We’re mostly going around it circles about the real implications of the practice and how the loved ones are affected. There’s another facet of this that is important: the status of the Mormon Church within our culture.
Imprecise Analogy Incoming:
Say I’m a significant media figure who hates Ronald Reagan. What if I name my toilet Ronald Reagan, and put out a press release about how I am urinating on Ronald Reagan’s ghost by proxy. So, the media goes on and on about what I named my toilet, because of my status as an otherwise very influential journalist. Then, when Nancy Reagan politely asks me to stop, I promise to. I later invite a visitor to my bathroom who reports to the media that I have engraved Reagan’s face in the bowl. When the news breaks, I call that person a bigot for reporting what my private bathroom is like. Then, when people say it’s in poor taste, I apologize and promise to stop… (…for now…)
This is a slightly different example, but here’s my point: If I did all that, no one should treat me seriously. My actions, in that case, make it clear that I am a jerk and should be dismissed from polite society.
The problem here isn’t what the Mormon Church is doing. It’s that they want to be treated seriously by a society they refuse to accommodate. Some have referenced Fred Phelps as an analogue for this practice (and that’s not entirely fair), but he has been dismissed by the wider culture because he is disrespectful to other people. The Westborrow Baptists are a punchline for what they do. The Mormon Church, I think, deserves the same fate.
(Of course, I think Catholic Church deserves the same for the abuse scandal and others, but no one listens to me…)
It’s not my religion, so what do I know. However, I see no reason to treat it as anything sillier than having to eat crackers and drink wine each Sunday.
That’s not quite the case. The theory is that in life, you live under a veil of ignorance as to the afterlife. You either believe or you don’t. As for those who don’t believe, the ceremony is a second chance. The belief is that once you’re deceased, sitting there on a hard wooden bench, waiting, hoping, praying that you’ll get a pass to enter the kingdom, (the baptism) you’ll gladly agree to the event and the benefits. If that’s the case, you’ll get to choose the bench or the door. If in fact death is the end, then does it really matter?
That’s correct in general I suppose, but here I was referring to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its related spokespersons in particular. Although I don’t feel Jews are any different in their thin-skinness among special interest groups in this regard.
The detail of the cult’s mythology (there, I am being disrespectful) means absolutely nothing. What is important here, and what the pro-ritual people seem to not understand, is that you don’t get to define what is offensive to me. Malthus’s flag example is the best I’ve seen - things done out of good will that offend someone are still offensive, and the person doing them is a putz if they keep on doing it.
There was an All in the Family where Archie sneaks his grandson off to church to be baptized, against the wishes of the kid’s parents. By itself the kid just got a little bath, but perhaps you can see that this is offensive, even if Archie was doing it for good reasons?
Or do you people look up to Archie Bunker as a moral exemplar?
In your examples, something is done to something else. A grave is defiled or a kid is kidnapped. In a Mormon baptism, nothing is done to a person without their consent.
No, official doctrine is that hey also have missionaries in the afterlife, and that the post death baptism is the last step, it is not just a “Hey this is god, they played you in the temple let me zap you into a better afterlife from my living room on Kolob” thing.
Also they say the “soul” has the right to choose, but what they don’t tell you is that this is exactly the same with baptism while alive, and they are kept on the rolls in the church as if they were the same.
I do NOT want my name associated with that organization, having grown up as a “gentile” in the “land of zion” I have zero desire to perpetuate what was a poorly thought out method for the early church to navigate around the “All my non-Mormon relives are now in hell” issue.
I want my relatives to think their religion thinks of me in hell, because I treat others better in real life than the majority of their fellow Mormons.
For them to count me as one of “them” is not for me to be happy, it is for them to be in comfort with their mythologies flaws.
“How could god not save those poor victims of the holocaust, I bet they know what is the real word now, hey lets zap them to heaven!!!”
But lets us get to the crux of the issue, they keep promising to stop and they don’t, no matter what the reason someone has for the offense that is the problem.
Actually, the Mormons think something is done to a person without their consent: They think that person is put on a list of the potentially saved. They think they have to do something more, too, but they believe they have done something to the person to change them because without this baptism that person cannot be given this extra special afterlife.
To me, this is the best analogy:
Someone I don’t know wants to put me on the marketing list. Once I’m on the list, all sorts of special, exclusive offers could flow my way. Of course, this person thinks, everyone wants to be on the list! Without being on the list, you don’t know all about the program! You wouldn’t be eligible to take advantage of the great deals! Everyone wants to save! There’s no obligation! It’s a free trial!
Apparently, you can’t even get away from spam when you die.
There is. Perhaps a little venture into genealogy might shed some light on this for you.
As for the cites, don’t forget the ones requiring certain things to be done while on earth. I’ll let you find it though.
Could you specify what it is he’s misinformed about?
The “simply ask your relatives not to” solution is exactly the kind of thing people are complaining about, since your relatives often don’t listen to your requests and just do the ceremonies for you anyway (and, in my family’s case, also relate stories about how the specifically-requested-not-to-be-included relative caused the chapel organist to play a song right before the ceremony that was meant as a sign that said dead relative had changed their mind and now wanted to be baptized).
Well you don’t get zapped to the celestial kingdom of course, what part are you saying is wrong?
That there are missionaries int the spirit world?
That those who are baptized and confirmed after death are on the churches rolls in in a way that is considered to be equal to them having done so on earth?
Or that the church promised to quit baptizing Holocaust victims?
I am confused about what part of my argument you have an issue with?
Maybe I was wrong, maybe god doesn’t do the zapping or maybe not from Kolob?
Hence the ceremony itself is “involuntary” on the part of the dead person.
None of this would be necessary if the ceremony all took place in the afterlife. You can’t suck and blow at the same time - that is, you can’t carry out a ceremony in the phyisical world using real live people in the name of someone, and then argue it really isn’t concerning them because they aren’t physically present. Obviously those conducting the ceremony think it concerns the dead person, or they wouldn’t bother to do it.
If a Vodoo priest was to make a wax doll of someone and stick it full of pins to curse them, the person being cursed isn’t present, but the ceremony is still “about them” and their participation in it is not voluntary. While they may not believe in Vodun, they still have every right to be somewhat pissed about being targeted in that way, and to request that Mr. Priest please stop doing it. Same if the target is someone’s dead grandpa.