Hartsock
Banned
ok, that was funny, I'll admit it.
But just curious as to why OC being present is a false dichotomy? I haven't studied it that much but if he says he was there, why should we believe otherwise?
The Official "Ask A Mormon" Thread
- Thread starter colton
- Start date
ok, that was funny, I'll admit it.
But just curious as to why OC being present is a false dichotomy? I haven't studied it that much but if he says he was there, why should we believe otherwise?
I thought nightmare gave a good answer/explanation of the other people's answers:
nightmare3983 said:
As for myself, yes I would be sad to learn Joseph Smith was a fraud, but I would certainly be overjoyed to be in the presence of God.(*) But frankly, if/when I meet Jesus, I think I'll be much more interested in surrounding myself in the arms of His love than in getting answers to theological questions.
(*) Kind of like you--what if you found out that the Buddhists/Muslims/Hindi/etc were correct, but somehow you made it to heaven anyway. Wouldn't you be a sad to find out Jesus was a fraud?
CONAN
Well-Known Member
It begins with faith. But at some point there has got to be some evidence given that your faith is not in vain. With any religion I don't know why you would stick around unless you had some personal evidence of at least the critical tenets of that faith being true.
But both can exist together. There are things about the LDS I know to be true, and there's plenty I take on faith.
Thank you. If that's reflective of the typical LDS attitude my assumption of what faith was for an LDS person was wrong. I've always understood faith to require a certain lack of evidence forcing you to take the proverbial "leap of faith" across a chasm of the unknown and the unknowable to find God.
CONAN
Well-Known Member
CONAN
Well-Known Member
As I said, your version and mine are not mutually exclusive and both are needed. I mentioned this.
Sure. I'll give my version of the standard LDS plan of salvation. And "plan of salvation" is commonly interpreted as "history of existence and purpose of life" in addition to the part specifically related to salvation, so that's what I will discuss.
1. God, our Heavenly Father, at some point became the father of our spirits. What this actually means in LDS doctrine isn't quite clear, because although we believe he is literally our creator and our father, we also believe that we have existed in some form from all eternity. How I personally interpret this, is to say that initially(*) we existed as some form of pure intelligence, and then God organized our "intelligences" into spiritual bodies.
2. Jesus, Lucifer, and the rest of us were all part of that group of spirits, although Jesus was enough like God to be considered God himself, that is "God the Son".
3. God wanted us to become more like him, and to do that he and Jesus developed a plan where we would be born, gain mortal bodies, live, and die. Many LDS consequently view this mortal existence as kind of like going away to college--we could only progress so far while we were in the presence of God, so we needed to leave His presence to progress farther. If we progress the way God desires, then we will be able to return to His presence after we die. To make known God's desires for us, God employs both the Holy Ghost (who speaks to each person individually) as well as prophets and apostles (who convey His words to people as a whole).
4. Lucifer (Satan) rebelled against this plan, and led away about one third of the spirits. He and they were consequently cast out of God's presence. He and they are real forces for evil in the world around us, who among other things offer temptations to lead us astray from God's plan.
5. As part of being separated from God and being tempted by Satan, we naturally sin. That's a serious issue because nothing unclean can live in the presence of God. God's plan therefore provided a Savior for us. Jesus, the Savior, paid the price for our sins so that if we accept His sacrifice and follow His teachings, we can be cleansed from sin and return to God having fulfilled our purpose for being born.
6. Because some people don't receive the opportunity to learn about Jesus and accept Him while alive, the gospel continues to be taught in what I'll call "the immediate hereafter". The immediate hereafter is what LDS typically refer to as the "spirit world".
7. At some point comes the resurrection, where our spirits literally take on physical bodies again--but this time, glorified immortal bodies. The resurrection is accompanied by our judgment.
8. After the judgment, the righteous return to the presence of God and Jesus in what we term the "celestial kingdom" and receive what we term the "celestial glory". These individuals will be like God, having fulfilled God's plan for their progression. Others will receive lesser glories.
I think that's pretty much it, in as much as a nutshell as I could fit things in.
(*) whatever that word might mean in the context of a past timeline going to infinity
I think Conan's description was on the mark. The typical LDS description of faith comes from Alma chapter 32 in the Book of Mormon: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng. In that chapter, the prophet Alma describes how your faith initially starts off as a desire to believe, but then becomes more and more certain as you see the results of your actions, or in "nourishing the word of God" as Alma puts it.
Funny. I had to text my wife after that happened.
edit: ...although it would be even better if whoever had created it had spelled Uchtdorf's name correctly. ;-)
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Where does the "millenium" come in?
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
Actually at least 12. Three witnesses attested they saw the plates and an angel; eight others declared they were shown the plates by Joseph. He may or may not have shown the plates to others. The 11 (+ Joseph) are the ones who are listed byname as witnesses. Yes, I agree; if I "found" something that valuable I'd also want to show it to the world, particularly to establish my credibility. But, if you believe the story of Joseph, he didn't "find" the plates. Their hiding place was shown to him by an angel. And, according to Joseph, he was instructed to show the plates and the translation only to those whom the Lord inspired him to do so. You can either judge this as a convenient excuse or a wise admonition. What is not debatable is that many people sought to take his life. I would assume many were also looking for these alleged golden plates. If they were real, could he or even ALL the membes of the church at the time have provided adequate security to ensure the plates from being seized at any public viewing? And i'm not just hinting at a mob taking them from Joesph. Even the government could have stepped in and claimed rightful ownership since the plates were "found" on public land. Again, it was either Joseph following the counsel of the angel to not show these plates to the world, or Joseph - and his co-conspirators - formulating a clever ruse to deceive everyone else.
As for sirkicky's claim, yes, there were a few who were later excommunicated (and one who then returned to the Church). However, those men never denied seeing the plates. The reason for their disassociation with the church was they believed (at a much later time after seeing the plates) that Joseph had become a "fallen prophet" and was no longer leading the Church in the manner they felt he should.
The false dichotomy was that we were expected to choose between was a) he really was a witness to some supernatural event, or b) he knowingly participated in some deception.
I'd be more inclined to agree with what you are saying if he was the only one to claim to have seen the plates. Since 11, on record, others have claimed to have seen the plates that lends weight to either it is true or it is some elaborate deception.
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
I agree. But since not all people believe in the BOM, I generally use biblical references such as Hebrews 11;1 (from the King James translation): "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. "
So there is a certain "leap of faith" across the unknown. To bring this down to a personal, perhaps even non-spiritual level, don't we exercise faith in many things we do or others do? Many instances in life require us to hope for things we have never seen or experienced.
b_line
Well-Known Member
My name is b_liner1 and I'm a Mormon. High five a tiger!
https://www.colbertnation.com/the-c...weh-or-no-way----mormons---god-s-poll-numbers
https://www.colbertnation.com/the-c...weh-or-no-way----mormons---god-s-poll-numbers
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
And as firmly as I believe in the LDS Church, I have no problem with those who hold to the opinion that Joeph and others came up with an elaborate ruse. In essence, that's the basis for one of the "Articles Of Faith" which Joseph penned as an outline as to what we believe:
"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."
For those interested, I'll post a link to the 13 Articles of Faith. It's a good reference for those unfamiliar with LDS doctrine.
https://mormon.org/articles-of-faith/
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
FYI: The Wiki consensus article on The Three Witnesses claims 2 returned to the church.
I'm curious where the two of you got the idea that they never waffled on whether or not they'd actually seen the plates and an angel.
We'll start with Martin Harris. The dude was, in all honesty, kind of a loon. He was all over the map his entire life on what religion he belonged to (including a couple of LDS sects like the Strangites) and made a lot of statements that would today sound objectively crazy even to religious people about angelic visitations that happened to him and all the things in his life that were affected by demonic actions (basically every minor household inconvenience). During the early Palmyra years there are MANY accounts from several different and independent sources that Harris stated that he did not see the plates physically but with his "spiritual eye." In his late life he started denying ever having made these statements and said that he saw the plates physically. But, to be honest, there are just too many accounts of him denying it over too long a period of time (about 7-8 years) to take those late-life claims very seriously.
Harris' belief in the now-mainstream version of the church does not appear to have fully survived the assassination of Joseph Smith.
David Whitmer died having rejected the LDS church and its authority to claim the priesthood. In the early 1830s he stated that he didn't see the plates physically but instead with "an eye of faith." Whitmer's story as to how and when he saw the plates changes dramatically over time as well. At various points he appears to claim that he found the plates independently or happening to have seen other items (such as Laban's sword) independent of Joseph Smith.
Of the three Cowdery appears to have hewed closest to the original story. One always wonders what is in the purported Cowdery history of the church.
All three were excommunicated. Harris in 1837. Cowdery and Whitmer in 1838. Really the whole period of 1837 to 1846 or so is a very tumultuous time for the church. It's astonishing the church survived it.
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
I stand corrected.