It looks like the story might be bollocks.
I think that means the 40 comments to pause/play rule might be inoperative.
What kind of person would question my credibility?!?
Though at the link above there is mention of a corpse-humping finding by a Moroccan cleric. So maybe we still have something to work with here.
It's got to be the case, if it's written in the Daily Mail.
I wouldn't question your credibility, but given the right wine and some mood lighting, I might fool around with your corpse.
Wider description of Egyptian parliament activity. That newspaper is interesting reading. The only explicitly feminist mentions are that nurses are currently banned from wearing a veil, which someone wants to change, and that butane subsidies as currently proposed don't take polygamy into account, which, again, someone wants to change.
butane subsidies as currently proposed don't take polygamy into account
Um, what? On multiple levels.
7: You'd have to be married first, you criminal.
I assume the marriage has to occur while both parties are alive and that you can't try to find somebody by trolling the mortuary with a justice of the peace, two witnesses, and an unethical ventriloquist.
9: Presumably the calculations of how much subsidy is given out per family.
The law currently proposed is one butane coupon per household. Some Islamist points out that there should be an allowance for multiple wives. Brigham Young issued his wives scrip and had a comissary inside their house for managing distribution of food, cloth, and whatnot.
Proxy weddings are legal in one US state - Missouri? There was an article about it a few years back, lots of women marrying their fiances while they were deployed in Iraq, and the minister's son standing in for them. I think they even allow double-proxy weddings.
Ah, here it is.
http://www.military.com/news/article/for-some-gis-a-proxy-road-to-marriage.html
Montana, not Missouri.
Double proxy weddings would be a good setup for a quirky romantic comedy.
1: I like all the comments in that link saying "how could anyone possibly think that Islamists would want to pass such a ludicrous law?" Because, you know, Islamists are known for their solid common sense.
"I didn't know she was dead. I thought she was English."
Again with the Mormons, but posthumous religious conversion is a big fundraiser in the Mormon church, and let to a lot of early development of database technology in Utah. Ancestry.com is the descendent of that database, still managed by Mormons.
More informed-looking take at CSM. Apparently the Moroccan cleric being mentioned also rather incomprehensibly ruled that it's permissible for pregnant women to drink alcohol.
Because, you know, Islamists are known for their solid common sense.
It's possible to have a reputation as a complete fruitcale without necessarily being suspected of systematic necrophilia.
I wonder if systematic necrophilia is worse than opportunistic ad hoc necrophilia. Obviously, we need a consequentalist.
Good that this is debunked before I had to think about it. It's not even that necrophilia is so unthinkably horrible, as a good liberal who thinks purity is unimportant compared to harm or fairness I sort of think it's incredibly gross, but not really a moral problem. But the thought that there's enough of a constituency for it to be pushing legislation would be worrisome if true.
there's enough of a constituency for it to
I suppose you could get a similar effect among the living, if everyone was extremely patient, with some make-up and a walk-in freezer.
No more no more masturbatin's in Egypt!!
23: A friend of a friend had a boyfriend ask her to do that. Cold bath first, a little blue eyeshadow under the cheekbones, and lie real still.
13: Double proxy weddings would be a good setup for a quirky romantic comedy.
Spouseless in St. Louis (Tina Fey, 2018)
Kaden (Justin Bieber) and Kailie (Saoirse Ronan) are two strangers living in St. Louis, whose respective best friends Bradienne and Braden happen to look exactly like their counterparts and are engaged to be married. With Braden deployed to Afghanistan and Bradienne deployed to Syria, Kaden and Kailie agree to be bride-and-groom by proxy for their absent friends. On the day of the proxy wedding, they meet Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Jennifer (Angelina Jolie) at the wedding chapel, kindly old retired TV producers who share a tragic past -- each lost a pair of twins during a typhoon on the sets of "The Island" and "Just A Number", their respective reality shows. When President Ta-Nehisi Coates suddenly declares peace and recalls all US troops stationed abroad, hijinks ensue as the four friends and their older acquaintances try to make sense of their mixed-up marriages!
That's like dating somebody with a tattoo reading "Possible Future Serial Killer".
Obviously, we need a consequentalist.
You called? From that standpoint the only objection could be that it might distress the friends and relatives of the deceased (cf. Temporary Kings). But I have to follow LB in being grateful that there isn't actually a mass campaign in its favour.
28 is brilliant, and if I hit the lottery it will be made.
