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OfflineSchmendrick
Last of the Red Hot Swamis
Male


Registered: 08/04/13
Posts: 682
Loc: HagsCrag, TLU Flag
Last seen: 9 years, 4 months
Conversations with a Mormon
    #18824955 - 09/10/13 07:42 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Two Mormons, actually.  My cousins. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.  Well, them anyway.  I am far from innocent.

If nothing else, this might be enlightening to Shroomerites who are unfamiliar with some of the less widely known beliefs of Mormonism.

Sorry about the slightly confusing start, there was much which came before this in the conversation, and I had to choose where it should begin.

Anyway, enjoy.  Discuss.  or don't.  Whatever :P


Mormon#1 -
Quote:

I started out Mormon because I was raised Mormon. That much is fact. But I have remained so for a variety of reasons well beyond that. If that philosophy were as solid as you assert, there would be no Mormons who were not raised so and there would be no non-Mormons who were. I am Mormon because of a long series of conscious choices to be so. And, while personal experience does not constitute demonstrable proof for something, it is a valid data point.

I find it interesting that a scientific-minded person would decry the Mormon concept of God while science itself is essentially asserting the high probability that such a being exists and are actively looking for them. The Mormon faith asserts that God was once a mortal being, who, by living certain principles that contribute to a stable and progressive society, learned to control the natural elements and learned how to extend his own life indefinitely and against all destructive forces. Science says that is a load of crap, and then goes on to say that, since the earth is only about a third as old as the universe, it is highly probable that other civilizations have already existed and reached levels of technology that far exceed ours. Hmmm, that sounds familiar......

    Science is looking for ways to extend human life and papers are already being written about the possibility of extending it indefinitely. Science is looking for ways to terraform planets. Science is looking for ways to travel faster than the speed of light. And science is looking for life on other planets, including advanced civilizations that are far older than humanity, which they say is highly pMormon#2able. Mormons are saying that has all been done already by exactly those civilizations that they are looking for. And you are saying that they are wrong. So, as I said before, I find that interesting.




   
Quote:

Schmendrick -  Hmmm... Well, let's take this one at a time, shall we?

   
Quote:

"I started out Mormon because I was raised Mormon. That much is fact."




*** No argument here. ***

   
Quote:

"But I have remained so for a variety of reasons well beyond that. If that philosophy were as solid as you assert, there would be no Mormons who were not raised so and there would be no non-Mormons who were. I am Mormon because of a long series of conscious choices to be so. "




*** You miss my point entirely. I never said that 100% of the people in those places are of the described religions, or that conversions do not happen. Obviously they do. I simply asserted that if you were born in one of those countries rather than where you were, you would LIKELY have been raised in those other traditions, and would LIKELY be defending those beliefs today instead of Mormonism. The vast majority of people are born, live and die in the traditions of their parents. Had you been born in the jungles of Cambodia, you would likely live your entire life without ever hearing the word "Mormon".
    Your religion.. the initial exposure all the way through your independent acceptance of it has been thoroughly colored by the geography, social situation and family you were born into; change those factors at your moment of birth and your religion changes. Religion is, more than anything else, a function of geography. ***

   
Quote:

"And, while personal experience does not constitute demonstrable proof for something, it is a valid data point."




*** Personal experience is only a "valid data point" if said experience was had under measured and controlled, preferably blinded conditions, otherwise it is worth absolutely nothing; it is a completely subjective and anecdotal thing. Take for instance my sighting of 'Bigfoot' (or perhaps a Skunk-ape) in 2005. The following is not a fabrication invented to make a point, it really occurred: while driving through the backwoods of East Texas near Lake Livingston at around 2:30am in July of that year, I quite clearly saw something standing in the trees off to the side of the road as we passed. It was, in my estimation approximately 8 feet tall with long, reddish brown fur which set it apart from the surrounding greenery. I saw it clear as day in the unnaturally bright illumination from the HID foglamps I had installed on the truck. It stood perfectly still, but even in the quick glimpse I got, I could see the fur move slightly as the creature exhaled. And then it was gone, but that image is forever burned into my mind.

    So, did I see Bigfoot? Yes, I think so. Does that mean Bigfoot exists? Absolutely not. Contrary to the popular idiom, seeing is NOT the same as believing. I know very well that the senses, especially sight, can be deceiving... and more importantly, there is no credible evidence for the existence of such a creature; So if you ask me "Do you believe in Bigfoot?" My answer will most definitely and conclusively be: "No. I do not." If the evidence changes in the future, then I will revise my position, and my senses will be vindicated, but for now I must work under the assumption that some trickery of light, shadow and subtle wind convincingly fooled my senses that night, and that my brain simply filled in the blanks (as the human mind with it's imagination is often wont to do).

    If future evidence suggests that such a thing might actually exist in the backwoods of East Texas, then my experience might *become* a valid data point, but for now it is a subjective curiosity, nothing more. ***

   
Quote:

"I find it interesting that a scientific-minded person would decry the Mormon concept of God while science itself is essentially asserting the high probability that such a being exists and are actively looking for them. The Mormon faith asserts that God was once a mortal being, who, by living certain principles that contribute to a stable and progressive society, learned to control the natural elements and learned how to extend his own life indefinitely and against all destructive forces. Science says that is a load of crap, and then goes on to say that, since the earth is only about a third as old as the universe, it is highly probable that other civilizations have already existed and reached levels of technology that far exceed ours. Hmmm, that sounds familiar......"




*** Firstly, looking for advanced civilizations is not the same thing as looking for God and you know it. Claiming that science is 'looking for God' because we are trying to find extraterrestrial life is akin to claiming that science is looking for the literal "Fountain of youth" because we are are exploring the Amazon looking for various drugs, some of which might affect the aging process. There is a stark difference between a fanciful, magical fairy tale like the Fountain of Youth and real scientific research into the aging process.

    Secondly, you are absolutely wrong about the state of current science claiming that it is "highly likely" that super advanced civilizations existed before us. I will try to explain the reasoning behind this as simply as possible, starting from the beginning - the lengthy explanation below is not really for you, Mormon#1, as I am sure you are familiar with most, if not all of the concepts put forth. this is for anyone reading this who might not be as well versed, but I promise I will address the real point eventually :smile::

    The universe is approximately 13.81 billion years old. We know this because of red-shift and the density of matter in the universe. The speed of light is constant, but it's wavelength is not; light from objects which are moving away from you at great speed is observed to have it's wavelength "stretched" due to the speed, and the light appears to be shifted towards the red... in other words, the object appears to have a red tint to it. Objects moving toward you are blue-shifted. Anyway, when we look at the night sky, we see that the further a star is away from us, the greater it's red shift, and this effect is absolutely uniform across the sky. This is how we know the universe is expanding... sort of like a 3 dimensional balloon. if you draw a bunch of stars on a balloon and then blow it up, you will see that as the balloon expands, all of the stars move away from all of the other stars on the balloon. The same thing appears to be true for our universe, just with all of the dimensions increased by 1. instead of a 2D balloon expanding into 3D space, the universe is a 3D balloon expanding into 4D Spacetime. The details get fairly complicated, but see this -

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift..., particular at the end of the section.   

