Post
by Not Buying It » Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:41 am
Well, that was interesting. Not really the discussion I’d envisioned, but then often life doesn’t go the direction you think it will.
But Ed123 does bring up some points worthy of discussion if you can sift through all of the anger and ranting (boy it doesn’t take long for you to get prickly, does it?). Likening all of us to Korihor is interesting - see, I’m not worried about suffering the fate of Korihor, because all of the evidence points to that story being a total and complete fabrication. I worry about suffering Korihor’s fate like I worry about Death Eaters or the Nazgul. It’s a made-up story with no relevance to the real world, and you have absolutely zero evidence that says otherwise. As for the “warnings” I am ignoring, all of the available evidence tells me the leaders of the LDS Church are no more inspired than the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Scientology, or any other religion - you have no objective reason to think that your faith in your religion is any more true, valid, or legitimate than the faith of the followers of those religions. Lacking evidence of the veracity of their religion’s truth claims, they must have faith - just like you do. What makes your faith better? Why should I listen to President Nelson any more than I listen to David Miscavige?
Finally I am having a little trouble following where you are going with the “forcing you to be good by spoon feeding you proof so that you are forced to choose the right by undeniable proof” comment. Which is easier - simply believing what you are told (spoon fed, if you like), or taking a hard look at the evidence and making a decision after carefully applying critical thinking? Simply believing is the easy way out, at least in my book. A Supreme Being who gives me no proof is functionally no different than no Supreme Being at all, there is no way to distinguish between a Trickster God and one who simply isn’t there.
Simply having faith in something because someone tells you to chains you to whatever belief system you happen to be born into, and would be a remarkably inefficient and capricious way for a Supreme Being to run the epistemology of his universe.
Finally, I need to correct something, I didn’t mean to accuse my wife of using a weak, pathetic argument, she just made an offhand comment repeating what she has heard others say, she wasn’t really engaging in a debate. If she had seen the discussion as a debate, her arguments would have been anything but weak and pathetic, she is a remarkably intelligent person who just sees the Church differently than I do.
P.S. Ed123 I’m betting you haven’t really left, and you won’t be able to resist responding to this.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph