I don’t find it any wackier than a risen from the dead, virgin raping zombie who want everyone to eat his body and drink his blood.
I do find it offensive that they ‘baptize’ the dead, of other faiths, into their faith. That just seems designed to piss off everyone, to my mind. Unnecessarily antagonistic.
A fair beginner’s effort, I suppose, but all in all a rather impoverished construction. I give this C-, after docking points for: poor flow; redundancy (“risen from the dead […] zombie”); inaccuracy (strictly speaking the “zombie” is not the incarnation who impregnated Mary, which was consensual, and not a sexual act anyway); syntax errors (“a zombie who want”); and being preempted by the OP (“To atheists or agnostics, I concede that all religions might seem equally silly to you, but I’d rather not discuss that in this thread.”).
I come from near Hill Cumorah and grew up afloat in Mormons. I have probably seen the pagent 4 or 5 times and been given copies of the Book of Mormon at least 3 times.
Hm. Some of the ‘historical’ happenings are extremely dubious. I can associate this with much of the dubious ‘historical’ crap in the Old Testament, and a lot of the woo in the BoM I can associate with Revelations, with John the Revalator = John Smith.
Mormons themselves run the gamut of nice to nuts, just like any other religious group. I do like the emphasis on family day - too frequently the family is pushed apart by the hectic lifestyle today of kids and classes and afterschool activities and hobbys.
As a no longer Catholic, I find the fact that some Mormons practice polygamy no more offense than that Catholic priests have sex with underage boys, or that Muslims become suicide bombers.
No problem with Mormons, however an interesting study was done by Newsweed (survey), that indicated that a very large number of Americans would not vote for a Mormon for president.
Mormon topped the list, ahead of atheist, soldier, gay, woman, black, Jewish, and anything else they surveyed for.
I found another study that indicates in this order,
Willingness to Vote for Persons of Various Characteristics for President (No, Would Not)
Black: 5%
Woman: 6%
Catholic: 7%
Baptist: 7%
Jewish: 9%
Hispanic: 10%
Mormon: 22%
Gay or lesbian: 32%
Atheist: 49%
So perhaps I read the other article incorrectly, but of any religion that was polled for, this was the one most likely to cause people to not vote for (atheist excluded).
A quarter of Americans would not vote for a Mormon for president. If he wins does he go down the road of Kennedy and make it a widely accepted religion or is Mormonism just too creepy to win an election?
Not at all.
Let me offer up my own take on the matter. Until recently, the majority of Mormons were born and raised and lived in places in and around Utah where they had relatively little contact with anyone or anything outside of Mormonism. Even for those not living out there, the LDS Church tried its best to keep individuals from encountering other religions or ways of thought. I can understand why individuals raised that way would stick with Mormonism throughout their life.
Now, thanks to the internet and other developments, it’s becoming harder and harder for the Church to keep its members isolated from outside ideas. More and more members are learning about the Book of Mormon’s origins and subsequent revisions, the Book of Abraham, the complete lack of archaeological evidence for anything in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s long history as a con artist, his financial and sexual exploitation of his followers, the attempted destruction of the Journal of Discourses, Temple ceremonies copied from the Freemasons, the Mark Hofmann business, and fifty other things that undermine the Church’s credibility. I’d say that anyone who knows the full truth about these things and continues to believe the claims of the Church must be deeply in denial. I would not speculate about the reasons for this denial.
To be sure, I’m willing to throw in a disclaimer about the individual Mormons I’ve known being generally excellent people, just like everyone else is. On the other hand, I’ve also spoken with Mormon apostates and heard about the sorts of things that they went through both as Mormons and after leaving the LDS Church. It’s doesn’t sound good, and I can’t ignore the fact that anyone who supports the LDS Church is contributing to inflicting those experiences on people.
As for the issue of whether we should consider these issues when a Mormon candidate runs for office, I think we should, and I explained my reasoning on my blog.
(I’m a member of the Episcopal Church USA, for what it’s worth.)
Gallup poll is the source of that data:
Exactly the words I was fumbling for in my earlier post.
Presbyterian here.
They’re heretics and they’re not any more Christian than most Abhramic religions, arguably even less since Mormons are polytheists so perhaps comparable to some of those Hindu or Buddhist sects that do believe Jesus was a great man or whatnot.
After 9/11 the local Muslim place had an open house. As a cleric explained Muslim beliefs I leaned to my pastor and whispered, “They’re closer than Mormons.”
Apparently you aren’t supposed to make people laugh in the meeting hall.
ETA: Evangelical Lutheran, for what it’s worth since we aren’t remotely evangelical in that we’re cool with the beliefs of others and don’t evangelize them.
All religions seem equally ‘silly’ to me also and I know Lord Jesus. Actually there is some use of religions for those who don’t know God, but yes it is rather silly in some respects.
The Mormon religion is no more silly then others, just that is it close to it’s infancy. Early Jewidism with it’s rules and sacrifices and ‘myths’ sure is ‘silly’ also, along with most others.
Also a comment on getting a planet to rule, I do believe that is the case as I believe I’ve been shown, though it is more of the context of having a child, the womb is the planet, and the ruler is ‘mother earth’. It is a spiritual evolution of our soul.
I have nothing against the doctrines of Mormonism, so long as they practice them among other Mormons; but their efforts at prostheletization I find somewhat annoying, and they seem a reasonably major aspect of the faith. They keep at it even after you are dead, what with that whole baptism of dead Jewish ancestors thing. 
Jew here.
Eh - personally, I find the idea of any kind of invisible sky monster or monsters absolutely nuts. The details just aren’t that relevant or interesting.
Neither, apparently, is reading the OP. 
Joshua Graham is my all-time favorite Mormon. Malpais Legate in 2012!
Mormonism is an evil cult started by a conman to enrich himself and provide himself with young women to sleep with. However most Mormons are great people who are exemplary citizens. If more people were like Mormons the world would be a much better place. Anyone who is acquainted with the origins of Mormonism must deal with a lot of cognitive dissonance to stay a believer. Mormons have such strong communities that it seems worth the dissonance to stay in the community for many intelligent people. I have no problems with Mormons as politicians since they changed the oath to omit the “enmity against the United States” part, as I vote based on issues and not religion and happily voted for a Christian Scientist for congress several times. However, since Mormons lie about being Christian and being President would give him and the religously ignorant media a pulpit to repeat that lie around the world, I would not vote for a Mormon for President unless he publically admitted that mormonism is not Christianity.
“Nightline” did a show about Scientology a couple nights ago. I was only listening with one ear, but it focussed on a woman who used to be very close to the head of the church, the guy who took over when Hubbard died. She knew he was a phony, she was brutalized by church officials when she tried to blow the whistle, but she says she still believes in Scientology.
Kind of scary, really.
He’s got other errors too; Jesus only symbolically wanted his flesh ate and blood drank. He said that bread and wine represent these things; of course catholics are an exception, believing the bread and wine transsubstantiate into the actual flesh and blood.
Also, a resurrected person is not a zombie; zombies are still dead. A resurrected person is once again healthy, a zombie’s flesh continues to rot.
I always wonder about diatribes like that; I guess people feel so hateful toward something they feel they must misrepresent it.
No true Christian believes that Mormons aren’t Christians.
They’re off their rocker. Even without getting into the provably loony aspects fo the religion or its dubious origins, it really doesn’t make sense and never did theologically. I’ve never had a specific problem with Mormons per se, but their religion is basically flat wrong inasmuch as it leaves the Christian mainstream, and goes wrong in particularly amusing ways.
Most Christians worldwide do not consider this symbolic. Catholic, Orthodox, usually the Anglicans (if they can be bothered to admit to believeing anything at all) and some others. And I rather suspect the zombie reference was snark.