General religious discussion thread

[Mattel]

6 hours ago, SheepAreFluffy said:

I cannot imagine eternal existence to be anything other than ennui and stagnation and do not want to exist forever; I find the concept of a hell in which people receive eternal infinite punishment for finite transgressions is fundamentally at odds with my own sense of justice;

So for my own sense of justice I will try to present what I think is a more desirous form of Heaven and a more accurate form of Hell. 
 

One fact that most Christians who have given thought to this would agree on, is that God’s inherent and true nature is Love. Divine, sacrificial, unconditional Love. That is very important to understanding both Heaven and Hell. 
 

As I have been taught by those alive and those long dead, and as I have pieced together on my own time, Heaven is/will be (Time and Heaven are hard to talk about at once lol) a physical place. We will have bodies and won’t just be bodiless spirits enjoying life. The main appeal to Heaven is that you get to spend eternity with the Creator of the Universe who loves you to an extent we can’t understand. That is in essence what Heaven is. I have heard the Gospel narrowed down and distilled to this: God desires unity with the world. If this is true, then Heaven is a place we will live in complete unity with God. I believe that we live in a world which fell from a height, and a world which God wants to be returned back to that height. While everyone here might not agree on whether or not the world is fallen, I think we can agree that some things are profoundly and deeply wrong. Wanton murder is frequently the example given, and there’s a reason for that. Death wasn’t how God wanted the end of things to be, but now it is part of the human experience. Murder for no reason is profoundly wrong and to most souls it jars against our very inner being. 

So imagine living in a perfect world that is deeply and truly Good. We’ve all probably had those experiences where we felt deep in our bones or thought, “this isn’t how things should be.” Heaven will be the place where everything is the way it should be: Good. Heaven is perfect, and not some form of perfectionism goody-too-shoes way, it is a world in which everything is for our happiness and Good, True, and Beautiful. 
 

On a side note; I know that this is sometimes an opinion some Christians will have that disturbs those who aren’t and I want to address this: life on Earth is merely a place to save souls to go to Heaven, and that Heaven is a goal we are trying to reach to eventually escape from life here on Earth. NO. NOT TRUE. Yes, we Christians want to save lives (and IF Heaven is as I’ve portrayed it and believe it to be, why would some people NOT want to be there? Except I know some people still have other issues with an after life but that’s for a different discussion) but I believe that life on Earth can still be good and that we are here for a reason. God wanted us to enjoy life, and while on Earth it is the life we have to enjoy. And when I say enjoy, I mean live a life that makes us sigh from contentment when we look back. I don’t mean needless pleasures and excess, but truly living. My soul yearns for Heaven, but sometimes during life I experience moments that feel so, so close to being Heaven on Earth, and that makes life here worth it. 
 

I had originally planned to talk about Hell but this post is long enough and then I’d also have to explain the most correct idea of Predestination and Free-Will and how they function in terms of salvation (most correct idea based off of the ideas of philosophers/theologians who came before, Boethius, Dante, C.S. Lewis, etc.) and that is a long hassle. Anyway, Heaven is much, much more important than Hell. 
 

Does this view of Heaven seem a bit more hopeful than, it’s actually a pretty good example of a terrible version of the after life, the perfected world in the Scythe books, @SheepAreFluffy and @Oranjejuicemonki?

[Oranjejuicemonki He/Him]

20 minutes ago, Mattel said:

Does this view of Heaven seem a bit more hopeful than, it’s actually a pretty good example of a terrible version of the after life, the perfected world in the Scythe books, @SheepAreFluffy and @Oranjejuicemonki?

Ya makes sense to me.

I was saying I don't understand the point of Hell as understood by most people. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I believe in in a different afterlife than many other Christians might.

This is a video that explains really well the problems of Hell and the LDS view.

[SheepAreFluffy]

1 hour ago, Mattel said:

Does this view of Heaven seem a bit more hopeful than, it’s actually a pretty good example of a terrible version of the after life, the perfected world in the Scythe books, @SheepAreFluffy and @Oranjejuicemonki?

