89 replies to this topic

[Cheeseinator]

slornie, on 10 September 2011 - 07:07 AM, said:

Out of interest, what verse would that be?

The one that was always thrown at us are some of the very last verses in the Bible, Revelation 22:18-19 which says:

Quote

18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

So it seems to say that if anyone tries to add to the bible, or add more scripture then God will smite such people with plagues and whatnot, implying that there can be no other scripture.

This is wrong considering a few things:

1. When John wrote that, there was no bible. "This Book" does not refer to the whole bible, but only to the Book Of Revelation. Because there was no Bible, the Bible as we know did not exist until around 300-400 AD. Before then all of the books of the bible were floating around in circulation. Revelation is guessed to have been written anywhere from 60-100 AD and it was just one of many texts that the early Chrisitans had. It wasn't until about 400 AD that some people got together and decided what was canon and what wasn't canon, they basically voted on what should go into the bible. And that's how we got the Bible.

2. John's other book in the Bible, the Gospel of John, is thought to have been written from 90-100 AD. Indicating that it was perhaps written after the Book Of Revelation. Which may be very well true, as the greek in the gospel of John is a lot smoother, more polished, whereas the greek of Revelation seems to be far more "primitive" full of grammatical errors and whatnot. Of course we don't have the original copies so we can only speculate. But there's a lot of evidence for the Gospel of John being written after Revelations. Thus if we were to go with the common Christian assertion that you can't add to the bible, John just added to the bible.

3. It says that if any man should take away from the book again he would be similarly cursed. Well if this were to mean the whole bible then a lot of people have been smitten indeed for there are at least 18 books, that are mentioned in the bible, but aren't there. The Book of Jasher, the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Nathan, etc. There are lot of books missing from the bible. A clear indication that the book isn't a perfect impervious monolith containing all we need to know about God and his gospel. Though I suppose one could argue that God didn't intend to have all of that info and it was his will that such books should be held from us.

4. Here's the crusher, this is the best one to combat this false doctrine of there cannot be more scripture. Deuteronomy 4:2 says the following:

Quote

2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.

This is the one that would make people very angry and red faced. This is the ultimate ownage right here. Even the most conservative biblically based believer knows that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, and that Moses lived a looonnnggg time before John. So should one conclude that you can't add more scripture based on Rev. 22: 18-19, then by this same reasoning everything written after Deu. 4:2 is a frivolous addition to scripture and whoever wrote all of that is deserving of plagues indeed. Thereby making pretty much all of the bible false and only the first 5 books of the bible correct.

Pretty faulty logic if you ask me. The obvious conclusion here is that Rev. 22: 18-19 and Deu. 4: 2 refer only to their respective books and not to the bible as a whole. Thus the bible does not say that there cannot be other scripture outside of itself.  

slornie, on 10 September 2011 - 07:07 AM, said:

The only thing i really find troublesome about the heaven/hell stuff is how it works for people who never had the opportunity to "discover God".  In the Christian faith salvation is through accepting Jesus as God's son who died for and in place of us, right?  What about all the billions of people who died before Jesus was even born?  Or all those in the 2000 years since who lived in parts of the world untouched by his story.  Are they damned in the afterlife due to some technicality about when or where they lived?

Ah, I was hoping someone would bring this up. We've got doctrines that cover this issue too

Firstly if you believe in a divine all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect being, naturally this being would be perfectly just, a perfect sense of justice. Know surely a just god would not consign those ignorant of him to an endless torment.

In my church we've got at least two doctrines to cover this:

1. God grants salvation to those who 'would' have accepted him and his gospel during their mortal life. This would only make sense if one believes that god knows all, and would be the only being capable of unbiased judging, as he would know everything about us, our thoughts, desires, actions, etc.

