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What Happens When You Die?
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Lauren
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May 05, 2009 02:56PM
I haven't gotten it on DVD. I think my mom is trying to stop me from getting it. I've asked 5 times, and she always "busy."
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Get it from the library. It's definitely worth watching.
I know. :)I also wanna see Expelled, as research on the enemy. ;)
Two documentaries that I also enjoyed and recommend are:The Devil's Playground - about the Amish time of 'rumspringa'. Gotta love the willfully backward.
and
Jesus Camp - indoctrination at it's most repugnant.
Jesus Camp was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. *shudders*
"My point to her was that in the Bible, Eve was set up. God, being omniscient, knew for a fact that Eve would eat the fruit when He put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. He knew the future back then, and therefore he was 100% certain that Eve and Adam would eat the fruit and thereby cause the “fall of Man” (christian only) or at least be kicked out of Eden. In this way, Eve did not have free will at all, and she did not make a choice to eat the fruit. She did what God knew she would do, with 100% certainty. The God comes out and acts all surprised and pissed off when Adam and Eve are shy and knowledgeable (an omniscient god would never be surprised, but that’s another story), as if he didn’t know it was going to happen.My wife tried to counter with the whole free will argument, but it doesn’t work. Omniscience trumps free will. If God can do something KNOWING what the result will be for certain, there is no free will, and Adam and Eve did what God knew would happen like pawns, with no options at all. The result — Adam and Eve committed no sin — they were force-fed the fruit by a god who did what was needed to make them eat it. Man didn’t fall; he was pushed."
Lauren wrote: ""My point to her was that in the Bible, Eve was set up. God, being omniscient, knew for a fact that Eve would eat the fruit when He put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. He knew the futu..."Yeah, sure, except (of course) that there was no Adam, there was no Eve, there was no Serpent, no Satan, no Sin. There is just a myth; a bad, inconsistent myth that pushes an evil, wicked view of humanity as beings created perfect who fell from grace and hence "deserve" whatever evil God chooses to dish out upon them, when the empirical truth is that we are imperfect beings who have evolved out of animals and are animals still, lifting ourselves up through the use of reason and a process of memetic evolution to a state of ever higher morality.
God (if there is a God) should be proud of us. We've come a long, long way from single celled organisms. And just as we don't place our own children on the grill -- a practice, curiously enough, associated with Baal and Moloch -- when they vex us (all the more so when we are wise and understand why they are vexing us and how it is invariably because they are limited in choice by their own raging hormones, their own sense of greed, their youth and consequent lack of judgement) so I think we can be quite confident that God (if It exists) won't ever, ever do that to us as "punishment for our sins".
rgb
I just heard a really good argument related to this...drat! Can't find it.
From my erligious perspective, when we die our souls/spirits go back to Heaven. Then we go to the "Spirit Prison" (it honestly sounds harsher than it is) a place where all souls who did not have the chance to hear the true gospel or did not accept it in this life are taught and allowed to accept or deny it once again. After the Second Coming of Christ we come back to earth and our bodies are resurrected into perfection, as Jesus Christ's was. Then qwe are judged on our actions and works in this life.That's a summary :)
I can't wait to see everyone's face when it's Zeus at the pearly gates. There is no more reason to think that as any other religion.
Nathan wrote: "So Jayda,Why do you believe all of this? It sounds like BS to me."
Yes, (lovely as it all sounds) why do you believe this? It is absolutely not what is said in the NT. In the NT it is said rather forcefully that you either believe now or you get a one way ticket to hell. In fact, as Nathan has pointed out on other threads, if you ever "blaspheme against the holy spirit" (whatever that means) you can never be forgiven, on earth or in heaven. So I think you're sort of making up "Jayda Christianity" as you go along, using your reason to eliminate parts of actual Biblical Christianity that make no sense.
Ordinarily I'd applaud that -- it shows that you are willing to use your brain over scripture in a showdown -- but you should be aware of two things. One is that you are participating in precisely the kind of redacting of Christianity that has been going on since its inception.
Catholicism completely remade itself just a short time ago when it finally embraced the Big Bang and Evolution, definitively rejecting Genesis. In so doing, it gutted Christianity as it is perfectly clear that Jesus believed in the text of Genesis and Paul believed in the text of Genesis and they were both clearly mistaken, and at that point the whole worshipping Jesus thing is over because perfect beings who are God and their divinely inspired servants can't make mistakes -- but they did.
Lesser redacting of scripture and dogma has occurred continuously, with various groups resolving the paradox of heaven and hell in various ways (but always in direct conflict with religious theistic scripture, which is in conflict even with itself).
The other is that you cannot redact it to full consistency. You aren't just on a slippery slope, you're on a slope made of cobwebs, the entire mountain you think you stand on is all smoke and mirrors. The minute you "fix" one obvious error with band-aids and some glue (by inventing a second chance for sinners and nonbeliever that Jesus never actually offers in the Bible -- Jesus was actually pretty rude to non-Jews in the Bible, referring to them as "dogs" who distracted him from his Jewish preaching looking for scraps from his table) then you'll pull some other wound wider open and bleed even faster.
