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Joseph Smith taught that the moon was inhabited by people that live to be 1000 years old?

Not according to the Bible--it goes back to Adam, there. I'm not sure about according to historians, though.

I guess that's the confusing part for me. I mean, does it (or do theologians) reconcile what we know about human existence with what the bible says or is there an explanation for the period when polytheistic faith was dominant?

And a question on the side: Were there monotheistic faiths before Moses? Maybe not the main stream ones but any that are specifically known?
 
I guess that's the confusing part for me. I mean, does it (or do theologians) reconcile what we know about human existence with what the bible says or is there an explanation for the period when polytheistic faith was dominant?

And a question on the side: Were there monotheistic faiths before Moses? Maybe not the main stream ones but any that are specifically known?

According to the bible. polytheism and idol worshiped was going strong the second generation after Adam. It was so strong by the time of Noah that there was only one family in the entire world that wasn't a part of it. It got going again not very long after Noah rebooted the Earth's population. Idol worship and the such have always been the predominate faith outside of a small community of believers in God throughout almost of the entirety of the Bible. . .
 
According to the bible. polytheism and idol worshiped was going strong the second generation after Adam. It was so strong by the time of Noah that there was only one family in the entire world that wasn't a part of it. It got going again not very long after Noah rebooted the Earth's population. Idol worship and the such have always been the predominate faith outside of a small community of believers in God throughout almost of the entirety of the Bible. . .

Okay, so just to make this easy for me to understand in a general sense:

Adam----------->Noah---->Moses-->Jesus>Jesus->Mohamed->Joseph Smith
 
Okay, so just to make this easy for me to understand in a general sense:

Adam----------->Noah---->Moses-->Jesus>Jesus->Mohamed->Joseph Smith

OK, I'll use this as a starting point in dealing with your previous several posts, for clarity.

I "believe" in the Bible as a basis for theological opinions. It has survived as an accurate text across some incredible time spans because some folks take it seriously and try very hard to keep it consistent with the original or earliest known texts. Some folks spent or gave their lives to keep it sacred. The Latin Vulgate was the life work of one scholar who went to live in the Holy Land, Martin Luther helped with getting out a good German text, and several Englishmen including Tynsdale gave their lives to get an English text out so people could read it.

I also believe humans have been living on this planet at least fifty thousand years, and the story of Adam and Eve, and the lives and generations given in Genesis, are more or less old wives' tales, no better than the current issue of the Ensign magazine, because people with a mind to piety have gravitated towards popular beliefs or notions as "proof" of faith.

For example, the earliest Hebrew texts of the five books of Moses were produced during King Solomon's reign, at his insistence, from scraps of old texts. Solomon wanted a State Religion, and he sent his soldiers around the land to wreck the local temples and force everyone to go to his place in Jerusalem. Those texts should not be trusted any better for faithfulness to the original teachings of Moses than our present products coming out of the Church reflect the beliefs of Joseph Smith. Everybody has a point of view, and over a few hundred years everything can change.

So, anyway, personally I don't believe people who lived before will be treated unfairly by a "Just" God, and I don't think "God" is bound to respect our imperfect notions or traditions. The medieval notions of Hell have no mention in the Old Testament, and I don't trust the New Testament treatments of the notion either. Joseph Smith, and whoever wrote the Book of Mormon, attributed those notions as figures of speech portraying a mental anguish of regret and remorse for miss-spent lives when people realize their loss and the damage they've done to others in life.

I believe almost all direct "revelation" God has ever given Mankind has been subsequently twisted and turned, to the extent it would be a marvel of patience that He should venture to speak to us at all.

But the Biblical narrative still portrays a God that operates on just or virtuous principles in dealing with man, a "One God" as YHVH in the Old Testament from Adam onward. Some Christians made it out that Jesus was God somehow, although still the Messiah and somehow also the Son of God, and later generated the Trinity mystery to maintain a claim of monotheism. Only the Mormons ever came out with an inclusive theory on how the earliest references to "God" in the Bible are presented in the plural form in Hebrew, and clarified the teachings of Jesus that He is in fact not Jehovah, but the Adonai "Lord" referred to in Psalms 110:4, the OT text that was used by Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews. Mormons, however, found clarity uncomfortable and set James E. Talmadge up to bring Mormonism back to the confused notions of Christendom since Constantine's committee to make Jesus everything.

Anyway, confused living generates confused thinking. . . . so here we are.
 
Wonder what happened to babe. Anyone have his contact info? Wonder if he died, honestly.
 
One of the trippiest dudes I've ever come across.
I met him like a long time ago. Met him and his wife and kids at a McDonald's to chat. It was really enjoyable, his wife was really nice, kids seemed great. He was nice but somewhat standoffish and quiet. His wife was very outgoing and frankly a delight to chat with. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he's died by now. I think at the time he was early 60's or so maybe, could have been older, definitely not younger. That was late 2014. I know he took a few breaks from jazz fanz over the years but he's been absent for a long time now. I wish I could remember his name though. Feel kind of bad I can't.
 
I met him like a long time ago. Met him and his wife and kids at a McDonald's to chat. It was really enjoyable, his wife was really nice, kids seemed great. He was nice but somewhat standoffish and quiet. His wife was very outgoing and frankly a delight to chat with. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he's died by now. I think at the time he was early 60's or so maybe, could have been older, definitely not younger. That was late 2014. I know he took a few breaks from jazz fanz over the years but he's been absent for a long time now. I wish I could remember his name though. Feel kind of bad I can't.
My assumption had been that he probably died. Was his thought process in person anything like online? I’ve always found a weird incongruence in how people seem in written word vs. in-person persona, not in any intentional or bad way just odd.
 
My assumption had been that he probably died. Was his thought process in person anything like online? I’ve always found a weird in congruence in how people seem in written word vs. in-person persona, not in any intentional or bad way just odd.
I think most people are different online than in person. Anonymity adds a layer of protection that makes people feel like they can say things they would not normally say in person. Plus we all put on different faces for our families, spouses or partners, work, etc. babe was quite verbose online but in person he didn't say much and deferred heavily to his wife. I tried to engage him in discussion but he didn't really have much to say. He asked about what I was up to, which at the time was getting ready to go to Germany, and showed interest in all that, but he also did tend to ramble and his wife kind of seemed like she humored that. I imagine if I got to know him better in person a lot of that would change but that was my experience in that one encounter.
 
I think most people are different online than in person. Anonymity adds a layer of protection that makes people feel like they can say things they would not normally say in person. Plus we all put on different faces for our families, spouses or partners, work, etc. babe was quite verbose online but in person he didn't say much and deferred heavily to his wife. I tried to engage him in discussion but he didn't really have much to say. He asked about what I was up to, which at the time was getting ready to go to Germany, and showed interest in all that, but he also did tend to ramble and his wife kind of seemed like she humored that. I imagine if I got to know him better in person a lot of that would change but that was my experience in that one encounter.
There's the anonymity layer but I'm more referring to things that aren't able to be obscured as well. Like people who sound like complete morons online but come across very affable and confident in person. I guess maybe it's the opposite where I may know someone in real life and have a certain image of them, but then when seeing written word and their thoughts it looks absolutely nothing like this confident, intelligent in-the-flesh persona I've seen. And then it goes the opposite way, too. People who are very intelligent in written word but seem pretty stupid in normal conversation. It's always baffled me.
 
One of babe's last posts, in response to AI-o-meter, August 22, 2022.



"I don't think you are seriously sensible on this subject. You have fallen into the propaganda pit and become a propagandist yourself.

I don't see any issue with where trucks are parked. What is onboard might be an issue. What they are being used for is the issue. If I were a Ukranian and I saw missiles coming out of that place, I'd fire missiles right back.

The US army would fry natives in the entrances to bunkers and caves to get to the soldiers behind them in WWII, and all in all that's the way war works. The Ukrainians have been hiding everything behind civilians, in churches, in hospitals, next to apartment buildings, inside apartment buildings all the way in this war, torturing Russian POWs and disfiguring them, shooting them in the groin just to watch them suffer. A lot of unenthusiastic soldiers on both sides, a few real war criminals, on both sides no doubt. The Nazi wannabees on the Ukranian side have been hiding behind Ukranian national guard recruits sent up front to be cannon fodder.

