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darth_ender

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Join date
26-Apr-2011
Last activity
11-Jun-2025
Posts
8,815

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Post
#547540
Topic
This Thread Is Currently About...Bingo and/or Wings!!!
Time

Have to add another stupid pic just to explain.  First picture looked like it worked when I included it.  Checked later and it was not working.  Thought I fixed it and looked like it worked.  Checked back and again it was a fail, with punishments to boot :(  I didn't have time to explain, and now I check back again and the picture works fine, though I changed nothing, yet my first punishment remains.  And to top it off, the one person in all the world that I want to please didn't even get my joke.  *sob*

That guy is drunk with beer.  He's beer-ed!

Anyway, enjoy this loser pic.  I'm going to listen to my own echoing cries in my empty Hall of Shame.

Post
#547492
Topic
This Thread Is Currently About...Bingo and/or Wings!!!
Time

I actually looked up this site at archive.org and saw this thread when the subject was apples.  I was impressed by the clever references and puns without actually showing apples.  I thought this thread deserved a little more creativity.  This is kind of a weak start, but I thought I'd give you a little sex ed.  You know, the beards and the bees.

Post
#547479
Topic
Religion
Time

You are right, this is the religion thread.  I guess I felt I could speak for no one but the Mormons.

As for spaghetti monsters, I think they'd be created in the image of the angels.  Then we'd know why they call it angel hair.

WAKA WAKA!

 

In reality, I don't know how to address such a hypothetical situation without actually encountering it.  It's a fair question, but who knows how God created other life?  Hopefully someone else has a thought on this topic.

Glad you enjoyed Ender's Game.

Post
#547477
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

Yes I do know what you mean.  And no need to beat around the bush.  I started this thread knowing that difficult subjects like that would come up.  Ask further, and I will try to respond with candor.  But indeed, there are a number of black Mormons, and there have been at least some since the 1830s.

Post
#547427
Topic
Religion
Time

I deliberately avoided answering this question in this thread because my views don't match most Christians' views.

Mormons see God not as omnipresent in the literal sense.  We believe he is a physical being with a body, and despite being everywhere in power and influence (and his ablity to be wherever he wants at any moment), he is physically only in one spot at a time.  That said, he is also a male to us.  Get out the torches, lynch the Mormon!

Most I believe refer to him as "him" out of convenience, because you can't truly assign a sex to a sexless being.  Correct me if I'm wrong, someone.

As for life on other planets, it's not something I'm opposed to at all.  Wouldn't throw off my beliefs, though it would be a case of not full understanding.  Is mankind special to be made in God's image?  Does this extend in a less literal sense to other intelligent beings (since Mormons consider "in his image" to be quite literal, but this is not the case for other Christians).  Perhaps God created other life that looks like us.  I don't know, but you might find the Ender's Game series fascinating.  Orson Scott Card is a Mormon, and his Ender character is the child of a Mormon and a Catholic.  There are aliens, and some attention is given to religion's interpretation of different life, especially in Speaker for the Dead, I believe.

We believe God created woman in his image as well.  "So God created man in his image.  In the image of God created he him.  Male and female created he them."  Woman's role to us does not make her inferior.  It is simply a matter of order.  Any married man in my church will tell you that a woman is in no way the lesser part of a marriage.  Her role is simply different than men's in our estimation.  Many Mormons (and conservatives, which probably means many religious people) are big supporters of prominent female politicians, such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman.  You have to admit that does not sound too second class to me.

Post
#547420
Topic
Religion
Time

darth_ender said:

Faith can be either the easy road or the hard road, depending on one's willingness to understand and accept science.  For me it has become the hard road, but I love to have faith in what I cannot explain scientifically.

 I said this in my LDS thread, but I thought about this a little more and thought it might make an interesting topic.

There are those who believe in religion and therefore dismiss all science that disagrees with their worldview, finding the two incompatible.  This is the easy road for people of faith in my mind.  If it doesn't fit with your interpretation of events (i.e. the Creation), it must be absolutely false.

There are those who take a different sort of easy road, believing in science, and since it does not match up with scriptural accounts exactly, there must be no truth to them at all.  Sure, there are good stories and morals, but little scientific or historical value.

To me, a harder road is to believe in both.  How literal is the Bible?  How correct are our scientific measurements?  Are science and faith able to fit together?  Many Mormons are actually quite capable of both, and there is a surprising spectrum of those who take the most literal views of scriptures as opposed to those who take the most scientific views among Church leadership, past and present.  This can be difficult because obviously some things don't seem to line up.  It can cause a crisis of faith for those unwilling to suspend understanding.  Obviously our science is not perfect, but I don't believe our understanding of God's word is either.  But I do believe that God is real, that this is his universe, and that our understanding of his intentions in both science and faith will ultimately align.

I just had to elaborate my thinking.  Any thoughts?

