Moroni's Promise

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Marginal Gains said:

 

So let’s explore that a little.

We have agreed that the spirit will testify of true principles regardless of the legitimacy of the vehicle for delivery - be it a deliberate lie, a parable, or mistakenly repeating a story that isn’t accurate. So the Book of Mormon could be a deliberate lie, a parable or an inaccurate story and the Spirit would still testify to the reader the truth of the principles being taught.

So, is the Church being true inextricably attached to the Spirit testifying the Book of Mormon is ‘true’? Or can the book be ‘true’ and the Church not be?

Independent variables.

We must gain a testimony of each principle independently, or it would be blind obedience.

You have to realize that essentially what is happening here is that each individual is constructing a world view which his "gut" finds compatible with his entire being.

My daughter had a soap opera on yesterday and someone was making a business decision which had been studied out in detail, but it was a risky enterprise, and someone else asked him "So you are really going to DO this?"  His reply, after a long pause, was "Yep, it feels right"

No one would question that- and that is why they line was written that way.  In our culture it is ok to listen to your "gut" in all kinds of decisions, but picking a religion??   FERGITABOUTIT!

Why? because religion has become linked to science ever since Cardinal Bellarmine decided that Galileo was wrong because everyone knows the bible says that the sun goes around the earth, and how dare Galileo question the bible?

That was the start of it.  Religion became conflated with "facts" whatever those are supposed to mean in a world where science is supposed to and does, change continuously as new paradigms of looking at the world come into vogue.  Science is the perfect example of an "open canon" !  Is Pluto a planet this week?

If science was "true"- whatever that means, and religion was "true" then they had to agree.

Not so.

Again- independent variables!  

Religion is about what "feels right" in the construction of our own world views.  I find Mormonism incredibly fascinating precisely because it puts Humanity- including God seen as a glorified Human- at the center of the universe, creating it.   Some go with the Dawkins nonsense- but he is ridiculously uninformed in philosophy- laughably so.  The New Atheism is simply unacquainted with for example the Deflationary Theory of Truth (linked previously)  Dawkins view of "reality" is 2500 years old- straight out of Aristotle.

In every scientific discovery, man "creates" a little more of the universe!   Out of what?  Matter unorganized!   Our very perceptions of the world take light rays/particles unorganized and our brains organize them into a meaningful world that allows us to navigate around objects etc.

But what would those objects "look like" if we did not have eyes?  It is our eyes and brains that create and organize color and all that is around us.  Apply that to every other sense as well.   No human brain, then "reality" AS HUMANS KNOW IT would not "exist".

That is ultimately a tautology- because all we know comes through a human mind, so of course without human minds, humans would know nothing.   Read the Rorty quote below.

So each of us construct our own world according to our own needs- that is essentially William James' philosophy, and truth is what we make of it

The Restoration ended up full of Protestant theology- essentially Cardinal Bellarmine still rules among Mormons, but it is changing.   More and more are seeing it the way I do- not that I invented it by any means, but I actually had the philosophy before I found the church, and found here SOME like-minded individuals who "get" it.

The more you study philosophy and understand the philosophy of science, the better Mormonism looks.   I got the philosophy in my 20's and found the church in my 30's and that was 40 years ago and the more I study the more it "feels right".  So you do the math.

 

Edited September 6, 2017 by mfbukowski

[FormerLDS]

On 9/3/2017 at 10:29 AM, Avatar4321 said:

Funny. Luke 24 and acts 2 state differently.

The disciples should have know it was Christ because their hearts burned.

The people at Pentecost received the truth because their hearts were pricked.

Gal 5 speaks of the fruits of the spirit which include peace, love, joy as well as other feelings in the heart.

But to simply the Spirit as a mere feeling does not do Him justice. Nor does it seem prudent to deny the Holy Spirit

Where in Luke 24 does a feeling in the heart open their eyes to the truth?  I mean really - where?  If anything, Luke 24 proves the feeling in their heart did NOT open their eyes to the truth.  They heard, they felt a burning within their hearts (i.e. conviction), but their eyes were still not open to the truth.  It was the word of God that opened their eyes, not the feeling.  Yet LDS concistently try to bend Luke 24 to somehow fit Moroni's promise.

Where in Acts 2 does being pricked in the heart mean what they heard was truth?  Much as you would like it to be there, it's just NOT there.  These were simply convicted of their sin and need for salvation.

Again, nowhere in the Bible does God equate a feeling in the heard with a test for truth!

[BRMC]

2 hours ago, FormerLDS said:

Where in Luke 24 does a feeling in the heart open their eyes to the truth?  I mean really - where?  If anything, Luke 24 proves the feeling in their heart did NOT open their eyes to the truth.  They heard, they felt a burning within their hearts (i.e. conviction), but their eyes were still not open to the truth.  It was the word of God that opened their eyes, not the feeling.  Yet LDS concistently try to bend Luke 24 to somehow fit Moroni's promise.

Where in Acts 2 does being pricked in the heart mean what they heard was truth?  Much as you would like it to be there, it's just NOT there.  These were simply convicted of their sin and need for salvation.

Again, nowhere in the Bible does God equate a feeling in the heard with a test for truth!

Then what is a testament of the truth?

[FormerLDS]

On 9/8/2017 at 2:29 PM, BRMC said:

Then what is a testament of the truth?

Think of it this way: what was the testament of the testament of that truth?

You heard and made the choice to believe what you heard was truth.