I don't think very many scientists have my information or perspective. Trained not to think by years in school.

So I was a "Downwinder" as a child. I watched nuclear fallout clouds drift overhead while I played in the dirt. A lot of people got cancer somehow, over the years. Others no doubt suffered other health effects. I milked the cows that grazed in the fields and drank the milk. My lawyer brother was a partner in the law firm that handled thousands of injury claims in the area.

I worked for one of researchers that used dogs to find out how cis-platinum causes cancer. I love dogs. Don't you love dogs? I think I probably love dogs more than people.

I saw how our policies were developed. I saw the facts and the reasons.

I think you missed the point, probably on purpose here. That equates you with an ignoramus or a liar, in my book.

The choice was made to assume no threshold of effects, to extrapolate all the risks on a straight line back to zero, so far as radiation exposure is concerned.

The fact is there is for healthy, normal people, those who have no genetic or other abnormality in the relevant biology, a threshold to the risk. We live in a world where there is natural radiation of almost every sort.. Ionizing radiation is thought to effect its damage on our genes, our DNA, by damaging molecules in the structures and impairing normal processes. It known that we normally have repair enzymes at work fixing damage that naturally occurs. Unless that repair capability is exceeded in a radiation exposure, we normally can live fine with some exposures. There is an intensity factor and a time factor. Our repair enzymes are inducible, and it is known that exposure to radiation induces increased production of repair enzymes and increased capacity for sustaining health under a higher sustained exposure level.

We have a comparable capacity in regard to exposures to heavy metals. I did direct research studying those effects.

A very good study was done on mine workers exposed to Uranium ores, with follow-up on health effects across many years. The study has been largely ignored because the results are politically useless. People don't want to know. Lawyers don't want to hear it; judges don't want to hear it.

The study found that non-smokers who worked in the mines actually had better health than the general populace in the area. But oh my hell, the smokers got much more cancer than the general populace, much more than smokers in the general populace.

This phenomenon is easily understood as a synergistic effect of two risk factors.

Politically, the decision has been made to let people smoke, and everything we do must assume that as a constant, and so the radiation gets all the blame. Legally and politically.

The next thing you don't know, which also makes you an ignoramus and a willing liar on the subject, is nuclear power plant design.

I have another brother who is a nuclear engineer who has worked for nuclear power companies for decades, a criticality specialist. Sure I argue with him, too. He has to be on socially solid ground and just can't actually be a radical.

I don't suppose you really care to know the facts about safety precautions in designs built into nuclear power plants. Let's just say there is a reason for those god damned big concrete builds, and for the spacing between reactor buildings. Even really evil nuclear power companies don't want their investments to be built like bombs, or potential bombs, or even potentially dangerous. They learn from the mistakes of the past, and do stuff to avert future events.

I don't have the design on my desk here, sure, but I believe if a tactical nuclear artillery shell made a direct hit on the plant, on any of the reactor buildings, or in between two reactor buildings, that there would NOT be as much radiation released as some of the tests done in Nevada in the 1950s and 1960s.

Still, if I were a Russian, I wouldn't park military equipment or ammunition in that plant. I'd believe the Ukrainians will target that plant for propaganda purposes even if they have no facts about my military deployments. I'd believe they will fire on that plant and make every kind of accusation they can imagine anyway. So I'd hide the trucks in the trees or in a grain storage facility or a candy factory instead.

As a Russian, I would care that the nuclear fallout will blow over Russia and Russians. If I were a Ukrainian, I'd do an evil little smile and know that the fallout will blow over Rostov on the Don after drifting over half of the Russians in Ukraine. Knowing they are all heavy smokers. In fact, I would hardly be able to hold off the bombing.

All in all, this amounts to pre-determined decision Zelensky will act on, to blow up the plant and let his people live...... well, really, die......in the cold and dark through the coming winter. But most of the world will still see this war as US/Uk/EU imperialism gone amok,

Zelensky is not his own man, he is not acting in Ukrainian national interest. If he were, he would have insisted on showing up at the Minsk negotiations and chosen Russia has his good neighbor, shouting Nyet to NATO. The west has made him out to be a hero because he has sold out Ukraine.