Post
#547414
Topic
Ultimate Villains
Time

I have to add Gollum to my list.  I read the Hobbit years ago before the LOTR films came out and thought he was fascinating even then.  Almost done rereading it now, and his brief introduction in this book is fun.  A bizarre and interesting character, even before LOTR really fleshed him out.  I'd probably file him under "love to hate."

So Tyrph, you must be Boba Fett in disguise.

Post
#547411
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

I served my mission in Atlanta.  The number of baptisms per missionary was pretty low (I believe 6 baptisms in a two year mission on average).  I had 9 baptisms, so that was pretty good.  4 of those were black.  I still keep in contact with one of them.  I don't know if there are prominent poor black people (in general, poor people don't end up being too prominent).  However, I've known many others as well.

Post
#547254
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

Now that I understand what you mean, I actually am inclined to agree with you.  Much of what we do is for our benefit, not because God actually needs us to take a ritualistic bath.  I see where you're coming from.  It's analogous to what Jesus said: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."  Just feel 

As for being misguided or evil, I think you are justified in your position of being agnostic, and you are certainly not a bad person.  Faith can be either the easy road or the hard road, depending on one's willingness to understand and accept science.  For me it has become the hard road, but I love to have faith in what I cannot explain scientifically.  In this thread I only briefly touch on topics that I've really spent a great deal of time and energy into researching and pondering.  But I respect atheists and agnostics who respect us believers.

Post
#547226
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

Briefly, We live our lives, and the kind of person we are remains with us.  When we die, we don't hop straight to heaven, but instead await judgment.  During this time, those who did not accept Christ in life (through ignorance or rejection) have the opportunity to accept him there.  If they accept him, great!  But they may have missed out on the ordinances that he commanded be performed for them, i.e. baptism, while on earth.  Thus, in what I believe is not simply a workaround, but rather an opportunity for bonding and sacrifice on behalf of those who have gone before, those who still live and have a body can perform the ordinance for the dead.  Now the dead accepts Christ, and with the proxy ordinance in place, is now read to face Christ for judgment.  And the living proxy has, in his or her very small way, emulated the Savior by performing a saving act that someone else could not perform for him/herself.  Hope that helps.

Post
#547211
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

timdiggerm said:

darth_ender said:

James T. Kirk said:

[Explaining Spock's odd behavior] Oh, him? He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS. 


Oh, I got the reference, no worries there. I was referring to the "What does God need with a spaceship?" bit.

Ah, can't believe I didn't get it.  Yes, now that you explained it, that's very funny.  Sometimes I'm a little slow.

Post
#547210
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

doubleofive said:

 

darth_ender said:


To put it simply (and to partially answer a concern raised by 005), we believe that we have the fullness of truth, insofar as God has revealed to man, as well as proper authority to baptize.  Remember, we believe we are a restoration of Christ's church.  As such, we believe that many have missed the opportunity to receive the gospel.  We make this available through baptism for the dead, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:29
I was trying to leave this thread alone, but I had to comment on this. That's the verse that's used to justify the baptism of the dead? Paul was writing to the Corinthians because some of them denied the Resurrection, but still were baptized in the name of Jesus. Paul was saying that who gets baptized in the name of a dead person if everyone is just going to stay dead? He was trying to convince them that they needed to accept the Resurrection to make their faith real. Even the context of the chapter on your site says as much.

I don't want to fight or alienate my friends here, I just had to weigh in. I'm done here.

 

I assure you, if your comments are respectfully disagreeing, I feel no alienation.  There is only one person who has commented in this thread that has offended me at all (though nothing too bad), and it's certainly not you.  No alienation, and I respect your reasons for disagreeing.  This is actually the sort of thing I'd hoped for when starting this thread.  I don't expect to convince you to change your mind about the intent of that verse, but I hope I can explain why we disagree.

First, to actually support your view: the argument is that Paul was referring to "they" in 29 instead of "we," as shown in the next verse.  He doesn't even say "you."  That said, it does not seem logical to me that Paul, quick to condemn practices of which he did not approve, said nothing the dissuade any such practice, but rather spoke of it in such a casual manner.  But it seems strange to me that there would be such an upset at the thought of performing an act on behalf of those who are dead.  The atonement of Christ was an act performed on behalf of those who were living, would live, and those who had already died.  With both baptisms and the atonement, though an act of salvation may have been performed for someone else, the person must still accept what has been done (in other words, for you Frink, even a baptism of a Holocaust victim does not guarantee in our minds that that person will accept the baptism).

See http://en.fairmormon.org/Baptism_for_the_dead for some more information, including references to historical precedent.  Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead#1_Corinthians_15:29
 for discussion on alternative interpretations.

Doubleohfive, I'm sure you have more objections to what I believe than just this.  If you want to address it, I welcome it.  You have never been anything but respectful in every post I've ever read, and I believe we can discuss this without any hard feelings :)