Well, it’s not quite as simple as different rules for people in different stages of life. God first says X happened some time in the unverifiable past. Everyone talks about how great X was. What a miracle! Scientific data shows X is impossible and never happened. Oh, did we say X? No, no, God meant Y. He always meant Y. We must have just been confused and said X when really we meant Y all along. Go Y! How great is God that He made Y happen! Yay! [Fifty years pass…] Go Z! I don’t know that we ever believed Y. We’ve always known that Z was the absolute truth. Z! Z! Z!
If this (my bolding) were correct, then any such church would lose all credibility. God talks, but they get it wrong. What then are they getting right? Or was it correct the first time and the new information is wrong?
Let’s look at an example. Brigham Young said that God came down to the earth as Adam. That has been renounced by later prophets. If Brigham got that wrong, then what else did he get wrong? The best hitters don’t reach .400, but one would hope that a prophet had a better batting average, otherwise just save your time and flip a coin.
Spencer W. Kimball, the prophet from my youth, gave a talk in the 70s, saying that women shouldn’t waste their time going to college, they should raise kids instead. Part of the secret temple ceremony was, up until ’95, that women had to obey their husbands. That has been changed, and the requirement for barefoot women in the kitchen is no longer officially taught.
Of course conditions are different. Society has changed and the knee-jerk conservative reaction to suppressing women was no longer acceptable. The world changed, and finally the church noticed and made minimum efforts to conform.
What’s interesting is that God is consistently, without fail, behind the social or scientific curve. Polygamy is suspended when the Church property was threatened to be taken away. Blacks were allowed full acceptance only when the tax exemption status was threatened. The fantastical tail of Indian origins surrendered to DNA testing.
And all of these were taught, in their day, as eternal truths. God said this and God said that. What I don’t understand, and I wish someone could explain the nature of God to me, is the failure to anticipate the near future. If I could see ahead that in 5 years time society would force an issue, I’d make an early change, just so people could tell I was a god. Why wouldn’t you?
OK, here’s a probably-trivial oddity I’m curious about:
Is there a Mormon cultural tradition of dislike of salamanders?
Only since 1985 or so.
I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but in case you’re not, salamanders only came on the scene in 1984 with Mark Hofmann’s forgery of an early Mormon historical document.
The most telling part about the whole tragedy is that the Tanners, notorious anti-Mormons, were the ones saying it was a fake (against their own interests), while all the supposed “prophets, seers, and revelators” were busy moving the goal posts and saying “salamanders really mean angels.”
Since this incident, salamanders have become a kind of short-hand for Mormon credulity. For example, there is a website called the Salamander Society which highlights problems with Mormon beliefs.
No, I wasn’t joking; it seemed that every so often I would catch some oblique reference to salamanders and Mormonism that left me puzzled. I suppose the most direct example I can think of offhand is Orson Scott Card’s note on his story “The Porcelain Salamander”, in which he states that he picked the title creature as an example of a “disgusting animal”.
On the flip side, the actual creature in the story is quite charming, so I have no idea what this means anyway.
Thanks for the info!
Shouldn’t this be the “Card card?”
/runs away
I remember hearing about salamanders when I was young (well before 1984). I don’t remember much about it. Vaguely remembered, there were always rumors that Joseph Smith had some really far out occult ideas including something about magic salamanders (as opposed to real salamanders found in nature).
It wasn’t treated by Mormons as anything to loath, then; it was just as another anti-Mormon screed that we could shrug off.
Per wikipedia:
So there you have it, a toad-like animal. For the record, despite Mormonism Unvailed’s early date, I’m not aware of any reliable sources that back the toad story. Part of Mark Hoffman’s genius was that he knew exactly where Mormonism was vulnerable, and crafted forgeries that plausibly fit in those vulnerabilities. What is clear is that Joseph Smith was a very shady character prior to founding Mormonism, claiming he could see buried treasure with his seer stone and taking money in exchange for locating these treasures. He was convicted of fraud due to these activities in 1826.
Of course, that’s saying nothing of his shady post-church founding activities, including marrying his associates’ wives, marrying a 14-year-old, and the Kirtland Safety Society. There’s so much to choose from!
Wow. That is truly nasty. You truly think that promises elicited from a child who has been propagandized his whole life should be binding? I sense much darkness you you.
As a native Las Vegan, I can say this:
I think it has something to do with the large Mormon population in Las Vegas and the fact that 8 out of 10 Las Vegas jobs are, naturally, in the gaming industry (and the others being low-paying service industry jobs with terrible hours, not something particularly appealing to a pious religious guy with a large family).
Question:
Why do Mormon familes always have a huge stock of surplus food and water at the ready? Again, as a Las Vegan I had MANY Mormon friends and their houses were always full of food and drink, but there were rules about what we could eat and drink and what we couldn’t. One friend’s family had huge stockpiles of bottled water that we couldn’t ever drink…even in the parching Vegas summer heat. It was so strange, that secret stash, but I didn’t want to offend my friends by asking what the hell it was.
That all said, I find Mormons to be particularly polite and friendly. I visited the LDS Church’s evening service once before my friend left on a mission to Honduras (he gave a speech) and everyone was very welcoming, though I made my views on religion known to everyone within earshot. Afterwards they let us all stay past closing to play b-ball on their indoor court!
Assuming that this thread doesn’t qualify as a zombie, I’d like to know how a missionary would respond to the following question: If a Jewish tribe migrated to central America, why didn’t they take wheels with them?
[moderating]
Let’s not resurrect this old zombie thread–we don’t know if the OP is still following it. Go ahead and ask questions in a new thread, please, and see where things go from there.
[/moderating]
Preparing for the zombie thread apocalypse?