If you don't follow a/the Church...

[Willum]

If you claim to believe in the Christian god, but do not follow or believe in the practices of any church, and have your own unique perspective of this God, how can you distinguish this from a god you have simply made up?

In other words, how can you know your beliefs about God are better than a churches?
In other words, how do you know, of all the perspectives and interpretations of God, your's are correct? Or that God is what you have imagined?
And if not, how do you justify inventing or imagining a God in defiance of the certainly greater wisdom of a congregation?

If you are wrong, is it not CERTAINLY blasphemy to invent details of God you have no basis for believing are true?

[Difflugia]

*koff..Abraham papyrus..koff*

I don't know if you've seen it, but one of my favorite images is a scan of one of the original papyri that was found in a stack of old papers from Joseph Smith's widow (his original wife, Emma). It's the actual papyrus pasted onto a piece of notebook paper with Joseph's doodlings of what he thought belonged in the lacunae. I originally saw this in a copy of Church History in the Fulness of Times that a missionary let me borrow when I was in college and I later found a digital image buried on BYU's site. It's now at Wikimedia Commons.



Unfortunately, Church History in the Fulness of Times looks to no longer be available from the Mormon site. I guess it shouldn't surprise me too much that a thirty-year-old curriculum finally got an update.

[TRANSPONDER]

He snatched the book out of my hands and snarled the Good Old Mementra "Well If I'd known, I wouldn't have wasted my time!"

It hardly matters, but I'll just say that hasn't been my experience. They sometimes get bored quickly and leave when I want to talk LDS theology, but I don't think I've had any that were dismissive or nasty.

After which I have never wasted my time on Mormons. Ever. Except to debate. Though it's a gratuitous waste of effort as Mormon is not Really the major problem. And they wriggle and evade just like any Genesis -literalist. On the last board back in the 90's I debated the Abraham papyrus with one and she reverted (after shifting retreat - excuses) to claiming that J Smith had been receiving mental truth which he wrote down and the papyrus was only a sort of medium and no 'translation' was involved at all. And a few years later debating the lack of Hebrew DNA in any America native peoples and she simply denied the evidence.

Fundamentalist apologetics is fundamentalist apologetics. No matter the stripe, it involves squinting just right and ignoring that bit over there. One big disadvantage for Mormon apologists is that the language is American English, so there's only so much, "now this word really means something else."

But the initial impressions of the Book of Mormon was a collaboration between John the evangelist and James Fennimore Cooper...

If you've never read it, I recommend Mark Twain's take on it in his lesser-known book Roughing it.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

If you find that amusing, the whole chapter's a treat.

And it's always entertaining to hear from one of the frequent deconverts fuming over how they just swallowed all the stuff they were given by the controllers of the creed.

Especially the ones that didn't enjoy the experience of being missionaries.

I must have been unlucky to pull a wrong 'un. And I perceive that wriggle and turn is a very common human self justification method. Just make up any excuse, lie or flat denial rather than admit they might be wrong. And I've seen atheists do it too. It's hard when you get caught out and you don't want to say 'let me get back to you'. Of course here with the Abraham papyrus, it was diverting to see the constant fallback. First, denial of anyone knowing Egyptian script, then (after showing it was a very common funerary scene and we know for sure what the missing bits (1) are, and Smith's ignorance was such that he left in the canopic jars that he claims are some sons of Abraham or suchlike. We know that Smith's 'reading' is wrong. here, I got an attempt to deny that Smith was translating the script and i showed that he worked on the text day to day (the process is of basing a tall story on the various hieroglyphs, rather than actual translation) and she finally claimed that he was getting the story from God or some supernatural source and the papyrus was a sort of medium for it. The succession of excuses plucked out of thin air was a process diverting to watch, and even better, a year or so later when debating Hebrew DNA, I reminded her of it and she denied remebering ever having done it.

Oh yes, BoM translation can apply where 'chariot' is 'Interpreted' as 'Ox-cart'. I think they also translate 'cattle', since there were no cattle, nor sheep, or horses. And no Jews, so the DNA seems to suggest. There was an interesting sequel to the papyrus, as the LDS apologetics thinktank said the pieces were not the ones or were not copied correctly...I can't recall as the objections make no sense anyway. But the originals, thought to be lost in a fire, turned up. The blatant wrongness of the 'translation' could not be denied.

Now I rejected the book of Mormon as unconvincing right away, and the story of the church made me even more skeptical, but I'd say the Abraham papyrus has them bang to rights. And all they can do is keep quiet and hope that nobody talks about it.

(1) which would give the game away if they were still there, which is so convenient for J. Smith that it must be a miracle.

[TRANSPONDER]

*koff..Abraham papyrus..koff*

I don't know if you've seen it, but one of my favorite images is a scan of one of the original papyri that was found in a stack of old papers from Joseph Smith's widow (his original wife, Emma). It's the actual papyrus pasted onto a piece of notebook paper with Joseph's doodlings of what he thought belonged in the lacunae. I originally saw this in a copy of Church History in the Fulness of Times that a missionary let me borrow when I was in college and I later found a digital image buried on BYU's site. It's now at Wikimedia Commons.



Unfortunately, Church History in the Fulness of Times looks to no longer be available from the Mormon site. I guess it shouldn't surprise me too much that a thirty-year-old curriculum finally got an update.

Well that's puzzling. I could have sworn that we only had Smith's reconstruction and the originals only turned up recently. Are we sure this isn't the original with Smith's reconstructions? The man with the knife has an animal head normally, Anubis as i recall. I may have a further dig.

[TRANSPONDER]

From what I can see, the figure is the original that survived the fire and was returned to LDS. apparently with J. Smith's 'restorations' in pencil. The apologetics excuse is that the longer roll was lost in the fire. This is of course irrelevant since it is the reproduced scene that is shown as misinterpreted, Smith showing the scene and saying what it was. Which conflicts with what we know it must be. And the finding and return of the original scuppered any attempts to claim that we don't know what the original really was, which is a clumsy excuse. Almost as clumsy as the smokescreen that the long roll was lost. It is this scene that is interpreted wrongly.

I mentioned the day to day translation which is no doubt the long roll and I suppose the hieroglyphs were reproduced with their 'translation' and as I recall some non Egyptian characters. Since the roll is gone, we can't say whether they were there or not.

But for me, while believers might deny, this gross misreading of a very common funerary papyrus does for Smith's credibility.

p.s I am a naughty boy but this docu. explains it nicely.

I also found a very similar scene from then papyrus of Serimen, but I can't copy it (restricted). But it can be viewed online.

[rovalin]

Understand me correctly, but I believe that even being a representative of a particular denomination, we invent God for ourselves. It resonates with my definition of love - we all share a common understanding of this term, but who can say we feel love the same way? We love different people, and we feel a unique set of emotions for each of them. So it's with God. Even if you follow the teachings of a particular church, you see God in your own way. Understanding God resonates with your life experience and your views on the world. Or, if you don't support the teachings of any church, most likely, you saw God as he appeared only to you. We won't comprehend the number of His forms, but we should be grateful for His presence in our lives.

[TRANSPONDER]

Understand me correctly, but I believe that even being a representative of a particular denomination, we invent God for ourselves. It resonates with my definition of love - we all share a common understanding of this term, but who can say we feel love the same way? We love different people, and we feel a unique set of emotions for each of them. So it's with God. Even if you follow the teachings of a particular church, you see God in your own way. Understanding God resonates with your life experience and your views on the world. Or, if you don't support the teachings of any church, most likely, you saw God as he appeared only to you. We won't comprehend the number of His forms, but we should be grateful for His presence in our lives.

I think you are on the right lines, and you may stay there, or you may move along (or back). I'd see this as getting to a non -religious -specific god, which is ok, as Theism is not the problem but organised religion, which interferes in society and politics and can lead to (or at least bolster) wars.

I don't see feelings in the head, 'Love' or emotions as anything supernatural, but rather a biological instinct that isn't understood yet. Morality was a big apologetic for God (or a god of some stripe) in then old days, but that apologetic has gone, and I reckon the god of warm fuzzies will go the same way.

In the meantime, you are on the right lines, I reckon, we (hellbound heathens) can do business with you, and welcome on the Board