South Park Mormons

Great Debates
1

This will limit the prospective responders, but can anyone who saw last night’s new South Park (where they go into the history of the Mormon church) comment on its accuracy?

I was laughing extremely hard through most of the animated explanation thinking it had to be exaggerted – there’s no WAY anyone would believe this stuff – but the little research I did last night before going to bed seems to imply they got it right.

I’ve got no beef with Mormons, but there’s no doubt the show last night made the church’s followers look …um… incredibly bad, or at least gullible. (Though they applauded the church’s focus on family happiness and cohesiveness.)

I know soooo little about Mormons and their beliefs that I’m hoping someone knowledgable who saw the show could pipe in.

2

I didn’t see the show, but do know a bit about the history of the church (having been raised Mormon). Were there specific things that stood out that you’d like verified?

Barry

3

I can’t answer your question as to the factualness of their parody, although I have no reason to believe they were lying about it. I laughed my ass off, but then I laugh when they make fun of Christians and Jews, too. They certainly haven’t spared anyone; even atheists got lampooned on that show. But isn’t the bigger issue that we’re talking about reglious beliefs? Since when are religious beliefs supposed to withstand objective scrutiny? The beliefs of Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, etc. are no more objectively verifyable than those of the Mormons. It just seems like the Mormons get criticized all the time for no other reason than that their claims aren’t as old. I mean, think about it, are Golden Plates intrinsically any sillier than Stone Tablets?

And at the end of the cartoon, didn’t they make the point that nobody ought to be judging them for their beliefs?

4

The Mormons featured in a high school history module i took…our teacher found it hard to avoid pointing out the irony when there was a Religious Education class talking about the dead sea scrolls in the next room.

5

They’re not verifiable, either.:smack:

Also, I should have said they’ve made fun of Catholics and Jews. Mormons are Christians.

And Barry, I don’t know what filmyak had in mind, but one thing that jumps out in my mind is their claim not only was Smith unable to produce the Golden Plates, but was also asked to translate the plates a second time with the original translation hidden, in order to verify it, and that he was unable to do so. They made it seem like it would have been a very simple way for him to confirm the truth of his claims, but that he refused to do so.

6

Well I have to start by admitting my bias – I am an atheist who doesn’t believe the claims of any religion.

But at least the older, more established religions claim that their defining miracles were generally witnessed by a lot of people. God made himself visible to all the Israelites at Mt. Sinai in Judaism, Jesus had several witnesses view his miracles, I can’t speak for Islam since I really don’t know much about it either.

Now personally, I don’t buy the claims as a whole. Hard to cross examine hordes of nameless witnesses who’ve been dead for millenia.

The South Park episode pretty much had a town believing Smith’s claims merely because he said they were true. And yes, the one time someone stands up to him and asks him to verify his claims, he doesn’t. And his followers believe his explanation (God’s wrath at asking him to repeat himself or something like that) instead of realizing it’s a sham. I’d never even heard of the golden plates, or using rocks to translate plates no one saw while they were hidden inside a hat. And again, outside of Smith there were apparently zero witnesses to any of his claims?!

In addition, there are more preposterous claims (again with zero evidence or witnesses) that the native Americans were white folks from Jerusalem (how did they get to America? I dunno.) who were wiped out by other people who, as punishment, were burned red and are now called American Indians.

And this really has become one of the world’s fastest growing religions? I’m trying to keep an open mind here, but this is really tough. I was genuinely stunned at the claims that formed the basis of this following.

As for the show suggesting you respect every religion – that’s not quite what they said in full. The Mormon kid in the show said he didn’t believe his religion’s claims at all, but that at least his religion promoted a happy and cohesive family life, so don’t knock the good it does.

PS - I thoroughly enjoy when the show makes fun of Jews, Cathloics and Atheists as well.

Sorry if the post sounds disrespectful, because I TRY to respect >>followers<< of any religion. I just have a hard time respecting the religions they follow sometimes. I know, I’m bad. Sigh.

7

Catholics are Christians.

8

So, you’re getting info on religions from cartoons? Interesting.

Please click here for what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to say about their beliefs.

9

Active member of the LDS church here. I have never heard this claim. It could be a confused with a different story, namely the loss of the first 100+ pages of manuscript.

