The Nehor

Which is a blast against image worship and not other gods. Idols were not the Greek gods any more than the ark of the Covenant was the Israelite God. Humans and elements were not considered the same thing or considered to come from the same source in Greek philosophy or religion. Except Aratus didn’t mean that nor did Paul’s audience seem to believe that is what Aratus or Paul meant. You’re relying way too much on a word choice that you think has to be literal. ”He is a son to me.” Someone in the far future could read a line like that and assume that means I must be a literal son. Plutarch would probably have been less than ten years old at this point. He was more of the “world-soul” type where human souls would be emanations of God. Premortal souls existing is a thing. Doesn’t really support a parent/child relationship between God and humanity. At least not one compatible with LDS theology.

Yes, I now worship El and his goddess Asherah. I keep going back further in time.

All of Christianity is just Jewish apostates. We’re all going to burn in hell for our heresy. That is all.

I have no idea. I am just saying that in the Genesis story there is no indication that they are immune to aging or immortal. That seems like the kind of thing you mention if you think it is important.

Yes, he slips in a standard idol polemic similar to how Jeremiah (and others) did. That is not the main thrust of what he is saying though. In the verses before he talks about how God has granted humanity all their power and reason. He is claiming that one God is the source of all life. He was arguing that humans and the divine are more alike than idols and the divine. It is not about being biologically related. If the argument was that God and humans are biologically related because Zeus and humans are biologically related it falls apart even faster when someone points out that Zeus and humans aren’t biologically related. He is arguing that God created man in his own image. Not that God birthed humanity. I suspect Paul is probably about to transition into teaching that Jesus is the perfect representation of God in a way that surpasses all idols since he starts talking about Jesus and the resurrection. Again, he is using a quotation about a Greek pagan god who is not biologically related to humanity. Why would he do that to try to show that God is somehow biologically related to humanity? He is talking to philosophers. They would shoot him down in seconds. Paul is preaching the superiority of the God he is preaching by tying God to creating humanity. There is a lot of Greek philosophy tied up in how humanity is different from the animals and the natural world but he is pointing towards a greater God. I am not familiar enough with Greek philosophy to go beyond that. I know a bit but if I tried to explain it I would probably get a lot of it wrong. The most powerful counterargument is that if humanity was being taught to be the biological children of God why did no one at the time pick up on or engage with that idea? Instead it is suddenly discovered to mean that over a millenium later by a faith that preaches that this is the case. If you can only find this idea in the text when you bring that idea to the text it is probably not in the actual text.

Just…..no. The “we are his offspring” bit is Paul quoting Arastus of Soli, a poet. It is part of an invocation to Zeus at the beginning of a poem about astronomy: “From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood. He tells what time the soil is best for the labour of the ox and for the mattock, and what time the seasons are favourable both for the planting of trees and for casting all manner of seeds. For himself it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations, and for the year devised what stars chiefly should give to men right signs of the seasons, to the end that all things might grow unfailingly. Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.” To suggest that Paul is declaring that humanity is the literal biological offspring of God based on this quotation would mean that Zeus was believed to be the literal biological father of all of humanity in Greek mythology which he is not. Paul is just using this poem as part of a philosophical argument. Paul is not quoting Greco-Roman mythology to establish the kind of divine parentage the LDS Church teaches. That is just silly. It is reading into the text something the author and/or Paul never intended.

Cool, I am gonna just opt out of working for the pro-slavery genocidal God. You do you though.

The Bible does not teach that.

Physical addictions get stronger when the physical body is gone? I know where this comes from but it is just not very logical. It is just apostolic rationalizing without any revelation or scripture backing it up. Plus it is almost always about addictions. We have to make all of these moral failings instead of medical problems and then wonder why they keep happening. Le sigh.

Yes, probably. That was the one verse that opposed it but I did question if Lehi would have actually known that by revelation or just guessed. It is not in the Bible. In fact the idea that they were immortal wasn’t in the Bible either.

You should definitely not send me all your money. Definitely do not do that.

I think it is less about everyone not being as sex positive as teddyaware (that feels weird to type) and more about why physical beings having sex would create spirit beings since that doesn’t make a ton of sense. Also why you would need a sex process to form spirit beings out of intelligences or whatever spirit beings are made of.

It can mean that but Jesus was talking to Peter. This is what apostles and prophets say but do they really have an insight into how this works after death. I am dubious. It also seems like a really reflexive thing you would say if someone says they aren’t too worried about it because they can change later. You would want to tell them that that is a bad idea. It might even be a bad idea but I find myself doubting that they checked in when giving the reason that it is harder to repent in the next world……especially considering almost everyone is going to repent in the next world. Is it really that much harder at that point? I doubt this is going to happen. I can buy the first part but everyone agreeing that their supposed willful rejection of God deserves eternal punishment and that this is justice by any measure. Yeah, not buying it. This is screwed up Romans 1 type thinking where all sinners actually know the gospel is true and just willfully reject it because they want to sin and practice idolatry. And this rejection is also said to be what causes all kinds of wonderful vices. Also God leaves these reprobate non-Israelites/non-Christians and because of God departing from them they (amongst other things) become very very gay. So Paul clearly had no idea what he was talking about since that is not how any of that works. It is just some Israelite bigotry he picked up somewhere.

