Ask a Mormon, Part 4

well of course,,,if you don't pay the cover to get in, it is much, much harder to get in. But, you could always sneak in the back door. I think demanding money to get into heaven is a little too much of this world and really has nothing to do with heaven at all.

Well good thing that isn't really what we are doing - but there is also no reason to think we shouldn't have to make sacrifices to gain exaltation.

If I started up a Church, I would definetly ask the members of my flock to give money to my "organization"so that they could get into heaven. In fact, I would make it conditional...seems like a good business model for Jesus.

Good for you, but this is "Ask a Mormon" [what Mormons believe], not "Speculate Why Mormons REALLY Do What they Do," so I don't see what it has to do with anything.
 
Do you find it at all coincidental that Joseph Smith participated in many treasure hunts in his early life, and that his birthplace was part of a "burned-over district," notorious for founding new religious sects?

Specifically, do you find it coincidental that a known treasure hunter in a region where religious sects were often found just happened to find a treasure, and found a sect?

We are quite open about the fact that the emergence of all those sects had a big role in Mormonism being established, so no I don't find it "coincidental".

I also don't see anything odd about the fact that God used something already familiar to someone (finding treasure, although the circumstances were different) as a means of communicating with them.
 
For what it's worth, I will try to answer everything that I get asked, but I am more willing to answer questions that are actually trying to find information about what we believe/do than that try to convince me we are wrong, and phrases like "don't you find it a coincidence that . . . " seem a lot more like the latter.
 
The same as between Her and any other human woman . . . She would have been involved in the plan that led to Jesus being born physically, but as I said, I don't see any reason to think that actual intercourse took place.
 
Ok. How was Nephi Justified in killing King Laban over plates of brass? Surely there are other ways to obtain records than killing a ruler of the land?
 
Joseph Smith seems to have articulated a doctrine where humans can become Gods themselves and rule over their own universes/worlds. Feel free to correct me if this is incorrect.

Do you consider it possible that this God over this universe is simply a previous individual uplifted to God-status along this same plan?
 
Joseph Smith seems to have articulated a doctrine where humans can become Gods themselves and rule over their own universes/worlds. Feel free to correct me if this is incorrect.

Universes, yes.

Do you consider it possible that this God over this universe is simply a previous individual uplifted to God-status along this same plan?

It is possible, but we haven't been told anything specific about it. At any rate since we don't know anything about any other universe that this one, we focus only on God.
 
Do Mormons believe in an anthropomorphic God and Goddess?

From our perspective, "anthropomorphic God" doesn't make much sense - we were created in the image of God, He was that way first, thus it's really theomorphic humans.

In what way do their forms differ from those of humans?

We don't know, exactly. But see the last few pages of this thread where it was discussed.
 
So why must you worship a potential other guy who became a god in order to become one yourself? Doesn't this make it so all humans have the power to become a god regardless?
 
Apparently not, since he not only needed to get past Laban but wear his armor to get them from Zoram.



So killing a person is ok as long as the end justifies the means. Nephi and his brother had successfully escaped Laban but went back to get some records engaved on brass plates and end up killing Laban to get the records.


I am not saying that many religions are not responsible for killing one, two or thousands of people in the name of God. But, this type of behavoir seems all too common and explained away as being necessary for the good of God and man.

Can't I just be a good person and still get all the rewards of living a righteous and humble life. Do I have to join an organized religion to get the best rewards of heaven?
 
If God is engaged in a monogamous relationship, why would he wish for his people to be engaged in polygamous relationships, in certain circumstances? Isn't that deviating from the divine plan?

What are the benefits of polygamy from the Mormon point of view?

Why wouldn't polyandry be acceptable in the circumstances where polygamy is acceptable?
 
So why must you worship a potential other guy who became a god in order to become one yourself? Doesn't this make it so all humans have the power to become a god regardless?

What do you mean? Exaltation is only possible through God; we lack the power to do it ourselves. I can't really speculate on how God did it because we don't know.

So killing a person is ok as long as the end justifies the means.

Most people, except extreme pacifists, would say this is true at least sometimes.

Nephi and his brother had successfully escaped Laban but went back to get some records engaved on brass plates and end up killing Laban to get the records.

