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Scientology On Trial In Belgium
dgharmon sends this news from the Atlantic Wire:
"After a years-long legal battle, federal prosecutors in Belgium now believe their investigation is complete enough to charge the Church of Scientology and its leaders as a criminal organization on charges of extortion, fraud, privacy breaches, and the illegal practice of medicine. ... Multiple reports and the group's legal history point to one key factor here: The Belgian government won't charge Scientology for being a cult — authorities are focusing on prosecuting it as a criminal organization. Which is a new twist, as most of the group's many court battles over the years have focused on establishing its legitimacy as a religion. ... The Church of Scientology houses its European headquarters in Brussels, so a ban in Belgium could be crippling to the group — and authorities there seem to know it."
The underwear.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
May Justice prevail.
about time this happened. It should be banned EU-wide.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
Yes. While the theological principles of both are particularly wacky, the Scientologists are involved with a whole host of criminal-esque activity that they cover up with a combination of an army of loyal attorneys and blackmail, whereas the Mormon church is largely not involved with that sort of thing.
Quite a few, tbh.
That you think that there isn't really just highlights your own ignorance and stupidity.
Seriously. All religions practice abuse of one sort or another.
Catholics: the child molester's club.
Muslims: the cult of the pedophile warlord.
Jews: faith of the would-be child murderer (that would be Abraham...)
Need I go on?
But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and the Mormon Church?
Is there really much difference between "insert religion" and "insert religion", except for when the scam started? They seem to be going after them in LIFO order to build up precedence.
I think that the Belgian authorities should also try to organise this in a European context (L'union fait la force!).
Another idea I had: how should crowdsourcing be organised to damage scientology (I refuse them a capital)?
i don't know alot of mormonism, but scientology has been known to harass, abuse, threaten ex-members, people who disagree with them etc. etc. also check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Time.
Same thing applies to all other organized religions as well.
I don't know of very many similarities between scientology, a con game started by a science fiction writer, and the Church of Latter Day Saints, a significant religious denomination whose members perform millions of hours of community service and give generously to communities around the globe. That's like asking "what's the diference between the Red Cross and the mafia?"
Operation Snow White was the Church of Scientology's name for a conspiracy during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of infiltrations and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members, in more than 30 countries;[1] the single largest infiltration of the United States government in history with up to 5,000 covert agents. This was also the operation that exposed 'Operation Freakout', because this was the case that initiated the US government investigation of the Church.
Under this program, Scientology operatives committed infiltration, wiretapping, and theft of documents in government offices, most notably those of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Eleven highly-placed Church executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard and second-in-command of the organization), pleaded guilty or were convicted in federal court of obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of documents and government property. The case was United States v. Mary Sue Hubbard et al., 493 F.Supp. 209 (D.D.C. 1979).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Sent from my ENIAC
Why(except perhaps for tax purposes) would a group being recognized as a religion or not so recognized be relevant? Both religious and secular organizations are capable of being criminal organizations, or not, and both are capable of using the sort of ethically problematic coercive tactics most commonly associated with cults.
Certainly, being a well established and respected religion can be very convenient indeed(see also, decades-if-not-more of kiddie rape with near-total impunity); but if you have to fight for recognition as "Well, I guess you technically meet the standards of a 'religion', so we can't legally deny you." you don't automatically acquire the establishment and respect, which are what really count.
How many other churches have, in the modern era, tried to infiltrate the government and destroy evidence against them (Operation Snow White)?
France has already convicted several senior officials a few years back for crimes such as embezzlement, and contribution to suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_France
Sure. Maybe you should include the Taoists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains. Unless you only mean Abrahamic religions, in which case you should say so and not ALL.
...and bring the same charges against the Catholic Church?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and any other religion or cult?
FTFY.
Mormon here. When someone disagrees with us, we do worse: we send missionaries after them.
In terms of beliefs? That's for you to decide. In terms of actions and the things that really matter? Not even close. When the Mormon church has been implicated in things like Operation Freakout or Operation Snow White, or any of the other crazy things the CoS has done to people that you can learn of after 5 seconds on Google, then your false equivalence of comparing the CoS to other religious bodies might have a point. The modern Mormon church is, as far as I know, generally decent and full of okay folks. I don't know if I can say the same of the CoS, judging by all the stuff they've done, and that's the issue here.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
Alleged theology, and just how much the founder really could have used a stiff dose of Chlorpromazine, are surprisingly poor guides to the contemporary behavior of religious groups once they've had a few decades or centuries to move past the initial 'charismatic leader with band of disciples' stage. The big question is what direction(or directions, sub-sects crop up like weeds) the group drifted on its road to the present.
why not the rest of religions?
But few make it an organized part of the dogma. They'll look the other way, or even cover up the actions of what they believe to be an otherwise honorable member, but Scientology is the only one that appears to systematically institutionalize these acts as a 'good thing', that much/most of the church should support and participate in.
I know many would disagree, but look at the rape situation. We have substituted accusions and sometimes admission of rape of children, rape of nuns, in an institutional environment. The fact of the matter is that these are crimes against humanity. That these were not codified as crimes against humanity until this century is irrelevant. Trail were held after WW1 using codes that were not developed until after, and these codes were continually developed and applied as new atrocities were dealt with.
Yet not a single Catholic official has been put on trial in international court. The Vatican is a sovereign city-state. I do not expect the pope to have the morale courage to take the responsibility for these crimes against humanity, but I would this he would choose one or two top officials to throw under the bus and reach some moral compensation. But the catholic church, like more religions, live outside the sphere of civil and normal discourse, so is not subject to the noms and laws most fo the secular world lives by. Whichis why picking on scientology is not really going to change anything.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Not to offend anyone (or, sorry that I WILL) basically every organized religion is wacky. Since they're all based on things that have to be taken on faith, the only difference is how much disbelief the adherents are willing to suspend. Granted, to THIS observer, Scientology (and Mormonism, close behind) are at the far end of the spectrum, but it's a quantitative rather than qualitative difference. Now, practically, the Scientologists appear to present an ongoing danger to society; the Mormons no longer appear harmful.
Steven Fishman attested in court that he was assigned by the Church of Scientology to to murder his psychologist, Dr. Uwe Geertz, and then commit suicide.
The Fishman Affidavit is a set of court documents submitted Steven in 1993 in the federal case, Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz (Case No. CV 91-6426 (HLH (Tx) U.S. District Court for the Central District of California).
The Affidavit contained criticisms of the Church of Scientology and substantial portions of the Operating Thetan course materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishman_Affidavit
Sent from my ENIAC
i don't know alot of mormonism, but scientology has been known to harass, abuse, threaten ex-members, people who disagree with them etc. etc
This is true. Mormonism seems to run the same way as other churches. Scientology seems to operate like the US government.
Catholic church's Vatican bank has been slapped with fines for money laundering, more than once, IIRC, never mind the whole sex abuse thing. I'm pretty sure any religion you'd look at, with exception maybe of pastafarians (yum noodly appendages!) would have huge recent skeletons in their closets :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
In particular, having stupid theology isn't a crime in Belgium. The Scientologists here are being charged with a bunch of "regular" criminal conduct, which doesn't really depend on whether they're a real religion or not (you can be prosecuted for that even if you're a very well established religion, as some Catholic dioceses have discovered).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and the Mormon Church?"
Or Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, etc...
How many other churches have, in the modern era, tried to infiltrate the government and destroy evidence against them (Operation Snow White)?
The Scientologists are bumbling amateurs in this area. The serious religions effectively take over the state. In some cases, the takeover of state by religion was accomplished so long ago that the religion is even considered a state itself. Once a state is under the control of a monomaniacal cult, all shenanigans committed therein simply don't exist.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'd just love see them bite the dust.
Pastafarians have pirate skeletons in their closets(because pirate skeletons are cool!)
Building that sort of power base takes time. Scientology is still a newcomer. Give them another century or two.
The LDS church is also full of people who fund anti-gay campaigns, protest free speech, lobby for blasphemy laws and were responsible for slaughtering civilians during their fight against the US government. That's just the official LDS church, there are fundamentalist offshoots of Mormonism which are smaller, but much creepier.
So, yes, I would say it's completely fair to compare the CoS with the LDS church. Or, for that matter, any other reactionary, religious organization.
Actually, the European headquarters of Scientology is in Copenhagen (according to this US report), while the Brussels office is merely a lobbying firm for Scientology to the EU.
Clicked pie.
You mean the Moron Church?
Scientology is not a cult nor a religion but a big money scam. Their #1 priority is to drain their members bank accounts just like so many mega churches here in the u.s do. Religion like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam started as a personal belief systems but turned into political tool to control people. Even our u.s constitutional laws are being used against us by the oligarchy. Regardless of religion or government common laws the power hungry will always find ways to control the masses.
How many other churches have, in the modern era, tried to infiltrate the government and destroy evidence against them (Operation Snow White)?
Ever heard of the Islamic republic of Iran? That did not come about peacefully.
Or the Banco Ambrosiano scandal?
I'm not Mormon, and frankly, I find the religion a little weird. That being said it is absurd not to put things on a relative scale. The weirdness and widely known evil of the COS is orders of magnitude worse than LDS.
If you've ever had the misfortune to wonder into Schaerbeek you could be forgiven for thinking that it should be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Magic underwear? Same loony bin, different floor.
If even half of this book is true, every government should be going after them.
I'm not Mormon, and frankly, I find the religion a little weird. That being said it is absurd not to put things on a relative scale. The weirdness and widely known evil of the COS is orders of magnitude worse than LDS.
I don't know about that. Scientology, for all its ills and faults, doe not try to subjugate women. LDS, on the other hand, thrives as a result of it.
Unless it's a certain group in Mexico. Those guys are already past that point and have begun to actively fight the drug cartels.
I'm pretty sure any religion you'd look at, with exception maybe of pastafarians (yum noodly appendages!) would have huge recent skeletons in their closets
Buddhism? I think not.
Paganism? I think not.
Unitarian universalists? I think not.
No its pretty much JUST the mainline judeo-christians and fringe cults that misbehave.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So...what are the approximate odds that they'll be able to get the US to extradite basically every scientology employee (yes, I said employee) to Belgium to get locked up forever? lol.
For a start, religions don't demand you pay up to read the texts and consider them trade secrets.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
I believe that there are severe differences from them... Take these two:
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
That said, that the core of the religions is imagination doesn't prevent many of them from being rich treasure troves of culture and knowledge of what it is, and has been, to be human - created by humans.
Sure. Maybe you should include the Taoists, Buddhists
Those two (and Confucianism) are responsible for scientific apathy that encompassed Asia and made them stagnant for thousands of years. You might be familiar with many anecdotes about X being invented in China first, problem was religion was against advancement. Science was just a way to amuse oneself. You werent supposed to innovate, you were supposed to resist the change and live in peace with your surroundings. Stability over progress.
Christianity was responsible for Dark Ages in a rather violent fashion in the west, at the same time Asian religions made them peacefully stagnant.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
They are former members suing to get their "on account" money back for unused "services". The "registrar" is always getting people to pre-pay well in advance for the percentage commission. The staff members that recruited that member using the free "stress test" or "personality test" also get a commission.
The Mormons have their problems too, namely how poorly those who leave the religion are treated, but that doesn't seem to have much, if anything, to do with the Church at all, just their society in general. It's much like how, here in the rest of America, back in the 50s when most people were Protestant, if someone came out as an atheist, they'd be shunned by their coworkers, family, friends, probably employers as well. This shunning wasn't directed by any church or preacher, it's just how the closed-minded people of the time acted.
Other churches might be founded by wackos, but do they currently engage in criminal activities?
Buddhism isn't really a religion as I understand it[1]. For example, it perfectly fine for a Buddhist to be an atheist as I understand it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism#Is_Buddhism_a_religion.3F
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R2-45
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Also, a significant amount of the weirdness with LDS is in the far past, now that Smith and Young are long dead, and they (finally) stopped saying that black people are subhuman. Most of CoS's weirdness and evilness is still fairly recent.
You appear to be confusing an exhaustive list (which he never claimed to be supplying) with a set of examples (which he strongly hinted that he was supplying).
This is a common mistake among the ignorant, so don't beat yourself up too much.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The myths of Scientology aren't any more ridiculous than the myths of Christianity, Catholicism, Judiasm, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam or any other religion.
