I think you’re right, Apos. I just rememebered it had Satan in it and I forgot about two part TV ep. I stand corrected.
They do? I haven’t seen every episode, but this is the only one I’ve seen where Mormonism is even mentioned. And what Diogenes the Cynic said is the only other instance I’ve ever heard of.
Here’s a question I haven’t seen answered in this thread. emarkp said that Martin Harris claimed to have lost the pages from the book of Levi, and that Lucy Harris was skeptical of the whole thing. But is it accepted, as was shown in the episode, that Lucy Harris actually took the pages to test Smith’s claim?
I think the Mormons have indeed only been mentioned in the two instances already named.
Satan, of course, has appeared before: he had a big wrestling match with Jesus!
They don’t, really. They take a lot more shots at other faiths, comparatively speaking. Judaism, for example. Kyle is Jewish, and Cartman constantly refers to it. One of the creators, I think Stone, has a Jewish family background. So they did an episode that took the kids to an orthodox Jewish summer camp (all the kids had the little sideburns; sorry I don’t know the terminology) and the Master Control Program came out of the campfire and… Anyway, as far as other religious traditions, there was also that one episode about Catholic priests who were up in arms because their right to have sex with little boys was being infringed and then that giant spider dragon appeared and… er… Oh, and if you take New Age bullshit as a pseudo-crypto-faith-y type thing, remember that John Edward is the Biggest Douche in the Universe!
Anyway, they hardly focus on LDS to the exclusion of other options.
Well, who said anything about changing your beliefs? Fightin’ ignorance is what we do 'round here. And you have not learned “quite a bit,” but only a little about us. It’s a decent first step, though.
I would not say accepted; it has been a point of speculation, but no one seems to know what exactly happened to them. Martin Harris bugged Joseph Smith, on behalf of his wife, for weeks, and when Smith finally gave in, Harris promised to show them only to his wife. Instead, everyone and their grandmother came in and saw them. They disappeared, and Harris, who certainly did not know who had taken them, was afraid to go and tell Smith (who was by then caring for his very ill wife and grieving for the stillborn baby). If Lucy Harris knew who took them, or was involved herself, she doesn’t seem to have told anyone AFAIK. Eventually it all came out and Joseph was in despair. A revelation told him not to retranslate the pages, since it was a double bind; if the new translation was identical, whoever had the pages would rewrite them, so it was a losing proposition. A scientific test it was not–the pages were not stolen by someone wanting to do an unbiased, fair evaluation. Mob violence (‘mobocracy,’ as Joseph Smith put it) was more what was going on here.
Yes, I know; my point was that I originally contrasted Mormons with Christians, which was the wrong way to phrase it, since Mormons are a subset of Christians. Mormons are not a subset of Catholics, however. South Park has made fun of Catholics AND Mormons at different times. Clear now?
See, you have to understand that statement is simply other-worldly. A missionary is screened beforehand, and he simply is not allowed to serve if he’s got moral problems. While I’m not saying all missionaries are perfect, they are engaged in work that we consider sacred (the sharing of the Gospel) and they strive to not only live the highest moral standards, but also not even give the impression of sin. Members of the LDS church are urged to keep themselves morally pure, and avoid pornography. To
[quote the LDS president]
(http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/2000.htm/ensign june 2000.htm/recurring themes of president hinckley.htm#LPTOC12):
Second, IIRC the plot is that he decides to do this to raise money for his temple wedding. This is strange both because of the fact that most missions are self-financed, and because of the cost of a temple wedding. How much does an LDS temple wedding cost? Take a guess. That’s right: $0.00 exactly. No ordinance in the church is for sale. Furthermore, after prostituting himself to the pornography industry and abandoning his mission, a person would no longer be allowed to enter the temple, let alone be married there. He would most likely be a candidate for excommunication, which is very serious (though unlike other churches, excommucants may still attend Sunday meetings, they are not allowed to participate by partaking in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, say prayers for the meetings, etc.).
Those were the biggest issues I recall from what I read about it. It managed to not only mock much that we hold sacred, it presented a false image of the church (the cost of temple weddings, etc.).
I doubt it, but then there’s little archaelogical evidence for most of the claims in the Bible, either.
To be more precise, there are anonymously-written stories about people witnessing those things. There are no independent eyewitness accounts.
I’ve always been amazed that XXX (pick your religion) followers are quick to dismiss other religions’ stories as mere tall tales, while they believe theirs are factual, if just as unbelievable on the surface.
So we end up with folks who find it absurd that Zeus throws lightning rods and bangs women that his wife then turns into sheep as punishment, but plausible that the sun stopped in the sky and some poor fellow was swallowed by a giant fish.
So yes, Beagle, I agree with you completely.
True. But at least the stories pretend to have lots of witnesses. As I said before, I don’t necessarily buy it, but if I wanted to convince people of something I’d tell them that 100,000 other people also witnessed the event. Especially if I was writing it 100 years after the event and no one could contradict me with first hand evidence.
I have a few questions that I’d like your take on:
Who lynched Joseph Smith?
Assuming leadership of the church after Smith’s death, why did Brigham Young and many members of the church promptly leave the United States?
Assuming that BY fled to avoid a similar fate as Smith, what’s your take that some followers of the Church, including Smith’s family, remained in the Nauvoo area practicing the basic tenets of the church as they had been before Smith’s murder, with no persecution?
Do you believe polygamy was a tenet of the church before BY’s departure or was it established to rapidly increase the population of the Church?
It may seem obvious that some of my questions are rhetorical and I’m just stirring the beehive.
Am I spreading mistruths about Mormonism, the RLDS/CoCers or Christians in general? No more than the mistruths they all spread daily.
Keep the faith. No really, I mean keep it.
Yours burning in hell,
pd
To continue the hijack somewhat, ISTR the “Mormons are the only ones going to heaven” joke being on the Simpsons. Some relatively recent ep, when they all went to hell in the little room, and Flanders wanted to know what the one true faith was, and the Chief Wiggum lookalike was like “Mormon. The correct answer was Mormon.” And I watch South Park very rarely, and havn’t seen any of their movies. Anyone remember that?
ummmm
Your first post on these boards should be something like
your favorite tv show, or something LESS controversial like Why Evolution SHould Be Taught in Schools…
Sorry.
The Simpsons are my favorite TV show.
My question about this is why were the Isrealites supposedly white? I had always understood that they were rather dark-skinned, especially before all of the interbreeding with Europeans.
Actually, no. The movie only shows kenny going to hell and Hell having an expotential increasing population, while Heaven’s remains static at about a thousand or so.
It was an 2 parter episode called “Do the handicap go to hell?” and “probably” that asked and answered that question.
Though At the end, Saddam is sent to heaven because they want to get him out of hell. He seems to find being surronded by mormons pretty abhorrent.
Catholics are considered a branch of Christanity, though weather Mormonism is considered under Christanity is quite debatable.
That’s because they, in fact, are a branch of Christianity, as are the LDS.
Regardless of the climate, only the ignorant (read: bigoted) dispute the fact that the LDS are also a branch of Christianity.
Um no, no it’s not.
Debatable, that is.
Catholics aren’t considered a branch of Christianity. It’s their show as far as America and Western Europe go. The Nestorian, Egyptian, or Eastern Orthodox Church might be able to bicker over the point with them, but it’s ludicrous for Protestants to do so. It’s like saying that the King James Version is the only real bible, but the original text might be a tolerable substitute. Not that I haven’t heard that one too.