Mike Pearson

Intelligence, truth, light, meaning

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

If you're not willing to fully consider an idea, you will never know if it is true, no matter how much evidence there is for it.

You have to be willing to make any change in your life to know truth.

This is why it is critical for humans to practice giving up things they like.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@jaredadairbell @Ch_JesusChrist There were people called "Christians" in Alma

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@ElJefe53209440 @kgp______ @Primary_Pianist If I mistake your relatives does it mean that I had the wrong you, or does it just mean I mistook your relatives?

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck We don't have to prove crap. Faith. Remember that part?

It's like you're not listening to a thing I've said. I'm done

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck I can't believe your biggest point is the logistics of baptisms while you're content with a god who damns people born in the wrong place and wrong time.

1. Wooden structures, locations unknown.
2. Locations unknown.
3. Large existing populations diluting DNA.

🥱

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck Yeah we have time during the millennium. I've probably done a few hundred. It really isn't hard.

You have shown absolutely nothing that science contradicts my religion on. Nothing.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck How can I reject nothing? Lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack.

So you believe in baptisms for the dead? If not, what happens to people who lived in a time where they had no access to the gospel?

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck That was literally answered in the 2nd paragraph you just replied to

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

I was not talking about tiny phrases. There are huge sections of verses organized into chiasmus that definitely had nothing similar in KJV.

About the tiny phrases that appear in both: The New Testament quotes books of scripture that were not in the Old Testament or discovered in general until relatively recently, as well as books that are. The prophets in the Book of Mormon obviously had some of those other books, and more. In fact, you see a higher frequency of references to some apocryphal and OT teachings in sections closely following instances of prophets receiving the brass plates from other people. Nice touch on the part of Joseph Smith.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

Reason... That's funny.

I meant intellectually calm down because saying a thinking human is falling for this stuff is an extreme position. By their fruits ye shall know them. Empirically, members of the Church of Jesus Christ are _more_ likely to remain active as they attain education, while other Christian churches are the opposite.

I would sooner become agnostic than join any other religion, and it is the extreme reason found in this church that keeps me faithful to the gospel. I could give you a huge list of the irrationalities espoused by other Christian churches, but I'll give you just a couple:

1. The idea that God loves all His children and yet automatically damns most of them by not providing their way to hear the gospel is insanely incoherent.

2. The idea that the Bible is the end of revelation is insane. God talks to people because our circumstances are not always the same, and we need personalized guidance. A testimony if of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and if a prophet writes that down, it's scripture.

My church makes Christianity coherent.

Every year more scientific evidence points to the benefits of the commandments. Members of the church abstained from tobacco long before scientists found that it caused lung cancer. Many examples like this.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck How did Joseph Smith dictate a book in so short a time that included complex Hebrew poetic structure and statistical word patterns for each independent author that shows no matches to each other or any involved in the production of the BOM?

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck Calm down. An honest person just doesn't deny overwhelming evidence.

But we don't know everything humans must be grounded in faith to succeed. Scientists have faith in 1. The value of the next discovery 2. That there is more to discover. Otherwise they're wasting their time.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

Here's what the church says about DNA. My grandpa taught at BYU and he said many decades ago in his writings that there were probably a lot of other people living in the Americas, based on the text alone - he was not referencing DNA so it was not backwards reasoning.

Telling me that some coins have been found is utterly useless. I imagine they at least knew where to look. Yeah? And iNsCRIpTioNs? Where should we find those?

Also, imagine for a second that you were God planning all of this out. What happens if conclusive evidence were found? That would be akin to finding evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now if God wants us to have conclusive evidence, why doesn't He just show us everything? In other words, how could it be proven that Joseph Smith knew something so miraculous that nobody else knew unless it would remove the need for faith?

That's why I'm not passionate about this topic. It's pointless, and barely science. I'm interested in psychology and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not treasure hunting. That's shallow nonsense. Archeologists are continually discovering things that drastically change the timeline they had for human migrations. Don't put so much weight into it.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck Coins are very small. Where should we start looking for coins?

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

"You aren't a Christian if you don't accept the Trinity."

The history of that statement is quite shocking, and almost nobody who says it knows that acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity was once enforced by exile, fire, and death.

Here is what happened.

For the first 300 years after Jesus, Christians did not agree on how He related to God the Father. They argued about it constantly. There was no official rule. That was just normal.