Scientologists have a bad reputation for sketchy things they have done to people, but look at the record of any of the religions listed above.
So what is the difference between Scientology and those other religions. Time. Scientology was recently made. There are adults who were alive when L Ron Hubbard was alive and wrote Scientology.
The other religions were written in the murky past, hiding their shaky, man-made foundations. The other religions have generations childhood & family traditions/inculcation. Scientology does not.
To me, the two sets of things are about the same. I don't think Scientology can be put on trial without a mighty helping of hypcroisy.
Given the exponential pace of technology, in a century or two we may have evolved ourselves into beings that would be considered gods by today's standards, merged with machines, we will likely be immortal and linked into a global consciousness. Beings like that would see religion as naive, pointless and very outdated. It already is that, but we would clearly see it for what it is.
You need only watch the news to see that Christianity is just as criminal as Scientology. But anyone looking to prosecute Christian leaders, Protestant, or Catholic are looking at civil war.
Think again.
Maybe not recently, but mass sacrifices, blood rituals and canibalism has all been part of various pagan traditions.
I'm not clear on just how a religion that teaches that God doesn't really desire you to sacrefice your first born, is a bad thing. Yes, saying that you should be willing to do things you find morally abhorent, if your God requires them of you, is a rather primative moral code, a bad thing, and all that. However if you take the account as factual, God stopped Abraham before he went through with it. Abraham was living in a place where other religions did practice infant sacrefice (if that part of the OT is also factual - and note that most modern archaeologists and historians don't dispute that part regardless of their own religious affiliations). If it wasn't Yahway telling him to do it, Abraham would have had the example of other religions suggesting it was the right thing to do - and if Abraham or others had been inspired just by those examples, the various Bels and Marduks and such of the region, what would have stopped them from following it all the way through? The old testament version of God at least says, in effect "Yeah, I'm expecting obedience just like every other single god you've even remotely heard of, but now I'm gonna show you I'm more worthy of that obedience than those gods, because there are things I won't ever ask you to do, because I care about you and yours too much to ask them of you". The parable of Abraham is about a supposed deity saying He's not just expecting BLIND obedience, He's willing to give some sign of why He should actually deserve obedience. Yes, (some) more modern versions of religions have gotten to a lot better moral theory than that, but it was still a small step in the right direction.
While were at it, criticising Islam or at least its founder, sort of depends on the situation. There's a certain difference if the prophet created teachings to justify his taking a child bride, or if that was the way things still worked in the region, at that time, and he just didn't behave to a higher standard than the secular society immediately pre-islam. Most of the people throwing out the pedo-prophet charge have no idea if the actions of Mohammed were any worse than typical for the parent culture, or about average, or even a bit better, and it may be that the worst claim to be leveled against Islam is it didn't make the people who joined behave to a higher standard than they would have otherwise.
The modern Roman Catholic church has failed dramatically, becoming one of the safest places for child molesters to hide. Unlike the 9th century, the current church is operating against a background of secular cultures who overwhelmingly have clear laws specifying a minimum age of consent, and just about all of those cultures
set that age at at least 14 for any sexually related activity and 16 or higher for some forms. It's actually less explicable than the ancient examples.
Who is John Cabal?
Pat Robertson and the entire religious right say hi. Zionist Jews also send their greetings.
And the Mormons are known to kill those people, and non-believers. But then I am sure Scientology would of been doing that as well if it was a few decades older.
Really? I'm not a mormon but that sounds like bullshit to me. Do you get off on making up shit?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The Catholic Church is responsible for the greatest genocide in human history - that of wiping out an estimated 120 million people in Central and South America, destroying countless cultures and plundering all of their wealth. The residential schools that decimated the cultural heritage of North American First Nations peoples were also run by Catholics. Even if you ignore the millions of acts of rape and pedophelia carried out by clergy in the modern era, the Catholic Church has been engaged in the most depraved, genocidal, racist, sexist evil deeds that humanity has ever committed for over 1,000 years.
I hope some day that 'freedom of religion' is replaced with 'freedom from religion' as a fundamental human right.
Have you read what they say about black ?
Judaism - typical tribal religion that succeeded more than others
Christendom - around that time, Jews were sure that second coming is going to be very soon. This made easy for one self-proclaimed messiah after another to gain some followers, preach about overthrowing roman rule and promptly get slaughtered by local garrison. Jesus was probably a wacko, but at least clever enough to not challenge the empire
How about pedophilia and money laundering?
You've never heard of the Danites? There was even a Sherlock Holmes story about them.
Seriously, the EU might be thinking about considering the Church of Scientology a criminal organization, but historically there was armed conflict between the Mormons and their neighbors, and the US federal government very nearly went to war with Utah.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
Scientology in Belgium is interesting to say the least
* A lot of extreme right wing politicians has something to do with Scientology.
- Johan Demol - ex-member of a extreme right wing organisation "Front de la Jeunesse" , also ex-cop and ex-politician.
- When there is something in the news about Scientology in most cases you will see Hugo coveliers being interviewed as their laywer (who also have made some appearances in Scientology videos) spouting the same "religion prosecution" bullshit.
* Scientology tries to infiltrate into our government and organisations
- The secret service suddenly stopped working with the communication firm Nextel because of the fact that is has close ties with Scientology. What incident happened is a mystery.
- In the Flemish parlement there was a partner company (Ideas) of Hewlett Packerd that provided certain services that was a Scientology company. There was a lot of uproar because it came out that Scientology companies provided services to the Ministry of Defense, Local affairs and Social Services. Those departments that have very sensitive data... . Also because there are documented cases where in the nineties they also tried to infiltrate the French and German government departments.
* They over-flooded Belgian libraries with free (propaganda) material and books written by hubert.
Scientology is an extremely dangerous organisation. If it was me I would already put out International Arrest Warrant for the leaders of this dangerous cult.
Buddhism? I think not
There were huge Buddhist temple complexes in Japan that threatened the government as centres of power, murdered their opponents and engaged in constant pederasty. But it's only bad when Westerners do it, right?
I eagerly await your "No True Scotsman"-themed response.
Reminds me of a picture I saw in The Economist a few years ago of Buddhist monks in Korea rioting with clubs.
Despite the Dali Lama's successful Holywood PR compaign, Tibetan Buddhism was a corrupt theocratic protection racket before the Chinese invaded.
Paganism is harder to compare, because it's more of a vaguely defined counter-culture style than a religion with an organization or a theology. But if we count historic so-called 'pagan' religions then I'd say that human sacrifice is a pretty serious skeleton, if a few hundred years is 'recent' enough. Most of Christianity's worst abuses stopped that log ago also.
Animism is messed up also. And of course Hinduism had the caste system, among other evils, many still persistent. And atheism had the genocides in Cambodia, China, and Ukraine, if we want to include anti-theistic thought systems.
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are bad too, but putting other more 'exotic' religions on a higher plane seems to me to require unfamiliarity of their actual features, or at least selective unfamiliarity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176747/Buddhist-monk-repeatedly-raped-teen-years-impregnated-her.html
Buddhist monk 'repeatedly raped teen for two years until he impregnated her'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135116/Britains-senior-Buddhist-monk-accused-raping-girls-10-temples-shrine-room.html
Britain's most senior Buddhist monk accused of raping two girls under 10 (one in his temple's shrine room)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087416/Buddhist-monk-arrested-rape-British-tourist-mountain-shrine.html
Buddhist monk arrested for rape of British tourist at mountain-top shrine
http://english.srilankamirror.com/2012/06/young-buddhist-monk-rapes-pregnant-woman/
A young Buddhist monk has been arrested for allegedly raping a pregnant woman, aged 23 years, in Walasmulla.
http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/buddhist-monk-charged-with-raping-australian/story-e6frfkp9-1111112934035
A SENIOR Thai Buddhist monk has been charged with raping a Vietnamese Australian teenager during a ritual he claimed would protect her from bad luck, police said today.
I can continue if you'd like.
Give [Scientology] another century or two.
Belgium doesn't intend to and neither should anyone else. If it were just a question of their illegal actions, you could always say it was just a few (large number of) loose cannons. But Scientology is unlike accepted religions because its core practices seem intended not to stifle sociopathic behavior, but to exacerbate it. Jesus tells Christians "now that you are absolved of your past actions, go, and sin no more" Hubbard tells Scientologists "once you're cleared of your thetans, you're a Nietzschean superman. No one can stop you, and you should overpower those with thetans. Not can. _should_. _Must_." Murder isn't against Scientology; it's part of their core beliefs (google R2-45). It's a belief system that is dangerous to society.
I agree, I always thought Jesus was a mentally ill and charismatic individual who could get people hooked on the fantastic and amazing visions he experienced. That could explain Mohammad or the Mormon guy too. Irresistable nutcases with tall tales and a way with words.
Anyway the difference with Scientology is that they've actively targeted and attempted to murder individuals that opposed them, and they've enslaved and murdered their own members.
Even the freak cults like Waco and FLDS didn't quite go that far, though by no means were they largely more sane.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
There is sod all difference between OS X and Windows 7.
Christianity was responsible for Dark Ages in a rather violent fashion in the west...
Swing and a miss. The Western Roman Empire debasing its own currency was the cause of the Dark Ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency
If religion is taxed then some religious organizations will continue and some will stop existing. The ones that fail obviously do not have divine connections. All religions claim to have access to some "higher power". If this is true then that power will insure that they remain in business. If they can't then their higher power is dysfunctional in the material world, so in a practical sense it does pass a basic requirement of religion.
Note that this test is no different then a popularity contest. All it takes is enough people to support the religion and it will be considered legitimate. It is perfectly acceptable for divine interventions to take the form of support from individuals. It is also the case that the tax criteria neither proves or disproves the existence of any religious belief.
Any religion or religious individual who opposes this tax change is explicitly doubting the divinity of their religious organization. If they are true believers they will assume that their organization will succeed. If tax status is all that stands between them and failure, then it's not much of a religion.
Why is Snark Required?
This is not current Mormon practice, but it well-documented Mormon history.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's obvious you haven't read the religious texts of either the Mormons or Scientology. I'd bet you haven't even read the bible, most christians haven't, other than select passages their preacher has them turn the page to.
And yes, the Mormons may be different, and their history is rather oddball, but scientology is just plain wackjob badly written sci-fantasy.
By the way, all of those religious texts I've mentioned are easily obtainable, and for free if you just look. Go read them.
Buddhism? I think not.
There is the slight matter of the Tamil genocide.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Well regular christians have done all that stuff for centuries, why shouldn't a newly spawned branch of christianity be any less disreputable? Yes, Mormons are Christians. So are Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and so many others.
No, I'm not a Mormon, but I probably know a lot more than many of the posters here today. Sad, isn't it.
Actually, they haven't done that in over a century as far as I know, but it is documented fact that Mormons did kill some non-believers. They also kidnapped daughters of other non-believers and forced them to "marry" their captors.
The reasons the Mormons were forced out of the different states they lived in before they went to Utah had more to do with them being gigantic assholes and less to do with their wacky religious beliefs.
like this with a 10-foot pole. Proving fraud has the highest level of evidence requirement of any criminal charge in most courts around the world. Numerous churches have beaten the FDA on the practicing medicine charges and have stared down many attempts by the IRS and others at charging them with fraud while sustaining minimal damage over the years. This will probably be another huge waste of time and of some government's taxpayer dollars spurred on by some locals. It's nothing new. However, higher courts almost always take the "freedom of religious expression" clauses in their constitutions very seriously and very literally, and it's almost impossible to meet the fraud pleading requirements in a case like this.
Local levels, many, and rather successfully it seems.
Federal/national level, haven't heard of any others. Key point there, "I haven't heard of any others".
Which churches/organizations other than scientology and catholics have been having non-misdemeanor legal issues?
Slashdot religious whack jobs are, sadly, on the lookout to mod comments such as this down. Sigh...
If there is another Unitarian Universalist here, we could form a committee to debate this.
It's easier to track the history of frauds when they're recent. Scientology is all too obvious. Mormon's founder was established as a fraudster early on.
On the other hand, "Church of Christ, Scientist" appears to have a self-deluded founder, rather than a malicious one. That doesn't undo the damage she's done, but they aren't noteworthy for illegal behavior like the other two.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Mormonism does not hold that Jesus was God, but that he was "a god". It therefore cannot be considered a "Christian" religion. To call a Mormon a Christian is deceptive. If these religions were businesses, Mormonism would be considered fraud, trademark infringement, and an unfair trade practice.