Apparently the Moroccan cleric being mentioned also rather incomprehensibly ruled that it's permissible for pregnant women to drink alcohol.
It's so haram, it's halal!
ALL I NEED'S A HOLE AND A.... AW, FUCK IT.
17
Again with the Mormons, but posthumous religious conversion is a big fundraiser in the Mormon church
I'm morbidly curious about this. How? Do churchmembers get charged for the privilege of having their ancestors converted? Does the fraudulently inflated membership list count for some subsidy?
Natilo is the answer to John Cusack's dreams.
Sorry that's an unsufferable link. Punchline at the end:
I don't know what they make in Hollywood, but they don't really make good romantic comedies anymore, is what I'm saying.
I'm morbidly curious about this. How?
By raising loans against the putative value of all the estates worked by them.
posthumous religious conversion is a big fundraiser in the Mormon church
I don't understand how this could be true. There are no special fundraising appeals for genealogy and temple work. Do you mean the church owns a bunch of ancestry.com stock or something?
It's not fraudulent, but status in the church depends on having Mormon ancestors, who may not have had a chance to hear the good news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead
It's not financially fraudulent,
I don't even have a super strong personal problem with it, but it seems so self-evidently offensive to people who would reasonably care.
It's just a purse, who cares what it says on the outside?
Well, it's just that when it was a cow it professed to say something different.
I have no problem at all with baptism of the dead, and I don't understand why anyone cares.
and I don't understand why anyone cares.
Really?
18: Obviously this is because the baby might not be Muslim, and she is therefore permitted to drink for one (but not for two).
45: I don't understand why anybody cares either. Short of actually digging up corpses to dunk, it's a completely imaginary undertaking, like me claiming that I'm having nightly hotmonkeysex with your ancestors. The only thing that's being accomplished is self-delusion by the baptizers.
44: They care because it's a co-option of the meaning of their ancestors' lives.
So for example, if Great Aunt May died in the holocaust, and you identify as Jewish in part to honor her memory, it's probably quite frustrating to find out that she's retroactively a Mormon.
Personally I can't get worked up about this sort of thing, because I try not to get too attached to stories I can't control. But most people aren't like that.
I'm performing gender reassignment surgery on as many dead Mormons as I can during the months of May and June. Just send me your great-grandmother's name and she'll be your great-grandfather in 10 minutes or less.
47: I don't care about it, but many people clearly do, and the fact that the Mormon church continues to do this, even though so many people have said that they are offended, clearly shows church leaders to be a bunch of dickbags.
Well, if it's the sort of thing you care about, it's an insult to your dead relatives. If your grandmother was and you are a devout Muslim, and Mormons are going around claiming "Actually, she's a Mormon for real now," that's not that far off from "Your grandmother has abandoned God and is burning in Hell." (I don't know that an actual Muslim would believe that as a consequence of an actual post-mortem conversion, but you see what I mean.) Even if you believe it's just talk, rather than an accurate report of the spiritual state of your dead grandmother, it's still the kind of thing that I'd think it'd be a real pissoff to hear someone say.
49: Someone was out there doing postmortem gay marriages on dead Mormons. You could try and get in on that action.
People who care are closet polytheists.
I don't understand why anybody cares either.
I don't care one whit; you can have imaginary monkey-sex with my beloved great-granny all day long. But you can't possibly be confused as to why other people might care.
status in the church depends on having Mormon ancestors
This is a weird way of putting it. Mormons believe that there are a few essential sacraments (which they call "ordinances") that are required for salvation and for being linked to family members in the afterlife. These ordinances have to be done with physical bodies, so they have proxy ordinances, including baptisms. Most proxy ordinances are done for people of no known relationship to any living Mormons -- it's just people who have been dead long enough for whatever the current policy is, and who have been identified through archival research. Because Mormons want to be linked to their ancestors (there's a whole very fuzzy theology about this), many Mormons do genealogical research to discover non-Mormon ancestors, and then they go do the proxy ordinances for them.
In a way, this is kind of a high-status thing to do, but most Mormons aren't really involved in the research. Usually it's your grandmother or great-uncle, someone retired who has time on their hands to go through old parish records or whatever it is that they do.
I'm still not understanding the "big fundraiser" claim. All this activity costs the church money, and like I said there are no special fundraisers just for this kind of thing.
