emarkp, how do you account for pepperlandgirl’s account, then? Note that I’m distinguishing between the religious beliefs of individual Mormons and the religious teachings of church officials here.
Daniel
I’ve been thinking this over, and it’s not clear to me why you can tell the difference between a blank and a bullet. If the amount of powder is the same wouldn’t the kickback be the same as well?
Daniel, that’s pretty easy to explain. You have to understand that the majority of LDS teachers (Sunday School, seminary, etc.) are untrained laypeople (is that a word?). Everybody gets a job to do–mine is currently Young Women’s secretary–and people change around a lot. We have teaching manuals (and, of course, the scriptures) to keep everybody on pretty much the same page doctrinally, but it’s not uncommon for people to insert their opinions, or folklore they don’t realize isn’t true, or other stuff. It’s the bishop’s job to keep a handle on it, but he can’t be everywhere, and he’s a layman too. So it would be quite easy for pepperlandgirl to have heard it talked about in church in Utah, and for emarkp to have never heard it mentioned in California. All you need is a Sunday School teacher or so (and don’t get me started on seminary teachers!).
The amount of powder isn’t the same usually. I’ll leave it to others more qualified to say if this is a different case. Also, I’m not sure how much the actual difference in mass expelled makes to the feel. Another thread I guess for GQ.
All I know is that when I was a kid in Army Cadets we could fire FN’s (7.62mm/.308 calibre) one handed when loaded with blanks. Would never have tried that when it was loaded with real rounds.
In Mormon terms, what is seminary? For Presbyterians (and AFAIK, most Protestants), it’s the college you go to to learn how to be a minister. Is it the same in the Mormon church? If so, I would have thought seminary professors would be very clear on the difference between doctrine and folklore.
Unless, of course, they ask.
It seems to me that getting 4 rounds from a gun is probably a faster and less painful way to go than being hooked up to a generator for a couple of minutes.
And what is it that folks have against Mormons? I’ve never really understood that at all. Even the whole multiple wives thing (assuming the wives were of consenting age) doesn’t seem that horrific to me.
As an aside, I’ve always thought that executions should be as bloody as humanely possible - that death by firing squad or the axe (or in a pinch, hanging) is better than the chair or lethal injection. I think that the people authorizing and carring out the deed should be aware of the fact that killing is not a civilized matter.
No, I’m not anti-death penalty (at least not for that reason). I’m just pro-honesty. Executions shouldn’t be carried out by doctors.
Actually, they’re not. (At least not in TN, anyway.) When the state decided that they were finally going to start killing folks again (after the violently anti-death penalty judge nearly got disbarred for some of his actions), there was a big controversy over who was going to stick the needle in. The doctor refused to do it, because he felt it violated the Hippocratic Oath (I’ll leave sarcastic comments for another time), and so it had to be done by a medical technition. (This was figured out well beforehand, so it wasn’t like the guy was lying on the table with folks going, “I’m not going to kill him! You kill him!”)
Sorry, I should have explained that. Seminary is a religion class for high-school students, and is every morning at about 6.30, unless you live in Utah, where you take a study hour at school and go across the street. It’s a four-year course of Old Testament, New Testament, Church History, and Book of Mormon. The job of teaching a bunch of teenagers the gospel every single morning, I suspect, leads some people to try to find something more interesting (read: sensational) to say. But that’s just my theory. It’s just one of the jobs people are asked to do, so there aren’t many professional seminary teachers. (At the college level, religion classes are called Institute, and it is an actual paying career-type job.)
And I should add that we really don’t have anything much that can be called a professional clergy. There are no LDS seminaries in that sense; you can go to BYU and study theology, but that doesn’t make you any more of a priest or clergyman than the local plumber, it just makes you knowledgeable about such things, which is presumably where Institute teachers come from. (The actual priesthood is available to all worthy males, and is supposed to be used by inspiration.) Even the general authorities and apostles, etc., don’t have any professional qualifications beyond being --according to us–inspired men called of God. They are usually former businessmen or teachers or whatever.
Thanks, genie! That’s very helpful. I have trouble imagining a more thankless job than teaching teenagers the finer points of religion at 6:30 in the morning.
If i were being executed i would prefer a firing squad over, lethal injection, I mean, if i were shot in the head i doubt i would even have time to realize that a gun went off, with a lethal injection, your sitting on a table waiting and waiting untill you finnaly slip out of being. sorry to chage the topic a bit, but i just dont see the big comotion over the use of a firing squad.
Hell, I’d take the firing squad myself, if only because I’d get to die standing up.
But it’s more than that. Even if it’s not a doctor, it’s some other beaurocrat, and beaurocrats shouldn’t kill people. Death must not be part of a system, because killing - whether by knife, rifle or cruise missile - is a chaotic, barbaric art. It’s not a science, and it’s not a procedure, like renewing a driver’s licence. To say that it is makes a mockery of human civilization.
No man deserves to die without his blood falling on his killers’ hands. So to speak.
Yeah. I remember quite enjoying Seminary myself, but we whined plenty. It had a lot going for it though–donuts every Friday, seeing friends every morning and carpooling to school together, and I got to sit next to a guy I had a big crush on every day for a whole year.
If you get ahold of the CD Rom that the LDS church puts out…the one that has all the writings of Brigham Young on it. Do a search for the word javelin. You will find all sorts of stuff that Brigham wrote of about running people through and spilling their blood. Including some stuff of about interacial relations.
I have the greatest respect for my LDS brothers and sisters out there, but Mr. Young had some things to say that made my LDS friends cringe a bit when we looked through it.
3 entries on the same subject constitute “all sorts of stuff?”
That makes sense, but it seems to me that religious-based folklore constitutes part of a person’s religious worldview.
At this point, it may be an argument over semantics. Still, it looks to me like my point #1 is accurate, especially when coupled with point #2. I don’t see the utility in distinguishing between folklore and religion in this instance.
Daniel
Actually, you wouldn’t. IIRC, Gilmore was seated in a chair. IAC, you did get shot standing up, you’d still be alive when you hit the ground. They don’t shoot for the head, they go for the heart.
I don’t see any discrepancy. The method of execution isn’t important–the phrase “spill blood” or “shedding of blood” means death, not that blood actually comes out of the person. Any form of execution “spills blood.”
Additionally, while I was doing some research on the topic, I came across two excellent resources.
A letter from Bruce R. McConkie (on behalf of the leadership of the LDS church) about so-called “blood atonement.”
A heavily footnoted essay by B. H. Roberts (former LDS church historian) on the subject.