Yes, they are, but all those petitions will go to the same Wizard.
The worship goes to the same God, is their idea. I’m having trouble getting this idea across, i’m really not sure how to put it. When praying, each of these groups will be invoking the name of a different God, but the idea is that all the prayers go to one God.
Ok, how about this. Do you believe that, when you, or a Muslim, or a Jew, prays, all those prayers go to a God which exists at least in part in the form of Jesus?
It doesn’t. Hence my pointing out specifically that it affects the spiritual meaning.
And yet you believe that something is being done to those baptised posthumously. You believe they are having something forced upon them. Thus the existence is relevant, since if there is no Spirit then nothing is being done to those dead.
But you have made such a presumption, by suggesting that those dead and then baptised are having something done to them. And as they aren’t affected by the physical, material anymore, what manner are you suggesting they are affected in other than the spiritual?
Again, why – because you say so? I understand that YOU believe that a different understanding of God implies worship of a different God, but I’m not following why you think I have to agree, or even care that that’s what you think. I’m not being dismissive, at least not intentionally, but other people’s beliefs are of interest to me in terms of expanding my knowledge of belief sets; they don’t interest me in terms of trying to decide whether they are right or wrong. I only have to decide which one is right for me, and I’ve already made that decision.
But this is factually incorrect, as I have already said. They don’t invoke the name of a different God, they invoke the name of the same God. This isn’t a matter of what I believe, it’s what the vast majority of Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe.
Do I believe that? Sure. I’m a Christian, and a Trinitarian. You would get a very different answer from a Muslim or a Jew.
As a lukewarm Catholic, I feel no anger at what the mormons are doing. In fact, I think that the preservation of records is a laudable goal and I would go as far as to say that I would be an undercover agent if they ever needed records from my parish.
As to why I am not upset, my logic goes something like this:
1: Mormons do not believe in the 3-in-1
2: Catholics believe belief in the 3-in-1 is necessary for a valid baptism.
Therefore the baptism after death is not valid. Not valid=not a sacrament
This does remind of the bruhaha a few months ago when the Catholic Church said that if you were baptized with a nonstandard formula* in a catholic parish, then you needed to get rebaptized with the official one. The thing was that if you didn’t know for sure if you were baptized validly you were supposed to assume you were. I feel pretty comfortable stating that this and the records debacle shows that the issue for the Catholic Church, at least, is more political than theological.
*I.e. in the name of the Mother, the Child, and the Eternal Effluvium, etc.
I think I see what you’re getting at here. And my response is that you apparently also believe that something is being done to them, since you describe them as “those baptised posthumously.”
Well, then this is kind of my point. If you’re invoking the name of the God who exists in part in Jesus, then you invoke the name of a different God than a Muslim or a Jew. Surely “A God which exists in part as Jesus” and “A God which does not exist in part as Jesus” are two different Gods? All of your prayers may go to the same God, but they’re not all going to go the God all of you believe is the actual one, because they’re contradictory. As a Christian that believes in Jesus as God, and as a Christian that believes that all the prayers of the People of the Book go to the same God, would I be right in assuming that what you believe is that the prayers of Muslims and Jews actually go to the God which exists in part as Jesus? And would you agree that those who believe otherwise believe that your prayers likewise are actually going to a God that doesn’t exist as Jesus? That’s the difference i’m talking about - you all believe in there being one God, but you believe that one God is your God.
Whether or not the religion in question is correct has zero effect on the meaning a baptism has to those on Earth. I’m in agreement with you there, assuming i’m correctly getting what you mean. What i’m saying is that the truth of a religion does have an effect on the meaning a baptism has spiritually.
But your post to me looks like you do say that. “It is offensive to subject someone to a religious rite that is not their own and without their consent”. Since the person in question is dead, if they do not exist spiritually then they are being subjected to nothing at all. If they do not exist spiritually after death then they cannot be insulted - there is no them to be insulted.
You are presuming that this action is something which insults the dead, something to which they are subjected, against their will. That, to me, sounds like you are presuming that these things affect the dead.
Hoorah, perhaps my curse of unintelligibility is wearing off.
As it happens, I don’t; i’m describing them as that in terms of the hypothetical that people exist after death. I don’t personally believe in an afterlife. If there is no afterlife, then certainly I would consider there to be no people to be baptised.
