(July 31, 2015 at 7:45 am)Neimenovic Wrote: The strongest argument against god is the amount of different religions and the way they evolve and change over time. What you believe is determined for you by your parents based on your place of birth 99% of the time.
I've tried asking multiple christians if they would still be of the same faith had they been born in Syria. Most trot out the same thing, that they would eventually convert to the present faith. Highly unlikely. Also, people convert *from* all religions *to* all religions quite frequently.....and so they're all correct, I guess.
It's also amusing how 'The One True Faith' isn't even original bullshit. Religions keep changing, merging and borrowing from each other...yet god is supposed to be unchanging. Uh huh.
And it's fascinating how 'god' only decided to interfere with his 'creation' after some 90,000+ years of our existence....Tardy much?
Regarding changing and merging; LDS is astonishing in the magnitude and pace of it's rewriting of itself. Joe Smith and Brigham Young (and virtually all other early Mormons) are definitely heretics by the lights of current LDS beliefs and would be instantly excommunicated if they were alive and members today.
I'm starting to view Mormonism as a 'petri dish' for what most/all religions have experienced through their evolution to the present time. The appeal of Mormonism in this 'white lab coat and maze running mice' view is that the Mormons are less than 200 years old, and have conveniently left a massive paper trail of all their shenanigans, duplicity, connivance, and prevarications.
As a model for what hoops other religions have had to jump through to iron out their gestational fuckups while creating far, far, far more fuckups in the process, LDS is uniquely suited. I realize now most all religions have self-falsified themselves over the centuries, and this is specifically due to the amazing job LDS has done to itself.
Hat's of to Joe Smith and his little experiment !!
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.