I'm lost into a cult that controls my religous thinking, the Mormon church has abondon me

a reply to: musicismagic

I am so sorry you and your wife are having this awful experience. Finding out people you thought of as friends had another agenda not associated with human friendship, devastating.

I suspect the love you have for eachother will succour you and help heal your broken hearts.

As will sex and drugs and rock and roll.

a reply to: Bluntone22

HAve you heard of “soaking”

Yep it’s real

Out of all the cults out thereyou chose Mormon?.
Why do you need a cult anyway. U don't need to an labelled as anything.. Just be you and enjoy doing what you like.

Aslong as you are doing no unjust to others than u a decent human being.. maybe try Hinduism if it really need one to latch onto . They don't have a Hell and they don't have do's and dont's.. Just be kind and show love and enjoy the few years left you have on this planet

a reply to: lSkrewloosel

Look I am a Christian, I was originally baptized Catholic but my mom was Anglican, we never had church school upraising's or attended church for anything other than funerals' or at time's of crisis and the first time I took the sacrament was at an Anglican church though I tried a catholic one as well, there ceremony's were actually very similar indeed.
I felt lost as at the time I had head injury's and was also undergoing a probably nervous break down but I got involved in the Church of Christ an american cult, Got dunked like a rich tea biscuit into a big tub of water by some ex US marine guy whom was the self styled pastor over here in the UK, I heard a very angry voice shouting from far above as real as you or me at me saying "You will NOT accept this as a baptism you are already baptized but as a blessing only" and about the same time (not at the dunking obviously) I had a very strong - very real dream of the ladder of Jacob or what I took to be Jacob's ladder only for the next day when I attended that church to be given what they were using for host which turned out to be these thing's.
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com...
The piece of a broken cracker I received had Jacob in the middle of it and of course as I was almost to a nervous break down and had head injury's I could not help myself but started to chuckle - I mean it was too much a dream of a ladder and then a biscuit with Jacob in the middle of it.

I then came back and the pastor started to talk about the church being burgled and a few other thing's almost accusingly and this actually severely offended me because I am most definitely not the criminal sort and did not even live near to this church.

I am Still a Christian, perhaps what you may call a non conformist but I believe - I know that God is real and he does not always answer our prayers even in our most dire time's but always remember this.
laviejita78.files.wordpress.com...
In my heart all christian's are my brothers even if I disagree with them on some thing's or maybe I am wrong sometime's but we all answer to the same God - the REAL one.

originally posted by: dfnj2015

originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: musicismagic

Have you tried atheism? Why leave one group of liars, just to join another?

I agree. The atheists are a bunch of liars. They claim they do not to have any dogma but they are just as bad as the rest.

What is some of this atheist dogma? I am willing to bet that you can’t list any. My general position is that i don’t believe people’s claims that gods exist. You do know that there are thousands of different versions of gods floating around. I simply don’t believe any of them. Mainly because none of them. And i’ll say it again. None of them have anything remotely like proof to back them up.

If an atheist makes a claim that cannot be backed up, i will also point that out, but as for atheism, it simply means we don’t believe you.



Also, what do atheists lie about?

a reply to: Woodcarver
I'm the same, I don't say gods do not exist, just I don't believe the claims of gods due to lack of verifiable evidence.

a reply to: musicismagic

The only book you ever needed was the Bible. You only need the power of the Holy Spirit to decipher it, not the Book of Mormon or any other book or leader. Pray for the power of God's Holy Spirit to lead and teach you directly. He'll bring you comfort and lead you in the right direction from here. We'll be praying for you!

originally posted by: CharlesT
EVERY religion professes to be the only true religion and sole path to god and salvation.

Actually, there are quite a few religions that teach something else. I'm inclined to conclude the other view described in the article below, is more popular in this system of things (but I don't know the exact statistics, it's more of an estimatation of the situation and counting the approx. 1.6 billion Hindus and Buddhists for starters, see below).

Are All Religions Different Roads Leading to God? Awake!—2001

The Bible’s Viewpoint

“I FIND it literally incredible that the God of the whole universe has chosen to be known by one religious tradition,” stated author Marcus Borg. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu said: “No religion can claim to have the whole truth about the mystery” of faith. A popular Hindu view is “Jotto moth, totto poth,” which means when loosely translated that all religions are but different roads leading to the same goal. Buddhists also share this viewpoint. Indeed, millions of people believe that all religions are different roads leading to God.

