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Isaac Newton's views on religion

Ashurbanipal said:
To really explain that, I'd have to basically type out everything these folks have written. Janiak, for example, thinks Newton is best thought of as a philosopher, and he makes a pretty good argument for it. Cohen agrees with your view about alchemy, Dobbs on the other hand thinks alchemical ideas, especially the notion of attractive force, was critical to Newton's physics.
TY for the information.

I previously googled the three authors and noted how Dobbs was the driving force for the thesis “Alchemy as Inspiration Behind Newton’s Science”.



Ashurbanipal said:
Well, first, Boyle was his chief mentor in alchemy, and that Boyle, Locke, and Newton were all members of a secret alchemical fraternity. You should read, and really study deeply, some of Newton's "other" work to understand how he thought about things. As for it being an intellectual tragedy...well, that's the popular view of alchemy, certainly. I doubt Newton would have formulated either his physics or his optics without the aid of alchemical ideas, though. B.J.T. Dobbs makes a good case for this point.
I am loathe to accept a thesis assigning import to a field of such intellectual and moral bankruptcy as alchemy. I do not see how a rigorous case can be made in favor of alchemy absent written affirmation in Newton’s hand and in the hand of the others, so I feel entitled to assume better of the motivation for their scientific endeavor, and leave it at that.



Ashurbanipal said:
Depending on what you mean by the latter two (that is, what you mean by alchemy and theology), .
It should not be necessary to introduce a tangent on the meaning of these terms.



Ashurbanipal said:
you may or may not be right.
Googling “Newton Number words alchemy” provides authoritative academic citation for the fact that Newton devoted one million words over 600 MS pages to alchemy.

Googling “Newton Number words theology” provides authoritative academic citation for the fact that Newton devoted three million words to theology.

That is good enough for a QED on the immensity of Newton’s alchemical and theological work, even if the 1/3-1/3-1/3 rato is not exactly on the money.



Ashurbanipal said:
If by "theology" you mean the development of defenses of dogmatically-held beliefs, then sure, it's probably a worthless endeavor.
Defense of dogmatically held religious belief is a branch of theology. Theology is the branch of philosophy which is devoted to religious thought.



Ashurbanipal said:
If, on the other hand, you mean the attempt to grapple with and understand the great mystery of the divine, I'm not sure I understand why any other knowledge is more worth having.
Our views are diametrically opposed here: I am sure I understand that theology is nowhere near being the worthiest of all fields of knowledge. (Alchemical knowledge is at the bottom of the list)
 
The worthiest and wisest pursuit of knowledge to go beyond mortal limits in the eternities:

67 And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things.-D&C 88:67

A lot a fun too:
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Stop studying myths and start studying science, And get off my yard!
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Merry Christmas!
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reply #23):
laska said:
The angel defines the use of abominable in the Book of Mormon:

"And the angel said unto me: Behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity.

6 And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it.(1 Nephi 13:5-6)

That is not libel against unbelief.
No, the angel cited above defines only the “most abominable”, which is physical violence against the saints of God, and the quotes above are not what I was addressing in your reply #17. Those are indicated below, in bold red lettering, with my annotation in bold blue lettering underlined:

(reply #17):
laska said:
The abomination epithet was used by an angel of God in the Book of Mormon:

"The phrase "great and abominable church," which appears in an apocalyptic vision received by the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi 1 in the sixth century B.C. (1 Ne. 13:6), refers to the church of the devil and is understood by Latter-day Saints to be equivalent to the "great whore that sitteth upon many waters" described in Revelation 17:1. This "whore of all the earth" is identified by Nephi's brother Jacob as all those who are against God and who fight against Zion, in all periods of time (USV: IOW disbelief in the LDS version of religious truth is an abomination) (2 Ne. 10:16). Nephi did not write a detailed account of everything he saw in the vision, as this responsibility was reserved for John the apostle, who was to receive the same vision; however, Nephi repeatedly refers to its content and teachings, using various images and phrases (1 Ne. 13:4-9, 26-27, 34;14:1-4, 9-17).