Another religious debate on /.
Not one view will be changed as a result.
If you're living in a predominately Mormon area, and you're not one of them, you're a lot less likely to be part of their circle, do business with them, marry their children and so forth.
This as told to me by various Mormon and non-Mormon friends from SLC.
I suppose this isn't a lot different from other religious groups. But it's worth pointing out.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
I agree, but smart people need to start somewhere. I believe this is what is called a "precedent"
Once more, I'm forced to agree. History does not record any evidence of a religion started on rational or logical basis
The massacre little over a century ago. I don't remember the date or name, but the event was that Mormon extremists attacked a convoy with guns, killing dozens or near a hundred people. Perhaps somebody could be more specific. Nothing more recent comes to mind, however.
This is an area of open debate among competent historians. I've read many explanations, and the general cultural rot encompasses debasing the currency. Christianity shares the blame.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Atheism isn't a religion. It is just what we have when we don't believe in all the other crap.
One complaint I have on the Mormon religion is that when people are introduced to the church through it's missionaries they are told that everything they need to know is in the Book of Mormon.
Any missionary teaching that everything is in the Book of Mormon is in error. That is not in any of the standard discussions. If it was true, none of the rest would be necessary.
Believing the Book of Mormon to be scripture is, however, a core doctrine and a requirement for baptism.
Then later on you find out that fundamental doctrines are not contained in there, but spread out among the Pearl of Great Price, the Book of Abraham, Doctrines and Covenants as well as 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses.
The Book of Abraham is part of the Pearl of Great Price.
The D&C and PoGP are both referenced in the standard discussions, though not as heavily as the BoM.
The Journal of Discourses is not canon.
Short form: any sermon or teaching by an authorized priest is 'scripture', but is not doctrine unless it is formally canonized. This concept is not generally taught by modern Protestants, as they have had closed canon since Martin Luther, so it can lead to some confusion.
That many central beliefs are not taught to members before baptism is troubling to me.
The nature of God, Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Resurrection, Salvation, Priesthood, Temples, are all covered. What central beliefs are missing?
People should learn about those things and have a clear understanding of exactly what the church teaches before they are baptized.
Agreed. People do need to understand what they are getting in to, and the primary role of missionaries is to help them gain that.
Peace
Well these all have far fewer abuses but fewer ain't zero:
Hindu's: caste system
Buddhist: Myanmar muslim persecution
Taoists: Emperor Wuzong persecutions (though admittedly they have a great record)
Re: In some cases, the takeover of state by religion was accomplished so long ago that the religion is even considered a state itself. [bold emphasis mine]
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City
.
Whilst the Popesters and catholics may want you to think and believe that Vatican City always is and always has been considered a state, it was not considered at state unto itself until 1929 by the Lateran Treaty .
:>)
Religions, being mythology, likes to build even more grandiose mythologies about their own origin along with their standard domain of mythologies about the origin of this world.
The doctrine of the trinity is not the sole determinant as to whether or not a religion is "Christian".
The Flying Spaghetti Monster forgives you for your oversight.
Then again... they did in France; and they won. And so will they in Belgium if they got their case and evidence right.
...had more to do with them being gigantic assholes and less to do with their wacky religious beliefs.
Good to see Mittens and Darl McBride are keeping with tradition.
The doctrine of the trinity is not the sole determinant as to whether or not a religion is "Christian".
Wouldn't their belief in multiple gods, some of which used to be human, run contrary to monotheism?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
France got a small fine against the bookstore after years of prosecution at huge public cost. There's no way a professional fraud examiner would pursue such a case without regard for the public treasury. To give you an example - in America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
And who has the trademark on Christianity? The Roman Catholic Church? Sure, Mormonism is identifiably different from other brands, but I figure if they claim Jesus Christ was the most-holiest-person-EVER they're Christians if they want to call themselves Christians and if they don't want to call themselves Christian, they don't have to whatever they believe. Why split hairs?
Christianity isn't a specific set of beliefs and practies, it's a category of religions. Before the 4th century, there was a LOT more diversity of belief among people who called themselves Christians, e.g. Gnostics, Manicheans, Arians, etc as opposed to almost all other modern Christians who accept the Nicene christology and soteriology. Most the Roman Empire chose to promote the Nicene view I don't know, but that's the historical reason why most Christians today believe pretty much the same thing about Jesus.
Actually, they haven't done that in over a century as far as I know, but it is documented fact that Mormons did kill some non-believers. They also kidnapped daughters of other non-believers and forced them to "marry" their captors.
The reasons the Mormons were forced out of the different states they lived in before they went to Utah had more to do with them being gigantic assholes and less to do with their wacky religious beliefs.
Yeah, UnitedStatesofAmericans did that to Native Americans, too. Start pointing fingers about that and you'll run out of fingers pretty quick.
And wasn't this thread about Scientologists in Belgium?
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
The roots of Judaism and Hinduism are so far in the past it's really hard to say what their founders were thinking. Buddhism is a little better grounded in history and Christianity's founding is even a little murky. I think all but Hinduism could have been founded by crazy charlatans.
Neither did the United States of America...
Because all non-mono-theistic philosophies, religions and traditions are the same, right? Granted that we could even ignore the fact that ancient Aztec priests are all dead today...
Paganism is a bit of a derogatory word coined the "big three" mono-theisms to deliberately alienate competition as they conquered. Let's not just ignore the differences between worldviews simply because they aren't humanist atheism, mmm?
You should check out the Irish celtic religions. Animal and human sacrifice abound, in some areas. So yeah, Paganism.
Most of Christianity's worst abuses stopped that log ago also.
Bullshit. That log still continues to roll down stairs, alone or in pairs, and rolls over your neighbours dog. On the other hand, it's great for a snack and fits on your back.
Scientology is very big on making bomb threats. Mind you, they make the bomb threats in other people's names. They made bomb threats on behalf of Paulette Cooper (see Operation Freakout) where they got her finger prints on a piece of paper, added the threat then mailed it. It continues to this day, where they put up a YouTube video claiming to be from Anonymous and making bomb threats. (They really goofed on that one. They made a DVD on black PR on Anonymous. On the DVD, they had a copy of the fake video, but it was in higher resolution than the one upload to YouTube. Gee, where could they have gotten that hi-res copy?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I believe this approach to dealing with the organization is exactly appropriate. The practice of any religion can be run by an organization that turns out into a cult. The attacks that we see on "Scientology" should not really be directed at the subject of Scientology nor used to label the subject as a cult. It is the corrupt management by David Miscavige that really is to blame. And, yes, he IS criminal. He abuses staff, torments former members who try to practice outside his control, harasses members for donations relentlessly and, of course, he trashes freedom of speech to keep people from knowing of his crimes. Mark Rathbun is the former number 2 in charge of the Co$. He's out and posting on a blog on WordPress everything he knows. Check out his blog for a viewpoint you won't hear from anyone else.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
what about islam ex members? :)
in America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
Can we make that statistic more public? I'd love to see part of the Fiscal Cliff resolved by us spending another $500K or $500M on these sorts of things. And I don't know any Congressman who has gone on the record as publicly desiring "more waste, fraud, and abuse." Some folks love to create new laws and programs; I like to see the existing ones actually implemented and fully funded before evaluating next steps. That ROI for fraud investigation is wonderful.
The doctrine of the trinity is not the sole determinant as to whether or not a religion is "Christian".
Indeed. A surprisingly large number of evangelicals believe that the catholic church is not christian. And they aren't shy about it either.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So the whole crusades thing wasn't as bad? WTF?
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
When that happened, the USA threw its toys out of the pram and decided that the ONLY reason possible for telling the USA off and saying "no" to it was if it was a communist liberal USA-hater.
That the USA is ever wrong is completely unpossible.
"That ROI for fraud investigation is wonderful". I've worked on several healthcare fraud cases that returned over $1 billion dollars to the US treasury (I'm not claiming credit - these things have huge teams of prosecutors and investigators working on them). Anti-fraud efforts are the most effective means of controlling rampant waste of government dollars. You are absolutely right - if we simply enforced the laws on the books, expenditures would be a fraction of what they actually are. And this applies to most countries in the world. In fact, in many countries, nepotism and bribery are much more the rule of the day than we see in the US, and the massive cost of corruption is actually built directly into the government's annual budgets.
With regard to these religious cases, keep in mind that most governments in the world won't commit to prosecuting a fraud case without being virtually assured of several million dollars in return. This is because of the enormous work required to overcome the heightened evidence pleading requirements for fraud cases in most court systems. If you think that the prosecutors of the world are going to unite and "strike down" some religion that you personally oppose, you are probably greatly mistaken.
Why does a religion that sings 'father, son and holy ghost' when worshiping get away with calling itself monotheistic? How is praying to patron saints monotheistic? It looks like deification from over here.
That isn't that far from Mormonism either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemocracy
Scientology is just as legitimate a church as any other. It doesn't matter how you claim your religion started, all that really matters is that you NEVER deliver or prove any aspect of your faith. All modern organized faiths share the same aspects which are, empty words, vague expressions and no answers. Before anyone flies off the handle at me, show me one example of an organized church where the members actually get to see and interact with a real god. Not a god who you just pray to and believe in, not a god who is based off aliens, a god you can walk up to and shake the hand of.
Not as brutal can be a huge difference. Scientology tends to be extremely brutal. They go out of their way to bankrupt and discredit you no matter where you live. Though I admit Mormon areas don't sound like very attractive places to live.
As you scroll through, witness the success of the troll in completely diverting the topic off of the criminality of Scientology onto -anything but- Scientology. Scientology is criminal and is being prosecuted for it... That IS the topic.
To be semi-fair, "pagan" is a damn nebulous term.
Maybe this is just me, but making fun of Mormon underwear seems to me just as dumb as making fun of the hijab, yarmulke, Sikh turban, or pocket protector.
OK, I've never worn a pocket protector, but you get my point I hope.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
That doesn't sound any different from a Democratic voter living in a predominantly "red state" area, these days.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Doesn't make much sense to me, but they do consider the three things to be part of the single godhead. And the saints aren't gods. They'll pray to saints, to intercede for them, but won't worship saints as they would God. It's like trying to make sense of a book, where each chapter was written by authors who had little to no contact with the other authors. Little wonder it'd end up being a mess.
In Mormon belief it's a bunch of gods with Yahweh in charge. At least that's my understanding of their position.
Baloney can get pretty convoluted.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
1. patron saints are not God
2. patron saints are Catholic doctrine, not Christian doctrine
3. the son and the holy ghost report to the Father
4. and anyway, when Cthulhu returns it'll all be moot
That sounds like bull to me... I grew up in a small Utah town. There were 100 people in my senior class, and I was the only non-LDS among them. Besides making me feel a little isolated, it did not effect me that much. No one excluded me from anything that wasn't an actual church even and they certainly did not treat my family badly, effect my parents and my own ability to hold a job.
I don't know where you get your information, but it is false.
Wow, modded down for saying somebody can't make an informed decision/judgement without data. Slashdot has certainly gone mainstream.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Yeah but all those are fucking hilarious too. Same with the pope hat and habit.
Because they teach that the 'father, the son, and the holy ghost' are all aspects of a single god. The ones I know will even compare it to the different phases of water: steam, water, ice when explaining it.
Sure. Maybe you should include the Taoists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains. Unless you only mean Abrahamic religions, in which case you should say so and not ALL.
Buddhism isn't as rosy as people make it out to be. Much like Hinduism, Buddhism has been used to enforce caste systems and lower the status of women. Even today women are considered to be less clean because they are objects of desire (often monks wont talk to women, most will refuse to directly take an object from a woman, the woman will need to place the object in a cloth and pass it to the monk). Most religions on their own, including Islam, Judaism and Christianity are not bad. It's people misusing these religions for their own aim. Look at the Islamic state of Iran, it's not Islam that is doing evil, it's the leaders of Iran, Islam is a convenient excuse and tool for oppressing the people. Same with paedophile priests, Christianity isn't forcing them to have sex with little boys, but it sure does make a convenient excuse after the fact.
