What religion are you?

It seems we've scared him off (prove me wrong, LightWanderer!). Same thing happens when I get them knocking on my door.

Preezy wrote:It seems we've scared him off (prove me wrong, LightWanderer!). Same thing happens when I get them knocking on my door.

Those Postcode Lottery adverts are proof enough that there is no God and we live in a cruel, meaningless universe of torment and pain.

Drumstick wrote:I think it's a downright shame that some people feel unable to have conversations about the topic of religion on the whole without the worry of it turning into a barnstorming row. Ultimately, that says something about the people it's being discussed with.

Starbreaker wrote:

Johnny Ryall wrote:Don’t beat yourself up, the PG era may as well have been a lifetime ago. I can’t remember a single drama from that time.

Beautiful moments, lost to time like tears in rain

Agree with the filthy Scot though Knoy. Of my very few remaining memories of PG, you being a frothing anti-Christian is not one of them. Also - and I want to tread carefully here - Scotty, whilst I'm sure a good person underneath it all, could be incredibly stubborn when he had his mind made up about something. Essentially, what I'm saying is don't beat yourself up for what was essentially a bunch of 15-20 year olds throwing testosterone all over the place.

Plus you have a fine ass.

Yeah, this. We have all hopefully grown up and developed a lot over the course of a decade. PG was fun but I'm sure there'd be a fair share of cringeworthy posts/topics to look back on if it was still around.

Chill bruhs.

Thank strawberry float it's not archived tbh. The blog threads.

It's funny, when you're a teen and have all the time in the world EVERYTHING is important and you have all this time to shout your angry opinions at people until they agree with you or fall out with you.

Then you grow up get responsibilities and realise you'd rather meet that person in the middle and at least keep a friendship (unless they're a nazi obv).

Errkal wrote:I’m an atheist.

I have no beef

You're thinking of Hinduism.

A few years back, there was a guy on my facebook contacts which i can only describe as the very worst kind of atheist.

My news feed was constantly flooded with atheist propaganda, it was like being friends with a vegan.

I appreciate that some folk choose not to follow religion, but i do object to being bombarded in the manner that i was, as i would not do the same with my own beliefs.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Those Postcode Lottery adverts are proof enough that there is no God and we live in a cruel, meaningless universe of torment and pain.

I always hope that my neighbours will be raided by the cops for drugs or something, as then i can film the raid and use that postcode lottery ad song as the backing track.

Preezy wrote:It seems we've scared him off (prove me wrong, LightWanderer!). Same thing happens when I get them knocking on my door.

I was spending time with the family. We went to the beach, it was a lot of fun.

Preezy wrote:1 - Again, and not to labour the point as I don't want to come across on picking on you specifically - you assume that God has a plan, right? So even if you didn't know the details you should surely know not to test that plan or his ideas by praying for things, better to just let things play out exactly as they are because that MUST be God's plan, how could it be anything else?

Maybe what I'm saying isn't coming across correctly.
Let's say you get sick. You come to me for a blessing, because I have the priesthood, the ability to act in God's name.
I put my hands on your head and then God says stuff He wants you to know, through me. Stuff like "I am your loving Heavenly Father, I will keep you safe during this time. I have a plan for you etc". I have no idea what He says during these prayers cause I don't remember any of it. It's not about me, it's about the person receiving the blessing and God who is blessing them. I'm just a vessel through which God can deliver this blessing.

Here's the church explaining priesthood blessings

2- But anyone can give comfort to people, that's nothing special. Unless the comfort has measurable healing properties. You said you could actually heal people. I would assume there are countless stories of people with cancer or other severe illnesses being cured as a result of prayers/miracles, right?

If it's in God's plan people can be healed. Personally I haven't researched it so can't give specific examples.
A lot of the time it's just comfort and counsel coming to them, through us, from God. Only worthy males who hold the priesthood have the authority to speak on behalf of God.
Imagine you're driving. Speeding. Karl from down the road sees you and pulls you over. You're not going to listen to him as he isn't a policeman, he doesn't have the authority to pull you over.
But if a policeman pulls you over, he does have the authority. Similarly only those with the authority to act in the name of God can give these blessings.

