Mormons tend to see god and santa as the same creature, magical, all powerful, and all knowing.

Where as it is common in mainstream Christianity to ask through prayer for the strength to get through some adversity, it is the mormon way to think that nothing bad should ever happen to the person because they obeyed all the rules. Or to decide that “Heavenly Father” (infantile terminology) has some plan that involves calling the person back to heaven.

I once read a quote from a Jesuit that said that people should not confuse nature with god, which seems to a common exmormon I-won’t-believe-in-god-because-babies-die reasoning. Nature causes death and destruction. Always has, always will. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time causes death. Anyone who went to the world trade towers on a certain day, at a certain time, on the upper floors, was likely to die due to circumstances. End game.

Truth be told, the knowledge and wisdom usually comes from adversity. If everything is always wonderful then people tend not to develop emotionally.

I don’t think that the mormon faith promotes a very mature view of religion and it is not wonder that once santa/god has been revealed to be the man behind the curtain, that exmos get rid of the whole concept.

I don’t understand why the atheists on the board have to post long rants about the logical fallacy of god. So, god does not work for you? Good for you. My spiritual experiences have led me to another answer, one that is unassailable, as I am quite certain of my own experiences. My experiences will not convince anyone, and that is fine. I don’t understand why religion can’t be a personal choice on this board instead of constant rants and attacks.

"Truth be told, the knowledge and wisdom usually comes from adversity. If everything is always wonderful then people tend not to develop emotionally."

Never thought of it that way, but you hit the nail on the head...

<<<"Truth be told, the knowledge and wisdom usually comes from adversity. If everything is always wonderful then people tend not to develop emotionally.">>>

Nonsense. That would only be the case if the all-mighty, all-powerful, all-knowing god created the universe in such a way that developing emotionally, and gaining knowledge and wisdom was only possible through adversity.

But an all-powerful god could just as easily (literally) have created a reality in which gaining knowledge, wisdom, and developing emotionally could be accomplished by breathing.

So I'm not sure how raven's lack of logic hit anything on the head...

Mormonism has a very primitive and anthropomorphic view of GodIMO. He is more like a super hero.

Yea, a completely fruct'd up superhero, like the Comedian in "Watchmen".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 11:21PM by untarded.

Stick to your guns, Raven.

in particular and religion in general. so the people that have been deeply and adversly affected are prolly gonna lash out at the religious thing around them. it is painful at time to watch actually. perhaps the best thing to do is not involve yourself by reading certain poster or posts. some of these people have been in or are still in deep pain. i think more empathy by everyone would benefit everyone.
I am happy for you and your experience. and you are right
My experiences will not convince anyone... thats true just remember their experiences are valid too.
just sayin!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 08:20PM by bignevermo.

In Mormonism, God is deeply concerned about the teenager that masturbates. He is also deeply concerned about the person who partakes of the forbidden coffee or green tea.

I agree with you Q the Raven. I think it shows a sort of emotional imbalance when someone always has to "be right" and try to convince others. I am like you. My belief in God is unshakeable and I really don't care what others believe. I don't try to convince them to think differently, so leave me and all who choose to believe alone. We all have rights in America don't we? Don't think Prez. O. did away with that yet.

I do get tired of the preaching by a few atheists. Imagine what would happen if Christians tried that.Proselytizing is proselytizing so far as I am concerned.

Yeah, imagine if christians did something crazy like burning people at the stake if they didn't profess the correct creed :P

Or pushing Christianity destroying cultures and beliefs around the world (i.e. Christian missionaries of the 1700's).

Or getting governments to print "In god we trust" on money, or trying to force non-believers to say a pledge with references to God.

Or using the bible to as justification to pass laws that take away the rights of whole classes of people

the list goes on and on.

[this a response to Steve Bensons Bursting the Santa-Style [Delusion Bubble: Using Mormonism, Christianity and Islam as [Investigatory Guides, Religion Is . . . (sound of angel [trumpet, please) . . . Delusional--

[Who cares what you think about religion? Seriously, get a life.
[Posted by: Quoth the Raven Nevermo (

I love it when the uneducated/uninvolved respond to intellectual threads with eloquently rehearsed responses that add so much to the discourse

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 02:12AM by steve benson.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 01:50AM by steve benson.

To try to justify their beliefs. IF a theist wants to believe in something that makes absolutely no sense unless you abandon all reason and logic, that is the theists business.

