Possibly Aaron32 started this thread as a result of my question as to where pre-existence of all is mentioned in the Bible.
Nah.
@Aaron32 started this thread to find common ground with our critics. But he, like you, are both wrong. The early church and the Book of Mormon teachers all were aware of the pre-existence and taught it. I'm surprised you all missed it or even how you can continue to ignore it. IMO, that just tells me how much you all don't know and further how critical such an idea is to who we are. If we are creations like a statute or a building, then we have no thought of our own and would be no more capable of sin than a rock is. The bodies we dwell in are God's creation, but the being that dwells within them is not. It is the being that will be judged, not the body.
Your teachings about what God created in us would mean that whatever we do, God created us to do. That would make us puppets and that whatever we did, we were designed by God to do and should not be held accountable for any of our actions. And when would we ever be able to do anything but what the puppet master wanted us to do? This reminds of a political statement that we will own nothing and be happy about it. That is the religion of those who accept creation at birth. Your end philosophy is exactly like the political one. We will have nothing but everlasting life and be happy about it. If it isn't true in the political venue, it won't be true in the eternities no matter how much you want it to be.
I had this book on Mormonism in my library and my aim was to extract the obvious unique Mormon concepts and briefly discuss them.
Fine, discuss them, but do it in separate threads. There is no value in an argument that meanders through a maze without an objective in mind. In addition, reading someone else's opinion of our religion is just going to give you their opinion. Form your own opinion, read our material and ask us to explain it if you don't understand it.
Start with the Book of Mormon, then the Doctrine & Covenants, then the Pearl of Great Price. Those would be good for a start.
At the end there were far too many concepts where the Mormons contradict the Bible teaching
Far too many I'm the opinion of the author u r reading. Your book report just seems like so much incoherent rambling, there is nothing to really address. My first thought is to dismiss them all as being misleading. Then there is the fact that you think you already know the truth rather than seeking to find truth and as such, you just become an antagonist without the ability to debate.
Your first question has been answered. Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon address the pre-existent nature of man. It's not about foreknowledge, it's about actually being called from before we were born, before anyone was born. All this and yet, you know better, why? Because you read a book. All you are doing is learning from men, not God and not the spirit. And now, rather than explore this challenge to your understanding (based on someone else's opinion), you have moved on to other opinions, dismissing the opportunity before you. Can u see why we have no interest in your book report?
I decided to forget about the whole project,
Great, why r u still here?
any Mormon who reads the Bible for himself would see the discrepancies and the fanciful claims, ideas and practices of the Mormons.
And that's just it. We don't see that and the Bible is in our canon of scripture. We spend two years on the Bible in each round of church instruction (which rotates through the scriptures which includes the Book of Mormon and church history - giving a year to these other two topics). We find that the Bible supports our theology where yours is a reinterpretation of it, kind of like making it fit your theology rather than the other way around.
For example, it is clear that throughout the Bible temple worship was central, both old and new testament and that temples will be central in the last days, yet you all have no temples at all. It's now be redefined to be either our bodies or some other definition that fits your forms of worship. Your not even close to the temple litergy one finds in the Bible and from what I can tell, never will be. You all wouldn't even know what to do with one if you had one. Look at the RLDS. They have one but it's just a big chapel, largely unused.