Big discussion between me and the other alien craft today on the story that a Mormon church posthumously baptized Simon Wiesenthal. Jewish leaders are outraged and some Mormons have apologized. My question is…why?
Seems to me you have several ways of looking at this:
Both religions are real, but Mormons can’t “steal” someone from another religion who’s already dead.
Both religions are real, and Mormons CAN steal a dead person’s soul, so Jews are right to be upset.
Neither religion is real, so all the hocus-pocus means nothing. You can’t do anything to a dead person, except affect our memory of him/her.
Judaism is real, Mormonism isn’t, so nothing Mormons do affects anything.
Mormonism is real, Judaism isn’t, so Mormons can do whatever they want.
I can imagine the argument between a Mormon leader and a Jewish leader:
Mormon: We baptized Simon Wiesenthal, so now instead of being in Jewish heaven, he’s in Mormon heaven.
Jew: No, he’s not. Your ceremony means nothing.
Mormon: Yes, he is.
Jew: No, he’s not.
Ad infinitum.
Obviously, some people are very upset about this. I just don’t understand why. It’s disrespectful, sure, and indicates a sort of arrogance among Mormons that they’re helping people in the “wrong” religion – but doesn’t every believer, by definition, think their religion is right and the others are wrong? Or else, why practice?
I just don’t see how what the Mormons did affects anything. Are the history books now going to start saying “Simon Wiesenthal, former Jew and current Mormon…”? Of course not.
It doesn’t matter if either religions is “correct” - it is purely a matter of respect for a person, his experience, his beliefs, and his family. That they would do this is just an example of what is evil, about so much religion - the absolute assurance, with neither proof nor evidence, that they have the correct view of the world, and that anything they do to further that view is morally justified. It is a short step from this to pouring money into the fight for Prop. 8 because they are convinced their god thinks that gayness is wrong. And not much further to forced baptism.
My church, the Succulent Order Of Flagaboo The Muddy One, has a feature that auto-baptizes all Mormons 1 month after their death into our fold, so they can avoid the Plane Of Annoyances.
Isn’t it a sign of respect? Presumably the Mormons think the baptism will help Mr Wiesenthal in the after-life, so from their point of view they’re helping him out. They like him enough to want him to go to Mormon heaven. Presumably they don’t do that for every person, so signaling him out in that way seems a gesture of respect.
It doesn’t seem any different from when someone says they’ll pray for me. Even if they know I’m an atheist, I don’t take it as a sign of disrespect. From their point of view their helping me out, and even if I think that’s sort of a silly point of view, I take it as a compliment that they want to help me out.
The theology isn’t the problem here. All that nonsense about, “Well, if the Mormons are right, but the Jews are wrong…” isn’t the issue. The issue is that there’s a pretty long, and very unpleasant, history of powerful Christian organizations forcing religious conversions on unwilling Jews.
Granted, in this case, the Mormons are waiting until the unwilling Jews are dead before doing their conversion voodoo, so we’re not exactly talking about another generation of Moriscos here, but I can appreciate Jews wanting to nip this sort of bullshit in the bud before it gets out of hand.
No, it’s not respectful of the beliefs of Simon Wiesenthal. It’s an expression of the belief that his religion was the wrong one.
As a matter of fact, they do this kind of thing a lot, and it pisses off a lot of people. That’s why the Mormon church agreed a few years ago that they would stop baptizing dead people except for the relatives of living Mormons. Before that, they did baptize a lot of famous dead people who had no connection to the LDS, and a lot of Jewish Holocaust victims.
In most circumstances I don’t object to that either. But when people say they’ll pray for you, they’re usually saying they hope things go well for you. They’re not saying “I’m going to go home and super-secret baptize you into a religion you don’t believe in because otherwise you’ll go to hell.” That’d be rather obnoxious, don’t you think?
An adventurous mohel should start posthumously circumcising Mormons.
In my opinion, there’s no real harm done. Both sides are free to express themselves–Mormons by claiming to baptize others and others by complaining about it.
I don’t think the Mormons are selective at all about who they choose to “help” in the afterlife. Aren’t they hell-bent (ha!) on eventually doing this to every dead person?
But why? The ceremony has no affect on the dead person. Even if you believe that the dead (or at least dead Jews) have souls, that doesn’t mean that a ceremony performed by non-believers who worship a wrong or non-existent god can affect that soul.
It seems like the argument becomes “Your magic is affecting my magic, so please stop it.” The solution should just be not to believe in the magic that offends you.
Hasn’t this already been explained a couple of times?
Agreed.
Agreed. Which doesn’t make it less obnoxious: the ceremony involves Mormons saying that, whatever you believed and whatever you did with your life, you’re not going to see God unless you’re baptized in the LDS church, so we’re just going to go ahead and do that for you without asking. It’s the afterlife equivalent of something like telemarketing.
Right. And the Mormons aren’t doing it to be mean - they want what’s best for Wiesenthal, and obviously going to heaven is about as “best” as you can get.
I don’t see how this is different from praying for someone. If you don’t think it has any effect, then take it as a general expression of goodwill. If the Mormons took it into their heads to baptize my dead grandmother, I would feel about it as atheists do about prayer. It won’t make any difference to me, to her, or to God.
If they’re right, cool - my grandma goes to Mormon heaven. If I’m right, no harm done.
Sure, you can get bent out of shape because of past forced conversions, but there are no forced conversions going on here - Wiesenthal isn’t any more Mormon now than he was was he was alive.
I thought Wiesenthal was an atheist. If he can become an atheist and still be a Jew, I don’t see how a Mormon performing a ceremony after he’s dead is going to affect his Jewishness.
Even though this has been explained to you several times, I’ll take a shot at explaining it by way of analogy.
Let’s pretend you have a beloved child. And the beloved child dies young. And you put her in a grave. And every night, I come and urinate on the grave–then write to tell you about it the next morning each morning.
The ceremony I’m doing has no effect* on the dead person. But it certainly wouldn’t make you feel good about it when you read my note.
(And yes. I’m comparing Mormon baptisms to peeing on a grave. It’s an intentional comparison)
*Ok, yeah, piss has some effect, but you know what I mean.
But, pissing on something is generally considered a sign disrespect. Baptizing someone is not generally considered a sign of disrespect. And, the Mormons aren’t doing the baptizing as a sign of disrespect, either. And, his grave won’t smell like baptizing when they’re done. Also, they aren’t baptizing him every night and then telling his family about it, reminding them of their lost loved one. I think your analogy fails in multiple ways.
Here’s another bad analogy – let’s say you have a loved one who dies. I go and dig up the body and put its head on a pike, because I consider that a sign of respect.
I think we agree that would be in poor taste, at least. It’s also not analogous to baptizing the body in the grave.
