I merely quote your leaders. The ammunition for this debate was provided by ressornu who posted about 10 pages of quotes from your "leaders." If your leaders didn't want to be criticized for these comments then they shouldn't have published their thoughts. And if you don't want to be criticized for what you think, then you shouldn't post your thoughts on FR.
Frankly WM I think you are a bit of a hypocrite. You feel free to criticize Calvinism and to attack those who post their beliefs on the subject. You nod in agreement when the discussion turns to Calvin's personal flaws, not the least of which was his complicity in the death of Servetus. Yet you cry foul whenever someone qeustions the leaders of your church.
Hey for Billy Graham, the Pope, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and every other church leader who makes public pronouncements it is open season on FR. But no one better say a single bad thing about one of the leaders of the LDS Church or challenge the basis for their doctrines or you are an Anti-Mormon bigot.
If the LDS Chruch is true, then one would think that it could stand up to its critics. If the LDS Church is true, then you should have all the answers>
When I was a young LDS I was taught that none of the other "Chrsitian" churches had the answers and that the LDS Chruch was the ONLY chruch that had all the answers to all the questions. I believed that. Perhaps that is why I was able to see light and realize that the LDS Church dind NOT have all the answers. In fact, as this thread shows, the LDS have more questions than answers.
I was literally shocked to my core when I discovered some of the statements of the leaders of the LDS Chruch which have been posted here. Well I think a little light shining on what these people had to say is in order. If you can defend it, then that is great. If you can't defend it, then tell us it is indefensible.
If you don't want to listen to criticism of your church, then perhaps you should stop chiming in on the Calvinism threads. The true Arminians can get along just fine without your input. You constantly post your LDS "Scriptures" on the Calvinism and Catholic threads and then give your testimony that Joseph Smith is a true prophet and that the Book of mormon is true, etc. Well, if you are going to post these opinions, then those who read your statements ought to be free to call them into question.
So if you have any real answers to the questions that I and others have posed. If you have any response to the information that has been posted, I'd like to see it. But don't just leave a "testimony bomb" on the thread and expect that people are not going to challenge it. If you think Joseph Smith is a true prophet, then prove it. If you think the book of Mormon is true, then prove it. If you think that the Book of Moses is true, then show us the manuscripts that Jospeh Smith used for that translation and let us judge it objectively.
Is that too much to ask?
Ping to that Marlowe.
Maybe you think we should have all the answers, but the LDS Church has never claimed to have all the answers. We think we have more of the answers, but nobody's got them all.
You keep demanding proof that the LDS Church is true. You keep posting stuff that in your opinion proves that it's not. Fine, everybody's got an opinion on the subject. But if your goal here is to drive all of us existing LDS members out of the LDS Church, just because somebody managed to do the same with you, then you're wasting your time and ours.
Hugh Nibley, on discussing the foundations of the Latter-day Saint position, had the following to say:
If the Church has any first foundation, it is the unimpeachable testimony of the individual. Since this is nontransmissible, one might dismiss it as irrelevant, an absolute beyond discussion, criticism, or demonstration. Even for the individual, the testimony comes and goes in accordance with faith and behavior. If it is real, then it is indeed unassailable and imponderable. I cannot force my testimony on you, but there are certain indications to which I might call your attention. People who lose their testimonies and renounce the Church or drop out of it, if they are convinced of their position, should be totally indifferent to the folly of their deluded one-time brethren and sisters: if they want to make fools of themselves, that is up to them, but we are intellectually and socially above all that. Well and good, that is how it is in other churches; but here it does not work that way.
Apostates usually become sometimes feverishly active, determined to prove to the world and themselves that it is a fraud after all. What is that to them? Apparently it is everything-- it will not let them alone. At the other end of the scale are those who hold no rancor and even retain a sentimental affection for the Church-- they just don't believe the gospel. I know quite a few of them. But how many of them can leave it alone? It haunts them all the days of their life. No one who has ever had a testimony ever forgets or denies that he once did have it-- that it was something that really happened to him. Even for such people who do not have it anymore, a testimony cannot be reduced to an illusion.