Long story short: Martin Harris borrowed 116 pages of the translation to prove the work to his wife (Harris mortgaged his farm to pay for the initial publication of the Book of Mormon). While it was in his possession, Joseph Smith’s wife Emma gave birth to a stillborn child–he was a bit distracted for a week or two. When he checked up on Harris, the pages had been lost, and when he inquired of God as to whether to retranslate, he was told not to.

Longer story here.

I’ve never actually watched South Park, but the creators of the show seem to have quite a thing about Mormons–I haven’t quite figured it out.

10

No, I got what I assumed to be erroneous (or at least exaggerated) information on the LDS from a cartoon, and then I researched it a bit, including a post here. And so far, I’m shocked to see the information on South Park appears to be accurate, even if they played up the comedy portion.

Thank you for the link, but I had already checked out the church’s official site. They are a bit… brief on details, shall we say. If they DO believe what I’ve learned over the past few days, apparently they realize it’s farfetched enough to avoid putting any mention of the negative details (like the failed repeat translation, or the lack of witnesses anywhere) on the website. Probably a smart move.

11

I’ll check out the longer story, thanks. In the meantime, the SP version was similar to the 1st half, minus the childbirth. They claim that Emma, being a skeptic, hid the manuscript and told her husband to go back and have it retranslated. If it was truly the word of God, then the translation would match verbatim (translating something twice would have identical results). If Smith was making it up as he went, however, he wouldn’t be able to repeat the task.

When Harris did this, Smith quickly said something like “let’s move on to book two instead.”

As for SP and Mormons, this is the first time I’ve even seen them mentioned on the series, though I haven’t seen all the episodes. But I THINK one of the creators was raised Mormon. And no worries, they really do make fun of ALL religions and non religions alike.

12

The only real difference between emarkp’s version of the re-translation story and South Park’s is in the motive of Harris’s wife (if she was the one who took them). South Park made her a skeptic who was testing whether Joseph Smith would translate the material the same way if he had to do it again.

13

We Mormons commonly refer to this as “the law of witnesses”. Here are a few examples of it.

In fact, we see the Book of Mormon like a second witness which corroborates and strengthens the Bible.

Well, not exactly zero witnesses.

Again, this is a warped view of LDS belief. The Book of Mormon is (mostly) a record of people who left Israel about 600BC and came to the Americas. So if you call Middle-Easterners from 2600 years ago “white”… The book makes no claim about the group was the only ancestry of modern Native Americans (North and South), but many people have assumed that over the last 150+ years.

Yes, yes it is one of the fastest growing religion.

But we actually believe something crazier than all that. We believe in this guy who ran around teaching nutty religious stuff for three years and was eventually killed for it. Oh, and he came back to life afterwards, claimed he was the son of God, Savior of all manking, etc. Surely this is a crazier story than anything Smith or his contemporaries claimed about the plates?

14

There’s a scene (it might be in the movie, but I don’t recall exactly) where a bunch of newly departed souls are in line for the afterlife, and a guy behind a desk says something to the effect of, “Okay, all of you religious people, you’re all going to Hell, except the Mormons. If you aren’t Mormon, you guessed wrong. Sorry.” So in the South Park universe, the Mormons go to Heaven, and everyone else is damned.

15

This is actually quite a departure from reality. Emma was Joseph Smith’s wife, not Harris’. She was the first scribe for the translation (Joseph translated with the aid of a scribe for the whole thing), and there is no historical evidence I know of that she ever doubted the translation. Harris’ wife on the other hand was critical of what Martin was doing, and IIRC had friends who were similarly skeptical.

That’s actually pretty funny. Not historically accurate though, and we have enough trouble already with people believing half-truths and outright lies about us.

Yes, but they seem to have a special place for Mormons. They did make the appallingly bad (and again, seriously erroneus when it comes to LDS doctrine and culture) Orgazmo. Not that I’ve seen it, but the critics uniformly panned it, it failed at the box office, and won a rare distinction of being rated NC-17 with no nudity, etc. etc.

