Beyond Mitt's Underwear: Part 3: The Preexistence, Creation, and Plan for Salvation
Father in Heaven (Elohiem) and His wives live near the star called Kolob on a pair of magic stones. They were once mortal humans just like we are and have retained their physical bodies of flesh and bone, but instead of blood they have “spirit matter, a substance which is more refined and pure and glorious than blood”. At the time of creation
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If you don't examine whether the answers are consistent, well-sourced, verifiable against reality, and match what you CAN confirm, how can you accept it? How can "number of answers" matter AT ALL if the source of the answers can't defend itself?
I mean, Basic Scientology teaches simple life skills! Those are objectively a good thing for people to understand, and a network of co-religionists easing your path is, for the individual, a great thing. And yet, Scientology is completely full of shit, and you *do* agree with me that Scientology is full of shit because you're not a Scientologist. And yet, adopt Scientology, immediately receive real-world results that the Scientologists claim "because Scientology". If you refuse to examine anything beyond the immediate, if you refuse to question what God may or may not have told past Prophets, why is Scientology *not* the correct religion, again?
non-snarky questions over, beware, snark may ensue:
I had had so many prayers answered directly, it was a non-issue.
Even though the answer to ever question that wasn't "was this going to happen anyway regardless of my prayer" was "no"?
I would suspect that you are an SJ, though I could easily be wrong. :)
I've never taken a professional Meyers-Briggs, nor seen anything that suggests Meyers-Briggs is meaningful in any real way - but yes, I suspect it would label me as Sensing/not-imagining Measuring/not-imagining, or "SJ".
I asked for some signs, some guidance and miracles to help me find my way. I told God I was willing to do whatever He wanted me to do, but I needed some answer that I could not manipulate, something external to me to show me that I was making the decision He wanted me to make. I got it, and that's where I draw the curtain closed. My experience was intensely personal, and I do not intend to make it public.
Notably, your past public proclaimations of divine intervention have been DEMONSTRABLY IDENTICAL to things completely indistinguishable from "divine intervention", which also were repeatable and testable in ways you claimed God's Will could not be.
Saying "I have experienced the divine and I wish to hide it" implies that you wish to avoid analysis and criticism, not that you feel your experience is valid. And yes, I am in fact not disposed to believe that your experience of Christ is genuine when I can point out more rational explanations and identical experiences by people who concluded not-Christ -- but that shouldn't really change your obligation to Witness, should it?
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This is an excellent question, and I am enjoying your sincerity. :)
Except you are saying the source of the answers is Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, etc, and that's not true. You don't even believe in God, and so when I say that God is the source of those answers and I already have a relationship with him, you dismiss that out of hand, which is fine. That's totally your prerogative. But since you dismiss what I call the TRUE source of all these answers, you are forced to focus on the weak, mortal, seeming-source of those answers, and thus you come up with seeming-logical answers that are actually not answers at all, at least according to the way I see it.
I know how to ask God for clarity. I've done it all my life. I've made many mistakes since it's not a cut-and-dried process, but a skill you have to develop over long years of practice and desire. So I went to the real source and asked Him, and when he says to not worry about that stuff, I don't. It's His work and His business and I know how crazy it sounds to you because you don't even believe in Him in the first place. But that's OK. :)
If you refuse to examine anything beyond the immediate, if you refuse to question what God may or may not have told past Prophets, why is Scientology *not* the correct religion, again?
What I teach goes far beyond simple life skills. The truths I find in the Book of Mormon and profoundly powerful, life-changing things. yeah, you can find lots of unique and interesting things in the other books, but I don't bother with them much. If I want to change my life, be a better person, I study the Book of Mormon. Scientology hasn't got *anything* like that. Not even close.
Plus, as I said before, they don't have wonderful, family-affirming, hope-filled visions of fabulous eternities like I do. Why the heck would I trade down?
non-snarky questions over, beware, snark may ensue:
Seriously, when you are not being a straight up jerk, I really enjoying talking to you. Your snark always make me laugh, so please, snark away. :)
Even though the answer to ever question that wasn't "was this going to happen anyway regardless of my prayer" was "no"?
