story right or BoM stuff validated by evidence.

So it seems that engineers can find their way to get things from one planet to another yet the God of the universe can not get the correct story of first vision. His current prophet certainly has not told us what the correct version is. You would think that would be as important as exploring another planet.

We can explore another planet but on this planet can not find evidence from a civilization that the Church claims they have a record of and that God inspired these people to come to the Americas.

Of I forgot. The Mars landing requires critical thinking skills. The first vision and BoM stuff requires faith. How stupid of me to think that engineers are smarter than God.

I dunno, SEP, given how many first vision stories horney joe spun, one of them has just got to be true!

Void K. Packer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I dunno, SEP, given how many first vision stories
> horney joe spun, one of them has just got to be
> true!
NOT NECESSARILY SO!!

It aint necessarily so
The things you are lible
to read in Joe's bible
they ain't necessarily so



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2021 12:45PM by thedesertrat1.

Well, don't be too quick to draw comparisons,
because the Mormons got them Quakers up yonder on both the moon and the sun,
and NASA hasn't been able to to that yet. ;)

Oh how gullible you are all!

Prophet, seer and revelator Joseph Fielding Smith declared that man not only would never get to the moon but that no satellite or robot would ever desecrate a celestial body.

the orignal Mormon God was a modalist trinitarian god and Jesus was one of the suits that he put on to appear to humanity. Even before he took upon him flesh and blood, he appeared in the form that he would take in spirit to the Brother of Jared in Ether.

Joseph never embraced the the mystery of the trinity. He grew up in a post-Englightment America that eschewed contradiction and mystery and sought to have seemingly logical or quasi-scientific explanations for biblical literalism.

First he confounded the persons. But as he was "translating" the Bible, he began fleshing them out and decided the Father was a distinct personage, one of spirit, but still seperate.

By the time he was talking to the Jew who taught the school of prophets some hebrew, he had worked out the logical conclusion that if all three personages were gods and were seperate, then were many gods. Then he began to notice all the parts of the Old Testament that still echo the polytheistic origins of the Jewish God thinking he saw a council of the gods theology in it, which he wedded to verses in the New testament talking about thrones and scepters and sitting on the right hand of god and reigning in power and glory and being exalted. That's when he went all in on his Book of Abraham version of God.

This is more than theological progression. What he ended with was different than what he started with. He claims in the King Follett Discourse that he had always insisted that the Godhead were seperate beings, but that isn't true. The Book of Mormon does more rhetorically to teach Christian monotheism than even the New Testament. Joseph was able to radically reinterpret the Bible, but he's still left with the fact that his first production teaches something completely different, and he just ignores that dilemma hoping you won't notice it.

I was a worm in the Book of Mormon for years, and I tried to find a solution to this problem. I didn't. It helped me understand why there were multiple first vision accounts, though. When I placed them in my mind in chronological order with how I know Mormon theology developed, it made horrifying sense. It meant Mormonism didn't start with my white, bearded sky daddy and his ressurected son appearing to Joseph as two distinct personages. That was a Nauvoo doctrinal construction towards the end of Joseph's life. The earliest version of my Heavenly Father and my savior Jesus Christ were very different. In that version, God is a spirit and whenever he manifests in a form for you to see, he takes the form of his "Son" Jesus Christ, but it's him.

Joseph F Smith and company tried to reconcile this stuff in the early twentieth century with their invention of Divine Investiture of Authority, but this is only an apologetic that tries to make sense of all of Joseph's contradictory portrayals of the Godhead.

Joseph made it all up. He doesn't speak for your heavenly father. He never did.

Thanks for laying it out so clearly. I have some friends who have stayed with Mormonism because of its post-Enlightenment logical rigor. Ironically, one is a NASA engineer.

I think that may be why people like Sterling McMurrin stuck with Mormonism and tried to salvage something worthwhile from the moral wreckage of Mormonism.

Maybe the engineers and scientists that planned and built the Mars project used real mathematics.

While the people trying to figure out the first version is using the math some politicians in Oregon are advocating.

https://publicappointmentscommissioner.org/oregon-promotes-teacher-program-that-seeks-to-undo-racism-in-mathematics/

Er - okay. This has what to do with first vision stories or recovery from mormonism?

I see this as notice that Truth is sought and then tested via cruel, cold, hard facts. And that faith has little to do with it, other than taking people's word that they "faithfully" followed the instructions they were given.

Whereas in the realm of religion, i.e., belief in the first vision story and how the BofM content moved from gold plates to the printed page, there are no, as in ZERO, demonstrable data points that can be reviewed.

Of course, the church takes the view that if it could PROVE the two mentioned issues, then people would not have their faith tested and where's the fun in that? You can't rub people's faces in the truth, you have to make them seek it out!

Science saves lives and property but doesn't depend/rely on faith to do so.

Religion "saves" souls, but ya gotta follow the rules of the Admins you pick to guide you, which mostly involves believing. Belief is really, really big when it comes to salvation, not science. Stupid science!

Thanks EOD for expressing my thoughts.

I bill by the quarter; so expect my bill in early April... Like maybe the 1st...  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Face it - God was not much of an engineer. His idea of a 19th century communication device was a rock, and it had such poor screen contrast that you had to put it in a hat to be able to read it.

Not much of a medical person either. Olive oil? Really?