(Well, I've never read Scythe (YA dystopias aren't really my thing), but hopefully that isn't necessary to understanding your main point.)

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't change the way that I feel. It's not the "what" of heaven that I have a problem with, it's the "how long". Eternity is just a horrifying idea to me. Heaven sounds like it would be a pretty great place to spend a few million years, but a few million years is 0% of eternity. Billions of trillions of years is 0% of eternity. The Poincaré recursion time of the human brain is 0% of eternity. The Poincaré recursion time of the observable universe repeated Graham's number times over is 0% of eternity.

Heaven for as long as I want it and then I get to stop existing when I'm done? That sounds great. That is something that I would want to believe in. Not something that I would believe in, but something that I would wish were true. But heaven that lasts for eternity and I have no choice? That still horrifies me.

[Chaos he/him]

On 2/5/2026 at 10:45 PM, Mattel said:

I have a question for those who aren’t Christians (asking as a Christian FYI): what is the main reason that you don’t want to believe in God?

 

I believe everyone believes what they do for a reason and I’m just curious what those are

Others have talked about the hidden assumption you've placed in the question, so I'll answer the question, "Why don't you believe in God?" 

I don't really understand why, if God exists, that He needs to be so hidden from empirical examination.

Not to assume your personal beliefs, of course, but let's say someone believes in the global flood story of Noah, as many people do. If a global flood story was true, where is it in the geologic column? We should be able to tell, Yes, this is when this occurred historically, we can see evidence of old civilizations collapsing at this big boundary. If animals radiated out from a singular point after such a catastrophe, we should see that pattern matched in ecology in distribution of animals. We should see genetic bottlenecks in... basically everything, even bacteria, under such a cataclysm, and we should be able to identify that bottleneck occurring at the same too, too. There are empirical things that we should all be able to observe and all agree that, hey, something big happened at this point in time. That'd be very compelling to me, and I'd be more than happy to accept that. Instead, none of those things are there, and there are tons of reasons that the flood is fully percluded by the data. Now, of course, plenty believe this story is not literal, and that's super fair. You can certainly argue that reasonably. I'm just saying, if a religious text matched what we could see very accurately, that would be very persuasive to me!

I've had an LDS member tell me that any evidence of God's existence or influence cannot ever be empirically verified, so that's a pointless exercise. What? That seems wild to me. Can we not find archaeology to support the stories to see whether they happened? I would like to know! If God nuked an ancient city with divine smiting, we should be able to find markers of this. 

But let's even up the ante more. Let's say God is real, and there is a true religion. Let's say that worship makes you, essentially, into something like a DnD cleric. Said worshipper can go into a hospital and start curing cancer, one after another. We can all see it and verify it. It can be repeatable. Nice. So we could agree God exists, and there is a true religion. Does that mean people would worship that God? To me, belief in God is very different from worship. The "well if we knew God existed, that'd take away our free will" argument seems very weak when lots of people in the Hebrew Bible knew God existed and very much broke commandments, disobeyed, and were not Godly people. People would still choose all the time. What's the problem? It comes across as an excuse the fact that... as we discover more and more about the world, the magical/supernatural answer never seems to be the correct one. That doesn't mean the magic doesn't exist, but it sure seems strangely elusive if it's supposed to be all around. 

I don't know. I write fantasy novels. I always think about, okay, what if this? I just think the world would look very different to this if a God formed this all with clear purpose, or with a purpose for us. We live on such a small proportion of the surface of this planet, where much of the planet will kill us. This planet is one tiny portion of the solar system (all of which would kill us), one of billions of star systems in the galaxy, in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. All of these places are basically a death sentence to us. In a theistic universe, we could literally have magic powers to explore these galaxies and survive space without needing this complex biochemistry to keep us going. God could do anything. Now, maybe all those stars aren't for us, sure. But I don't think it's hard to imagine a universe where some magic powers could be helpful for us and just make things a little better. This is really the best God can do? 

