Reasons to agree
- Any church could say this, but if they all set logic aside, their is no way to advocate one above the other. People will be forever trapped within a certain faith tradition, without saying that one is better than another in a logical, informed sort of way. You just have fru-fru- and la-de-da to back you up, and everyone just ignores anything the other guys say, because they aren't looking at the world through the correct contact lenses.
- If spiritual powers attended the work of the LDS church, you would see more blessings in the lives of its members.
- If spiritual powers attended the work of the LDS church its leaders would have said fewer stupid things.
- If spiritual powers attended the work of the LDS church its leaders would have made fewer mistakes.
- The spiritual powers of the church, are promised to bring practical results, and so if the church has spiritual powers, they should be measurable in improved lifestyle. The church says it is a very practical church. Their is no separation of spiritual and temporal commandments. Work, life, and death, and everything in between are spiritual. We accept truth from any source. Life processes themselves teach us spiritual lessons. The Gospel is supposed to help you live a better happier life. That the special gospel that we teach is especially good a creating a zion-like society. We tell our members that we have prophets to lead us, and help us avoid the problems that the rest of the world struggles with, however this sets the church up to be easily measured by sociologist, and it turns out that we don't have lower divorce, suicide, child abuse, and Utah has twice the national average of per-capita antidepressant use.
- We need real, tangible ways of measuring the effect of religion in people's lives. Saying that you have to measure a church by the spirit, means that you measure it from person experience, and anecdotal experience is not as trustworthy statistical studies.
