As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
I’m LDS some people might call us Mormon.
The short of it is I asked God and I felt his presence. Not like any earthly feeling, more like the burning the bible / new testament describes.
But even without any of that I’d still have believed / known. I just, always have if that makes sense? I might’ve gone a different direction in my beliefs but I’d still have known he’s there.
I have always wanted to ask someone who has this opinion how they confront the knowledge that people from every religion have felt the same thing? Some people have felt this way multiple times about mutually exclusive faiths.
That’s one of the largest things that led me to be an agnostic atheist (meaning I don’t claim to have knowledge, and I hold no belief in a god; I don’t disbelieve, it’s the ascence of belief). I was raised non-denomination Christian, but I had a good Buddhist friend in high school. It made me curious about other faiths, and they’re almost all mutually exclusive, yet every one has people certain they’re correct. What are the odds I was born to a family that believed the correct one?
I’m not self-centered enough to believe I’m special and all the other people are just unlucky, so the result is that it’s most likely I wasn’t born lucky, and neither was anyone else. So many religions have faded out of existence, so the odds are if any are correct they don’t exist anymore. Why would I think I happen to find the right one?
I know this is unlikely, but I’d be interested to hear an actual opinion about how that feels, not hearing about what you’re supposed to believe (which I’ve heard before). I think it’s interesting to know if it makes others feel the same way I once did or not.
So, for the sake of this post isn’t “I’m trying to convert you to my religion” I’m going to try and summarize our points of belief while more or less answering your question, and I’m not doing it out of a debate, but merely to answer you :)
It’s not really “we think we’re lucky or better than anyone else” hell we actually believe that God is a God of fairness that doesn’t value one person over another. Ie. “We are all his children and he loves us equally” is a core belief we hold. And as apart of that belief, we firmly hold it true that God will ensure that all his children who lived or died without hearing his gospel will have the opportunity too. That’s point 1
Point 2. Yes you can most certainly have spiritual experiences outside of the LDS faith or any faith for that matter. We tend to refer to that as “The light of Christ” but for a summarized explanation. We basically summarize that as, a testimony of truth wherever it may be found God will bare witness of it.
And I also tend to lean towards a lot of Buddhist tenants myself btw. The concept of a state of being called Nirvana, that life is suffering (Though I know that’s not exactly what he said) and a few other ideas they hold I agree with.
I’m going to question this a bit if you don’t mind. Doesn’t the LDS church teach that there are different “degrees of glory” and only the followers of the church’s faith can reach the celestial kingdom? Yes, there’s exception for those who haven’t heard, but those who have and didn’t follow the teachings are left out, even though there doesn’t seem to be anything different about proofs of faith provided by followers of the LDS or any other religion. They seem to be the same veracity as followers of any other religion.
Yeah, I think it’s great to learn about other religions so we can take pieces of them that help us. Even if I don’t believe any are any more likely to be true than the others, there’s “truths” in all of them that apply whether you follow the faith or not.
Also, thanks for the excellent questions! I love having friendly discussions with other people who believe differently. It really opens up my perspective. Hell, I served an LDS mission in Seattle Washington. If there’s one thing I cherish, it’s my conversations with those of other faiths and learning more about their perspectives.
So, and A LOT of LDS and even other faiths make this mistake about our beliefs.
Yes we do believe in “Kingdom’s of Glory” just as we believe in God having a law, commandments etc. That being said, the LDS faith is in its core quite different from other faiths in that we don’t believe in your classical, “Hell fire and damnation”
Just to clarify this for any other Christian denominations, aside from our other teaching’s where alot of this comes from is this:
John 14:2 > In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
1st Corinthians 41 > There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
With that all being said. The biggest misconception and frankly appalling misunderstanding anyone makes in this, is that one person is valued less than another.
Our firm faith is that, by living the precepts of God you can make it to the celestial kingdom, IE. The highest degree of glory, but that that’s only provided through the Atonement of Jesus Christ ie. It’s not our works that “buy our way into heaven” it’s entirely through Christ and his Atonement.
That is absolutely paramount.
Second. We don’t believe God has a “cool kids list” or a list of rules you had to follow and if you didn’t. Lol sucks to be you.
We believe that God judges based on the person and their intentions, not solely by their actions. IE. It’s not black and white. Otherwise, how could the Atonement claim to be all encompassing?
Kingdom’s of Glory then becomes a choice we can make to get to. Like in my other comment. Some people will prefer pepperoni, some supreme, some pineapple.
But all will be happy and in a heavenly state regardless. And no one person is left out of receiving the happoness they prefer.
This is why a “feeling” should not be the reason you convert to a religion. You should be skeptical of Christians that argue their conversion on feelings alone. I certainly had feelings that I attribute to the Holy Spirit when I was an inquiring Christian but I frankly tried to ignore or diminish them to stay sober minded. Relying entirely on emotionalism or charism is historically discouraged as you could just as easily be swayed by demonic forces (e.g. prelest). It’s one of many critiques of charismatic Protestantism and the LDS church.
Everyone on earth that has adopted or converted to any religion has done so with a feeling as their reason. Nobody has ever converted due to cold hard facts or some research on the afterlife. Proof is unexisting by definition of faith.
Assertion
Applying material requirements to the metaphysical and transcendental
Transcendental Argument for God makes an affirmative pre-suppositional argument for God.
I… Yes? That’s a correct interpretation, but you denied an answer to me. Or perhaps I misunderstood your position, that nobody should ever convert or consider any religion?
I’m saying that your assertion isn’t justified (e.g. it’s just a subjective opinion). That you can’t expect to apply the scientific method to something that transcends the material world and that there are indeed logical arguments for why someone should believe in God as opposed to not believing in God.
I’m an Orthodox Christian.
I don’t think you’re correct with your argument. Why would someone choose any particular religion? That’s the argument. There is no logical argument for that. There are arguments for choose one in general, although logically very flawed. Still, there’s no logical argument I’m aware of to choose a specific one.
There is argumentation beyond the transcendental argument to believe, for example, the Christian God. It has to do with prophesy, metaphysics, theology etc
Does it feel correct that there are levels of heaven, better and worse heavens on other planets? I always felt this is disturbing to me, but it makes sense what you are saying
Not so much “levels of heaven” in that anyone’s values lesser than others. It’s that God understands his children, he understands we’re all different. I like a plain pepperoni pizza. Some people like supreme pizza, some people God forbid like pineapple on their pizza.
He’s not going to force one person or another into this route definition of “heaven” because supreme pizza may not be heaven, nor plain pepperoni or pineapple.
Sorry if that analogy doesn’t make sense.
No, no it definitely makes sense and btw pineapple on pizza is heavenly (pun intended) but I have always thought and heard from my Mormon friends that they can “work harder” on faith and then come closer to God in the afterlife as a “reward” (this is just me paraphrasing violently) and I found that kind of offensive, as I feel most religions and absolutely Christianity as a whole make a big deal of being equal children of God. Like if you wanted to sit next to Jesus you better work your ass off in your life. It is probably wrong, I understand, but even the idea of a hierarchy in a spiritual setting is for me incredibly offensive