Nothing matches my expectations for a theistic universe, honestly, at least not for a God who intervenes a lot. I could list a lot of things that are demonstrable that I think are unexpected in that worldview. The stories feel like what people would write in the time period, not eternal, special divine information or revelation. I don't think it's a high bar to have empirical evidence, supernatural abilities, or some specific prophecies fulfilled that couldn't have been literary creations. I'm sure people will disagree with me and say that such things have occurred, which fair enough, but I'm willing to be convinced if the case is good (PM me!). Instead, the case tends to rely on a personal story. That is great, and I am glad people are becoming better people because of it, but that is just not good enough for me for something so all-knowing and all-powerful. 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

The "well if we knew God existed, that'd take away our free will" argument seems very weak when lots of people in the Hebrew Bible knew God existed and very much broke commandments, disobeyed, and were not Godly people. People would still choose all the time. What's the problem?

Not to preach or do blasphemy or anything, but I actually do recall now the biblical passage which is meant to answer something like this, I think:

Quote

²⁶ Eight days later, the disciples were again in the house, and on this occasion Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and he said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Do not doubt any longer, but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Then Jesus said to him,

“You have come to believe
because you have seen me.
Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.”

³⁰ Believe in Order To Live.^[h] Now Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not recorded in this work.

from the book of John chapter 20, verses 26 through 30 in the New Catholic Bible as accessed from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john 20&version=NCB 

There is supposed to be a blessing that is specially created for those who come to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the ministry created by God, without being witnesses to the signs of God the Son. It would make you or I, in a way, more blessed than the very apostle who touched the wounds of risen Christ.

At the point of bringing up such imagery there is a keen emotional affect; at least to me there is one. The viscerality of putting hands into an incarnated God's open wounds excites me personally.

[Chaos he/him]

3 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Not to preach or do blasphemy or anything, but I actually do recall now the biblical passage which is meant to answer something like this, I think:

from the book of John chapter 20, verses 26 through 30 in the New Catholic Bible as accessed from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john 20&version=NCB 

There is supposed to be a blessing that is specially created for those who come to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the ministry created by God, without being witnesses to the signs of God the Son. It would make you or I, in a way, more blessed than the very apostle who touched the wounds of risen Christ.

At the point of bringing up such imagery there is a keen emotional affect; at least to me there is one. The viscerality of putting hands into an incarnated God's open wounds excites me personally.

Sure, my rebuttal would just be that that sounds like a story you tell people who doubt. "Trust me, someone totally saw this, you're way more blessed if you just believe it rather than wanting evidence" is not very compelling to me, personally. I can see, at the very least, why it was a useful story to tell in that respect. The existence of a story like this makes the text feel far less divine and much more human-constructed.

And same with all of this stuff trying to make emotional pleas, like you said, to make a compelling point. Like, I agree that religion and faith isn't about dispassionate logic, so that makes some degree of sense, but... If it were true, I wouldn't have to believe in it. The evidence should be strong enough without me being biased to agree. 

In the last year someone tried to convince me magic was real and there are actual spells that can be cast, but all the effects were... really debatable at best? (It didn't help that the book they linked immediately tried to use jargon with infinity and quantum mechanics to make it seem reasonable.) I did not find "I cast a spell and then months later, good things happened and that was my intent with the spell" to be compelling. Sure, maybe, or maybe because you already believe that the spell works you see patterns to match to fit with that, ignoring weeks of it not working until you spotted something that fit. 

Of course, telling compelling stories is a great way for people to find meaning in things, and that is fair. I don't know if a story alone could ever be enough for me to decide if there's anything supernatural.