Then a priest named Arius said the Son came from the Father and was beneath Him. Not equal. Not eternal. A lot of Christians agreed with him. A lot. This was not some fringe group. For stretches of the next century, his side was winning.

Other Christians said the opposite. The Son was fully God, equal to the Father, no beginning. Two camps, same Bible, opposite conclusions.

The fighting got bad. Riots. Mobs in the streets. Christians brawling over the nature of God.

So the Roman emperor stepped in. Constantine. He had just won a civil war and he wanted his empire to stop fighting. He was not even baptized. He did not care about the theology. He cared about order.

In the year 325 he called the bishops to a town called Nicaea. He paid for it. He ran the meeting himself. And they voted. They ruled that the Son was equal to the Father, fully God, one substance with Him. That ruling is the core of the Trinity. It got settled in that room, by that vote, on one word that is not even in the Bible.

They wrote the ruling into an official statement of belief. A creed. Every bishop was expected to sign it.

That is the part people think is the story. It isn't. The shocking part is how they made everyone accept it.

Constantine made the bishops sign the creed. The few who refused, he banished.

Then he ordered every book Arius ever wrote to be burned.

Then he made a law. If you were caught hiding one of those books, you were put to death.

Even after all of that, the Trinity did not win for good.

A few years later Constantine changed his mind. He brought Arius back. And he exiled Athanasius, the bishop who had won the argument at Nicaea. That man got banished five separate times in his life for believing the thing the church now says you have to believe.

For the next fifty years it flipped back and forth. One emperor said Trinity. The next said no. Whoever sat on the throne decided what was true. The official belief about God changed every time power changed hands.

It finally got locked in by another emperor named Theodosius. He made the Trinity the law of the empire. Disagree, and you were a heretic. Not in some spiritual sense. By law. Backed by soldiers.

A few years after that, the empire executed a bishop for his beliefs. The first time the state put a Christian to death over doctrine. It would not be the last.

Then came the document that says it out loud. A creed written around the year 500. Almost five centuries after Jesus. They named it after Athanasius, that same bishop. He did not even write it. They put his name on it for the authority.

It opens by declaring that anyone who does not hold the Trinity, whole and complete, will perish forever. Believe it or be damned. Put in writing, and made the test of who gets saved.

So that is where the line comes from. Not from Jesus. Not from the apostles. From emperors and councils who needed a divided empire to fall in line.

The Trinity did not become the rule because the argument was settled. It became the rule because the side that held it had the throne, the law, and the sword.

The next time someone says you aren't a Christian unless you accept the Trinity, remember what it took to make that rule stick. Exile. Fire. And death.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@L3407972118571 @chris_evans1776 @glennbeck The gold plates have more witnesses than the resurrection of Christ. The Bible also has a talking donkey.

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@littlejoeward @teak421 @glennbeck Yes and you can read in the text that they built most structures out of wood, including prisons

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

How major does a point of doctrine have to be before it becomes a different Christ? It doesn't make sense. We just disagree about the same person. Maybe the problem is that you want us to burn in hell but your idolatrous doctrine says that all you have to do is pretend to believe in Christ by saying "Lord, Lord" and so the only loophole to damn us is to say it's not the same person.

I think pretty much everything we believe is mentioned in the Bible. Do you have an answer to Paul's reference to baptisms for the dead, or do you really believe that a loving God would create billions of people in situations where they couldn't hear about Christ and then burn eternally through no fault of their own?

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@teak421 @littlejoeward @glennbeck The one born in Bethlehem.

How many are there?

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@L3407972118571 @chris_evans1776 @glennbeck No more than Christianity as a whole

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

@xavierjamesg @GrkAristoTurtle @DanShaha See the last paragraph here https://t.co/1L3tRz9SLb

[Mike Pearson @LDS_Science]

"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee."

What do you think the word "as" is doing in there?

You believe in a schizophrenic god who prays to himself. But you still believe he was the same historical Jesus we believe in. So that makes you both Christian and mistaken. How is all of this so hard to understand? Do you believe your in-group must be perfect? Are you going to say we're not real Americans or humans next?

Cain and Abel were brothers. How is it demeaning of Jesus in any way to say He was brothers with a bad guy? Do you not understand that brothers are not the same person?

God the Father had a SON, and WE are ALSO children of God. And what do you call children of the same father? Siblings, yeah?

You don't understand the beliefs of our church. On my mission in Japan it was much more enjoyable grappling with bigger theological questions with Buddhists and agnostics than these endlessly repeated myths and strawmen about my own beliefs.