However, if a theist starts using logical fallacy after logical fallacy to try to justify their religion to an atheist, they should expect to have their logical fallacies get shot down.

To me someone that claims that their answers are "unassailable" has competently closed their mind to future experiences. Yes, the great closed minds of history have also had answers that have been "unassailable" and often proved to be wrong in the long run.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 11:33PM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...IF a theist wants to believe in something...that is the theists business.

I feel that there are many times on this board when even that much is not treated like the theists' business. One could simply say "I believe [blank]," without trying to justify it at all, and get jumped on.

It is a valid question on this board. Such discussions about beliefs are indeed valid on this board. The admins even state that people stating their beliefs here are going to get challenged. To be honest, I don't see why people that rely so heavily on "beliefs" seem to think that they should be able to state their belief and go unchallenged, oh, wait, maybe that's what you are really saying isn't it? Maybe, you want to be able to state your beliefs and never have them challenged. If you read what I posted and you quoted, I was talking about what they believe, and that is true, but IF they TALK about their beliefs on a public discussion board then EVERYONE is free to talk about those beliefs, even if what they say directly challenges those beliefs.

But I do love how you don't actually deal with the main point. You just try to interject what you FEEL, and do so without supporting evidence, to try to discredit opposing views.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 01:22AM by MJ.

MJ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't see why people that rely so heavily on "beliefs" seem to think that they should be able to state their belief and go
unchallenged

You were the one who said that our (theists') beliefs are our business. I was simply agreeing with you.

Again, you DODGE THE CENTRAL POINT. In this case, this is a DISCUSSION board, if people are going to discuss their beliefs, their beliefs are going to get discussed.

But AGAIN, you have not shown where people WHO KEEP THEIR BELIEFS TO THEMSELVES have had their right to believe what they want violated.

You do know the difference between having a belief and bringing up one's belief as part of a discussion, right? Having private beliefs is one's own business, bringing them up for discussion is implied consent to allow EVERYONE to discuss, disagree and challenge those beliefs, thus making it OK to be the business of others.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 02:51AM by MJ.

Summer offered a very interesting perspective on religion on another thread. It was a perspective I haven't heard anyone here express. I'm not sure that you or many others here would be able to "discuss" it. I don't know if you could get past your own "unassailable" beliefs. And, I don't think many would even try to discuss her perspective because it just doesn't lend itself to the black and white analysis. And, once you get out of the world of black and white, it becomes a little more difficult to be right. Some people like to be right.

I've also noticed some people even refrain from weighing in on a topic unless they get to frame the question. They basically refuse to be put in the position to answer a question. Why? Its easier and you can avoid being challenged.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 03:02AM by thingsithink.

I have never said my beliefs are unassailable, in fact if you research I will bet you can find that I will consider any EMPIRICAL evidence of a God. If someone can supply some evidence of a God, I, for one would be willing to change my mind, The fact that nobody has provided such evidence does not make my beliefs unassailable, so your trying to define how unassailable my beliefs are are INAPPROPRIATE at best.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 03:15AM by MJ.

Excellent essay by an author who seems to have his act together:

http://www.theamateurthinker.com/2011/02/how-can-we-find-truth-part-4/

Quoth the Raven "Nevermo" Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...it is the mormon way to think that nothing bad should ever happen to the person because they obeyed all the rules...

This strikes me as coming in really low in terms of Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Perhaps even as low as stage one, which is more common to children. The thinking is, do the right thing so you won't get punished.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development

There's also a lot of superstition in Mormonism, I think far more than most other Christian denominations, i.e. members who wear their garments magically escape harm.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 01:51AM by steve benson.

"My spiritual experiences have led me to another answer, one that is unassailable, as I am quite certain of my own experiences. My experiences will not convince anyone, and that is fine. I don’t understand why the Mormon religion can’t be a personal choice on this board instead of constant rants and attacks."

Testimonies cut both ways, Raven.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 02:17AM by steve benson.

The difference is that no one with religious or spiritual beliefs feels the need to start rants that state that atheism is delusional. How exactly is that respecting another’s beliefs?

Do you really think your rants are productive? It is just name calling in a vomit of words.

