Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Hear, Hear, Well said!It's funny to read fundamentalist using the same apologies for differing religions and then complaining about the apologetics of the other religions. The thought processes are identical with similiar content. They can see what is wrong with the other religion views but not their own.The thing is they represent a sizable segment of humanity and this kind of thinking will continue for quite sometime, it just seems so easy and appealing to a common modus operandi of the brain, I guess. lfenedited to add a dropped y changing "the" to the intended "they".This message has been edited by lfen, 12-11-2004 10:34 PM

So do Ouija boards, etc.I don't think you are lying, I think you are perceiving things they way you want them to be, an utterly human activity that we all engage in to varying degrees.lfen

Arach,Have you read any eastern thought? From what I've read on this forum you have a deep grounding in western Judeo Christian beliefs.One major theme in the east is to look for the divine in the present moment in the present experience/self rather than to look to an authority from another time and place. The idea of the ego being either exalted, saved, made immortal is not held, rather the consciousness that takes itself to be the shifting organism awakens to it's real unborn nature that was never separate from the source.I realize that Indian and eastern thought lacks appeal to many westerners but as you seem to be looking at alternatives to the mainstream conceptions I thought I would inquire as to your thoughts about the nondual conceptions.Joeseph Smith seems to have added in some ideas that were fashionable in his times to his largely Judeo Christian based Book of Mormon. I don't think Smith either claimed or demonstrated that he was awakened. I agree with those who characterize him as a pious fraud.I once heard a computer science type characterize the Mormon church as having awesome social engineering. He meant it respectfully as he was dating a Mormon girl at the time. I would like to ask setting aside questions of theology what about the Mormon life style or social order do you find so appealing, and could those elements be abstracted and applied to other religions or even in other non religious settings?lfen

I think it's more that God and the scriptures of the sect are used to support the social unit, mores, rules, customs, etc.I wasn't specific enough. Religions have authority and need funding of one sort or another. I think Robertson and Falwell as individuals are in the religion business to gratify their desire for personal power rather than a desire to help fellow humans.Societies need rules and they can be ad hoc. In the Buddhist monastic orders there are attempts at correction. The rules seemed to in some cases arise to handle abuses. I read this rule that brought the situation vividly to life. It was forbidden for monks to hide a piece of meat or desirable food under their rice in order to fool the servers into giving them more. That had to have arisen because monks were going through the serving line and had come up with this dodge.
I think the big punishment was loss of seniority. You had to be really flagrant to get kicked out. I don't have a problem with that but then I'm not a monk. Societies all have rules and consequences. And from my work with children it's really worse when those rules and consequences don't exist.lfen

I knew someone who went to Friends Meetings and that sounds something like what they described. I don't know if Quakers are as friendly though I was given to understand they were non judgemental, but that is not the same thing exactly, more reserved I think.lfen