Was Noah Really a "Preacher of Righteousness"?

[Eek!]

23 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Does everyone get the same answer?  No - that is because we are all at different places along the path and God teaches each of us individually.  Some need to learn long division, some calculus and some need to question the entire enterprise of math or religion in general.

This makes way too much sense.  

[USU78]

On 4/26/2018 at 12:48 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, you can certainly believe that corporations are people too, and ignore the legitimate arguments which call that fallacy into serious question.  And you can certainly relegate anyone who finds that absurd and evil to ignorance or malevolence.  The polarization on such questions is pretty extreme.

When that same fallacy is applied to a religious organization, it permits one to foolishly speak of the organization as a person, instead of citing particular claims by individuals inside such organizations.  And that is very convenient for those who want to ignore reality.

Never mind

Edited May 6, 2018 by USU78

[Marginal Gains]

16 hours ago, Marginal Gains said:

 

I repeat my CFR for “a quote from a senior Church leader that supports the claim that the scriptures and your interpretation of them is more important than the living Prophet.”

Just one will do.

 

12 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Here's a ton

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_doctrine/Prophets_are_not_infallible

I must be missing it. Those references seem only to be saying senior Church leaders are fallible. I can’t see “a quote from a senior Church leader that supports the claim that the scriptures and your interpretation of them is more important than the living Prophet.”

By all means pick the one that you feel best responds to the question and quote it.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Marginal Gains

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Marginal Gains said:

 

I must be missing it. Those references seem only to be saying senior Church leaders are fallible. I can’t see “a quote from a senior Church leader that supports the claim that the scriptures and your interpretation of them is more important than the living Prophet.”

By all means pick the one that you feel best responds to the question and quote it.

I am assuming you have the ability to reason, and do not have to be spoon fed.

What living Prophet is going to say "don't listen to me." ?

What leader of any organization will say that?

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/04/revelation-for-the-church-revelation-for-our-lives?lang=eng

Quote

 

Does God really want to speak to you? Yes! “As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course … as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.”10

You don’t have to wonder about what is true.11 You do not have to wonder whom you can safely trust. Through personal revelation, you can receive your own witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that this is the Lord’s Church. Regardless of what others may say or do, no one can ever take away a witness borne to your heart and mind about what is true.

 

 

 

If you can't put together

"You don’t have to wonder about what is true.11 You do not have to wonder whom you can safely trust. Through personal revelation, you can receive your own witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that this is the Lord’s Church. Regardless of what others may say or do, no one can ever take away a witness borne to your heart and mind about what is true."

 with NUMEROUS  quotes proving the notion that "prophets are fallible" I suppose you do not have enough willingness to even try to understand our point of view, so further conversations with you are useless.

Let any impartial reader decide that for themselves.

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Marginal Gains]

Given that some find it acceptable to believe in a local flood, rather than the literal global flood taught in Church materials. Do those same people find it acceptable to likewise rationalise things like the parting of the Red Sea, Adam & Eve and even the resurrection to be less grandiose events that have been embellished over the generations, despite that Church material would have us believe them literally?

[mfbukowski]

13 hours ago, Marginal Gains said:

Given that some find it acceptable to believe in a local flood, rather than the literal global flood taught in Church materials. Do those same people find it acceptable to likewise rationalise things like the parting of the Red Sea, Adam & Eve and even the resurrection to be less grandiose events that have been embellished over the generations, despite that Church material would have us believe them literally?

1Cor 13:

Quote

 

⁹ For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

¹⁰ But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

¹² For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 

 

[Marginal Gains]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

1Cor 13:

 

Not sure how that is a response to the question I posed. Any chance you can explain a little?

 

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, Marginal Gains said:

Not sure how that is a response to the question I posed. Any chance you can explain a little?

 

Sure. Yes.

That is the answer. But just as grand spiritually

What could be more important than having your sins forgiven and living forever? Who cares about a stupid flood?

A flood of Love is exactly what we need on the other hand.

Edited May 15, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Marginal Gains]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Sure. Yes.

That is the answer. But just as grand spiritually

What could be more important than having your sins forgiven and living forever? Who cares about a stupid flood?

A flood of Love is exactly what we need on the other hand.

So, in response to my question, do you take a similar casual view on the relative unimportance of the literalness of Adam & Eve, Book Of Mormon, Restoration claims, Jesus miracles etc? Can it all, in your mind, be waved away as unimportant if it didn’t happen as described or taught?