2. The way he does that is through what we call 'Vicarious Ordinances for the dead'. It says many many times in the scriptures that you have to be baptized to be saved. It's a requirement, we believe that wholeheartedly. So if baptism is a necessary requirement for salvation (also I might add that baptisms that are performed with the proper authority, which is a huge discussion in itself, basically it means being baptized in any church doesn't count, its gotta be the right one). So then what all of the billions of people that never got a chance to be baptized? Well we believe someone has got to do it for them. We call them 'Baptisms For the Dead'. Note that its baptisms for the dead, not baptisms of the dead, lest you conjure up in your minds a weird image of people digging up graves and baptizing corpses, (as I did when I was kid and was first taught the principle). Basically its this: My great great grandfather was never baptized so we've got this special ordinance where I could be baptized in his place, and thus he would have the requirement checked off for him. Which is why our church is obsessed with collecting genealogical information. Looking up names and dates of deceased ancestors going back hundreds of years. We pour over records from all over the world as far back as we can find. I think for my own family it goes back to 17th century Wales and Scotland, we've not yet found any family records older than that. In fact I think our church has the world's largest genealogical research center in the world here in Utah, and all, regardless of faith or belief can come and access the records we've amassed to find out about their family history for free. You can do it online for free as well. It's pretty neat.

Though that brings up another element of what we believe about the after life. What I stated in my earlier post is only half of the picture. We believe that there's a space in between heaven and mortality. We call it the 'Spirit World', it's neither heaven nor hell nor here in the physical world. The closest mainstream Christian doctrine that you all might be familiar with is that of purgatory. We believe that once you die your spirit leaves your body and goes to this spirit world. In this world there are two divisions, a paradise and a prison. Those who go to paradise were those who believed in God, were good people, were baptized with the correct authority, and continued being faithful church members throughout their lives. Those who go to prison are those who didn't do so well or who didn't even know about God or Jesus or any of that stuff. Now this might seem unfair at first. But firstly the prison isn't a torture chamber, no flames and no suffering for your sins. For those who were actually bad, and knew it, they might be rather uncomfortable up there, having to dwell on their not so stellar performance and un-repented of mistakes. The people in paradise don't sit around and chill, they go over to the prison side and teach those who never had a chance to hear the gospel while they were alive. Now these people, after they've been taught simply await someone on earth, someone alive, to be baptized for them, when that happens they get to switch over to the paradise side. They stay up there until the end of the world and the 2nd coming and all of that stuff, then comes the resurrection, then the final judgement, then the placing of everyone into their proper place into the graded heaven that I talked about earlier.

So we believe that there are all of these people up there waiting for us to find their info and get baptized for them. That's why we work so feverishly in this genealogical stuff. Now there are people who's records we will likely never find, think of all the people who've died without reading and writing who didn't keep written records, or who's records have been lost from history. Well that's where #1 comes in. God will make up for those who's info we couldn't find. Nevertheless he expects us to do our best to get as many as we can. Also we believe that during the Millennium, (the 1000 year period after the end of the world but before the judgement and all that) there's gonna be some neat new information and tools available for us to find info for those who we couldn't previously.



So in that sense everyone's covered. Everyone's got an equal chance at salvation, wether you've heard of God or not.

[Piglet]

So what you're saying is that your wall of text really has meaning to it? Jeez... now I need to find the time to read through all of it >.> Way to go cheese!

[Malus Rune]

hagren, on 10 September 2011 - 04:26 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure that living with Jesus' teachings in mind is a sufficient form of belief (Or acting similarly for any other motivation)- because through living by (or near to) his example, you are sharing his views on morality and humanity, and thus believe his way to be right.

Aye, that's the only interpretation that could conceivably make sense to me.

Having said that, I never believed in any form of Hell as a Christian. I've never believed in "justice" as a concept in terms of people getting "what they deserve", so the idea of sending anyone, no matter how evil, to eternal suffering- especially when you're omnipotent and can easily stop them hurting people in whatever afterlife they end up in- wasn't anything I could condone. That and as I recall, initial references were just made to "death" for the un-saved; the myth of a place of fire and torture came because of imagery concerning Gehenna, a trash-burning dump outside Jerusalem. Or something like that.

[clue]

Sounds like an awesome experience you had in Texas, cheese. I went on a mission in Haiti. It was only a week, so obviously less immerse than your two year epic, but it was enlightening and life-changing nonetheless.

I find a lot of the Mormon beliefs that you have described to be very interesting. However, other ideas I disagree with.

