I glanced at the numbers in wikipeida, which has a page for LDS membership using the Churches numbers, some of the membership rates of S. Pacific Islands are upwards of 25%, but the demographic information in each countries own wiki-page (which seem to have been compiled from gov’t surveys) are usually much smaller (though still much higher then anywhere else). Samoa, for example, has 30% LDS membership according to the Church, but only 12% according to the Census. Tonga goes from 45% claimed membership, but the gov’t census finds only 17%.
I suspect the explanation is as erdosain suggests, the LDS counts anyone who’s ever been baptized, but a lot of once baptized Samoans and the like don’t count themselves as Mormons
No, I took it as a bit on the ignorant side. Most Mormons live outside the US. I’ll just ignore your comment about knee-jerking since, in my opinion, it’s just your opinion and not really a stellar one at that.
But that’s my point. No religion survives modern scrutiny. They get by based on preying on those who refuse to apply modern scrutiny. In this instance, Mormonism survives because there’s no real difference in their level of crazy compared to other religions.
The level of literacy among the general populations at the time, and the recentness of Mormonism I think are the biggest differences. Many people kept personal journals or wrote letters on a regular basis in the 19th century. This is how you end up having 8 or 9 different versions of the First Appearance story that Joe Smith told at different times to multiple people who note it in their journal or in a letter to someone else. Read as a whole they’re all quite contradictory.
I don’t think they’re wildly different in level of crazy, but Mormonism does seem to be more easily falsifiable. Jesus or Mohammad may have been transparent cranks, but they lived far enough back that there isn’t much of a record regarding them from anyone who wasn’t already a follower. There’s a pretty wide host of accounts of more recent prophets, though, there are plenty of non-flattering contemporary accounts of Joseph Smith, Elrond Hubbard and Mary Baker Eddie, so there followers need an extra bit of ability to ignore some of the documentation anti-thetical to their faith.
Similarly, the events described in the Book of Mormon happened in a period that Joseph Smith didn’t really know much about, but we know much more about now. Smith apparently thought there were horses and sheep in the New World, that there were Jewish decendents alive here, things that archaelology has pretty well falsified. The writers of the Bible, on the other hand, had at least some knowledge of the times they were describing, and in some cases were just a few generations removed from those times, so at least the broad details match with other records and archaeological findings, or at least aren’t contradicted by them (or in the case of Exodous, are far back enough that a beliver can wave lack of evidence as simply the effect of few records surviving the relevant time period). The effect is that a Mormon believer has to put a little more work in ignoring archeology, while a Christian or Muslim can, at the least, accept the basic conclusions of the scholars in the field, and in some cases take comfort in the fact that history supports at least the broad strokes of the bible story, at least from the book of Kings on.
This is true. Mormon missionaries are the only door-to-door solicitors that I’d feel comfortable having over for dinner.
Anyway, I imagine that many members try to justify or just gloss over some of the more unsavory tales about their early leaders. There was a scene during the third season of Big Love where the family visits a Mormon historical site, and they meet a regular LDS family. Bill says something about Joseph Smith having a couple of dozen wives and the dad from the other family insists that most of them were simply widows that he was taking care of.
As an aside, I attended a Mormon church for a few years as a kid when my parents were exploring different faiths. We watched a lot of videos and heard many stories about the church’s early history, but never once did they say anything about polygamy. A couple of years later when I was in middle school, I noticed our history book had a blurb about how the church’s early leaders practiced polygamy. I was floored. I thought, “These people? No way. These are some of most conservative, Ned Flanders-like folk I know. There’s no way they’d be into something like THAT.”
As someone who spent two years as a missionary in Argentina, I can tell you this is generally true. Retention rates have historically been abysmal in Latin America. However, I don’t think Latin American Mormonism is a very good fit for this topic. The reason? None of the people I baptized in Argentina even knew that Mormons used to practice polygamy! If they stick with the religion, they’d eventually hear something vague about it, but very little. They simply don’t have access to the same information that we have whether due to language (very little scholarship on Mormonism has been translated into Spanish) or due to poverty (home internet access is still a work in progress for many Latin Americans). Modern scrutiny is dependent on a certain level of economic development. (Not that Latin America is THAT poor, but converts to religions almost always come from the lower economic rungs.)
I’d be interested to know whether they show “Big Love” on television in Latin America. That could very well be the beginning of this modern scrutiny for many people (even though the show focuses on Fundamentalist Mormons, not regular Mormons).
Considering that Christianity itself has survived as a religious faith for 2,000 years despite being utterly implausible and foolish to anyone with a rational mind, it’s no surprise that a fringe cult such as Mormonism continues to survive.
People are gullible enough to believe anything, I suppose.
They got their numbers up to self-sustaining levels in Utah at a time when very few people gave a fuck what happened in Utah.
Arguably, this period still exists.
Only if you are using the definition of rational in the “dividing up limited resources” sense then yes, those with minimal critical thinking skills find xtianity to be both plausible and wise.
Well, I’ll throw my hat in with everyone who’s said that it’s because people generally don’t analyze religion. If you start thinking about any religion critically, you risk toppling the house of cards. We tend to not like feeling played so a lot of people avoid the truth so they don’t feel conned.
I use the correct definition: “having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense”. By that definition, many rational people are Christians. Therefore your statement is incorrect.