God who?

The one your daughter worships.

It's been a while since I read the bible, but wasn't there something about how "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?" Of course, Mormons might classify that as "true but not useful."

I've heard three different stories for this one:

1: Two thousandish years ago, there was a gate in the wall around Jerusalem that was small. It was named "The Eye of a Needle". In order for a camel to pass through it, it had to be unloaded then get on its knees and shimmy through, hence the phrase.

2: After this phrase was "said", the religious leaders wanted a loophole so they made the afore-mentioned gate.

3. God really meant it as said, as in a camel passing through the eye of a sewing needle.

(Edit) Set-up question? "Do you consider the church president and the apostles to be Christ-like?"
The answer would probably be "Yes," or at least, "I hope so."
Then share this pearl (or great price) of wisdom:


"... And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." (Matt 8:20)

Christ was basically a traveling mendicant preacher, who was betrayed by the embezzling keeper of his purse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2022 02:09PM by caffiend.

Maybe they think Jesus learned his lesson?

Ouch!

"please quote me the specific Bible verse you are using to justify that."

I have read the New Testament, some of the Old Testament, and none of Joseph Smith's books (I was never Mormon). In the New Testament and the portions of the Old Testament I've read, I've never found anything saying that God and Jesus Christ wanted the church to be rich and powerful. In fact, if you take the Bible literally, Jesus both shuns and criticizes the rich and powerful.

For example, all four gospels talk about Jesus entering the temple grounds and shooing away the merchants. In the book of Matthew, the BeAttitudes in chapter 5 specifically state that people should be "poor in spirit." In Chapter 25 of the same Gospel, Jesus lays out how he will judge the sheep and goats, and none of the judgments are based on how powerful and rich his church is.

In all three of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus sends his Disciples out to proselitize wearing just the sandals on their feet. In short rebuffs in all three gospels, he tells strangers who wish to follow him to sell their homes, give away their money, take up their crosses, and follow him. Even more direct is the parable of Lazarus and the rich man found in Luke (I don't remember the chapter or verse at the moment) where the rich man winds up in hell because he failed to share his wealth with poor Lazarus.

So it's clear Biblically that God didn't want a wealthy and powerful church, and I really can't find any verses to contradict that. Can you?

I think the issue is not wealth as such but the worship of wealth before and to the exclusion of God as the provider, and the disregard of the less fortunate. Plenty of Biblical characters were blessed with wealth.

In some tribal communities, they know who the richest person in the village is because they give the most to others.

Exactly, but Mormonism falls down hard on share the wealth.

In mormonism, the poor feed the rich.

If God wants or needs any church to be rich and powerful, he or she can certainly make it happen without my participation.

God can't handle money

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr3PJOhsbZY

Even more Fun & Clarity in adding to your video above!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2iv9GceJA8

Or so it seems to me...

God is a delusion of grandeur.
Santa Claus for adults.

I thought she was mother nature?

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I thought she was mother nature?


BIG difference between the personal ‘God’ of the Bible and Spinoza’s ‘god’, Nature.

I’m careful to make the distinction, as was Einstein, et al.

So you have delusions of grandeur.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So you have delusions of grandeur.

Believing you are going to survive death, just because God loves you, is a delusion of grandeur.

I don’t believe I’m going to survive death, nor do I believe in any kind of a personal God. I do believe in what Spinoza, et al, believed in, that Nature is sacred.

"Sacred?" No, Spinoza did not say that "nature is sacred." Neither did Einstein.

You're making stuff up again.

To both Einstein and Spinoza God and Nature were one and the same.

‘A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’ Einstein

“Spinoza’s metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase that occurs in the Latin (but not the original Dutch) edition of the Ethics: “God, or Nature”, Deus, sive Natura: “That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists” (Part IV, Preface)”

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNatu

Well, you proved my point. You could not produce anything from Spinoza or from Einstein claiming "nature is sacred."

I repeat: you made that up.

They both equated Nature with God, which is the same thing as divine.

Divine is an adjective. God is a noun. They are not the same thing. Related, sure.

dogbloggernli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Divine is an adjective. God is a noun. They are
> not the same thing. Related, sure.

noun: the Divine : providence or God.

noun: Providence: God or nature as providing protective or spiritual care.

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS939US939&sxsrf=APq-WBsKJrcjvHiCuDuHekA5PlsbefRNqQ:1649558280276&q=divine+providence+definition&spell=1&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwjr7dO6u4j3AhUlHLkGHS35B0sQirwEKAB6BAgCEDI

"I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems."

On 24 April 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine Kaizō in 1923:

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Pantheism_and_Spinoza's_God

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I believe in Spinoza's god, Nature, but I believe Nature does play dice with the universe only on a quantum scale, all the time, only the dice are loaded, in favor of matter out of energy and energy out of matter, in favor of cosmos out of chaos, beauty out of entropy.
consciousness out of the singularity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2022 10:53PM by schrodingerscat.

Yawn

Every sperm is sacred: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk

There is this debate scene in "The Name of the Rose" that is the pretext for the gathering at the monastery.

We have all traveled great distances to put an end to the dispute that has so gravely impaired the unity of our Holy Mother Church.

Good people throughout Christendom.are directing their gazes

at these venerable walls anxiously awaiting our answer to the vexed question:


"Did Christ or did He not own the clothes that He wore?"

--

Beloved brethren of the Franciscan Order our Holy Father, the Pope,has authorized me and these, his faithful servants, to speak on his behalf.

The question's not whether Christ was poor, but whether the Church should be poor!

"Sounds like something the Pharisees would say."

Lets look at the first recorded tithing settlement.

Acts 5:1-11

Ananias and his wife sell some land but don't give all the money from the sale to Peter.

Peter confronts Ananias who swears he gave the appropriate amount to Peter, but Peter tells Ananias he is lying and Ananias falls down dead.

Three hours later Ananias' wife Sapphira not knowing her husband was killed by god talks with Peter.

Peter confronts her, she lies, god kills her.

Verse 11 "great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things."

Take from it what you will.

God has blessed the richest and most powerful religions with the most riches and power.

His wishes are therefore self-evident.

Jesus did admit that we always have the poor with us. God wouldn't have it any other way.

But the point of my thread was the logic that God needs riches and power. That is the argument believers I know use to justify all the crap that leaks out of the church showing them a corporation first.

Yes, I understand and agree.

I was just suggesting another facet of the phenomenon: that the only faiths we know are the ones that have achieved worldly success. There may well have been other religions that were far healthier, more loving, and better for people and society, but their very values ensured that they would not survive.

What is best for its believers is worst for a religion.

He wants the church to be moral. It isn't.

GAWD?

Having money and power has nothing to do with God. It's all about money grubbing, power hungry church leaders pretending to have "general" authority.

Religion is the best business model ever invented. You give someone an unverifiable promise of eternal life if they give you money and do as you command.

God/Religion is for idiots. Believe me I know, I used to be one.

There's a passage in the Book of Mormon which condemns churches who use their wealth to build fancy buildings but neglect feeding the poor. (1 Nephi 22:23, 4 Nephi 1:26)

Another passage condemns churches that try to be popular. (1 Nephi 22:23)

Thank you.

It's all a waste of time. You can use scripture to justify any position. The Ten Commandments says Thou Shall Not Kill but yet Moses ordered the house of Israel to kill. Nephi who the LDS point to for his super obedience beheaded a man because God said it needed to be done.

You can do anything as long as you find the right loophole. The Mormons will simply say they are building Zion and gathering Israel. The money will go towards building church's and meeting houses in parts of the world where the members are too poor to foot the cost of such things.

Any argument outside of their narrative will be dismissed as counter to God. It's all about prophecy and that makes the books fluid. Nothing is written in stone. The narrative can change on a whim.

Maybe the Alice in Wonderland nature of Mormon doctrine is part of the brainwashing. You have to make yourself believe it.

It's complicated. People stay in the church for other reasons than belief. In fact, I think belief is a small part of it.

Prosperity gospel vomit.

God is already rich. If God wants the Church to become rich he will make it rich. What I know from scripture is that God do not need anything from anyone except that non-believers believe in him.