LOL! No, I've had answers to questions, problems solved, miracles occur, and all kinds of things outside of the very narrow window of questions your comment implies. :)
I've never taken a professional Meyers-Briggs, nor seen anything that suggests Meyers-Briggs is meaningful in any real way - but yes, I suspect it would label me as Sensing/not-imagining Measuring/not-imagining, or "SJ".
Heh. And that's exactly what an SJ would say. They don't buy into that "psychology test" nonsense. Seriously though, the MBTI is probably the most researched, scientifically based test there is. if for no other reason than for curiosity's sake, you ought to either take 3-4 of the free tests you can find online, or pay for the official one to see what you come up with. It might be somewhat illuminating. :)
Saying "I have experienced the divine and I wish to hide it" implies that you wish to avoid analysis and criticism, not that you feel your experience is valid.
Actually, that's exactly NOT what I meant by it. To tell you of that experience would require from me a certain amount of vulnerability and going into some detail concerning mistakes and weaknesses of mine that I would really only share with very close friends or family. As I said, it was intensely PERSONAL. If you really want me to tell you about those experiences, you will have to work *really* hard to convince me that you are one of my best friends, that I can trust you with my problems and weaknesses because you would never ever betray me or take advantage of me in any way. I'm having a hard time envisioning a reality where this could happen, if for the sole reasons that 1) you are not a believer in any sense of the word, let alone LDS and 2) you are in Canada, so we will likely never meet in person, which would be about the only venue I might ever tell that story.
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I'm sincere most of the time. I'm just ALSO rude.
Except you are saying the source of the answers is Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, etc, and that's not true.
They claim their source goes back farther, but, and this is important, all the subsequent investigation has shown that everything that WOULD be true if their source went further back than them is not true.
You don't even believe in God,
True.
and so when I say that God is the source of those answers and I already have a relationship with him, you dismiss that out of hand, which is fine.
This part, I disagree with.
And my disagreement is fundamental *and*, I think my disagreement is so critical that I find the statement that I dismiss it "out of hand" genuinely offensive.
No, I'm not joking. I am deadly serious when I say that I find accusations of casual dismissal offensive. I don't want you to apologise, I don't want you to feel you need to placate me. I want you to *understand* why I feel it is offensive to describe that way, even if you disagree. With me? Okay, here goes:
I do not dismiss your experience casually. I dismiss your experience because it is unremarkable, because it is unoriginal, and because it is unpersuasive.
Your experience is unremarkable because it is shared with billions of other people who believe *contradictory* things that cannot be mutually true, simultaneously with you. You cannot all be right, and yet you all claim to be equally right. As such, I do not and cannot consider your claim to be any more (OR LESS!) credible than the claim of anyone else.
Your experience is unoriginal because it makes no claims that have not already been addressed, and that are not also shared by billions of other people who believe *contradictory* things that cannot be mutually true, simultaneously with you.
Your experience is unpersuasive because it makes no claims that have not already been conclusively disproven, and that are not also shared by billions of other people who believe *contradictory* things that cannot be mutually true, simultaneously with you.
I dismiss your experence because your experience is DEMONSTRABLY WRONG, because if your experience were true, any number of things would be measurably different. And the best counter you have to offer is that God alters the past and hides to prevent His own discovery, where if we hadn't looked He would have left His favour?
I do not dismiss your experience "out of hand". I dismiss your experience because you are wrong, and have been proven to be wrong, and because I have no expectation that you will ever be proven right. Because if you WERE right, then things would be different, and they are NOT different. Reality does NOT match your faith, nor that of anyone else. Reality is reality, regardless of what you believe.
I have not dismissed your beliefs "out of hand". I have dismissed them after careful consideration, giving them FAR more thought than you ever did. Applying far more thought than you EVER have has led me to conclude that Mormonism is Islam is Zoroastrianism is Hinduism is Last Tuesdayism is Scientology: all equally valid.
That's why I find your accusation that I dismiss this "out of hand" offensive.
Do you understand, now?
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I do, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. The funny thing about taking offense is that everyone has different hot buttons, but we expect everyone around us to know what *our* individual hot buttons are because we know them and they are logical to us. Anyhow, the fact that you were willing to take time to explain that this particular phrase is a hot button for you says a lot of good about you, and my respect for you has gone up a notch.
That being said, let me explain something to you about our theology that addresses your particular concern.
I believe in a God that somehow, for some reason, only had his Gospel taught in a small portion of the world across history, and then it was taken away. Huge sections of our world and history did not have this Gospel taught in it, and that was OK for some reason. How do I reconcile what I know about a loving God with the idea that Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and Taoists and every other religion exists when He could have sent prophets to these lands and got everyone converted to the "Mormon" faith (though it would not have been known like that)?
As I dig deeper into my theology, I discover that this world was mainly a testing ground for character, not doctrine. If the latter was true, then He would not have been OK with 2000 years of the Great Apostasy following the death of the Apostles. Since He knows each of His children on a perfect and profound level, and He knows the best place and time and culture and family to send His children to for the personalized experience and instruction they need to become the best person they can be, then I start to understand that perhaps when a Catholic prays and receives inspiration that they should be a Catholic, He is giving personalized instruction to that child based on what they need. Perhaps they don't need to be LDS in this life. Indeed, for a long time, Catholic was about the only Christian option, so He was totally willing to work within those bounds.
The truth of the next life being the leveling ground for all the misfortune and misunderstandings of this life allows Him to guide each child to and through the religion they need, while not shutting down their options for eternal progression.
So when you see billions of people claiming the same source but getting different answers, you see evidence of No God. But I see the same thing, and because my theology is expansive, merciful, and individualized, I see evidence of God. You cannot comprehend a God who could be so individualized, but I can and do, and thus accept what other people come up with.
I also think that while someone may have an experience with the divine, they may also lack the knowledge to properly interpret such experiences. For example, an American Indian who takes hallucinogenic drugs to receive divine guidance could very well be getting a mixture of straight hallucinations and revelation from God, but they don't know how to tell the difference, and so the whole experience was accepted rather than sorting it.
Anyhow, do *you* understand?
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Except, and this matters, you have no reason to consider your Gospel any more credible than that of anyone else.
I discover that this world was mainly a testing ground for character, not doctrine.
Which is to say, you discovered that your doctrine was unsupportable, and thought of something else. A little *more* digging would have shown you that the claim that the world is a testing ground for character is ALSO unsupportable.
when you see billions of people claiming the same source but getting different answers, you see evidence of No God.
Clarification: I see billions of people claiming many different sources, and getting contradictory answers, with all answers either matching their own preconceptions (and thus, are their own inventions) or having better explanations than a deity. Which is why I see no evidence of a God, which is NOT the same as "evidence of No God". The distinction is important.
. But I see the same thing, and because my theology is expansive, merciful, and individualized, I see evidence of God
Except, you don't. You see a world where all the evidence points to no God taking a hand in it, where you've said previously, outright, that you believe God deliberately erases all evidence of His own existence - and you use that to conclude YOUR God, by rationalising that he's just hiding the truth from everyone else who aren't ready the way YOU are ready.
You cannot comprehend a God who could be so individualized,
More, I do not accept your rationalisation. I can comprehend a God who *could* provide many paths and personalised teaching and who would only reveal the true truth to those who are "ready" for it - but I don't believe that any such God exists, since no path provides anything different from any other path, or from no path.
Either there *is no* correct direction, or people moving in the correct direction are not getting any feedback, at all, making their direction completely arbitrary and their choice of the correct or not-correct direction utterly random. Why yes, they COULD all become Mormons, but there's nothing to say that Mormons are right and that you aren't secretly being groomed to be a Jehovah's Witness, or an Asatruar, or a murderous cannibal - and your side trip through Mormonism is just a mistake along the way, that you're making because you're not ready for the real truth and God knows it.
I also think that while someone may have an experience with the divine, they may also lack the knowledge to properly interpret such experiences
Whereas I know, for a fact, that people atrribute to the divine all kinds of experiences that have non-divine causes.
Anyhow, do *you* understand?
