mrmarklin

Nonsense. Many cultures have creation myths. Why is that less scientific than anything else?

There are many creation stories from many cultures. So creationism is not per se Christian. Or even necessarily religious. It’s an alternative that could be presented as an alternative to evolution. Not that it’s any more believable.

Normal is a fairly broad spectrum. I consider myself a normal person, but not a normal LDS. Throughout my life, even in youth all my best friends were not and aren’t members. My interests have not coincided with those of my peers in my local area. I’m not a hard core temple goer and I have no problem using a great deal of my time doing my hobbies and traveling with my friends outside the church. I have held callings, but currently don’t. I’ve privately disagreed with many policies from SLC, mostly because our leaders are products of what I call Mormon culture. They have a difficult time seeing beyond Utah, it this is hopefully changing. It’s still the best way to live. I have a great family.

You have no idea of my experiences. But I’ve lived long enough and interacted with enough people that I know that being an active member of the church is a very good way to live. I live in a very cosmopolitan area and have seen a lot.

I don’t know why any normal person would leave the Church. It’s a great way to live. Our beliefs are simple. Everything taught is to the benefit of us remaining with our families, and returning to the greater family of God. This has been taught since the beginning of the restoration. And is the impetus to build temples so we can be sealed to our families, and covenant with God so we are ultimately sealed to Him. God created the Church so we can return to Him, and bring our children with us. There is nothing else. Grievances about supposed bad acts of past and current Church leaders are just excuses to not follow the program. But make no mistake, all our leaders have been always pointed in the direction of preserving families.

It’s a small market. I doubt any of them are getting rich.

The mandate is the problem. From a neutral point of view, since no one knows how we got here, having a deity create us is as good a theory as any. Evolution, the current hypothesis, is at least as far fetched as God. But people believe it implicitly!

I believe Jesus was married monogamously with Mary Magdalene. Mostly because she was the first to see Him as a risen person. There is certainly no proof of any sort, and the Church is wise to avoid taking a position on this controversial topic. Further, I believe if He was married, that there was no issue. That would have put the apostles in an untenable position in eventually running the church. Who else could be the leader except the Savior’s son? Did the Jews practice polygamy in the Roman era? If so, there is no mention of it in the Bible. The Romans didn’t practice it AFAIK.

Only churchmen such as cardinals had a pay cut. The lay workers did not. On another note, ideas about taxation on this thread make me laugh out loud. GAAP? Really? All charities in the US at least, pay taxes on business income that’s not directly connected to the charity’s purposes. This applies to churches as well. The LDS church changed a lot of policies regarding fund raising and other things, as a result of this law. I’m sure the LDS church is incorporated separately in all countries where it has a presence to isolate the main church HQ here in the US from other nation’s laws. I think Canada requires some public reporting of finances. At some level, it would be good to know some details of Church finances. But it’s not hard to see why it had to go dark. Huntsman’s lawsuit is just a ploy to get “discovery” so that the Church will be forced disclose financial information.

It’s likely that the Church uses independent auditors to examine some of its business operations. But maybe not. Obviously, if the Church has nothing to hide, and I believe it doesn’t, there is nothing to fear. Keep in mind that according to US tax law, it can do almost anything it wants with the funds, and renders accounts to no one. Not even the IRS.

I read a bunch of the comments and then skipped a lot. All of us are totally ignorant of what the church’s income is or its balance sheet except for the $100 billion which has been acknowledged. Other than a few relatively small bunch of transactions, we don’t know exactly how the church spends its money. After all the kilobytes spent, some of you are fairly worked up about perceived fraud. As someone who has been peripheral in the church accounting system I will say this. The church uses fund accounting. It has a strong internal audit system. It’s likely that outside accounting firms are used to audit the Church’s funds given the internal audit program, but I have no direct knowledge that this is true. You guys need to get a life angsting over all of this. BTW, I heard President Nelson has had a revelation to build a Palace in or near Central SLC, so he can keep up with the Pope. 🙃

Legally, the Church can do almost anything with the tithing funds. Including saving them!

Since there is no allegation that anyone enriched themselves, the benefits of tithing reside within the giver. They can take mine and burn it for all I care. I’ve already had the blessings.

True.

There is evidence. Unfortunately, unlike the Romans, the Nephite civilization was succeeded by degenerate people. Therefore we have no written record of history after 421 CE. And it is difficult to relate findings with what little we know of how the Nephites lived. But there are ruins of great civilizations in the Americas, and it’s obvious that there was great knowledge available at one time. Some have postulated that these peoples were greater than the Romans. Are we going to find a sign somewhere that says “Nephi slept here”? Likely not. I doubt anything definitive will be found in our lifetimes, as only around 2% of all possibilities have been made known up until now. And most of the good ruins post date the Nephites by centuries.