Mormonism is one of the best proofs that there is no God. For Him to exist, and allow such a massive fraud to be perpetrated in his holy name, is almost inconceivable.
Rob Paulson Are you suggesting that God should not allow humans free will, reasoning and the ability to have relationships? That would be the only way to avoid the option to do what you choose to do. He could have programmed us to do only good but you wouldn't have the choice to reject Him like you do.
+L Morter - I'm suggesting that the Judeo-Christian God of the old testament, upon which Judaism, Christianity and Mormonism are based, is dead (i.e. never existed). Because that god has apparently allowed a con man and a liar to take his name in vain and lead millions of people astray from mainstream Christianity toward a false belief system that cannot save them. If ever there was a time in the history of the world when the "god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" should have intervened in the affairs of humanity or punished a false prophet for "touching the ark" and usurping unto himself his holy priesthood, this is it. For god to allow the false religion of Mormonism to grow and flourish upon the earth makes no sense and it benefits nobody. Why would a loving god allow a spiritual plague to infect the minds of millions of his children? A loving parent will allow his children free agency, but he will not permit them to take poison. So yes, I reject that god because he is a myth.
The bible warns that there will be many false prophets that will lead people astray (Mt 24:11) so it's our job to pay attention and to discern the false from the real. You can't blame God for people choosing to follow a false one. The only way that God can stop us from doing stupid selfish things would be to remove our freedom to make choices. Is that the kind of God you would prefer? You feel that a "good" God would control everything and not allow any freedom? It's possible but is it reality? No. The fact that our world is so screwed up gives you the answer. God has given us a certain amount of dominion/control in our lives. This results in some good things and some bad things. God created order we brought chaos into that order because we choose to ignore God and do our own thing (which is always less then Gods perfect standard). God is working on the mess that we have made of things while still allowing us freedom so that we can have the freedom to be in a love relationship with Him and with others. There is no other way to accomplish a true loving relationship because love can''t be coerced.
+L Morter - What is the point of creating humanity if god is going to allow us all to spend our lives blinded and in bondage to a false religion and false prophets? There is no point to living, no point to our existence if we spend our lives in chains. Your god is cruel, callous, incompetent and indifferent. Absent in times of need. powerless to save from falsehoods, neglectful of his children, without the ability to lead or guide us away from false religion and false churches. He is without substance - a myth, and a fable. Allowing himself and his name to be used as a tool by deceitful men like Joseph Smith to enslave the minds of men. Why should I worship or believe in such a god? He cares nothing about me, or the 15 million other people who are trapped in the cult of Mormonism. Now that I am finally free I want nothing to do with any more fake churches built by men to chase after the almighty dollar. I despise the greedy, grubby-handed sniveling christian ministers who come on my television claiming to teach the word of god, but in reality wanting the same thing Joseph Smith did: to get money, my time, and my free will. Christianity is a train wreck and I won't give my life to another false religion.
Sounds like you are trapped in your bitterness and anger because you were duped. I don't mean to offend you when I say that. It breaks my heart that people like yourself are hurt by the wolves out there. I can see that you do not have a biblical understanding of who God really is and that you are not interested because you don't want to be led astray again. I don't blame you at all. It's not God that messes things up and creates evil, it's men. You have put your faith in the wrong place in the past, in men. God gives us freedom to make choices which is why there is corruption and evil, not because God is evil but because men are. The wonderful thing is that God hasn't given up on us. He has given us hope by extending his mercy, grace and forgiveness through his Son.
Why is it asserted that evil is a problem to atheists? Evil in the religious sense doesn't exist to a non-believer, most are happy to accept that bad things happen, people are understandably imperfect by the standards of modern law and society. How could it possibility be any different?
A moral is simply an obligation. Obligations are only binding on external truth claims. For example if someone or an entire society said blue is better than green, You are not obligated to agree or to conform to this belief. If however someone says the moon exist, now you are obligated to accept the moons existence, because the moon externally exist. Outside of theism, there are no obligations, because obligations rely on objective reality, not internal feelings which do not correlate or find their grounding in objective reality. Therefore morals are a problem for atheists. If you appeal to society, all you have done is make the color example i gave fallacy. If everyone said blue was good and green was bad, it would not make it so. Nobody is obligated to agree because such a claim is not objectively true. Only if there is a standard to the universe and our existence can we say something is good or bad. Atheists require might makes right, that means they will appeal to the strength of the total number of the population that believes in one thing as opposed to another to physically impose their un grounded opinions on others. Of course this is another fallacy, since if popular opinion determined truth, the earth would have been flat in the ancient past, since everyone believed it.
