If I had heard of any of that, I would have bid my friend sayonara a lot sooner. It was only because of that lack that I stuck around for a short while. Mormons didn’t really seem all that different from Catholics, Quakers, or Methodists. They went to church, they led a good life, they were nice people. It was only later that my eyes were opened to the absurdities.
An article relevant to the OP: “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon”. To answer the question “How has Mormonism survived modern scrutiny,” he simply never scrutinized it. When he was a teenager and it fit his social needs, he believed. When he outgrew it and it all felt kinda silly, he stopped believing. He still appreciates the friendly Mormon culture, but has no Mormon belief. And anecdotally, he describes himself as non-Mormon and ex-Mormon, but unless he has resigned in writing he is still tallied as one of the 14 million.
Sounds like what I read a bout Mormon missionaries in London (baptizing drunks-in exchange for a fish and chips lunch). "Chip 'em and dip 'em!
Deleted. Already addressed in other posters’ posts above.
[quote=“Musicat, post:239, topic:546841”]
[li]The idea of pre-Columbian contact with America[/li][/QUOTE]
I have to laugh at anybody who thinks that this is a wacky idea these days.
Well, we’re not talking about any old contact. We’re talking about the specific claims made by the LDS religion. Not sure it’s any whackier than claims made by other religions*, but to us non-religious types, it’s pretty darn whacky.
*That a Catholic priest is literally turning bread into the actual flesh of Jesus Christ, for example.
From Palestine? In biblical times?
On an unrelated note, I noticed that someone has been putting up hidden camera footage of the Mormon temple ceremony on YouTube. It was only a matter of time.
The upshot is that all of you can be as bored as we were! (Mormons have to sit through the exact same ceremony thousands of times over the course of their lives.) I assume they can’t upload the movie portions of the ceremony due to copyright restrictions, but there is a pretty clear video of the series of secret handshakes and passwords that supposedly you have to give the angels to get into heaven.
You also get a look at the unfortunate outfits everyone has to wear: white robes, green aprons, and baker’s hats for the men.
Unfortunately, the guy who uploaded the videos is a total douchebag, though.
The guy who posted that video is a WONJCT who thinks the Mormon church is going to run the country. Shades of the loons surrounding the attacks on JFK.
I agree. That’s why I called him a douchebag. Frankly, he’s lucky the Secret Service isn’t knocking on his door. But he’s the only one with footage (for now) so I’ll have to ignore his idiotic comments under the videos.
I should point out to people who are curious that the ceremony isn’t very exciting (they cut the only exciting part out 20 years ago), but if you’re dying of curiosity and the transcripts online aren’t good enough, you can see what it actually looks like.
For anyone else who has no idea what this means, I googled it and ended up at a thread started by Monty. Broadly speaking it means conspiracy theorist - if you want to know exactly what it means, you’ll have to google it yourself as I don’t wanna spoil the suprise without Monty’s permission!
Ok, I’ve just watched the video. That is blatantly nicked from masonic cermony.
Do mormons acknowledge the link?
Yes, kind of. But it is never brought up in church, and I had no idea for a long time. I mean, everyone knows Joseph Smith was a Mason but you’re not supposed to talk about the temple ceremony outside of the temple, even to other Mormons. Unless you read about it online or have someone tell you, it is possible to be a temple-going Mormon and not to realize the Mason connection.
The underwear (garments) that you have to wear also has Masonic symbols sewn into it, too, and I remember being rather upset when I first discovered that they were just Masonry symbols and not some special symbols that God invented just for us.
Really? I’ll be stunned if it turns out I coined the term. I really thought it was something I’d picked up from this very board. Feel free to spoil.
Awww, come on. Now I’m really curious.
Google confirms that Monty coined the term, and then he pretended that everyone else was an idiot for not already knowing it. And as has already been established in other threads on the SDMB, anyone who thinks that the Oath of Consecration is a conflict of interest for a POTUS candidate is a conspiracy theorist. It doesn’t matter that no actual conspiracy is posited. In Montyland, CT is an acronym for Conflict of Interest.
Okay, I was wrong. The term was first used in 2008 by a poster named johnhenry at koreabridge.com, by a Mormon with ties to Korea whose posting style is remarkably similar to … drumroll for suspense … Monty’s!
That would be because I post on that site as johnhenry.
By the way, the CT posited is the supposed conflict of interest.
Another by the way: Maybe (although I doubt it) I’m the first to use the abbreviations for it, but I’m certainly no the first to use the term Whacked-Out Nut-Job Conspiracy Theorist. Here endeth the hijack (I hope).
The guy hyping the temple video, alias Newnamenoah, claims to also have a video of Romney taking the Oath of Consecration. In response to criticism that the Secret Service was going to be all over him for stalking a candidate, he claims to have called the Secret Service and introduced himself. I suspect he’s full of shit, and I hope he doesn’t get into legal troubles for entering private property under false pretenses and then violating the owners’ privacy. We’ll just have to wait until late September (when the Romney video supposedly goes viral) to find out.
Conspiracy theory or not, communist or not, the video (if it exists) will make a lot of voters uneasy. It will show Romney in white robes with a baker’s cap and green apron, behind closed doors consenting to an oath to participate in Joseph Smith’s failed experiment in socialism. Here’s the oath:
Whether it’s fair or not to point out the absurdities in Romney’s religion, Mormonism has certainly been getting a lot more “modern scrutiny” in the past 4 years.
I missed it, what was the exciting thing that they stopped doing 20 years ago? Was it the in-temple annointing of oils?