Cheeseinator, on 09 September 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

Now having scripture outside of the bible is something that most other Christian religions give us a shitload of crap for. They claim that the Bible is all there is and it says that there cannot be any other scripture outside of the bible (completely untrue)
(jump to another part of cheese's text)
Another thing that a lot of Christians hate us mormons for is that we believe that the Bible isn't perfect. We state that "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly." In other words not all of the bible is true, it has a lot of errors. Centuries of copying and re-copying + corrupt people who removed and added things to the bible = the record we have today.

I disagree, not so much as with the possibility of extra-Biblical texts, but with the possibility of the modern versions of the Bible being erroneous. It is my belief that the Bible is the word of God, written by men of integrity through divine inspiration or other means. Some mistakes such as, "Paul went to X town on his way to Y town" versus "Paul went to Z town on his way to Y town" are not important. I do not believe that God would allow for the fundamentals of the Bible to be manipulated.

When it comes to the Gospels and the Book of Acts, the men who wrote them were entirely dedicated to the teachings of Jesus and the acts of the Apostles. They had nothing to gain by standing by their writings and witness accounts  of Jesus' resurrection, in fact they risked death. Early Christians were persecuted, as many of you may know.

There are more than five thousand Greek New Testament manuscripts in existence today, the largest of any Greek manuscript. In fact, the second most abundant of manuscripts are of Homer's Illiad, which was practically a holy book of the ancient Greeks, which had about 650 manuscripts. Therefore, the fundamentals of the New Testament are very accurate in today's Bibles.

Cheeseinator, on 09 September 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

In my experience that's somewhat different than the J-Dub method of trapping you on your porch and brandishing the
Bible in your face like some sort of weapon.
(removed text)
That brings up another thing that sets us apart from most other Christian religions. Whereas some like the J-dubs and Adventists will try to convert by "proving" that they're right and telling you must join them or you will burn in hell, we on the other hand simply present what we believe in, tell them how our beliefs have greatly benefited us personally, and how it can benefit them, and we give them material to read, usually the Book of Mormon, and we say, study this, pray about it, in fact you can just pray to God and ask him if all of this ^@!$ we've been telling you is true! And if you do that and it feels right then you can join our church! But the choice is yours, it's ultimately up to you.  
I dunno how that sounds to you guys, but I find that method superior to others who try to force their opinions on you.

I agree with you here. While we were in Haiti, we painted houses, worked on the construction of buildings, and simply showed love to the children in the villages there. It is my opinion that acts of kindness, actually showing people God's love, is more effective than speech. A big part of my church here in Miami is community outreach is helping people in practical ways, and then we tell them that we are just trying to show God's love.

Cheeseinator, on 09 September 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

mormons believe that they can become gods

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ermmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I do not agree with you here for... a multitude of reasons

Edited by clue, 13 September 2011 - 08:32 PM.

[Cheeseinator]

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

I disagree, not so much as with the possibility of extra-Biblical texts, but with the possibility of the modern versions of the Bible being erroneous. It is my belief that the Bible is the word of God, written by men of integrity through divine inspiration or other means. Some mistakes such as, "Paul went to X town on his way to Y town" versus "Paul went to Z town on his way to Y town" are not important.

We also believe that the various writers of the Bible were inspired, we believe it to be true to the letter as it came out of mouths (or pens or whatever they used to write with) of the original writers. Unfortunately we also believe that it's been severely corrupted in many places. And far more corruptions than mixing up place names as your example above, whole doctrines have been corrupted and entirely false doctrines have been built upon what we would consider errors in the bible.

Here's one of my favorite examples:

John 1: 18

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

I'm using the KJV by the way.

So from this scripture one could conclude that nobody has ever seen God... ever. Yet there are many many scriptures you can find in the Bible which indicate that many people have indeed seen God!

Examples:

Genesis 32: 30

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

Isaiah 6: 1-5

1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

And some more references should anyone be interested:

Exodus 24: 9-11
Numbers 12: 5-8
Acts 7: 55-56

So we have a problem here. We have one scripture that says that nobody has ever seen God yet we also have a handful of scriptures that say that people have seen God. So what can we conclude here? We've got a few options. 1. The Bible contradicts itself and is therefore not true. 2. At least one or some of of those scriptures don't actually mean what they say. (This was the most common explanation people would always give us, also the most retarded. What else could it mean? So we're going to cross this one out.) 3. One or some of them must not be translated correctly.

We go with #3 that John 1: 18 has been altered in someway by someone here's what our corrected version, called the JST (Joseph Smith Translation) looks like:

And no man hath seen God at any time, except he hath borne record of the Son; for except it is through him no man can be saved.

So now our scripture says that nobody can see God, unless they've borne record of the Son, meaning that they have a really really strong "testimony" as we call of it, of the son. Meaning that you've got to have a lot of faith. Before you've seen God. This makes a lot of sense. Because in these other instances in the bible where people have seen god they all have something in common. They're all prophets, they're specially chosen people by God to speak his word. To do such a thing requires a lot of faith.

Interestingly enough the JST version of John 1: 18 sounds a lot like John 6: 46

Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.

Now this seems to say that only people that are of god can see god. Someone of God would probably have a lot of faith and maybe be a prophet too, same explanation as above.

See the consistency that the corrected verses bring to the bible? We had a clear contradiction, and only in their corrected states do these passages not contradict themselves. This shows that yes indeed there are some serious errors/mistranslations in the bible.

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

I do not believe that God would allow for the fundamentals of the Bible to be manipulated.

This goes back to what I was talking about in my earlier post about agency. God allows us to pretty much anything we want. He doesn't like when we do these things and he has all power and could if he wanted to prevent us from doing bad things. But that would remove the whole point of life. Like I said, if God stopped everyone from doing bad things then we'd essentially become drooling mindless morons, unable to make decisions on our own and choose what is right on our own. We'd expected God to make all of the good decisions for us. Besides, God has allowed far worse things to happen, think of all the numerous episodes of death and destruction on epic scales, surely that's more awful than people manipulating his word? But I guess that depends on your opinion.

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

When it comes to the Gospels and the Book of Acts, the men who wrote them were entirely dedicated to the teachings of Jesus and the acts of the Apostles. They had nothing to gain by standing by their writings and witness accounts  of Jesus' resurrection, in fact they risked death. Early Christians were persecuted, as many of you may know.

Agreed

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

There are more than five thousand Greek New Testament manuscripts in existence today, the largest of any Greek manuscript. In fact, the second most abundant of manuscripts are of Homer's Illiad, which was practically a holy book of the ancient Greeks, which had about 650 manuscripts. Therefore, the fundamentals of the New Testament are very accurate in today's Bibles.

Okay... And the point here is...? While there are a lot of copies floating around we don't have any of the originals, we don't even have copies of copies of the originals. And if I remember correctly not all of them say exactly the same thing, the most marked difference being in the Qumran scrolls if I remember correctly.

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

I agree with you here. While we were in Haiti, we painted houses, worked on the construction of buildings, and simply showed love to the children in the villages there. It is my opinion that acts of kindness, actually showing people God's love, is more effective than speech. A big part of my church here in Miami is community outreach is helping people in practical ways, and then we tell them that we are just trying to show God's love.

We did a bit of that service as well, we had to physical service of that kind for at least 4 hours a week in addition to proselyting. We did much of the same, painting, throwing up fences, picking up trash. And it's true what you say about such acts of kindness, as they say actions speak louder than words and people were often far open willing to listen what we had to say after they had seen us out going about performing such service.

clue, on 13 September 2011 - 08:31 PM, said:

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ermmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I do not agree with you here for... a multitude of reasons

Most people are uncomfortable with this one. But it makes sense, as I said in my previous post, are we not children of God? And if we were children of God what would we grow up to be? There's also some tenative biblical backing to this doctrine of ours, my personal favorite came from Jesus himself:

John 10: 34

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

Other biblical references to this doctrine include:

Psalms 82:6 (This is the one that Jesus is quoting in the above example)
1 Corinthians 8: 5-6

But we don't use the bible to prove the veracity our doctrines to others, it can help, but as I mentioned before we tell people to think about it, read about it, and then pray about it. Most Christians believe that God can and will answer prayers. People didn't always believe some of the more odd things we taught them (like having living prophets and apostles in the present day). We told them that they shouldn't take our word for it, go take God's word for it! He probably knows if doctrine X is or isn't true. So you can go pray and ask him should that tickle your fancy.

