None means None

[Russell C McGregor]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

Then there seems to be no reason that you need to be here trashing us since the Holy Spirit will force us to believe in what God wants us to believe when it is time.

Only if we're of the elect.

I've got Jim's number now: he's a TULIP Calvinist.

If we're not one of the elect, then we'll deservedly go to Hell for our sins.

If we're not one of the elect, the Calvinist God knowingly (and therefore intentionally) created us for no other purpose than to condemn us to an eternity of unremitting torture, being roasted alive. Apparently so that the elect would appreciate how merciful he's being to them.

However, even the mercy aspect is somewhat problematic. Because if we are one of the elect, the Calvinist God seemingly created us for no other purpose than to condemn us to an eternity of unremitting torture, in that we will be forced to spend forever with Calvinists like Jim.

 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

Oh my gosh. That is the same line you guys were using when I discovered the internet in the 90s. Total flashback.

Lot of flashbacking with Stiles for me.  Makes me grateful I didn't get first exposed to apologetics when it was on the AOL boards as this stuff is so boring.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Calm

[carbon dioxide]

10 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

I suggest you go back to Southern Virginia University and tell tall tales about how you defeated the combined armies of geologists, hydrologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, Egyptologists, theologians, linguists, and biologists that are united against the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, and the LDS church.

The Unity Word for Today is Kinderhook.

You pretty much can find armies of scholars from different fields at any university in America that are united against most Bible claims. 

[juliann]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Lot of flashbacking with Stiles for me.  Makes me grateful I didn't get first exposted to apologetics when it was on the AOL boards as this stuff is so boring.

They can only "win" at this stuff if they flash mob their targets. We had the patience back then to demand a level playing ground with no Church stuff used and none of their church stuff used, only mainstream scholarship of the Bible. That excluded the Bible colleges. They can't "win" if it is Bible to Bible....and especially if the early Christian Fathers are used. When we began they used to think deification was so hilarious. Within a few years they were claiming they believed in it too. Ours was just the "wrong kind."  In the good old days it was almost all fanatic Evangelicals thinking they could compete with people who had degrees in biblical studies.

Can you imagine Jim against a humanist? What he isn't acknowledging, and it is unfortunate....how low public opinion of fundamentalist evangelicals has dropped because of the "I'm saved and yer not!" antics. It has harmed the public perception of all religion. Party on Jim.

[carbon dioxide]

On 2/4/2016 at 5:44 PM, Jim Stiles said:

First heaven is the sky/atmosphere.  Second heaven is interplanetary/interstellar/intergalactic space.  Third heaven is where God and the elect angels live.

 

Complete nonsense.  There is no evidence that ancient people understood where the atmosphere ended and where space began.  They did not really understand the stars.  As far as they were concerned, the stars, space, and sky and atmosphere are all part of the same heaven. 

"The question, however, naturally arises in the modern mind, schooled as it is in the almost infinite nature of sky and space: Did scientifically naive peoples really believe in a solid sky, or were they just employing a mythological or poetic concept?.... The answer to these questions ... is that scientifically naive peoples thought of the solid sky as an integral part of their physical universe. And it is precisely because ancient peoples were scientifically naive that they did not distinguish between the appearance of the sky and their scientific concept of the sky. They had no reason to doubt what their eyes told them was true, namely that the stars above were fixed in a solid dome and the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So they equated appearance with reality and concluded that the sky must be a solid part of the universe just as much as the earth itself." (Paul H. Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above Part I: The Meaning of raqiaa in Gen 1:6-8,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 (Fall 1991), p. 227 cited by Blake T. Ostler in his article The Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo was Created out of Nothing: A Response to Copan and Graid Part 1: The Scriptural Argument)

There is simply no passage in the Bible that speaks of intergalactic or interstellar space let alone calling it the 2nd heaven.   This may be a clear case of what it means to not add or take away from the scriptures.  Not that God can't add books or revelations but people like you declaring that interstellar space is the 2nd heaven when the there ZERO passages in the Bible that declare such a thing.  In fact do a search on the 2nd heaven in your Bible and find out how many hits you get.  When I search for "2nd heaven" in the Bible I get NO hits yet you declare because there are no hits that it MUST mean interstellar space. 