From my experience, no one with religious beliefs cares what the atheists think or do. You find religion delusional, fine. Good for you. I find it naively amusing that atheists are so certain that they know how all the universe works and therefore have become the authority and have the right to tell others how to think. What ever happened to freedom of religion? That can’t be allowed because the atheists have decided they don’t like it?

As the bard, so wisely wrote-
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”


I would be ashamed by hubris to believe that I can speak for all humans and to tell them how to think and what to believe. But that is just spiritual old me.

<<<I find it naively amusing that atheists are so certain that they know how all the universe works>>>

Typical x-ian straw argument. Atheism has nothing to do with how the universe works. Your claim is delusional.

<<<The difference is that no one with religious or spiritual beliefs feels the need to start rants that state that atheism is delusional.>>>

That's because atheism is not a claim. It's the default position. There's nothing delusional about that.

Not to start the debate about semantics again, but atheism (unless the term is completely vacuous) does make an assertion/claim/proposition about how the universe works, or more precisely, rules out certain ways in which the universe works. An atheist does not view the workings of the universe as being subject to the powers and intentions of god(s). That rules out some conceptions of how our universe may function. When an atheist observes something about our world she does not ask 'what god did that?' or 'why did god cause that?' You may view that as a triviality, on the order of someone ruling out that it's 'turtles all the way down' or something like that. That's your subjective call. To me the god/no god thing is a fundamental component of how one views the world. It makes all the difference in how we make sense out of existence. If one thinks that there is, most likely, no meaning built into the universe or no ultimate end towards which the universe and ourselves are oriented, then it is unlikely that one will spend much time trying to seek out that meaning or purpose to things. If one thinks that it is probable that there are such things out there to discover, one may be more likely to spend time trying to actually discover them. It's not clear to me that our position should be that unless whatever meaning may exist to the world graps me, slaps me in the face, and makes itself patently obvious to me, I shouldn't worry about such things. If there is any sort of meaning or purpose built into existence then I wouldn't be surprised if it takes some effort and time on our part to discover it.

Whether atheism is the default position is debatable. It certainly has not been the default position for most of human history or for most human beings. Are you arguing that it should be the default position, even though historically it has not been? I would agree that to accept the existence of god(s) one first needs some sort of reasons to think that god(s) do in fact exist. I think most theists would agree with that as well. Given that we are all presented with some basic observations about our own existence, the existence of the world, and the order of the world, we make inferences about that world. To me it is not obvious that in trying to make sense out of those observations what our default position should be or what are the right sort of questions to ask.

You're obviously not following any of the threads on atheism.

Atheism does not "rule out" any possibilities about how the universe works. Atheists do not assert that no gods exist, or that the universe wasn't created by a god. That would be antitheism which DOES make an assertion.

Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god or gods. That doesn't mean we're not open to the possibility that a god or gods might exist, and by extension that the universe could be a god or gods' creation.

I have no belief in any gods. I make no claims about how the universe works. I am an atheist.

And of course "no belief" is the default position. Believing is a verb. It is something that you actively do. The default position is to do nothing and take no stance. It is not a claim.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2011 01:55PM by kolobian.

All you need do is go on Youtube and check out the plethora of anti-nontheist/atheist posts or just non-Christian attacks that are EVERYWHERE. People like me are thoroughly sick of having to hide that we are not christian, let alone Wiccan! (shudder)

There are some decent, live-and-let-live christians in the US, but their numbers seem to be diminishing. I am astounded at what seems to be the refusal to see or admit seeing that it's open season on non-christians. Look at all the support asshats like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann get - and its because of their brave, patriotic intolerance of their own narrow ways. That's the major draw.

Quoth the Raven "Nevermo" Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The difference is that no one with religious or
> spiritual beliefs feels the need to start rants
> that state that atheism is delusional.
>
> From my experience, no one with religious beliefs
> cares what the atheists think or do.


I am then left to surmise that your experience must be quite narrow.

whatever.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

That's why it's better to stop dreaming philosophically and focus on what exactly is in heaven and earth. That's called empiricism.

Shakespeare - 1
Theists - 0

kolobian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's why it's better to stop dreaming
> philosophically and focus on what exactly is in
> heaven and earth. That's called empiricism.
>
> Shakespeare - 1
> Theists - 0


Hubris. Look it up.

Empiricism is a philosophical concept. Any sort of science or rational discourse we engage in is going to be based on certain philosophical assumptions. The more explicit we are about those assumptions the better.