this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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I'm LDS some people might call us Mormon.
The short of it is I asked God and I felt his presence. Not like any earthly feeling, more like the burning the bible / new testament describes.
But even without any of that I'd still have believed / known. I just, always have if that makes sense? I might've gone a different direction in my beliefs but I'd still have known he's there.
I have always wanted to ask someone who has this opinion how they confront the knowledge that people from every religion have felt the same thing? Some people have felt this way multiple times about mutually exclusive faiths.
That's one of the largest things that led me to be an agnostic atheist (meaning I don't claim to have knowledge, and I hold no belief in a god; I don't disbelieve, it's the ascence of belief). I was raised non-denomination Christian, but I had a good Buddhist friend in high school. It made me curious about other faiths, and they're almost all mutually exclusive, yet every one has people certain they're correct. What are the odds I was born to a family that believed the correct one?
I'm not self-centered enough to believe I'm special and all the other people are just unlucky, so the result is that it's most likely I wasn't born lucky, and neither was anyone else. So many religions have faded out of existence, so the odds are if any are correct they don't exist anymore. Why would I think I happen to find the right one?
I know this is unlikely, but I'd be interested to hear an actual opinion about how that feels, not hearing about what you're supposed to believe (which I've heard before). I think it's interesting to know if it makes others feel the same way I once did or not.
This is why a "feeling" should not be the reason you convert to a religion. You should be skeptical of Christians that argue their conversion on feelings alone. I certainly had feelings that I attribute to the Holy Spirit when I was an inquiring Christian but I frankly tried to ignore or diminish them to stay sober minded. Relying entirely on emotionalism or charism is historically discouraged as you could just as easily be swayed by demonic forces (e.g. prelest). It's one of many critiques of charismatic Protestantism and the LDS church.
Everyone on earth that has adopted or converted to any religion has done so with a feeling as their reason. Nobody has ever converted due to cold hard facts or some research on the afterlife. Proof is unexisting by definition of faith.
So, for the sake of this post isn't "I'm trying to convert you to my religion" I'm going to try and summarize our points of belief while more or less answering your question, and I'm not doing it out of a debate, but merely to answer you :)
It's not really "we think we're lucky or better than anyone else" hell we actually believe that God is a God of fairness that doesn't value one person over another. Ie. "We are all his children and he loves us equally" is a core belief we hold. And as apart of that belief, we firmly hold it true that God will ensure that all his children who lived or died without hearing his gospel will have the opportunity too. That's point 1
Point 2. Yes you can most certainly have spiritual experiences outside of the LDS faith or any faith for that matter. We tend to refer to that as "The light of Christ" but for a summarized explanation. We basically summarize that as, a testimony of truth wherever it may be found God will bare witness of it.
And I also tend to lean towards a lot of Buddhist tenants myself btw. The concept of a state of being called Nirvana, that life is suffering (Though I know that's not exactly what he said) and a few other ideas they hold I agree with.
Does it feel correct that there are levels of heaven, better and worse heavens on other planets? I always felt this is disturbing to me, but it makes sense what you are saying
Not so much "levels of heaven" in that anyone's values lesser than others. It's that God understands his children, he understands we're all different. I like a plain pepperoni pizza. Some people like supreme pizza, some people God forbid like pineapple on their pizza.
He's not going to force one person or another into this route definition of "heaven" because supreme pizza may not be heaven, nor plain pepperoni or pineapple.
Sorry if that analogy doesn't make sense.
No, no it definitely makes sense and btw pineapple on pizza is heavenly (pun intended) but I have always thought and heard from my Mormon friends that they can "work harder" on faith and then come closer to God in the afterlife as a "reward" (this is just me paraphrasing violently) and I found that kind of offensive, as I feel most religions and absolutely Christianity as a whole make a big deal of being equal children of God. Like if you wanted to sit next to Jesus you better work your ass off in your life. It is probably wrong, I understand, but even the idea of a hierarchy in a spiritual setting is for me incredibly offensive