‘We Celebrate Her Courage’—LDS Post Praising Eve’s Choice To Eat Forbidden Fruit Goes Viral

RileyG said:

How odd.

I know they didn’t view God as eternal but one a man who achieved Godhood. Or as Satan and Jesus as half brothers, or everyone had a pre mortal existence.

Very unorthodox and possibly stolen from other world religions.

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Smith declared, at the funeral of Elder King Follett in 1844, "God himself was once as we are, and is an exalted man."

As to Eve, a quick search turned up something similar in Smith's Pearl of Great Price.

For those who want to know more about Mormonism, a good resource is Kingdom of the Cults. The chapter on Mormonism has a lot of information not usually mentioned, including an early, unflattering, encounter with Smith selling scraps of paper marked with a mishmash of symbols that he claimed to be copying from an ancient source he found. The copy of Kingdom of the Cults I have wasn't edited by Ravi Zacharias, and it might be good to look for that one in a library.

Aldebaran said:

While they're at it, why not praise Lucifer for "standing up to the Man" for wanting God's position?
If a person has a truly rebellious heart, they would be willing to praise any rebellious figure since they would have the same pattern of thinking.
When one finds themselves admiring Eve for disobeying, or Lucifer for rebelling, it's time to stop and figure out why.

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As yes, Lucifer, the biological brother of Jesus according to LDS teaching.

All this makes me sad. I know some people who are LDS, and they seem to be good people. They go to church, support their families and speak of the focus that their church is putting on Jesus as their savior. I strongly suspect that they are in their church because that is their community and has been since birth. They likely spend very little time thinking about these fringe doctrinal points.

With all the various Christian denominations, in the eyes of God, it is inevitable that we all hold this teaching or that which is incorrect. I'm all for getting the facts straight and staying on the straight and narrow. But how to handle the situation where there is error on an institutional level? One might sit down and reason with a person, explaining their problematic thinking. But how to do that to an entire organization? One would have to get all the thought leaders to agree at once that they are wrong.

Meanwhile, the people who have been taught that it is the right thing to just follow what their pastor tells them trudge along because of tradition. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. While it is easy to be gobsmacked by these incredible (in a bad way) doctrines, we should all consider what cherished errors we grip with white knuckles in the denomination and community we grew up in.

KT

KevinT said:

All this makes me sad. I know some people who are LDS, and they seem to be good people. They go to church, support their families and speak of the focus that their church is putting on Jesus as their savior. I strongly suspect that they are in their church because that is their community and has been since birth. They likely spend very little time thinking about these fringe doctrinal points.

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I've no doubt that many are better people than me. But it's like a man on the sidewalk arguing with a man on the 2nd floor about who's closer to the noonday sun. The man on the second floor is closer, but both are very far away.

KevinT said:

All this makes me sad. I know some people who are LDS, and they seem to be good people. They go to church, support their families and speak of the focus that their church is putting on Jesus as their savior. I strongly suspect that they are in their church because that is their community and has been since birth. They likely spend very little time thinking about these fringe doctrinal points.

With all the various Christian denominations, in the eyes of God, it is inevitable that we all hold this teaching or that which is incorrect. I'm all for getting the facts straight and staying on the straight and narrow. But how to handle the situation where there is error on an institutional level? One might sit down and reason with a person, explaining their problematic thinking. But how to do that to an entire organization? One would have to get all the thought leaders to agree at once that they are wrong.

Meanwhile, the people who have been taught that it is the right thing to just follow what their pastor tells them trudge along because of tradition. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. While it is easy to be gobsmacked by these incredible (in a bad way) doctrines, we should all consider what cherished errors we grip with white knuckles in the denomination and community we grew up in.

KT

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Some of it has to do with being told that the reason why the bulk of Christianity does not share in and disagrees with the fringe doctrines of their church, is because their church is the true church. Along with a few other ones that sprang up in the 19th century. Spearheaded by a religious leader claiming a special divine vison such as Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell (JW), Mary Baker Eddy and so on.

Genesis is full of oddities.

For instance, God practically declared it a sin to have knowledge of good and evil

This contradicts Christ's mission to preach the Gospel (Knowledge of good) and the expose the works of evil (Knowledge of evil)


And then God commanded man to violate or assault Earth (Genesis 1:28 in Hebrew)

But those who do that will be judged/destroyed according to Revelation 11:18 in Greek ultimately portraying God and Satan are the same entity and also the "Dark Prince of this world" (John 12:31).


That is if you interpret Genesis as God having some human qualities. God becomes Satan in the New Testament.

The only way for God to escape such interpretation entirely is that God have zero human-like qualities. The scribes (in their shortsightedness) probably assigned God human-like properties yet God is totally inhuman like celestial objects like a star or galaxy. "Adam and Eve" are not humans either but could be heavenly bodies themselves like planets or even comets (be fruitful, multiply, have dominion over the Earth (or attack, assault it, etc))

Because if these things are actually real yet, we find no tangible evidence on Earth, we're probably looking in the wrong direction. We're looking for "human signatures" when the actual events may have been "non-biological" in reality. They could even be major astronomical events like the impact that wiped out all the dinosaurs.

The ancients writing them down but ultimately corrupted in presentation. Jesus gave a clue - you cannot trust the scribes.

Modern humans could have emerged from one such major celestial event in ancient times like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. If such thing happened today, our civilization and technology completely wiped out, survivors would document the event in writing. However, thousands or even millions of years from now, succeeding generations would have no clue what they're about (until advancing enough in science and knowledge) and assign their own cultural interpretation of their generation.

We've had quite a few fictional stories/movies on related subjects and many are horrific as expected.