Like John, Nephi and Jacob describe persecutions that evil people will inflict on God's people, particularly in the last days. The angel who explained the vision to Nephi emphasized that this great and abominable church would take away from the Bible and "the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord" (1 Ne. 13:26), causing men to "stumble" and giving Satan "great power" over them (1 Ne. 13:29; D&C 86:3; Robinson, "Early Christianity," p. 188). Though many Protestants, following the lead of Martin Luther, have linked this evil force described in Revelation 17 with the Roman Catholic church, the particular focus of these LDS and New Testament scriptures seems rather to be on earlier agents of apostasy in the Jewish and Christian traditions" (USV: Why only “earlier agents of apostasy”? It is not reasonable to conclude that earlier apostasy is abomination while all other apostasy is not abomination. Apostasy is a category of disbelief which includes me: I renounced all religion after being raised a confirmed Episcopalian. Therefore I take this LDS "abomination" libel personally) (see A. Clarke, Clarke's Commentary, Vol. 6, pp. 1036-38, Nashville, Tenn., 1977)...-Great and Abominable Church-Wright, Dennis A.

Now, I notice you do not reply to my comments about the abomination of murder in my post # 21. Since Its central insight bears repeating I repeat it below, highlighted in oversize bold red lettering underlined:

killing innocent people is an abomination as when God massacred the first-born of Egypt
 
(reply #24):
laska said:
The hundred or so guys that painted their faces black and killed Joseph and his brother Hyrum would be part of the great and abominable church, the church of the devil.
Joseph and Hyrum Smith were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.



laska said:
The people that killed the New Testament apostles, that killed the faithful members of the Church that followed them in the 1st and 2nd centuries would be part of the church of the devil. The religious leaders that had Christ killed, the same thing.
Christ and the Christian martyrs of the first centuries AD were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.



laska said:
Throughout history there have been people who have an all encompassing hatred for God's true prophets and gospel. If there is an ever consuming desire and hatred against the church of the Lamb, that is a sign that the adversary likely has power over you. The devil has an eternal hatred for the church of the lamb.
The Church of the Lamb committed numerous murderous abominations in its history, and earned the hatred of numerous innocent victims.



laska said:
That is why out of all the myriads of religious sects in the United states, the land of the free, only one and all hell breaks loose. Only one Church was there is an extermination order put out on it by a sitting governor of a state. And had to flee into the wilderness.
Although one innocent death is too many, were even 50 Mormons killed as a result of this order? Whatever the number was, it was too few to assign the word “extermination”.

Also, although polygamy is no reason to kill anyone, it has always been a crime in the United States, and the first generation Mormons brazenly and intransigently promoted it. Since there were too many of them to jail, exile was an understandable attempt at a solution for the place and time.
 
LDS boilerplate and propaganda.

I wouldn't call that response boilerplate. Not sure I'm the first one who thought of tying "everlasting" gospel with the Egyptian "Mormon" -love "established forever" but I've never read it and it was my own original thought. A lot of the calendar stuff is from calendar expert John Pratt, but i wouldn't consider him that boilerplate either. As far as propaganda, I do really believe it strongly but that doesn't mean a bias that distorts truth and facts. You may disagree with say my interpretation of the Rev 14 verses, but in no way have I distorted facts or misleading. For example is it propaganda to state that when God set up His kingdom with ancient Israel in order to escape their enemies they fled during Passover on an exodus led by a prophet of God on a journey across the wilderness to a promise land where they settled beside the second largest inland lake of salt on the earth(the Lord's covenant people are called the salt of the earth), where they built a temple to the Lord, and made the desert bloom. And the LDS exodus has all the same elements. Then make the point that I believe God uses the exodus motif as an ensign to the nations that the kingdom of God is on the earth. Where is that misleading? How is that propaganda.

What is misleading is the many errors in the last 3 or 4 posts of yours. I may cover those later.
 
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I wouldn't call that response boilerplate. Not sure I'm the first one who thought of tying "everlasting" gospel with the Egyptian "Mormon" -love "established forever" but I've never read it and it was my own original thought. A lot of the calendar stuff is from calendar expert John Pratt, but i wouldn't consider him that boilerplate either. As far as propaganda, I do really believe it strongly but that doesn't mean a bias that distorts truth and facts. You may disagree with say my interpretation of the Rev 14 verses, but in no way have I distorted facts or misleading. For example is it propaganda to state that when God set up His kingdom with ancient Israel in order to escape their enemies they fled during Passover on an exodus led by a prophet of God on a journey across the wilderness to a promise land where they settled beside the second largest inland lake of salt on the earth(the Lord's covenant people are called the salt of the earth), where they built a temple to the Lord, and made the desert bloom. And the LDS exodus has all the same elements. Then make the point that I believe God uses the exodus motif as an ensign to the nations that the kingdom of God is on the earth. Where is that misleading? How is that propaganda.

What is misleading is the many errors in the last 3 or 4 posts of yours. I may cover those later.

Newton was quite correct about the Nicene Council dogmatizing pure crap.

Eusebius comes to the same conclusion, and he was at the Nicene council. He writes about it in his famous book "History Of The Church."