 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2016 by carbon dioxide

[boblloyd91]

31 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Complete nonsense.  There is no evidence that ancient people understood where the atmosphere ended and where space began.  They did not really understand the stars.  As far as they were concerned, the stars, space, and sky and atmosphere are all part of the same heaven. 

"The question, however, naturally arises in the modern mind, schooled as it is in the almost infinite nature of sky and space: Did scientifically naive peoples really believe in a solid sky, or were they just employing a mythological or poetic concept?.... The answer to these questions ... is that scientifically naive peoples thought of the solid sky as an integral part of their physical universe. And it is precisely because ancient peoples were scientifically naive that they did not distinguish between the appearance of the sky and their scientific concept of the sky. They had no reason to doubt what their eyes told them was true, namely that the stars above were fixed in a solid dome and the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So they equated appearance with reality and concluded that the sky must be a solid part of the universe just as much as the earth itself." (Paul H. Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above Part I: The Meaning of raqiaa in Gen 1:6-8,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 (Fall 1991), p. 227 cited by Blake T. Ostler in his article The Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo was Created out of Nothing: A Response to Copan and Graid Part 1: The Scriptural Argument)

There is simply no passage in the Bible that speaks of intergalactic or interstellar space let alone calling it the 2nd heaven.   This may be a clear case of what it means to not add or take away from the scriptures.  Not that God can't add books or revelations but people like you declaring that interstellar space is the 2nd heaven when the there ZERO passages in the Bible that declare such a thing.  In fact do a search on the 2nd heaven in your Bible and find out how many hits you get.  When I search for "2nd heaven" in the Bible I get NO hits yet you declare because there are no hits that it MUST mean interstellar space. 

 

 

 

As luck would have it Robert Boylan wrote about this on his excellent blog scripturalmormonism.blogspot.ie just a few days ago. He has several early church father quotes that agree with LDS interpretations of 3 heavens as well as some other good stuff 

[boblloyd91]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

Oh my gosh. That is the same line you guys were using when I discovered the internet in the 90s. Total flashback.

And this is what happened when you were completely unprepared to deal with scholarship necessary to discuss religion beyond insults and accusations. Two evangelical scholars critical of Mormonism wrote this, the title is self-explanatory and its not us that lost the battle.  “Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?” Trinity Journal (1998) 

That is why you guys now cluster in safe places like CARM. 

 

 

I couldn't have said it better myself!

[Jim Stiles]

11 hours ago, Avatar4321 said:

that is completely absurd. The Lord spoke clearly when he said "choose this day whom ye will serve". There is no point to preach the gospel if what you described is accurate. God does not compel us in anything. He invites us to offer up a willing heart and a contrite spirit.

One cannot believe something that one has not heard, or possibly read.  Preachers are still needed.

What you are describing is almost what savedwheat was saying.

[Jim Stiles]

3 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

Complete nonsense.  There is no evidence that ancient people understood where the atmosphere ended and where space began.  They did not really understand the stars.  As far as they were concerned, the stars, space, and sky and atmosphere are all part of the same heaven. 

"The question, however, naturally arises in the modern mind, schooled as it is in the almost infinite nature of sky and space: Did scientifically naive peoples really believe in a solid sky, or were they just employing a mythological or poetic concept?.... The answer to these questions ... is that scientifically naive peoples thought of the solid sky as an integral part of their physical universe. And it is precisely because ancient peoples were scientifically naive that they did not distinguish between the appearance of the sky and their scientific concept of the sky. They had no reason to doubt what their eyes told them was true, namely that the stars above were fixed in a solid dome and the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So they equated appearance with reality and concluded that the sky must be a solid part of the universe just as much as the earth itself." (Paul H. Seely, “The Firmament and the Water Above Part I: The Meaning of raqiaa in Gen 1:6-8,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 (Fall 1991), p. 227 cited by Blake T. Ostler in his article The Doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo was Created out of Nothing: A Response to Copan and Graid Part 1: The Scriptural Argument)

