I was doing a little research on Mormonism lately after they came to my door and dropped off one of those books, and those people believe some craaaaaaaaaaaazay stuff! A good deal of it is Zardoz-level stuff like the Scientologists, but the Mormons don’t seem to catch as much crap in the public eye. Why?
I would say that part of it (except for the more cultish offshoots) is that the Mormons aren’t out to suck people’s money the way the Scientologists are.
There aren’t any high-profile Mormons like there are high-profile Scientologists.
Actually, I’m amazed at how much flack the Mormons get from mainstream Christians.
Nothing in Mormon theology strikes this atheist as any crazier than a guy walking on water or turning water into beer.
The only differences I can see are that:
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Mormon theology is not part of mainstream western culture; and
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Many of the events are alleged to have happened more recently, so the lack of evidence is more discrediting.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Seconded; my family’s mormon and even though I don’t buy it and never did, none of it that I ever heard seemed any crazier than, say claiming that you transubstantiate bread and wine into actual flesh and blood so that your parishoners can be literal cannibals. It actually all just sounded like fundamentalist Christianity polished up for marketing purposes. (Dead babies don’t go to hell, families are together forever, the eternal punishments are more like white-collar prison than a supher pit, etc…)
I’d like to hear what in particular the OP thinks is nutty. I mean, beyond the usual bearded sky-god stuff.
Because it’s supernatural based like mainstream Christianity, and not pseudoscience based like the Scientologists. Just like people who claim visitations by angels get more respect than people who claim visits by aliens. America is a country that puts great store in superstition and mysticism, and gives you far more slack if you couch crazy beliefs in such terms.
When Mormonism first got started, it caught a lot of crap. As late as the turn of the 20th century, Reed Smoot, the first Mormon senator, had to put up with a three year Senate investigation before the Senate voted that a Mormon could be seated.
People.
Glass houses.
Stones.
You mean besides Harry Reid, Orrin Hatch, Steve Young, Gladys Knight, Jon Heder, Rick Schroeder, Henry Eyring and so on?
My answer would be that a) Mormons do get a lot of people thinking they’re crazy, and as I said in another thread there’s a small industry devoted to telling people that, and b) they aren’t as weird as Scientologists and aren’t in the habit of suing people who say so.
Not to mention Gov. Oven Mitt Romney, his father Gov. George Romney, the Marriott family (as in the hotel chain)…
Getting back to the OP, I’ll go with what Der Trihs said: the Mormons’ ‘crazy’ beliefs are about supernatural things, which is a topic where everything’s beyond proof. As a more mainstream Christian, my crazy ideas simply have a longer continuous pedigree.
But the Scientologists’ crazy ideas are to a fair extent crazy ideas about the things of this world, and consequently are more transparently bullshit.
Not that Mormons don’t take a lot of shit, but I concur that they get a good deal less, these days, than the Scientologists.
The “Mormon Theology in 6 Minutes” Video, Digg.Com, YouTube.com and the Web 2.0 | Mormon Stories Utube is on the case.
There’s also Mitt Romney - who, by the way, does catch a lot of flack on the Mormon thing.
Another part of the answer might have to do with the fact that Mormons are more than happy to tell you precisely what they believe, for free, while Scientologists like to claim that their religion is also their intellectual property - and they’re sue people just for distributing information about those beliefs, let alone criticizing them. This doesn’t help them.
Sky God
Immaculate conception
A baby is born and is the son of God
He has special gifts/powers
He dies on the cross for the sins of humankind
He comes back from the dead three days later
His blood has washed the humans sins away, if you accept Him as your personal savior
And He’s going to return to Earth when the World comes to an end
Believers go to Heaven, non believers go to Hell
Glad the most popular religion in the West isn’t as crazy as LDS or Scientology
It’s still not as wacky as Reaganomics.
I suspect part of it is that Mormons have a reputation for decency that scientologists don’t have.
I know lots of Mormons. Most of them are just outstanding people. The tenets of their faith tell them to be loving parents, to take care of themselves, to be humble, to be assets to their communities, etc. They’re not really a proselytizing faith, so they tend to leave others alone. In terms of a faith’s effect on its followers, modern Mormonism seems pretty benign, or even positive.
Scientology, on the other hand, seems totally different. It reeks of quackery, dangerous beliefs, aggressive ‘recruitment’, and scamming. Its main effect on people’s lives seems to be to separate them from their money while feeding them bullshit. If you read up on church practices, they’re pretty foul. For example, forcing people to abandon friends or even wives/girlfriends if they won’t join the faith.
Read what happened to Tom’s girlfriend before Katie. She describes being increasingly pressured to join the church, and left Tom after he invited her to dinner, and it turned out to be a grilling where she had to sit in front of a whole gaggle of church officials and be lectured/browbeaten/cajoled into joining the faith. Pretty scary stuff.
Bad-mouth the Mormons, and they’ll turn the other cheek and forgive you. Bad-mouth the scientologists, and you might have an army of lawyers harassing you and dirty tricks being played to destroy your life.
I don’t think the Mormon faith is any wackier than the Christian faith. I don’t think it’s any stranger to wear special holy underwear than it is to get down on your knees and bow to Mecca periodically, or to eat a cracker and wine and believe it is the transubstantiated body and blood of your saviour that you’re scarfing down.
If we’re willing to give a pass to people who see the image of Christ in a piece of toast and think it’s a miracle, or to people who think they won the big game because Jesus sat on their shoulder and helped them make the 3-pointer, why shouldn’t we give a pass to the Mormons for believing that Joseph Smith recovered a new testament from God and has some new prophecies? What’s the difference?
That was basically the message of the “South Park” Mormon episode. They mocked the Mormon faith because that’s what they do, but the Mormon family was nice and cared about each other–way more than the other South Park families. So the message I got…nice people…kooky beliefs.
We aren’t? Good golly, what are all those thousands of missionaries doing, then? 
It’s true that most Mormons won’t actively try to convert you every single time you meet them at work. But ask a question, and they’ll happily invite you to church.
Just to expand on what Sam Stone said, Scientology was founded by a guy who was not only a nutcase, but a dirtbag of the highest order (or perhaps the second-highest order, I tend to forget my dirtbag hierarchy).
In any case, read what Cecil has to say about L. Ron:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_134.html
"By establishing a religion Hubbard was able to set himself up as a font of revelation rather than a scientist and thus control the movement. He also hoped to deflect outside criticism and indeed might have succeeded in doing so had it not been for his own implacable paranoia. He established thought police, conducted purges, and declared his critics “fair game,” who “may be deprived of property or injured [or] tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”’
I may be talking out my arse from across the pond, but I think the big difference is that mormonism is a split-off of christianity, while scientology isn’t.
As far as I can see, objectively scientology is no worse or crazier than some of the more materialist christian factions that seem to be accepted in the U.S.