This kind of got me rambling about my previous response of "why I don't believe" than anything else, so apologies on that.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

10 hours ago, Chaos said:

In the last year someone tried to convince me magic was real and there are actual spells that can be cast, but all the effects were... really debatable at best? (It didn't help that the book they linked immediately tried to use jargon with infinity and quantum mechanics to make it seem reasonable.) I did not find "I cast a spell and then months later, good things happened and that was my intent with the spell" to be compelling. Sure, maybe, or maybe because you already believe that the spell works you see patterns to match to fit with that, ignoring weeks of it not working until you spotted something that fit. 

I do agree that the scriptures of Christians and a lot of other cultures do sometimes make me wonder where the mystical snake transmutation duels fit into all of it?

Quote

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ⁹ “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Prove yourself by performing a wondrous deed,’ you will say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it in front of Pharaoh and it will become a serpent.’ ” ¹⁰ Moses and Aaron then went to Pharaoh and did what the Lord had commanded them to do. Aaron threw his staff in front of Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. ¹¹ Pharaoh gathered the wise men and sorcerers and even the magicians of Egypt. With their magic they did the same thing.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 7&version=NCB  this time verses eight through eleven of chapter 7 of Exodus.

Magic certainly does seem to always retreat from definitive tests. I would be amazed to see conjured serpent duels, but somehow those never happen with reliable video recording.

[Keke They/he]

Okay so i have a question for hellenists

so like Greek gods n stuff?

so in the summer im going on a tour with my school and we are stopping in greece.

now i love learning about other religions and cultures but specifically Greek mythology. Idk ive been fascinated by it since i was a kid. Something about beleiving in more then one god just captured  my interest.

So i want to ask a few things. 1. How do you worship them? Like most Christian places have a church building or temple but i dont think ive seen any Hellenistic ones. 2. How do you learn about the like history? Is there like a rule in which tales are real or not? And 3. What are like your rules? About what to do and what not to do? Do you have something parralel to the Ten Commandments? And how do you know? 

I dont mean to sound mean if i came across like that i just suck at phrasing. Im genuinley curious and i cant find a non contradicting source online to learn. 

 

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

On 3/16/2026 at 8:59 AM, Through the living keigs said:

Okay so i have a question for hellenists

so like Greek gods n stuff?

so in the summer im going on a tour with my school and we are stopping in greece.

now i love learning about other religions and cultures but specifically Greek mythology. Idk ive been fascinated by it since i was a kid. Something about beleiving in more then one god just captured  my interest.

So i want to ask a few things. 1. How do you worship them? Like most Christian places have a church building or temple but i dont think ive seen any Hellenistic ones. 2. How do you learn about the like history? Is there like a rule in which tales are real or not? And 3. What are like your rules? About what to do and what not to do? Do you have something parralel to the Ten Commandments? And how do you know? 

I dont mean to sound mean if i came across like that i just suck at phrasing. Im genuinley curious and i cant find a non contradicting source online to learn. 

 

I know a Hellenist... since no one has answered I could ask them for you this sunday when I see them

Edited March 27 by Clarkmon22

[Keke They/he]

On 3/27/2026 at 12:10 PM, Clarkmon22 said:

I know a Hellenist... since no one has answered I could ask them for you this sunday when I see them

Yes!thank you

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

23 hours ago, Through the living keigs said:

Yes!thank you

Sorry I saw them Sunday and forgot what your questions were. imma write them down an ask next Sunday. sry!

[Mint11 she/her]

On 2/6/2026 at 10:14 PM, SheepAreFluffy said:

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't change the way that I feel. It's not the "what" of heaven that I have a problem with, it's the "how long". Eternity is just a horrifying idea to me. Heaven sounds like it would be a pretty great place to spend a few million years, but a few million years is 0% of eternity. Billions of trillions of years is 0% of eternity. The Poincaré recursion time of the human brain is 0% of eternity. The Poincaré recursion time of the observable universe repeated Graham's number times over is 0% of eternity.

