The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church • Hacker News Board

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#481

Post by tomcam » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 8:47 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #378

allthecybers wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been explaining this concept to my Christian fundamentalist family members for a long time. They look at the right-wing as more faithful to the tenets of their religious literature, but I don’t see it. What I see is more of a left leaning set of ideals, that aligns with the teachings of Jesus. I think the population of people that are left leaning and Christian practicing is low and they don’t tend to be as infl…

Usually the right winger types are pretty heavily into prosperity gospel and feel that their faith entitles them to whatever they are into. Many of the loudest folks are associated with unaffiliated parishes, where there is no higher earthly authority to reign in the pastor. You also see a lot of extreme behavior tied to single issues like abortion or birth control. In short, people very passionate about an issue wil…

> Usually the right winger types are pretty heavily into prosperity gospel and feel that their faith entitles them to whatever they are into.

Citation? Not my experience at all.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#482

Post by jshevek » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

darksaints wrote: post #306

umvi wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, how do you know that what you are assuming is "common" isn't just a warped perception due to distillation effects of internet fora? My brother and his wife asked us not to bring up church stuff to them, and like normal humans and family members who respect each other, we obliged. And it's a two way street; when they come visit us we still say prayers for meals and they don't make a bug fuss about it.

And how do you know that your experience is the common one? The exmormon subreddit is an extremely large and active subreddit, with lots of unity in experiences. Its by far the largest known community of ex members of any religion on reddit. If your experience were more common, the exmormon subreddit would probably be as dead as the /r/excatholic subreddit. Now that is a community that really doesn't give a shit if y…

Ex Mormon subreddit participants self select for those who have ex mormom experiences worth discussing.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#483

Post by zmix » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

abnry wrote: post #218

zmix wrote: post #153

One of my favorite passages from the New Testament is this: Matthew 19:16-30 New International Version (NIV)[1] The Rich and the Kingdom of God 16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 “Which ones?” he inquired.…

There are numerous rich disciples of Jesus. It is not clear that all of them gave away all of their wealth. You are correct that love of money and possessions is crucial concern as a Christian, and that Christians are taught to rely on the Lord for their day to day needs. But ultimately it is the heart attitude towards money. Money is a resource like any other resource, such as time or people. You can be idolatrous a…

Jesus words are very clear here and leave no place for doubt. Therefore all of those, who followed him, must have given up on material property, which makes sense, if one accepts the idea, that "Money corrupts."

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#484

Post by goto11 » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #436

drKarl wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually not real evidence that Jesus even existed. The "official" gospels were chosen in the council of Nicaea in the year 325. There were lots of other gospels wildly contradicting each other, which were arbitrarily dismissed. Even the chosen gospels contradict each other. The writers of the gospels were born between 50 and more than 100 years after the alleged story they're telling. No roman or jew histori…

The writers of the gospels were Jesus’ contemporaries. And I guess you’ve never heard of Josephus? He’s only the most well known Jewish historian since Moses. Jesus most certainly lived, no serious scholar of history claims otherwise.

To be fair, Josephus has only two quotes about Jesus, and one is definitely a forgery, although it is debated if it is a full or only partial forgery. The other quote is considered authentic, but just mention "James, the brother of Jesus". So not a lot to go by.

But you are correct that historians generally consider Jesus to be historical. It is not so much due to Josephus though, but more due to critical reading of the Gospels themselves.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#485

Post by zmix » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #198

zmix wrote: post #153

One of my favorite passages from the New Testament is this: Matthew 19:16-30 New International Version (NIV)[1] The Rich and the Kingdom of God 16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 “Which ones?” he inquired.…

This also says that you should leave your family. Do you think of this when you hear about people who call themselves Christians but love their family?

Absolutely. And it does not hold true only for Christians. Christianity is just an expression of deep, basic virtues, that are valid for human being at a whole.

Now, ask yourself:

Do you need to abandon your family in order to leave it behind?

Will you lose love to your family, if you free yourself from the bounds of it?

Was his mother at his side, when he died?

Was Jesus was aware of kin-keyness?

Mankind's history is full with corruption by the family, the "folks", and similar peer pressures. One mustn't go the spiritual way: Just check out "Romeo and Juliet" vs. the two "Houses".