    If we reverse the calculations, following the expansion observed through the redshift and density back in time, we arrive at a point in time when the universe was too dense to be expanding in a neutral state. Combined with other evidence (including the existence and details of the Cosmic Microwave Background; more may be found by the interested reader through Google), we know this moment to be the "Big Bang". The moment of the creation of the universe. Prior to this (if there is such a thing), all matter existed in an infinitesimally small area (actually, literally zero space) in which time had no meaning. The Big Bang is the event, not yet fully understood, which resulted in the rapid inflation of all matter past the point of critical density where it would collapse back on itself (and, apparently, resulting in ongoing acceleration). This "point of creation" occurred approximately 13.81 billion years ago.

    So, with the 13.81 billion years established, lets think a little bit about how the universe formed after the Big Bang and the time-frames involved:

    (Please note, I have skipped the initial epochs and inflationary phase of the Big Bang and all of it's stages (including initial neutral Hydrogen recombination phase) because it is not really relevant to the subject at hand, and because I could easily triple the size of this response if it were included here; there is no "easy" way to explain all that to a layman reader.  So, let's begin with Hydrogen): 

    In the beginning (ha!), there was only Hydrogen. After the initial cooling period, the universe was nothing more than a quickly expanding vast, mostly uniform, cloud of Hydrogen atoms. There were no stars, no planets, no elements in existence at all save Hydrogen.

    However, due to the existence of gravity as a fundamental property of spacetime (and areas of slightly higher/lower particle density), those Hydrogen atoms slowly began to gravitate toward each other and form small clouds. These clouds had higher gravitational pull than the surrounding Hydrogen which permeated the universe, and so more Hydrogen atoms were attracted toward them. In this way, the Hydrogen of the early universe gradually consolidated into vast clouds of matter which would eventually condense into the galaxies.

    At this point, we are still just talking about gaseous Hydrogen. nothing else yet exists. However, the Galactic clouds continued contracting and drawing in matter through the effects of gravity, and even more dense Hydrogen clouds came together called Nebulae.. the birth places of stars within a galaxy. Within these dense Nebulae there was finally enough Hydrogen in one place for an amazing thing to happen: the Hydrogen clouds within became so dense through the force of gravity that they formed into distinct blobs.. and, as the gravitational pull at the center of the blobs grew with the addition of more and more atoms, they formed into distinct spheres.. and they started to heat up because of all those atoms bouncing around in their centers. These spherical clouds of Hydrogen continued to attract matter, grow in size, density and heat until the forces at the core became so great, and the atom collisions so intense that they began to exceed the nuclear forces holding the Hydrogen atoms together.. which began to split and recombine into a heavier element: Helium. This atom splitting process, fueled by gravity, is called nuclear fusion, and when it occurs in nature, a star is born.

    Now we start to get into the things you might be interested in, Mormon#1. We need to realize something about these early stars and galaxies: they had no rocky planets. Why? because rocks did not exist yet. The elements required to make a rock were still a long way off. These early stars may have had spheres of pure hydrogen orbiting them which had not quite had enough fuel to attain "star" status themselves, but that's all.

    All stars create heavier elements through nuclear fusion, starting with Helium; it is the first element created when a new star ignites, and that is why it is the most abundant element in the universe after Hydrogen. Other elements are created as the star progresses through it's life cycle... Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen... and on down the periodic table. Each one harder to create than the last, and requiring a larger star. Massive stars explode when they die, spreading their created elements back into the universe. The dust and gas in the Nebulae ejected by stars at the end of their lives forms new interstellar clouds out of which new stars are created. When a small star dies, it simply collapses into a white dwarf, and it's outer Hydrogen/Helium shell drifts off into space.. the elements generated during it's life remain locked inside.
 
  So, only the second and later generation Nebulae are rich in heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, sodium, calcium, aluminium and iron... the elements necessary for life, technology and civilization. The Solar System and the Earth formed from such a second or third generation enriched cloud.

    The first, very massive stars likely only lived for a hundred thousand years or so, and most of them died in violent supernova explosions. But they were all found in regions much denser than "average" space. So these "enriched" gas elements that had been fused beyond hydrogen and helium were spread out among the interstellar gas and dust. This typically triggers a new wave of star formation, which we find all over our own galaxy in the form of open star clusters (like the Pleides).

    The very first stars, Population III stars, are called "metal-free" stars because they only have hydrogen and helium. But once they spew the first chunks of heavier elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, silicon, iron, etc.) into space, the stars that form after that will all be Population II stars: metal-poor (but not metal-free) stars.

    Population II stars we find mostly, today, in globular clusters, as the 13.81 billion year age of the Universe is only long enough for stars more than about 85% the mass of our Sun to have died. Less massive stars, even the ones created 13.81 billion years ago, are still chugging along, fusing their hydrogen into helium.

    And wherever population II stars have run out of fuel, died by going supernova, and triggered new star formation, that's where you get a Population I star, like ours.

    They are not incredibly rare; there are something like 10^23 of them in the Universe. But they are fairly new. In fact, our Earth, being 4.5 billion years old is very likely orbiting one of the first population I stars in the universe (within a few million years of being first).

    And then, of course, you need a proper planet type containing all of the proper elements which orbits at the proper distance from the sun, with liquid water and the spontaneous formation of base replicating Amino acids.

    Once you have ALL of the above, you still have to wait and see what comes out of that specific planet's evolutionary process. And of course, chance cannot be discounted. If not for the chance destruction of the dinosaurs by the Chixulub meteor 65 million years ago, we would not be here at all.

    If your "God" did everything you claim he did, such as create the Earth, then this 'advanced civilization' of yours would have had to come into existence on a planet with sufficient elements for life and advanced technology, gone through it's own evolutionary process (which takes no small amount of time), developed civilization, and mastered space, time and all the governing laws of the universe... all in time to create our Earth and Solar system around 5 billion years ago. That is RECORD time, Mormon#1. In fact, it is absolutely impossible knowing what we know about the lifecycle of stars and the early universe. There just isnt enough TIME. This planet, ("Kolob" is it?) would have to have come into existence as a rocky, element rich planet orbiting a long-lived medium sized star no later than 10 BILLION years ago for there to be even the remotest chance.