I have often said Putin is Russia's "Hillary", meaning I see no difference in character, and meaning that as an insult to both. But that is because neither of them, or Biden, is "American"."
 
Okay, so just to make this easy for me to understand in a general sense:

Adam----------->Noah---->Moses-->Jesus>Jesus->Mohamed->Joseph Smith
History knows thousands of other less known self proclaimed "prophets" or "messengers" of god lol. Might as well add orange clown to this list as claimed by some magats.
 
And another from Babe a few days earlier than the one above. I remember being constantly amazed by the things going through that guy's head.



The frightening thing to me is how easily Trump supporters not only give him a pass, but convince themselves there is no way he could do anything wrong, so whatever he does is perfectly fine and in fact the best course of action at the moment. There is a wave going around my wife's facebook group that Trump only took home documents to help protect the country and so by raiding Mar-a-Lago the FBI actually committed treason.

Of course this is heavily dependent on many of them still holding out that Trump is still the rightful dictat...uh president and that Biden was elected due to massive and unprecedented voter fraud never before seen in our country. So with this heavy victim mentality, it is easy for them to bring anything else into their belief-system that exonerates Trump and in fact makes him the martyr/hero of the story. He could literally be holding children chained up in his basement at Mar-a-Lago and a substantial portion of the US would forgive him, justify his actions (he was protecting the children from their liberal parents, you know, q-anon and other such ********), and praise him as the messiah they believe him to be. He was absolutely right when he said he could shoot someone and no one would care. But worse than that, many would find a way to tie into their messiah-worship complex as a heroic act necessary for the security and safety of the country.

I do not think we have ever seen such a cult of personality in the presidency, or really in any high office of our government, like this before. And hopefully we never do again.
Click to expand...
This crap is really way over the top of crazy. And I'm the expert on that subject, if you believe any of your "friends" in here.

No President of the Us has ever had the lunatic opposition Trump has had. Before he was even elected, plans were laid for his impeachment. "The Resistance" in here declared their heroic opposition the day he won. Many dems claimed his victory was "illegal" and that he was illegitimate as Prwsident.

Should have been a lot of media crap about how those folks were an insurrection, but the Media was in with it big time.

To become reasonabler about all this, you need to recognize why he was ever a "thing". For decades, no one could get a swing at the Presidency without approval from an "in-crowd" in Washington and in corporate America, lets call them "the Chamber of Commerce" or the Council on Foreign Relations..... pretty much the same thing. Even the media honchos are all in the CFR.

Ostensibly, the CFR is a non-partisan club that invites prestigious people to join. Lately, they've opened up membership to applicants, but they have a set of intellectual offerings, books and such, they want you to read. But in reality, it is the American twin of the British Royal Institute of Institute of international Affairs, the Pemberly Place er..... Chatham House of British high society. Both originated at the same meeting and arose from the same plan to solidify Western political alignment. Sibling instutes or councils have been established in almost every western nation. They have been so effective in controling politics in all of these countries, no one could ever get into power without belonging, essentially, to the "club".

Donald Trump went to the head office of the US CFR, hat in hand, seeking approval from the head of that organization, but he failed to comply with the fundamental conditions for acceptance. He had his own ideas. He wasn't going to just take instructions.

For decades, American conservatives with ideals of having a government they could expect to comply with their ideas have been so badly lied to, and about, by politicians and all kinds of progressive political wonks, there was a huge mass of of the electorate that almost stopped believing they had any say. Add to that the millions of ordinary Americans who have been hammnered economically by bad government policies and leadership, who just wanted something diff3erent.

So here come Trump, with just enough financial independence he " could "just say "no" to bad government". He stood up and said a few things that lit the fire for change, the real hope for change.

And a real threat to the Establishment.

So go ahead, love your Establishment. Love your politcal dream.

but Trump is nothing but a real "American" who represents the will of most Americdans. If he goes ttotalitarian, he'll be gone overnight. If he sticks to doing stuff people want him to do, he's a threat to your bad political wetdreams. Buty not to democracy.
 
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