Joshua Hults You have made a subjective decision that the morality of bronze and iron age tribes, that was recorded in a certain book, trumps any standard that is formed in the modern age, by informed consensus, research, centuries of experience and the simple experience of knowing that one's actions have consequences that affect others similarly to yourself.
Considering that much of the morality of the Bible is indefensible without performing considerable contortions, I find it hard to believe that you actually find it superior to standards of morality enshrined in modern law, which are considerably different!
Christians have flaws also... What is wrong with atheism??? What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know??? It’s impossible to know something anyway because we can only believe through the absolutes that are received by us through your senses and who is to say that these absolutes are true either??? You never can truly know just believe
All religion suffers from the same problems. It is incredibly blinkered wishful thinking, almost universally accepted from the culture one is born into (am I right?) and requiring that vast amounts of common scientific knowledge are thrown out in favour of wildly differing ancient stories. This is surely, by the admission of the authors, why most leaving Mormonism become atheist or agnostic!
I've just posted most of this in reply to the latest AA video, so excuse my laziness! In reality no one knows and we may never know with any certainty, all the more reason not to have mythological guesses forced upon us from an early age! Progress in the quantum and astronomical world may be taking us closer though. Big bang singularity theories are being diluted with ideas of preexisting conditions, quantum fluctuations or black holes producing "white holes" of creation, any of which may become the dominant conclusion. If you can have a complex eternal intelligence, you can have a simple yet unstable background of a more mundane variety without resorting to the same degree of invention! (My previous post) Compliance to a brief god-made creation requires that the background to the universe contains a preexisting, ready-made intelligence that had the will to create a complex universe. We are to assume, for his own entertainment! Thankfully current theories are a little more sober; an eternal yet unintelligent background perhaps rooted in the quantum realm would trump the idea of an intelligent precursor, particularly as the rise of complexity to produce our own intelligence can be attributed with some certainty to naturalistic and well understood causes.
AY: "Big bang singularity theories are being diluted with ideas of preexisting conditions, quantum fluctuations or black holes producing "white holes" of creation," ... "a simple yet unstable background of a more mundane variety" *OK. Are "these preexisting conditions" and "simple yet unstable background" matter?*
Mormonism is one of the best proofs that there is no God. For Him to exist, and allow such a massive fraud to be perpetrated in his holy name, is almost inconceivable.
Rob Paulson Are you suggesting that God should not allow humans free will, reasoning and the ability to have relationships? That would be the only way to avoid the option to do what you choose to do. He could have programmed us to do only good but you wouldn't have the choice to reject Him like you do.
+L Morter - I'm suggesting that the Judeo-Christian God of the old testament, upon which Judaism, Christianity and Mormonism are based, is dead (i.e. never existed). Because that god has apparently allowed a con man and a liar to take his name in vain and lead millions of people astray from mainstream Christianity toward a false belief system that cannot save them. If ever there was a time in the history of the world when the "god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" should have intervened in the affairs of humanity or punished a false prophet for "touching the ark" and usurping unto himself his holy priesthood, this is it. For god to allow the false religion of Mormonism to grow and flourish upon the earth makes no sense and it benefits nobody. Why would a loving god allow a spiritual plague to infect the minds of millions of his children? A loving parent will allow his children free agency, but he will not permit them to take poison. So yes, I reject that god because he is a myth.
The bible warns that there will be many false prophets that will lead people astray (Mt 24:11) so it's our job to pay attention and to discern the false from the real. You can't blame God for people choosing to follow a false one. The only way that God can stop us from doing stupid selfish things would be to remove our freedom to make choices. Is that the kind of God you would prefer? You feel that a "good" God would control everything and not allow any freedom? It's possible but is it reality? No. The fact that our world is so screwed up gives you the answer. God has given us a certain amount of dominion/control in our lives. This results in some good things and some bad things. God created order we brought chaos into that order because we choose to ignore God and do our own thing (which is always less then Gods perfect standard). God is working on the mess that we have made of things while still allowing us freedom so that we can have the freedom to be in a love relationship with Him and with others. There is no other way to accomplish a true loving relationship because love can''t be coerced.
+L Morter - What is the point of creating humanity if god is going to allow us all to spend our lives blinded and in bondage to a false religion and false prophets? There is no point to living, no point to our existence if we spend our lives in chains. Your god is cruel, callous, incompetent and indifferent. Absent in times of need. powerless to save from falsehoods, neglectful of his children, without the ability to lead or guide us away from false religion and false churches. He is without substance - a myth, and a fable. Allowing himself and his name to be used as a tool by deceitful men like Joseph Smith to enslave the minds of men. Why should I worship or believe in such a god? He cares nothing about me, or the 15 million other people who are trapped in the cult of Mormonism. Now that I am finally free I want nothing to do with any more fake churches built by men to chase after the almighty dollar. I despise the greedy, grubby-handed sniveling christian ministers who come on my television claiming to teach the word of god, but in reality wanting the same thing Joseph Smith did: to get money, my time, and my free will. Christianity is a train wreck and I won't give my life to another false religion.