In another thread the following interesting observation was made:
I assume that you (as a Christian) love everybody, including people you've never met, like me. If you want more selfish interests, you no doubt love your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends even if you find it difficult to really "love" complete strangers.
Some of those people that you love are sinners and/or reject Jesus. I do, because I've given him every chance to directly physically manifest himself to me or change my coffee into wine and he has failed to do so. Nathan does, and I don't think he even gives Jesus that much of a chance, although doubtless if Jesus apparated right behind him and whomped up upside the head to drive out the demons that no doubt possess him I'm sure he'd reconsider. Both of us are easily influenced by empirical experience, especially experiences that are clearly outside the realm supported by the known laws of physics. Both of us blaspheme on the odd occasion against the holy spirit, as I for one doubt that Jesus used the magical power of the holy spirit to do things like change water to wine or drive out devils. Both of us are, according to strict scripture, damned.
There is little reason to doubt that many of the people you love more intimately and selfishly are similarly damned. It is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to avoid damnation, after all.
Now, if one person that you love is sent to Hell to be tormented for eternity, can heaven (no matter how pleasant) be heaven for you? What mother can experience heaven with a child in hell? What brother can experience heaven with a sister in hell? What true Christian can experience heaven with a single person in hell?
If you are a true Christian you must therefore reject the concept of hell itself, as there can be no heaven for free-willed believers who love a single person who is condemned there for eternity. Yet if you reject hell, you reject the Bible, and if you reject the Bible (which clearly states that unbelievers, blasphemers against the holy ghost, and many, many more sinners and non-Christians will be condemned to hell) and hence you are no true Christian either.
Being a true Christian isn't just difficult, it is impossible. Adopting as an ideal the best principles of Christianity, your first step must be to reject its worst principles, to face the fact that the faith is self-contradictory.
But if it is self-contradictory, if you are listening to your own heart to choose that which is good and should be kept and that which is bad and should be rejected, why do you need the Bible at all? Why not simply rely on your head and your heart, your reason and your moral sense, without trying to make sense out of a senseless mythology written by superstitious and credulous people?
rgb
rgb wrote: "Nathan wrote: "So Jayda,Why do you believe all of this? It sounds like BS to me."
Yes, (lovely as it all sounds) why do you believe this? It is absolutely not what is said in the NT. In the N..."
I'll be honest - I only read the first paragraph before I actually felt a little insulted. You're making rather rash assumptions that I take some offense too. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but that's what happened.
I'm not going by Jayda Christianity - I'm going by Mormonism, my religion, my beliefs. In my religion there are different levels of heaven - the Celestial (the highest degree of Glory), Telestial, and Terrestrial Kingdoms. Most people will be sent to one of these, whereas hell be with Outer Darkness, where only the worst will go. As far as what I believe hell is (though it isn't certain doctrine in my religion) I feel that it will be more knowing what you could've had, rather than fire and burning.
The part where you said He's failed to appear in front of you, etcetera, I found ridiculous, no offense meant. Why would He do such a thing for someone so critical? Were you trying to get proof of His existance for your spirituality, for your knowledge, or for your greed? God cannot manifest directly in front of someone who does not need it, and though you may believe that you needed it to keep your faith going you didn't. If you truly wanted to believe in God you still would. Do you believe in God? Do you believe that He's a just and fair God? Do you believe that there's a reason for everything? God cannot appear to one who does not need to be shown, and there are reasons for that. Obviously, no one is worthy to be in His presence. He's God, the Heavenly Host, our Heavenly Father. Then there's the fact that if He gave us all the answers, if He appeared to us all just to prove His existance He'd be breaking His own eternal laws and would cease to be God. This life is about faith and with seeing there is no believing. You can't just ask God to show Himself to you and expect it. Then you wouldn't have to have faith, which is one big point for this life.
Tell me exactly when and why Jesus and Paul made mistakes. I still believe in Genesis. I don't believe all of this scientific hubaloo about evolution and The Big Bang. They're theories and nothing more. Yes, they have things that point to them, but so does God. How perfectly this world "evolved" and how we all function perfectly with each other, for each other. Our morals - without them we'd be like cavemen. So how did we come up with morals on our own? Now, you may be able to give me a scientific answer to this and I'll listen to it. It doesn't mean that I'll believe it. I'm very strong in my religion and my beliefs and I have very rarely ever been swayed. I doubt that anyone can sway me nowadays. But that doesn't mean that I'm not wrong in my beliefs. No one can prove or disprove the existance of God, the validity of the Bible and Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that the Bible doesn't have flaws and contradictions - it does, I admit that. But that was caused by man, no God Himself.
And I don't ever remember Jesus calling non-Jews dogs.
Jayda wrote: "The part where you said He's failed to appear in front of you, etcetera, I found ridiculous, no offense meant. Why would He do such a thing for someone so critical? Were you trying to get proof of His existance for your spirituality, for your knowledge, or for your greed? God cannot manifest directly in front of someone who does not need it, and though you may believe that you needed it to keep your faith going you didn't. If you truly wanted to believe in God you still would. Do you believe in God? Do you believe that He's a just and fair God? Do you believe that there's a reason for everything? God cannot appear to one who does not need to be shown, and there are reasons for that. Obviously, no one is worthy to be in His presence. He's God, the Heavenly Host, our Heavenly Father. Then there's the fact that if He gave us all the answers, if He appeared to us all just to prove His existance He'd be breaking His own eternal laws and would cease to be God. This life is about faith and with seeing there is no believing. You can't just ask God to show Himself to you and expect it. Then you wouldn't have to have faith, which is one big point for this life."Oh my, I see. A Mormon.
Well, let me ask -- why, precisely, wouldn't Jesus appear to me? What does being critical have to do with it? He reportedly appeared to Saul, when Saul was more than critical, he was openly persecuting Christians. He reportedly showed himself to his own brother, Thomas, because not even his own relatives would believe that he came back from death. He showed himself to "hundreds of early Christians".
Why them and not me? Is it too much trouble for him? Does he get tired? Is this some sort of game?
Also, why do you assume that I don't believe in God? Belief in God is not equivalent to belief that Jesus is God, or the son of God, or that Jesus existed, or was resurrected. Most of the people on this planet who believe in God do not, actually, believe these things. It is only in your own mind that they are equivalent.
Why, exactly, can God not appear to one who needs to be shown? How ridiculous is that? He only appears to people that don't need it? Thanks a lot! Although of course as I just pointed out, that's not at all true.
You state that no one is worthy to be in God's presence. How, exactly, can we not be in his presence at all times? Do you think God is some sort of physical being, located at a definite place and at a definite time (somewhere else)? That doesn't sound like God, that sounds like a physical being living in and constrained by the Universe, not any sort of transcendent being.
Why, exactly, would it be "breaking God's own laws" for Jesus to appear to me any more than it was breaking his laws for him to appear to Saul/Paul, Thomas, the other apostles, to Mary and one or more other women (who knows how many) or "hundreds of others as reported by Paul? And how, exactly can you even suggest that "God would stop being God" if God does this or that? Who made you the arbiter of what God can do, as if an eternal being can become or stop being?
And finally, why in the world is this life about "believing"? Again, you're making it some sort of cosmically silly game. Is the winner the one who believes the silliest thing without any evidence? Or should we, in fact, believe things that we do see, and tend to disbelieve things that we cannot see, cannot validate with evidence, that make no sense?
Just curious. I personally don't see the slightest point in having "faith" in things and don't consider it morally excellent, I consider it (believing things without reasons) to be morally reprehensible. If Satan exists on earth, it is as unreason, and the greatest wickedness on earth is done by those armed with rootless and unreasoning moral certitude backed up by "faith" and scripture.
Tell me exactly when and why Jesus and Paul made mistakes. I still believe in Genesis. I don't believe all of this scientific hubaloo about evolution and The Big Bang. They're theories and nothing more. Yes, they have things that point to them, but so does God. How perfectly this world "evolved" and how we all function perfectly with each other, for each other. Our morals - without them we'd be like cavemen. So how did we come up with morals on our own? Now, you may be able to give me a scientific answer to this and I'll listen to it. It doesn't mean that I'll believe it. I'm very strong in my religion and my beliefs and I have very rarely ever been swayed. I doubt that anyone can sway me nowadays. But that doesn't mean that I'm not wrong in my beliefs. No one can prove or disprove the existance of God, the validity of the Bible and Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that the Bible doesn't have flaws and contradictions - it does, I admit that. But that was caused by man, no God Himself.
If you still believe in Genesis, then you have already stuck your head a mile beneath the sand, I'm certain irretrievably. You don't believe "all this scientific huballo (sic)" about evolution and the Big Bang because you live in a state of self-inflicted blindness, one that I am frankly amazed that any human can manage in this day and age. The evidence is overwhelming, so you simply have to close your eyes and mind to the evidence. You should be proud of yourself! Why bother actually using your mind to consider the evidence when you can read some ancient words (or, in the case of the Book of Mormon, some far more contemporary words that were completely made up and that contain anachronisms, poorly copied "Biblical" language, and that display a staggering lack of even the correct geography of the actual lands of the Bible).
As for swaying you, I fully understand that your beliefs cannot be swayed, because if the scientific proofs of the Big Bang, if radiometric dating, if the clearly date-sorted record of evolution visible in the layers of fossils visible all over the world, if the entire science of modern genetics, if the mathematical and computational proofs of the power and efficiency of evolutionary algorithms, if experimental verification of the evolution of new species do not sway you, how can I?
As for mistakes Paul and Jesus made, the first one is that they believed in Genesis, and Genesis is directly contradicted by God's own words written in the natural record of the world, not the lying and easily mistaken words of men. Jesus's apostles believed that the world was flat. The Bible clearly describes the heavens as being a solid bowl with holes through which God pours rain. It speaks of a self-luminous moon. Its science is terrible, and its morality is largely despicable.