There is simply no passage in the Bible that speaks of intergalactic or interstellar space let alone calling it the 2nd heaven.   This may be a clear case of what it means to not add or take away from the scriptures.  Not that God can't add books or revelations but people like you declaring that interstellar space is the 2nd heaven when the there ZERO passages in the Bible that declare such a thing.  In fact do a search on the 2nd heaven in your Bible and find out how many hits you get.  When I search for "2nd heaven" in the Bible I get NO hits yet you declare because there are no hits that it MUST mean interstellar space. 

By the time of Paul, the cosmology of the people of God had moved from the Ancient Near East model of a concrete firmament to something like Ptolemaic cosmology, which does differentiate between the earth's atmosphere and interplanetary space.  The layout of Dante's Divine Comedy is similar to Ptolemaic cosmology.

The simple fact is that what Joseph Smith Jr. said about the three kingdoms of heaven and outer darkness cannot be reconciled with what the Bible says about heaven and hell.

[Jim Stiles]

3 hours ago, juliann said:

They can only "win" at this stuff if they flash mob their targets. We had the patience back then to demand a level playing ground with no Church stuff used and none of their church stuff used, only mainstream scholarship of the Bible. That excluded the Bible colleges. They can't "win" if it is Bible to Bible....and especially if the early Christian Fathers are used. When we began they used to think deification was so hilarious. Within a few years they were claiming they believed in it too. Ours was just the "wrong kind."  In the good old days it was almost all fanatic Evangelicals thinking they could compete with people who had degrees in biblical studies.

Can you imagine Jim against a humanist? What he isn't acknowledging, and it is unfortunate....how low public opinion of fundamentalist evangelicals has dropped because of the "I'm saved and yer not!" antics. It has harmed the public perception of all religion. Party on Jim.

Face facts, the internet is the enemy of the LDS church.  The LDS church has known from the very beginning that Joseph Smith Jr. was fraudulent treasure hunter motivated by a desire to have sex with as many women as humanly possible.  I remember back in the 1970's when everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy.  Lo and behold, forty years laters, the LDS church has been forced to face the truth about their leader.

[Freedom]

28 minutes ago, Jim Stiles said:

Face facts, the internet is the enemy of the LDS church.  The LDS church has known from the very beginning that Joseph Smith Jr. was fraudulent treasure hunter motivated by a desire to have sex with as many women as humanly possible.  I remember back in the 1970's when everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy.  Lo and behold, forty years laters, the LDS church has been forced to face the truth about their leader.

Do you understand what a logical fallacy is? You just made an appeal. If you are going to make a comment like 'The LDS church has known..." you have to provide proof, otherwise you just demonstrate that you are an idiot. Do you honestly think that such a comment would cause us to tremble? It is the type of argument that a child would use against their parents in order to stay up past their bedtime. Please identify who 'everyone' is who denied Joseph Smiths' polygamy. If it is everybody, you should be able to produce volumes of testimonies and church articles to support your claims.  

[Russell C McGregor]

1 hour ago, Jim Stiles said:

Face facts, the internet is the enemy of the LDS church.

Only to the extent that the internet is every crackpot's soap box.

1 hour ago, Jim Stiles said:

 The LDS church has known from the very beginning that Joseph Smith Jr. was fraudulent treasure hunter motivated by a desire to have sex with as many women as humanly possible.

Fun fact: Did you know that the Greek word "diabolos," which descends into English as "devil," actually means "accuser" or "slanderer?"

That outburst of yours includes at least three clearly malicious and disgusting slanders.

I'd love to have a good faith reason to conclude that clearly malicious and disgusting slanders are not conclusive evidence of your true character. Can you please offer me any?