    Advanced civilizations may yet exist... in fact they almost assuredly do, and they might be thousands, even millions of years more advanced than us. But not Billions. The universe simply has not been around long enough for that.

    But lets toss ALL logic and reason aside for just one moment and assume your belief system is true. How did this element rich planet "Kolob" come into being so quickly? And after that, how was this god-man species of yours created... was it through an evolutionary process? But most importantly: if your "God" is simply an alien and did not create the universe, but is simply a product of it himself, then why should I worship him anyway? It seems to me that if what you claim is true, he is more of an alien mad scientist on one HELL of an ego-trip, not a "God" any any real sense of that word, and we are all just the rats in his little experiment. Should the rat worship the scientist? I think not. ***

    There is my response, Mormon#2 and Mormon#1. Have at it.



   

--------this part of the exchange is not quoted properly because apparenty I can only have 15 quotes in a single post on Shroomery---------------

   
Quote:

Mormon#2 - Have they tested this theory of yours in a double blind study? I didn't think so. Honestly, this sounds like the mad ramblings of someone who has lost his hold on reality. I mean who would claim they know what happened billions of years ago, besides some mystical shaman trying to foist his religion upon me?

    Schmendrick -  Someone who actively keeps up with scientific knowledge and advances, specifically astrophysics, a makes sure he understands the concepts involved, that's who.  There might be one or two things I am mistaken about because new research has come out that I have missed, but generally the above post should hold water. 

    Mormon#2 -  Have you tested this theory you believe in? Have those tests been done "under measured and controlled, preferably blinded conditions"? Otherwise it is worth absolutely nothing. 

    Schmendrick -  This is not my theory. This is the current understanding of the scientific community, and is based on more evidence and experimentation than you can possibly fathom. 

    Mormon#2 - Schmendrick, this is the theory that you believe in. If it hasn't been tested "under measured and controlled, preferably blinded conditions"? It is worth absolutely nothing. These are your words. YOURS!  I can fathom quite a bit more than you give me credit for.

    Schmendrick - I do not "believe" it. I THINK about it, have examined the evidence and have decided that it makes absolute sense to the best of our current knowledge.

  Belief is what you do.. you were told as a child that God made you, that Jesus died for your sins, and you don't seem to have questioned it since. Everything you see around you is a biased confirmation of that already entrenched belief. My opinion changes with the evidence, and at this moment, today, the preceding posts describe our current understanding according to the available evidence.
 
    Mormon#2 -  And so because of this, you believe it.
 
    Schmendrick -  No, because of this, it is what I hold to be the currently best accepted explanation of the formation of the universe. No part of it is sacred. If ANY part is ever proven to be untrue, that part will be discarded and my opinion will be recalibrated. Science is a fluid, ever changing thing, ever advancing in knowledge. Belief is not a part of it.




    Mormon#1 -
Quote:

I'm glad you know how to use Google. I've found lots of fascinating stuff on there as well. But for astronomical issues, I prefer to ask my Uncle Dave Laney. He's an actual astronomer--semi-retired now--who spent a lot of his long career working on the astronomical distance/time scale. I had a fascinating discussion with him about 3 years ago on some of the very subjects you mention, and a lot of what you're saying is based on assumptions of uniformity that simply don't hold up. And that's why, every so often, the age of the universe is revised, as observational techniques get better. Add to that the fact that you are assuming the Big Bang to be a singular event, which is also a topic of no small debate. Add again to that the notion of a multiverse, which is actually fairly well accepted. And all of that adds up to an almost 100% chance that the events we observe here are not happening for the first or last time.

    But the real kicker here is that none of that changes my own personal experience. As much as you like to ignore personal experience, as I stated before, it represents a valid data point. On the scale of the world, it represents many millions of valid data points. Scientists and atheists like to explain it all away by putting it into the context of their own experience, because certainly no one on earth could have had an experience that a scientist has not had, right? The limits of human experience are firmly bounded by the views of the more objectivist subset of those who choose to pursue advanced degrees in science, right? The way it always goes is this:

    1 - I relate an experience that I consider to be of a religious nature
    2 - The atheist present tells me it was the result of placebo/self-fulfilling prophecy/random chance/etc.
    3 - I respond by saying that placebo doesn't work on subjects who are unconscious/unaware, self-fulfilling prophecy doesn't work if I have no foreknowledge of various contraindicating facts, random chance doesn't explain how I could gain knowledge that I previously did not have, etc.
    4 - The atheist then tells me that I must be embellishing the experience in my mind
    5 - I respond that, in most cases, there are other people who were there and remember it the same way
    6 - The atheist responds that we are all embellishing it in our minds
    7 - I respond that the odds of us all embellishing it exactly the same are so tiny as to be practically impossible, and also that collective delusion is a thoroughly disproven notion
    8 - The atheist responds that, if it is not placebo or delusion, I must clearly be lying about it
    9 - I ask him for evidence of previous falsehood on my part
    10 - He can't produce any
    11 - I ask him for evidence of my delusional state of mind
    12 - He can't produce any
    13 - I ask him if I'm not demonstrably crazy or lying, why doesn't my experience count as a valid data point
    14 - He says something which logically reduces to "Because it challenges my assumptions"

    En finale, your aversion to religion is not the result of reason and logic, but the result of emotional reaction to your bad experience with your father. I've said it before and it is absolutely true. You identify religion, authority, and a variety of life choices with your father, and consequently, your anger and bitterness toward him makes you angry and bitter toward everything you identify with him. And you use what you accept as reason and logic as an excuse for how you feel, instead of actually dealing with it, and pretty much just ignore the rest. That is pretty clear because you seem to go looking for stuff to fight against. For instance, the evolution article you posted the other day is from a creationist website. What is a professed atheist doing on a creationist website? I don't believe in the Atkin's diet, so guess what websites I never spend any time on? If I see no value in something, I don't go looking for it. Simple as that. In addition to this, you interpret things out of context just so you can argue against them, as you did with our lively debate about steroids when you reviewed my health care paper. That constant need to argue and prove yourself right and superior is a classic giveaway of deep-seated authority issues. I'm sure that's clear to everyone but you.