3 - I'm also now curious about demons - so I assume you believe demons exist. What do you think they are? Why would God create and allow demons to exist? Why not just get rid of them all? It's like the serpent in the Garden of Eden - why create a snake that can talk and tempt innocent Eve into eating the apple? Why not just not create a bad entity and continue along in paradise?

Prepare to enter deep doctrine territory.
At the beginning of this universe, before this world was created, we all lived up in the spirit world, as God's spirit children. He wanted us to experience the stuff that He's experienced. He wanted us to go down to Earth with physical bodies, so that we can have experiences and tests that help us grow and become the best possible version of ourselves, with the goal of ultimately returning to live with Him as perfected beings. In order to get into Heaven after we die, we need to be baptised. For this we need physical bodies, as we're baptised by immersion - our whole body going under the water - while someone with the priesthood authority says the necessary baptismal prayer.
Anyways back in the beginning, God called a great council in Heaven where we were all told this plan. He knew that part of being on this Earth and receiving these tests and experiences is that sometimes we'd make bad choices, so He needed someone to die for our sins, a Saviour. Satan offered to be this Saviour but said that he would control us like puppets, make sure we did everything right. He secretly wanted the glory for himself, as by controlling us he'd be an unrighteous god in charge of us. God didn't like this, as we need free will. The agency to act for ourselves, not to be acted upon. Jesus offered to be our Saviour and let us have free will, even though He knew that doing so meant that many of us would reject Him. It's better to do the right thing out of choice other than out of being forced to.
God gave all of us a choice during this council in Heaven. Did we want to follow Satan's plan or did we want to follow Jesus and God's plan. All of us who are on Earth chose God's plan, so He sent us down here, giving us physical bodies so that we may learn and grow. That's why He places so much emphasis on heterosexual marriage and reproduction; it's to make babies so that more of His spirit children who are waiting up in the spirit world may get physical bodies.
Satan and those who chose to follow him during the council in Heaven weren't sent to this Earth. They were cast out into Outer Darkness (ie Hell). Those who chose to follow Satan are known as demons.
They absolutely despise us as they do not have physical bodies. Like I said, physical bodies are essential for us to make the journey necessary to return to Heaven. However people on this Earth can make themselves vulnerable to possession, by deliberately and purposefully disobeying the commandments and asking to be possessed. It's rare and something we don't like to talk about because it's pretty dark. But yes, demons can possess these people, get physical bodies that way. Demons can be cast out via the priesthood authority, but only if the possessed person is willing to change (you can see the problem there, most aren't willing to change or are no longer in control enough of their own bodies to change).
Lastly, the spirit world isn't really "up there". The spirit world, not the final three kingdoms (the place we go to after the final judgement) but purgatory etc, is actually here in the same place as this Earth. We mortals can't see it because a veil has been put over our eyes so we don't have all the answers (this life is to test us, if we had all the answers it would be like a cheat sheet, no real progression). Those who have died and demons all walk this Earth. We can't see them but sometimes, for specific purposes, they can make their presence be known. Both good and bad spirits. They can't hurt us but we can feel their presence. Ever go into a place and feel that it's haunted? That's why. Priesthood authority can cast demons out of places as well as just people.
It's a dark, very nearly taboo subject, so not many LDS members will mention it. Heck many don't know about it. But yes.

On the topic of the Garden of Eden, it was a necessary part of God's plan. "Here's a tree, the one tree you can't eat from. Don't eat from this tree. Don't do it. No don't. No no don't. Don't do it. No." Of course they were going to do it.
Satan thought he was thwarting God by tempting Eve but God always knew how things would play out. Think about it, God needed Adam and Eve to reproduce so other spirit children could get physical bodies. Adam and Eve were completely innocent in the Garden, unaware of their nakedness etc. There was no way they'd be able to reproduce until after they tasted of the tree and became aware of their bodies.
"Men are that they might have joy" but to know joy they must know suffering. To know good (the right thing to do) they must know bad. Sin was always going to happen in this world (hence the whole debate in the aforementioned Council). God needed them to taste of the fruit, but it had to be of their own free will. Getting cast out from the Garden of Eden is called "the Fall of Man".
The Fall of Man was absolutely essential for man's salvation.

