Commentary: Discussion on Mormonism

Question:

Is it bad form to reply to a post in the moderated thread as an easy way of getting a linked quote, knowing that it will be moved here?

Or should we really make the reply post in this thread from the start?

My preference would be that you refer to post numbers or link to the post in question. If you post in the moderated thread, I have to approve it, move it, etc. It's a process I don't want to consume my free time with.

That's what I figured. Thanks for the quick response.

I think what might be easiest all around is to go through the process of quote and/or multi-quote in the moderated thread, but instead of posting the response, I'll just copy it and paste it in over here. That takes less work on my part, and you'll never even notice that I did it. And the quote(s) will already have the built-in link there automatically.

An excellent idea!

Tanstaafl said:

That's what I figured. Thanks for the quick response.

I think what might be easiest all around is to go through the process of quote and/or multi-quote in the moderated thread, but instead of posting the response, I'll just copy it and paste it in over here. That takes less work on my part, and you'll never even notice that I did it. And the quote(s) will already have the built-in link there automatically.

Click to expand...

"multiquote" is persistent across threads (and even sections of the Forum) so you can use multiquote on a post in the Moderated thread and then click quote on a post in this thread and it will pull the post(s) from the other threads to your reply box here (you'd still have to delete the content of the quoted post from this thread).

I had no idea it would do that! Thanks for the idea.

That's easier yet.

Darat said:

"multiquote" is persistent across threads (and even sections of the Forum) so you can use multiquote on a post in the Moderated thread and then click quote on a post in this thread and it will pull the post(s) from the other threads to your reply box here (you'd still have to delete the content of the quoted post from this thread).

Click to expand...

That doesn't seem to be true for threads in the Sticky area. It was working as I was playing around with it in the "normal" section, but when I tried to bring quotes from there here, quotes from here there, and quotes from here into another sticky thread, only quotes from within the same sticky thread were shown.

As a separate FYI, you can also click the multi-quote button, change threads, then use the generic Post Reply button so you do not have to delete unecessary quotes.

Hokulele said:

That doesn't seem to be true for threads in the Sticky area. It was working as I was playing around with it in the "normal" section, but when I tried to bring quotes from there here, quotes from here there, and quotes from here into another sticky thread, only quotes from within the same sticky thread were shown.

As a separate FYI, you can also click the multi-quote button, change threads, then use the generic Post Reply button so you do not have to delete unecessary quotes.

Click to expand...

Damn and blast you are right - leaves us with a quandary - unstick it to make quoting easier or leave it stuck to make it easier to find!

Darat said:

Damn and blast you are right - leaves us with a quandary - unstick it to make quoting easier or leave it stuck to make it easier to find!

Click to expand...

My vote is to leave it stuck and use the patented Tanstaafl method of copy and paste to retain the quote links. I hope to follow these two threads, and having them sticky makes it easy. I don't mind the copy and paste bit, as I probably won't have to do that too often.

I agree; leave it sticky!

My patent application was approved so quickly?

BTW, my thanks to the mods for their efforts.

Good call - thanks to the moderators for being willing to try a strange experiment. I hope it goes well.

way to go "r"s, I'll be lurking with bated breath.

Me too. Cool.

articulett said:

Me too. Cool.

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Good first post, RF.

That's the problem with faith and feelings... you are told that faith and feelings are gifts and "signs" of truth... you are told to look for such signs... so you are given a belief... told that affirmation comes as a feeling... that if you don't get that feeling it's because you don't "believe enough".

And then every "hint" is taken as part of the proof. And every failure to find evidence as a sign that you aren't worthy or you aren't doing something right or you don't believe enough.

When I was a kid, my Mormon friend told me that I had "heard the word (Mormonism) and didn't believe and now I couldn't go to the highest heaven... For an explanation of this manipulation check this out: http://possummomma.blogspot.com/2007/08/eight-hour-lunch-podcast.html
Her Mormon friends at her slumber party agreed, and I grew worried. So I looked for a way I could prove my religion was true-- and I found it. I was Catholic... we had the Pope-- he could trace his way all the way back to Paul... and he was infallible-- more people said so. And anyhow, weren't the Catholics the one with the stigmata? Surely that was a sign that they were god's favorites. The Mormons only had that silly underwear. And I tried to think of the nicest person in the world-- I came up with 2-- Mother Therea and my Aunt Angie. They were both Catholic. Therefore, obviously catholicism was true... if it wasn't I'm sure my parents would be concerned enough about my eternity to find out otherwise.

I tried to read the book of Mormon, but it was more boring and sexist than the bible and that was a total snoozer. (I had forced myself to read the new testament that they were illegally handing out to kids in public school in those days.) I wasn't getting any feeling.

In retrospect, I'm glad my kid never had this angst and "belief" silliness inflicted upon him. A kid shouldn't have to worry about ETERNITY and whether he/she "believes" the right thing the right amount the right way.

And this is THE manipulation technique used by all successful religions, cults, and similar ideologies. Unquestioning faith is good. Feelings confirm facts. It's bad to doubt (not have testimony). It's good to get others to believe (and it boosts your own faith too.)

But if all beliefs use this and they don't agree with eachother, then claims based on such knowledge are just useful for showing how easy it is to manipulate people into to thinking they have the truth rather than useful for actually knowing anything.

They can't all be right; but they CAN all be wrong.

RandFan said:

First let me thank rkronk for his gracious offer to debate these subjects.

For those who want an in-depth idea of where I'm coming from please check out my posts in the Religious Book Exchange thread and particularly my post here.

• Epistemology (is knowledge of the supernatural (God) possible?).

Let's start by going to the most rudimentary of philosophical questions. What is knowledge? Or, in a similar vain, as Pontius Pilate so famously asked of Jesus Christ, "what is truth?" John 18:38
.

Click to expand...

Belief, knowledge and truth are all different things. You can believe something, say "God exists", and believe that belief is knowledge, but it is only knowledge if the belief is true (among other constraints). At least according to the philosophical tradition this is the case. This may be obvious, but when you start to talk about knowledge by talking about truth I am worried that you may be using the words differently to how I understand them.

RandFan said:

1. It assumes that it is possible to correctly "know", ¹without error, the truth of a proposition innately and not by any external sensory perception. We know that this is not true. There are many examples of honest and intelligent people who believe demonstrably false propositions. I've given accounts of a number of examples in the other thread but would be happy to recount them and more here. We can test people's internal compass, so to speak (see the Monty Hall Problem). People are often certain about things that they later change their minds about. Things that cause them a degree of unease when they find out that they were wrong because the felt that they "knew" they were right. Most if not all of us have experienced this.

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To establish that "it is possible to correctly "know", ¹without error, the truth of a proposition innately and not by any external sensory perception" is false takes showing that such a situation never occurs. That is to say, you haven't shown such by showing that sometimes such believed knowledge is not actually knowledge.

Hi - this is my first post - I just want to post that I'm LDS, and I found this site from someone else. I have a lot of catching up to do by reading the relevant threads on the LDS Church and on whether it's true. I look forward to reading and commenting where I can.

Randfan and rcronk:

I would suggest that you might want to narrow your scope to one issue (or maybe two issues) at a time. Just a thought, but it seems like trying to do five threads in one is a bit much.

I agree - I want to address one issue at a time and I think this is one issue but it's a big fat one that we could have broken up. We'll see if we need to do this as the thread progresses.