    I appreciate your attempt to rescue me from my insidious brainwashing and inevitable intellectual ruin, but I'm doing fine. And the more I follow certain principles, my life keeps getting more fine. And that's really where my allegiance lies--in the principles. I figure I'll find out soon enough whether the rest of it is true, but as long as the principles keep getting me the results I want, can you really say it's logical to stop following them? And if I have a framework that supports those principles with less overhead and variability than I would have on my own, can you really say it's logical to abandon it? Where is the sense in that?


 

----------------- Again, not quoted properly because of the quote limitation --------------------

    Schmendrick - 
Quote:

You think I googled all of that information in the space of a couple of hours since your last post? it took me almost that long just to figure out how to word it so that your poisoned mind might understand even a little of it.




    Mormon#2 - 
Quote:

Someone has been poisoned here, and my bet is on the person spewing forth all the venom.



 
    Schmendrick - 
Quote:

"If I see no value in something, I don't go looking for it. Simple as that." <---- and that is why you will never become truly educated, Mormon#1. The only way to really learn is to try to see all sides. That is what I was doing on the creationist website. Seeing what their arguments were. And they were very, very few.

    My relationship with my dad is fine. We made up more than 15 years ago. Way to be current.

    Are you going to address any of my specific concerns, or are you just going to keep claiming that I am a google monkey to make yourself feel better?
 
    Also, you can stop copying and pasting specific phrases from my post and googling them to try to pin me down on plagiarizing. I wrote the whole damn thing myself, completely from memory except for the specific descriptions of the star population types, which I could not remember the details of and grabbed from a forum. So now, I await your response.

    And @Mormon#2, instead of addressing my arguments, Mormon#1 came back with a bunch of nonsense about why he doesn't want to have this conversation, whined about how is uncle is smarter than me (boo hoo!), accused me of googling everything, tried to divert to mulitiverses which were not in his original post and tried to dismiss my arguments as just "daddy issues". I think that calls for a little venom in response.

    @Mormon#1, I thought we were arguing about THIS universe. If you want to talk about multiverses, brane collisions, et al, I can do that, but your argument seems to be that "God" is an alien from this universe, that he came from an advanced civilization and created this world 4.5 billion years ago... not that he is from before or somehow external to this universe.

    If you had mentioned multiverses even once in your previous posts, I would have addressed it. As it was, my response was downright SMALL compared to what it could have been. I was trying to be concise.

    There is no real point about arguing about what came before the Big Bang right now anyway. If you want me to wrap all of reality up into one tidy neat bow for you, multiverses and all, I am afraid I cannot do that. Nobody can... yet.



 
    Mormon#2 - 
Quote:

God can.


 

    Schmendrick - 
Quote:

Really? then pray to him and have him send you the calculations please. You would win a Nobel prize. Probably more than one.



   
    Mormon#2 - 
Quote:

As if the Nobel prize is worth anything, besides money. They lost all credibility when they gave Obama the Peace Prize before he actually did anything except spout some nonsense about change.

    Also, I suspect even if he sent me all the calculations and everything tied up in a neat little bow, I wouldn't comprehend it, let alone be able to explain it. I suspect even our most brilliant scientific minds would have a hard time grasping that most of what they thought they knew was so utterly and completely wrong.



 

    Schmendrick - 
Quote:

That is entirely possible. But as soon as they DID grasp it, the scientific community would quickly adjust all relevant theories and calculations accordingly, start doing new research and making better things with the newly gained knowledge.

    I never claimed that science had everything right, they most certainly do not. The key difference is this: they do not claim to have all the answers like religion does. No real scientist claims to know the "truth" of anything. They only claim to have theories, experiments, and evidence which supports those theories. Some theories, like Gravity (yes, gravity is a theory) and Evolution have Lots of evidence, and so are generally accepted... but if even ONE credible, repeatable experiment ever came to light which conclusively contradicted those theories... if an apple was ever seen to fall upward, or if human footprints were found with dinosaur footprints showing that man and the great lizards walked together on the earth at one point, well... then the whole theory would have to be scrapped.

    Science is interested in evidence and repeatable experiments, nothing is held sacred.




Edited by Schmendrick (09/10/13 10:17 PM)


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OfflineBig_Dave
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick] * 2
    #18824975 - 09/10/13 07:46 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Holy fuck dude, do you really think you're gonna get a bunch of stoners to read a post that long?


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OfflineSchmendrick
Last of the Red Hot Swamis
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Big_Dave]
    #18824990 - 09/10/13 07:48 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Big_Dave said:
Holy fuck dude, do you really think you're gonna get a bunch of stoners to read a post that long?




Ummmm.... maybe?  LOL


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Offlinempd
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Big_Dave]
    #18824993 - 09/10/13 07:49 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Haters gonna hate.


--------------------
There is no truer calling for mankind than that of true conservatism.


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OfflineLizard Eyes
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: mpd]
    #18825185 - 09/10/13 08:36 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Wow good job keepin on those mormons :highfive:

Entertaining read and you held your own :thumbup:

I was raised mormon and believed for the first 16 years of my life, it wasn't until a good friend of mine started having really intense arguments (akin to the ones you posted) was I slowly able to break out of my religious armor.

It's truly unexplainable how different it is to view the world from a Mormon view point. Having not believed in it for going on 5 years now I even have a hard time remembering what its like. I went to a Mormon meeting recently because my "friend" was returning from his mission. That meeting was one of the creepiest culty things I have ever been to. All growing up it seemed completely normal to me though. :shrug:

I personally don't ever argue with religious people anymore. I figure if they want to be that way and it makes them happy why not.  Although at first I had really mixed feelings towards my friend that "deconverted" me. It was like he grabbed me and pulled me out of a bubble and once I was on the other side there was nothing but black.  There I was stuck with my friend outside of the comfortable little bubble in a dark, confusing, chaotic and largely inexplicable existence.  It almost felt like there would be some "AHA!" moment or I could ask him "now what?" once I finally saw things his way. All he had for me was a I don't know man.:justdontknow:

Years later I am eternally grateful he saved me from that religion.  Just tread lightly when your trying to change someones view of existence. Its not a willy nilly type of thing. :lol:.  Another thing that makes it so devastating to newly deconverts is their entire social structure and family life is completely focused around the church. When I first lost religion I kinda went off the rails and just barely (after extensive acidic exploration) finding a center in my life.


BTW, were you raised Mormon? From the rebuttal about your "daddy issues" its sounds like you might have been. JW.

Keep on keeping on, and keep on fighting the good fight!:shineon:


--------------------

Every little thing is gonna be alright:heart:  All you need is love :love: Nobody's right, Nobody's wrong, Life's just a game it's just one epic holiday! :peace:


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OfflineSchmendrick
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Lizard Eyes]
    #18825241 - 09/10/13 08:47 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Just tread lightly when your trying to change someones view of existence. Its not a willy nilly type of thing.