I will deal with each of your three libels, in reverse order.

First: There is not a shred of evidence for the "Old Joe's Libido" theory of Mormon polygamy. Not a shred. It fails at every turn to explain his proven actions. As such, it is a projection of the mind of the one uttering the accusation, and nothing else.

Perhaps you've read Matthew 12:34. But then again, perhaps you haven't. It's in the Bible, after all; and I've observed that EV's aren't very good at reading the Bible, especially anything that isn't in Romans or Galatians. I suggest you read that verse; it applies to you.

Joseph's actual speeches, writings and activities are on record, and they show overwhelmingly that he was motivated by actual religious conviction. That is the one and only explanation that can even begin to account for the totality of his actions.

Perhaps you've never experienced actual religious conviction, so you can't relate to it. However that may be, it is a real, observable phenomenon, and it was clearly the driving influence in Joseph's life.

Second: Joseph admitted his treasure hunting activities in his own official history; you know, the one at which you keep waving your hand, but which you've never bothered to read. No accusation of "fraud" has ever been made to stick in that regard, despite the best (or worst) efforts of bigots and haters in every generation. Including in courts of law, in front of hostile (i.e. conservative Protestant) juries.

Last: The nasty conspiracy theory you've offered. It actually deserves more time than I'm going to give it. Apart from the fact that it uncannily resembles the kind of nasty conspiracy theories that the very worst liars of the 20th century used to drum up hatred against Jews, it is evidence of something else: namely, your complete inability to contemplate even the bare possibility that anyone could possibly draw any different conclusions than the ones you've been fed by unscrupulous propagandists, and which you've uncritically swallowed.

In a word, it demonstrates your own overwhelming bigotry.

Well Jim, I have news for you.

The more people know about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ, the less they agree with the bigoted Dreck you've been spouting here. You are right when you suppose that many Latter-day Saints have known for years about the -- stuff -- upon which your spiteful accusations are based; and they've known a great many more things which your anti-Mormon propaganda mill prefers not to disclose to you. And knowing all those things, they draw very different conclusions.

And they do so in actual good faith. Something you clearly struggle to understand.

1 hour ago, Jim Stiles said:

 I remember back in the 1970's when everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy.

Umm, Jim?

Call for references, please.

If "everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy" back in the 1970's, then at least some of those denials must have found their way into print in some actual Church publications somewhere.

So kindly produce these, please.

I'm going to make a prediction: I predict that you'll find none.

Do you know why?

Because it just so happens that I -- even I, myself -- do, in fact, remember the 1970's. Very clearly.

I served a mission beginning in 1977, to be exact.

And I know for a fact that the Church emphatically did not deny Joseph's polygamy in the 1970's, or any other decade.

If anyone was still trying to deny it at that late date, it was a splinter group that then called itself "The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," which had its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. (It calls itself something else now.) Note this well: the unwillingness of the "Reorgs" to admit that Joseph practiced plural marriage was one of the major controversies between them and us.

Can you guess why that was?

Because we always insisted that he did practice it.

Now Jim: you've been schooled.

And if I was in a charitable mood, I'd be willing to let it go at that.

But I'm still going to insist on my Call for References, above.

Per the rules of the forum, you are obliged to either support your claim, or retract it.

In all the circumstances, a retraction will amount to an admission that you've knowingly lied to the forum.

But that's okay. We'll forgive you. Providing you own up.

1 hour ago, Jim Stiles said:

 Lo and behold, forty years laters, the LDS church has been forced to face the truth about their leader.

And it's spiteful, gratuitous remarks like the above that make it necessary for you to snack on a little humble pie.

 

[Avatar4321]

3 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

One cannot believe something that one has not heard, or possibly read.  Preachers are still needed.

What you are describing is almost what savedwheat was saying.

If God can compel us to believe the Bible, why do we need preachers? The Bible is already written.