Sounds like you are trapped in your bitterness and anger because you were duped. I don't mean to offend you when I say that. It breaks my heart that people like yourself are hurt by the wolves out there. I can see that you do not have a biblical understanding of who God really is and that you are not interested because you don't want to be led astray again. I don't blame you at all. It's not God that messes things up and creates evil, it's men. You have put your faith in the wrong place in the past, in men. God gives us freedom to make choices which is why there is corruption and evil, not because God is evil but because men are. The wonderful thing is that God hasn't given up on us. He has given us hope by extending his mercy, grace and forgiveness through his Son.
Why is it asserted that evil is a problem to atheists? Evil in the religious sense doesn't exist to a non-believer, most are happy to accept that bad things happen, people are understandably imperfect by the standards of modern law and society. How could it possibility be any different?
A moral is simply an obligation. Obligations are only binding on external truth claims. For example if someone or an entire society said blue is better than green, You are not obligated to agree or to conform to this belief. If however someone says the moon exist, now you are obligated to accept the moons existence, because the moon externally exist. Outside of theism, there are no obligations, because obligations rely on objective reality, not internal feelings which do not correlate or find their grounding in objective reality.
Therefore morals are a problem for atheists. If you appeal to society, all you have done is make the color example i gave fallacy. If everyone said blue was good and green was bad, it would not make it so. Nobody is obligated to agree because such a claim is not objectively true. Only if there is a standard to the universe and our existence can we say something is good or bad. Atheists require might makes right, that means they will appeal to the strength of the total number of the population that believes in one thing as opposed to another to physically impose their un grounded opinions on others. Of course this is another fallacy, since if popular opinion determined truth, the earth would have been flat in the ancient past, since everyone believed it.
Joshua Hults
You have made a subjective decision that the morality of bronze and iron age tribes, that was recorded in a certain book, trumps any standard that is formed in the modern age, by informed consensus, research, centuries of experience and the simple experience of knowing that one's actions have consequences that affect others similarly to yourself.
Considering that much of the morality of the Bible is indefensible without performing considerable contortions, I find it hard to believe that you actually find it superior to standards of morality enshrined in modern law, which are considerably different!
Christians have flaws also... What is wrong with atheism??? What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know??? It’s impossible to know something anyway because we can only believe through the absolutes that are received by us through your senses and who is to say that these absolutes are true either??? You never can truly know just believe
There really is no good reason to embrace the "historical, traditional" "Christianity".
Travis Anderson There's one very good reason, because it's true.
All religion suffers from the same problems. It is incredibly blinkered wishful thinking, almost universally accepted from the culture one is born into (am I right?) and requiring that vast amounts of common scientific knowledge are thrown out in favour of wildly differing ancient stories.
This is surely, by the admission of the authors, why most leaving Mormonism become atheist or agnostic!
Please think before you comment next time.
Joshua Hults
I did of course, and that was my conclusion. Did you wish to engage on those points or are you still thinking?
AY:
What is your theory about the origin of the universe?
I've just posted most of this in reply to the latest AA video, so excuse my laziness! In reality no one knows and we may never know with any certainty, all the more reason not to have mythological guesses forced upon us from an early age!
Progress in the quantum and astronomical world may be taking us closer though. Big bang singularity theories are being diluted with ideas of preexisting conditions, quantum fluctuations or black holes producing "white holes" of creation, any of which may become the dominant conclusion. If you can have a complex eternal intelligence, you can have a simple yet unstable background of a more mundane variety without resorting to the same degree of invention!
(My previous post) Compliance to a brief god-made creation requires that the background to the universe contains a preexisting, ready-made intelligence that had the will to create a complex universe. We are to assume, for his own entertainment! Thankfully current theories are a little more sober; an eternal yet unintelligent background perhaps rooted in the quantum realm would trump the idea of an intelligent precursor, particularly as the rise of complexity to produce our own intelligence can be attributed with some certainty to naturalistic and well understood causes.
AY:
"Big bang singularity theories are being diluted with ideas of preexisting conditions, quantum fluctuations or black holes producing "white holes" of creation,"
... "a simple yet unstable background of a more mundane variety"
*OK. Are "these preexisting conditions" and "simple yet unstable background" matter?*