Right.

I am not saying that many religions are not responsible for killing one, two or thousands of people in the name of God. But, this type of behavoir seems all too common and explained away as being necessary for the good of God and man.

Well, Nephi had a lot of trouble accepting it, even after being specifically commanded to do so.

But as a general rule the number of times that someone will be commanded by God to kill is . . . not often. Cases where people claim that God commanded it, but he didn't really, are a different situation entirely.

Can't I just be a good person and still get all the rewards of living a righteous and humble life. Do I have to join an organized religion to get the best rewards of heaven?

Well, no, you don't have to join an organized religion, as long as you are alive, to get into heaven. But you do have to accept the basic principles on which salvation are founded, at some point, to get salvation. So atheists can get into heaven after they die, but they can't really be atheists in heaven.

On a somewhat unrelated note, it is hard for someone to go throughout life without having any ideology at all, and any ideology can be subverted to bad purposes, not just religious ones.

If God is engaged in a monogamous relationship, why would he wish for his people to be engaged in polygamous relationships, in certain circumstances? Isn't that deviating from the divine plan?

What are the benefits of polygamy from the Mormon point of view?

Why wouldn't polyandry be acceptable in the circumstances where polygamy is acceptable?

Well, we know THAT God commanded us to live it for a time, but not necessarily WHY; my view is that polygyny specifically will have to exist in heaven due to demographics if nothing else (if more women than men are exalted) and so it was put into place so we could get used to the idea.

The benefits of plural marriage was just that it was commanded. But not all Mormon men had multiple wives (there is some controversy over the exact numbers, but I don't think anyone claims it was more than about a quarter of men, and the average number of wives was around 2) and most were willing to give up the practice when commanded.
 
Well, Nephi had a lot of trouble accepting it, even after being specifically commanded to do so.

But as a general rule the number of times that someone will be commanded by God to kill is . . . not often. Cases where people claim that God commanded it, but he didn't really, are a different situation entirely.



.

I am not sure how you get proof that Nephi was commanded by God to kill...but I will take your word for it. I guess this is where faith comes in?

How do I know if God has commanded me to kill someone? How do we know that people who "claim" God commanded them to kill are not telling the truth?

Perhaps if Nephi were tried by the laws of our land he would be in jail along with his brothers and we would all write them off as religious fanatics who killed the leader of a land to obtain thier confiscated bible? BTW, Did the plates of brass not contain the ten commandments or am I getting mixed up?
 
I am not sure how you get proof that Nephi was commanded by God to kill...but I will take your word for it. I guess this is where faith comes in?

Nephi said, in the Book of Mormon, that he was. I mean, if he was wrong about that, he was wrong about existing, too.

How do I know if God has commanded me to kill someone?

Well, in general, it's safe to assume he didn't.

How do we know that people who "claim" God commanded them to kill are not telling the truth?

Maybe it doesn't matter . . .

Perhaps if Nephi were tried by the laws of our land he would be in jail along with his brothers and we would all write them off as religious fanatics who killed the leader of a land to obtain thier confiscated bible?

Because I at least accept that if God commanded me to kill someone, he would also implicitly be commanding me (as He does) to follow the laws of the land, and I would willingly pay whatever penalty society enacts for such things.

BTW, Did the plates of brass not contain the ten commandments or am I getting mixed up?

They did . . . including the commandment not to murder, or not to kill, or however it is translated, whose interpretation is always debated.
 
He was historically the bishop of Rome, which is the pope and his succession is well archived.

I believe Plotinus said that there is very little evidence that Peter was particularly involved in the church at Rome, and that the church was definitely well established there long before he even visited the city.

Furthermore, there was no office of "the bishop of Rome" at the time. The earliest churches were originally led by councils of elders, with horizontal specializations rather than a vertical hierarchy. Rome was one of the slowest to move to ecclesiastical monarchy.

