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Post by rick on Apr 8, 2010 14:20:16 GMT -4
Is Bill a friend of yours? I got permission to quote him. I think it is funny.
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Post by rick on Apr 8, 2010 14:17:19 GMT -4
The biblical Noah was a doomsday forecaster and he was right once, but when he was right, his detractors perished.
So, if you believe that story, doomsday forcasters can be right.
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Post by rick on Apr 7, 2010 18:36:35 GMT -4
If I go around urging that unless we act right now we're all going to be eaten by polar bears I guess I really am hoping that I'll be wrong, but the fact is I am wrong, and polar bears aren't going to eat us all even if I don't go around warning people. Therefore it would be wrong for me to influence the government into spending billions of dollars to create an anti-polar bear army to save us all because it's wasted effort that could have been better spent somewhere else. On the other hand, if left to our own Nature, we will chop down all the trees, pave all the forests and polute all the oceans --then wonder why there is no clean water or fresh food. Doomsday forcasters surve the same purpose to humanity that dog trainers surve to dogs. Jason, I suspect you get your annalogy from your imagination rather from actual events or people.
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Post by rick on Apr 7, 2010 16:25:08 GMT -4
That does not make any sense because, once they are right, no one will be alive to provide kudos.
The benefit they provide is providing the fear to keep them from being right. Their task is NOT to be right. Their DESIRE is to be wrong.
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Post by rick on Apr 7, 2010 16:23:32 GMT -4
"Buzz Aldrin was on Dancing With The Stars. I think it was fake and the entire program was shot in a studio." --Bill Thompson
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Post by rick on Apr 6, 2010 19:49:02 GMT -4
They are always wrong because they are only going to be right once.
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Post by rick on Apr 6, 2010 19:48:05 GMT -4
Which Apollo mission is featureed on the song "High Roller" from The Crystal Method's album "Vegas"?
I think it is Apollo 10. "This Transmission is coming to you... from the far side of the moon..." or something like that.
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Post by rick on Feb 13, 2010 5:47:23 GMT -4
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Post by rick on Jan 4, 2010 5:50:02 GMT -4
Jason, the fragment is from a part that Smith transltated. NO, it isn't. One of the existing fragments has a drawing that is in the Book of Abraham. The drawing has no writing on it, and so couldn't be translated. There is no way to tell what else was on the missing fragments in the scroll which contained the drawing. Smith interpreted the picture incorrectly. Translation is synonymous in this context with interpretation Jason, you mention some facts without any conclusion. Sure there was a lot more translated, but that does not mean anything conclusive. What exactly do you mean by " There is no way to tell what else was on the missing fragments in the scroll which contained the drawing"? Also you mention some analogies that have no application to this issue. Your comment about translating a large amount of Dutch -- or whatever language -- does not apply. The facts are this. It is clear that the fragment discovered is from the facsimile. It is clear that the fragment cannot be from another part of the papyri. It is clear that Smith got the translation wrong. The "Spiritual" reading is not the same as the real interpretation or translation. Rhodes makes this clear in his effort to explain away the fact that Smith got it wrong. How do you define something as being "anti-science"? It has nothing to do with the fact that many Mornoms are scientists.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 23:35:17 GMT -4
I don't. The official word of the Church comes from Church leaders, not apologists. Even if they are BYU scholars. "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry." (Thomas Paine)
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 23:17:56 GMT -4
I don't. The official word of the Church comes from Church leaders, not apologists. Even if they are BYU scholars. I already made my opinion clear on Michael Rhodes' theories. That is a opinion that is not an informed one. Rhodes goes through extreme lengths to defend Mormonism. In the manuscripts I have read he stretches the truth and just might lie a little in some of is defense of the church. So are you now saying, Jason, that you choose to ignore any information that is contrary to what you want to believe? "Stretching the truth" seems to be a Mormon thing according to what they have told me since I was first introduced to the church. The illustrations of Smith sitting down with pen in hand going over the golden plates, I have only recently learned from eye witness accounts, did not really happen. What other things are exaggerations and emblishments? What if missionaries told about the stones and hat trick from the beginning? What if missionaries told people that the golden book was seen in visions and dreams? What if missionaries told people that the golden book was not in the room when scribes jotted down Smith's stories?