The last thing that intrigues me about your reply is that you assert that the Bible has flaws and contradictions, but aren't willing to consider Genesis (one of the most glaring and overwhelming sources of direct contradiction of actual physical evidence on the planet) to be one of them? Sure, the problem is that Genesis was written by men! I agree! God, on the other hand, "wrote" the stars and the rocks themselves, and you yourself can look out at the stars, you yourself can look over the evidence He placed in the rocks. You cannot understand Genesis -- it is overtly silly to make grass and flowering plants before you make the sun, and it is impossible to explain the vast coal mines with nothing but fossils of ferns, nary a flower or grass seed in sight, if the Genesis scenario is correct. You are capable of understanding and personally verifying the science. Science is what remains when skeptical minds do their best to doubt not on the basis of opinion or myth, but on the basis of evidence.
Give it a try.
rgb
P.S. Read Mark 7:27, Matthew 15:22-26. She has to abase herself and agree that she's a dog for Jesus to trouble himself to heal her daughter. Thanks Jesus!
"Oh my, I see. A Mormon."XD
"I don't believe all of this scientific hubaloo about evolution and The Big Bang. They're theories and nothing more. Yes, they have things that point to them, but so does God. How perfectly this world "evolved" and how we all function perfectly with each other, for each other."
I recommend reading some of my Musings, in my Writings. It should clear these points.
And again, I know that you don't mean it this way, rgb, but I was offended. Actually, it was worse this time seeing your reaction to my specific faith. I will respond to the rest of your long comment when I can.P.S. Read Mark 7:27, Matthew 15:22-26. She has to abase herself and agree that she's a dog for Jesus to trouble himself to heal her daughter. Thanks Jesus!
Mark 7:25-30
" 25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed."
Obviously he's not talking actually calling her a dog. Jesus came for the Jews first and then to the Gentiles. He wasn't on earth at that time for everyone, but to teach the Jews and to guide them. In the last days the Gentiles will be first and the Jews will be last. He isn't calling her a dog, he's comparing his teachings to the food and the children to the Jews. Someone actually said that the Greek word that was translated into dog (kunariois) is actually better translated as "little dog", or the house-hold favorite dogs. The Greek woman cleverly caught on quickly to the catches at that expression, arguing that if the Gentiles are house-hold dogs, then it is only right that they should be fed with the drumbs that fall from their master's table.
The last thing that intrigues me about your reply is that you assert that the Bible has flaws and contradictions, but aren't willing to consider Genesis (one of the most glaring and overwhelming sources of direct contradiction of actual physical evidence on the planet) to be one of them? Sure, the problem is that Genesis was written by men! I agree! God, on the other hand, "wrote" the stars and the rocks themselves, and you yourself can look out at the stars, you yourself can look over the evidence He placed in the rocks.
In my opinion, though it's not doctrine, I believe that perhaps the matter made up of the earth was millions of years old, and/or that it took millions of years to create. We don't know what time was like to God before He set the 24 hour span on earth, we don't know how long it was before Adam and Eve were placed in Eden, we don't know for certain what kind of animals lived before Adam and Eve partook of the fruit. Genesis isn't clearly wrong - I'm not saying that it doesn't have flaws, but as with everything in faith, it is not possible to prove or disprove God and the absolute validity of the Bible.
Let me ask you this Jayda. Don't you think it was bit convenient for Joseph Smith that he said he was actually one of the three beings that will judge you upon your death? According to Mormonism, you get judged by God, Jesus (which is also God so it seems a bit redundant) and Joseph Smith.
Joseph Smith didn't even try to hide the fact that he wanted to be considered a god. He clearly used this "fact" to manipulate people and take advantage of them. Can you trust someone who clearly has alterior motives? "Believe this and you will go to Heaven. Also remember that I will be judging you. Sooooooooo, you may want to give me that money I kind of need. Also, you better babysit my kids on Saturday."
How can you seriously believe this obvious nonsense?
I don't believe such stuff because Joseph Smith never said that. Where in the world did you hear that? It's just ringing with prejudice, and maybe that was the way you worded it. Joseph Smith never said that. Jesus and God are two separate beings - the Son of God and Jesus' Father. How can they be the same thing? Jesus said that the Disciples of Christ would judge us along with Jesus and God, not Joseph Smith, and Joseph never said that either.
Joseph Smith clearly did NOT have alterior motives. What did he have to lose, what do WE as members have to lose?
As far as the rest of it, I may not respond quickly because I was very offended and I'm getting a little tired of people assuming and repeating the same things over and over again and me repeating my answers. Forgive me if I sound rude, I don't mean to, but I'm a little annoyed and upset.
You don't have to respect them but there are ways you can word things so that it isn't offensive. What you just said was extremely offensive and, even though it probably will sound lame to you I feel a little attacked. What do you have against religion, let alone Mormons? What have you learned about Mormons from Mormons, or non-prejudice, church-sanctioned books? Because if you haven't learned anything from that then it's pretty much all prejudice.Joseph Smith translated off of Gold Plates. If he was illiterate (which I don't see the truth in - proof?) it was already illiteracy on the plates, which was probably literate in their time and day.
Dear Jayda,I'm sorry if I've offended you.
However, reading the verses again, it still looks to me like Jesus calls her a dog and refuses to heal her daughter (I guess it is too much "work" for this infinitely powerful being). She then has to kiss his ass and agree that she is a dog before he decides to help her out.
This isn't the first or only time Jesus is rude and racist. No matter what, this doesn't sound like a perfect being to me quite aside from the hearsay associated with the whole story.
From your remark on Gentiles beating out the Jews, it sounds like you buy into John's and Paul's antisemitism. I'm sorry to hear that. I can't think of any reason in the world that any racial people should be "first" or "second", although I agree that the Book of Mormon is full of overt and covert racism. The Jews were wicked. The Nephites were exceedingly white and fair. God cursed the Lamanites and made their skin turn dark, which makes them "loathsome". Unbelievers need to turn to God so that they can be made pure and white.
In my opinion, though it's not doctrine, I believe that perhaps the matter made up of the earth was millions of years old, and/or that it took millions of years to create.
In your opinion? What does that mean? Do you somehow think that your opinion, or mine, or the Bible's, make any difference? What do you think of the evidence? How do you explain the evidence in mathematical detail?. How do you explain how the evidence is mathematically consistent? Do you even have any idea what the actual evidence is?
Your statements about the age of matter are meaningless. Why millions? Why not tens? Why not hundreds of millions. Why not hundreds of thousands? You have no reason to pick one number over another because you have no understanding of the physical processes that would permit you to fix a time.
Why do you think God "created" the matter millions of years before "assembling" the earth? What do you think He used for tools in the assemply? Matter does contain clocks -- even clocks that count time by the billions of years -- but you obviously are ignoring them. The Universe itself contains clocks, but you're ignoring them as well. How do you explain the Hubble constant? How do you explain the size of the visible Universe? How do you explain the 3 degree microwave background? How do you explain the initial distribution of nucleotides?
You seem to think that the estimated age of the Universe is a matter of opinion. It is not. It is a matter of finding the quantitatively best explanation for a widely disparate body of evidence. Your unsupported statement of millions is based on pure unadulterated ignorance, and I do not mean that as an insult, just as a statement of fact. If you disagree, don't be insulted, provide me with a quantitatively accurate, alternative explanation of the evidence (demonstrating in the course of it that you actually know what the evidence is).
Regarding Joseph Smith and TBOM and anachronism, where to begin?
2 Nephi 29:3 And because my words shall hiss forth -- many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.
Only this was supposedly around 550 BCE, and the term "Bible" didn't exist. So this was some prophecy!
Enos 1:20 And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us.
Only a) the scimitar/cimieter had not yet been invented in 500 BCE; b) there is no evidence that there were metal swords of any kind in pre-Columbian America. Kind of a double whammy -- an impossible anachronism coupled with an impossible prophecy.
Mosiah --11:8 And it came to pass that king Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings; and he ornamented them with fine work of wood, and of all manner of precious things, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of brass, and of ziff, and of copper;
The only problem is that brass wasn't made deliberately (mixing zinc and copper ores) until roughly 20 BCE, and iron was similarly unknown in the time of Noah. It was called the Bronze Age for a reason. However, Joseph Smith obviously believed the incorrectly translated terms in the Bibles he had accessible to him, just as he inserted 22 verses straight out of Mark that weren't actually in the earliest manuscripts of Mark. And what is "ziff"? Oh, wait! An unknown metal altogether.
3 Nephi -- 9:18 I am the light and the life of the world. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Words from Revelations, which was not written in 550 BCE. Boy, what perfect prophecies! That Nephi might as well have been reading words off a page!
Here's an especially good one:
Mormon -- 9:24 And these signs shall follow them that believe -- in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;
Another double whammy. First of all, we have yet another reading-words-off-a-page from Mark 16:16. What a prophet! The big problem is that these words were never written by Mark. They are consistently absent from the earliest extant manuscript copies of Mark. Not only does the Book of Mormon prophecy the words of Mark, but it prophecies the additions to Mark! That's a neat trick!
There's more. Laban's sword was made of precious steel. Alas, steel was nearly unknown before 400 BCE, and never appears in the actual Bible. A brass compass, when neither brass nor compass existed in 600 BCE. Steel bows, except that neither steel nor steel bows existed in 600 BCE, and if they did they would not break. Crops were planted that were brought with them from Jerusalem, only there is no evidence in the New World of any old world crops. In fact, if you read Guns Germs and Steel you'll learn that a major hypothesis for why civilization did not develop in the pre-Columbian New World is that they lacked the fertile crescent crops grown in the Middle East, they lacked the domesticated animals common in the Middle East that made civilization possible (animals that settlers could not have failed to take with them), and they lacked steel. What civilization would have forgotten how to make steel, lost all of the animals they took with them, and lost all of their food crops, especially when they once "grew in abundance"?