Historian Geoffrey Parrinder stated: “It is sometimes said that all religions have the same goal, or are equal ways to the truth, or even that all teach the same doctrines.” The teachings, rituals, and deities of religions are indeed similar. Most religions speak about love and teach that murder, stealing, and lying are wrong. In most religious groups, some put forth sincere efforts to help others. So, then, if one is sincere in his beliefs and tries to live a good life, does it matter what religion he belongs to? Or are all religions just different roads leading to God?

Sincerity Alone—Is It Enough?

...

Babylon the Great: Reasoning From the Scriptures

... In time, Babylonish religious beliefs and practices spread to many lands. So Babylon the Great became a fitting name for false religion as a whole.

What evidence points to the identity of Babylon the Great, referred to in Revelation?
...
Ancient Babylonian religious concepts and practices are found in religions worldwide

“Egypt, Persia, and Greece felt the influence of the Babylonian religion . . . The strong admixture of Semitic elements both in early Greek mythology and in Grecian cults is now so generally admitted by scholars as to require no further comment. These Semitic elements are to a large extent more specifically Babylonian.”—The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898), M. Jastrow, Jr., pp. 699, 700.

Their gods: There were triads of gods, and among their divinities were those representing various forces of nature and ones that exercised special influence in certain activities of mankind. (Babylonian and Assyrian Religion, Norman, Okla.; 1963, S. H. Hooke, pp. 14-40) “The Platonic trinity, itself merely a rearrangement of older trinities dating back to earlier peoples, appears to be the rational philosophic trinity of attributes that gave birth to the three hypostases or divine persons taught by the Christian churches. . . . This Greek philosopher’s [Plato’s] conception of the divine trinity . . . can be found in all the ancient [pagan] religions.”—Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel (Paris, 1865-1870), edited by M. Lachâtre, Vol. 2, p. 1467.

Use of images: ...

Belief regarding death: “Neither the people nor the leaders of religious thought [in Babylon] ever faced the possibility of the total annihilation of what once was called into existence. Death was a passage to another kind of life.”—The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 556.

Position of the priesthood: “The distinction between priest and layman is characteristic of this [Babylonian] religion.”—Encyclopædia Britannica (1948), Vol. 2, p. 861.

Practice of astrology, divination, magic, and sorcery: Historian A. H. Sayce writes: “[In] the religion of ancient Babylonia . . . every object and force of nature was supposed to have its zi or spirit, who could be controlled by the magical exorcisms of the Shaman, or sorcerer-priest.” (The History of Nations, New York, 1928, Vol. I, p. 96) “The Chaldeans [Babylonians] made great progress in the study of astronomy through an effort to discover the future in the stars. This art we call ‘astrology.’”—The Dawn of Civilization and Life in the Ancient East (Chicago, 1938), R. M. Engberg, p. 230.

...

I don't buy it. If any religion was the only way billions of people would be damned to hell no mater if their hearts are pure or not.

If the teachings regarding "hell" coming (or originating) from Babylon the Great are misleading, would that in any way affect your reasoning above?

...
What is the origin of the teaching of hellfire?

In ancient Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs the “nether world . . . is pictured as a place full of horrors, and is presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness.” (The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, Morris Jastrow, Jr., p. 581) Early evidence of the fiery aspect of Christendom’s hell is found in the religion of ancient Egypt. (The Book of the Dead, New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1960, with introduction by E. A. Wallis Budge, pp. 144, 149, 151, 153, 161) Buddhism, which dates back to the 6th century B.C.E., in time came to feature both hot and cold hells. (The Encyclopedia Americana, 1977, Vol. 14, p. 68) Depictions of hell portrayed in Catholic churches in Italy have been traced to Etruscan roots.—La civiltà etrusca (Milan, 1979), Werner Keller, p. 389.

But the real roots of this God-dishonoring doctrine go much deeper. The fiendish concepts associated with a hell of torment slander God and originate with the chief slanderer of God (the Devil, which name means “Slanderer”), the one whom Jesus Christ called “the father of the lie.”—John 8:44.

Source: Hell: Reasoning From the Scriptures

Additional information:

What the h*ll is HELL anyway? Are you going there?

originally posted by: Woodcarver
a reply to: musicismagic

Have you tried atheism? Why leave one group of liars, just to join another?

You mean those who do this?

Or this?

Psychology: Dawkins&Krauss selling the philosophy and contradiction that nothing is something

Or this?

Or this?