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 23:03:16 GMT -4
Mormons claim that their folk magic of using seerstones and dividing rods has biblical simularities. Something about dowsing is like the rods in the bible. Try looking up "urim and thumim" regarding seer stones, also Revelations 2:17. Dowsing rods (which I assume is what you mean by "dividing rods") are not particularly relevent to LDS theology. Exactly. Show me some reference outside of BYU or FARMS where the four sons of horus are the Earth in its four seasons like Smith claims. The four sons of Horus, I thought, were the four jars that body internals are kept during the mumification process.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 20:47:20 GMT -4
Like Jason said, you could apply this to almost any religion. But if you raise your kids to be Catholic they might hate you for doing so when they grow up. You are conditioned to see the world through a mind that has been built around believing only one thing to be true and anything that distracts you from it is bad or wrong. But fresh eyes and fresh minds will not see things this wayAny religious belief requires faith - there can be no proof of any one, in my opinion. People interpret their experiences and "revelations" in many ways, which is why we have many religions. Mormons claim that their folk magic of using seerstones and dividing rods has biblical simularities. Something about dowsing is like the rods in the bible. But no main stream Christian sect claim that these things are literally true anymore. So saying that "you can say this about many other religions" is not a viable defense. There is a difference between, let's say, Methodists and the Branch Dividians. When a group say that things like the tower of babble or the great flood are litteral historical occurances and that their leader has physical contact with angels or space aliens, watch out. First comes the snake oil and then comes the koolaide. Can I suggest that, since we are now on page 33, we take the ironic route and lock it? Not yet. Jason, I take Michael Rhodes as the official word of the LDS church since FARMS and BYU offer him up and stand behind him. He claims that we are looking at the translation all wrong if we take a modern, technical definition of the word "translation" and that the papri is only a guide that Smith used to provide a spiritual text. Tea leaves, in other words.
If you disagagree then it is you, Jason, who is Anti-Morom and I suggest you either write a book presenting your case or you start your own off-shoot sect.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 16:55:12 GMT -4
This is a lot like people who believe that crop circles are made by aliens. When the people who made the crop circles come forth the believers first try to attack the legitmaticy of the people who confess that they made the crop circles. Failing that, the believers say that the crop circle makers were somehow telepathically influenced by unseen aliens.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 16:19:08 GMT -4
Sometimes. But not without proof. A theory or a wish or a dream or a hope is not proof. Quite right. You obviously do not understand the basis for my belief in God and the LDS Church. I believe because not because I heard plausible theories, but in the simplest terms because God told me He exists and that this is His Church. Not in a voice or by an angel, but by direct, personal communication without words - a very spiritual and sacred experience. That is why your comparison to Santa Claus falls completely flat for me. There simply is no comparison to my one-time belief of Santa Claus and my knowledge of the existence of God. I believed in Santa Claus for completely different, and inadequate, reasons than the reasons I believe in God. Perhaps Mr. Rhodes doesn't know as much as he thought he knew about what is happening with the papyrii. You can say perhaps this or perhaps that, but lets discuss facts. The fact is, BYU and FARMS hold him up as the authority for supporting the faith in light of the damage that the papri's true translation shows. And Rhodes says that "we should not think of 'translation' in the modern sense". Instead Rhodes says that Smith was getting a deeper and more spirutual message by looking at the papyri and the hypocephalus. So he is admitting that Smith made it up whilst saying so in more eloquent terms. This is a conclusion he makes after first trying to poke holes in the studies that show that Smith got it all wrong. But minor errors do not make for an incorrect conculsion, so Rhodes has to conclude that we need to look at the Book of Abraham in a spiritual way and not a scientific way. What this means to me is this. You might be Mormon. But if you raise your kids to be Mormon they might hate you for doing so when they grow up. You are conditioned to see the world through a mind that has been built around believing only one thing to be true and anything that distracts you from it is bad or wrong. But fresh eyes and fresh minds will not see things this way. I asked some Mormons "what if you are wrong". One answered, "if I am wrong, then I am in good company". That is the Biblical Fundamentalist view that God is looking down and seeing that you mean well; or maybe he means that he is surrounded by good people by being a Mormon and so all is good because they mean well. But the road to hell is paved by good intentions.
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