Universalists. Amongst the Church Fathers that includes Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Gregory of Nyssa. I like Gregory the best. He is also the only ancient writer we know of that declared that slavery as an institution is inherently sinful. Sadly his view did not catch on. Later the Christian universalist schools lost out to those who thought the wicked were punished eternally. The ones who thought sinners were annihilated also lost. Then it came back. You can find lots of varieties of Universalism within Christianity today. Some believe in a kind of purgatory but that all will escape it. The LDS Church has something similar (sort of) but they also tier up heaven so that some will never get into the cool kids club. Some don’t even have that purgatory. So yeah, that is a lot more pleasant. Of course the variant of this is that there is a kind of universalism but is limited to a specific group (those good old Book of Mormon Zoramites for example). This gives you the joy of a kind of guaranteed salvation but also lets you other and marginalize the inferiors who aren’t getting in.

Ugh, I know I am going to hell but if Stanley is there it will be intolerable. Gotta make sure Stanley ends up anywhere else! There was a really stupid Christian made a few years back called “Nefarious” that includes a demon that basically preaches the far-right evangelical gospel to try to get his manifesto published but it made no sense. The demon was really stupid. All the characters come across as stupid actually since they were too busy preaching to make anything make any sense.

The explanation I sometimes hear is that God changed His mind but that has its own problems. And yeah, identifying the serpent with Satan came later and is probably extrabiblical. They call Satan “the snake” in the Apocalypse but that is probably a reference to Leviathan and not the snake in the Garden. One theory I had was that humanity was supposed to progress normally in a Terrestrial environment and then partake of the fruit when they were ready. The equivalent of the end of the Millenium when those born during it are tested. This time the plan failed or was ‘hacked’ deliberately as a rescue mission for fallen spirits (i.e. us). I don’t really hold to it anymore. Now I see the story as a story about a snake that thought it was clever and a God who needs better agricultural planning. Don’t put the stuff you don’t want the kids to eat in the middle of all the stuff you do want them to eat. Idiot. That and a metaphor. It has certainly impacted mine.

I read the scriptures and God is not the kind of boss I like to work for.

This is just speculation. Also, it sounds awful. You must serve the same person and only act with their approval…….forever. The only possible balm being that eventually someone will have to get your approval to do anything….though do you have to pass that up the chain too? Yuck.

That is easy. Universalism doesn’t give you anyone to hate, exclude, and other. Also if people were choosing a faith based primarily on how nice God is and how everyone goes onto eternal joy there are other faiths that promise this to a much greater degree than the LDS Church does.

Making and keeping covenants under false pretenses. If those don’t count as God lying then I don’t think there is any plausible way in general to show that God lied. I use eternal to talk about the duration of it and conscious to separate it from places like the old Sheol of Judaism which sounds hellish but you go there and aren’t in a state to feel it is good or bad. Conscious means you know it is bad. Admittedly the Church walked back a lot of the doctrine of hell taught in the Book of Mormon and made it eternal for only a few but for some it is eternal or maybe there is some end that God can’t or won’t share. Yet when I go with the “trust nothing” approach other members look at me oddly and back away slowly. I have been in the Church for a long time and I have almost no idea what the afterlife involves. We know almost nothing about it and have a few barebones statements about it that came by revelation that are often ambiguous or unclear. Then we have heaps and heaps of speculation about it. Some of it ‘feels’ good but that is a horrible indicator of truth.

D&C 131 comes from a summary of the teachings of Joseph Smith written by William Clayton about a series of meetings. He put some things in quotes suggesting they were direct quotes and other things not in quotes suggesting they are summaries. The bit about their being three subdivisions in the Celestial Kingdom is not in quotes. Also their being three glories or degrees kind of suggests that Joseph was talking about the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial divisions and not some further subdivision. Also no one took up the idea that there were subdivisions in the Celestial kingdom from the text until much later. This leaves me a little dubious of everything in this section. Particularly stuff that isn’t said anywhere else.

There are plenty of other religions that it is “okay” to make fun of and mock.

Okay, but did Jesus preach to the Watchers or not?

i am not particularly comfortable with this. If you want to take the “ostensibly” part out God lies throughout the Old Testament. Starting with the “surely die” one the day you eat of it since they both lived for over 24 hours. You have God sending forth lying spirits. You have prophets prophesying military victory and then being defeated when the rival king sacrifices his son to call on the power of their own god. The hellenization was an eternal conscious hell existing at all yet we still have it in our theology. At which point why feel comfortable with any element of our theology as it doesn’t really matter if it is correct or not. You could even argue that teaching false doctrine that convinces people to make and keep covenants is holier than teaching truth that might be less convincing.

By this standard any reasoning that gets people to make and keep covenants is good even if the premises of the reasoning are false. You hit the problem of God ostensibly being a God of Truth who cannot lie. Then again, on the other hand, there are plenty of times in the Old Testament where God specifically lies or instructs others to lie on His behalf. Even in the Doctrine & Covenants the rationale for describing hell as endless as a scare tactic is acknowledged as being misleading by God but was allowed to stand because it worked on our minds to produce a good result even though it was supposedly a misunderstanding. And to make things more confusing the concept of hell wasn’t around in early Christianity. In the gospels and early Pauline stuff the relatively rare cases where the result of disobedience are discussed the fate of the ‘wicked’ is annihilation and not ongoing conscious torment. The only book of the New Testament that provides a lot of the current stuff Christianity in general believes about hell is Revelation. And those portions read more like the revenge fantasies of the writer who is understandably very upset about all the Christians being killed and wants God to dish out some suffering. It reads like the lament in Psalms that blesses the person who kills Babylonian infants by smashing them against stones. I get that the writer is angry but I am not sure the punishment they want to dish out is somehow good or holy or should be taken as commentaries on eternity. The modern versions of hell seem to owe more to stories of the afterlife coming from other parts of the Greco-Roman world than to early Christianity (or Judaism).