Please enjoy our forum, but also please remember to use common courtesy when posting and refrain from posting personal attacks, profanity, vulgarity, threats, racial or religious bigotry, or any other materials offensive or otherwise inappropriate for a conservative family audience.
IMO some of the statements on this thread go beyond discussing the merits of one religion versus another. They smack of religious bigotry and hatred. Mormons are not inherently evil nor is their religion. It can be demonstrated conclusively that they have done good works around the globe helping the poor, sick, and those in need.
As far as I know, FR does not harbor any animus towards the Church of Latter Day Saints and the free exercise of that religion. Mitt Romney is not the Mormon church or vice versa. Condeming Romney does not equate to condemnation of the Mormon Church. That is my point.
“refrain from posting ... religious bigotry”
Well and good, but please do define religious bigotry. By the implicit definition I have seen in your posts, no sincere follower of Jesus can escape the charge, and that does not make sense, because I do not think FR’s policy was ever intended be contrued as against legitimate Christian expression.
Then the problem becomes, what is legitimate Christian expression in connection with Mormonism or any other competing faith system? If Jesus and the Apostles routinely exposed errors in the false teachings of their day, why are modern Christians prohibited from doing so?
I have read this entire thread, and you have not made a case to show why false teachings should not be publically exposed as falsehoods. Instead, you consistently fall back to your “hideout” position that Mormons do some good in the world, therefore expressing firm opposition to their misguided system of belief is somehow bigotry.
What you are doing, perhaps inadvertently, is relying on the negative emotional charge in the word “bigotry.” It is like a talisman, a magic wand you can wave to condemn an expression you don’t like. Fine. Just be aware that such a device doesn’t reach a thinking individual. It is transparent that you have no rational, defensible basis for your position, or you would have used it by now. Instead, as I said before, you always retreat to charged words, essentially an emotive argument, not a logical one.
Therefore, I ask again, can you reconcile your extremely broad definition of “bigotry” with the clear teaching of Scripture that Christians are obligated to publically confess only the true Christ and only the true teaching of Christ and his Apostles? For example, both Mormonism and Islam have falsified representations of who Jesus is. Which misrepresentation, here on FR, are we allowed to expound and expose? If one but not the other, on what rational basis?
Because what you are doing is redefining good and evil on your own terms, and without offering a rational basis for doing so. Just out of thin air. Again, it’s a free country, and you’re free to do so. Just don’t expect to get a lot of buy-in from people who define good and evil both in terms of natural law and Christian Scripture. Because while natural law may teach us, for example, that murder is a fundamental evil, both Christ and the Apostles clearly consider false teachers evil as well, and on issues that come very close to home for the Mormon religion, such as proclamations of self-deification.
My theory on how you rationalize this is you do not consider Biblical teaching on such things a legitimate aspect of determining good versus evil. Instead, you seems to define good almost entirely in terms of humanitarian kindness, in the spirit of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” That, BTW, is the essence of the new, post-Christian civil religion, and I understand you are free to believe it, but you may expect resistance if you attempt to impose it on those who take their religious framework from the actual words and examples of Jesus and the Apostles, both of whom were more than willing to come down hard on false teachers as evil, simply for teaching falsehoods about God and Christ, in addition to the evil of lacking brotherly love.
Moderns try to compartmentalize love and truth as two separable things, but those early believers who delivered this faith to us made no such artificial separation. Believers love God and each other because they love truth. And they love truth because all true truth points to reality, to the one and only true Savior, and exposes all counterfeits for the frauds they are. And they are not ashamed of either him or the truth that exalts him over all other pretenders to the crown.
So label us however you like. You will find we are not in violation of the FR policy simply for being convinced of the truth of Scripture. But if it makes you feel good to say it, have at it. We can “tolerate” it.
“It can be demonstrated conclusively that they have done good works around the globe helping the poor, sick, and those in need.”
So what. Jim Jones was at one time lauded for good deeds. His followers ended up drinking Cyanide in Koolaid.
Goodness, I’m certain even the NAZI party in its early days “helped the poor, sick, and those in need.”
Your point is lame. I wouldn’t be inclined to vote for Romney even without his staunce Mormonism. However, there is NO WAY I’m going to help put a cultist in the White House. Mr. Obama is a clear cut evil and easy to recognize. Mr. Romney is just as evil, but in an insidious way. Chocolate coverd poison!
This a LIE straight from HELL!