(July 31, 2013 at 7:05 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(July 31, 2013 at 6:49 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: It's a good thing God always knows what's best for us. I know you don't think so now, but you might sing a different tune once you know what's in store for you. The only hell we believe in is the one of our own making. Hell can either take place while you are alive, or once you are dead in spirit form. There is no hell when you are resurrected.

Nice non-answer. What if I don't want to go to heaven, be resurrected, or live forever?

He, like all Mormons, preach Free Will, or Free Agency, but the secret is that this so-called agency isn't free at all. According to his religion, God's plan is in place, and we have no choice in any of the matters.

(July 31, 2013 at 6:17 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: Now's your chance to ask a real live Mormon anything you want. I hope to learn more about you as well, and I know this will be very beneficial to both of us.

Do you guys really believe that you get your own planet in the afterlife?

Because that would make your religion have at least one really cool idea, which puts it ahead of most others.

(July 31, 2013 at 6:45 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: 1. I believe we have a living prophet on earth.

Hiya PP

I'd never heard of this living prophet thing before. So that's your elected president? Kinda pope substitute?

(July 31, 2013 at 6:45 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: I've noticed the same, though I can't blame them for not knowing; after all, they don't have a living prophet to tell them the words of God.

Surely direct contact with actual God trumps a 3rd party?

Is the living prophet Tom Cruise?

How cool would that be??? (Jack Reacher the preacher.)

(July 31, 2013 at 6:45 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: 5. I believe that I will be with my family forever.

That settles it. Do not, I repeat, do not baptize me after I'm dead. One lifetime with my family is all that anyone should be asked to endure, especially my older brother and father. My older brother has actually become a Mormon. There is no damned way I'll join his overbearing ass on Kolob or Krypton or any where else. Not in this life time nor any other.

Funny thing someone who delved quite deeply into Mormonism told me, was about the link with Joseph Smith and hallucenegenic drugs.

So JS wanders into the woods one day, and comes back with tales of stainless steele tablets. Yah, mushrooms would do that.

http://www.i4m.com/think/history/holy-ghost.htm

Quote: Twenty years later, in 1864, members would ask Church leaders, “why it is that we do not see more angels, have more visions, that we do not see greater and more manifestations of power?”

The mystery seems to center around Joseph Smith himself. According to church historian Richard Bushman, it was Joseph Smith himself that connected converts to heaven by some power that he possessed, a power that remains a mystery to this day. (Bushman, R. L. (2005). Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. P. 560)

But is Joseph Smith’s spiritual power to connect converts with heaven really beyond our ability to investigate and understand?

Over the last 50 years Joseph Smith-like spiritual power has come under examination by an ever increasing number of anthropologists, religious historians, ethnobotanists and ethnomycologists. It now appears that spiritual power comparable to that of Joseph Smith can be acquired in the course of consuming visionary plants, mushrooms and cactus. Otherwise known as psychedelics and hallucinogens, when these visionary materials are taken in a religious setting, they are often referred to as entheogens. An entheogen is any substance, such as a plant or drug, taken to occasion a heavenly vision or spiritual rapture.

LDS Historians D. Michael Quinn and Lance S. Owens have shown that Joseph Smith incorporated elements of ceremonial magic and alchemy imported from Europe. (Bushman, R. L. (2005). Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. P. 107, 131)

Alchemists are believed to have employed the visionary Amanita muscaria mushroom in their occult practice

(July 31, 2013 at 9:11 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Funny thing someone who delved quite deeply into Mormonism told me, was about the link with Joseph Smith and hallucenegenic drugs.

So JS wanders into the woods one day, and comes back with tales of stainless steele tablets. Yah, mushrooms would do that.

http://www.i4m.com/think/history/holy-ghost.htm

What, they use drugs? I may have to reconsider.

(July 31, 2013 at 9:07 pm)whateverist Wrote:

(July 31, 2013 at 6:45 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: 5. I believe that I will be with my family forever.

That settles it. Do not, I repeat, do not baptize me after I'm dead. One lifetime with my family is all that anyone should be asked to endure, especially my older brother and father. My older brother has actually become a Mormon. There is no damned way I'll join his overbearing ass on Kolob or Krypton or any where else. Not in this life time nor any other.

Hear hear! I just had a family reunion, and it was not a pleasant experience. Never again. I'm serious about that.

(July 31, 2013 at 6:46 pm)The Germans are coming Wrote: How strickt do you take the laws given in your faith?

And how diverse is the mormon comunity in general? Are there fundermentalists, reformers and various differen views in politics and other social matters being represented in your church?

We generally trust that if there is a commandment passed down from on high that we are never in the wrong for following it. If the Prophet leads us astray, then the burden of guilt is with him, and not us sheeple.

While I belong to the mainstream Chruch, there are certainly other branches. Consider the HBO TV series with Bill Paxton; he was following a more fundamentalist approach to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He continued following the law of plural marriage, as instituted by Joseph Smith, but more important than having many wives is to obey the laws of the land. The United States does not allow a man to marry more than one woman, so we excommunicate anybody who tries to take a second or third wife.

I consider my views to be more liberal. I even admitted to having a drink or two from time to time, and that I do indeed drink coffee. People like myself are called Jack Mormons, but I'm not the more extreme case as I still attend Church and hold a calling in my Ward.

You seem like a pretty personable Mormon with your booze, coffee and cheap whores but I don't fancy your signature, mormonbuddy.

(July 31, 2013 at 9:35 pm)PeterPriesthood Wrote: Learn what we should learn.
Do what we should do.
Be what we should be.
-Thomas S. Monson

Why be a sheeple? Do what you think you should do and most especially be what you in fact are. This is what you should learn.