First, as I’ve reiterated repeatedly, this is for many Christians, Jews, and Muslims simply incorrect. You can look up Abrahamic religions and/or “People of the Book” as easily as I can cite them to you. Second, this is incorrect as it pertains to my personal beliefs and the beliefs of my denomination. Again, you don’t get to tell me what I do, or what I believe.
There is only one God. Either I’m right about His aspects, or the Muslims are, or the Jews are. Some of us are in error, but none of us are worshiping a separate god. This is extremely important: these are monotheistic religions that do not admit of the existence of other gods, nor (for obvious reasons) do any of them admit they are the ones who are wrong about the details of the God we all hold in common.
Why does that mean they don’t go to the same God? Why does contradiction as to our separate understandings of God mean there is more than one god? All Christiams, Muslims, and Jews believe in an omnipotent omnibenevolent SINGLE God. There is only ONE.
It’s the SAME GOD. My believe in the divinity of Jesus and their disbelief in it does not mean we are worshipping separate Gods. It means either I’m wrong or they’re wrong; it doesn’t mean there are two gods.
Except that’s not what I mean. The attempt to baptize the dead certainly does have effect on those on Earth; it greatly offends some of them.
I have no idea what you mean by “spiritual meaning.” The only meaning we can give to a baptism or to its attempt is a meaning based on what we know in the here and now, and what is reasonable to predict based on what we know. Every thing else is hidden from us.
It is the ATTEMPT to baptize them, the RITUAL of baptizing them, that is insulting to the memory of the dead and to the living who feel that insult. The person who has died cannot choose whether or not they will be subjected to the ritual. In many cases, we have reason to strongly believe that the person who died would never in a million years agree to be subjected to the ritual, or have it performed in his or her name. That is offensive to those who believe that sacraments should not be performed without permission of the subject. And if you can’t get permission, you don’t do it. Honestly, I don’t know how much clearer I can be. Whether the person actually enjoys an afterlife is irrelevant. For those who find the practice objectionable, it’s either: “Grandma Ruth would have hated this if she were alive, which she’s not because I think she’s dust but still, I don’t like people doing ‘for’ her something she would not have wanted done if she was still alive” or “Grandma Ruth is still alive, in [limbo, purgatory, heaven, hell], and based on everything we know of her, she hates this.” If we can say – if we even suspect – that the person in question either does not want it done, or would not have wanted it done, then IMO doing it anyway is the problem.
The “some of us are in error” part is what i’m talking about. I get that you all believe in one god. I get that you believe that in actuality, while you may invoke the name of different Gods with different qualities, you believe you are all worshipping a single God. I’m just trying to point out that you all have different ideas on what qualities that one single God embodies. Like you say, some of you are in error about what you think he is.
Argh. I’m saying the opposite of that. I’m saying you believe they do all go to the same God, and i’m certainly not saying the contradictions mean there’s more than one.
Let me try it like this. Imagine instead of praying, people wrote letters to God. A Christian might address his “Jesus, Son of God, Heaven”. A Jew or a Muslim might address the letter quite differently. Now, all of you believe that - no matter which address might be on the letter - all of them will end up going to the same person, the same place. The true place. That there is only one God, and all these letters, though addressed differently, will go there.
However! The Christian believes that that one true address is the one he’s put down; the being he addresses is the one he’s written there. He believes all those letters will all go to “Jesus, Son of God, Heaven”. Likewise, a Jew believes all those letters go to the same place - but he believes that one place is how he addresses the letter.
Each believes the letters will go to the same being, the same address. But each believes that the address they’ve put down is the right one. The God is the same, but the concept of who and what that God is is different.
Please re-read. I said the truth of the religion has no affect on the meaning of baptism to those on Earth. If the religion is false? People will be upset. If the religion is true? People will be equally upset. You are saying it is the physical attempt that matters to those on Earth, and that alone, and i’m agreeing with you.
I’m not entirely sure how you can on one hand claim we cannot give any kind of spiritual meaning to a baptism, and then on the other claim baptism is an asking for God’s prescence and blessing, or that the ritual is a sacred one.
You’re listing reasons why the family of those dead, or those not yet dead, would be offended. I have already agreed that it is reasonable to be so. I am saying you have assumed insult - not just on behalf of those dead - but by those dead. If you’re now taking that back, that’s fine. If you’re saying I misread -
As meaning that it would be offering insult to the dead, then that’s fine, but I think it’s reasonable for me to have thought you meant the dead were being insulted along with the living.