Isn't "changing people's views of existence" what the shroomery is all about? :laugh:

Quote:

BTW, were you raised Mormon? From the rebuttal about your "daddy issues" its sounds like you might have been. JW.




Yep.  I had it shoved down my throat till I was 18, but then I threw it back up again.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Lizard Eyes.  Seriously.  I am always interested in how these sorts of things pan out for others.


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InvisibleRiderOnTheStorm
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18825376 - 09/10/13 09:14 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

I actually read the whole thing, you did a great job summarizing the birth of the universe and earth and debating Mormon #1. Hopefully it wasn't lost on Mormon #2 that his cousin was resorting to straw man arguments and pop-psych personal attacks because he couldn't refute the points.

Classic how he went from championing science when he thought it supported his beliefs to decrying it as meaningless once he realized that it actually refutes them.

If that's not religious delusion I don't know what is.


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OfflineSchmendrick
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: RiderOnTheStorm]
    #18825488 - 09/10/13 09:35 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

RiderOnTheStorm said:
I actually read the whole thing, you did a great job summarizing the birth of the universe and earth and debating Mormon #1. Hopefully it wasn't lost on Mormon #2 that his cousin was resorting to straw man arguments and pop-psych personal attacks because he couldn't refute the points.

Classic how he went from championing science when he thought it supported his beliefs to decrying it as meaningless once he realized that it actually refutes them.

If that's not religious delusion I don't know what is.




Yeah, I was a little disappointed.  The thing is, I obviously know these people.  They are my first cousins and very smart fellas, if a bit misguided (in my opinion).  I fully expected a strong intellectual argument from them.  I did not expect the personal attack, and I was caught off guard by it.  Maybe I overreacted though... Mormon1 has not answered any of my messages since this conversation.  I think I angered him pretty badly.


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InvisibleRiderOnTheStorm
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18825571 - 09/10/13 09:55 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

The religious always try to find a way to explain a reason you would have left the church other than their beliefs not adding up.

My dad likes to think that I left because of the church elders far right beliefs and adherence to tradition, even though I tell him it wouldn't have mattered he's sure that's why I left.

My friend's sister insists it's for the same reason your cousin pulled on you.

My mom thinks it's because music and mushrooms opened me up to dimensions full of demons.

That sucks that he won't respond to you but give him time and he might open up. He might be afraid to talk to you if you rattled his beliefs, or simply angry that you did a better job defending and explaining your position than he did.


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: RiderOnTheStorm]
    #18825751 - 09/10/13 10:39 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Well, i gotta say I read the whole thing. Pretty crazy, I had no idea that this is what mormons really believe but #1 still had all the typical arguments against science that I've found with other religions. Basically it boils down to "I don't know how it works, and there is a well excepted theory of how it works but I don't want you to tell me because the bible tells me and the bible is always right." It's like they've built their reality around a fundamental understanding of the bible or what they've been told and their argument completely folds when that gets challenged.

At least though it was a clearly a debate between intelectuals. I got a buddy that just recently seems to be going off the religious deep end but he's a lazy stoner and I would never get any kind of dabate like that out of him. I mean dumb as a rock and theres nothing like arguing with an idiot, much less a crazy idiot.

Anyways, good luck with your cousins. I'm sure #1 will cool off shortly so you can take another stab at it and get him going again.


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Big_Dave] * 1
    #18825945 - 09/10/13 11:46 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

What a beautifully clear and concise interpretation of our contemporary scientific discourse! Loved reading the Mormon arguments crumble and wither away into nonsensical and personal attacks. Telling.

Whenever I debate with a theist, I insist on highlighting our similiarities rather than dubunking their beliefs or educating them on scientific theory. The best message/impression to leave with a theist is one of tolerance, open-mindedness, and respect for others' beliefs and feelings. Being a good person shouldn't have any limitations placed on it. And that is by far the most palpable negative effect of religion; limiting oneself to set boundaries and standards of acceptance. I try to live my life in a way that exemplifies this belief in limitless goodness.

Happy trails!


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: junkyardgod] * 1
    #18825962 - 09/10/13 11:52 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

OP i couldn't read the whole thing because i found your half of the conversation to be overly pedantic to a fault. 

Also your definition of life had an anthropomorphic bias.  Maybe you accounted for that i dunno i didn't read past that.


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: teamkiller]
    #18826991 - 09/11/13 09:01 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

teamkiller said:
OP i couldn't read the whole thing because i found your half of the conversation to be overly pedantic to a fault. 




I often get a bit wordy when I jump into something like this.  I did, honestly try to keep it to a minimum, but you have to understand my audience here - these two guys are both very intelligent and well informed, and I knew that if I did not cover my bases, this conversation would spiral into a rabbit hole of "ah, but you didn't address..." and various gotchas.  There is a balance to be found... but maybe I missed the mark.

Quote:

Also your definition of life had an anthropomorphic bias.  Maybe you accounted for that i dunno i didn't read past that.




Good catch.  I was aware of the anthropomorphic bias when I wrote it.  Life certainly can exist outside of an Earth-like environment, even very complex and intelligent life;  however, I was targeting a specific argument which is that God created the earth and then created man "in his image". 

There is a verse from the Book of Mormon which reads "As man is, God once was.  As God is, man may become".  If man is created in his image, then the original species that "God" came from must have had the same habitable planet requirements as man. 

I excluded other possible environments in which life might exist for the same reason that I excluded multiverses and the early epochs of the Big Bang:  they weren't relevant to the argument I was targeting, and I didn't want the response to turn into "War and Peace".


Edited by Schmendrick (09/11/13 09:09 AM)


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18827990 - 09/11/13 02:19 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Before I begin, I'd like to state for the record that while I do hold some spiritual beliefs, which includes a vague belief in "god" or some type of "driving/guiding intelligence" I am not a member of any religion, per se.  I was raised christian, and still admire the teaching of Jesus, but  I disagree with them (Christians) on many points.  That said....

First of all, dude, fucking brevity. You say you were  trying to be concise, but it honestly doesn't seem that way. It seemed a little more like you were trying to bury them in science. A very large, wordy chunk of your argument could have been better summed up as something like:




Quote:

Due to the current accepted age of the universe, 13.5 Billion years or so, and the amount of time it takes heavier elements to form in stars (heavier elements which are necessary for planets, and life like ours)  the earliest possible formation for similar planets is maybe 10 billions years ago. Because of the timeframe for evolution from single celled organisms to more complex life, it is unlikely any civilization could be billions of years older than us.