Heaven for as long as I want it and then I get to stop existing when I'm done? That sounds great. That is something that I would want to believe in. Not something that I would believe in, but something that I would wish were true. But heaven that lasts for eternity and I have no choice? That still horrifies me.

interestingly enough, I had (and still have, though I think I've gotten a little more desensitized) the same reaction to the concept of immortality when I first came across it in fiction. it horrifies me and isn't something I would want, but for some reason when its the afterlife, it doesn't bother me

I think you'll find though that "eternity" might actually not mean never ceasing to exist, if someone believes that there is an end to time, which some do

[Frustration]

So I have a question for my Protestant friends out there.

For context I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we have a lot of detractors and they have a lot of reasons for why they don't like us.

In particular one of the accusations I've seen more often recently is something along the lines of us believing that "Jesus and Satan are brothers," which isn't how we phrase it at all but regardless.

I'm just genuinely curious as to why so many people have such a visceral reaction to that idea, because I don't understand it. 

[Mattel]

The reason that is prone to get such a strong reaction is because the Trinity is such an important cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian. The mere idea of Jesus and satan being brothers implies a few things. It means either that Jesus was created (and wasn't begotten) of the father and that satan was as well, or that Satan is also begotten of the father. Putting satan on the same playing field as The Son would be considered highly heretical to most protestants because that's elevating an angel to the height of God, or lower Jesus down to the level of angels. 

Does this make sense?

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Mattel said:

The reason that is prone to get such a strong reaction is because the Trinity is such an important cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian.

Small sidenote, the Trinity didn't become a common part of Christian doctrine until the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. In fact the council was called in large part due to disagreements within the early church over the nature of Jesus and His relation to the Father. This has next to nothing to do with the topic, but I wanted to point it out.

1 hour ago, Mattel said:

The reason that is prone to get such a strong reaction is because the Trinity is such an important cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian. The mere idea of Jesus and satan being brothers implies a few things. It means either that Jesus was created (and wasn't begotten) of the father and that satan was as well, or that Satan is also begotten of the father. Putting satan on the same playing field as The Son would be considered highly heretical to most protestants because that's elevating an angel to the height of God, or lower Jesus down to the level of angels. 

Does this make sense?

Not really, as that's mostly just boils down to us rejecting the Trinity, but most of what I see lists this as a separate argument, as if it were an additional affront on top of rejecting the Trinity.

[Oranjejuicemonki He/Him]

2 hours ago, Mattel said:

 the Trinity is such an important cornerstone of what it means to be a Christian.

Why?

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

3 minutes ago, Oranjejuicemonki said:

Why?

Not into the stuff, but there is a lot of neat things it accomplishes theologically. God is imminent and transient by being both the Father who is above the creation and the Holy Spirit which is in all Goods. Likewise, Jesus being fully God instead of something lesser to the Father makes the sacrifice upon the cross as significant as possible. There is also the nature of Jesus as God in himself being both wholly divine and wholly human which is actually important as a kind of willful contradiction of other logics: We might otherwise suspect that being God and being human are incompatible as one might imagine them as two different natures.

Further to remove this makes it hard to maintain as clear of a distinction from Islam. As someone outside of this all, I think it could have been the case that the Roman Catholic Church could have come to just about any conclusion about the nature of God if subject to the right historic circumstances. However, the emergence of Islam, which holds God to be profoundly singular, as the immediate and local rival of Christianity for most of the time from when Trinitarianism was adopted until after the printing press and Reformation would radically change the nature of what it meant to be Christian.

 

[Mattel]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Not really, as that's mostly just boils down to us rejecting the Trinity, but most of what I see lists this as a separate argument, as if it were an additional affront on top of rejecting the Trinity.