I do. But I think it's critical to catch that I don't think *you* understand the arguments you're making, or the logical results of them.
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And that is because, when it is boiled down, we are really having two different conversations. You are trying to convince me through pure logic that there is no God, and that my beliefs are nothing short of insanity at worst, and ridiculousness at best. The specifics of my particular theology have no bearing on your basic arguments one way or another.
I am interested in dialoguing. I have zero expectation that anything I say will change anyone's mind (and I am not here to have my mind changed, either), and so I am more interested in hearing what people have to say in order to enrich my view of the world and *learn*. Because I love learning. :)
So after reading everything you write, I shrug, and say, "That was an interesting point of view. It doesn't change my point of view, but in case you are interested, here's mine."
Not to mention that I understand there are many ways to understand and learn truth. Logic is but one of them, but it seems to be the sole tool in your toolbox when you have these discussions. I have a whole set of different tools that I can use in addition to logic, and they have served me well. You try to beat me down with your logic, but I just nod and say, "That's fine. If that was the only tool I used, I'd have the same conclusions, so I totally understand where you are coming from. It is *you* who do not understand where *I* am coming from. You think you do, but since your only tool for understanding the world is logic, than you have no real comprehension of the world I live in."
But of course, you disagree with that statement, and that's fine, too. I'm not particularly interested in revisiting these conversations with you - we've done the rounds here, and we both know how they end. :)
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More, I'm trying to convince you that your assumptions are unjustifiable, and thus your conclusions irrelevant, and that this reflects an ongoing trend in your epistemology - both within theology and without.
The fact that you're a member of one of only two major modern religions to make concrete claims as an article of faith that have been absolutely and conclusively proven to be false? Is just gravy.
I have zero expectation that anything I say will change anyone's mind (and I am not here to have my mind changed, either)
See also: You're DOING IT WRONG.
Logic is but one of them, but it seems to be the sole tool in your toolbox when you have these discussions.
"Rationality", not logic, and it's the only tool that *can* be used, and the only tool that has ever produced results.
Using any other tool necessarily involves abandoning rationality in favour of something that has never produced results.
I have a whole set of different tools that I can use in addition to logic,
And they have misled you into using unjustifiable assumptions to conclude absurdities, AND you deliberately go out of your way to pretend that your assumptions are not completely arbitrary.
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I have been pondering this all weekend to see if I could clearly explain in such a way that might help you in understanding where I'm coming from. Let's see if I have been successful.
"Rationality", not logic, and it's the only tool that *can* be used, and the only tool that has ever produced results.
This is demonstrably, verifiably, absolutely false. Let me give you some very concrete examples.
I deal with addicts every time I go into my office. If your assertion was true, I would be able to point out how what they are doing is harming them and those around them, and they would be able to say, "Oh, of course! I'll stop right now!" However, this approach by itself does not work.
Logic has zero ability to change us or drive action.
Really.
How many people who have been told by their doctors that if they do not change their diet and start exercising, they will die of heart disease that then turn around and do not make those changes?
Rationality dictates that for their survival, they change their habits. They have had it empirically proven to them that they will die if they do not stop, and they do not stop.
I assume, having the geek-cred that you do, that you will recognize the sci-fi movie I describe next. I am leaving it unnamed for spoiler reasons in case you have not seen it or anyone else reading this has not seen it.
The main characters land on a planet where everyone is dead. There has been no violence done, people are simply sitting on the street, laying at their desks, etc. As they explore, they find a video stating the the government had experimented with a new drug in an attempt to make the population more docile, and they succeeded so well that everyone stopped where they were and simply starved to death.
Note: they knew they were starving to death, but they did not care. All the rationality in the world did not convince them to stand up and do something about it.
Logic only has power to move us when we care about it.
Let me say that again in a different way. Without emotion, logic is utterly, completely useless.
All motion comes from e-motion.
I cannot solve my clients' addictions and problems with logic. Rationality does not move them. I must work within the bounds of their emotional issues with emotional solutions. If rationality was my sole tool, I could not do what I do. Rationality and logic can guide my emotion, but emotion is still at the core of it.