16

First, thanks for the witness links. Again, it’s new to me. This is a religion I know close to nothing about. Question: where are the plates now, and why are they kept hidden from the rest of the world (assuming they are)? What language were they written in originally? How did two… rocks? devices?.. aid in the translation? And why do Mormons believe Smith didn’t make it up himself, including making the plates? Not asking cynically on that last part. But if someone came to me today with a similar story, I’d be guessing he didn’t “find” them so much as “make them” – especially if they weren’t allowed to be given out to scientific scrutiny. Heck, the Catholic Church even allowed scientific testing of the Shroud of Turin (with disastrous results for them, true, but at least they put their $ where their mouth is).

As for Emma Smith – my bad, I confused the names. I meant Harris’s wife, my mistake.

More later, but I have to run. Thanks for the replies!

17

I’d point you to a (hard to find) book called “Paul and the invention of Christianity.” Very interesting read. Claims Jesus was basically preaching Judaism, and that Paul, having failed to make himself an established leader of several other religions, took advantage of his fortunate timing to turn Jesus’s teachings into a new religion after J’s death (and against his will). That is to say, the book claims a new religion was not Jesus’s intention, that he was just teaching Judaism and the rest was posthumous P.R. Read the book if you want more on that.

Anyway, thanks for the witness links. Again, it’s new to me. This is a religion I know close to nothing about. Question: where are the plates now, and why are they kept hidden from the rest of the world (assuming they are)? What language were they written in originally? How did two… rocks? devices?.. aid in the translation? And why do Mormons believe Smith didn’t make it up himself, including making the plates? Not asking cynically on that last part. But if someone came to me today with a similar story, I’d be guessing he didn’t “find” them so much as “make them” – especially if they weren’t allowed to be given out to scientific scrutiny. Heck, the Catholic Church even allowed scientific testing of the Shroud of Turin (with disastrous results for them, true, but at least they put their $ where their mouth is).

As for Emma Smith – my bad, I confused the names. I meant Harris’s wife, my mistake.

More later, but I have to run. Thanks for the replies!

18

Oops sorry for multiple posts. Forgot to add the first part to one, and it won’t let me delete or edit.

19

I’m confused as to why this is ironic. FTR, the LDS are quite fond of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and BYU is a major player in the ongoing preservation and translation work.

filmyak, I’m glad you’re looking for some actual fact-based information, and there are several Mormons here who can help you out. The LDS website is “brief on details,” yes, but not because they’re embarrassed. It’s meant as a starting point. There’s plenty more available.

Let’s see… as for where the plates are now, they were taken away by the same angel who pointed them out to Smith in the first place, once the translation was finished. They were written in what the BOM calls ‘reformed Egyptian,’ which seems to have been Hebrew language written in Egyptian writing so as to take up less space.

Why do we believe that Smith didn’t make the whole thing up? Because we ask God for a spiritual witness of the truth of the gospel. Every Mormon is taught from a young age to pray for answers and listen for them, and then to ask God for confirmation (or denial) of every aspect of the Church and in personal life, from the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and other books of scripture, to the veracity of the statements of the prophet, to whether or not it would be a good idea to marry this person or take this job. Oh, and we also enjoy research and whatnot; it just isn’t the core basis for our beliefs.

I personally find it hard to believe that Joseph Smith (a poor and uneducated farm laborer) could have come up with about 40 pounds of gold, hammered it into thin leaves, inscribed words on it in an untranslateable foreign language, shown it to 11 other people but not his wife, and then made it disappear. There are simpler explanations if you want to go for the hoax opinion (though I don’t find them particularly compelling, either).

There are several books out there for the non-LDS person interested in finding out more. The complete idiot’s guide to Mormonism is actually a pretty nice book, and the one Time put out a few years back is IMO biased but not actually inaccurate. Either should be in your friendly neighborhood library, and there might even be an introductory volume or two written by (gasp!) an actual member of the Church. Misinformation about us abounds, however, even in encyclopedias and ‘reputable’ sources, and you would be well advised to ask someone in the know about the accuracy of anything you read–note the recent reprint of an old article about us in US News & World Report’s religion issue, in which they managed to get Joseph Smith’s name wrong in the headline!*

*I mean, how hard is Joseph Smith, for goodness sake?!? They also misidentified the Salt Lake Temple and a stature of Brigham Young.

20

actually, the BoM says the opposite of the Bible in many instances.
which can be checked in many older threads on this board.