Mormons are going around claiming
Okay, but that sort of Mormon goes around claiming all sorts of crazy shit. Getting offended at this particular batshit tidbit seems analogous to taking offense at the homeless schizophrenic shouting that your grandmother was lizard people.
The Mormon baptism for the dead is supposed to be merely an invitation for the person in the next life to accept or refuse their church, not something that automagically makes the dead person Mormon.
To my mind, that makes it less offensive that simply claiming the other person is now part of the "fastest-growing church in the world (tm)". But I can see pretty easily why someone could be offended by it, and they are supposed to baptize only their own ancestors, so it seems the Mormons agree.
I'm having coldlizardsex with your ancestors, apo.
"Your grandmother has abandoned God and is burning in Hell."
Which is reserved for me to say about your grandmother. I mean she didn't really abandon God since she was a heathen infidel from the get-go, but whatever. She's definitely still burning in hell. Anyway stop talking shit about MY grandma!
56: I am willing to bet that you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a single statement that would offend your sensibilities.
56: MY GRANDMOTHER WAS NOT LIZARD PEOPLE!
44: Well, I don't have strong religious convictions, so the idea of it being done in the name of myself or someone like me doesn't bother me much. I'd be a tiny bit annoyed at the idea of having something so pointless done ostensibly for my benefit, and my name on the church's list falsely, but that's it. After I'm dead, I doubt I'd know or care.
If we're talking about people who do have strong religious convictions, though, being much more strongly annoyed or even offended (incensed! Ticked off even!) seems justified. Even if you believe it's completely ineffective in a spiritual sense (and I wouldn't even take that for granted, given that we're talking about strong religious convictions in the first place), it's still disrespectful to their beliefs.
Considering that they keep on doing it for the same people over and over again, it seems comically inept to me. "We're only getting one bar on our prayer cell phone, so we have to keep trying to make sure the call gets through." "That one didn't take, we'd better try again!" "She's in so much spiritual trouble, she needs extra washing!" Well, darkly comic. But to someone with strong religious convications, that might look more like calculated offense.
Suppose you are a mainstream trinitarian Christian and so was ancestor X. In your belief system, to convert to what you believe to be a glaring heresy might well put you in danger of eternal damnation. Therefore, if heretic Y turns up and informs you that ancestor X has been retroactively converted, you might be quite miffed on their behalf.
In practice, you would only object to the principle of the thing, since as a mainstream trinitarian you wouldn't believe that retroactive conversion of the dead was possible, any more than if you were an atheist.
As I understand it, the Mormon church stopped doing proxy ordinances for people who died in the Holocaust when they were asked to stop, decades ago. A few loony Mormons managed to keep doing it, but that involved being not-quite-forthright about where they got the names they were submitting for the ordinances.
As far as the general project, I dunno. Mormons aren't claiming that performing a proxy baptism makes someone into a Mormon; the idea is that the soul of the dead person is in another realm currently and has the opportunity to hear the "true gospel" and make a free choice about whether to sign up. We in this world don't know what the dead people are deciding, so the idea is to do the proxy work for everyone. The ordinances only become efficacious for those dead people who choose (in the spirit world) to become Mormon.
(Of course, there is some folklore about certain dead people appearing to Mormons in dreams and saying "Go do my temple work" or "I've accepted the temple work," or whatever. Various Founding Fathers, I think, and some other famous people. And many Mormons will say they have experienced a spiritual revelation of some sort that a particular ancestor of theirs had been waiting for the proxy work to be done and was grateful.)
So I guess my opinion about it is, the Mormons shouldn't be doing baptisms for groups of people whose descendants ask them to knock it off, but it's not rude for them to continue doing baptisms for people who are turned up in run-of-the-mill name gathering.
Getting offended over people doing things that would be nice if their religion were true, but have no actual impact otherwise, is kinda dickish. For example, if you say you have the flu, and someone says they'll pray for you to get better then you just stfu, or else you're being a dick.
This is all the more true of things that people are doing in private. I'd agree that it'd be really rude of Mormons to start spamming people about how they baptized their grandparents. But people doing private religious rituals that have no actual real world affect? Religions do all sorts of weird things, and have all sorts of weird beliefs about people not in their religion. The polite thing to do is just ignore it.
