Hitokage said:Staying in that Heavenly Kitchen.
Barefoot and pregant too.
Hitokage said:Staying in that Heavenly Kitchen.
All those spirit children gotta come from somewhere.Jeff-DSA said:Barefoot and pregant too.
ronito said:All those spirit children gotta come from somewhere.
There's no real way to know. The church boasts 14 million members. But that number's grossly inflated. I mean if you were ever a mormon and you don't specifically fill out the paperwork to be removed from the church records they'll count you as a member until you're 110 (even if you're dead). So there's no way in hell 14 million is anywhere close to the actual number of mormons let alone temple recommend holders.lawblob said:Anyone have any resources for calculating the approximate number of active, adult LDS people in the world, or number of LDS people with a current temple recommend.
I would assume the number of people with a current temple recommend couldn't be much higher than 500,000 - 900,000... maybe lower?
Meadows said:Quite a lot of Mormon missionaries here in Taiwan.
ronito said:This week Rolling Stone has a fascinating write up about "The Order" a polygamist mormon organized crime family.
It's here and it's really interesting:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...ne-mormon-cults-secret-empire-20110615?page=1
ronito said:This week Rolling Stone has a fascinating write up about "The Order" a polygamist mormon organized crime family.
It's here and it's really interesting:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...ne-mormon-cults-secret-empire-20110615?page=1
Huntsman has said in the media and intimated elsewhere that he's not really a practicing mormon.speculawyer said:Who is more Mormon: Huntsman or Romney?
Romney for sure.speculawyer said:Who is more Mormon: Huntsman or Romney?
Huntsman has said in the media and intimated elsewhere that he's not really a practicing mormon.
Interesting. I did not know that. Well Huntsman must have been into it at one point . . . doesn't he have 7 kids?ronito said:Romney for sure.
chances are Romney is wearing his garments right now, you couldn't say that at all with Huntsman.
From everything I've read, romney has been a lifer, whereas Huntsman was raised with it, but kind of stopped being invested in the last decade or so. Huntsman Sr. is a major bigwig in the church though.speculawyer said:Interesting. I did not know that. Well Huntsman must have been into it at one point . . . doesn't he have 7 kids?
I also got the feeling that Romney wasn't really into it either . . . but perhaps he has been downplaying it (for obvious reasons).
speculawyer said:Interesting. I did not know that. Well Huntsman must have been into it at one point . . . doesn't he have 7 kids?
I also got the feeling that Romney wasn't really into it either . . . but perhaps he has been downplaying it (for obvious reasons).
Welcome!NICKNACC said:i am a member going to Brigham Young University ......in idaho. its the retarted stepchild of BYU provo utah. Church has done nothing but bless me. I strongly believe in its doctrine and teachings since i have read the book of mormon and believe it is the word of god thus verifying the church today.
i served my mission in New Jersey for two years speaking spanish. It was amazing and i dont know who i would be without it. I also got to bless lots of people.
.....yep
What do you mean "You people?"!!!speculawyer said:Well Huntsman must have been into it at one point . . . doesn't he have 7 kids?
NICKNACC said:i am a member going to Brigham Young University ......in idaho. its the retarted stepchild of BYU provo utah. Church has done nothing but bless me. I strongly believe in its doctrine and teachings since i have read the book of mormon and believe it is the word of god thus verifying the church today.
i served my mission in New Jersey for two years speaking spanish. It was amazing and i dont know who i would be without it. I also got to bless lots of people.
.....yep
Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have some extra hurdles to jump in the race for the White House: convincing voters they wont force Americans into polygamy, restore prohibition or integrate other Mormon stereotypes into the Oval Office.
A recent Gallop Poll shows 22 percent of Americans would not vote for a Mormon. Stereotypes and sentiments surrounding Mormons frequently make their mark on LDS candidates running for office, and often, these stereotypes are inaccurate or wrong.
Negative images influencing almost a quarter of voters can break a campaign when many elections are decided by a difference of only one or two percent. Mormon stereotypes were among the strongest indicators of the various results shown in the Gallup Poll. The only groups scoring worse than Mormons were homosexuals (32 percent) and atheists (49 percent). The same poll showed 5 percent of voters would not vote for an African-American president, 6 percent would not vote for a woman and 9 percent wont vote for a Jewish person.
As 2012 presidential election media coverage heats up, and speculation abounds in the cable news networks, one trend seems to dominate conversation about Huntsman and Romney anti-LDS sentiment. However, high anti-LDS sentiment across the nation has motivated many volunteers into restoring and building a better LDS image.
Jim Dabakis, is a Utah state Democratic chair hopeful.
Im really disturbed in America that we have that kind of prejudice and bias, he said in a news release. In this day and age, there is no room in America especially in our political system for religious bias. Misunderstandings and ignorant presumptions on what it means to be LDS need to be confronted on a massive scale.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has requested that candidates running for office not imply that their candidacy or platforms are endorsed by the Church.