Safe to say, your comment sounded rather ironic to me. Indeed, why leave one group of liars (or simply those that are deceived and promoting falsehoods/lies and teaching contradictions), just to join another? Or for that matter, why suggest another to someone who just left a group of people spreading falsehoods (knowingly or unknowingly).

a reply to: whereislogic
You may have seen my earlier posts in this thread, I was raised/brainwashed a Mormon as a child. I reject all unverifiable claims of gods now, the Mormons have no more or less evidence to support their claims than any other religion/cult.
I'll believe claims when they can be verified, but until then I don't do blind faith.

I am not a member of any group, I just happen to not blindly believe unverifiable claims of gods, so that covers everyone, Sikhs, Muslims/Jews/Christian, Hindus and any other cult you can think of.
If you can come up with some verifiable evidence to support your claims then I'm all ears, perhaps a miracle or something, but anything less and I'll just call it woo belief and dismiss it as such.

a reply to: musicismagic

Originally posted by musicismagic
Please my fellow ATS members, I'm going into a wind of confusion that may just blow me away. I feel I'm been mislead that I must believe the mormon book is true.

You’re going into a “wind of confusion” because you sense something is wrong…which is a good sign btw…

Jesus didn’t come to bring another man made religion imo…see Matthew 23:15

And you’re right too start thinking something is wrong.


For starters, Joseph Smith attempted to rob (take payment) from people by claiming to have the power of divination to find buried treasure…And whether he was found guilty or not in a court of Law does not make any difference…imo

If he truly had that gift, he would have used it to fund himself, as his family was financially struggling at that time. Clearly a liar and a cheat from the very beginning.

Sometime later Joseph Smith tried his hand at being a preacher…but he failed and his congregation left him…

Roughly one year later…the whole buried treasure, Golden plates, and the Book of Mormon arrives on the scene…see the parallel…”Follow me now!!! I have this book” etc…

Zero Archaeological evidence has ever been found for the supposed wars that took place within the Book of Mormon. No Swords, no weapons of any kind have ever been found. Paul’s words have practically been plagiarised into the book of Mormon word for word…unless you believe the BOM came first… And another crazy coincidence…One of Joseph Smiths father’s poems/stories is found within the book of Mormon…it’s not word for word but it’s pretty close to the original…strange right…

There are no sources or past accounts of the BOM in history…outside the BOM itself. In other words, there are no accounts of the stories being kept by other tribes/nations, about the stories found within the BOM…It’s almost like they lived in some kind of exclusive bubble all by themselves lol… Again really strange…

Many of Josephs Smiths own followers had discovered that he had many wives, all the while teaching his own congregations that this was wrong/unbiblical. There was clearly much unrest even between his most loyal followers because of that issue. Concerned members of his congregation planned to print an article about that very issue at the local printing press in Nauvoo; JS found out about their plan and had the printing press destroyed by his own private army; as he practically owned and ran the whole town.

This is the real reason why Js was ultimately arrested and yet the LDS organization try to make him out to be some kind of Saint in their pamphlets and videos etc...

There are so many other loopholes…I could go on and on…

I think many inside realize it’s founded on a lie, but there is so much money and infrastructure involved, that they have to keep paying apologists to help keep it afloat.

- JC

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy
You want a miracle?

Contextual evidence regarding the miracle of life, the relevant facts and possible conclusions one can draw from them by inductive reasoning, or common sense:

Real science, knowledge of realities compared to unverified philosophies and stories

See the description of the playlist for a proven effective methodology to discover facts/truths/certainties/realities. Pay close attention to the methodology and type of logic or reasoning Isaac Newton used to make both the discoveries of the facts/certainties/truths described in the Law of Gravity, which stand unrefuted till this day, and the fact/truth/reality regarding God's existence, which also stands unrefuted till this day (keeping in mind the methodology described by Newton and his commentary about hypotheses not quite cutting it, let alone fancy elaborate untestable unverifiable and sometimes outright contradictory storylines about something coming from nothing or mythological multiverses or those involving the term "chance and necessity", see Michael Behe video for that quotation).

Oh, and keep in mind that Newton wasn't the first who made this particular discovery or used the same reasoning to come to that conclusion. I'm just referring to his methodology because it has proven effective results that a lot of people are aware of, or is easier to realize regarding the topic of gravity for example, not overlooking his other discoveries. It's also a useful way to phrase a guideline for any sort of truth seeking process, it's a little more specific than just advising people to use their common sense to get to the bottem of things and draw the right conclusions. One can always give it a try one day. If you want to know more details or other ways to phrase certain things about the topic of inductive reasoning and common sense, try the video with Michael Behe in it, you can skip the stuff in the middle about "irreducible complexity", he should have been focussing on the topic of interdependency there anyway, in my eyes (I'm talking about video 35, not 3, allthough that one isn't a bad idea to watch as an introduction).

