Holy crap (no pun intended) I gotta reach deep down in my brain for this one.
The whole "jesus visted some indians" thing is not right.
I know I gave the ultimate extreme condensed version of it, but that part is true. I'm pretty sure the "Land called Bountiful" mentioned
here is the Americas. The book deals with more than that, I know. It's all about God's dealings with the ancient Native Americans. Jesus appearing was just one part.
A prophet named Moroni came to visit a person named Joesph Smith. And Moroni had some gold plates with some words of God on it. I dont think they were the commandments. They were something else IIRC.
Right, they were the books of prophets who lived in the Americas from like 1400 BC to like 400 AD or so. Moroni was the last prophet and he came back as an angel in the 1800's and appeared to Joseph Smith.
I know some of the main differences between christianity/catholics is that some believe that God, Jesus and the holy ghost are all the same thing, and the other half thinks they are 3 seperate things. IIRC (jeez im a little embarrased now) I think the mormons believe that they are 3 seperate things. I may have that all wrong. I cant remember.
Yeah, that's one of the minor differences between Catholics and Protestants and even Protestants and other Protestants. The major ones, which wars were fought over, deal with the ideas of predestination, and transsubstantiation (which I think is the silliest of the things they fought about), the idea of purgatory, the Blessed Virgin, the veneration of saints, and a ton of others.
And Wombat. I'm not trying to say for you to be anything but proud of your religious devotion. I hope you know I'm not trying to detract from your personal faith and how you relate to it. I just think other people of other faiths should be able to have just as deep of a belief and devotion to their faith without it being diminished for not being what your idea of faith should be.
Thanks, but please don't compare me to the Westboro people. I know atheists love to hold them up as examples of "crazy Christians," but in reality, they're about as far from Christianity as I am from Wicca.
UnseenWombat, how can you say that your religion is without a doubt the most superior religion if you haven't explored the teachings of other religions?
It's like saying that chocolate ice cream is the best flavored ice cream without ever having tried any other flavors.
I know you can't compare religion with ice cream, but if one were to dedicate their life to chocolate ice cream and claiming that it's superior to all others, you'd think they'd at least taste the other flavors.
A very good point. First off let me say, like I did earlier in the thread, that I don't believe everything taught by the other religions is wrong. If it's true that we're all seeing the same God, it makes sense that their teachings would have truth to them as well, and we do see a lot of the same themes in the Bible and other religious texts. Only where they differ am I saying that I accept Christianity as true and the others false. It would be dishonest not to. Either a thing is true or it isn't. Two mutually exclusive ideas can't both be right.
I know that at face value, especially looking at religions from an atheist perspective, it can look like they're all as unlikely, and therefore it doesn't matter what you believe. But there are a lot of reasons to believe Christianity as the right religion. First off, there's overwhelming historical evidence that Jesus did exist, just to get that out of the way. Jesus fulfilled a whole lot of old testament prophecies when he came to earth (at least 40, not sure of the exact number). The odds that one man would do that are astronomical. Also there's the things Jesus said about himself. No one says those types of things without them either being true, or the person being completely nuts, or lying. But anyway, the one thing we
can conclude from that is that he's not simply a "great moral teacher" who was still just a man. That option is not open to us. Then finally, there's the resurrection itself. No other leader of the major religions came back from the dead like he did.
I see no such evidences for the veracity of the other religions, however, let me also state that it doesn't necessarily follow that all of their adherents are universally condemned to eternal torture like the atheists in here keep accusing. C.S. Lewis (my hero, if you haven't already gathered that) said, "Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life. . . . we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected."