Mystical Ninja Starring Danmon wrote:

Errkal wrote:I’m an atheist.

I have no beef

You're thinking of Hinduism.

Starbreaker wrote:

Johnny Ryall wrote:Don’t beat yourself up, the PG era may as well have been a lifetime ago. I can’t remember a single drama from that time.

Beautiful moments, lost to time like tears in rain

Agree with the filthy Scot though Knoy. Of my very few remaining memories of PG, you being a frothing anti-Christian is not one of them. Also - and I want to tread carefully here - Scotty, whilst I'm sure a good person underneath it all, could be incredibly stubborn when he had his mind made up about something. Essentially, what I'm saying is don't beat yourself up for what was essentially a bunch of 15-20 year olds throwing testosterone all over the place.

Plus you have a fine ass.

Thnx bbs

I'm not beating myself up over it, but I've been doing a lot of reflecting on my past, over the last year or so, and my online life has actually formed a pretty big part of that, so it's something I've been thinking about, but never really talked about on here. Basically, there are a lot of things from my adolescence and early adulthood that I'm embarrassed about, but I'm also really interested to understand why I did those things and acted that way. I feel bad about a lot of things, but also know that that's a time in life when a lot of people make mistakes and it's OK. The best thing I can do is acknowledge it and be better, rather than refuse to admit I was wrong and double down. And yeah, Scott could be incredibly stubborn, I quite liked that about him, but I feel this is an area where I was out of order in the way I interacted with him.

More to the point of the thread, I just came to realise that my old views of religion cost me personally in a number of ways, none of them major, but a lot of it meant denying I enjoyed aspects of religious culture and art, or being a bit more of a dick to religious people than they actually deserved.

Johnny Ryall wrote:

Drumstick wrote:I think it's a downright shame that some people feel unable to have conversations about the topic of religion on the whole without the worry of it turning into a barnstorming row. Ultimately, that says something about the people it's being discussed with.

Starbreaker wrote:

Johnny Ryall wrote:Don’t beat yourself up, the PG era may as well have been a lifetime ago. I can’t remember a single drama from that time.

Beautiful moments, lost to time like tears in rain

Agree with the filthy Scot though Knoy. Of my very few remaining memories of PG, you being a frothing anti-Christian is not one of them. Also - and I want to tread carefully here - Scotty, whilst I'm sure a good person underneath it all, could be incredibly stubborn when he had his mind made up about something. Essentially, what I'm saying is don't beat yourself up for what was essentially a bunch of 15-20 year olds throwing testosterone all over the place.

Plus you have a fine ass.

Yeah, this. We have all hopefully grown up and developed a lot over the course of a decade. PG was fun but I'm sure there'd be a fair share of cringeworthy posts/topics to look back on if it was still around.

Chill bruhs.

Thank strawberry float it's not archived tbh. The blog threads.

It's funny, when you're a teen and have all the time in the world EVERYTHING is important and you have all this time to shout your angry opinions at people until they agree with you or fall out with you.

Then you grow up get responsibilities and realise you'd rather meet that person in the middle and at least keep a friendship (unless they're a nazi obv).

The blogs were an early lesson for me in protecting your privacy online. I'll never forget when almost my entire year in 6th form had found and read my posts in there.

LightWanderer - in the nicest possible way, that gooseberry fool crazy

Preezy wrote:LightWanderer - in the nicest possible way, that gooseberry fool crazy

It's religion. You sound surprised here.

LightWanderer wrote:So you've heard of us then?
Recently our prophet made an announcement that we can't be called Mormons. He prefers the term the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but that's long and pretentious so I just call it LDS.

So he'd prefer to sound like something you catch on a night out in Soho than Mormons? What's the reason for the change?

Sandy wrote:

LightWanderer wrote:So you've heard of us then?
Recently our prophet made an announcement that we can't be called Mormons. He prefers the term the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but that's long and pretentious so I just call it LDS.

So he'd prefer to sound like something you catch on a night out in Soho than Mormons? What's the reason for the change?

The "official" reason is to help us focus more on Christ and how it's His true church.
The more likely reason is Google. The name "Mormon" is dirt. Between the controversial Book of Mormon musical, the gay porn site MormonBoyz, the antichurch exMormon subreddit and the offshoot polygamist versions of the church, Mormon is a pretty difficult name to take seriously right now.