Religion in general has two problems, it's used by people in power to restrict thinking (Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism do this very well, they just preach that people do it in a non-violent way) and make people more pliable and secondly, people who believe in religion too deeply, unwilling to question the religion or their actions in the name of religion.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually, that statement is self contradictory. A Christian believes that the Christ is God. If he believes any differently, then he's not a "Christian". He might be Hindu, he might be Pagan, he might be atheist, but he's not "Christian".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
A sometimes more useful way to contrast religions is to look at where they each look for authority.
Christianity and Islam both place a lot of Authority in the written word. Some sects more than others, but all sects to some degree.
Judaism places authority in the spoken word (the written texts must be read aloud to be understood, because it is the spoken word that has Authority; the written stuff is merely a mnemonic aid). This is a significant difference: the Authority is there only as the words are spoken; there is no absolute "This was once written therefore it shall forever be this way" dictatorial attitude about it. It is more a "Tell me again, right now," thing, with the inherent recognition that even though I may have heard this a thousand times before, maybe this time I will more clearly understand some meaning that I never really heard before.
Zen, Tao, and Buddhism state that the Authority has nothing to do with words, that it is found through wordless states like meditation. Zennist practice goes so far as to use koans to so twist up the language that the usefulness of words is momentarily broken, which provides an opportunity for the trained seeker to experience the wordless authority. The core written teaching about the Tao is: "The Tao that you read about is not the Tao".
In contemporary neopagan practice, authority is sought through directed visualizations augmented by chanting, drumming, dance, and ritual.
And so on. Something that is interesting here is that the religions that rely on the written word for their authority are historically the least tolerant and most war-like. They definitely score highest on the "holier-than-thou" scale.
I know nothing about the internals of Scientology. But what little I know of it suggests that it wants it adherents to put more faith into its written words than any other religion has ever done.
Will
None of them are anywhere near as funny as a TSA uniform, though.
Even though jezus christ, mohammed, buddha et al are all long dead and we can never provide evidence they were potentially damaging to society, does not mean their heritage hasn't been very very very damaging indeed. Need I remind you of the concept of crusades or jihad? In another example of religious-induced suffering, followers of the usually-so-peaceful buddha recently stormed and burned muslim villages in Myanmar, purely and only because the residents of those villages were not like-minded buddhists. ALL major religions have the alarming attribute of being potentially very harmful to society.
the Mountain Meadows Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
Sure, but that's just this era's version of a court jester's costume.
For those who want to know more about that: http://www.vice.com/vice-news/the-mexican-mormon-war-part-1
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
Because you have FAITH that it has to be the case.
Jesus was probably a wacko, but at least clever enough to not challenge the empire
You are assuming the fan fiction has any basis in reality.
Or play the long game, Mormons have been known to baptise the dead in grave yards to their faith in the uk.
Whilst the Popesters and catholics may want you to think and believe that Vatican City always is and always has been considered a state, it was not considered at state unto itself until 1929 by the Lateran Treaty [wikipedia.org].
True, but it always did go out of its way to act like one, even when it wasn't one. The TV show "The Borgias" show an example of it. Then there's the Holy Roman Empire.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Regular sports fans and enviro-terrorists have been doing this for years too.
Doesn't take religion all it takes is people looking for an excuse to be violent.
"Despite the Dali Lama's successful Holywood PR compaign, Tibetan Buddhism was a corrupt theocratic protection racket before the Chinese invaded."
And now there is no protection and no escape. Tibets new golden age is reserved for the Han chinese as are its natural resources.
Theism is belief in the existence of a higher power. Atheism is belief in the non-existence of a higher power. Agnosticism is the lack of belief.
Atheism may be different than other religions, but at its core, atheism requires that one accept the non-existence of a higher power on faith alone, because there is no explicit proof of it, nor can there be. Sure, you can go on all day about Occam's razor, but that is still belief. Wikipedia say that "Religion is a collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values."
With Mormons it's just an allegation that it's all a scam, but with Scientologists we can call up a huge pile of living witnesses and track the scam back to the beginning. The camoflage as a form of worship is just part of the con, and you've fallen into their trap by comparing them with established forms of worship.
Early Mormon history may be very interesting but a better comparison would probably be with the gangs of New York or Chicago mobsters. Scientology is a racket IMHO.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
I believe that there are severe differences from them... Take these two:
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there. Sure, many sects and leaders have used these to the same ends as the two religions listed above, but at least they don't seem to be started by someone with a clear motive to gain from it.
Other than maybe Buddhism, Scientology and Islam are the only ones where we have good documentation of the origins.
Personally I tend to place Scientology a little further out on the crazy spectrum, but as an atheist I'm not sure how well I can justify that. Are the highest beliefs of Scientology really that much crazier than Christianity? Are the abuses of the church of Scientology that much worse than the Catholic church? To what degree is Scientology getting a worse rap just because it's the wrong flavour of crazy?
I stole this Sig
I actually found this series to be a fairly informative bit of background on Scientology. It seems the Xenu stuff is only presented to a very small portion of top level Scientologists (and lower level folks are generally shielded from the info). The bulk of the religion tends to be built around 'auditing', which is basically therapy sessions where people are hooked into an e-meter (essentially a lie detector) which helps them identify stressful topics so they can address them. If nothing else it helps explain Hubbard's hatred for psychologists (as his religion was based around his own brand of therapy).
I stole this Sig
Bullshit. Read a book. In fact, read the article you posted. The Vatican is the successor to the Papal States that were annexed by the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s and 1870s. Since the Kingdom of Italy didn't actually physically assault the Pope's palace, it's sovereignty was in a state of limbo until the Lateran Treaty.
The Papal states themselves filled a power vacuum left by the collapse of various governments in Italy following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They didn't take over the state because there wasn't a state to take over!
And for the record, I'm an atheist and not some papist apologist.
That doesn't sound any different from a Democratic voter living in a predominantly "red state" area, these days.
Or vice-versa - Seattle, Portland, NYC, parts of SanFran, LA (esp. Hollywood)...
But, you know, get that ideological hate on, instead of recognizing the fact that any place that is homogeneous is going to favor those like them, and tend to exclude those who aren't.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wow, the anti-religionists are comming out of the wood-work. They forget that secularists like Hitler and Stalin still hold the record in human atrocities. Instead of blaming religion, blame human nature.
Dude - you do know that Mountain Meadows was over 150 years ago, right?
I lived in Salt Lake for about a decade. I'm not LDS, nor was I ever. Aside from social isolation (due to the fact that most social activities center around the local 'Ward'), and a slow-motion barrage of missionaries who wanted to interrupt my beer/smoke breaks to talk to me about that book written by Mr. Smith, I was pretty much treated in a friendly manner.
Now career-wise, there comes a point where a temple recommend is pretty much required to move ahead in most (local) circles, but otherwise they're harmless to live among.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Mormon here. When someone disagrees with us, we do worse: we send missionaries after them.
Mormon here. When someone disagrees with us, we do worse: we send mercenaries after them.
There... Fixed.
And who has the trademark on Christianity? The Roman Catholic Church? Sure, Mormonism is identifiably different from other brands, but I figure if they claim Jesus Christ was the most-holiest-person-EVER they're Christians if they want to call themselves Christians and if they don't want to call themselves Christian, they don't have to whatever they believe. Why split hairs?
Christianity isn't a specific set of beliefs and practies, it's a category of religions. Before the 4th century, there was a LOT more diversity of belief among people who called themselves Christians, e.g. Gnostics, Manicheans, Arians, etc as opposed to almost all other modern Christians who accept the Nicene christology and soteriology. Most the Roman Empire chose to promote the Nicene view I don't know, but that's the historical reason why most Christians today believe pretty much the same thing about Jesus.
I did not have any mod points but +1 to the parent. The standard prayer "Our father" (or whatever it is called in English) was specifically designed to "trademark" christianity. Certain elements in that prayer were put there to define some beliefs as non christian, for example the "...tortured by Pontius Pilatus.." part. According to the Gnostics (who believed in a conflict between Spirit and Matter), Jesus could not have been in pain on the cross since he was a higher being (more Spirit, and pain and suffering is part of Matter). Pretty amazing actually that I as an atheist (or more specifically an Ignostic) often know more about the historical contexts of certain parts of christianity than many of those that call themselves christian...
Maybe they were talking about ex-Mormons, like if you leave the faith but stay in the community, like an Amish person wearing jeans and a t shirt. Shunning might be the result whether instiutionalized or not.
I did not have any mod points but +1 to the parent. The standard prayer "Our father" (or whatever it is called in English) was specifically designed to "trademark" christianity. Certain elements in that prayer were put there to define some beliefs as non christian, for example the "...tortured by Pontius Pilatus.." part.
Hmm, if by "Our father", you're referring to the Lord's Prayer, it doesn't mention Pontius Pilate.
By this we mean that scholars argue whether the only contemporary mention of Jesus (in the writings of josephus) was entirely made up or only partially fictional. Wikipedia has the gall to say that most scholars agree that Yeshua bar Yehossef existed.
Which direction the razor of Wm. Ockham slices here depends on your preconceptions.
The camouflage as a form of worship is just part of the con, and you've fallen into their trap by comparing them with established forms of worship.
Only if you don't think that all other religions are a con, too...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Not sure real mormons
You seem to give an awful lot of credit to established religion. Almost like most of them don't encourage poor treatment of women, persecution of gays, owning of slaves, and so on. Intended to stifle sociopathic behavior, my ass.
The others do not claim magic powers hey don't have. Oh except from the pocket protector.
In other news, it's totally fine to make fun of all of them.
You're probably referring to the Apostles' Creed, not the Lord's Prayer (which begins with "Our Father").
And atheism had the genocides in Cambodia, China, and Ukraine, if we want to include anti-theistic thought systems.
You can't include bald people when talking about hair color. If christians claiming to be of the same religion commit murders for their god it obviously has _something_ to do with their religion. If people that don't believe in any god commit murders in cambodia, it can't have anything to do with religion, as there isn't any. Atheists aren't a religious group, they aren't a group at all. I don't give a rats ass if someone is atheist or not. You can't murder someone in the name of not believing in any god. "Here, take this sacrifice o'almighty ..?.. "
No he doesn't. Cute and Cuddly will be doused in Parmesan Cheese and baked until golden brown.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I agree that human nature is the root here, but Hitler was not a "secularist", and Nazi Germany was explicitly Christian (notwithstanding any "no true scotsman" arguments to the contrary).
"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/09/burma-ethnic-tensions-escalate
You can cross Buddhists off your list of 'holier than thou's, harder to say about Pagans, not many about these days.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Islam, however, is welcomed.
Maybe this is just me, but making fun of Mormon underwear seems to me just as dumb as making fun of the hijab, yarmulke, Sikh turban, or pocket protector.
OK, I've never worn a pocket protector, but you get my point I hope.
Forget the magic underwear (that protects the wearer from harm - okay, protection from the cold and sandstorms I'll grant you...) What about the golden tablets that could only be read with some special magic seeing stones? It's worse than loony - it's a con.
We have to carefully define terms. You're mixing wikipedia's definition of religion with your own definitions of atheism and agnosticism (which aren't uncommon but also aren't universal). I think snapping to the wikipedia definitions for all three terms is reasonable, and according to those definitions, on the pages for atheism and agnosticism, condensed and paraphrased:
Mere atheism is the lack of belief, not necessarily belief of lack.
Strong atheism is belief of lack.
Weak atheism is atheism that is not strong atheism; that is to say, weak atheism is lack of belief without belief of lack.
Agnosticism is taking the position that whether theism or atheism is true is basically unknowable.
Agnosticism is therefore compatible with non-fundamentalist theism and with weak atheism both, and you could stretch the definition of religion around "strong atheism" or even around agnosticism, but I don't think you can stretch it around weak atheism, and therefore you cannot stretch it around atheism either. This said I do think that's a stretch of definition even to encompass agnosticism or strong atheism.
Practically speaking, any weak atheist will almost certainly disbelieve in every specific religion they've heard of in a "strong" manner -- eg. outright disbelief in Catholicism or Scientology or Hinduism or what-have-you -- but I don't think many reasonable people call disbelief in Hinduism a religion, even if you can technically shove not-belief in specific religions into the definition of "world views that relate humanity to spirituality".
Pretty much by induction, I'd say that strong atheism isn't a religion simply because it collects up disbeliefs in all possible specific theistic religions without advancing its own religious ideas beyond said rejections. Like the semi-famous quote which I'll paraphrase, "atheism is a religion in the same way that baldness is a hairstyle".