Here's 1 video from that playlist with some hints regarding Newton's discovery of God's existence and way of reasoning regarding that subject:

originally posted by: CharlesT
EVERY religion professes to be the only true religion and sole path to god and salvation.

Follow-up on my previous comment cause I just noticed LABTECH also expressing a similar view that was described in the article I quoted from:

If it is Jesus you have given yourself to then remember he gave you YOU back by his suffering and you can really actually go into ANY church and pray to him if that is the case - at least any mainstream faith.

I still recon it's quite popular.

Does It Matter Which Religion You Choose?


Oh, and coming back to what you said for a moment, there was also this summit at the UN where the following views were promoted (notice what type of view the founder of CNN, Ted Turner, promotes there after 1:58, instead of listening too much to the narrator talking about that summit and invoking conspiracy entertainment concerning a so-called "one world religion", "population control" and "one world government" to draw some extra viewers, not the point here, that stuff is just right wing propaganda playing the anti-globalism sentiments in their target market; just focus on what Ted Turner is promoting there):

I highly recommend not letting your mind and thoughts be shaped by businessmen who own mainstream media organizations. Whether that be Fox or CNN. And to be highly suspicious of whatever they're selling, whether or not they're using their own media channel for it.

originally posted by: CharlesT
EVERY religion professes to be the only true religion and sole path to god and salvation.

Recently I commented in a thread in the philosophy and metphysics subforum made by someone named ManyMasks who said:

but like I say im just learning, and we can all find truth, whatever path we take, this I believe.

Again we see the Hindu religious philosophy described in the article I quoted come up. I run into it again and again on ATS. Much more often than someone willing to stick their necks out and say, I've figured it out, this is it (the truth of the matter), and the other religious philosophies/ideas that are incompatible, are wrong (including the one quoted below again), and here is why (or how you can tell, how you can tell the difference between what is true/certain/absolute/conclusive/correct, without error and what is not true/certain)...

i.e. someone who doesn't adhere to the contradictory agnostic philosophy that 'science does not deal with absolutes' (and all its variations, see the way Vilenkin describes it in his mail to Lawrence Krauss quoted in the video I linked earlier at 1:46, first Lawrence Krauss video, he's also an adherent to this contradictory philosophy and misuse of the word "science", conveniently ignoring the word is derived from the Latin "scientia" which means "knowledge" which essentially means a familiarity with facts/certainties/truths or things that are factual/certain/absolute/true; true science/knowledge is all about things that are absolute/factual/certain, whatever you're selling Vilenkin, is something else and more appropiately referred to as philosophy) or that you can't be certain of anything (or you can't know anything with certainty).

These people like Vilenkin often act way more religious regarding such dogmatic contradictory philosophies and misuse of language than people that are officially members of some organized religion. And I haven't seen W.L.Craig address it either. I mean, if you can point out the contradictory use of the word "nothing", you might as well point out the contradictory and misleading use of the word "science" or the concept of "science" as well. Some people do not seem to see that this philosophy about science is used to support their entire storytelling ventures, tip-toeing around any inconvenient facts that show the logical flaws, gaps and entire chasms in their storylines, especially the evolutionary stories (from their claims regarding "nothing" to multiverses, to string theory to M-theory to certain parts of the Copenhagen intepretation of Quantum Mechanics, to missapplications of Quantum Mechanical language for the early universe, to a useless endeavor to find a "theory of everything" as its called to cosmic evolution to chemical evolution to biological evolution; and on and on the unverified philosophies go). Selling unverified stories that are already promised in advance that they never will be verified either and still using the marketing label "science" for them. It's the ultimate cop-out for actually providing conclusive evidence for whatever storyline you're selling and it has allowed many scientists to gain prominence and advance their careers without ever making a single actual discovery in the sciences. Trying to get attention with the latest most exotic spice (story), acting like those people during that area in Euopean history where both exotic spices and exotic philosophies (and so-called "hypotheses") were so popular. It may give one some context regarding what Newton said about hypotheses in the methodology I referred to in one of my comments here (same timeperiod).

Remember, the Hindu saying was:

A popular Hindu view is “Jotto moth, totto poth,” which means when loosely translated that all religions are but different roads leading to the same goal. Buddhists also share this viewpoint.
...
Historian Geoffrey Parrinder stated: “It is sometimes said that all religions have the same goal, or are equal ways to the truth, ...”