Lamanites in the Americas, would that change any of your beliefs? Why or why not? At what point does faith simply not cut it for you in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Many people I've encountered say that they have faith and that nothing could sway them from it. Perhaps I just don't understand because I can't fathom believing anything with unquestioning certainty, but I would really like to hear the opinions of people here.
  11. The pleasure was all mine. I think we've sufficiently derailed this thread for today too.
  12. I've seen too many people that claim God has made himself known unto them and given them messages, completely different and conflicting messages even. So if I had a spiritual experience where I "felt" God, I would take it as evidence, not proof. Feelings are unreliable and easily influenced. I find it more likely that my desire for God to make himself known unto me lead my unconscious mind to simulate that experience. So yes, I would need a bit more to go on.
  13. It's not hard for me to believe in God, and it's not easy either. Accepting a concept doesn't have a difficulty associated with them for me, I simply accept whatever I've seen the most evidence for. I think that even if I did find massive amounts spiritual evidence for God I would just take the existance of God as my currently accepted theory, I could never take God as an unquestionable concept for the same reason I don't take evolution as an unquestionable concept.
  14. And that is what I tend to think as well when people say their truth is the only true and living church, but then again some people are more easily offended. I think prisonchaplain nailed the issue though.
  15. I believe you stated it better than I could. :)
  16. Your analogy only about the salt only shows that that you now associate the salty taste with the object salt, there is no theory to be proven or disproven there. Inferring from a feeling that God exists and is the one sending you that feeling is somewhat different from correlating salt with a taste. When I say that the existance of God can't be proven, I mean it in the same way that evolution can't be proven, they are both simply theories. You can find mounds of emperical evidence for the theory of evolution and mounds of "spiritual" evidence for the existance of God, but that doesn't make either of them anything more than theories in my mind.
  17. Let me just say that I am not in the least offended by how the church presents itself, but I can see how someone might be. Stating that your church is the only true church is like saying that vanilla is the only flavor of ice cream worth eating. It's a matter of opinion that is being stated as a fact and that is inherently arrogant and offensive to some people people. I don't think those people are offended that you believe your church is the only true church, they just take issue with how it is stated. Would you be offended and/or think I'm arrogant if I stated that evolution is the only explaination for human life?
  18. By definition, religion can not be proven or disproven as it must be taken on faith. Also, science doesn't seek to prove or disprove anything, only improve our understanding of the world around us with theories based on experiment and results. I have to say that anyone trying to disprove religion with science doesn't seem to understand either of the two words.
  19. I've read through the posts in this thread and it appears we share a similar philosophy on religion and faith. I consider myself agnostic as well and came to this board for similar reasons. This thread is actually quite similar to one I made not to long ago that you may want to look at: I want to believe I can't say I've been converted by conversations here, but I will say that I've learned a lot and I think this is a good place to investigate the questions of faith and religion you've brought up. The people here have been accepting of different points of view and questions on religion in general as long as it remains civil. I'm probably not the person you want to talk to if you want to acquire faith and fit in with your family, but I do enjoy good philosophical discussions.
  20. Yes evolution is a theory, but then again everything in science is a theory and that is the beauty of it. Nothing in science is absolute fact and nothing claims to be either. We talk about the "law" of gravity and the "laws" of physics because they are observed rules that help with the world around us not because they were once "theories" and then promoted to "laws" because we are so certain of them. A scientific law attempts to describe an observation in nature while a scientific theory attempts to explain it. Why do I point this out? Because I've heard many people say that evolution is just a "theory" and that they won't buy into it until it is a "law" like gravity. They don't realize that it will only ever be a theory, just as every other mechanism discovered by science. Waiting for a theory to become a law is like waiting for an apple to become an orange. I'm not saying that evolution is the only explaination or even that you should "believe" it, I'm just making sure no one is discounting evolution simply because it is referred to as a "theory". Edit: With that said, there is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence for evolution and I don't know of any biologists that doubt it is possible for evolution to produce a new species.
  21. I haven't heard that, but it sounds like a sensationalist news story prompted by a journalist looking for a headline and having little or no understanding of the subject (those seem to run rampant). I'm fairly certain we are most genetically similar to chimpanzees as they are our closest relatives.
  22. I would like to clarify a few points in the theory of evolution. Since you say you would like to know, I will explain to the best of my ability. Keep in mind that I am a software developer with a background in science, not a biologist so I have limited knowledge on the subject. Yes, species are still evolving and we can observe that in organisms with very short life span, like bacteria. That is why you are instructed to keep taking antibiotics even after you're feeling better or you might create a strain of bacteria resistant to that antibiotic. So why are species still here if they "evolved"? Because there is still a niche for them to fill. When a segment of the population gets seperated and starts adapting to fill a new niche, that doesn't mean all of the population needs to follow, this is how species branch off over time. We didn't evolve FROM the apes that we know today, we simply share a common ancestor that not longer exists. This can be verified by examining the DNA that we share, including various pieces of "junk DNA" left behind by viruses (ERVs) millions of years ago that only gets passed from parent to child. Many consider this the strongest evidence of evolution as you can track where species branched off from one another very accurately through the ERVs they share in their DNA. I hope that helps.
  23. That is exactly my point. Presumably God set up the rules, why require everyone to come to him on faith rather than just appear to everyone or leave some kind of emperical evidence of his existance? Wouldn't you want your children to know you exist?
  24. You are a very insightful individual. On more than one occasion you have caused me to think about things in a way I had not before considered. I still tend to disagree in most cases, but if there is hope for me accepting the Gospel in this lifetime it is because of people like you. I apologize in advance for the following rant, it sounds harsh but is only expressing my internal struggle and I truly want to know your opinion on it. I've heard the analogy many times that God is watching us like a parent would watch over their child. It's a powerful analogy evoking loving feelings and intentions from our creator, however I can't help but think that it's a flawed analogy. What parent would deny their children even the slightest evidence of their own existance? If God is omnipotent he could easily appear to each of us or simply give us all the evidence we need to conclude he exists (as individuals it's different for each of us). What parent would remain silent while their children kill each other? I get that we all have free agency, but I just find it hard to believe that God would not intervene in any way to save thousands of his children from painful deaths, but He would go out of his way to intervene and reward those who have paid their tithing. Thinking of it that way makes God sound nothing short of sadistic, so I find it prefereable to think that He does not interfere at all in our affairs (which has also been supported by my personal observations).
  25. Spiritual peace I respect and can understand that as being a reward for tithing, but do you think that God looks at all those who gave tithing and carefully manipulates the physical world to sometimes give them special perks as a result? I've gotten very similar perks as you while being blatantly disobedient by your standards. You can say its for different reasons, maybe He recognizes that I'm a good person despite my lack of faith, but if there is an omnipotent God out there interfering with the physical world to reward the faithful, wouldn't He then withhold those rewards from the non faithful and disobedient if that were truly the criterea He is rewarding? Don't get me wrong, I think paying tithing is a wonderful thing for those who do, but the attitude some people get essentially equating it to "buying" physical blessings somewhat puts me off. I know that is not the intent so I don't fault the church for this, but the way people see it still fascinates me.