The Church does encourage its members to play a role as responsible citizens in their communities, including becoming informed about issues and voting in elections, said the official political neutrality statement released by the Church.
ronito said:http://universe.byu.edu/index.php/2011/07/19/22-percent-of-americans-would-not-vote-for-a-mormon/
This always struck me as strange. Really to an outside observer Mormonism, while admittedly stranger than most Christian religions, they aren't all that much more so.
Sorta like the people that laughed at the rapture guy but still believe in the rapture, all they disagreed with was the date, not the concept.
lawblob said:Mormon intolerance is a strange thing. Growing up in Houston, it was infuriating how so many evangelicals had such poor opinions on Mormons. It's amazing how the Church's nutty history continues to stick around and haunt it, long after the actually nutty stuff has any day to day relevance for LDS people.
I'd be very interested in what the missionaries had to say. I'd be interested in what active mormons have to say. I have heard/have been taught that the timeline was just misinterpreted (which always sounded like an apologist's argument to me). And I've also heard that there might've been a way from Adam and Eve to eventually pro-create if they had stayed in the garden without eating the fruit (again another apologists's argument). I could never get my head around this like the whole "The natural man is an enemy to God." teaching (well, who created the natural man?). I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say.heyf00L said:OK, I have some questions. I'll just put out one for now.
I had some Mormon missionaries come talk to me once. We got stuck on this:
God created Adam and Eve and gave them two commands:
1) Be fruitful and multiply (ie have babies).
2) Don't eat the forbidden fruit.
But apparently Mormon theology holds that it was only after they ate the forbidden fruit that they gained physical bodies and the ability to have children.
So, that would mean that God gave two commands that where mutually exclusive of each other. They would only be able to keep one by breaking the other. I can't understand that.
Follow up questions: Is this the only time that God has done this? Are there other commands today that we ought to break in order to keep others and/or receive the benefits from?
The Fall of Adam and Eve (lds.org)
Moses 5:11
heyf00L said:OK, I have some questions. I'll just put out one for now.
I had some Mormon missionaries come talk to me once. We got stuck on this:
God created Adam and Eve and gave them two commands:
1) Be fruitful and multiply (ie have babies).
2) Don't eat the forbidden fruit.
But apparently Mormon theology holds that it was only after they ate the forbidden fruit that they gained physical bodies and the ability to have children.
So, that would mean that God gave two commands that where mutually exclusive of each other. They would only be able to keep one by breaking the other. I can't understand that.
Follow up questions: Is this the only time that God has done this? Are there other commands today that we ought to break in order to keep others and/or receive the benefits from?
The Fall of Adam and Eve (lds.org)
Moses 5:11
Again, you're getting your stuff here from people that WERE mormon and the church changes rather quickly.heyf00L said:They never said anything convincing. They kept saying why the Fall was a good thing, but even if you believe that it does nothing to explain the paradoxical commands. They eventually said it's just a matter of faith and urged me to pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to me.
You can't make a confused timeline argument because even the retellings of the story in the Smith-produced scriptures give the same timeline and emphasize it (Moses 5:1 for example).
While looking through Smith's stuff there I can't get over how often God reveals the full details of Jesus (called the Only Begotten or the Son) to Adam, the patriarchs, Moses, etc. Even there in Moses 5:8 an angel tells Adam to call on the name of the Son forever. Yet somehow none of this made it into any of the Hebrew scriptures and was completely unknown to the Israelites or Jews. Is there some explanation for why these important details (on how to worship God) were intentionally withheld and instead put into secret books that would only be discovered over 3000 years later in America well after teachings about the Son of God are well known?
The whole "God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good and still allow sin to exist" thing hasn't been a logical problem for a long time now. Of course that doesn't stop people from thinking it is a problem. But anyway, I don't think that God giving two logically inconstant commands would fall into that category.lawblob said:Without going into detail, (mostly because im' too lazy to dig out books I haven't read in a decade), I think this question generally falls within the broader context of the logical problems with Judeo-Christian theodicy.
OK, I'll keep that in mind. I was just Googling a bit, and I found this posted on some Mormon's blog talking about neoorthodox Mormon views on the Fall which attempt to conform more closely with traditional Protestant views without abandoning key Mormon doctrines. However, I don't see anything that would solve the paradox.ronito said:Again, you're getting your stuff here from people that WERE mormon and the church changes rather quickly.
Most mormons don't know about it. And those that do explain it away with a small line that one of the founders (I believe it was Oliver Cowdery) had written in a journal or something that said the ring around the facsimile was red. The one shown was blue.heyf00L said:I also have asked Mormon missionaries about the controversy around the Book of Abraham facsimiles, but none has ever known what I was talking about.
I'll ask my brother--if anyone would know the answe rto this, he would. He publishes a lot of papers regarding statistical analysis of church membership and retention rates over time. A lot of it has been focused on international numbers, like this one:lawblob said:Anyone have any resources for calculating the approximate number of active, adult LDS people in the world, or number of LDS people with a current temple recommend.
I would assume the number of people with a current temple recommend couldn't be much higher than 500,000 - 900,000... maybe lower?