When Emperor Constantine agreed with the Athanasian Creed and with 3 in 1, Eusebius was crestfallen. Eusebius himself was an Arianist.

Athanasianism is not supported by the Greek New Testament. Arianism is.

Modern Protestants take Athanasianism yet one step further and make Jesus their God and they forget Jesus' Father completely. They believe these Two have morphed into One.

All you need to do is read the Greek New Testament in Greek and your eyes will be opened.

I would not get too worked up about this error if you are Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Mistakes happen. Especially if your organization is almost 2,000 years old.

Mistakes happen everywhere.

Fanny Alger was a mistake.

Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs was a mistake.

Sylvia Porter Sessions Lyon was a mistake and a complete violation of Moses' law regarding marring a mother and her daughter.

Patty Bartlett Sessions was a similar mistake.

When the leader of your church becomes a scoundrel and your council of 12 does nothing about it that is a huge mistake.

Under Smith's successor, Mountain Meadows was a mistake. 150 men, women, and children were murdered for their cattle and wagons.

There have been many mistakes everywhere. And there have been many so called great apostasies.

The great apostasy of 1054 by the Eastern Orthodox Church was a mistake.

The great apostasy of Martin Luther in 1517 was a mistake.

The great apostasy of King Henry the 8th in 1529 was a mistake.

Mistakes happen everywhere all the time.
 
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reply #23):

No, the angel cited above defines only the “most abominable”, which is physical violence against the saints of God, and the quotes above are not what I was addressing in your reply #17. Those are indicated below, in bold red lettering, with my annotation in bold blue lettering underlined:

(reply #17):


Now, I notice you do not reply to my comments about the abomination of murder in my post # 21. Since Its central insight bears repeating I repeat it below, highlighted in oversize bold red lettering underlined:

killing innocent people is an abomination as when God massacred the first-born of Egypt
Again, you are going beyond what the Book of Mormon defines it. It is defined by persecuting the saints and altering the scriptures. It doesn't say non believers. And why earlier apostasy? Because LDS scholars tend to believe the people who killed the NT apostles, the saints ie faithful members of the Church, and altered the scriptures were in the first and second centuries and that the Catholic Church came later after the apostasy was already complete. That is all the author was stating, that it is not necessarily the Catholic church that the scriptures were speaking of as many readers assume. But were the popes who say sanctioned the inquisitions part of the church of the devil? i'd say yes. I'd say anyone that does evil such as delighting in murder is the church of the devil. That goes for members of any religion or non believer.

You try to equate evil with God, as far as the death of the first born of Egypt. I assume you would say the same with the Flood. If you see a man shoot another man it may look from your vantage point that it is murder. But maybe the guy that got shot has a bomb under his sweater running towards a playground full of kids and the person who shot him knew this. That changes the entire picture. You may read the Genesis account of the Flood and say how could God destroy the people of the earth. He's just as bad. But maybe the higher reality is that the earth was so wicked that all of His innocent spirit sons and daughters waiting in Heaven to be born on the earth would be born in such an evil world that they too would be corrupted and interfere with their second estate and thwart their progression in the eternities. Death in this mortal life is just separation of the spirit from the body, and this life is just a nano second compared to eternal existence of the soul. Eternal death is real death. God looks at things eternally. So the Flood was necessary to save future generations. The same reasoning could be given in the first born of Egypt. Also this life is a gift of God and is temporary, all of us will be taken home at some time. The timing is up to God, and we knew this when we accepted to come down here. He knows the best timing for each of us and how it will effect our eternal destinies. God is light/truth with no darkness in Him. Everything He does is for the benefit of His children eternally. His love is infinite and pure. His mercy is infinite. The only reason there is eternal misery of anykind is because of agency and cause and effect that is reality of existence.
 
(reply #24):

Joseph and Hyrum Smith were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.




Christ and the Christian martyrs of the first centuries AD were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.




The Church of the Lamb committed numerous murderous abominations in its history, and earned the hatred of numerous innocent victims.




Although one innocent death is too many, were even 50 Mormons killed as a result of this order? Whatever the number was, it was too few to assign the word “extermination”.

Also, although polygamy is no reason to kill anyone, it has always been a crime in the United States, and the first generation Mormons brazenly and intransigently promoted it. Since there were too many of them to jail, exile was an understandable attempt at a solution for the place and time.

No value to you.

The extermination order(Executive Order 44) by the Governor of Missouri was on Oct 27, 1838, plural marriage was not practiced until later. The persecution of Joseph Smith from 1820 when he was 14 and had his first vision to his martydom in 1844 had nothing to do with polygamy. Having to flee Missouri and Illinois had nothing to do with polygamy. That was an issue later.

The 1838 order stated: “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description...”.

Description of Missouri militia attacking a LDS settlement:
..."The Missouri state militia then besieged the Mormon headquarters, which ultimately surrendered. Not only did the Mormons have to agree to leave the state, their leader, Joseph Smith, was nearly executed after a brief trial on November 1st. Following the conclusion of the court martial, Major General Samuel Lucas of Missouri ordered General Alexander Doniphan to “take Joseph Smith and the other prisoners into the public square of Far West and shoot them at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.” Doniphan thought the order to be “cold-blooded murder,” and replied, “I will not obey your order. My brigade shall march for Liberty to-morrow morning, at 8 o’clock, and if you execute those men, I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God!” Smith, therefore, owed his life to Doniphan’s sense of morality!"...A Missouri Governor Once Threatened to Exterminate Mormons - History and Headlines


About 10,000 Mormons had to flee the state. Their lands and homes stolen. In 1976 the governor of Missouri Christopher Bond issued an apology for the state. Bond:"The treatment of the Mormon people in Missouri in the 1830s and beyond was barbaric. Women were raped and tortured. Men were killed by mobs or driven out of state. Their property was stolen. The lucky ones were those who were left alive with nothing and were forced to make their way into a more hospitable state."

Similar type persecution happened in Illinois. In 2004 the state of Illinois passed an unanimous bill apologizing and regretting the treatment of the mormons by the state. They sent a delegation to Utah to apologize in person.
 
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USViking said:
I previously googled the three authors and noted how Dobbs was the driving force for the thesis “Alchemy as Inspiration Behind Newton’s Science”.

Hers is a surprising thesis, and one opposed by Cohen. Given your comments so far, I think you'd like Cohen's stuff...and I don't mean to give the impression I think Cohen is a dimwit or anything. I think it's an honest disagreement by people who are intellectual peers, but who see things differently.

USViking said:
I am loathe to accept a thesis assigning import to a field of such intellectual and moral bankruptcy as alchemy.

Don't you think, though, that the bolded bit reveals a bias on your part? I mean, we all have our biases. But they prevent us, often, from seeing truth as it is. Again, you'll have to read Dobbs stuff to get the fine details of her argument, but she's pretty careful in her argumentation, and I think she makes a good case.

USViking said:
I do not see how a rigorous case can be made in favor of alchemy absent written affirmation in Newton’s hand and in the hand of the others, so I feel entitled to assume better of the motivation for their scientific endeavor, and leave it at that.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you just mean, unless we have written affirmation that Boyle instructed Newton on alchemy in Boyle's and Newton's own hand, we shouldn't believe it? I hate to tell you, but we have their correspondence (and Locke's as well) and we know that's what happened. Boyle was an alchemist, and his development of the principles of modern chemistry was inspired by a particular branch of thought in alchemy that attributed attractive forces to corpuscles. It's all laid out fairly explicitly; I think the Royal Society maintains the archives on Boyle's side. The British Museum has the Keynes material (i.e. Newton's stuff).

If instead you just mean it's hard to make a case for alchemy itself...well, consider that, largely thanks to Newton's work, we've come to accept a particular view about the nature of physical stuff. That view has it that what we observe can serve as an explanation for what we observe. Rather interestingly, this was a view that Newton was loathe to accept, and one it's not clear that he himself ever held. Nineteenth century distortion of his view is probably more responsible for our own inheritance of this idea. Newton was accused (by Leibniz and others) of taking seriously the notion of occult forces, but that notion came to dominate how we think of physics. The forces are just kinda there, as is physical law. An alchemist would ask why we feel entitled to help ourselves to such a view.

This is not to say that any particular view is correct. But I think if you spend some time and effort really grappling with how we got to where we are, and especially with the ideas that Newton, Leibniz, Boyle, Descartes, Gassendi, etc. were investigating and formulating, it'll probably change your view somewhat. The notion of spirit was banished from our concept of physics, but when you look at why and how it was, it looks pretty arbitrary. Food for thought.

USViking said:
Defense of dogmatically held religious belief is a branch of theology. Theology is the branch of philosophy which is devoted to religious thought.

I wouldn't quite divide things up that way. For one thing, there are plenty of philosophers of religion who would balk at being called theologists, especially as many of them are themselves atheists. But there are also theologists who think it's no part of the business of theology to try to uphold dogmatic belief--lots of mystics have thought so. I tend towards that camp.

USViking said:
Our views are diametrically opposed here: I am sure I understand that theology is nowhere near being the worthiest of all fields of knowledge. (Alchemical knowledge is at the bottom of the list)

I like the way you phrase that, because it seems that understanding is really what is at issue. The philosopher Linda Zagzebski has done some work on the notion of understanding, which she defines as "grasping the non-propositional structures of the world." The "world" in this sense is just everything that exists, and includes basically any subject at all.

It seems to me that for some people, there is no sensus divinitatis, while for others, there is, and it changes how the two groups respectively grasp the non-propositional structures of the world. This, in turn, changes which inferences seem solid, and which seem suspect. For my part, I think very few people are truly capable of religion in the strict sense of linking-back (re-ligio) to God, and furthermore, it's unethical to attempt to get someone who cannot to attempt it.
 
Key dates of the Restoration:

First vision-spring 1820
Receiving gold plates from angel Moroni-Sept 22, 1827 Feast of Trumpets/Autumn equinox
John the Baptist restoring the keys of the Aaronic priesthood and the authority to baptize-May 1829
Peter, James, and John restoring Melchizadech priesthood-May 1829
The Book of Mormon published-March 1830
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints officially organized-April 6, 1830(Lord's birthday on Gregorian Calendar)
Long awaited return of Elijah to the temple conferring the sealing keys of the Melchizadeck priesthood-Easter Sunday Apr 3 1836

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints given all the keys necessary to seal on earth and in Heaven the ordinances that pertain to the salvation of the human family. (baptism, conferring gift of Holy Ghost, seal marriages and families together for eternity in the temple, etc).

firstvision.jpgdownload (22).jpgimages (59).jpgtranslate2.jpgdownload (18).jpg
 
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The last verses of the Jewish scriptures(Old Testament):


1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

2 ¶But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.

4 ¶Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5 ¶Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. (Malachi 4)


Elijah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel who lived around 900 BC. God performed many miracles through Elijah, including raising the dead, bringing fire down from the sky, and taking the prophet up to heaven "by a whirlwind" without tasting death. The Book of Malachi prophesies Elijah's return "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord". LDS revelation confirms the reason for Elijah's return is that he has the keys of the sealing power of the Melchizadech priesthood. These keys are neceassary for the kingdom of God on the earth(Christ's true chuch) in order to seal on earth and in Heaven the necessary ordinances to achieve eternal life in the next life such as baptism, conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost, eternal marriage, sealing of family for eternity, etc. In the New Testament on the mount of transfiguration, Elijah visited Peter, James, and John to confer these keys as Peter, James, and John formed the leadership of the Church under the direction of Christ and the Father. The New Testament church was rejected by the world, the apostles and true followers persecuted and killed, and the Church was taken from the earth somewhere in the neighborhood of the end of the first century. The kingdom of God on the earth and the nation of Israel was then to endure a long dark ages until God would restore both prior to the Second Coming of Christ.


The Jewish people have long awaited the return of Elijah. At each Passover meal every year they leave a cup out for him.

When the angel Moroni first visited the young Joseph, he quoted the above verses in Malachi and told him it was soon to be fulfilled.

After the LDS completed the first temple of this dispensation in Kirtland something amazing happened. On Easter Sunday April 3, 1836, at the temple, the long awaited return of Elijah occured. First the Savior appeared, followed by Moses, then Elias, and Elijah.

Moses restored the "keys of the gathering of Israel," one of the necessary preparations for the Second Coming. These include the keys to gather scattered Israel from the four quarters of the earth and to lead the Ten Tribes from the land of the north.

Elias "committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed." (D&C 110: 12.)

Elijah restored "the power to hold the key of the revelations, ordinances, oracles, powers and endowments of the fulness of the Melchizedek Priesthood and of the kingdom of God on the earth; and to receive, obtain, and perform all the ordinances belonging to the kingdom of God, even unto the turning of the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the hearts of the children unto the fathers, even those who are in heaven."


At his return, Elijah declared: "Therefore, the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands; and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors." (D&C 110:16.) With the keys of the dispensation of the fulness of times (D&C 112:30) restored, the Church would then "build up the kingdom before the coming of the great day of the Lord."
 
Something cool is happening in the last verses of the Jewish scriptures that hint of when Elijah would return:


1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.


2 ¶But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.


3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.


4 ¶Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.


5 ¶Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:


6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.(Malachi 4)






In the verses above, it mentions "the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings" in relation with the return of Elijah.

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That phrase is referring to the Resurrection of Christ. Jesus was resurrected on 16 Nisan Easter Sunday 3 Apr 33AD. Not only has this been the long established date of the LDS, most non LDS scholars have chosen this date as it is one of only two or three dates in the decade window of possibilities that follow a Friday Passover on the Jewish Calendar as the New Testament requires.


The date Enoch returned to the LDS temple was 16 Nisan Easter Sunday 3 Apr 1836. Notice how closely that date is with Jesus' resurrection date of 16 Nisan Easter Sunday 3 Apr 33 AD. It is rare for Easter to be both on 16 Nisan of the Hebrew calendar and on April 3 of the Gregorian Calendar. Calendar expert John Pratt shows other things that make the alignment even much more rare. Those two dates are so closely aligned that Pratt states the following: "...the Easter of 1836 was calendrically the most similar in history to the Easter of A.D. 33. And if the earth's orbit continues unchanged, that Easter should retain this distinction for another three thousand years, when a better realignment interval is due..." Symbolism of Passover
So out of all the 1983 Easters after 3 Apr 33 AD, and almost 3000 more Easters into the future, 3 Apr 1836 from an astronomers point of view is the most similar Easter to 3 Apr 33 AD, the Savior's Resurrection.


Malachi 4 hints at the date of the return of Elijah by tying Christ's resurrection date "the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings" with the return of Elijah. And he returned to the LDS temple on the one date most closely calendrically aligned to the Savior's resurrection. Jewish tradition of tying the return of Elijah with the Passover Feast also fits 3 Apr 1836 as it was 16 Nisan, the day after the Passover Feast.
 
The stick of Judah and the stick of Ephraim

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Ezekiel 37:
15 ¶The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying,

16 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:

17 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.

8 ¶And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?

19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.

20 ¶And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.

21 And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:

22 And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
 
Found an interesting article from a physics professor at BYU on Isaac Newton.

It doesn't matter what you found.

Newton's laws are true, not because he said they are true, but because they are true as part of universal laws and he was the one to discover them.

The rest of what he may have said, believed, speculated, or just wished, are all irrelevant, unless they are true.

Then, stop obsessing on what Newton said about many other things, other than what he said about reality.
 
It doesn't matter what you found.

Newton's laws are true, not because he said they are true, but because they are true as part of universal laws and he was the one to discover them.

The rest of what he may have said, believed, speculated, or just wished, are all irrelevant, unless they are true.

Then, stop obsessing on what Newton said about many other things, other than what he said about reality.

Paralogically that makes perfect sense.
 
I am tiring of religious polemic and will probably not engage OP further than the following series of posts.

(post #32):
laska said:
I wouldn't call that response boilerplate. Not sure I'm the first one who thought of tying "everlasting" gospel with the Egyptian "Mormon" -love "established forever" but I've never read it and it was my own original thought. A lot of the calendar stuff is from calendar expert John Pratt, but i wouldn't consider him that boilerplate either. As far as propaganda, I do really believe it strongly but that doesn't mean a bias that distorts truth and facts.
The first paragraph of your reply #23 was propaganda in that it misdirects the great reputation of Isaac Newton in support of your own religious convictions. Those convictions are LDS- based, regardless of your innovative personal touches.


laska said:
You may disagree with say my interpretation of the Rev 14 verses, but in no way have I distorted facts or misleading. For example is it propaganda to state that when God set up His kingdom with ancient Israel in order to escape their enemies they fled during Passover on an exodus led by a prophet of God on a journey across the wilderness to a promise land where they settled beside the second largest inland lake of salt on the earth(the Lord's covenant people are called the salt of the earth), where they built a temple to the Lord, and made the desert bloom. And the LDS exodus has all the same elements. Then make the point that I believe God uses the exodus motif as an ensign to the nations that the kingdom of God is on the earth. Where is that misleading? How is that propaganda.
Classic LDS boilerplate.


laska said:
What is misleading is the many errors in the last 3 or 4 posts of yours. I may cover those later.
To be addressed ff.
 
(post #34):
laska said:
Again, you are going beyond what the Book of Mormon defines it. It is defined by persecuting the saints and altering the scriptures. It doesn't say non believers. And why earlier apostasy? Because LDS scholars tend to believe the people who killed the NT apostles, the saints ie faithful members of the Church, and altered the scriptures were in the first and second centuries and that the Catholic Church came later after the apostasy was already complete. That is all the author was stating, that it is not necessarily the Catholic church that the scriptures were speaking of as many readers assume. But were the popes who say sanctioned the inquisitions part of the church of the devil? i'd say yes. I'd say anyone that does evil such as delighting in murder is the church of the devil. That goes for members of any religion or non believer.
By “apostasy” I mean renouncement of religious faith. This may entail:

(1) renouncing all religion, or
(2) converting to another religion, or
(3) a special case LDS use of the term, according to you above, for those who persecuted early Christians, and who LDS think corrupted the scriptures.

As for (1)- renouncing all religion, of most interest to me personally, LDS is unambiguously censorious:

Mormon President Calls for New
Battle Against Atheism


(from link, emphasis added):
Gordon B. Hinckley said:
Speaking to a meeting of the American Legion yesterday, the President of the Mormon Church (Church of Latter-day Saints) called for a "battle" against Atheism, and conjured "an unequivocal trust in the power of the Almighty to guide and defend us." According to a report in today's Salt Lake Tribune, Gordon B. Hinckley praised veterans of various U.S. wars, "but warned that their sacrifices may be in vain unless the nation turns itself again to God."

The event was the 78th national convention of the American Legion being held in Salt Lake City. Hinckley praised those "who have been defenders of our liberty at great cost," but warned that "those battles are over and another battle goes on."

"The new battle is one against atheism," noted the Tribune.

I do not oppose any religious activity which is free of ambition to social and political dominance and other abusive behavior. I believe most non-Communist atheists would concur. However, tolerance does not impel duty to respect , or to foreswear the most vehement philosophical denunciation. That is no more than fighting LDS fire with fire of my own. If you can’t take then don’t dish it out.

(2) and (3) to be covered in next posts due to board post size limits.
 
Last edited:
By “apostasy” I mean renouncement of religious faith. This may entail:

(1) renouncing all religion, or
(2) converting to another religion, or
(3) a special case LDS use of the term, according to you above, for those who persecuted early Christians, and who LDS think corrupted the scriptures.

As for (2)- converting to another religion, I was gratified to read LDS President Dieter Uchtdorf’s conciliatory remarks:

LDS Leader Dieter Uchtdorf Addresses Those Who Leave the Mormon Fold

(from link):
Dieter Uchtdorf said:
“Sometimes we assume <that when someone leaves the church> it is because they have been offended, or lazy, or sinful. Actually, it is not that simple. In fact, there is not just one reason that applies to the variety of situations. Some of our dear members struggle for years with the question of whether they should separate themselves from the Church. In this Church that honors personal agency so strongly that it was restored by a young man that had questions and sought answers, we respect those who honestly search for truth.”

“Some struggle with unanswered questions about things that have been done or said in the past. We openly acknowledge that in nearly 200 years of Church history, along with an uninterrupted line of inspired, honorable, and divine events, there have been some things said and done that could cause people to question.”

Hopefully Uchtdorf’s comments on this subject represent a wholesome new trend in LDS moderation and tolerance in general. I am entitled to wonder, though, what he and others say in private, and feel in their hearts.
 
As for (3)- the special case LDS use of the term “apostate”- your insistence on limiting the term to actors of the pre-Roman Catholic era is contradicted in the passage below by LDS founding father and Apostle Orson Pratt, who denounces both Catholics and Protestants as “apostate”:

The Mormon Curtain

(from link, emphasis added):
Orson Pratt said:
"Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the "whore of Babylon" whom the Lord denounces... as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. And any person who shall be so wicked as to receive a holy ordinance of the gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent of the unholy and impious act. If any penitent believer desires to obtain forgiveness of sins through baptism, let him beware of having anything to do with the churches of apostate Christendom, lest he perish in the awful plagues and judgments, denounced against them. The only persons among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people who have authority from Jesus Christ to administer any gospel ordinance are those called and authorized among the Latter-day Saints. Before the restoration of the church of Christ to the earth in the year 1830, there have been no people on the earth for many generations possessing authority from God to minister gospelordinances. We again repeat. Beware of the hypocritical false teachers and imposters of Babylon! - Apostle Orson Pratt The Seer, Vol.2, No.4, p.255
I hope complete, explicit, unqualified official LDS renunciation of this grotesque, evil passage has been made.

And speaking of the RC Church, it has in recent years dropped the baptismal requirement for salvation. As well it must and any church must in order to credibly aspire to moral justice: Even leaving apart the case of unbaptised infants, there are legions of virtuous people, fully deserving of salvation (if salvation in fact occurs), who God (inexplicitly) omitted from all revelation of his (supposed) love.

I am aware of the LDS practice of baptism of the virtuous dead. Well, LDS needs to adopt some sort of mass baptism of the unidentified virtuous dead, because it will simply not get to billions of them otherwise. And besides that, the virtuous dead should not have to wait or depend on the graces of LDS to receive their just reward.
 
