Why don't Mormons catch as much crap as Scientologists for their crazy beliefs?

Great Debates
121

[QUOTE=treis]
Compare that with the Vatican that gives detailed financial reports. As do, I believe, all of the dioceses.
[/QUOTE]
Since when ? There’s been quite a few scandals in recent years invoving various dioceses and secrecy. For example, in only took me a short google to find this.

[QUOTE=New York Times]
The first of the two, Bishop J. Keith Symons, learned in 1994 that the diocese’s chief financial officer, Robert Schattie, had plundered the church treasury, but to avoid scandal the bishop did not file charges, church officials said. Instead, the diocese signed a secret agreement with Mr. Schattie under which he was to repay $200 a month, a schedule that would have required more than a century to reach restitution.

But Mr. Schattie quit paying after only a few months, church documents indicate, and Bishop Symons took no action before he resigned in 1998 for molesting boys. Under his successor, Bishop Anthony O’Connell, the diocese continued to consider it more important to keep the embezzlement secret than to recover the money, said J. Patrick Fitzgerald, a lawyer for the diocese.

[/QUOTE]

122

I didn’t say that they were scandal free. Just more transparent.

123

[QUOTE=treis]
I didn’t say that they were scandal free. Just more transparent.
[/QUOTE]
The Catholic Church is transparent ? Since when ?

124

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
The Catholic Church is transparent ? Since when ?
[/QUOTE]

The 80s, I think.

125

Yeah, that was the turning point. The present still sux, but it’s closer than ideal. You are de3aling with 2K of inertia here. It isn’t going to be perfect, just yet.

126

BTW, Mountain Meadows is, as 19th Cenury Catholics might say, an “unfortunate incident.” Fully culpable against the Mormon faith at the time, but something we all need to IGNORE because it IS NOT CURRENT!

And yes, I’m theologically mellow on Friday nights because that’s the night I drink, but I keep thinking while I’m drinking and The Drink has been a center of Philosophy for millenia. Look it up.

127

[QUOTE=treis]
The 80s, I think.
[/QUOTE]
you have not been following the sexual abuse lawsuits in San Diego. The Church has been doing a lot of obfuscating of their true financial position.

They are more transparent than when they did not report at all but that is not saying a whole lot.

128

[QUOTE=dropzone]
Too polite. Which, in light of Church history and how the nuns and priests tried to raise those people, says a lot about how well their parents did it. I mean, c’mon! Members of my Lutheran congregation were being given an explanation of Muslim beliefs at the local mosque and I, being well raised but too old to remember it, muttered to our pastor, “Well, they’re closer than the Mormons.” And it’s true and no reason to not find Mormons to be nice, if a little boring. They’re just not Christians unless you stretch the definition far beyond the breaking point.

[/QUOTE]
Oh well, if everyone doesn’t think so, it’s not my problem. I still like you. It would be fun to argue out the exact definitions, though. I don’t see why Mormons don’t count under any reasonable definition of Christian; we believe in Christ as the Savior and Son of God, born of a virgin, died on the cross and was resurrected after 3 days, the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father. I really can’t see a need for quibbling over more than that.

No, we don’t accept the Nicene creed; it’s not scripture. I guess we’re just more sola scriptura than the rest of you folks. :stuck_out_tongue:

129

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
And Mormonism never gave us Battlefield Earth.
(Although what famous writers have been LDS?)
[/QUOTE]

Just to add - the writer/artist of the best Space Opera webcomic in the universe, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary, is LDS. Which fact easily makes up for my occasional annoyance at nicely dressed men (no bicycles) coming to my door.

130

[QUOTE=dangermom]
I really can’t see a need for quibbling over more than that.
[/QUOTE]
And I’d argue that our recent parishoners from India named “Thomas” have probably been Christians since St Thomas hit the Indies 2k yrs ago, while our (majority) parishoners are Nordic and their ancestors have been Christian since long after about 1000AD so they have no reason to brag, but I prefer going with my “nice but boring” definition while ignoring technicalies; them which the OP wants us to pick anew.

(blowing a kiss at my pal, dangermom, because, jerk I may be, I hate starting fights.)

131

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Which fact easily makes up for my occasional annoyance at nicely dressed men (no bicycles) coming to my door.
[/QUOTE]
Dib, that makes up for some of what a (welcome because this board sometimes needs it) jerk you sometimes are. :slight_smile: We SF argumentists sometimes need someone to remind us why we argue with each other and blow off everybody else.

