Converting to Judaism in ancient times

[HVC]

...

Perhaps because my statement is 100% accurate?  Christology is the nature/essence of Christ vs. God.  It has nothing to do with any apocryphal myths about what Jesus did in North America or any lost tribes or anything like that.

Has everything to do with Christology.  Traditional Mormon beliefs are that Jesus
A) is the result of a physical union between God and Mary.  As in humping and cumming and whatnot. Not true of any other Christian or even Muslim sect.
B) Jesus was Jehova in the Old Testament, while God is Yahweh.  So it is non-Monotheistic from the outset.
C) That people can become like Jesus, and become Jesus-like regents of their own planets. 

Let's look at Mormonism's other greatest inverted-Christian hits:
A) God isn't the creator of the Universe, he is from Kolob, he just created our solar system
B) The most important, oldest Mormon prayers all ask for material power, and expect to be rewarded with Godhood or near-Godhood in the next life.  Compare this with the oldest Christian prayers: all redemption and "THINE is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory".   Christianity and Islam (for the most part on the last one) focus on servitude of God, Mormons focus upon their own wealth and success in the next world. 
C) Mormonism has consciously adopted the imagery of pre-Monotheistic Levantine religions, including Sun iconography and the spiritual importance of Bulls (hence the fountain).

As I've stated previously, Mormonism is to Christianty what the Nation of Islam is to Islam.  The two belong in their own category rather than in the Abrahamic tree.  I think the same might be true of Rastafarianism, but I'm not sure.  For some reason, America fermented some insane new faiths.

None of this is any more ridiculous than believing that Jesus of Nazereth is the son of god.

The ridiculousness of either is not in question, the question is if one version is inline with the other.

[Neil]

The ridiculousness of either is not in question, the question is if one version is inline with the other.

Neither rules the other out.

[Queequeg]

You have personal reasons for hating the Mormons because you have meanie relatives who are Mormon or something.

Either that, or I actually know something about Mormonism and Mormons.  Due to, you know, personal experience. 

There's a big distinction to be made between Mormonism the curiosity and Mormonism in reality.  Kind of like how Scientology is funny until it locks people away and starves them to death over a period of several days.  Mormonism has mellowed out a bit largely because they didn't hide their wackiness as well as Scientology and the Army was coming after them, but I don't think that fundementally changes the religion.  It's the same religion founded by a pathological liar with a taste for pubescent girls (plural being important) and a third grade education.

Anyway, it's like you have a vendetta against the Mormons and your posts are just trying to justify this.  Therefore, no amount of defending them is going to get through to you.

If people stopped arguing to justify vendettas on Languish, we'd be empty in a week.  Our biggest personalities run almost entirely on it.

B) Since the Mormons use the Bible unabridged to the best of my knowledge, along with the apocryphal Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and two other things whose names escape me right now, I don't know how this can be true.

God has two major names in the Old Testament: Yahweh and Jehova.  To the Mormons, one is Jesus and the other is the God from Kolob.

B) Not sure if this is true re: the oldest Mormon prayers (and unsure how you can know this as the early Church was rather secretive about its rites and still leans heavily on revealed truth).  The "rewarded with Godhood" thing IS true for sure, though.

Earliest as in the Temple prayer and whatnot.  "Strength in the bones and in the sinews"....it sounds wrong to Christians, for obvious reasons. 

C) Never heard this before.... and one picture of a font decorated with a bull motif doesn't prove anything.

Bulls on an altar?  In an Abrahamic faith?  Mean nothing?   

What if they are correct?  How can you prove they are not?  Absence of evidence ain't proof of absence.

Besides the obvious falsehood of all the Book of Mormon and almost everything else, I suppose you are right.  Except, of course, that President Hinckley (my great uncle) said, repeatedly, that either all of the Mormon doctrine is true or none of it is.  So by Hinckley's own standards, the bogus claims in the Book of Mormon render it bullshit on its own terms.

No, wait... I know the answer to that.  They're not correct because RELIGION IS A BUNCH OF NONSENSICAL BULLSHIT.    Due to this fact, I don't care what they call themselves.  You want to be Christian?  Fine, you're Christian.  You want to be 'Black Muslims'?  Fine, you're Black Muslims.  Since none of it is true, it is all equally meaningless in my eyes.

This is why Atheists are sometimes so terrible at studying religions.  Like misanthropic anthropologists or radical Muslim porno critics. 

There are categories in religion.  Christology (which I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot about) is a good example.  We can categorize faiths intellectually.  It's a serious intellectual activity, no more a BUNCH OF NONSENSICAL BULLSHIT than studying comparative politics or comp lit.  I doubt you'd agree that the German Democratic Republic was Democratic by any standards but its own, or that the PRC is Communist in anything but name.  Same with Mormonism.

[Valmy]

They're not correct because RELIGION IS A BUNCH OF NONSENSICAL BULLSHIT.   

Almost everything humans are about is on some level nonsensical bullshit.  I don't see why this suddenly means that somebody who believes something that is completely out of whack with what Islam says can be classified as a Muslim even if they claim they are.

Just like a Communist who then says 'but I believe in private property and I believe that is the foundation for a good society' isn't a Communist no matter what they say.

Or every label and term is meaningless and we should all just admit it is all meaningless and start sitting around in French cafes contemptiously smoking cigarettes.

[Neil]

It's the same religion founded by a pathological liar with a taste for pubescent girls (plural being important) and a third grade education.

Every religion was founded by profoundly damaged people.  The problem with Mormonism is that it's recent enough that we remember who they are.

[Valmy]

Every religion was founded by profoundly damaged people.  The problem with Mormonism is that it's recent enough that we remember who they are.

True which is why it is baffling people believe it.

[Neil]

Every religion was founded by profoundly damaged people.  The problem with Mormonism is that it's recent enough that we remember who they are.

True which is why it is baffling people believe it.

Some were raised to it.  Others have been converted by the good points of the religion.  Either way, the religion doesn't go out of its way to provide opposing viewpoints, and 200 years is a long time for people.  They tend to forget things.

[Caliga]

Well, and truthfully I don't think most people who think deeply about theology go around converting to religions.  They convert because one or more of the following is true:

* They're lonely and find the church a nice social group.

* They "need answers" and will take them from whomever shouts them loudest or first.

* They marry someone of that faith and feel it necessary to appease them.

* They're the kind of weak-willed person who just does whatever someone emphatically tells them to do, and get approached by a missionary.

[The Brain]

* They're the kind of weak-willed person who just does whatever someone emphatically tells them to do, and get approached by a missionary.

[Tonitrus]

* They're the kind of weak-willed person who just does whatever someone emphatically tells them to do, and get approached by a missionary.

Sometimes that could work.  Back home, one of the times Morman missionaries came to my house, it was two very HOTT blonde girls.   

I was, at least, exceptionally polite when I declined their proselytism. 

[Sheilbh]

The irony of your statement is that Mormon theology as it relates to Christology is identical to the ancient Arian position.  Obviously there is no direct connection between the LDS Church and Arian Christianity, but I guess you could get away with calling them "Arian Christians".

Neither Arians nor Mormons are Christian.

[Maximus]

Neither Arians nor Mormons are Christian.

nor catholics

[The Brain]

Only the pure evangelical faith as laid down in Augsburg 1530 and Uppsala 1593 is Christianity.

[HVC]

Neither Arians nor Mormons are Christian.

nor catholics

How can catholics not be christian? They were like the first christians lol

[Maximus]

How can catholics not be christian? They were like the first christians lol

No they weren't. The whole "state church" thing was pretty antithetical to christ's teachings.