If you cling to rationality, it is because you care about it so much that you are willing to embrace utterly illogical, irrational beliefs, convinced that you are being completely rational.
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Rationality dictates that for their survival, they change their habits. They have had it empirically proven to them that they will die if they do not stop, and they do not stop.
I think you need to take a class on psychology. There is a whole other system for why this happens that explains a great deal more than just addiction, and while you may decide afterwards that the root of that system is "God created humans to have brains that function in this way", if you skip the system itself, you are doing your clients a massive disservice. For you to say that there is no rational way to deal with these problem is completely provably false. There is absolutely a rational way of dismantling the systems that lead people to have those issues in the first place (and also to ignore them until they stop ignoring them), and that system is something you learn in therapy. That is what psychology-based therapy is there for.
Emotions are chemicals in your brain and the perceptions that you have. They are not inviolate. If you have ever successfully attempted to cheer yourself up when you've been a little down in the dumps, you know this to be true. You DO. We both know you do, whether you want to admit it or not. Emotion is absolutely a malleable thing that can be changed with effort. Knowing that on the one hand but then on the other claiming the complete opposite whenever it involves something more serious, something harder, something that could take years of work instead of just a few minutes, is complete intellectual laziness.
If you skip giving your clients the rational, workable tools that will, in fact, help them to dismantle even the biggest of emotional and psychological obstacles, and instead give them a band-aid false panacea of "do it because of God", you are, again, doing them a massive disservice. But I suspect that's only half the case. I suspect that the other half of what you do does involve giving them some of those tools, but only up to a point, and then you attribute the rest to God, without being willing to see that those same tools could go the full distance if you and/or your client actually wanted to push to get there. Which is half intellectual laziness and half intellectual dishonesty.
Not that my opinion, as someone who is living proof that what you have to say about this is incorrect, matters, but: I can accept someone who says, "I see and respect and embrace the rational system, and I think it's beautiful that a higher power created it." I can't respect anyone who says, "I can accept whatever rational systems don't make me uncomfortable, right up until the point where they DO make me uncomfortable, and then I switch to the irrational and throw comfortingly murky subjective bullshit at it until I can stop engaging with the problem."
But then again, rational psychology also tells us why you do that, so.
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Goodness, I would never get any results from my clients if I believed that. Logic and rationality is a fantastic tool! It just isn't the *only* tool. I've taken many classes on psychology, and I am well aware of this.
I'm sorry that you misconstrued my words to mean something they didn't.
But I suspect that's only half the case. I suspect that the other half of what you do does involve giving them some of those tools, but only up to a point, and then you attribute the rest to God, without being willing to see that those same tools could go the full distance if you and/or your client actually wanted to push to get there. Which is half intellectual laziness and half intellectual dishonesty.
It's a good thing you said you only suspected instead of saying you knew, because your suspicions are wrong. :) The people who come see me have found out the hard way that "You and me, God" just doesn't work. I don't discount prayer. I encourage it. But the God I believe in does not help those that don't help themselves, so I don't give them a half-effective way to change. I give them an amazing way to change, and then have them ask God to make it even better.
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> I never said anywhere that logic was stoopid,and dat peepl who tink dat logik is dum r de best peepl evr!
On the other:
> Logic has zero ability to change us or drive action.
You said logic on its own was useless. I said it's not, and can IN FACT be the sole tool and still produce results (please see: me), and that I think your ideas about emotions are bunk and I can prove it with one simple example, which I did. I'm not misconstruing anything. I think you just suck at communicating.
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Anecdotal. :) Lest anyone accuse me of being a hypocrite, I think anecdotal evidence is great when defending an emotional argument. But when you use anecdotal evidence to support your claim that rationality is fundamentally true, you are so shooting yourself in the foot.
Here's the truth - I don't doubt you applied logic to solve a problem. But you applied logic and emotion together, not just logic. If you didn't care about logic, you would not act on it. Logic is awesome to help guide emotion, but logic alone is useless.
I think you just suck at communicating.
Awesome. Love me an ad homimen before I go to bed in the evening.
You are totally welcome to your opinion. :)
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She said "X is true in at least one case, here's proof"
That's not "anecdotal", that's "it only takes one counterexample to disprove a universal. Which she did.
PS: Ad Hominem is "you are a bad person, therefore you are wrong". What she said was "you are a terrible communicator, therefore your points are communicated terribly". This is not ad hominem, and only someone who was really bad ar arguing, like you, would confuse the two.
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Here's another example:
Everyone in this world is driven by emotion, period. Being that we are driven by emotion, we are swayed by arguments that touch our emotions. You are emotionally invested in being rational, therefore, you give rational arguments emotional force. (This is not an inherently bad thing, by the way.)
However, most of the rest of the world does not do this, as stated in this old truism, "You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar."
When I bring this to your attention, I am telling you, "This is reality." You reply, saying, "This is a stupid reality, and I refuse to be a part of it." (This is where it becomes a bad thing.)
This is entirely your call, and I respect your ability to make that choice. However, you are living in an irrational world when you fight against this truth. You call it a tonal argument, but it's not a tonal argument when I tell you, "You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar." I am simply telling you how reality works among human beings that are driven solely by emotion.
You are passionate about rationality, and that passion blinds you to the truth of the reality around you, the reality that you do not (and will never) live in a purely rational world, and in fact, a purely rational world be very very bad, since we would then all wind up like the people on that planet - dead because we did not care enough to feed ourselves.
You can pity me all you want, but pity is not rational. It is emotional. It is, in fact, arrogance thinly veiled by pseudo-compassion. I see that clearly, and your pity as absolutely no power to move me to change because it is you trying to play a game whereby you place yourself in a superior position above me using a tool that you deny has any power in the first place, a tool I use constantly in my counseling office and in my daily life, and am very adept at recognizing and using.
Your position is untenable. If you wish to have more influence over people, accept that emotion drives them and seek to understand the principles and techniques related to influencing humans. I again recommend Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People. It would be very helpful to you.
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And no - you may get more people agreeing with you that the sky is red, but that's irrelevant, because regardless of how many people agree with you, you're still wrong. More particularly, you still can't demonstrate your correctness or defend your assertion, and thus you fail miserably in the face of challenge that *does* address facts.
it's not a tonal argument when I tell you, "You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar."
Yes, it is. It is the definition of a tone argument. It is an argument that my position is wrong because it is not presented nicely enough, which is, say it with me, A TONE ARGUMENT.
None of which addressed the ACTUAL issue, of course, which I note you have attempted to deflect.
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It's only a tone argument if I say *I'm* blowing you off because you're being a jerk, which I'm not. I disagree with you on a completely different level. I may not choose to engage with you if you're being a jerk, but that's still not a tonal argument because you could be a jerk and tell me that the sky is blue, and I'd still not want to engage. I desire to have polite, respectful debate, and when that vanishes, I have no desire to be a part of it.
Still not a tonal argument so far.
All I am doing is trying to be helpful by pointing out to you that people are primarily emotional, and that no rationality can take hold if your jerkiness gets in the way of your message when you are talking to other people.
That's telling you that since many people get wrapped up emotionally, you can very easily deliver your message in such a way that your emotions do not cloud your argument with them. The tonal argument exists, and many people do it, and it's wiser, when you are serious about trying to persuade them, to not invite them into that place.
So, no - not a tonal argument. The fact that you act like a jerk sometimes is a true statement, and that statement has nothing to do with my personal acceptance or rejection of your message.
None of which addressed the ACTUAL issue, of course, which I note you have attempted to deflect.
I can totally understand how it might look like that. The truth is that 1) I am working (at home, but still working), 2) I have several meetings today so my time to write is limited, and 3) right when I was sitting down to draft the next part of my response, a child my wife was babysitting puked everywhere in our bedroom (the joys of having a very small apartment - I don't have a single place I can go to to be isolated from the chaos), so I got drafted to help clean up. It took all my extra time this morning.
I may have some time this afternoon to respond, but I may not. Could be a day or two before I can continue. Everything I just said applies, so you'll have to wait until I can get to it this afternoon or tomorrow.
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