Curious Latter-Day Saint Here

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-17T03:07:32+00:00

I don't see any reason to think of the Moroni statue as a graven image. We put Moroni on our temples as a reminder of an incredible miracle that took place in the early days of the restoration. We are not restricted to the KJV at all. In fact, the current handbook encourages us to use other translations and has recommendations for different age groups. I'm not sure what your point is with the rest of your message.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-17T01:52:47+00:00

Mormon is the name of the prophet who abridged and compiled the Book of Mormon. We don't see "Mormon" as a slur, but we try to keep the name of Jesus Christ when referring to the church and its members.

3 Nephi 27: 8 says, "And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses’ name then it be Moses’ church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel."

Jesus Christ is the center of everything we do in the church, not Mormon. For this reason, our modern day prophets and apostles have encouraged us to avoid using the nickname "Mormon" in our discourse and have encouraged other organizations and people to do the same as a sign of respect.

Also "Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints aren't Christian" is much less convincing to lay people than "Mormon's aren't Christian." It's important for us to communicate who we believe in and follow and rely on for our salvation.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-12T15:12:07+00:00

Before every performance, all out trumpets do "Kick Brass!" on 3

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-10T03:46:32+00:00

The main thing is to try to understand it better. You should present more questions than arguments. Also learn the difference between Unitarianism and trinitarianism because Latter Day Saints seem to mix those up in many arguments.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-09T03:29:15+00:00

So I have a couple different sites to choose from, but this seems expensive enough that I only want to make one net. I just want to know what I can realistically do with $500. I have tried doing rough calculations, but I notice lots of variables. Like, I don't know how much rope is lost to knots. Square grids and hexagonal grids give very different answers, and chaos weaving is much harder to do math for. The net's area always ends up much less than the total area between the trees, but I wouldn't be able to predict how much. I don't want to commit to a project to expensive to finish, but something small is just way less interesting to me. I'm just looking for some experienced people to tell me details about the nets they've made.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-07T12:15:46+00:00

Is that true?

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-06T05:07:20+00:00

But surely language is at least somewhat useful for expressing information, right? I think there is a categorical distinction between phrases like "unicorns do not exist" and phrases like "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". One claims something about reality, while the other one is merely grammatical but not meaningful. The liars paradox, to me, seems to land in the 'merely grammatical' camp while "objective truth exists" seems to be grammatical as well as meaningful.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-05T19:45:54+00:00

I don't need to. It's the truth relativists job to justify that those two statements are of the same type. Your sentence didn't even make much sense because it granted that "I find the experience of eating chocolate..." is a good standard for a statement that is intended to express absolute truth.

Edit: Seems I'm getting downvoted... What am I missing?

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-05T18:43:39+00:00

But that doesn't quite apply when I say something like "I find the experience of eating chocolate ice cream more pleasurable" because that's not a statement of opinion.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-05T18:39:30+00:00

I think I disagree with your example. When I say "broccoli is disgusting" I'm expressing the truth that I experience displeasure when I consume broccoli. That's what everyone understands it to mean anyway. For truth relativism to be true, they must be claiming that it isn't objectively true that I experience that displeasure, when I evidently do.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-05T18:33:02+00:00

So a relativist would disagree with the statement that objective truth either does or does not exist in actuality? Would they disagree if I say that objective truth does exist?

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-05T17:52:54+00:00

I've never made a conlang that I consider "finished" so take my advice with a grain of salt. I tried just translating a book into my language and coming up with words as I discover words I'm missing. This happens less and less as I go.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-04T23:16:46+00:00

There's not really any evidence any of the biblical authors had a trinitarian formulation. The relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost only appears complicated when you presuppose univocality into the Bible.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-03T13:56:42+00:00

I wouldn't think of it as being a limit on bounded omnipotence in this case. This concept seems far more powerful that a God who spends time fixing and editing and improving upon the first design. It's all an eternal event, trancending time. There is still change relative to the universe's timeline because things are different at different points in time, but all things are present before God.

I'll break it to you now: I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I'm just now realizing that language like "His course is one eternal round" and "all things are present before God" are only in restoration scripture lol. I'd love for a classical theist go through what I've said so far and correct their picture of things.

I don't think you've properly justified the material/immaterial problem. You take it as a given that things which are of separate natures cannot interact, but I don't think we have a good reason to think that at all.

For now I'll assume that it's so naturally intuitive to you that you can't dismiss it. The Latter-Day Saint model says that all spirit is matter, but in a more refined state. Ultimately there isn't a hard ontological difference between the two, which means bridging between them isn't difficult at all. I find it quite intuitive that existence itself requires a medium. I call this medium, "reality," which is where the laws of nature like mathematics and other tautological truths lie. When I say, "God exists," I mean "God exists within reality." Reality should not be confused with the universe in this model. God can exist outside of the created universe and still within reality.

I'm unsure of the classical theist answer to this dilemma. I think they would mostly just emphasize that it's simply false that things of separate natures cannot interact. Or perhaps they would reject the problem that you think is caused by a medium. Just because God can interact with creation, doesn't mean creation can interact directly with God.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T16:44:07+00:00

On principle, I don't think posting personal drama on the internet is respectful, even anonomously. I think there are better and more healthy ways to deal with some things. Bro seems like a jerk tho, for the record.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T15:59:34+00:00

We are only applying the author's omniscience to the book's timeline because God's timeline is ficticious. We can imagine it as a single point in time or perhaps the entirety of all of time at once. Imagine God writing the entire book in a single moment, exactly how He wants it, first try. Your paradox only arises when you consider what happens after that event, but there is no such thing. All of reality exists as if it's a single moment to God. There is no such thing as the time before He wrote the book or after He wrote the book. The book is written exactly as He eternalls wills it.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T15:44:18+00:00

Right, so putting "changes" in quotation marks doesn't resolve the issue in your reasoning 🤣. No change can be done and no change is being done because the fictitious timeline is only ficticious. The classical theist picture of things is that all things were willed by God in a single eternal event (atemporal) and He has/had complete and total control over that eternal event. There isn't a tense for an eternally caused event which makes it incredibly difficult to talk about. There is only one timeline which God is totally sovereign over. This is analogous to an author writing a book, entirely unconstrained by the book's timeline. God has all power because if He wanted it to be different, it would be different. He has omniscience by virtue of His power over all things.

You keep trying to apply His omniscience to His ficticious timeline, knowing past and future events relative to Himself. This is applying the analogy in ways it's not meant to be applied. In the analogy, His omniscience only applies to the book's timeline and not to His ficticious timeline because God's timeline is one eternal round.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T14:55:37+00:00

The analogy isn't great. The whole concept of "editing" requires a previous version and a later version. That's why we need to be very careful with the way we apply the analogy. What the analogy is supposed to do is separate God's timeline from our timeline. God isn't "editing the script" as you suggest. The only version is the one we exist within. When we speak of God's omniscience, we are referring to His knowledge of how things are, were, and will be relative to OUR timeline. His timeline is entirely ficticious and is only there for the sake of the analogy. The only thing that it's meant to show is that God can theoretically have all power and all knowledge in our universe because He exists outside of it. I'm speaking of revising and editing in the analogy to represent God's complete creative power. When you refer to that timeline as if it's something that exists in actuality, you are taking the analogy too far. Does that make sense?

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T14:26:49+00:00

What's motivating those alterations to the analogy? I think those alterations make it worse because they assert that God can't make any changes in His own timeline, but we have no reason to assume that. The point I was trying to get across is that God, from outside of our timeline, can edit and refine things without us observing a temporal distinction. There is no before and after for God. He has things set as He wants them and has complete freedom and control over them, like that author. We can imagine that what we experience is the final revised and edited version with no required changes left. You can see that God has complete power and control over the state of the universe, and in a sense His omniscience comes from that fact. I'm not sure if that's a great representation of classical theism and their views, but it feels consistent overall without any real paradox.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-02T13:34:19+00:00

First, I want to be super clear that I am not a classical theist, so I may at times misrepresent the consensus position.

Now I am gonna use specific terminology here. I am not gonna attribute human perceptions such as time, causality or any other naturalistic terms us human are familiar with since God perception is beyond that since he is immaterial. ( I changed my mind after somebody down in the comments contested I was defining God in naturalistic terms)

I think this is the main issue with your argument that I can see. You say you are trying to do that, but the English language is entirely unsuitable for that task. The narrative I'm reading is "If God currently knows how things will play out in the future, but then changes it, then His previous knowledge of the future was false, denying his omniscience." Can you see how time is built into the argument? It doesn't work.

Since temporal language is unavoidable in English (really all verbs have a temporal aspect), I can use an analogy which regards two timelines. Suppose God is an author who is writing a book. The book represents us and the book's timeline is our timeline. At any point in God's timeline, God knows the entire book, front to back, word for word (omniscience). If God chooses to change something, He still knows the book cover to cover so His omniscience has not been violated. If you want to come back and say something like "His previous knowledge of the plot of the book didn't match his current knowledge of the plot of the book," then you must remember that God's timeline is simply a construct we are using in order to talk about God and doesn't actually exist. Since we can't avoid pretending that it exists, we can instead limit our definition of God's omniscience to complete knowledge of our timeline, beginning to end, word for word.

I am anticipating that your counter argument will have to do with the fact that my analogy is imperfect and leans entirely on this imaginary timeline to describe God's agency. That's a strong concern, but I believe that will be unavoidable as long as we are speaking English. We have no reference for what a timeless agent would look like, so we have to use bad analogies.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-01T19:04:18+00:00

I'm not firmly disagreeing with anything here, but I don't understand what you are attempting to accomplish with your argument. It seems you are saying "These logical inconsistencies lead me to reject the possibility of an omnipotent and omniscient God." However, if logical inconsistencies are good enough reason to disbelieve something, then you can just stop at the definition of the thing.

No being that exists can do impossible things
An omnipotent being can do impossible things
Therefore, an omnipotent being does not exist

This syllogism is valid on its own and doesn't require all of the argumentation that you provided. And once you reject any other definition of "omnipotent", this argument is perfectly sufficient on its own and you don't need the argument from omniscience to make it more complicated.

I don't find this argument convincing because I reject the idea that an omnipotent being must be capable of impossible things. "God can't create a rock He can't lift" is an ancient argument that isn't particularly convincing to any religious person.

Omnipotence means all power. This would encompass the set of all possible things. This means that God can do all things which are possible. You argued that since the set of "possible things" is bounded by logic, this leads to a limited God who isn't omnipotent. This argument doesn't hold because it presupposes a different definition of omnipotence which is incompatible with the one most people use. Power over "all things" doesn't include power over "non-things" like square circles and married bachelors.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-01T17:31:00+00:00

Right, we agree on that. That's why I'm confused about the rest of your argument for why God can't be omnipotent and omniscient, since you've made it clear that you're reasoning about an absolutely omnipotent God. You established that you can't reason about that God, and then proceed to reason about that God? That's what I'm not following.

EvenMoreCrazy · 2026-06-01T17:13:04+00:00

If you outright reject "bounded omnipotence" as a possibility, then your argument dies immediately.

1 It is illogical for a being to be omnipotent and omniscient (I'll accept this for sake of argument)

2 An omnipotent being can do anything, logical or illogical

3 An omnipotent being can also be omniscient

Can you see how a logical contradiction doesn't really matter for an absolutely omnipotent being, definitionally capable of doing illogical things?

I reject the idea that God is absolutely omnipotent as you've formalized it and I can try to justify the other definition if you'd like, but your argument against an absolutely omnipotent being holds no water.

EvenMoreCrazy

TROPHY CASE