Or do we need something more than the Bible in order for God to compel us to believe? If that's the case then you've completely undermined your argument that the Bible is all we need.

[Avatar4321]

3 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Face facts, the internet is the enemy of the LDS church.  The LDS church has known from the very beginning that Joseph Smith Jr. was fraudulent treasure hunter motivated by a desire to have sex with as many women as humanly possible.  I remember back in the 1970's when everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy.  Lo and behold, forty years laters, the LDS church has been forced to face the truth about their leader.

No one ever denied it. Section 132 is still in the scriptures. Where does this ignorant meme come from?

 

[boblloyd91]

9 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Face facts, the internet is the enemy of the LDS church.  The LDS church has known from the very beginning that Joseph Smith Jr. was fraudulent treasure hunter motivated by a desire to have sex with as many women as humanly possible.  I remember back in the 1970's when everyone denied that Joseph Smith Jr. engaged in polygamy.  Lo and behold, forty years laters, the LDS church has been forced to face the truth about their leader.

I was born in 1985 and always knew about polygamy. My parents were born in 1956 and 1961 respectively and always knew about polygamy so that alone challenges your ill informed thesis. And while on the one hand I agree that the internet can be faith demoting for us it can also be faith promoting as we now have access to information that before wasn't readily available such as great websites like bookofmormoncentral.org, Mormon Interpreter, the Book of Mormon Onomasticon, the Maxwell Institute and more. It really all depends on what you're looking for because whatever that might be you'll find it.  Speaking of the internet, do you not realize that this argument can apply to your own religious convictions? I read atheist blogs over on Patheos and they make the same statements about Evangelical Christianity being weakened by the Internet due to their faith being challenged by new information  in science and exposure to other new sources of information (which tends to happen when one has a fundamentalist worldview). 

 

Speaking of of a fundamentalist worldview, I think it bears pointing out that in my observation many Evangelical Fundamentalists tend to have the modus operandi of only considering a select few sources as valid and disregard anything that would contradict their preconceived notions. Someone else here pointed out the Mosser and Owens paper. I notice that whenever we bring up answers to questions (or accusations) they are often dismissed outright by many fundamentalists because we are "of the Devil" or "deceived". I feel that it doesn't do you or you fellow critics any favors because we won't take anything you say seriously as you are coming across more as a pompous narcissist then someone who is actually worried about our salvation. That's not to say some Evangelicals don't do this. I have a great deal of respect for Richard Mouw and Craig Blomberg, two Evangelical scholars who have sought to understand where we come from and still disagree with us. However because of the respect they have showed me and my faith I will (and have) taken into consideration more where they are coming from and considered their truth claims

[ALarson]

5 minutes ago, boblloyd91 said:

I was born in 1985 and always knew about polygamy. My parents were born in 1956 and 1961 respectively and always knew about polygamy so that alone challenges your ill informed thesis.

Of course, members knew about polygamy.  But, did you know the details that many now know because of the internet (and that are included in the church essays)?  

How about polyandry.  Did you know the details regarding that before the internet?

One still has to search and study on their own of course and decide for themselves which sources are reliable and accurate.  The internet is a great resource for the church to get information out to their members too.

[thesometimesaint]

11 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

By the time of Paul, the cosmology of the people of God had moved from the Ancient Near East model of a concrete firmament to something like Ptolemaic cosmology, which does differentiate between the earth's atmosphere and interplanetary space.  The layout of Dante's Divine Comedy is similar to Ptolemaic cosmology.

The simple fact is that what Joseph Smith Jr. said about the three kingdoms of heaven and outer darkness cannot be reconciled with what the Bible says about heaven and hell.

Utter clap trap. Flat Earth Society

SEE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies

[boblloyd91]

57 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Of course, members knew about polygamy.  But, did you know the details that many now know because of the internet (and that are included in the church essays)?  

How about polyandry.  Did you know the details regarding that before the internet?

One still has to search and study on their own of course and decide for themselves which sources are reliable and accurate.  The internet is a great resource for the church to get information out to their members too.