All this activity costs the church money,
??? Fees for baptisms, weddings, and funerals have been how organized churches everywhere have kept their priests fed and their buildings built. Historically, churches use public declarations of faith by people on the margin as a way to get and maintain secular power. Looking for marginal places for LDS, is money flowing from Tucson to Utah or vice versa? What's the economic structure of LDS? Who pays, who decides about spending, and who benefits?
There are no fees for baptisms, weddings, or funerals in the LDS church. Local ministers do not receive any pay; nor do the people who officiate at the temple when members do these proxy ordinances.
It's certainly true that the Mormon church takes in lots of money from its members, and it apparently has sizable assets these days. And yeah, organized religions affect power distribution, economic activity, etc. But to say that "posthumous religious conversion is a big fundraiser in the Mormon church" is just wrong. The church raises money in other ways, and the posthumous ritual stuff is almost entirely volunteer, with the overhead being paid out of the general funds.
I would guess that for a church with mandatory tithing, that would dwarf all other sources of income. They're getting 2 million a year from Romney alone!
68.1 But don't you need to tithe to stay in good standing and thus be allowed to baptized, married, or funeraled?
It's nice to hear Bave chiming in with Actual Knowledge about this. It had not been clear to me exactly how it worked.
Yeah, I think the tithing is the main source of their income, although maybe their investment income is greater. The Mormon church doesn't share much financial information, but since I was a kid they've shifted away from having local congregations raise money to build a new meeting house because the central church has enough money to pay for stuff like that themselves.
70: Yes for getting baptized or getting married in the temple. Tithing is considered one of the requirements of worthiness for baptism and for being admitted to the temple. If you want a non-temple marriage performed by Mormon clergy, you don't have to be a tithepayer; same with having a Mormon funeral.
I certainly have the impression that they have a vast and lucrative investment portfolio.
I stand corrected about the fees, thanks for clearing that up, and thanks for sharing an informed perspective.
dreams, some other famous people
Thanks for the details, this is a really interesting perspective. Would a posthumous baptism for John Wayne be considered OK? Jane Mansfield?
The issue with Anne Frank in the Dominican Republic recently was not that this was a private matter, but that some kind of free record got made and then published.
Are there services that converts are forbidden from participating in if they have not paid their dues?
Getting offended over people doing things that would be nice if their religion were true, but have no actual impact otherwise, is kinda dickish.
Yes, but telling people that you have retroactively and without permission changed something about them that was central to their identity, even if it doesn't re-direct their eternal souls, is also dickish.
Are there services that converts are forbidden from participating in if they have not paid their dues?
So, for any Mormon, to go into the temple you need a Temple Recommend, which you get by having interviews with your bishop and stake president. They ask you a standard set of questions and then decide whether you're "worthy" to enter the temple. One of the questions is whether you pay a full tithe. I don't know what happens if you say you don't -- it's not an automatic disqualifier, but I suspect in most instances it would keep you from getting a recommend.
But most of Mormon religious life doesn't happen in the temple. You can certainly attend meetings if you don't pay tithing. You can hold a "calling," which means you have some kind of unpaid responsibility in your congregation. I'm sure the callings that involve significant responsibility are reserved for tithepayers, so you won't get anywhere in the hierarchy without paying your tithing. And nobody but you and your bishop will know whether or how much tithing you are paying, so it's not like there's community pressure directed at any one person in particular. Among committed Mormons, tithing is considered very important, but I have no idea how many active Mormons actually pay a full tithe.
The Mormon church isn't telling you that. They're doing it privately and not contacting you. No one is forcing anyone to go digging into who they're baptizing.
I don't know what official LDS salvation doctrine is, but surely part of the problem is the implication (whether real or perceived) that the decedent would be in / go to hell without said baptism.
My understanding is that Mormon beliefs on hell are actually pretty generous to non-Mormons.
I actually have a a lot of respect for the LDS church over tithing. It's embarrassing how few evangelicals tithe, and it's embarrassing that churches don't exert any real pressure over it. But I guess that's what happens when you have hundreds of denominations. There's no real leverage.
Has there actually been any serious pushback on this practice aside from the Jews objecting to it being done to Holocaust victims? Because that comes from a very specific set of ideas within Jewish thought that doesn't ultimately have much to do with how the Mormons see it.
I'm a basically orthodox, though shitty, trinitarian Christian and could care less about the Mormon retroactive baptism. If they're right, awesome, if not, doesn't affect me. I mean if they got aggressively in my face about it it would be annoying, as it would for anyone; otherwise who cares.
