Friday, September 25, 2009
Protect Insurance Companies PSA (T in C)
Health Care Issues Abound
I am all for Obama's health care plan. I look forward to the day it is passed. I am sick of ignorant people twisting the truth too.
Labels: health care, Obama
THE THIRTEEN ARTICLES OF FAITH Mormons Believe But Are Afraid To Tell You
Friday, May 15, 2009
Maybe this is why the image of the church is suffering, it's all so different than mainstream Christianity or even reality. Some members aren't even aware of some of these beliefs, because the church is slowly moving away from some of the crazier one. Older church prophets, manuals and instruction books taught all of this however.
1. We believe that if we are good Mormons who marry our wives in the Temple, when we are resurrected, we become Gods. We get our own star and have lots of sex, so we have billions of spirit children. If we are lucky, we get more than one wife. Our firstborn spirit child becomes the Jesus to a planet we populate. We get to make an Adam and Eve for each planet. Then they (that planet's Adam and Eve) start making physical bodies for all our spirit children.
2. We believe God was once a human just like us on another planet. He was a good Mormon with his own Jesus and his own God. He was eternally married to a woman from that world who became our Heavenly Mother. God and Heavenly Mother got their own star and their firstborn spirit child was Jesus. Above God the Father is God the Grandfather, and above him, God the Great Grandfather, and it goes back forever.
3. We believe Jesus, the Holy Ghost, Michael the Archangel, Satan, all humans, and all demons are spirit children of our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. We all lived together in the Pre-existence with God near a star called Kolob, God's first created star. One third of God's spirit children took Satan's side, got thrown out of Heaven, and became the demons. The rest took Jesus' and Michael's side. Michael became Adam and the ancestor of us all.
4. We believe the body of Jesus was created from a sperm of God the Father's. The Holy Ghost put that sperm in Mary's womb, and the embryo of Jesus was created.
5. We believe the Bible has been chopped up quite a bit. A lot of good stuff has been taken out, like the books of Jasher, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Iddo, and Jehu, and the Laodicean Epistle by Paul. There is also the story in Genesis about Enoch and his city, which was taken to Heaven.
6. We believe the Book of Mormon to be Scripture superior to the Bible, because the Bible has been changed so much from when it was originally written. The Book of Mormon is a history of two Jewish Indian tribes, known as the Nephites and Lamanites. They came here about 600 BC. The Nephites were mostly good and wrote the Book of Mormon on Gold Plates. Jesus visited them shortly after his resurrection. In time, the Nephites became pretty bad, and were wiped out about 400 AD. Moroni, the last Nephite, buried the Gold Plates in a hill in New York.
7. We believe in three heavens. The highest one is called the Celestial Kingdom. God the Father, Heavenly Mother, Jesus, and all good Mormons and children who died before they were 8 will live there forever. The middle heaven is called the Terrestrial Kingdom. It is for good people who did not want to be Mormons. Jesus and people from the Celestial Kingdom can come down to visit, but God the Father and Heavenly Mother cannot. The lowest heaven is the Telestial Kingdom. It is for people who were pretty bad, and spent the whole Millennium in Hell.
8. We believe people who did not get a chance to become Mormons in this life can become Mormons in the next life. Mormons get baptized for dead people in the Temple. This will go on in the Millennium until every good person who wants to become a Mormon will get a chance.
9. We believe the only people who stay in Hell forever are Satan, the demons, ex-Mormons who criticize the Church, and really, really bad Mormons who would have killed Jesus themselves if they could have gotten away with it.
10. We believe those of African descent are descendants of Cain, through Ham's Cainite wife, Egyptus. We believe they could not have the Priesthood because they were less valiant in the Pre-existence.
11. We believe we no longer have to believe what dead Presidents of the Church believed. We don't have to believe, as Brigham Young did, that Adam is God the Father, or that Jesus was a polygamist, or that gold grows. We don't have to believe, as President Joseph Fielding Smith did, that we would never make it to the Moon, or that those of African descent cannot receive the Priesthood until Abel has children on another planet, who get the Priesthood there first.
12. We believe a text which was proven to be a 4th century BC Egyptian funeral text, which has been translated by many Egyptologists, to really be the Book of Abraham, and that Joseph Smith's totally different translation is the only true one. We also might believe the Kinderhook Plates he translated to be accurate, even though they were proven to be a hoax, or that he knew he was being tricked, even though he translated part of them.
13. We believe whatever the President of the Church says is true, even if it contradicts a dead President of the Church, or even if it contradicts history. Our salvation depends on us sacrificing our intellect to the President of the Church, and its General Authorities.