The only possible conclusion from these and many more anachronisms, plagiarisms of incorrect text as Joseph Smith would have known it and the every-other-verse inclusion of "And it came to pass" and other "biblical-sounding" lines. The Book of Mormon was an original work of religious fiction, composed by Joseph Smith. No golden tablets ever existed.
This isn't meant to be offensive. But I suggest you critically examine your beliefs, especially in contrast to actual history and science as supported by multiple, independent, records (and a certain amount of common sense).
rgb
"Mormon -- 9:24 And these signs shall follow them that believe -- in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;"My only point is, what would happen if we fed everyone in a church poison?
Nathan wrote: "My only point is, what would happen if we fed everyone in a church poison?People who go to church get fed poison every Sunday."
And if you fed them, say, cyanide, ricin, Sarin, or any of a wide range of organophosphates, alkaloids, binary nerve agents, or radioactives, they would die, more or less quickly and more or less painfully.
And they know it perfectly well.
The interesting question is: is this evidence that they don't really believe, but that God would have saved them if they did, or that they do believe but there either is no God (so poison is poison, duh!) or there is a God but he never actually divinely inspired these words and so true believers don't get resistance to poison as part of their attributes in the MMRPG of Life. So poison is poison, duh.
The truest of true believers isn't generally enough of an idiot to take a hit of Sarin or enter a room filled with mustard gas or chlorine or cyanide, making it difficult to do the experiment. No matter how much they will argue with you about the perfect truth of the Bible, they aren't about to behave as if it were really true and ask Jesus for a mercedes benz (my friends all have porsches, I must make amends), handle black mambas or cottonmouths (nasty tempers, both), or drink a liter of sulphuric acid followed with a lye chaser. And none of them are so silly as to think that they can lay hands on an amputee and regrow their limb, or a terminally ill cancer patient, and remove their tumors and mets.
However (sigh) as I pointed out up above, this anachronistic plagiarism of Mark wasn't in the real Book of Mark as written by the original author (whoever he might have been). Proof positive, really, that the author lived after maybe 400 CE (I'd have to read Misquoting Jesus again to find out just when it was inserted) and I think that there is no real doubt that the author's initials were J. S.
So the correct answer from all points of view is: "They would die."
The atheist as prime examples of evolution in action, especially if they hadn't yet had children or fed it to their children too.
The Christian because the real book of Mark doesn't promise +5 against poison.
The Mormon because oops, Joseph Smith copied the edited book of Mark (which was all he knew) and hence lied about a lie. Or "told a story about a story" if one is feeling more charitable.
rgb
Lauren wrote: " "Mormon -- 9:24 And these signs shall follow them that believe -- in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;"My only point is, what would happen if we fed everyone in a church poison? "
Shades of Jonestown?
"People who go to church get fed poison every Sunday. "Too slow-acting. And they take the world down with them.
Jonestown x57895828598 if the entire world decided to trust the Bible to save them from cyanide.
Jayda wrote: "rgb wrote: "Nathan wrote: "So Jayda,Why do you believe all of this? It sounds like BS to me."
Yes, (lovely as it all sounds) why do you believe this? It is absolutely not what is said in t...
I'm going by Mormonism..."
Hmm...So you're not the only Mormon? That's a relief!
Mod
My brother dated a Mormon for three years. I know quite a bit. I met many of her friends and family members. Joseph Smith translated off of Gold Plates.
No. He translated off of magical gold plates that ascened into heaven before anyone could actually see them. Hmmmm.....
"You demand proof from me that Joseph Smith was illiterate (as if the fact that he had to have someone else write the actual Book of Mormon for him wasn't enough), yet you don't demand any proof of that story.
Yeah, yeah....that seems reasonable."
Okay first of all they didn't magically appear, they were buried in the ground for many years
secondly, just cuz your brother "dated a mormon" how does that make you know evrything? Did you actually go to the church? Do you even know what the book of mormon is?
And thirdly, your reasons are crap.
I think that, when you die, you're dead. That's it. The end. You stop existing. And honestly I'm ok with that. I mean, if this life is all we get, that just makes it all the more beautiful. The most beautiful things in life, a first kiss, a spring flower, a beautiful sunset, fade away. And they are precious because of that. Life is the same way. Yes, it ends, but if you live it the right way, and appreciate it for what it is, it's long enough. Honestly, the concept of eternity terrifies me. I mean, think about it. You could learn every fact and idea that there is to learn, master every trade and every skill, meet and have every possible conversation with every person who has ever lived, ask God every question possible to ask in every language, and see everything that has ever existed. You could hit a lead ball the size of Jupiter with a feather until it turned to dust a hundred times over. You could do all of that, and you would still have an infinite amount of time left to sit and do nothing. No matter what you've done or how long you've spent there, you will never make any progress, because you will still have the same amount of time left to go. I don't see how people can look forward to that.
Can I prove what I think? Not really. No-one can. But I would say that, since there is no evidence what so ever for the existence of souls or that consciousness can exist without a brain, I would say that I'm not being irrational in my beliefs. I would almost say that they make more sense than other beliefs. But obviously I think that, or I wouldn't believe it, would I?
Emily wrote: "I think that, when you die, you're dead. That's it. The end. You stop existing. And honestly I'm ok with that. I mean, if this life is all we get, that just makes it all the more beautiful. The mos..."Sounds good to me!
Add to that the dilemma of God. The hell of a changeless eternity, where nothing is new and nothing can be new (what does "new" even mean, to an eternal being with infinite knowledge who lives outside of time) is exactly what everybody claims for God.
Hinduism (perhaps alone) claims that this is indeed the timeless state of the eternal Godhead -- a state of perfect, unchanging knowledge that is so close to non-knowledge, a state of being that it is so close to non-being, a state where God is all things, all times, all places, frozen, and utterly without drama or sin, that God as One became many, God split Itself into a near infinity of parts that each part might not know the whole, that each part might be able to experience time, the flow of entropy, discovery, newness.
In this vision of the cosmic all, death is you as a tiny fragment of God (and yet the whole thing) forgetting once again so that you can be born anew to learn and experience and love and hate and be a saint and a sinner all over again, backwards and forwards in time, so that God Itself is akin to the weave of a tapestry of worldlines, the union of all stories, with the best remembered and the worst forgotten, forever.
Since death is (all agree) at the very least the great unknown, a state where even our imagination fails as how can being imagine nonbeing, visions such as this (mythical or not) can give one cause for unjustified optimism instead of (equally unjustified) pessimism. Perhaps, just perhaps, it all works out perfectly in the end, the sum total of all things.
Sorry, feeling spiritual tonight.
rgb
I HAVE AN ANSWER!!!!!!First: There is a heaven and a hell.
Second: to get to heaven, you must believe in jesus christ and ask for forgiveness through prayer.
Third: to go to hell, Kill yourself, don't repent, do terrible things, don't beleive in christ... ect...
Fourth: if you wan't proof of all this... read a book. a certain book about tough questions about christ... it's called: "Did Adam have a belly button?".
( and btw adam did not have a belly buton )
You assume there is a heaven and hell, when in fact you have no proof of such an assumption.
HEY!!! people. pay attention!all storys sound different but if you listen, they all have the same builing blocks!
like christain beleif of noahs ark, and this one other story... listen:
Christain: All the people on Earth got bad and there was murder and other horrible things. all the people had sinned in terrible ways. But Noah was a rightous man of christ and was to be saved. So god told noah to build a large boat: the ark and to put two of every unclean animals and 7 each of the clean animals on it and he did. then God sent a rain that lasted 40 days and 40 nights and it killed every one and every thing that live on the earth except the animals on board the ark and noahs family. when the rain stopped, Noah sent a bird out to go and search for land, it came back with nothing. a few weeks later and Noah sent out a second bird, but still nothing. after a few more weeks, Noah sent out a dove. it did came back with an olive tree's twig in its beak and they knew there was land. so eventually when they could finally see the mountain peaks in the distance, they landed on a large mountain top. then the animals went free and the earth repopulated itself... the end!
( for now! )
Nice fantasy. I'll be sure to share it at Hogwarts, after I get my letter.
oh wait i forgot something! before i said the end i should have mentioned that god told noah that he would never send a world wide flood to kill all the people ever again. and to remember the promise, God put the rainbow in the sky after every rain!
No, actually, light refracted from the sun through the prism created by the water does that. 6th grade weather science.
Lauren wrote: "There is no separation of mind and body. The mind does not exist outside of the brain. When the body dies, the mind dies, because they are one. The 'soul' is a trick, if you will, of how we think..."
LIAR!!!!!!!!!!!
You evil little B******
Thats not true at all. we are spirits! the body is only temporary! until you die, you are trapped in the body. your body dies but your spirit lives on forever!
And you get judged by God.
"LIAR!!!!!!!!!!! You evil little B******
Thats not true at all. we are spirits! the body is only temporary! until you die, you are trapped in the body. your body dies but your spirit lives on forever!
And you get judged by God. "
You do realize that is grounds for me to ban you from the group. You not only are a close-minded idiot, but you have the audacity to insult those who actually know what they are talking about.
But, I won't. I need a new punching bag. ;D
actually, its not "evil little bitch"It's evil little bastard
ooo, scary threats. I'm shaking in my heathen boots.
Sometimes I forget what it is I dislike about religion.And then I meet people like Kimberly, and I am reminded.
and btw adam did not have a belly butonHow in the ever loving fuck would you know this?
It amazes me how easily Christians can just apply a new coat of invented bullshit onto the old bullshit and claim that they know it despite the fact that there is no evidence for it even in the fucking bible. Of course Adam had no bellybutton. Because when an invisible man in the sky makes a lump of dirt into a man who has magic ribs that can spawn new people, that man doesn't grow in a womb and therefore does not need to receive nutrition via a placenta, because that would make no sense.
Dan wrote: "and btw adam did not have a belly butonHow in the ever loving fuck would you know this?
It amazes me how easily Christians can just apply a new coat of invented bullshit onto the old bullshit an..."
There's a fact that belly buttons are a scar from the umbelical cord.
and since adam was the first man, created from dust, he was not connected to a mother the way you and i were, so as such, he did not have a freakin belly button.
Lauren wrote: "Nice fantasy. I'll be sure to share it at Hogwarts, after I get my letter. "if you do ever get the freakin letter, youll be put into slytherin you kniving little thief-of-hope!!!
Kimberly... how do you expect to convert anyone with such a nasty attitude towards others? Is that how Jesus would teach? How Jesus would speak to others, would treat others, no matter their differences or their beliefs? Do you honestly think that this is how God would want you teaching His word? Certainly not. Being rude is not going to get you anywhere, ESPECIALLY in the religious aspect of debating. Simple as that.
"if you do ever get the freakin letter, youll be put into slytherin you kniving little thief-of-hope!!! "
I'm sorry your hope is based on a lie. Truth hurts honey. Plus, Slytherin is totally badass.
Nathan wrote: "if you do ever get the freakin letter, youll be put into slytherin you kniving little thief-of-hope!!!You are a real bullshitter aren't you? You say really nasty things on this forum, and then g..."
BUT, there is a very important difference. On this forum, Lauren (the mod) won't boot anybody for anything, even direct ad hominem attacks using bad words. On the I Live for Jesus forum, I got booted for politely suggesting that there is a fundamental difference between what we know from science and what some people claim to know from reading the Bible, and that when the two conflict there is really no question about which one is likely to be correct. But because I said this, forcefully but politely, to Carolyn the mod, she booted me instantly.
Science, you see, is open minded and welcomes debate even from other points of view that are wrong. It can take it. Science doesn't claim to be divinely inspired truth written down by ignorant, superstitious, but infallible tribal shamans way back in the Bronze Age (men not unlike primitive Islamic Imams in the Taliban, but still more ignorant as they still thought the world was flat and the sky was a solid bowl), only the truth as best we can make it out from careful examination of the evidence provided by the world itself. Anybody is always welcome to introduce a new hypothesis and see if it makes more sense but -- making more sense requires that it explain everything better and not conflict with explanations we already know work rather well (like the laws of physics) unless you are prepared to offer a complete, quantitative replacement that works as well or better and that isn't inconsistent with your other changes.
You see, science requires global consistency as part of the answer. It's not just "maybe we were evolved" vs "maybe we were created" where "debate" consists of "Evolved!" "Created!" "Evolved!" "Created!" "Evolved and your mommy is a poopy head!" "Created and I'm telling!" It is look at all the evidence and the best complete theory starting with our theory for how nuclei and atoms and molecules are put together and ending trying to understand the human mind, with a complete "gapless theory" in between.
Carolyn thought that it was "reasonable" to still believe a myth originally told generation to generation by an illiterate society to explain gaps in their knowledge of the world at a time when their knowledge of the world was one enormous yawning gap. Obviously, so do you, Kimberly. It is absolutely your right to believe anything you like, however stupid. But that does not make it "reasonable" for you (or somehow not a stupid thing to believe) any more than it was reasonable and not stupid for Carolyn.
That's why the things we are telling you are taught in schools and universities, at least the ones that aren't thought-controlled by religious fanatics intent on preserving leftover Dark-Age ignorance of the kind that almost got Galileo burned at the stake.
Here's an exercise for you. You won't like it, but it is an honest challenge. Perhaps you'll see yourself in it and learn from it. In 1615 Saint Robert Bellarmine wrote the following letter back to Galileo after examining Galileo's "heretical" proposal that the Earth was round, revolved about its own axis, and revolved in an orbit around the Sun, a small part in a large Universe that was by no means in the center of it.
Read it. Notice how precisely it sounds like your own arguments today. Genesis is right because it is part of the Bible. The flood happened because the Bible says it did. Anyone with the temerity to think otherwise is acting in a way injurious to God because it contradicts the Bible, and if the Bible is wrong, then all who have followed it as if it were right are fools indeed.
Try to remember, as you see your own words echoed, that Galileo was right, as even you cannot possibly doubt at this point. And Bellarmine's observations are as true now as they were then. Galileo's discovery makes fools of all who have ever taken the Bible to be literal truth, as it is contradicted in fact by the direct evidence of our senses and the direct apprehension of our minds.
Here is is:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/16...
(Since this is a rather juvenile thread, I suppose I should "double dog dare you" to read it or something, in case your sheer intellectual curiosity is lacking.)
rgb
*group hug*XD
Questioning Society
Books mentioned in this topic
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (other topics)Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (other topics)
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (other topics)
The Upanishads (other topics)