Also, you can go on all day dismissing Occam's razor, but even mentioning it is an outright admission that accepting non-existence of a higher power is not necessarily predicated on "faith alone", unless Occam's razor is dismissed as faith.
Meanwhile I'm tempted to call agnosticism pretty much self-evident to all thinking people except for the vast evidence to the contrary. I wouldn't generally call myself agnostic since I'm basically 99.999999999% sure of the strong atheist position but by technicality I'd admit that I am agnostic along with any person who is even halfway reasonable, whether theistic or non-theistic (even freakin' Richard Dawkins has admitted that much, and he's about as strong a strong atheist as you'll find in any public figure). You yourself casually professed an agnostic position by saying "because there is no explicit proof of it, nor can there be". But if you really wanted to call agnosticism a trivial religion, well, fine, semantic arguments bore me greatly. I imagine such agnosticism (under the definition in this post) would rival Christianity and Islam for membership numbers, though.
But seriously, is there all that much difference between any of them? Just because we can trace these two churches back to their wacko founders, doesn't mean the other older churches weren't founded by wackos too.
Well quite. I bet virtually every religion started off as a cult revolving around a narcissistic lunatic with his disciples embellishing or flat out lying about his life and accomplishments. The only difference is the amount of time they've been around and the ability for people to check out the claims.
Sadly for scientology L Ron Hubbard's life and accomplishments as claimed by the church can be compared to court documents, contemporary newspaper reports, war records and so on and the lies are obvious. The church would have us believe he was a decorated war hero, a renowned explorer, nuclear physicist, etc. In reality he was a narcissistic, paranoid, wife beating, pathological liar. The cult managed to acquire many of these traits which is why it is so batshit insane and such an easy target for mockery. Doesn't explain why anyone would be attracted to join but clearly some people do.
"But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and the Mormon Church?
Let me fix that for you...
But seriously, is there all that much difference between Scientology and any Church?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Dont forget Judaism as its where they ripped christianity from to create their own cult
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Scientology a business pretending to be a religion to get the tax benefits and fool the delusional
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Actually the followers are wackos... L. Ron Hubbard was simply winning a bet with he made with Robert Heinlein, that he could write a better religion (Heinlein wrote "Stranger in a strange land" arguably a better religion.) As for Mormonism, the "YOUNG" man who created it was a known charlatan and huckster, and was very well known for telling whoppers for fun and profit, and you have to admit, if you're going to fleece the rubes, get rich and end up convincing a couple dozen girls that God wants them all to sleep with you, well its was all just poking fun.
In America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
That's good. I believe in the UK, most of the benefits investigations have a rather net positive outcome.
I remember a while back however a big stink about a division which was spending millions and recovering very little. Terrible, right?
Well, I don't think so. The division pursued all the most difficult cases. Its purpose was not to recover money so much as to prevent much much wider benefit fraud by showing that it wasn't worth cheating the system. People complained about the particular division in isolation but failed to take into account the much wider impact.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge... and then it grew from there.
Should be mentioned here that Buddha was fairly insistent on people thinking for themselves and not worshipping anyone, including him. Didn't quite work out that way though. As soon as he was gone, up came the laughing buddha statues and a whole lotta hymn-ing.
I think you are right.
This looks like literal translation from Dutch..."onze Vader (=our Father literally translated) die in de hemelen zijt" = Lord's Prayer
"Staalmannen" (steel men) is referring to the roman catholic "geloofsbelijdenis" (= creed in English?).
Yes, it's hard to get political support for government fraud investigations that don't pay for themselves in America. Over here, budgeting is an open political process, so every dollar spent is argued over at great length.
France got a small fine against the bookstore after years of prosecution at huge public cost. There's no way a professional fraud examiner would pursue such a case without regard for the public treasury. To give you an example - in America, the typical Medicare fraud investigation returns $10 dollars or more to the public treasury for every $1 dollar of taxpayer money spent on the investigation.
In other words, you're saying the professional fraud examiner has no interest whatsoever in potential future losses or in the victims of the fraud, and only goes after big fish?
I find this hard to believe. I can imagine this being the rational thing to do when the primary victim is the State itself, even in light of that not chasing small or mid-sized fish ultimately encourages more fraud in complete impunity. If so, it's no wonder that Wall Street is so screwed up.
When the victims are private citizens that go through the trouble of filing complaints, however, I cannot fathom this being the case. Especially considering how these victims' lives are typically shattered -- depression, etc.
Picture: "Sorry Sir, eat your loss and go cry a river. You're too small for us to go after whoever defrauded you."
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge...
I strongly recommend a reading of "The Golden Bough" which contains an excellent section on the origin of religion, with more citations than you can shake a stick at. It's anthropology, so it looks at actual human customs, etc., not blog-level speculative thought.
The tl;dr version is: All religion is based in fraud, because it is one of two branches of the solution to the "damn, my magic doesn't really work and people are starting to find out" problem. Given that the shaman (not the prostitute) is the worlds oldest profession (and in many current primitive tribes, still the ONLY one), you would make a huge leap of faith to assume they were all so dumb and ignorant that they didn't notice a basic fact about their own daily activities.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Christian Church is responsible for handing a lot of Ancient Greek philosophy over to us.
The dogmas of Thomas Aquinas are reinterpreted Aristotelian physics, making the thinking man adhere to scientific principles.
The contents of these principles are superseded by Copernicus, Newton aso; BUTT! the tradition of inter subjectivity in science is philosophical (Asia Minor through Athens) and we still abide by these principles.
I suspect Aquinas replaced a proto-empiricism in Aristotle with the Bible, but that may have been done later.
We're counting some 2500 years of human thought.
This cannot be identified with the shallow and reversed self-help techniques of Scientology.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
However, you can move from the US and take your family with you.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
This is not true.
The Christian Church BEGAN as a dictatorship, but was dissolved as such by the democratization of its own humane message. The last of the three dictators, the pope, was humiliated by the reduction of his realm.
The Middle Eastern trio are global, Hinduism is local (though universal) and the true Buddhist is laughing his a** off.
The Human Rights charter of the UN is characteristically secular Christian, I think. The values put forth are pretty consistent with a majority of secular Christians in the Western world.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Why does a religion that sings 'father, son and holy ghost' when worshiping get away with calling itself monotheistic? How is praying to patron saints monotheistic? It looks like deification from over here.
Ask the Hindus; they have millions of gods, all of which can be considered aspects of the one God, if you wish.
But there is nothing wrong or inferior about polytheism. In fact, I would tend to think that recognising many gods makes people more tolerant towards those who follow a different religion, simply because you aren't tied into the idea that "There Is Only One God".
hmm I thought priest and prostitute were equivalent but you have converted me , A prostitute may even give you the paradise you paid for.
The same way that the Invisible Pink Unicorn bbhhh can be pink and invisible at the same time.
It's a religion. It's not supposed to make any sense.
No - your example is incorrect - any Wall Street fraud would be a multi-million dollar case. But religion cases have normally resulted in far less money in fines, and ultimately consist of late tax penalties or immigration fines in most cases. Since there are already government structures in place in nearly all developed countries to deal with tax and immigration issues, it would be an unecessary (and large) expense to go through with fraud litigation. Keep in mind my original point - when you litigate fraud, you are almost always held to the highest evidence pleading requirement - much higher than even for a typical violent crime, such as murder. Fraud must be pled with "particularity", which is a huge and expensive hurdle to overcome. You basically have to know and state the "particulars" of the fraud before you get a chance at discovery or deposing witnesses or proving anything in trial. If you can't do that, your case gets thrown out, regardless of how much money has been spent building the case. Preparing a fraud case can be many times more expensive than bringing a typical medical malpractice case to court.
Islam was established as a way to control and motivate followers and gain power by a local chief...
That's quite revisionistic, don't you think? One might say also that the Islam was a social movement for the people with no chief or tribal association, the condition where anybody can kill you without a punishment.
In contrast, some of the other religions (Judaism, Christendom, Hinduim, Buddhism) seem to have started out as attempts to understand the world and fill out holes of their knowledge
Surely there is the pattern here: the root religion and the protest movement, or reformation. Christianity would be the reformation over Judaism and the Buddhism is the reformation over Hinduism. The reformations are all about the change of the roles and concepts related to the human being and the mind.
Hate to break it to you, but the Mormons don't claim it has magic powers either. The only claim is that it reminds the wearer of covenants made with God so they'll stay on the straight and narrow. If wearing special clothes helps someone be a better person, I'm all for it.
Moreover, Mountain Meadows was not so much driven by a matter of doctrine or religion as by the perception that the Federal government was going to run them off their land (as indeed the government of Illionois did in Nauvoo 50 years before.) On a whole, the Mormans have been much less the persecutors than the persecuted.
BTW, I too am not a Mormon. Just an interested observer.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
One godhead, three "faces". As originally construed, Jewish monotheism was never intended to analyze the internal character of God, but to say that you should not worship any God other than YHWH. Interesting thing is that, for a very long time, nobody had a really terrible time with the trinity. It's based on a Platonic philosophical view, and doesn't make sense if you're not a Platonist.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
3. the son and the holy ghost report to the Father
Only kinda sorta.
The Father is God
The Son is God
The Holy Spirit (Ghost) is God
The trinity is essential to Christian theology because only God's sacrifice of Himself could atone for all sins for all time (instead of sacrificing a lamb once a year in the temple, which was destroyed 40 years later anyway).
In the past the same Belgian legal system had great difficulty with persistent individual offenders, having hard proof in its hands. This time it is fighting against an organised group, with good funding, myself I do not recall of any success in similar situations. Most likely numerous appeals, postponements and procedure battles will follow. My personal guestimate is that the European court of human rights is minimum 5 years away from today. Lets pray the Belgian courts have got some pride and boy-scouts left, as this did sometimes work in the past.
With this kind of argument you can justify anything. Justifying or explaining something doesn't make it right.
Mohamet was a child molester, it doesn't matter whether all arabs in the area were also child molesters. He got the whole sex thing wrong. Now, how can anybody be sure that he got his other teachings right? What value does a religion spewing out of the mouth of such a man have? He didn't come up with revolutionary ideas that weren't thought of before, why are the words of this child molester more valuable than any other's? At the time maybe islam was a pretty good religion. It might have saved more damage to the society of that time. But now, how is it relevant? Lock up your wife? Get four or more wives? Kill all infidels? How do these teachings benefit the modern man, who knows so much more about sociology and politics than the desert arabs of two thousand years ago?
Note that people criticising islam are not arguing that it wasn't a fit religion for desert arabs of the time. We are saying that such a religion is no longer applicable in our modern society. We just use the arguments against its prophet to point out that it was a religion meant for an evil time, when people were ignorant and couldn't think of what else was possible.
Quite a bit, actually, as much as I am loathe to admit it. It was started by Joseph Smith in much the same way is many other Christian denominations. This was a thing that alread existed an was believed in. Scientology, OTOH, is more like the FSM; an invented construct of modern times that there is no argument that it is an invented contsruct.
That said, WTF, Mormons? My ex-wife converted to Mormonism and my daughters weren't allowed to attend her wedding when she was remarried. And WTF do you have against drinking, when Jesus was a self-proclaimed winebibber? You guys have a shitty religion.
Free Martian Whores!
"The Belgian government won't charge Scientology for being a cult" Of course ! In Belgium also, religions are legal. The only way to get rid of Tom Cruise is to accuse them for crimes.
Yeah, and what about that guy that turned his staff into a snake, and parted the red sea, and got tablets written by the hand of deity. What a scam.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
Judaism (in my view, anyways as I have read the torah - english translated) started out the same way as islam, only not quite so violent. I think christianity was more like a "let's still be jewish but break from the old ways and be nice to one another" (whether or not it actually turned out that way is debatable) rather than understanding the world.
I am neither anti-semetic nor christian, that's just how I view it. If you read the old testament, it's pretty blatantly tribal in nature. (I am non-religious.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
You're backwards. Catholic == Christian, Christian != Catholic.
Free Martian Whores!
Think again.
Maybe not recently, but mass sacrifices, blood rituals and canibalism has all been part of various pagan traditions.