Though, I must admit, that I do not find this forum (or any internet forum at all) to be the right place to go deeper into such topics ;-)

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#486

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 10:40 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #460

gherkinnn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a lot of people invoke Christ, but have little to do with his teachings. Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.

Have you read the full bible? The Jesus stuff might be more on the liberal end but Christianity in general is very much socially conservative. Especially the old testament. In genesis whenever god made a covenant (like made Abraham the main dude) it always came with God giving them great wealth (sheep and an abundance of land) as well as leadership of entire areas. At least the early stuff, the leaders/prophets were…

> The Jesus stuff might be more on the liberal end but Christianity in general is very much socially conservative.

“Christianity” is about Christ, not something else.

> Especially the old testament.

The old testament is context for the NT, but with a very small number of exceptions (and with the exceptions of potential general applicability to Jewish Christians, which were common in the first Christian communities but rare today) the dictates of the OT law expressly are superceded by the “Jesus stuff” for Christians.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#487

Post by wl » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 11:12 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #468

bensonn wrote: post #239

Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound interest to get to this point. If used as an endowment to support 16 million people in 170+ countries that doesn't seem too crazy. A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.

> A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy. Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.

Those assets, technically and legally, belong to the office Nelson occupies, not Nelson personally. It's a corporation sole, which is often used by Bishops of other churches to hold the assets of a diocese. The alternative would be the corporation aggregate with a board of directors.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#488

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

allthecybers wrote: post #225

gherkinnn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a lot of people invoke Christ, but have little to do with his teachings. Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.

I’ve been explaining this concept to my Christian fundamentalist family members for a long time. They look at the right-wing as more faithful to the tenets of their religious literature, but I don’t see it. What I see is more of a left leaning set of ideals, that aligns with the teachings of Jesus. I think the population of people that are left leaning and Christian practicing is low and they don’t tend to be as infl…

> They look at the right-wing as more faithful to the tenets of their religious literature, but I don’t see it

On the wealth issue specifically, you can certainly read it that way. I mean, I think it's wrong, but it's not like there aren't things that can be viewed, in isolation, as just as emphatic support for the prosperity gospel as other passages can be viewed as a mandate for asceticism.

> I think the population of people that are left leaning and Christian practicing is low and they don’t tend to be as influential on the national stage as the religious right.

The left-leaning Christian types tend not to wave Christianity around like a cudgel in political discussions, which makes them less visible as Christians in those contexts, even when they are quite visible.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#489

Post by Fellshard » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

mola wrote: post #463

Fellshard wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figures you're being downvoted to pieces, when this is among the key aspects of Jesus' teachings. Indeed, the entire Sermon on the Mount is centered around the centrality of the /heart/ as the seat of sin, and the thoughts and intentions of the /heart/ as being the fount from which actions stem. Individual sin is what Jesus demanded repentance from; there is no 'collective sin' in Scripture, though groups of people w…

I really think you have major misconceptions about social democrat ideology. Your 'ancestral sin' interpretation could easily be said on capitalists who don't have a problem with people capital fortune being decided mostly a birth. (You're born poor, you are likely to stay poor, you're born rich you're likely to stay rich no matter what you do). Or, You could also easily say that the Protestant morals equate physical…

None of what you just said aligns with reality.

Being born into wealth lends a significant chance of mismanagement and losing that wealth.

Protestants - not the megachurches that go by the label 'protestant', but believe nothing remotely related to Scripture - have no such conception.

Lastly, you're moving what I said, narrowing the scope to 'democratic socialists'.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#490

Post by arconis987 » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

johnsonjo wrote: post #474

akira2501 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and also of a people preparing/amassing the relative wealth/supplies (Noah, Joseph, etc). Matthew 19:24, direct 'quote' from Jesus: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Seems pretty clear. > being to only have necessary debt (e.g. university or a house) I work for a Mormon owned company, this ideology even extends th…

> > and also of a people preparing/amassing the relative wealth/supplies (Noah, Joseph, etc). > Matthew 19:24, direct 'quote' from Jesus: "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Seems pretty clear. Here’s the full passage from 19:24-26 > 24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a need…

I’m very curious about spiritual confirmations of truth. What was your spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon like? How do you know that the spiritual experience came from an external source and was not just generated by your brain?

[Edit: Asking because I wonder often about the provenance my own spiritual experiences. I’m currently leaning toward “generated by the brain,” but I would love to be wrong about that.]