If you read the assertions Jim was making, he said that no one in the 70's or before knew that Joseph Smith engaged in polygamy. Of course not everyone knows every single detail myself included, however that's not what the point of my response was, it was to address a patently false over generalization by a hostile critic who insulted the intelligence of myself and many people I know who have sincerely and honestly looked at the issues, and instead claims his caricatured straw man is how things "really are"

[ALarson]

6 minutes ago, boblloyd91 said:

If you read the assertions Jim was making, he said that no one in the 70's or before knew that Joseph Smith engaged in polygamy. 

Yes, his statement that "everyone" denied it was extreme (and not accurate).  However, there are still active members today who believe that Joseph Smith did not live polygamy.  There are members of my own ward who were not aware that Joseph was married to many women until the essays were published (shocking, but still true), and very few knew about polyandry. 

The internet has most certainly brought many more details to light regarding how Joseph Smith and others lived polygamy and polyandry (and for some members that Joseph actually did live polygamy)

Edited February 7, 2016 by ALarson

[thesometimesaint]

45 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Yes, his statement that "everyone" denied it was extreme (and not accurate).  However, there are still active members today who believe that Joseph Smith did not live polygamy.  There are members of my own ward who were not aware that Joseph was married to many women until the essays were published (shocking, but still true), and very few knew about polyandry. 

The internet has most certainly brought many more details to light regarding how Joseph Smith and others lived polygamy and polyandry (and for some members that Joseph actually did live polygamy)

That information has been available for at least 173 years now. The internet not so much.

[Freedom]

44 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Yes, his statement that "everyone" denied it was extreme (and not accurate).  However, there are still active members today who believe that Joseph Smith did not live polygamy.  There are members of my own ward who were not aware that Joseph was married to many women until the essays were published (shocking, but still true), and very few knew about polyandry. 

The internet has most certainly brought many more details to light regarding how Joseph Smith and others lived polygamy and polyandry (and for some members that Joseph actually did live polygamy)

Did you know that many members of the church do not: read Hebrew, understand calculus, know that many if no all founding fathers were not christian, understand the Syrian civil war or a million other topics? It is not the role of sunday school to teach them. If people care, they can take the effort to fond out like I did 10 years before the internet existed. There are members who are convinced evolution is a tool of the devil, that prophets are inerrant and that women are fully responsible, based on how they dress, it they are sexually assaulted. This ignorance is their own fault.  

[ALarson]

9 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

That information has been available for at least 173 years now. The internet not so much.

True.  But it's the internet that has made information much more accessible and which brought it to the attention of many more members.

One could dig and find the details before the internet.  But, I doubt anything regarding Joseph's polyandry was in any church materials that were published pror to the internet and now it's published by them in their essay and on lds.org.  

Edited February 7, 2016 by ALarson

[Freedom]

4 minutes ago, ALarson said:

True.  But it's the internet that has made information much more accessible and which brought it to the attention of many more members.

One could dig and find the details before the internet.  But, I doubt anything regarding Joseph's polyandry was in any church materials that were published pror to the internet and now it's published by them in their essay and on lds.org.  

This applies to every subject. Before the internet people had limited access to ALL information. As such, I have no idea what your point is. 

[ALarson]

3 minutes ago, Freedom said:

Did you know that many members of the church do not: read Hebrew, understand calculus, know that many if no all founding fathers were not christian, understand the Syrian civil war or a million other topics? It is not the role of sunday school to teach them. 

This isn't what we're discussing.  It doesn't matter if it was the Sunday School's role is to teach them these details or not.  The fact remains that many more know them now because of what was published on the internet.  I'm not blaming anyone for that.  

[ALarson]

Just now, Freedom said:

This applies to every subject. Before the internet people had limited access to ALL information.

Of course this applies to many other subjects.  Where did I say that it didn't?  But, we were discussing information regarding details of Joseph's polygamy and polyandry being more available to church members now.