Timewaster's Guide Archive

2)  Logic.

I don't like to talk ill about other religions.  To be honest, there are wonderful things in each and every religion I've studied--and, as a writer, I like to read about religions and learn about their teachings.  Also, as I said above, I don't think you can prove religion with arguments.  Only God can prove whether a religion is true or not.

However, there are some things, logically, about Mormonism that just make SENSE to me.  I served a mission for the Church, and during that mission, I taught about what I believed.  There were several questions that people would ask that I haven't found sufficient answers to in any other Christian religion.  Two of the biggest of these were:

1)  How can you believe in God when there is so much suffering in the world.
2)  What about all the people who aren't of your religion?  They go to hell because they happened to live at the wrong time, when there were no missionaries to teach them?

Question Two:

LDS doctrine is one of the only world religion which includes serious, powerful provisions for the benefit of those who never learn of Christ. 

I'd just like to mention that Christianity also has reasonable answers to both of those questions also.  There is not necessary *accepted* Church doctrine for all of Christianity, but there is definitely *potential* answers to those individual questions, specifically in the apologetical circles.

1a.  This is the typical problem of evil question.  If we are not talking about natural evil(i.e. natural disasters), then the common view is that there must be a great enough Good to justify all the evil that is in the world.  Typically that is viewed as mankind's free will.  Because God is allowing Man free will for both good and evil, the benefits of that free will and all the acts of love, kindness, selflessness, friendship, community etc. outweigh the negative effect of giving Man the free will to engage in evil.

1b.  Natural evil is a harder question and less clear cut, but the typical answer to that also generally involves free will and God giving us dominion over the earth.  I won't dwell on this since it is typically less argued.

2.  I would think/hope that most educated Christians do not simply say that because missionaries never preached to the Native Americans for thousands of years then all of those Native Americans were destined to hell.  There are several possible solutions to this problem that are discussed, one is counterfacturals as you mentioned: if someone WOULD have accepted the gospel.  Other possibilities include judging people on what they did know and feel and how they acted.  Perhaps people felt the higher power of God and felt in touch with it, or acted in community and kindness with their fellow man, or what have you and so the argument is that for their specific understanding of God and the world that they acted in a godly or good manner.  There are other possibilities here also, there is no specific one espoused by the Christian Church simply because the answer cannot be known but these were some of the more well known arguments. 

All that said, I definitely agree with your opinions on Experience, Logic, and Feelings as being conducive to faith and it was interesting to read your posts and beliefs.

Thanks.