(post #34):
laska said:
You try to equate evil with God, as far as the death of the first born of Egypt. I assume you would say the same with the Flood.
Those are just two prime examples out of billions of examples of God’s evil.


laska said:
If you see a man shoot another man it may look from your vantage point that it is murder. But maybe the guy that got shot has a bomb under his sweater running towards a playground full of kids and the person who shot him knew this. That changes the entire picture.
A man who shoots a child is a murderer from any vantage point.

Also, your point above is an evasion which does nothing to address the specific case of God’s mass murder of the first-born of Egypt.


laska said:
You may read the Genesis account of the Flood and say how could God destroy the people of the earth. He's just as bad. But maybe the higher reality is that the earth was so wicked that all of His innocent spirit sons and daughters waiting in Heaven to be born on the earth would be born in such an evil world that they too would be corrupted and interfere with their second estate and thwart their progression in the eternities.
The people of the earth could never be so wicked as to deserve the punishment of universal mass murder. Even if the adults were guilty, all children must be presumed innocent of capital sin, and must consequently be spared in any system of just moral law.


laska said:
Death in this mortal life is just separation of the spirit from the body, and this life is just a nano second compared to eternal existence of the soul. Eternal death is real death. God looks at things eternally.
All preventable suffering of innocent people is gratuitous, and any agent who could prevent it but permits it is evil.


laska said:
So the Flood was necessary to save future generations. The same reasoning could be given in the first born of Egypt.
An omnipotent God can choose from an unlimited number of means of providing for the safety of future generations. Only a evil god would choose mass murder of the innocent children of the present generation.


laska said:
Also this life is a gift of God and is temporary, all of us will be taken home at some time. The timing is up to God, and we knew this when we accepted to come down here. He knows the best timing for each of us and how it will effect our eternal destinies.
The best timing for the prevention of suffering is immediate.


laska said:
God is light/truth with no darkness in Him. Everything He does is for the benefit of His children eternally. His love is infinite and pure. His mercy is infinite.
God is darkness and there is no light or truth in Him. Everything He does is for His own Vanity. His hatred is infinite and vile. He is without mercy.


laska said:
The only reason there is eternal misery of anykind is because of agency and cause and effect that is reality of existence.
The only reason there is eternal misery is because of the agency of God and the cause and effect that is the reality of His evil.
 
(reply #35):
laska said:
No value to you.

The extermination order(Executive Order 44) by the Governor of Missouri was on Oct 27, 1838, plural marriage was not practiced until later. The persecution of Joseph Smith from 1820 when he was 14 and had his first vision to his martydom in 1844 had nothing to do with polygamy. Having to flee Missouri and Illinois had nothing to do with polygamy. That was an issue later. .

According to the following LDS site Joseph Smith is thought to have taken his first plural wife in the mid-1830s, following revelatory commandments in the early 1830s:

The Beginnings of Plural Marriage in the Church

However, you are correct and I was incorrect in that polygamy had nothing to do with the Illinois and Missouri persecutions. The pre-trek Mormons were apparently able to keep the practice secret until they were secure in Utah.

I will gladly add that from what I have been able to discern from the past few days reading the pre-trek Mormons were innocent of any wrongdoing, secret plural marriage being irrelevant.



laska said:
The 1838 order stated: “the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description...”.
I concede this point as well.

However, you do not reply to the following other points from my post #30, which bear repeating:

Joseph and Hyrum Smith were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.

Christ and the Christian martyrs of the first centuries AD were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.

The Church of the Lamb committed numerous murderous abominations in its history, and earned the hatred of numerous innocent victims.

And with that I bid our discussion farewell.
 
(reply #35):


According to the following LDS site Joseph Smith is thought to have taken his first plural wife in the mid-1830s, following revelatory commandments in the early 1830s:

The Beginnings of Plural Marriage in the Church

However, you are correct and I was incorrect in that polygamy had nothing to do with the Illinois and Missouri persecutions. The pre-trek Mormons were apparently able to keep the practice secret until they were secure in Utah.

I will gladly add that from what I have been able to discern from the past few days reading the pre-trek Mormons were innocent of any wrongdoing, secret plural marriage being irrelevant.




I concede this point as well.

However, you do not reply to the following other points from my post #30, which bear repeating:

Joseph and Hyrum Smith were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.

Christ and the Christian martyrs of the first centuries AD were innocent victims of the abomination of murder. However, calling the murderers part of a church of the devil has no value except as a literary flourish.

The Church of the Lamb committed numerous murderous abominations in its history, and earned the hatred of numerous innocent victims.

And with that I bid our discussion farewell.

:2wave:
 
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