The closest that the very early church had to a single leader was not Peter but James the Just, the brother of Jesus. (Plotinus also claims that the Catholic church is being very unreasonable when they choose to interpret adelphos to mean cousin or relative rather than brother. The Eastern Orthodox position of claiming that his brothers were older sons of Joseph from a previous marriage seems a little more reasonable, although etymologically adelphos means from the same womb and would seem to fit best with the notion that Mary has other children after Jesus rather than maintaining perpetual virginity)
 
Just to stick my oar in:

YeaH, didn't virtually all of the early Christians, excepting maybe the Marconites, agree on the importance of Apostolic Succession?

To some extent. All the ones who were what was subsequently labelled orthodox did. But not only the Marcionites but (say) the gnostics would have rejected it too; indeed most of the gnostic texts that we have are effectively attempts to undermine the principle, since they all assert that the teachings of the mainstream disciples were shallow and the "true" teachings were transmitted secretly by some especially privileged disciple (although they can't agree which one).

In fact the notion of apostolic succession arose really as a means of distinguishing between the correct teaching and the incorrect; it was a doctrinal standard. And quite a reasonable one too. But it's big leap from the notion of apostolic succession to the papacy, let alone the notion that the Pope wields the authority of St Peter. It wasn't until the fourth century - hundreds of years after the emergence of the notion of apostolic authority - that any bishop of Rome thought of arguing along those lines.

He was historically the bishop of Rome, which is the pope and his succession is well archived.

No. First, the succession is not well archived at all. As MagisterCultuum correctly says, even the supposition that there was "a bishop" in Rome (or anywhere else) in Peter's lifetime is highly dubious. The fact that Noetus was examined by "the deacons" in Rome at the end of the second century strongly suggests that that church had not yet evolved the monarchical episcopate even by that late stage, so to suppose that it existed in Peter's time or even soon after seems very unlikely.

Even if Peter had been the single leader of the church in Rome, and even if there had been a clear succession of uncontested leaders of this kind, that wouldn't make him "the Pope" unless you take "Pope" to mean nothing more than "the leader of the Christians in Rome". But that doesn't imply anything special.

That is not to say that the Pope doesn't have some kind of special authority, or that he isn't in some important sense the successor of Peter or shares his authority. But these claims are quite distinct from the notion of apostolic succession.

If my religion isn't legitimate, and yours is an offshoot of it, then that makes yours illegitimate too. :(

Why? That assumes that "legitimacy" of religion is inherited, like some kind of genetic condition. Why should that be the case? And what is "legitimacy" anyway? Surely what matters is whether a religion is true. And I don't see why a true religion couldn't emerge from a false one, or one that is partially false.

I believe Plotinus said that there is very little evidence that Peter was particularly involved in the church at Rome, and that the church was definitely well established there long before he even visited the city.

Furthermore, there was no office of "the bishop of Rome" at the time. The earliest churches were originally led by councils of elders, with horizontal specializations rather than a vertical hierarchy. Rome was one of the slowest to move to ecclesiastical monarchy.

The closest that the very early church had to a single leader was not Peter but James the Just, the brother of Jesus. (Plotinus also claims that the Catholic church is being very unreasonable when they choose to interpret adelphos to mean cousin or relative rather than brother. The Eastern Orthodox position of claiming that his brothers were older sons of Joseph from a previous marriage seems a little more reasonable, although etymologically adelphos means from the same womb and would seem to fit best with the notion that Mary has other children after Jesus rather than maintaining perpetual virginity)

That's right. Of course, adelphos could mean "cousin" or something like that; the point is merely that there's no reason at all to suppose that it does, other than the dogmatic (as opposed to historical) belief that Jesus couldn't have had (full) siblings. But that isn't enormously relevant to Mormonism.

I have a question about the Mormon conception of God. Perhaps this has already been asked. But if God is physical, then where is he? As I see it, there are only three possibilities for something like this: he might be in a particular location in our universe; he might be omnipresent throughout our universe, located in every place; or he might be in an entirely different spacetime altogether. All three of these seem to me to be problematic, for various reasons.
 
Why? That assumes that "legitimacy" of religion is inherited, like some kind of genetic condition. Why should that be the case? And what is "legitimacy" anyway? Surely what matters is whether a religion is true. And I don't see why a true religion couldn't emerge from a false one, or one that is partially false.

Because the Pope is appointed by God. It isn't inherited it's a position given by God to the most qualified candidate, ignoring the anti-Popes in history.
 
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