I find it funny that you think Christianity is immune to ancient pagan traditions. Where you do you think the ritual of Communion came from exactly? It didn't originally involve wafers and wine.
how is making fun of traditional garments dumb?
You seem to be confusing the pattern for Christian prayer outlined by Jesus, and repeated parrot-fashion by some Christians as the "Lord's Prayer", with the Apostles' Creed, which was indeed formed to firm up what was and what was not orthodox faith. Other creeds also came into being in the early centuries of the christian era, which were also designed to exclude certain non-orthodox beliefs.
Christian the LDS may label itself, but its members would probably not subscribe to, for example, the Athanasian Creed with its Trinitarian statements - but then nor would Tim Berners-Lee.
I get your point, but I don't know of anyone who wears a pocket protector that believes that it can stop bullets.
On the other hand there are Mormons who believe their underwear is a convent with God and that it will protect them.
The practice of any religion can be run by an organization that turns out into a cult. The attacks that we see on "Scientology" should not really be directed at the subject of Scientology nor used to label the subject as a cult.
Except that Scientology was intentionally created as a cult masquerading as a religion for commercial purposes.
Not exactly. Arius and his followers called themselves Christians and were close to becoming the dominant force in the Christian Church during the 4th century, yet held that Jesus was the greatest of the creations. Unitarians today call themselves Christians and reject the doctrine of the Trinity.
A Crhistian, in the historical derivation of the term, was originally simply a follower of Christ.
You can call one man, "President, father, husband, and Obama" and still be referring to one person.
I didn't know prayer can only be directed at Gods. Saints are honored, not deified (not sure if that is a word).
Mormons are not christians, you write a new book, you are a new branch. It's the same way catholics are not considered jews.
I know nothing about the internals of Scientology. But what little I know of it suggests that it wants it adherents to put more faith into its written words than any other religion has ever done.
It wants them to have faith in the writings before they read them. So much faith that they will be willing to pay 100K or more for the privilege.
OK, so let me get this straight. You did not wear the pocket protector, I suppose that means you wore these :
hijab, yarmulke, Sikh turban
What I am not sure you clarified was, did you also wear the mormon underwear ? And, did you wear them all at the same time ?
> They forget that secularists like Hitler and Stalin still hold the record in human atrocities
Secularists believe that everybody can worship, or not worship, as they please; and that there is no official religious belief. That is does not describe Hitler, or Stalin.
To me, when the founder names himself as the ultimate profit, that seems like a cult.
That is not true of Christianity, or Judaism, as far as I know.
However, that is true of LDS, scientology, and Islam.
> The modern Roman Catholic church has failed dramatically, becoming one of the safest places for child molesters to hide
Unlike modern Islam, Catholics do not condon the practice. That is a significant difference.
In Saudi, nine year old girls are still legally married to 50 year old perverts.
Stronger than your 'strong atheism' is a term used by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins etc. This is 'anti-theism'. For them it is not enough to personally disbelieve in supernature, but it is important to also try make the case to others using rationality that supernature doesn't exist.
However if you take the account as factual, God stopped Abraham before he went through with it.
Isn't that kind of a dick move, though, regardless?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
It's usually noted that L.Ron was living on a yacht the last 10 years of his life, since the UK gov't didn't believe Scienterology was a religion, and wanted him for tax fraud.
mark
There is a lot of difference between most religions and Scientology.
1. No other religion copyrights the scriptures and actively discourages members from sharing the scriptures with others. CoS goes after websites or any other organisation who may publish things about Scientology especially the high level stuff.
2. The only church-sanctioned way of accessing the content of the "scriptures" is to pay for the different programmes.
3. No other reilgion actively infiltrates government with the explicit purpose of thwarting investigations.
4. Scientology and Islam are the two religions which go after any detractors using any and all sorts of tricks and violence. It is actually codified into their system of working. Read about "Fair Game". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_%28Scientology%29
5. There are multiple quotes by Ron Hubbard about how it makes sense to setup a religion to make money.
Think again.
Maybe not recently, but mass sacrifices, blood rituals and canibalism has all been part of various pagan traditions.
Ya, but they weren't in the closet about it. The Buddhists were open about wanting to rule territory and start wars as were pagans about human sacrifice.
I have no idea what cults Hitler adhered to but certainly not the pyramid cults of the Prussian kings.
Sorry, no mod points here either, but +1 for you too - I learnt a word today that pretty accurately describes my views - Ignosticism. I wouldn't say that you knowing more about the historical context than many "Christians" is even slightly surprising though...
Yes. Christians have never actually realised that they believe in 3 gods so they still claim to be monotheistic.
They aren't a particularly fast bunch. Wiki Trinity.
Except you wouldn't tell people that you believe that the pocket protector helps you to be a smarter person because that would be absurd. Same level of absurdity as believing wearing specific temple garments (or any other) "when properly worn...provides protection against temptation and evil" (insert absurd statement here).
As a hater, you can sit on the side lines of any religion and make that same judgement. As someone who was looking for answers, with an unbiased eye, I found that Scientology has allowed me to find my own answers. At least hundreds of thousands of people have found it to work. I'm not going to stand here like some fanatic and insist it is "the one true way" like the "Tom Cruise" idiots of the world. If it works for you, great. If not, fine, keep looking. But smearing it without a real understanding of what it really is has a word for it: FUD.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Nicene view also covers most eastern orthodox styles of Christianity too, and with some quibbles it covers Coptic churches.
Mormonism is a lot like Islam in that it adds a third major book to the mix even though theologically they are very different.
A common view from within thetraditional canons of the Christian church in the UK is that the Mormans are a "Christian Cult", i.e. not Christianity, but a bastardisation of it. And being a large influential club, they can decide who is a member, and who isn't. And the Catholics, Protestants, and Baptists all agree that they themselves are all in the club, but that LDS, and the JWs and CSs are not in the club. Those of us outside have no leverage in saying "but these others should also be in" - we simply don't get a vote.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
A Study in Scarlet was just a strange book. So much really doesn't even involve Sherlock Holmes. I think Doyle basically just wanted to present this weird new religious offshoot to the British readers and felt he could get a bigger audience by combining it with his popular series.
But then really a lot of Sherlock Holmes was strange. Books about someone very logical written by a highly illogical person who believed in faeries. Good as a rudimentary detective fiction but many of the stories fall down because the solutions to the mystery involve a lot of cultural biases rather than logic or "eliminating the impossible".
And which "teachings" were being followed during such acts ? When citing this you'd need to provide an interpretation to explain how the jump from the "teachings" is made to the physical acts.
One thing this religion recognizes is the imperfectness of humanity. Are you sure these acts were not being committed by people who happened to be associated with the religion but looking to maintain the nurture their egos, their trappings and their "power" ?
Funny how you can get away with anything as long as you're a national government. Case in point: Syria.
The Christian Science Monitor she founded is known to be one of the few actual moderate and unbiased periodicals in publication, so she gets a pass for her healing by prayer.
Besides which, Christian Scientists nowadays see prayer purely as a supplement, which is harmless by itself. That they're willing to change one of their founding tenets also says a lot about the church itself.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Originally I think Hubbard didn't want Scientology to be considered a religion (at least that's what he said publicly). Later however it turns out that it's a good idea to be a religion for tax purposes.
The problem with your approach is that it renders the term meaningless. If I can call myself a Christian and be one, even if I sacrifice goats to the dark lord while doing so, then what's the point in that classification?
Now, no-one has a trademark on Christianity. No-one has a trademark on a great many other things, and yet we somehow manage to have meaningful definitions for them. In this particular case, the belief in oneness of God and divinity of Jesus has historically been the defining characteristic of Christianity. So, no, Mormons aren't Christians, and neither are Manicheans (but Arians are).
patron saints are Catholic doctrine, not Christian doctrine
It is also Orthodox doctrine.
Having multiple words to describe the same thing is not comparable. The trinity is more than having a bunch of names for the one guy.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Maybe this is just me, but making fun of Mormon underwear seems to me just as dumb as making fun of the hijab, yarmulke, Sikh turban, or pocket protector.
OK, I've never worn a pocket protector, but you get my point I hope.
I'm trying to imagine you wearing Mormon underwear, a hijab, a yarmulke and a Sikh turban... and failing (thankfully).
Hitler also said a lot of things early on as a political expediency.
There have been Buddhist states and wars.
Mormonism seems to run the same way as other churches. Scientology seems to operate like the US government.
Ah; that's the ticket! The CoS in the US can be charged with treason; members are being asked to pledge allegiance to a separate political entity and the CoS takes on the roles of government for any citizens.
And just like the US: once you're a citizen, you can never leave (except in exceptional circumstances)....
Then again, the US has Utah, so this may not work.
Unlike the common Mormon mythology, there were real reasons that they were driven out of Nauvoo, and later Beaver Island, Michigan, and it's not because they were of a different faith. The reasons for expulsion include: theft, fraud, arson, kidnapping, piracy, rustling, poaching, and suspected murder. Much of this had to do with their 'Doctrine of the Consecration of Goods', which essentially said that god created everything, they were god's chosen people, so any natural resource could be taken by any Mormon from any gentile. Nauvoo also had Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Holly Rollers, and a small group of Jews, who had no problems with their other neighbors.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I don't know about that. Scientology, for all its ills and faults, doe not try to subjugate women. LDS, on the other hand, thrives as a result of it.
CoS does try to subjugate women -- it's just equal opportunity and attempts to subjugate everyone else too.
In all fairness, the collapse of various of those governments were caused by the invasion of mercenaries hired by the popes (and anti-popes).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
That is completely different to the atrocities of the CoS or even Christendom. There is no single or main authority of Buddhism that dictates how the religion should be practice. There are popular ones sure. Religion in on itself cannot avoid being used by people for their own agendas whether it is a military junta in a third world country or a fringe population in a communist sovereignty.
There is a big difference between religions like Buddhism where it gets twisted and abused and used as a façade by people versus ones like CoS where the founders are the ones making it up to further their insidious personal goals or even one like the official authorities of the Catholic Church today which knowingly harbours and protects paedophiles (such as in Australia recently where it is uncovered that they have knowingly done so in the past 20 years)
Hooray!
Battling them is like battling moles in a really big lawn.
Time to shut them down for good.
Except that according to Harlan Ellison, L. Ron Hubbard - a science fiction writer - was told to start a religion as a joke, and was even given ideas, which he later applied, by his fellow writers.
Also, I don't think such a shady organization can be victim of FUD.
It was an inevitable failure. You can't see a yarmulke under a turban.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The other responder to your post is clearly more knowledgable about Mormon underwear than I am. However, I did want to correct one misconception.
I didn't say it was wrong to make fun of cultural or religious dress. I said it was dumb.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I can totally buy the claim that it provides protection against temptation. Not protection from being tempted, of course, but protection from giving in.
Under normal circumstances, nobody can successfully tempt you to do what you believe is morally wrong unless you choose to participate. Some recovering alcoholics use a talisman (e.g. a piece of jewelery or a tattoo in a place they regularly see) to be constantly reminded to stay sober. I can see how that would work.
I'm not sure what "protection from evil" means in this context, though. Whether or not it would work would probably depend on the kind of evil we're talking about. However, "protection from evil" might also be a jargon term with a lot of cultural understanding behind it.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
"On the other hand, "Church of Christ, Scientist" appears to have a self-deluded founder, rather than a malicious one. That doesn't undo the damage she's done, but they aren't noteworthy"
Thanks for the post. Most forget about these particular flavor of nuts. For those not familer, they don't believe in the use of medicine, and instead think that prayer will cure them. We're talking colds to cancer.
A number of children and adults have died from curable issues because of this quackery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ,_Scientist
Opiate of the masses, makes the typical 'church goer' not care about knowing what they are supposed to be believing. They'll show up to church once a week, socialize, get their entertainment in, then go home and watch football. Sure some go the extra step of bible study groups but they just get a different sort of brainwashing.
In the Gingrich era he managed to saddle the IRS investigations unit with the requirement that the highest priority for investigation was people claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, while at the same time squeezing their budget. The effect was that a unit that previously returned a large multiple of its budget back to the Treasury ended up at barely a break-even level, and complex investigations became almost impossible to conduct. Not sure it that was ever fixed, considering the subsequent political environment I rather doubt it.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
AC, So you've posted a quote from one person, that is based on hearsay. And you've made an innuendo that because he wrote fiction that anything he does must be suspect. So how does that elevate you from the level of FUD exactly?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
If successful, that would put an end to all jokes at Belgium's expense. Sorry, Monty P, there would then be nothing BETTER to call someone than Belgian.