132

[QUOTE=dropzone]
Dib, that makes up for some of what a (welcome because this board sometimes needs it) jerk you sometimes are. :slight_smile: We SF argumentists sometimes need someone to remind us why we argue with each other and blow off everybody else.
[/QUOTE]

Jerk I sometimes am, but I recognise good webcomic, and also the inherent niceness of a lot of LDS missionary folk. I generally have little problem with door-to-door missionaries, anyway. I have no problem saying “no thanks, I’m not interested”.

Lately, it’s been lots of Asian people - Chinese, I think, by what I can tell when they speak to each other. Never got enough of a spiel to tell if they’re LDS (there are women, which isn’t usual, is it?) - not JW, though, no Watchtowers in evidence.

133

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Just to add - the writer/artist of the best Space Opera webcomic in the universe, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary, is LDS.
[/QUOTE]
A webcomic I like enough that I got my username from it. Fortunately, unlike certain other comic artists, he can write a comic without turning it into unentertaining religious/political propaganda. I’d have never known his religious denomination, except that I heard it elsewhere.

I just hope he never has some massive religious surge and turns the thing into the Mormon Jack Chick In Space.

134

[QUOTE=beckwall]
Lived in Salt Lake City for a year, not an expert on the subject but would like to chime in. In most of the rest of the country, Mormons are as described above. Leave them alone, tell them no and they will respect your wishes. In SLC, if you don’t go to their ward house, then you will not be invited into their home, into their conversations at work, into anything they are doing. And then there are the SLC “Jack Mormons”, those who drink heavily and go home to kick the dog and beat the wife.

So generally speaking, most of the country does not see anything to get down on when it comes to the Church of LDS. But try living in their midst, when you are the minority, and you might come up with some other conclusions.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve heard similar reports from several non-Mormons who have lived in SLC and Provo. I’ve enjoyed spending time with every Mormon I’ve ever met, but from everything I’ve heard, I wouldn’t move to SLC.

135

I did mention this rather dubious work, because it is revered by Momons. The history of the curious tome is quite instructive: Joseph Smith purchased this egypi ian paparyrus document froma travelling show, in Chicago. He claimed to “translate” it (perhaps using the mysterious “seer” stones mentioned in the BOM?). Anyway, he did this translation at a time before ANYONE in the West could reach egyptian hieroglyphs. The French scholare Champollion didn’t crack the hieroglyphic alaphabet until 1840 or so.
At any rate, the egyptian document that Smith claimed to have translated (as the history of the patriarch Abraham) turned up recently, and Egyptologists found that it was actually a potion of a well-known egyptian funerary text 9the book of the Dead).
So what are we to make of this? Is the LDS Church correct in their embrace of the spurious text? Or did their chief prophet make a mistake? :confused:

136

I did mention this rather dubious work, because it is revered by Momons. The history of the curious tome is quite instructive: Joseph Smith purchased this egypi ian paparyrus document froma travelling show, in Chicago. He claimed to “translate” it (perhaps using the mysterious “seer” stones mentioned in the BOM?). Anyway, he did this translation at a time before ANYONE in the West could reach egyptian hieroglyphs. The French scholare Champollion didn’t crack the hieroglyphic alaphabet until 1840 or so.
At any rate, the egyptian document that Smith claimed to have translated (as the history of the patriarch Abraham) turned up recently, and Egyptologists found that it was actually a potion of a well-known egyptian funerary text 9the book of the Dead).
So what are we to make of this? Is the LDS Church correct in their embrace of the spurious text? Or did their chief prophet make a mistake? :confused:

137

[QUOTE=dangermom]
Oh well, if everyone doesn’t think so, it’s not my problem. I still like you. It would be fun to argue out the exact definitions, though. I don’t see why Mormons don’t count under any reasonable definition of Christian; we believe in Christ as the Savior and Son of God, born of a virgin, died on the cross and was resurrected after 3 days, the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father. I really can’t see a need for quibbling over more than that.

No, we don’t accept the Nicene creed; it’s not scripture. I guess we’re just more sola scriptura than the rest of you folks. :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

Well, I’m not gonna question your or any LDS member’s commitment to Christ. But when the LDS view of God the Father suggests that He may have been anything other than Eternal Deity, but instead a Deified mortal, that causes many Christian believers in the Catholic, Orthodox & Reformational churches (the ones that Joseph Smith’s God referred to as “abominations”) to question the soundness of the essential LDS theology.