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Marginal Gains said:

So, in response to my question, do you take a similar casual view on the relative unimportance of the literalness of Adam & Eve, Book Of Mormon, Restoration claims, Jesus miracles etc? Can it all, in your mind, be waved away as unimportant if it didn’t happen as described or taught?

Yes.  I don't care about how it is taught- I care about believing its results just as physicists do.

What if physics doesn't happen as taught?

http://www.peterbyrne.info/documents/sad0711Byrn3p.pdf

cosmology

Bad Boy of Physics Leonard Susskind rebelled as a teen and never stopped. Today he insists that reality may forever be beyond reach of our understanding Interview by Peter Byrne

Quote

Stanford university physicist leonard susskind revels in discovering ideas that transform the status quo in physics. Forty years ago he co-founded string theory, which was initially derided but eventually became the leading candidate for a unified theory of nature. For years he disputed Stephen Hawking’s conjecture that black holes do not merely swallow objects but grind them up beyond recovery, in violation of quantum mechanics. Hawking eventually conceded. And he helped to develop the modern conception of parallel universes, based on what he dubbed the “landscape” of string theory. It spoiled physicists’ dream to explain the universe as the unique outcome of basic principles. Physicists seeking to understand the deepest levels of reality now work within a framework largely of Susskind’s making. But a funny thing has happened along the way. Susskind now wonders whether physicists can understand reality. Susskind worries that reality might be beyond our limited capacity to visualize it. He is not the first to express such a concern. In the 1920s and 1930s the founders of quantum mechanics split into realist and antirealist camps. Albert Einstein and other realists held that the whole point of physics is to come up with some mental picture, however imperfect, of what objective reality is. Antirealists such as Niels Bohr said those mental images are fraught with peril; scientists should confine themselves to making and testing empirical predictions. Susskind thinks the contradictions and paradoxes of modern physics vindicate Bohr’s wariness.....

In the midst of all this remodeling, is there room for such a thing as an objective reality?

Every physicist must have some sense that there are objective things in the world and that it’s our job to go and find out what those objective things are. I don’t think you could do that without having a sense that there is an objective reality. The evidence for objectivity is that experiments are reproducible. If you kick a rock once, you’ll hurt your toe. If you kick a rock twice, you’ll hurt your toe twice. Do the same experiment over and over with a rock, and you’ll reproduce the same effect. That said, physicists almost never talk about reality. The problem is that what people tend to mean by ”reality” has more to do with biology and evolution and with our hardwiring and our neural architecture than it has to do with physics itself. We’re prisoners of our own neural architecture. We can visualize some things. We can’t visualize other things. Einstein’s abstract, four-dimensional geometry was hard to concretely visualize. It became visualizable through mathematical relations. When relativity suddenly appeared, it must have seemed to many people: What happened to “real”time? What happened to “real” space? It just got mixed up into this funny thing, but there were rules. The point was there were clear and precise mathematical rules that had been abstracted out of it, and these survived, and the old notions of reality went away. So I say, let’s get rid of the word “reality.” Let’s have our whole discussion without the word “reality.” It gets in the way. It conjures up things that are rarely helpful. The word “reproducible” is a more useful word than “real.”....

Is it possible to do theoretical physics and not have philosophical thoughts? Most great physicists have had a fairly strong philosophical side. My friend **** Feynman hated philosophy and hated philosophers, but I knew him well, and there was a deep philosophical side to him. The problems that you choose to think about are conditioned by your philosophical predispositions. But I also have a strong sense that surprises happen and put your philosophical prejudices on their head. People have the idea that there are cut–and-dried rules of science: you do experiments, you get results, you interpret them; in the end, you have something. But the actual process of science is as human and as chaotic and as contentious as anything else.

 

More about "reality as it is" vs "reality as it is taught"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology

Quote

 

Constructivism in philosophy of science[edit]

Thomas Kuhn argued that changes in scientists' views of reality not only contain subjective elements, but result from group dynamics, "revolutions" in scientific practice and changes in "paradigms".[4] As an example, Kuhn suggested that the Sun-centric Copernican "revolution" replaced the Earth-centric views of Ptolemy not because of empirical failures, but because of a new "paradigm" that exerted control over what scientists felt to be the more fruitful way to pursue their goals.

"But paradigm debates are not really about relative problem-solving ability, though for good reasons they are usually couched in those terms. Instead, the issue is which paradigm should in future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise. ... A decision of that kind can only be made on faith."

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp 157-8

The view of reality as accessible only through models was called model-dependent realism by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.[5] While not rejecting an independent reality, model-dependent realism says that we can know only an approximation of it provided by the intermediary of models.[6] These models evolve over time as guided by scientific inspiration and experiment.

In the field of the social sciences, constructivism as an epistemology urges that researchers reflect upon the paradigms that may be underpinning their research, and in the light of this that they become more open to consider other ways of interpreting any results of the research. Furthermore, the focus is on presenting results as negotiable constructs rather than as models that aim to "represent" social realities more or less accurately. Norma Romm in her book Accountability in Social Research (2001) argues that social researchers can earn trust from participants and wider audiences insofar as they adopt this orientation and invite inputs from others regarding their inquiry practices and the results thereof.

 

In short, virtually anything "as taught" is a story about an approximation of "what is"

Religious  stories and scriptures are the best models to bring us closer to God.  I do believe, on faith, in a literal resurrection and take all religious principles taught on faith, as useful analogies to teach us to get closer to God

Some could be literally true, but we will never know which are and which are not- but it doesn't matter-  their FUNCTION is to teach us useful ideas for us to believe which produce results in our lives.

Faith is defined as the "hope for things unseen" and that is exactly how I view it.

But we have been through this before and you have never understood it so I have little hope for the unseen phenomenon of you understanding it.

Every week or so we have the same discussion.  No more.  We can go on here if you like but no more repeats of the same material without you answering previous questions.  I 'm tired of it.

Just look at the repetition on this page.

Edited May 15, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Marginal Gains]

51 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes.  I don't care about how it is taught- I care about believing its results just as physicists do.

What if physics doesn't happen as taught?

http://www.peterbyrne.info/documents/sad0711Byrn3p.pdf

cosmology

Bad Boy of Physics Leonard Susskind rebelled as a teen and never stopped. Today he insists that reality may forever be beyond reach of our understanding Interview by Peter Byrne

More about "reality as it is" vs "reality as it is taught"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology

In short, virtually anything "as taught" is a story about an approximation of "what is"

Religious  stories and scriptures are the best models to bring us closer to God.  I do believe, on faith, in a literal resurrection and take all religious principles taught on faith, as useful analogies to teach us to get closer to God

Some could be literally true, but we will never know which are and which are not- but it doesn't matter-  their FUNCTION is to teach us useful ideas for us to believe which produce results in our lives.

Faith is defined as the "hope for things unseen" and that is exactly how I view it.

But we have been through this before and you have never understood it so I have little hope for the unseen phenomenon of you understanding it.

Every week or so we have the same discussion.  No more.  We can go on here if you like but no more repeats of the same material without you answering previous questions.  I 'm tired of it.

Just look at the repetition on this page.

Wow! Nothing needs to be literally true except for the resurrection....Wow!

What useful ideas does the global flood story teach us?

Edited May 15, 2018 by Marginal Gains

[mfbukowski]

51 minutes ago, Marginal Gains said:

Wow! Nothing needs to be literally true except for the resurrection....Wow!

What useful ideas does the global flood story teach us?

I never said that.

Read it again.

Perhaps a logic class would be good for you.

The flood story teaches that through obedience and personal revelation the Lord will lead us to safety.

[mfbukowski]

On 5/7/2018 at 11:17 AM, mfbukowski said:

I suppose you do not have enough willingness to even try to understand our point of view, so further conversations with you are useless.

Let any impartial reader decide that for themselves.

 

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Every week or so we have the same discussion.  No more.  We can go on here if you like but no more repeats of the same material without you answering previous questions.  I 'm tired of it.

Just look at the repetition on this page.

 

13 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I never said that.

Read it again.

Perhaps a logic class would be good for you.

The flood story teaches that through obedience and personal revelation the Lord will lead us to safety.

Yep, I have had enough. The third time is the charm, I gave done my earnest best.

Bye

Edited May 15, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Marginal Gains]

6 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 

 

Yep, I have had enough. The third time is the charm, I gave done my earnest best.

Bye

Is that literally true? 😉

[Marginal Gains]

If the flood was local, and Noah’s posterity was in the Middle East, how can the Garden of Eden be in Missouri?

Wait! I think I’ve got this...the Missouri location for the Garden of Eden isn’t meant to be taken literally, despite Church leaders and Church materials portraying it literally. It’s symbolic of <insert personal theory>.

How’d I do?

Edited May 16, 2018 by Marginal Gains