Strictly speaking, in the Mormon scheme of things, God the Father (ie Elohim) is not the god of most other Christian sects. Jehovah/Yahweh/Jesus is a different god entirely, and though Jesus’ named is invoked in the Mormon baptism, the sacrament is not conferred through him (which is one of the reasons the Catholic church does not recognize the legitamacy of Mormon baptism).
Whether the LDS church is or isn’t polytheistic is another debate, but the god of the Mormon baptism is not your god.
But here’s what you actually wrote, with bolding added:
The first sentence implies that only a capricious and arbitrary God would punish people for something other people did. And yet your third sentence says God rewards people for something other people do (which could be seen as effectively punishing people for something other people don’t do). I don’t see how that’s any less capricious or arbitrary.
Strictly speaking, of the numerous Mormons I know, not one of them would agree with you about pretty much any detail in this. (And they would laugh openly at, or be appalled by, the idea that mormonism is polytheistic.)
But then I’m sure you know much more about what they believe than they do.
I can’t make any sweeping generalisation of what “they” believe, as “they” are probably less monolithic in their beliefs than you might think; I’m only explaining the doctrine as I understand it.
And as a Mormon, the idea of polytheism doesn’t appall me at all.
Then it seems reasonable to conclude the discussion. I’m not much interested in defending the quality or basis for the offensiveness any further than I already have. I also think at this point neither of us is saying anything new.
I always find pronouncements like this to be blackly amusing. I mean: As if that’s for you to say. As I’ve already said, I see no profit in declaring who is or is not “Christian.” It’s clear the Mormons consider themselves Christian (worshipping the same God) – Cite – and that’s good enough for me since at the end of the day I don’t actually care either way. I acknowledge there are many people who do not consider the LDS Christians, and while this is may be potentially irritating or hurtful to the LDS, I also note that the LDS considers itself the restoration of the “true” church of Jesus Christ (the rest of us being at best in error or at worst heretics), so the accusations as to who is or is not Christian, or right, or best, is hardly all on one side. I want no part of it. If you are a Mormon and you consider your faith not a Christian one, that’s your business, but surely you know many of your co-religionists would disagree. So maybe you should turn your attention to informing them of what they have to believe? You undoubtedly have more in common with them, religiously speaking, and more stake in their Error, than you do in me or mine.
And I have to correct something I said earlier: It appears the policy of my church (the United Methodist Church) is to require converts from the LDS to be baptized again because it does not consider the LDS to be within the “historic, apostolic tradition of Christian faith,” Whether that means they are not Christian just not “historic, apostolic Christian” is another question, one I don’t bother to answer because at the end of the day, I don’t really care. I’ll also let you know that my pastor, when I asked, said that he did not know that was the policy of the UMC, he would have assumed otherwise, but in our local church so far as he knew the issue had never come up.
Perhaps that is the current Catholic point of view. Historically, Pope Leo X seemed to have no problem with providing post-humus indulgences given the right price. It seems that “No sacraments for the dead” would be more of a protestant point of view than Catholic, what with indulgences being pretty much the last straw for Martin Luther and all. Note that this was much later in the history of the Catholic church than the subject LDS silliness is in their history. They’ve come around to treating black folk much better fairly recently, so there is reason to hope that these post-humus baptisms will someday go the way of polygamy.
I think it’s possible to believe that all religions are different ways of worshipping God, in whatever form He/She is. May not be a Christian belief, but I was always something of a Cafeteria Catholic.
That being said, I still find the concept of “rebaptism” disturbing. Not everyone believes as I do, and I’d still find offensive personally. Yes, I’ve said this before. I still feel the need to repeat it.
What about those who die for their particular faith, or are assassinated for the teachings of their faith? People considered saints in said particular religions?
I have a feeling that nothing will discourage people who keep proselytizing after you’re post-humus and no longer even doing the plants any good.
I can, however, envision a hilarious episode of Topper, in which George and Marian practice hijinks on hapless LDS who’ve entered their names into the Mormon Book of the Undead.
I hear tell that Mother Teresa and Pope John Paull II were rebaptised by Mormons, though supposedly Mother Teresa’s name was removed from the database later (she’ll be baaaack).