Another reason for the IRS losing its effectiveness was the passage of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in July, 1998 (during the Gingrich/Clinton years of control of Washington). The IRS was accused of conducting abusive investigations, and as a result of the Act, the burden of proof for some IRS enforcement actions shifted from the taxpayer to the IRS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irs#Criticism. However, historically the enforcement of taxes, especially personal income taxes, is a tremendously expensive and energy-draining burden on any government. Modern governments would be wise to look at some of the ideas for alternative tax measures, such as flat or national sales taxes. Digital alternatives to large and expensive bureaucracies, such as the "government as a service" model of governing, have tremendous potential to make future forms of government far more efficient and make tax burdens less burdensome for individual citizens.
The first time I saw a yarmulke I thought it a very sensible garment for male-pattern baldness. Certainly much better than a toupee.
The Law of Consecration did not (and does not) permit church members to forcibly take property from anyone, church member or not. While we do believe that God created everything and thus everything belongs to God, we do not believe that "any natural resource could be taken by any Mormon from any gentile", nor was this ever a doctrine of the Church.
There are probably as many thieves among Mormons as among any other group of people, but the Church has never authorized or approved of theft, fraud, arson, kidnapping, piracy, murder, etc.
Evidence to the contrary would be gladly examined.
It's funny that people point at the Mountain Meadows massacre as "proof" that Mormons commonly killed people of other faiths. See, that massacre was carried out by a small group of extremists who were *not* authorized to do any such thing, and in addition, such an act is and always has been quite clearly prohibited by church doctrine. (Self-defense is not, but the Mountain Meadows massacre could not be considered self-defense by any rational person.)
But even if it *had* been authorized -- and again, it was not -- pointing to one isolated incident would not prove that such behavior was common. If it was indeed common for Mormons to kill non-Mormons merely for not being Mormon, shouldn't you be able to point to many examples, not just one?
Wouldn't you say that such behavior would undermine the missionary effort we have, from the very beginning, put so much work into?
(Yes, I'm Mormon, but please focus on my logic, not on my choice of religion.)
I don't understand why people insist that the Trinity doctrine is what makes a religion Christian. Mormons believe that it is only through the atonement of Jesus Christ that all mankind may be saved. Isn't *that* what makes a person Christian?
I don't think Shavano is saying that merely calling oneself "Christian" is sufficient; instead, he is saying that calling oneself a worshipper of Christ is sufficient. He is not rendering the term "Christian" meaningless, he is just defining it differently than you apparently define it.
We Mormons believe that both Jesus Christ and his Father are God (or gods, if you prefer), and that Jesus Christ is the literal son of the Father; in addition, we believe that they each have physical, tangible bodies of flesh and bone. (People who believe in the Trinity must necessarily believe that there is at least one physical body involved, because Christ had one after his resurrection, so believing that the Father has one too should not seem too much of a stretch.)
The *actual* difference between our belief and the Trinity doctrine is that we do not include a self-contradictory assertion that they are somehow both separate beings and the same being at once. Instead, we believe that the Father and the Son are separate beings who are one in purpose, that is, they work together in perfect unity. (This has the added benefits of being logically self-consistent, and of not contradicting anything Christ said during his ministry; I can give examples if you wish, but perhaps that would be best done via e-mail so as not to take this thread too far off topic.)
But the real question is, why does believing one or the other affect whether one is Christian? In practice, both beliefs lead to the same basic behavior: we worship the Father in the name of Christ, and believe that through Christ's atonement we can return to live in their presence.
Can you articulate exactly why it matters whether they are the same being and yet not the same being, or whether they are two beings (Father and Son) who are perfectly united in purpose? Why, exactly, does my belief disqualify me in your eyes from being Christian, despite the fact that I believe Christ is the only path to salvation? (This is a serious question; I've never gotten a response to it other than "it just matters!".)
(For the sake of simplicity I omitted the Holy Ghost from my above comments. The Holy Ghost is included in the standard view of the Trinity; Mormons consider the Holy Ghost a third, separate personage of spirit, who does not possess a physical body as the other two do. In either case, the Holy Ghost serves the same function. However, I do not think this is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand.)
only God's sacrifice of Himself could atone for all sins for all time
FWIW Mormons (myself included) would agree with a slight tweak of that statement:
Only God's sacrifice of a perfect being could atone for all sins for all time.
As God's Son, Christ was perfect, and was therefore capable of filling that role. Abraham's (aborted) sacrifice of his son Isaac was a rather straightforward foreshadowing of God's sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ.
Maniciheans believed Jesus was divine and was the Son of God. That's Christian enough for me.
I think people get hung up defining a narrow scope of beliefs to define Christianity because they are a Christian and a lot of Churches have a "salvation by faith" doctrine so they think that people are saved by believing the right thing about Jesus and whatever they believe is (by definition) the right thing. So if other people believe quite a bit differently then that's not the right thing and believing in not the right thing won't save you.
But that it is a wrong way to think about things when you're classifying religions. Christianity is big tent and it's much bigger than you have been led to believe. It's distinguishing features are belief that Jesus (that dude who lived early in the 1st century and got himself crucified, was supremely holy and you can somehow leverage that holiness to get to Heaven. Some Christians thought of him as a supreme prophet who got the whole and final Truth. Some thought of him as a man who was enlightened and had special secret transformative knowledge and he passed that along to his disciples. Some thought he was a divine being who appeared to people as a human being and lived on Earth but was never really human. Some thought he was both human and divine, but there were arguments over how this broke down. Of those who thought Jesus was divine, some thought he was part of God and some thought he was a subordinate God. Then there's the Holy Spirit. The Eastern and Western churches had a schism over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the father or from the father AND the son. Some think it's another subordinate god. Some people think Jesus is the begotten son of God and some think he's an unbegotten god co-equal with the father....
The variations go on and on. And on. My point is, given the HUGE variety of Christian beliefs from which the particular form of modern Western Christianity you're comfortable with is distilled, it doesn't make sense to draw a line around "Christians" that doesn't include Mormons.
I don't understand why people insist that the Trinity doctrine is what makes a religion Christian
It's not the Trinity doctrine, it's monotheism. When you say:
"The *actual* difference between our belief and the Trinity doctrine is that we do not include a self-contradictory assertion that they are somehow both separate beings and the same being at once. Instead, we believe that the Father and the Son are separate beings "
You basically ditch monotheism. The self-contradictory assertion is necessary to preserve the monotheistic nature of the religion while retaining the concept of Jesus as Son of God.
As for logic, well... I could point out a great many Mormon doctrines that are not just logical, but known outright to be falsehoods (starting with the infamous translations). Similarly, Christians also have many more self-contradictory doctrines themselves, depending on denomination (e.g. Calvinist "total depravity").
Why, exactly, does my belief disqualify me in your eyes from being Christian, despite the fact that I believe Christ is the only path to salvation? (This is a serious question; I've never gotten a response to it other than "it just matters!".)
As noted above, it's because this straddles the thin line between monotheism and polytheism. There's no moral judgement here - I'm not a Christian - I just like my neat classifications.
Dont forget Judaism as its where they ripped christianity from to create their own cult
it's not like Judaism was their sole source. They also added God having a kid, a dash of gnosticism, a quart of Zoroastrianism, a pagan-inspired virgin birth, two cups of demonic possession and a side Holy Spirit channeling. Whip until guilty. Roast at 425F for all eternity. Serve when Jesus comes back.
Maniciheans believed Jesus was divine and was the Son of God. That's Christian enough for me.
The two salient questions are:
1. Did they believe that Jesus is God?
2. Did they believe that he is the one and only God, omnipotent and omniscient?
The answer to #1 is yes. The answer to #2 is no - they were dualist.
In Mormon belief it's a bunch of gods with Yahweh in charge. At least that's my understanding of their position.
We believe that Yahweh is the same being as Christ, which is to say that we believe it was Jesus who acted as the God of the Old Testament. (It helps that Jesus said so himself in the New Testament, and that Isaiah said so in the Old.) We believe that it is not Christ/Yahweh who we are supposed to worship, but rather his Father (sometimes referred to as Elohim).
So in the sense that we believe there exist multiple omnipotent, perfect beings, yes, we believe there is more than one god. However, we believe that there is only one God whom we should worship, that is, we are to worship God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. (I realize elsewhere in this thread I said Mormons worship Christ. I tend to get sloppy with the specifics of this in most contexts, because it's generally not relevant.)
In the end I suppose it depends on how you define "monotheistic", that is, whether it precludes belief in the existence of other gods, or whether it requires belief in the existence of only a single God. Personally I don't worry about how people label me in this regard ;)
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread just now, I guess that depends on how you define monotheism. I would define it as the worship of one and only one God, which is a definition that fits Mormons; we worship God the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ. (Technically speaking, Mormons do not worship Christ; Christ is instead the vehicle of our salvation, which matches what is taught in the New Testament.)
I obviously believe I am both monotheistic and Christian, because I worship one and only one God, and I believe that it is only through Christ that I may be saved. As far as I am concerned, that is what matters.
If your definition of "monotheistic" requires the belief in the existence of one and only one god, then I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree :)
So, to clarify, in Mormonism, Jesus is a God, but is not worshipped?
I agree that it is a matter of definition. That said, "monos-theos" - "single god" - has the traditional definition implying existence, not worship. For what you describe, we have a different word - monolatrism (literally "monos-latreia", "single worship").
I could point out a great many Mormon doctrines that are not just logical, but known outright to be falsehoods (starting with the infamous translations).
I actually would be interested in such examples; I have studied many supposed contradictions in Mormon doctrine, and in most cases thus far, I have found that the apparent contradiction is caused because the person suggesting it is choosing a specific interpretation for some verse of scripture, and insists that said verse does not allow for any other interpretation. Other problems people have with Mormon doctrine come down to incorrect information about what Mormons believe, differences of opinion, conflicting hearsay from 150 years ago, and so on.
I have, after many years of study, concluded that my religion's teachings are logically self-consistent (and true, mostly for other reasons); this does not mean, however, that I would refuse to accept evidence to the contrary, if it actually is evidence to the contrary. All I ask is to be given the opportunity to actually figure out whether it is, without anyone telling me that if I come to some other conclusion I'm deceiving myself. Which is to say, I don't like people going into these kinds of discussions with no intention of allowing me to show them flaws in their reasoning, because it proves they're not interested in finding truth, just in demolishing their version of my beliefs.
(Again, in the interest of not derailing the thread further I would prefer to have that conversation via e-mail. I promise not to argue, though I would appreciate it if you allow me to provide resolutions to apparent contradictions if I can. Please don't just link me to some random anti-Mormon website, I've most likely already read it.)
So, to clarify, in Mormonism, Jesus is a God, but is not worshipped?
Correct. (Scroll down to the paragraph preceded by the heading "We worship the Father and him only and no one else".)
I can accept the definitions you've given, however I fail to see why it matters whether Mormons are monotheistic or monolatristic when deciding whether we're Christian. Regardless of whether we're technically Christian according to the definitions you've provided (and if it weren't even more off topic I could show how monolatrism actually is taught in the Bible) we're most definitely Christians in practice -- which is to say, we do our best to live our lives according to Christ's teachings, and we believe that it is only through Christ that we can be saved.
Isn't that relevant when considering whether it is reasonable for us to call ourselves Christian?
Well, all definitions are ultimately subjective, and dictionaries generally go with the majority viewpoint. My definition of "Christian" includes monotheism and treatment of Jesus as God - and so I don't consider LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses and most gnostics Christians. So far as I know, it is shared by most people - most certainly pretty much any Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant will not consider LDS to be a Christian church, and neither would most atheists...
That said, there is definitely a need for some more all-encompassing term that recognizes all churches that believe in the divinity of Jesus, regardless of his relationship to other entities etc. Ironically, semantically, "Christianity" is actually a perfect fit - unfortunately, it comes with all that historical baggage attached.
Fair enough. I trust you won't mind if I continue to call myself Christian, though, since there is no better term ;)
FWIW, of the nine relevant definitions for "Christian" at dictionary.reference.com, not a single one references the Trinity. The same is true for the five definitions of "Christianity".