138

[QUOTE=dangermom]
Oh well, if everyone doesn’t think so, it’s not my problem. I still like you. It would be fun to argue out the exact definitions, though. I don’t see why Mormons don’t count under any reasonable definition of Christian; we believe in Christ as the Savior and Son of God, born of a virgin, died on the cross and was resurrected after 3 days, the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father. I really can’t see a need for quibbling over more than that.
[/QUOTE]

I had an interesting “aha” moment a few years ago regarding a memory from just after college.

I was raised Mormon (I’m now an atheist). When I graduated from BYU, I moved to Indiana intending to establish residency and go to graduate school there. I got a job at a departments store. One of my co-workers was a sweet young pentacostal woman. At the time, all these non-Mormons surrounding me were quite the exotics, and this pentacostal most exotic of all. :rolleyes: :stuck_out_tongue: I was only just barely starting to question my faith at that time.

We (the pentacostal woman and I) had a few interesting conversations about religion. She asked me if I were a Christian. I hesitated. The answer was yes in the way that **Dangermom ** defined it. But, I somehow felt weird about saying simply “yes.”

Years and years later, I got to thinking about the incident and realized that there was a semantics issue there that I didn’t really understand at the time, only sensed.

When a pentacostal or other fundamentalist Christian uses the word Christian, they have a very specific definition of it. The best way I can describe it is that, for me, christian (lowercase c) is a simple noun used for a person with a certain religious belief that includes some kind of devotion to Jesus Christ. For her, Christian (uppercase C) is a person that subscribes to rigidly defined sub-category of those beliefs.

The question made me uncomfortable because, even though I knew I believed in Jesus Christ as a huge part of my theological underpinnings, I sensed that the word Christian meant something different to her. I could answer “yes” truthfully by my own definitions, but not by hers.

(My. I hope all that made at least some sense.)

139

Ralph124c, I don’t have time for a real discussion of the BoA, nor do I think that this thread is the right place for that discussion. The short version is: it’s a lot more complicated than you realize. But here are some links for you to peruse. Read and enjoy!

A complex but thorough dissection of BoA criticisms
A simpler FAQ version
The FAIR wiki version

140

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
I guess I should have said ‘aggressively proselytizing’. I didn’t really mean they don’t go on missions. The way I see it, Mormons tend to spread the faith through example. They believe that by becoming pillars of their communities and doing good works they’ll attract people to the faith. That’s pretty much what a lot of Christians do.
[/QUOTE]
You haven’t been to Utah. I don’t mean Salt Lake City, which in the interests of becoming a tourist destination demonstrates tolerance for all kinds of ideas, behaviors, musical tastes, and skin colors, but backwoods southern Utah, where if you ain’t a-Morman you better keep a-movin’. The Mormons I’ve kwown and worked with outside of Utah tend to be more tolerant and generally less dogmatic.

The Book of Mormon (once described by Mark Twain as “chloraform in print”) is pretty much a transparent fabrication that bares scant relation to reality, demonstratably in terms of the geography and zoology described within. Joseph Smith was well known as a spinner of tall tales long before he dug up those gold plates, and the Mesoamerican archeology done at BYU and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies is barely short of academic fraud. See Hampton Sides “This Is Not The Place” for more detail on the problems with Mormon archeology.

All of that being said, Mormonism certainly has a less bloody history than many other branches of Christianity (of which it is a subset, the protestations of other Christians aside) and certainly less than Judism. The Book of Mormon may be fraudulent and kooky, but it’s certainly less so than earlier books of the Bible, and particularly those of the Old Testament which can’t even offer a more unifying moral principle than that the only way to thrive is to be a white male who is willing to kill his own children or throw his virgin daughters to a mob. And certainly the Catholic church (among others) has repeatedly edited the Bible to take out the worst of the really rough stuff in the interests of making it more in alignment with the beliefs they’d like to promote. And unlike the Scientologists, their particular bit of pseudoscience archeology is pretty harmless in comparison to the whole auditing business. On an offensiveness scale of 1 to 10, the Mormons barely hit a 2.5, and then just because of Mitt Romney.

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Of course, it’s even better to drag them inside and try to convert them to your religion! Hooh-boy fun! :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]
Or actively go out and proselytize atheism to them.

[QUOTE=Kuboydal]
It’s still not as wacky as Reaganomics.
[/QUOTE]
You’re my new favorite hero for the day.

Stranger