Well any Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox Christian holds the understanding that if you believe in all of the nicene creed (ignoring filioque) then you are a Christian. The trinitarian nature of God is pretty much the building block of the nicene creed. So Christians won’t respond well to the idea of Jesus and satan being brothers (I honestly don’t even know what the church of LDS believes about that) because for Christian’s the trinity must be reality, and any framework of understanding where Jesus and satan are related beings in any way directly goes against what the trinity must mean. 
 

we Christian’s won’t respond well to that idea because we hold different beliefs about the nature of God, is pretty much what it boils down to and that’s not a fun answer is it

[NameIess]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Small sidenote, the Trinity didn't become a common part of Christian doctrine until the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. In fact the council was called in large part due to disagreements within the early church over the nature of Jesus and His relation to the Father. This has next to nothing to do with the topic, but I wanted to point it out.

Not really, as that's mostly just boils down to us rejecting the Trinity, but most of what I see lists this as a separate argument, as if it were an additional affront on top of rejecting the Trinity.

On your side note, I would say that the council codifying Christian beliefs about the trinity does not mean that those beliefs were not held before then, nor that they are not evident in the scriptures.

As to calling Jesus Satan’s brother, I’ll admit I’ve never heard that said about LDS before, but I think its’s so objectionable beyond rejecting the trinity because to us it’s like saying God and Satan are brothers. Like @Mattel said, it’s either elevating Satan, the original fallen angel and a created being, to the same level as God, or lowering Jesus to the level of an angel. It does feel like a step beyond rejecting the trinity, because it’s not just saying that Jesus and God are not one, but also that Jesus is basically just like an angel, and not even that but he’s similar to Satan.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, Oranjejuicemonki said:

Why?

Because after the Nicaean Council mentioned above Emperor Constantine 1 had all of the Bishops and other ecclesiastical leaders who opposed the council's decisions removed from their office.

When the Protestant reformation happened over a thousand years later they mostly followed in Catholicism's footprints and a vast majority of Protestant Churches kept the Nicaean creed.

Since the majority hold to it some churches/individuals will claim that those who don't agree with the Nicaean creed aren't Christians as a result.

2 hours ago, Mattel said:

The trinitarian nature of God is pretty much the building block of the nicene creed. So Christians won’t respond well to the idea of Jesus and satan being brothers (I honestly don’t even know what the church of LDS believes about that)

It isn't any sort of dogma, it's just something that naturally comes from the following beliefs.

We reject the Trinity, accepting the Oneness of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to be in purpose, attributes and powers, not a oneness in person.

We accept the declarations that we are children of God to be literal and not figurative, making us all brothers and Sisters.

However even then almost no one actually calls them brothers. The only times I think I've ever heard it has been in reference to the council in Heaven before Satan fell.

So that's part of why I'm wondering why it causes such a strong reaction, as it's a statement I might hear once or twice a year in an offhanded way and yet it's leveled as a terrible accusation.

2 hours ago, Mattel said:

we Christian’s won’t respond well to that idea because we hold different beliefs about the nature of God, is pretty much what it boils down to and that’s not a fun answer is it

I guess that works, but it still confuses me.

1 hour ago, NameIess said:

On your side note, I would say that the council codifying Christian beliefs about the trinity does not mean that those beliefs were not held before then, nor that they are not evident in the scriptures.

The belief in the Trinity was of course held before, coming especially from the Alexandrian schools, but non-trinitarian views were common beforehand among both the general practitioners and the clergy.

1 hour ago, NameIess said:

As to calling Jesus Satan’s brother, I’ll admit I’ve never heard that said about LDS before, but I think its’s so objectionable beyond rejecting the trinity because to us it’s like saying God and Satan are brothers. Like @Mattel said, it’s either elevating Satan, the original fallen angel and a created being, to the same level as God, or lowering Jesus to the level of an angel. It does feel like a step beyond rejecting the trinity, because it’s not just saying that Jesus and God are not one, but also that Jesus is basically just like an angel, and not even that but he’s similar to Satan.

I guess that makes a bit more sense, but just to clarify, can I ask if saying that Satan and Michael the Archangel were brothers would provoke a similar response?