The first definition for the adjective "Christian" is listed as "of, pertaining to, or derived from Jesus Christ or His teachings". The LDS Church most definitely fits that definition, regardless of the Trinity doctrine. Our doctrines are indisputably "of, pertaining to, or derived from Jesus Christ or His teachings", regardless of whether the rest of the Christian world agrees with our interpretation thereof.
Only if you don't think that all other religions are a con, too
In order to be a con, someone has to be after your money or other posessions. That fits both scientology and mormonism, but not most Christian faiths.
A con is simply an attempt to get you to believe something that isn't true. Ergo, every religion that has ever existed.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Thanks for clarifying things. By Christ being part of god, with the link to Isaiah, you mean the "I am" response from Christ?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
You are correct!
I was a bit unfair. By "true" Buddhism, I mean Zen Buddhism, which is akin to Nietzsche's existential nihilism. The traditional forms of Buddhism in East Asian countries are re-interpreted paternalism, like the family gods of the Roman citizens, very widespread across the world, however not actually a part of (zen) Buddhist philosophy.
This is an oversimplification, but there are no deities in Buddhism. This is contrary to the thinking where "Buddhist" states and wars exist, because they have a paternal deity figure.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
It would take an examination of the early history of northern Michigan. I have a very old copy of "A History Of The Grand Traverse Bay Area", written in the 1880s by an elderly gentleman who was present for much of the early settlement and who interviewed other early settlers. When Strang (who was Smith's designated successor) brought the Mormons who were smart enough not to follow Young to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan they began a reign of terror never equaled by any of the local Indian tribes. Entire families went missing while their boats and wagons showed up in the hands of Strang's followers. The courts, controlled by Strang, became a joke, and to add insult to injury Strang appointed himself to the state legislature. Finally the bastard was assassinated and the locals drove the worst offenders off the Island in a rather vile sort of pogrom.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
that massacre was carried out by a small group of extremists who were *not* authorized to do any such thing
This fact is also commonly know. I was indeed pointing out the singular event as counter argument to balance the aggressive tone of the parent.
The idea that catholics "...want you to think and believe that Vatican City always is and always has been considered a state..." is your myth. The Lateran Treaty is no secret. Maybe concern yourself with yourself where making shit up is concerned.
I think that the major problem here is that there's an infinite number of fantastic things one can believe in. I don't see any reason to put belief in lack of higher-power on a pedestal. To me, it's simply a definition of a sane, rational person. Just as one doesn't believe in Santa Claus, tooth fairy, pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and any number of popular fantasies.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yes, that is the quote I was referring to. (I realize many people interpret it differently.)
Maybe this is just me, but making fun of Mormon underwear seems to me just as dumb as making fun of the hijab, yarmulke, Sikh turban, or pocket protector.
OK, I've never worn a pocket protector, but you get my point I hope.
No, actually I don't see your point at all. Are any of those clothing items supposed to provide the wearer with hidden magical protections against evil? The Mormons' magic underwear is not worn so much as a public symbol of faith or modesty as it is a literal magical talisman. It's like a religious tin foil hat. It deserves all the ridicule it gets.
In truth, there wasn't a designated successor; there was a period of confusion among Church members for that very reason. This is why some Church members did not want to follow Brigham Young; many felt that the next prophet should be someone in Joseph Smith's family. At any rate, so far as I am aware, Strang was never a leader in the Church, and in fact, he had only been a member of the Church for four months before Joseph Smith was killed. At least the other "contenders" for Church leadership were already leaders in the Church, and had been for years. The only evidence Strang produced was a letter allegedly written by Joseph Smith appointing him to the office. Only a small subset of Church members followed Strang.
If you compare Strang's actions to the actual doctrines taught by Joseph Smith, you will see that he did not live by them, at least not after Joseph Smith's death. Additionally, the things he taught after that schism were outright contradictions of what Joseph Smith had taught. It is entirely possible that Strang taught what you have described, when he taught his people the Law of Consecration, but if so, it is not something Joseph Smith ever taught, and so not representative of Mormon beliefs at any point in time.
Insisting that Strang's teachings were representative of Mormonism as a whole is rather like saying that the beliefs of Lutherans are representative of Catholicism, merely because the former branched off from the latter and they use the same source material.
So, I fully concur with your opinion of Strang's actions, but you should understand that they were not representative of the things taught by Joseph Smith.
If memory serves, that's in John, in which case it's consistent with John's Christ being of divine origins.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Getting rid of your citizenship is piss easy, you need to have somewhere else to go and if you've got more than two million in assets they'll take capital gains as if you sold all of them today and if course you have to be square with the IRS, but once you've got that sorted it's a formal declaration at an embassy or consulate. Heck if you take an office requiring an oath you lose it automatically.
Of course if what you want is to renounce your citizenship to avoid taxes or start in the us without the obligations of a citizen, you're but otherwise it's really easy. You cab never get it back of course, but you want out, just get citizenship somewhere else and expatriate.
The 'small subset' was about a third of the church membership. I don't expect to convince a believer, so what is YOUR take on why the people of Nauvoo drove the Mormons out? If it didn't have anything to do with the charges brought against their leadership and the were willing to tolerate local communities of Jews, Mennonites, and Holy Rollers why did the Mormons have to go?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
According to Wikipedia, around 12,000 initially followed Strang (which probably was about a third of the church), but most left Strang's church before his death. I would suppose that they realized his teachings did not reflect those of Joseph Smith. I stand corrected... sort of.
Why did mobs continually chase Mormons out of town? Why were the early Christians persecuted by Jews and Romans alike? I don't have these answers.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Mormons were indeed thieves of the worst sort. Would that justify the arson, violence, and murder perpetrated against the Mormons? Since when was vigilante "eye for an eye" justice ever acceptable under American law? It's certainly not acceptable under Christ's teachings. We have a justice system for this exact reason.
Furthermore, if Joseph Smith was such an encourager of nefarious deeds, why would he voluntarily turn himself over to the courts on numerous occasions? Why would the charges continually be dismissed? If his nefarious behavior was so commonly known, why would the people have needed to turn to "mob justice" in order to get rid of Joseph Smith in the end, rather than letting the courts do their jobs?
History does not corroborate the idea that the Mormons were intolerant thieves, arsonists, and so on.
It is interesting to note that when Thomas Reynolds became governor of Missouri, he began efforts to extradite Joseph Smith to Missouri for alleged crimes that Thomas, as a Missouri judge, had dismissed before his ascension to the governorship. It seems likely that he did so due to pressure from the citizens who elected him; it does not seem likely that he simply changed his opinion once he was no longer a judge.
when was vigilante "eye for an eye" justice ever acceptable under American law?
Whenever the local courts were unable to dispense justice in the manner the local populace felt was appropriate. Dunno about Missouri, but in northern Michigan the judges that were not mormons were sufficiently cowed by threats of violence that any charges were dismissed before even being heard. Rural frontier = no witnesses for miles.
Why were the early Christians persecuted by Jews and Romans alike?
Heresy and sedition, respectively, for the most part. Learn some history. Not even vaguely similar to the situation in Nauvoo or Beaver Island.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Whenever the local courts were unable to dispense justice in the manner the local populace felt was appropriate.
I said "under American law". American law does not permit civilians to mete out their own death penalty just because they are not satisfied with the conclusions of the justice system.
Heresy and sedition, respectively, for the most part. Learn some history. Not even vaguely similar to the situation in Nauvoo or Beaver Island.
You don't think the Mormons were persecuted for heresy? If not, then you clearly don't know anything about Mormon beliefs.
When I said "I don't have the answers", I meant that I cannot understand why people would resort to physical violence merely because someone believes something different. (In some parts of the world, this is known as "intolerance".)
See, Mormons believe that God the Father and Jesus Christ are two distinct beings, each with their own physical bodies. Even now most people don't consider us Christian, for that fact alone, regardless of the fact that we indeed believe in Christ; two hundred years ago, this idea was even more alien to the mostly Protestant Americans than it seems now to the modern Christian world. Even in Joseph Smith's teen years, before he ever mentioned any other doctrine or even the Book of Mormon, he faced persecution for the mere fact that he claimed to have seen God and Christ, and that they were two separate beings.
But no, even though heresy has historically been the excuse for a wide variety of persecution and violence, and even though the Mormons believed something that the majority of the Christian world still considers heresy, heresy could not possibly be the reason that the early Mormons were driven out of their homes time and again.
Even later, when the Mormons went so far as to settle in a desert so that nobody would bother them and so that non-Mormons would have no reason to drive them out, the number one reason that their state (in its various proposed forms) was not permitted entry into the United States was their practice of polygamy. Not a history of thievery or piracy or arson or violence or murder, but because they practiced polygamy and the rest of America viewed the practice as immoral. That didn't die down until years after Mormons renounced the practice.
(Interestingly, despite the widespread acceptance of both the homosexual lifestyle and the sexually-active-but-unmarried-heterosexual lifestyle, and even the tacit acceptance of married-but-unfaithful behavior, Americans still view polygamy as immoral -- even though unmarried but sexually active heterosexual Americans probably have a far larger number of sexual partners than polygamists. Nope, having sex with lots of people is fine, but committing to more than one sexual partner in the form of marriage is not. Go figure.)
Mormons have been persecuted for their religious beliefs, for the most part. Learn some history.
Time to move to Belgium. :-)
SCNR.
Ulli
Disclaimer: planning to move there anyway. ;-)
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
I know, but the grant parent post used the term this generically, so it was too good an opportunity to ignore. Anyway if the point the grand parent post was making was that only a few religions have been aggresive and evil, pointing out multiple aggresive pagan traditions is a very relevant comeback. Very few (or possibly no) religions have ever _not_ been used for bad purposes, no matter how pure they started out.
Still, it seems telling that the people of Nauvoo never felt it necessary to drive out Jews, Mennonites or Holy Rollers (Beaver Island didn't have any of those three groups).
I have to laugh at the Mormon church's utterly hypocritical stand on polyandry, too. One man with multiple wives is (was) fine, but one woman with multiple husbands is a perversion.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
There's more to the polygamy issue than you make it seem. The practice of polygamy was never "OMG LOTS OF WOMEN FOR SEX", and in many cases it wasn't even about having more children. For example, by all accounts, though Joseph Smith had some dozen wives, the only one he ever slept with was his first wife, Emma. Other men were asked to marry and provide for widowed women who had lost their first husbands.
Also note that even among the early Mormons only a subset of men were asked to marry multiple women; it was not a general commandment for everyone. Furthermore, if polygamy is ever reinstated by the LDS Church as a practice here on earth, I do not believe the Church would mandate it, nor do I believe most Church members would practice it if given the option.
Among Mormons, marriage (when performed under the appropriate authority) is considered eternal. We do not use the phrase "until death do us part" in our marriage ceremonies. We believe it is better for a man to be married to multiple wives than for a woman to go for eternity without a husband.
I'll speculate on why God allowed it one way (polygamy) but not the other (polyandry), but before I do I want to make it absolutely clear that the remainder of this post is my own speculation and is in no way representative of official LDS doctrine.
One possibility is that more women than men are going to make it into heaven. In that case, assuming there is some benefit to being married in heaven, it would be better for some men to have multiple wives, so that all women can be married.
Another: it might be possible for married couples to have some manner of offspring in heaven. (Note that I am not referring to married couples becoming gods, I am merely speculating that since it is possible for married couples to have children during this life, perhaps it is possible in heaven as well.) If this is the case, then polygamy makes sense because a man can have children with multiple women at once, but polyandry does not because a woman can only bear the child of one man at a time; so, for the purposes of bearing children, polyandry offers no benefit over monogamy.
Again, this is my own speculation, and is not representative of LDS doctrine in any way.
At any rate, laugh if you wish. I believe God is omniscient, and I also believe that God has defined certain specific things regarding the practice of marriage. How can I argue with God? (That's rhetorical, please don't bother trying to convince me that I'm deceiving myself.) Experience has taught me on many occasions that God is much smarter than me, so I'm willing to trust Him on this.
laugh if you wish.
No, I don't generally laugh at people's religious beliefs, something which is as important to people's self-image as religion deserves tolerance at least. (I do have to admit chuckling on occasion though.) Yours has been an interesting viewpoint to hear.
I do laugh churches though, especially their leadership since they are more often than not their hypocrisy is visible to everyone but their followers.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin