Posted on 10/12/2010 9:09:28 AM PDT by Godzilla
This is known as the Mormon philosophical problem of eternal regression.
Well, imagine if you're the local head-hauncho of a company, and you need approval from the national CEO for something important.
You call him up. He says, "Let me get approval from the international CEO."
So he calls the Intl CEO. He says, "Let me call Kolob Central."
He calls Kolob central. And the Kolob CEO says, "I'll call Dad at Bolok Central."
So the Bolok CEO calls his CEO.
Rather than take this any further, I'll wrap it up here. At what point does a CEO reach an ultimate, independent CEO to get the authority to get the response needed?
NEVER! The return phone NEVER comes! Because the network of CEOs is infinite! Why Joseph Smith concocted both the universe's greatest bureaucracy AND the universe's greatest divine Ponzi Scheme! (No wonder Mormons in the last few years have lost $1.4 BILLION to financial fraud with more being uncovered every month...they have already bought into this ponzi scheme for these past 180 years!)
Well, thanks to Jeff Lindsay, we are reassured by Mormons that they don't worship an independent god.
And you know what that means? Well, when it comes to bandying around words like "sovereignty" and "authority," you can forget the Mormon god as having these in any kind of exclusive absolute definitions.
I have no problems with that concept. However over the weekend it was abused to the point where reasonable non-atagnonistic posts were deleted. One cannot have a discussion where only half of the discussion is allowed.
Maybe “ecumenical” in the end wasn’t the appropriate method, although the definition as given by the RM seemed to cover it well.
The regular RM restored the deleted posts later, only to lock the thread at the request of the initiator of the thread. Once again - hard to have a 'discussion' when only one side is allowed to be presented. I've been able to work within the mods rules regarding EC threads since the beginning. The point of this repost is to permit the discussion to be unfettered on the topic - not constrained.
This may be beause our general political form of argument also seems geared toward tearing down what others say and believe rather than explaining what we think is the correct beliefs and positions.
The point is, when those correct beliefs and postitions are contrasted to those of mormonism in a clear manner - the response often is the victim card. This especially becomes clear when mormon supporting citation are shown to be taken out of context, redefined and used contrary to what the origional author envisioned.
Excellent.
My new tagine (modified for length) if I may?
But that isn't the fault of a poster, right? No poster, including the one posting the original article, has any control over what comments get accepted or deleted. That is a moderator action.
So complaining about which posts were deleted seems like crying about how the moderators are doing their job.
And complaining that it is the fault of the original poster seems misguided -- as a freeper, I can hit abuse on every post I dislike, but only the moderator can act on my request.
Don't see any problems so far :)
Here's an idea. Why not have a split in the Mormon church? Those that want to be just another denomination of Christianity could be welcomed by most into the fold. Those that follow the more traditional views ....
That is something THEY would have to do. Problem is that to do that the "Christian" one would have to renounce - polytheism, works based salvation, extra 'gospels', etc that teach doctrines contrary to the fundamental ones broadly accepted by Christianity.
The Mormon church has moved away from past beliefs before. Instead of trying to convince everyone that you are Christians, why not actually become a Christian denomination?
That is their PR - indeed. Fundamental basis of mormonism is that THEY are the only true Christians. However, because the broad Christian population would instantly recognize the heretical doctrines of mormonism - they need the pr to convince the poorly informed via obfuscation and misinformation (sometimes referred to as lying for the lord or milk before meat) into thinking they are just another Christian denomination.
I think instead of trying to convince Christians that you are one of us, you should change some of your views and become one of us. He knows your heart.
I agree, and there are exmormons that post here whom Christ has opened the eyes of their heart to the falsehood of mormonism and into the welcoming arms of Jesus.
Dictionary definitions of the word "ecumenical" are not relevant, e.g. "promotion of unity or cooperation between distinct religious groups or denominations of Christianity."
Put another way, antis are welcome to post on "ecumenical" RF threads as long as they are not being antagonistic.
If you do not want antis on an RF thread, it must be labeled as a "caucus" "prayer" or "devotional" thread.
The general policy is that a thread poster can petition the RM to lock a thread and generally the RM does so. In a restricted thread the thread intiator can contact the RM via post or FM to point out an 'offending' post. It is mod's descretion to pull the post.
Prior to the first thread being opened and posts restored (only to be locked), over half of the posts were at one time deleted. That is not a discussion.
That moderator also removed the "ecumenical" label at the same time, suggesting either that ecumenical had been misused, or that something in the thread made the moderator decide it couldn't be ecumenical. That seemed to be the basis for restoring the removed comments -- not any admission that the comments were acceptable in an ecumenical thread.
In my opinion, there were multiple posts in that thread that violated the rules about negative attacks on other faiths. Of course, I'm not a moderator. I also don't know which of those that I think violated the rules were ones that had been removed by the moderators previously, so I don't know if my opinion matched that of the moderators.
But there is a considerable amount of antagonism on FR based on religion, including a very vocal and pro-active anti-mormon organization, as well as what appears to be a fairly active anti-Catholic and pro-Catholic conflict leading to a large number of caucus threads for articles that, on the surface, wouldn't be expected to generate animosity.
I see much of the caucus thread use as a sign that we are not treating other people's religious beliefs with respect. Respect isn't the same as acceptance, and I assert that one can respect a person's religious beliefs while strongly disagreeing with them and forcefully explaining your own beliefs.
Respect to me means not treating adherents to other faiths as being stupid or evil, or using personal attacks as a substitute for a discussion of why you disagree with their opinions.
That is how I try to approach all discussions here.
THX 1138
Undecided readers,
If you peruse the Free Republic religion forums you will notice a pattern. There’s an anti-Mormon group of people here that spends a great deal of their time attacking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They post regurgitated propaganda on an almost daily basis.
They have a misguided obsession. You can witness many different tactics employed that you might find quite interesting. The straw man argument is a big favorite and is frequently preceded by cherry-picking quotes or other material. After the “quotation” the attacker will misrepresent what has been said or what was meant and then attack their own interpretation. This is illustrated to some extent in this thread.
After reading their posts, I invite you to seek the truth about whatever “issue” they seem to be “revealing” or “exposing”. I promise that if you do so with honest intent, the “ahah” moments you will have will be many and frequent. You will start to recognize the tactics employed to cleverly twist and attack and will likely chuckle the more you see. In actuality, there’s nothing new here. It’s all been addressed many times before.
Here’s a few links to get your started from a different viewpoint. I have found that the vast majority of the “issues” brought up can be found and addressed at http://www.fairlds.org/ but here’s more:
http://scriptures.lds.org/
http://www.lds.org
http://www.fairlds.org/
http://www.mormonwiki.com/Main_Page
http://www.lightplanet.com/response/index.html
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDS_Intro.shtml
http://www.answeringantimormons.com/index.htm
http://promormon.blogspot.com/
With the deleted posts, it became apparent that it was abused IMHO.
But there is a considerable amount of antagonism on FR based on religion, including a very vocal and pro-active anti-mormon organization, as well as what appears to be a fairly active anti-Catholic and pro-Catholic conflict leading to a large number of caucus threads for articles that, on the surface, wouldn't be expected to generate animosity.
Caucus threads are the most restricted - you want to discuss your various beliefs without outside opinion - go there and knock your socks off - of course without bashing other religious beliefs. EC threads permit a more restricted intaction. Open is just that. The issue becomes the definition of 'attacking' or bashing. The mod warns those who are thin skinned to avoid this forum if one cannot recognize the difference between forcefully explaining your beliefs and 'bashing'.
To prevent throttling of the discussion of the topic, I reposted the article in a open forum so that people can discuss it with minimum of moderator action required.
It matters greatly from an eternal perspective. Jesus warned that some would say to Him "Lord, Lord" and He will tell the He never knew them.
But I would think that those who have come OUT of mormonism would have a greater perspective on how much it matters.
But when you say as long as their ACTIONS comport - what have their actions been historically? Polygamy in America is rooted to mormonism (even though they deny the practice TODAY, it is still practiced 'spiritually' as well as the doctrine remains on their books), it wasn't until 1978 and the threat of multiple lawsuits that blacks were allowed to become priests (and progress to godhood). Throughout most of their history, temple mormons swore a blood oath against the government (though this has been removed from the 'eternal' ordiance). I would argue that these changes in mormon practice and doctrine are more due to outside pressures rather than the heart of their religion.
What is unspoken by PD here is that the article is from one of his unimpeachable ‘sources’ for mormonism. Inorder to sound legit, lindsey has to obfuscate the doctrine of theosis to make it appear that lds are orthodox. Orthodox disagree -
So, check out the vast chasim between mormon twisting of theosis and Orthodox. One will see the mormon double standard.
Actions will not get you God's favor or salvation.
I’ve often thought people should re-post caucus items which are actually news items into the open forum, so the rest of us could discuss the news item, instead of just the one faith which posted it.
That way, people who want to have a narrowly focused discussion can do so, while others can have a free-wheeling discussion.
Becoming like gods is a tenent:
Is it true that because Latter-day Saints believe that human beings can eventually become like God, they are not Christian?
As even a cursory glance at early Christian thought reveals, the idea that man might become as God—known in Greek as theosis or theopoiesis—may be found virtually everywhere, from the New Testament through the writings of the first four centuries. Church members take seriously such passages as Psalm 82:6 [Ps. 82:6], John 10:33–36, and Philippians 2:5–6 [Philip. 2:5–6], in which a plurality of gods and the idea of becoming like God are mentioned.
The notion of theosis is characteristic of church fathers Irenaeus (second century a.d.), Clement of Alexandria (third century a.d.), and Athanasius (fourth century a.d.). Indeed, so pervasive was the doctrine in the fourth century that Athanasius’s archenemies, the Arians, also held the belief 3 and the Origenist monks at Jerusalem heatedly debated “whether all men would finally become like Christ or whether Christ was really a different creature.” 4
According to an ancient formula, “God became man that man might become God.” Early Christians “were invited to ‘study’ to become gods” (note the plural). 5
Though the idea of human deification waned in the Western church in the Middle Ages, it remained very much alive in the Eastern Orthodox faith, which includes such Christian sects today as the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches. 6 Jaroslav Pelikan notes, “The chief idea of St. Maximus, as of all Eastern theology, [was] the idea of deification.” 7
Is the subject of deification truly a closed question? After all, echoes of man becoming like God are still found in the work of later and modern writers in the West. For instance, C. S. Lewis’s writings are full of the language of human deification. 8 Even Martin Luther was capable of speaking of the “deification of human nature,” although in what sense it is not clear. 9
Related to the claim that Latter-day Saints are not Christians because of their belief in deification is the assertion that if they hold to some kind of belief in deification then it must be that Church members do not view Jesus as uniquely divine. Such an assertion is totally erroneous. The phrase “Only Begotten Son” occurs with its variants at least ten times in the Book of Mormon, fourteen times in the Doctrine and Covenants, and nineteen times in the Pearl of Great Price. Basic to Latter-day Saint theology is the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son of the Father in the flesh.
These are from the sources Paragon Defender recommended. But this LDS heresy is begotten from the Christian heresy. One heresy begets another. Since Christianity teaches Jesus is god in the flesh, what is to stop other heresies to be built upon that error?
The truth is that G-d is not a man. Period. Worship the G-d of Deut 4:8
And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? 9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. 10 Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, "Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children." 11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. 12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman.
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