Edited April 22 by Frustration

[Mattel]

32 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I guess that makes a bit more sense, but just to clarify, can I ask if saying that Satan and Michael the Archangel were brothers would provoke a similar response?

Nah, that's not an issue, but a professional angelologist would have issues with that I think, because while they are both most likely Cherubim, being the same type of angle doesn't make them related. It's not an awful way of using an analogy to understand how those two beings relate to each other, but just isn't as big of a deal because that's not making any strong statement about the nature of God.

[Oranjejuicemonki He/Him]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

The belief in the Trinity was of course held before, coming especially from the Alexandrian schools, but non-trinitarian views were common beforehand among both the general practitioners and the clergy.

Ya and plus it's not like ancient Israelites held trinitarian views right. Like for me I really don't see how you could get the trinity from the Bible. Especially the Old Testament but even the New Testament too.

[Qianweilian He/him]

10 hours ago, Oranjejuicemonki said:

Like for me I really don't see how you could get the trinity from the Bible. Especially the Old Testament but even the New Testament too.

Well, I believe the main source that for belief is John 10:30. "I and my Father are one." The general interpretation of this in the Church, I believe, is one in purpose. But taken literally, it can suggest that they are the same being.

14 hours ago, NameIess said:

As to calling Jesus Satan’s brother, I’ll admit I’ve never heard that said about LDS before, but I think its’s so objectionable beyond rejecting the trinity because to us it’s like saying God and Satan are brothers. Like @Mattel said, it’s either elevating Satan, the original fallen angel and a created being, to the same level as God, or lowering Jesus to the level of an angel. It does feel like a step beyond rejecting the trinity, because it’s not just saying that Jesus and God are not one, but also that Jesus is basically just like an angel, and not even that but he’s similar to Satan.

As @Frustration said, it is less emphasized that they're brothers, and more that they, and we, are all creations of God.

15 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Further to remove this makes it hard to maintain as clear of a distinction from Islam. As someone outside of this all, I think it could have been the case that the Roman Catholic Church could have come to just about any conclusion about the nature of God if subject to the right historic circumstances. However, the emergence of Islam, which holds God to be profoundly singular, as the immediate and local rival of Christianity for most of the time from when Trinitarianism was adopted until after the printing press and Reformation would radically change the nature of what it meant to be Christian.

The Council of Nicaea was far earlier than Islam. It was in ~325, whereas Muhammad was born in 570.

[Verdance he/him]

2 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Well, I believe the main source that for belief is John 10:30. "I and my Father are one." The general interpretation of this in the Church, I believe, is one in purpose. But taken literally, it can suggest that they are the same being.

As @Frustration said, it is less emphasized that they're brothers, and more that they, and we, are all creations of God.

The Council of Nicaea was far earlier than Islam. It was in ~325, whereas Muhammad was born in 570.

We really don’t know a lot about angels or demons, to be honest. I don’t see why there would necessarily be a family structure in there, there could be but if there is it’s not important enough for us to know about it as it’s never really mentioned in the Bible, or at least not in my Bible. 

It’s not like the function of angels is important to my salvation or my interactions with others. I think maybe somewhere in the Bible it warns against pursuing demonology, and I know that in Revelation it mentions not to worship angels. Just in general, they are God’s messengers, created around the same time as Heaven, and aren’t necessary to the Christian faith, not on earth at least.

[Mattel]

10 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

Well, I believe the main source that for belief is John 10:30. "I and my Father are one." The general interpretation of this in the Church, I believe, is one in purpose. But taken literally, it can suggest that they are the same being.

Another one is John 7:37-39. "On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, 'Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, "Rivers of living water will flow from his heart."' (When he said 'living water,' he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, Because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory." (NLT). Jesus speaks in the first person about the Holy Spirit, which seems to point towards the Trinity from how I read this. If Jesus speaks in the first person, but is actually talking about the nature of the Holy Spirit, then if God is three in one, then Jesus would have the authority as God (One God) to talk about the Holy Spirit (One of the Three).