Labels: LDS church, mormon
LDS Church: Do as I say, not as I do
by Micah McAllister
When it comes to evaluating or scrutinizing the LDS church, most members will tell you that the doctrine or church is perfect, but run by imperfect people. While this may sound good in theory to the members, it should be a blaring red flag. This is actually a “stop think” method utilized to keep members from thinking critically about the organization and blaming themselves for it’s (the organization’s) shortcomings. To continue this discussion, I would like to distinguish and segregate LDS faithful into two groups. The first group is comprised of the average member, serving in their local vicinity in various capacities and generally trying to do their best to fulfill what has been asked of them and what they believe is right. The second group is what I would call “upper management”, those at the top of the pyramid dictating the direction of the church whole. This group includes the First Presidency, the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, Seventy and some of the many office positions that keep the church running.
This second group is where I would like to focus and apply my theme of “Do as I say, not as I do”. Though there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of examples of this, today I will play nice and only focus on one, which in a way, covers most of the rest. Honesty. To setup this example, let’s establish from the LDS Church’s own Gospel Principles what it means to be honest:
"Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" (Exodus 20:16). Jesus also taught this when he was on earth (see Matthew 19:18). There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest. "(“Chapter 31: Honesty,” Gospel Principles, 203)
While I was on my way out of the church in June of 2008, I met twice with my Stake President. In trying to understand my reasons for leaving, he asked me several questions. “Have you been offended?” No. “Do you have any unresolved transgressions or sins?” No. (Side note: These are the typical off hand reasons that LDS members think of when hearing about a member going inactive or falling away. While this is sometimes the case, it is usually not the norm for stalwart members who leave unexpectedly.) “What is your main concern regarding the church?” My response to this question was the lying and deception to cover up and withhold the full history of Mormon origins.
How do I know the church is covering up or withholding the full story? Because Apostles themselves have admitted and admonished to not teach the full version of church history. Their reasoning is the whole “milk before meat” mentality. However, the diet of church history is never transitioned to “meat” and members are forever left to subside on “milk”. Church educators for seminary and institute often take it upon themselves to learn the “meat” of church history but when they attempt to share this “meat” with eager students, they are sometimes disciplined, threatened, or even fired. So while the “upper management” of the church preaches “honesty”, they themselves are failing to be honest themselves under their own definition of the term: “We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth”. Essentially what is taught in seminary, institute, primary, and Sunday school doctrine classes around the globe is a severely biased, watered down, and even modified version of the real events.
“It is . . . my conviction that God desires everyone to enjoy freedom of inquiry and expression without fear, obstruction or intimidation. I find it one of the fundamental ironies of modern Mormonism that the General Authorities, who praise free agency, also do their best to limit free agency's prerequisites--access to information, uninhibited inquiry and freedom of expression.”
-Michael Quinn, ex-LDS Historian
The following quotes are excerpts from a discourse given by Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1981 to LDS church educators during a conference at Brigham Young University. This clearly depicts the lengths and means the “upper management” is willing to enforce to keep the LDS faithful on a steady diet of “milk” while withholding the more filling and needed “meat”. (source: http://byustudies.byu.edu/shop/pdfSRC/21.3Packer.pdf )
"Church history can be so interesting and so inspiring as to be a powerful tool indeed for building faith. If not properly written or properly taught, it may be a faith destroyer."
“There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful."
"The writer or teacher who has an exaggerated loyalty to the theory that everything must be told is laying a foundation for his own judgment. The Lord made it clear that some things are to be taught selectively and some things are to be given only to those who are worthy.”
"That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith - particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith - places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities. Do not spread disease germs!" (Boyd K. Packer, 1981, BYU Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 259-271, emphasis mine)
While I understand the LDS church’s concerns and reasons to build faith instead of “destroying” it, my question is, if the full version of history and events is such that faith would likely not be established when taught, then perhaps it’s not a foundation one would want to have faith in anyways. Notice that Elder Packer’s concerns are not whether truth is being taught, but whether faith is being established. Using this logic, one could freely modify and teach the history of events of any cause to recruit followers, gain power, wealth or whatever and feel that the ends justify the means. However in the LDS church’s case, this is in clear contradiction to their own values and creed.
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.” -- Christopher Dawson
When history is modified such that it only paints a positive light for any organization, it is easier for people to get warm fuzzies about it, such that they falsely think they are joining a good cause and fail to recognize or accept all of the skeletons in the closet from both the past and present. They only see and accept what the organization want them to. Unfortunately, when combining this control of information with other subtle means and tactics, the free agency and authentic identity of individuals is literally robbed from them.
“For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.” -- Thomas Edison
Teaching a biased, watered down version of history is, in a very real sense, teaching fiction, spun to the benefit of the organization at the expense of the individual. Deception, lies, and cover-up are normally attributes of evil. An organization that preaches one thing but does another is not an organization worthy of loyalty or trust.
“The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.” -- Reinhold Niebuhr
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” -- Aldous Huxley
Please distribute freely.
Labels: honesty, LDS church, mormon