"[Rick] Phillips uses recent census data from Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Mexico, and New Zealand to attempt an answer to this question. According to the data, the number of self-professed Mormons is between 23-58 percent of the number claimed by the church. (Australia 47.5%, Austria 57.1%, Canada 58.4% (lower outside Alberta), Chile 27.3%, Mexico 23.2%.
mik said:I'll ask my brother--if anyone would know the answe rto this, he would. He publishes a lot of papers regarding statistical analysis of church membership and retention rates over time. A lot of it has been focused on international numbers, like this one:
http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/10/21/review-phillips-rethinking-expansion/
but I'll bet he has access to overall numbers, too.
This one little encapsulated quote might be enough to make the estimation though:
ronito said:blob I wouldn't consider that the investment people and church makes on missions wasted because converting is admittedly getting more difficult. I always thought of missions as killing a bird with two stones. Returned missionaries are much less likely to leave the church after two years of virtual monkhood in the mission field, and it takes men out at their height of hormones and teaches many how to live in strict church boundaries. Converting people is an added bonus on top of that.
Prozac will certainly help you present that face to the public.DigitalDevil said:2. Mormons have something figured out. Say what you will about their beliefs, their faith, their practices, but they are some of the (genuinely) happiest and most "at peace" people I have ever known.
DigitalDevil said:2. Mormons have something figured out. Say what you will about their beliefs, their faith, their practices, but they are some of the (genuinely) happiest and most "at peace" people I have ever known.
heyf00L said:OK, I have some questions. I'll just put out one for now.
I had some Mormon missionaries come talk to me once. We got stuck on this:
God created Adam and Eve and gave them two commands:
1) Be fruitful and multiply (ie have babies).
2) Don't eat the forbidden fruit.
But apparently Mormon theology holds that it was only after they ate the forbidden fruit that they gained physical bodies and the ability to have children.
So, that would mean that God gave two commands that where mutually exclusive of each other. They would only be able to keep one by breaking the other. I can't understand that.
Follow up questions: Is this the only time that God has done this? Are there other commands today that we ought to break in order to keep others and/or receive the benefits from?
The Fall of Adam and Eve (lds.org)
Moses 5:11
Not sure if troll, or just one of "those" BYU students. Pretty sure it's a troll but still have met plenty of people like this when I was at BYU.It is no secret that Cafe Rio is one of the more popular restaurants among BYU students. It is for this reason I felt compelled to write this letter to expose something I found both shocking and saddening. I noticed Cafe Rio uses real Coca-Cola in its recipe for pork barbacoa. That means many of us have disobeyed the commandments of our prophets without even knowing it!
I am appalled Cafe Rio would perpetuate this subterfuge in Provo. Surely the owners must realize how many of us are striving to uphold the Word of Wisdom. How can we do that when they are secretly giving us real Coke? Now that this despicable deception has been brought to light, I think the only solution that we, as students of the Lords university, can embrace is to immediately stop patronizing Cafe Rio until it uses caffeine-free Coke in its pork barbacoa recipe.
Until then, let us eat on campus BYU Dining would never serve real Coke. Further, I call on the Honor Code Office to consider whether students who continue to order pork barbacoa should have a place at this university. Surely we cannot have students attending BYU who dont think its important to follow the prophets. If students insist on eating pork barbacoa at Cafe Rio, they should cede their spot at this university to someone who is willing to be obedient, even when it doesnt suit their carnal tastes.
Scott Gale
Beaverton, Ore.
Troll, i have honestly never met another mormon who thought Coke was against the word of wisdom. Or they are just retarded, either way.. not worth paying attention to.ronito said:http://universe2.byu.edu/node/953
Not sure if troll, or just one of "those" BYU students. Pretty sure it's a troll but still have met plenty of people like this when I was at BYU.
by whom, about what?Meus Renaissance said:What are the attitudes/perception of Mormonism in America
DigitalDevil said:I worked for a company (in an industry) that employed lots of Mormons. The owner would travel to BYU every spring and recruit young men who had finished their mission to come and sell pest control door to door. I got to meet, work with, and manage a lot of really interesting people during that time.
A couple things I know about Mormons:
1. Despite the stigma surrounding polygamy, every Mormon I have ever met (hundreds) and the vast majority of all Mormons are disgusted by the practice.
2. Mormons have something figured out. Say what you will about their beliefs, their faith, their practices, but they are some of the (genuinely) happiest and most "at peace" people I have ever known.
3. If you are ever hiring for a sales position, hire a young Mormon who has finished their mission. Believe me, if you can sell god door to door, you can sell anything.
including alarm systems, satellite television, and pest control
lawblob said:Good point.
Raises another interesting question. How many LDS men would stay in the church into adulthood if it weren't for the mission program indoctrinating them to be active LDS men throughout their lives? Makes you wonder if the LDS church would basically collapse without the missionary program, based on sheer attrition of active members?
ronito said:http://universe2.byu.edu/node/953
Not sure if troll, or just one of "those" BYU students. Pretty sure it's a troll but still have met plenty of people like this when I was at BYU.
Not sure if it's still true today, but Utah led the nation in prozac use.bluemax said:Ehh, I think #2 is a falsehood. Their are a lot of massively unhappy LDS people who just put on happy faces for keeping up appearances. The church has really high rates of depression and suicide, ESPECIALLY among female members.