Post by blondie on Feb 17, 2007 19:24:15 GMT -5
This is a repost. I want to keep the Mormon discussion alive.
I believe that anyone who genuinely believes himself to be a Christian is one. You people should start using the word Heresy so you don't just end up going in circles over semantics. You can make the argument that all Protestantism is Heterodox.
Mormonism, Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventist etc. are all American flavors of Protestantism. They all formed in about the same time for the same reasons. This was a time recognized by historians as having a lot of Messianic movements. This was when the Bahia religion was started too.
American Protestantism is a random collection of beliefs more varied than any other religious movement outside Hinduism. You don't like your religion? Just make one up. It's the American way. All of these religions claim to be the one true one dating back to the beginning of time.
We can categorize religious movements any way we want. I call all forms of Christianity invented during the last 500 years Protestant. The more resent the more I use the term new-age. Mormonism may be nonsense, but it's practically Orthodox compare to the Late Great Planet Earth / Left Behind version of Christianity practiced by many Evangelicals.
Religion is always based on revealed truth. I don't believe Joseph Smith had a divine revelation, but then I don't believe Saint Paul, Moses, or Mohammad did either. Religious people are always dissing each other's magic. Why don't you all go out in a big field and battle it out with your magic powers? Then we could see whose God is real and whose is imaginary.
The best thing about the Mormons is that their claims are so easy to prove wrong. Only because the evidence is so close at hand. For instance the Pearl of Great Price was suppose to have been translated from some hieroglyphics Joseph Smith saw in a museum. Of course this was before the translation of hieroglyphs. Now we can read the original and Joseph Smith's translation we can tell he wasn't even close in his translation.
Being totally, demonstrably and objectively wrong has never stopped religion before. Look at the creationists. Look at how the Mormons handle the DNA evidence proving their theories of early American civilizations is bogus.
I have no more problem voting for a Mormon than any other religious person.
I believe that anyone who genuinely believes himself to be a Christian is one. You people should start using the word Heresy so you don't just end up going in circles over semantics. You can make the argument that all Protestantism is Heterodox.
Mormonism, Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventist etc. are all American flavors of Protestantism. They all formed in about the same time for the same reasons. This was a time recognized by historians as having a lot of Messianic movements. This was when the Bahia religion was started too.
American Protestantism is a random collection of beliefs more varied than any other religious movement outside Hinduism. You don't like your religion? Just make one up. It's the American way. All of these religions claim to be the one true one dating back to the beginning of time.
We can categorize religious movements any way we want. I call all forms of Christianity invented during the last 500 years Protestant. The more resent the more I use the term new-age. Mormonism may be nonsense, but it's practically Orthodox compare to the Late Great Planet Earth / Left Behind version of Christianity practiced by many Evangelicals.
Religion is always based on revealed truth. I don't believe Joseph Smith had a divine revelation, but then I don't believe Saint Paul, Moses, or Mohammad did either. Religious people are always dissing each other's magic. Why don't you all go out in a big field and battle it out with your magic powers? Then we could see whose God is real and whose is imaginary.
The best thing about the Mormons is that their claims are so easy to prove wrong. Only because the evidence is so close at hand. For instance the Pearl of Great Price was suppose to have been translated from some hieroglyphics Joseph Smith saw in a museum. Of course this was before the translation of hieroglyphs. Now we can read the original and Joseph Smith's translation we can tell he wasn't even close in his translation.
Being totally, demonstrably and objectively wrong has never stopped religion before. Look at the creationists. Look at how the Mormons handle the DNA evidence proving their theories of early American civilizations is bogus.
I have no more problem voting for a Mormon than any other religious person.