By this point in my life i consider myself to be an agnostic atheist. It doesn't feel right to totally deny god cuz I got no way of knowing if there is one or many or none at all, but at the same time without said evidence I can't believe in god

That being said, I was born a hindu and raised with some hindu values; like to this day I don't eat beef (tho i break this rule sometimes lmao) and try to follow some of the teachings of Krishna, though I'm not too familiar with the scripture to follow it that well anyway lol. My mother's a catholic and I used to go to church a fair amount when I was younger, but strawberry float that noise I far prefer the hinduism if imma be brutally honest

LightWanderer wrote:the gay porn site MormonBoyz

Thanks for taking our questions in good humour LightWanderer. Interesting to hear from a Mormon, pretty unusual religion to say the least.

I do have a question out of curiosity if you don't mind. You mentioned that LDS is a different sect to your parents', so how come you chose it? Why LDS and not a more mainstream church?

Karl_ wrote:

LightWanderer wrote:the gay porn site MormonBoyz

Thanks for taking our questions in good humour LightWanderer. Interesting to hear from a Mormon, pretty unusual religion to say the least.

I do have a question out of curiosity if you don't mind. You mentioned that LDS is a different sect to your parents', so how come you chose it? Why LDS and not a more mainstream church?

That website actually exists. I hate it because it shows a certain article of clothing members wear that should not be fetishised but it's a surprisingly popular website..

Yeah, our church used to have a saying before the name change. "We Mormons are a most peculiar people". We know how kooky we are. Many people hate how much ridicule we get but honestly it's a lot better to just embrace the wackiness and realise we're all humans trying to find our path in life and we're all going to do stuff that other people find a little bizarre.

My parents are very conservative (moreso my mom. My dad just does what she says) Catholic. Hard environment to grow up in being gay. Went right off religion for a long time.
Then during my late teens/early twenties (so a few years ago) I went through some very difficult crap. Ended up in a very bad place because of the lifestyle I wanted to persue without much support around. Was about to end it all when I felt God telling me to hang in there. He had a plan for me. He'd bring something great into my life if I just weathered out the difficult stuff.
Skip forward a few months. Things are improving. I'm looking for a way to get back in touch with God. Don't feel like the Catholic church is the true church (many of its priests have attacked children). Read up about every religion. Buddhism, Islam. Realize I need a church that focuses on Christ. Watch a movie about the early life of church founder Joseph Smith. His confusion is similar to my own.
Meet up with missionaries to find out more. Love how much more sense it makes than Catholicism (different kingdoms of Heaven instead of just Heaven and Hell, the chance to receive the gospel in the next life if we don't get it in this life)
One of the missionaries was clever. He said in the very first lesson "do you want to be baptised." I mistakenly thought that if I said no, I'd lose my chance for life so I didn't want to say no, especially since it made a lot of sense. I could always quit later if it turned out to be false, and God would understand my baptism as just part of my efforts to get closer to Him.
Three years later and I'm still a member. I'm struggling a lot recently with the whole gay thing (LDS God has no plan for gay people that doesn't include a lot of suffering) but I'm enduring. I know God is real. God is love. And if there comes a time that God wants me to leave the church and get close to Him another way He will show me.

LightWanderer wrote:Don't feel like the Catholic church is the true church (many of its priests have attacked children).

The Catholic’s don’t have the monopoly on that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_abuse_cases

LightWanderer wrote:I know God is real.

How do you know God is real? Believing in something is one thing, knowing is a whole different kettle of fish.

Spiritual but not religious I guess. I've explored pantheism, deism and pandeism in the past. I'm also interested in Buddhism but leaning towards the philosophy side rather than the religious side.

Karl_ wrote:

LightWanderer wrote:the gay porn site MormonBoyz

Thanks for taking our questions in good humour LightWanderer. Interesting to hear from a Mormon, pretty unusual religion to say the least.

It certainly is by all those documentaries my friend Alistair Lias watches.

Seriously Mormons are everywhere in Gay porn. Or so my other friend Norm De Plume tells me.