[BOTA:99]

I think Cluey is the perfect example of what a Christian should be personally. He has his beliefs and feelings and very strongly at that and dedicates himself to helping others whenever and however he can yet he also has no problem talking and being friends with someone like myself who could not be more of a polar opposite to him and his beliefs. That is the type of Christian this world needs more of.

[hagren]

This is the type of individual the world needs more of, period

[Thunder]

I don't really know what I am nowadays. I used to consider myself an atheist/non-believer but that kinda changed. Now I'm not sure what to be. I am hovering between things such as agnosticism, deism and polytheism. Simply put my beliefs are hard to describe and I don't really know myself how they work at the present time.

[Piglet]

Don't go for deiism.

Just be whatever you want to be and why does it have to be named?

I justb elieve in a God of some sorts to some extent and he may or may not be the God of the bible =P

[Dei]

But..but..Deiism is fuuun.. :c

[BOTA:99]

Wait? You have.... worshipers??  

[Piglet]

Mattism is way better than Deiism though!

[Thunder]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

[Malus Rune]

It's funny because Piglet's belief system incorporates many deist characteristics, from the sounds of his posts here.

[Cheeseinator]

Ah so Dei has actually been a god all of this time. And we scarcely knew it.

I guess we gotta start making sacrifices of catnip to him.

[Dei]

>:3 ...Fish is acceptable aswell.

[Piglet]

I am a deist in a way. Though I do think that the 'creator' can step in and will step in if things get too bad.

[Valdez]

Dei is definitely a god. The latin word for God was named after Dei's username on PF



...



tbh I think one of the main problems with the definitions of God from way back, was that they made him too OP by making him absolute. For example if you're an omnipotent being, are you able to use your power to create a problem that even your absolute power cannot solve? If you could create such a problem, then you are not all powerful because your power can't solve the problem. If you couldn't create such a problem, then you are also not all powerful because then it means there is something in the world that you cannot do, which contradicts the definition of all powerful, so it becomes a logical paradox.

There are plenty of other omni-paradoxes concerning god, for example http://wiki.ironchar...science_paradox

Edited by Valdez, 17 September 2011 - 01:03 AM.

[Malus Rune]

I'd think that in the type of theism that believes in a completely all-powerful deity, God is sufficiently interlinked with time and circumstance that tomorrow is what he wills it to be from the get-go. For me the more convincing paradox is "Could God create an object too heavy for him to lift?"

Having said that, I think that the big problem I have with an All-Powerful God is that he's also meant to be All-Loving. One would think that if such a God existed, things like the Holocaust and the black plague might not have happened.

Although David Attenborough is (I believe) an agnostic, and merely believes that life negates Creationism, rather than negates God himself, I think this quote is quite apt:

My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.

[Valdez]

Malus Rune, on 17 September 2011 - 01:53 AM, said:

Having said that, I think that the big problem I have with an All-Powerful God is that he's also meant to be All-Loving. One would think that if such a God existed, things like the Holocaust and the black plague might not have happened.

There are entire philosophical issues all around this http://en.wikipedia....Problem_of_evil

....like I said, when people started saying God was omni-this and omni-that, it started creating problems with logic and philosophy. It's also one of the reasons I don't subscribe to a religion, more often that not, stuff in religion forces you to apply heavy amounts of suspension of disbelief (simple example: Jesus walks on water) and in these modern times people tend to be more logic-driven.


I personally don't support theodicy so I'm perfectly fine with imagining a god that is not benevolent, at least not by human standards of benevolence. If we chose to apply human stndards of benevolence, it's as good as saying stuff like the holocaust and black plague were justifiable "because God allows it to have taken place"

Edited by Valdez, 17 September 2011 - 02:35 AM.