Your path to a religious stance

[SevTiZ]

case in point of not exactly feeling coherent at the time. The core that I really saw was with the point of authority--how does one decide what doctrine is true? Do you get several rich people together with all the knowledge and philosophies of the world so that they can debate until they reach a popular consensus, or do you listen to someone who speaks DIRECTLY with God? And if there are several people who speak with God, there's always one who stands... *carefully juggles word choices* ...the best term I've heard is "First among equals"--such as Miriam and Aaron being taught that Moses was to be foremost in authority in guiding the camp of Israel, or Peter being the main speaker among the apostles.

On another tangent....
I found it curious that different people my companions and I talked to would say something along the lines of "Joseph Smith didn't like any of the churches that were already around, so he went and made up his own!" If one DOES discredit the possibility of Divine guidance, how does that make Joseph Smith different than John Wesley, Alexander Campbell, Roger Williams (NOT the folk/country singer), John Calvin, Martin Luther, or anyone else who expressed dissatisfaction with what they saw in religion around them?

[Deacon]

[quote="SevTiZ";p="581543"]how does one decide what doctrine is true? Do you get several rich people together[/quote]
No, you find the dude with a box of magic rocks

If one DOES discredit the possibility of Divine guidance, how does that make Joseph Smith different than John Wesley, Alexander Campbell, Roger Williams (NOT the folk/country singer), John Calvin, Martin Luther, or anyone else who expressed dissatisfaction with what they saw in religion around them?

Joseph Smith expressed dissatisfaction with what he saw in religion around him, so he went and basically decided to make his own based on Christianity? That's what you're implying, though perhaps unintentionally. I'm not a huge fan of most of the celebrated Christian "thinkers" of yore, but none of them really decided to go write their own new Bible. Martin Luther protested and listed his points about what he saw as wrong, for instance.

As far as Mormonism itself, I'm not really educated enough (with references and all that) to argue intelligently on specific points of doctrine, but having attended a Mormon school in Guatemala, I can say that I learned about a lot of things that just seemed so far gone from Jesus' teachings and such that they left a pretty crazy taste in my mouth (though for the record, there's a lot of pre-packaged crap selling off the shelves in Christian book stores and such that does the same). I don't want to get into it, because I know religion is a deeply personal thing, and I have no need or desire to offend and piss people off.

PS Edit: A lot of the "cult" label comes from outsiders based on how it's not just another slightly different spin on various teachings of Jesus, but rather a whole new direction, following a single ridiculous new messiah figure (who is not Jesus) with random and out-of-the-blue and unprecedented ideas pulled from tablets only he can read. Whenever a (relatively) small group of people all leave behind what they knew to be true to follow some new self-declared spiritual leader on a romp through the streets of Crazy Town, it results in a cult label, deserved or not, and sometimes it sticks even it grows.

[lifedeath]

E) ALL of the above.

[tankkisankari]

[quote="Deacon";p="581582"] I don't want to get into it, because I know religion is a deeply personal thing, and I have no need or desire to offend and piss people off.
[/quote]
Especially when in the first post, i asked people not to.
I don't want this to become like the normal Jesus threads we have.

[Skorpion]

Had christianity (protestant type) thrown at me since starting school. Never believed a word of it, and went heavily atheist for a while. Since then I've just sorta mellowed a bit.
I'm now technically Jedi, according to the census. Religion is generally associated with trouble in my book, so I just avoid it.

[Cyberliger777]

I cannot really choose any of those options. My Mom taught me some, but not much but I questioned it, I learned in Sunday school, and I looked at the possibilities and I could not deny the truth. Plus, God has done so many personal miracles in my life what I might even have to vote for the last option also.

[fxandrew]

No one voted for the 2nd option... Interesting.
Does that mean that all the effort, if there was any, placed by schools to educate people on religion, had no effect at all?

[Phong]

I think that basically if someone is in a School that can teach religion, or is in Sunday school than it's most likely that they were from a family that tought them their religion already.

[Koeniou]

I went to a religious school. All it ultimately did was push me away from wanting to be a Christian. My family isn't religous, I only went there because it was the best school in the area.

[Tigger]

I still don't think I've got it figured out. My mom was religious - I went to church every Sunday (and eventuall every Wednesday) from the time I was 5 until I was 18. I went to a private Christian school from 7th grade to 12th grade, and went to a private Christian college for a year and a half after that. I was a religious nut as a kid as well, since I did all these things voluntarily.

Then...crap happened. Christian boys turned out no different from the rest of them, I wasn't with my parents anymore so there was no reason to go to church, and I started thinking. As an adult, I attended a non-denom church...and got kicked out for being a sinner. Just before I got married the first time, I started attending another non-denom...and the pastor embezzled all the money and ran off just after our wedding.

Needless to say I am slightly disillusioned with religion as a whole. I would like to start going back, but can't find one that suits both me and Aaron. No church here is enough like my one back home to make me comfortable - and my church back home would scare the bejeebies out of Aaron.

[Deacon]

[quote="fxandrew";p="635253"]Does that mean that all the effort, if there was any, placed by schools to educate people on religion, had no effect at all?[/quote]
There is no effort in American public schools to educate people on Christianity, though eastern mysticism and other world religions are or can be studied. Anti-Christian activists have successfully turned the courts to the point where its stance on Christianity is that it should be banned from discussion as much as possible. And the question is how you came by your faith, not whether you've ever taken a class on a religion.

[Arc Orion]

Deacon, that was never my experience. I never studied any religion as part of a school course, though I was perfectly capable of bringing a Bible to school and reading it myself (and for a while, did so often). In fact, though I never took the class, one of the lit classes did actually study part of the Bible - I want to say the book of Ruth. Of course, it was looking at it primarily from a literary point of view, and not a religious one.

[Spongiform]

[quote="Deacon";p="635346"][quote="fxandrew";p="635253"]Does that mean that all the effort, if there was any, placed by schools to educate people on religion, had no effect at all?[/quote]
There is no effort in American public schools to educate people on Christianity, though eastern mysticism and other world religions are or can be studied. Anti-Christian activists have successfully turned the courts to the point where its stance on Christianity is that it should be banned from discussion as much as possible. And the question is how you came by your faith, not whether you've ever taken a class on a religion.[/quote]

Maybe because it's difficult to teach about modern religions objectively enough for public schools when the person teaching it is likely to be a member?

:edit:

My world history class in 9th grade had a pretty fair sized segment about the rise of Christianity, mainly the beginning and then as it was incorporated into the Roman Empire, and Catholicism's role in the Middle and Dark Ages of Europe. And, as an atheist being taught this stuff by a teacher that was a (mild, granted) Christian, I thought it was done pretty well.

[StruckingFuggle]

[quote="Deacon";p="635346"][quote="fxandrew";p="635253"]Does that mean that all the effort, if there was any, placed by schools to educate people on religion, had no effect at all?[/quote]
There is no effort in American public schools to educate people on Christianity, though eastern mysticism and other world religions are or can be studied. Anti-Christian activists have successfully turned the courts to the point where its stance on Christianity is that it should be banned from discussion as much as possible. And the question is how you came by your faith, not whether you've ever taken a class on a religion.[/quote]

... What. The. Fuck?

[Spongiform]

My answer was a bit more helpful than yours, I think, Fuggle, and it had a similar message.