faith and/vs obedience and the reason god doesnt show himself to the world

mormons pride themselves on believing that the typical christian/jesus/NT believing isnt enough to get into heaven. "obedience is the first law of heaven." (DC 130:20-21) you have to be obedient and repent when you do something wrong. THAT is how you get into heaven.

you cant be saved by faith alone. "faith without works is dead."

if this is true, then there would be nothing hindering god in showing himself to everybody in the world. it wouldnt destroy his plan because everybody would still have to choose to be obedient. after all, that is how you get into heaven--by obeying god's commandments.

thus, the reason the mormon god doesnt show himself to the world is NOT because it would destroy his plan, but because he doesnt exist.

the mormon "war in heaven" story is the perfect implementation of my theory. everybody--in the presence of god--had to choose whether or not to follow jesus' plan. 2/3rds of the people chose to follow satan. it makes absolutely no sense then to make it a blind choice once here on earth.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,132179

deepak chopra on belief and science

The Nightline Face-Off: Does God Have a Future? (1 of 12)
Sam Harris and Michael Shermer vs. Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston

"i am not here to discuss belief. i think belief is a coverup for insecurity. you only believe in things that you dont know the truth of and you want to know the truth of. if i asked you "do you believe in electricity or electromagnetism?" you would say "what kind of a ridiculous question is that?" if you want to know the truth you must have the experience, you must have a theoretical basis and you must have the rules of science to either falsify what you are saying, experimentally prove it or at least submit to what is called occam's principle, the theory or parsimony--the simplest explanations are the best explanations. so i'm not here to defend the god of primitve theology...we are here not to argue the validity of science. science is the most impeccable way of understanding the rules, the laws of nature. it is science that brought us the rules of mathematics, physics, chemistry, cosmology, evolution. so we're not going to argue about that."

as a side note, i really love michael shermer's comments:

if there really is a god, then obviously he or she has a future. if there is no god then we're really only talking about the future of the belief in god.

"I do not believe in anything that must be 'believed' in"

someone on the exmormon.org site asked "do you still believe in jesus?" and i like SaviorSelf's answer:

The use of the word "believe" indicates that there is no verifiable proof as to the existence of something.

I don't have to believe in my truck, my house, my computer, my television set, etc. I KNOW for a fact that they exist. But since neither Jesus or God has ever visited me in person (the type of visit that I can record on a video) then I have no verifiable proof that they exist.

atheism - unseen god is foolish, unseen atoms/protons is sane

an interesting quote i found by Rev. John D. Allee:

Atheists, sad to say, take a black and white approach. You either believe in the existence of a deity, be it Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu or Ganesha, in which case you're delusional or, you believe in the existence of scientific things you can't see with the naked eye, like photons, atoms and molecules, in which case you are considered sane. Just because a person believes in the existence of a form or deity does not necessarily mean the relationship with said form or deity is delusional, fraudulent, deceptive or useless.

we can see atoms today, but before they were just believed to exist.