One. Short. Fucking. Paragraph.  Just saying....




On that note, your point above is somewhat bullshit, and even you concede to this.




Quote:

Advanced civilizations may yet exist... in fact they almost assuredly do, and they might be thousands, even millions of years more advanced than us. But not Billions. The universe simply has not been around long enough for that.








Oh, so they only might have thousands or millions more years of advancements? Why that is petty.  :rolleyes:  Maybe you forget that our entire civilization allegedly rose to its present point in several thousand years.  IMHO once a species gets past the  monkeys-in-the-jungle phase, advancements come pretty quick. And once they get past a certain hurdle (like the industrial revolution) it's even quicker. Maybe you forget that in the last 150 years or so we went from horse and  buggy to landing on the fucking moon, and everyone in the first  world having instant connectivity to just about any other first-worlder on the planet, vast public pools of knowledge, shit tons of advancement in science, technology, exponential growth of computational power....?  Give this society another  few thousand years without destroying itself, with that same rate of growth,  and just how much more advanced do you think we might become? 

A species with a few thousand years more advancement than us would probably seem like fucking magick with all the crap they could do. Especially if they didn't spend much of their history arguing, being greedy, fighting over religion, or struggling for power. Nevermind a society / intelligent species with millions of years head start. I think those people might seem like gods to us, if they're out there....


Anyway, a couple of my bigger beefs with yor argument acutally come from some of the side-arguments. First of all, mormon#2 had a point:  If you have not verified all of those things yourself, with experimentation and first-hand experience, even if you feel like you logically analyzed some data to arrive at your present opinion, you are still choosing to believe something that someone else told you.  I know some of you "skeptical" and scientific types think that's a dirty, degrading word. But it's the truth.

Did you discover it? Did you experience it? Did you instead read about it somewhere and choose to accept it as the truth? There you go:  Belief.

I love having this argument with militant atheists. A group which, by the way, acts in almost every way like a religion. Militant atheists will go out of their way to engage religious people in debates and arguments, if not just blatant insults. Why? Because they don't believe the same thing. The militant atheists are desirious to convert religious people to their way of thinking. Sound like any other group you know?

And that's my other major beef, and the other side-argument. Like your cousin, I have extreme difficulty believing that you're going to creationist sites so you can learn all about what they think, and become a more educated person. You clearly have already decided that they're full of shit. The only reason you would need or desire to know their reasoning, is to debate them, or to feel smugly superior to them.  And that's the kind of shit those aforementioned "Militant Atheists" do.  All the time.  I bet your mormon cousins don't go to atheist forums, or to science forums, to try to dissuade people from their beliefs. (They may go to peoples' homes, which is a whole other ball of wax)  Now to be fair, some religions / religious people do this.  Fundamentalist Christians are some of the worst.  But if your cousins are not out trying to get converts, and yet you are actively trying to engage religious people in conversation about it...? That actually makes your mormon cousins more respectful toward others who are different than you are.

I hope that's a sobering thought for you.


Now, the daddy issues thing.... I don't really want to get too close to that. And not knowing your particulars, I can't really comment extensively. I will point out, however, that even after people "make up" for past injury, some pain can still remain. And I've seen tons of people who were permanantly made bitter toward religion due to their families, regarless of the quality of their relationship.

Anyway, lastly, to be fair, your  "should the rats worship the scientists" analogy was pretty clever. And a worthwhile thought experiment. Staying within the context of the analogy, I'd give a resounding FUCK NO! But that would be largely due to the fact that scientists tend to see themselves as superior to the rats.  Perhaps more feeling, or prone to pain. Or maybe just more "important."  In other words, while the rats are sentient beings who can, and do feel the pain of our ruthless experimentation, it is "for the greater good" simply because it helps humans.  I guarantee you, that if rats have/ had anywhere near our level of cognition, they may not agree with such a view.

And one can not necessarily assume that an intelligent species that is superior to us in ability, would view us in the same way as we view rats. Their greater intelligence and lengthier evolution might make them infinitely more benevolent. So then we must imagine-- what if a "superior" species with a technological mastery such that it looked like "magic" to us, was involved with our own evolution in some way that was completely benevolent and entirely for our own good (not theirs)?  Would it be more reasonable to revere such beings?

Some people idolize other humans nearly to the point of worship for whatever admirable achievements-- and even most of the greatest humans on the planet are relatively selfish and self-centered.


Anyway, that's mostly my take. I'll finish by saying that Im not quite sure why you're even tyring to equate religion and science in any major way. They're two very different systems, that look at the world in different ways, and serve completely different functions.  And IMHO they are not incompatible.


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OfflineSchmendrick
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: CidneyIndole]
    #18830503 - 09/11/13 10:56 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

CidneyIndole -  first of all, thank you for your response.  Much of it I will not address directly because it falls under the category of opinion and not really worth arguing about, but I do want to comment on a few specific things:

Quote:

Oh, so they only might have thousands or millions more years of advancements? Why that is petty.  :rolleyes:  Maybe you forget that our entire civilization allegedly rose to its present point in several thousand years.  IMHO once a species gets past the  monkeys-in-the-jungle phase, advancements come pretty quick. And once they get past a certain hurdle (like the industrial revolution) it's even quicker. Maybe you forget that in the last 150 years or so we went from horse and  buggy to landing on the fucking moon, and everyone in the first  world having instant connectivity to just about any other first-worlder on the planet, vast public pools of knowledge, shit tons of advancement in science, technology, exponential growth of computational power....?  Give this society another  few thousand years without destroying itself, with that same rate of growth,  and just how much more advanced do you think we might become? 

A species with a few thousand years more advancement than us would probably seem like fucking magick with all the crap they could do. Especially if they didn't spend much of their history arguing, being greedy, fighting over religion, or struggling for power. Nevermind a society / intelligent species with millions of years head start. I think those people might seem like gods to us, if they're out there....




You are absolutely correct here.  However, you seem to have missed the point of my timeline argument.  The point was to show that no advanced civilization could, as of yet be BILLIONS of years ahead of us, and so could not have been around in time to create the Earth and the people on it 4.5 billion years ago.  A culture which is millions of years beyond us might be technically capable of accomplishing such a creation, but they could not have been around 4.5 billion years ago to do so.  that was the point. 

Quote:

Did you discover it? Did you experience it? Did you instead read about it somewhere and choose to accept it as the truth? There you go:  Belief.




Wrong.  Did we literally create another universe and watch it unfold, or travel back in time? No, but the observations, which are then used to perform math, which lead to the aformentioned conclusions, were in point of fact made in carefully controlled, blinded conditions, and verified independently, repeatedly, many thousands of times.  That takes it firmly outside the realm of belief.

Quote:

Fundamentalist Christians are some of the worst.  But if your cousins are not out trying to get converts, and yet you are actively trying to engage religious people in conversation about it...? That actually makes your mormon cousins more respectful toward others who are different than you are.




They are Mormons;  They go proselytizing all the time.  It is basically a requirement.  And this argument was on *my* Facebook wall; they came to me looking for a fight, and I gave them one.  So... yeah.

Quote:

Anyway, that's mostly my take. I'll finish by saying that Im not quite sure why you're even tyring to equate religion and science in any major way. They're two very different systems, that look at the world in different ways, and serve completely different functions.  And IMHO they are not incompatible.




Agreed.  I used scientific arguments with these two in particular because they claim to understand and accept science in general. I thought that spending the time to formulate this argument might actually have some sort of effect (obviously, or I would not have done it).  I was wrong apparently.


Finally, LOL @ you ridiculing my lack of brevity and then having a quite lengthy response of your own :grin:


Edited by Schmendrick (09/11/13 11:33 PM)


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OfflineHarperLewis
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18830788 - 09/12/13 12:14 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

    We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.

    We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.

I was raised LDS, and couldn't be happier having left at the age of 14.


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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: HarperLewis]
    #18830880 - 09/12/13 12:51 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

HarperLewis said:
We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

    We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.

    We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.

I was raised LDS, and couldn't be happier having left at the age of 14.




1st Nephi 3:7 -
I will go and do the thing which the lord hath commanded, for I know that the lord giveth no commandment unto the children of men save he shall provide a way for them, that they may accomplish the thing which he hath commanded.

Yeah, I have all sorts of 'scripture masteries' still burned into my brain along with those 'Articles of faith', too... they are taking up valuable memory space.  I wish I could figure out how to reformat my brain.

Well, maybe not just reformat.. I would like to retain the operating system.  I need to Fdisk, Format, Reinstall.


Edited by Schmendrick (09/12/13 12:52 AM)


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InvisibleCidneyIndole
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18832399 - 09/12/13 01:06 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Schmendrick said:
Finally, LOL @ you ridiculing my lack of brevity and then having a quite lengthy response of your own :grin:






I don't think I ever claimed I was going to be concise. :tongue:  I am a pretty long-winded motherfucker when I've got some points to address. :shrug:




Quote:

Schmendrick said:
You are absolutely correct here.  However, you seem to have missed the point of my timeline argument.  The point was to show that no advanced civilization could, as of yet be BILLIONS of years ahead of us, and so could not have been around in time to create the Earth and the people on it 4.5 billion years ago.  A culture which is millions of years beyond us might be technically capable of accomplishing such a creation, but they could not have been around 4.5 billion years ago to do so.  that was the point.






You're right. I did miss your point here. So basically that was a wordy way of saying that even if there was a race advanced so far beyond us they had technology that seemed like magic, they could not have been around long enough to create our world, and therefore could not be "our creators."  Is that pretty much your stance?

You do have a somewhat valid point there. However, just because it's unlikely any species was advanced enough to create / terraform our world in its infancy, I don't think it's quite as super-unlikely that there was a race advanced enough to manipulate our DNA, or our society, in our species' infancy. I still would not rule out that one as a possibility.




Quote:

Schmendrick said:
Wrong.  Did we literally create another universe and watch it unfold, or travel back in time? No, but the observations, which are then used to perform math, which lead to the aformentioned conclusions, were in point of fact made in carefully controlled, blinded conditions, and verified independently, repeatedly, many thousands of times.  That takes it firmly outside the realm of belief.






And I think now it's your turn to miss my point. Sure, no one was around to directly observe any of these things. That is true, and I guess that was a small part of my point. But more importantly, we have such hypotheses, theories, and knowledge because of the Scientific Method, experimentation, etc. So even if there was no one around to see the big bang, some guy performed experiments, which gave him data that he observed, which lead him to some conclusions about the big bang. (Still not a flawless system, I'll point out, but that's not my point)  My point is, you are not the guy who did those experiments. YOU are not the guy who made the observations and calculations which lead to our present understanding. Some other guy did that. Then you read about it. Then you chose to believe what you read. You did not find the proof. You probably didn't see the proof itself. You read some other guys account of discovering the proof and took his word on faith.




Quote:

be·lieve

verb

    1.accept (something) as true; feel sure of the truth of.
   
    synonyms: be convinced by, trust, have confidence in, consider honest, consider truthful,
    regard as true, accept, be convinced by, give credence to, credit, trust, put confidence in;
   
        accept the statement of (someone) as true.
       
        have faith, esp. religious faith.
       
        feel sure that (someone) is capable of a particular action.

       
    2.hold (something) as an opinion; think or suppose.






Do take note of some of those sub-definitions, and the synonyms. Your acceptance of the big band, and pretty much anything else you ever read in a science book, fits the definition of "believe" / "belief."  And the fact that you argued against it only proves my point-- that many scientific, anti-relgious, "skeptical" types such as yourself see "belief" as a dirty word, and try to do everything you can to convince yourself that you never engage in such a lowly practice. You do. Everyone does. We literally couldn't function without some level of belief and faith in our lives. If you didn't believe that the sun would rise tomorrow and the world would go on the same way it always has, you might be in a panic, unable to function. Likewise, if you didn't have faith that the roof over your head would hold. These are examples where belief and faith are vital. It just so happens that your reading scientific literature and accepting what it says without testing it out, yourself, constitutes a form of belief, which is very much not a dirty word. I promise.




Quote:

Schmendrick said:
They are Mormons;  They go proselytizing all the time.  It is basically a requirement.  And this argument was on *my* Facebook wall; they came to me looking for a fight, and I gave them one.  So... yeah.






Alright, if they came to you, I guess that's fair. But do understand, I was making some generalizations about certain types of people I've seen a lot online. I was not accusing you of being one, per se, merely pointing out that some of your tactics and arguments seemed similar. Also note that I did address mormon proselytizing. However, I think door-to-door religious sales are a little different than what I was  talking about. They're not going into religious forums, dedicated to discussion between like-minded individuals, only to tell them that they're wrong, and stupid, and represent everything that's wrong with humanity, like some of these "militant atheists" often do.

And I can't comment too much on the mormons, as we tend to get more jehovas in my area, but I'd been lead to believe they're somewhat benign, in that regard. When Jehovas come to your door, and you tell them you're not interested, they don't insult you, call you stupid, wrong etc etc.  Now, I did single out fundamentalist christians in my response before. That wasn't to pick on them, but rather for this exact reason-- as they are one of the few groups I've known to engage non-believers, and then proceed to insult them (or just say they're going to burn in hell) if they don't agree. Of course, not all fundies behave this way....




Quote:

Schmendrick said:
I used scientific arguments with these two in particular because they claim to understand and accept science in general. I thought that spending the time to formulate this argument might actually have some sort of effect (obviously, or I would not have done it).  I was wrong apparently.





You did make a couple interesting points. However, I don't think you accounted for some of my counter-points above, and overall I don't think your argument was as nail-in-the-coffin as you imagined it was. At least not from a religious viewpoint.


I also think you should really check out a book called God and The New Physics by Paul Davies. Really great but somewhat heavy read. Takes all kinds of religious and philosophical ideas, and talks about them in the context of a lot of (somewhat) recent scientific ideas. Addresses the big bang, cause and effect, free will, consciousness itself, etc etc. I think you'd find it interesting.


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OfflineSchmendrick
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: CidneyIndole]
    #18834395 - 09/12/13 09:08 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

I don't think I ever claimed I was going to be concise. :tongue:  I am a pretty long-winded motherfucker when I've got some points to address. :shrug:




I cede this argument... although really it all revolves around ones definition of 'concise' I suppose.  Compared to what I could have written up, this was pretty damned brief.

Quote:

Alright, if they came to you, I guess that's fair. But do understand, I was making some generalizations about certain types of people I've seen a lot online. I was not accusing you of being one, per se, merely pointing out that some of your tactics and arguments seemed similar. Also note that I did address mormon proselytizing. However, I think door-to-door religious sales are a little different than what I was  talking about. They're not going into religious forums, dedicated to discussion between like-minded individuals, only to tell them that they're wrong, and stupid, and represent everything that's wrong with humanity, like some of these "militant atheists" often do.

And I can't comment too much on the mormons, as we tend to get more jehovas in my area, but I'd been lead to believe they're somewhat benign, in that regard. When Jehovas come to your door, and you tell them you're not interested, they don't insult you, call you stupid, wrong etc etc.  Now, I did single out fundamentalist christians in my response before. That wasn't to pick on them, but rather for this exact reason-- as they are one of the few groups I've known to engage non-believers, and then proceed to insult them (or just say they're going to burn in hell) if they don't agree. Of course, not all fundies behave this way....




Mormons are not overly aggressive usually.  I have only had to get mean with them once, and that was when my inactive Mormon roommate who lived downstairs needed some help with his rent for a couple of months and went to the church for help...  They obliged, no questions asked, but apparently took it as an open invitation to come over and start preaching.  They knocked on MY door by mistake and a misunderstanding ensued wherein they thought I was him and did not appreciate how rude I was being after they had "helped me out so much recently".  That encounter almost came to blows until I realized what had actually occurred and directed them to the proper door.

Quote:

Do take note of some of those sub-definitions, and the synonyms. Your acceptance of the big band, and pretty much anything else you ever read in a science book, fits the definition of "believe" / "belief."  And the fact that you argued against it only proves my point-- that many scientific, anti-relgious, "skeptical" types such as yourself see "belief" as a dirty word, and try to do everything you can to convince yourself that you never engage in such a lowly practice. You do. Everyone does. We literally couldn't function without some level of belief and faith in our lives. If you didn't believe that the sun would rise tomorrow and the world would go on the same way it always has, you might be in a panic, unable to function. Likewise, if you didn't have faith that the roof over your head would hold. These are examples where belief and faith are vital. It just so happens that your reading scientific literature and accepting what it says without testing it out, yourself, constitutes a form of belief, which is very much not a dirty word. I promise.




Fine, I shall cede this point as well; but with the understanding that I do what I can to verify things on my own (as everyone should).  I own an 8 inch computerized telescope (Celestron Nexstar 8), a spectrometer and a bunch of other fun toys.. and I am no slouch in the mathematics department either.  I have personally witnessed and measured the described red-shift and many other phenomena first hand.  However, I do not have the maths or bulk of observations necessary to actually do the universal expansion reversal calculations myself, and there are many, many other things that I take on "belief" from the scientific community. 

So fine, I accept your belief argument... but only because you don't appear to be a dickhole and will not immediately scream "AHA!!!!  BELIEF!!!  YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN WE!!"  As my cousins would have if I had ceded the same point to them.  Sometimes you have to dig your heels in when you know that certain concessions will inevitably end up taking the conversation spiraling into a rabbit hole of no return.

Quote:

You do have a somewhat valid point there. However, just because it's unlikely any species was advanced enough to create / terraform our world in its infancy, I don't think it's quite as super-unlikely that there was a race advanced enough to manipulate our DNA, or our society, in our species' infancy. I still would not rule out that one as a possibility.




I actually hold this to be a distinct possibility myself, so... I agree.  But this is not what Mormons believe, and I knew it would not be the argument that they would pursue... at least I hoped not, because I would have had a very hard time refuting it.  I have tried and failed before, and that is why I must admit that it is a possibility.

Quote:

You did make a couple interesting points. However, I don't think you accounted for some of my counter-points above, and overall I don't think your argument was as nail-in-the-coffin as you imagined it was. At least not from a religious viewpoint.




Well, the only "nail in the coffin" argument I was trying make was specifically regarding the feasibility of the Mormon concept of God as a member of an advanced civilization which created the earth directly.  Obviously I am not going to pin down all religions on all points in a single argument.  One battle at a time, as they say. 

Fuck, I WISH I could make such an argument.  Maybe we need to go dig up Sagan and Hitchens, meld their DNA with Hawking, make a test tube baby and then have Hawking educate the child personally... maybe THAT person could make such an argument upon reaching adulthood, but not I.

Quote:

I also think you should really check out a book called God and The New Physics by Paul Davies. Really great but somewhat heavy read. Takes all kinds of religious and philosophical ideas, and talks about them in the context of a lot of (somewhat) recent scientific ideas. Addresses the big bang, cause and effect, free will, consciousness itself, etc etc. I think you'd find it interesting.




I will check it out.  I am not opposed to "heavy" reading :tongue:


Edited by Schmendrick (09/12/13 10:09 PM)


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Offlinelazyfingers
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Registered: 08/07/09
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Re: Conversations with a Mormon [Re: Schmendrick]
    #18834426 - 09/12/13 09:16 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

All Hail Mormosh God of Mormons.

:cat:


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