Just send me your great-grandmother's name and she'll be your great-grandfather in 10 minutes or less.
Az der toyte bubbe vot gehat baytzim volt zi geven mein toyte zayde, as the old Yiddish Mormon necrophiliac proverb says.
If this thread has not brought back the TOS...
83: Then you don't mind that I've consecrated your soul to SEITAN.
I'm with apo on this. I just can't get offended by these invites.
Say the LDs are wrong about the afterlife, then my RC ancestors just won't notice. Or LDS are right and the Pope is too (the many mansions theory). My ancestors get an invitation to switch paradises (or get out of hell). If they have the option to choose, so what? If the Pope is wrong and only LDS are right, then my ancestors are in the nice LDS hell and now have an option to upgrade that they never epxected. The final set is that there is no afterlife and all of this is one of the odd things that religions do.
Oh shit, fuck. Can't have that. Sniper Team, GO.
And what about all the just saved from hell by Jesus Christ? Moses and that lot (maybe Lot too) all redeemed by the Christian sacrifice. Now that's offensive.
I think the "If it's true, great, if it's bullshit, who cares" attitude is a very modern liberal attitude -- I mean, it's my attitude personally, but I'm not surprised at all that lots of people don't share it.
I'm with apo on this. I just can't get offended by these invites.
This is just the latest incarnation of "I don't even have a TV."
Getting offended over people doing things that would be nice if their religion were true, but have no actual impact otherwise, is kinda dickish. For example, if you say you have the flu, and someone says they'll pray for you to get better then you just stfu, or else you're being a dick.
This example is so not analogous that you're banned.
91 -- Nah, I think the pre-liberal attitude would be to think of Mormons as dangerous heretical weirdos generally, not of the posthumous baptism as having any particularly negative effect. To the extent that paganism was seen as having an actually deleterious effect, as opposed to just preventing the pagan from receiving salvation, it was pretty limited to the idea that there was actual satan-inspired "real" magic being worked in this world. Mostly pagans were just seen as wrong, not empowered by their paganism.
Anyhow, Teo probably has it right in 82.
95 is not always true. For example, in Jewish law, things that have been consecrated for idolatrous rites are forbidden to Jews, whatever their original state or physical composition.
(That's why there's such a thing as non-Kosher wine; no guarantee that it wasn't used in some kind of cannibalistic sacrament or whatever.)
It's not a big stretch to imagine the same principle applied to the pagan consecration of the dead.
I'm thinking of things like early Christian martyrs going to the lions (at least in church legend, not sure about the historicity of it) rather than sacrificing to Jupiter. The concept wasn't that that sacrificing to Jupiter would have a magical bad effect, but that it would be wrong to be seen to be apostate from Christianity, and so importantly wrong that it was worth dying for. The posthumous baptism isn't the same thing exactly, but it seems to me to be close enough to the same conceptual space to explain some irritation.
Yes, I was basically thinking of pre-modern Christianity in 95. Don't know enough about Jewish law to make the claim.
To me, it feels like what one kid does to provoke a reaction from another kid. "You know your sentimental item that you care about so much? I'M PRETENDING TO STEP ALL OVER IT!!!" It's an obnoxious thing to do.
Say the LDs are wrong about the afterlife, then my RC ancestors just won't notice. Or LDS are right and the Pope is too (the many mansions theory). My ancestors get an invitation to switch paradises (or get out of hell). If they have the option to choose, so what? If the Pope is wrong and only LDS are right, then my ancestors are in the nice LDS hell and now have an option to upgrade that they never epxected. The final set is that there is no afterlife and all of this is one of the odd things that religions do.
This sort of logic assumes a monotheistic system. I believe in the real God, therefore what do I care what those people who believe in false idols spend their time pretending to do? But you could just as easily see yourself on the side of one particular deity, and be upset that the followers of a rival deity are trying to claim you for their side.
This certainly seems to be part of Christian tradition as well. A large part of the baffling/infuriating claims by Christians that they are being persecuted despite being overwhelmingly culturally dominant boils down to "It's the followers of Jesus Christ versus the enemies of Jesus Christ. Jews, Muslims, agnostics, Secular Humanists, they're all on the wrong team."
99: I think that religions with a concept of ritual contagion would be the most likely to have a strong aversion to the conversion of their dead by other religions.
I don't think Christianity quite has that concept, but Judaism, Islam, and at least some forms of Hinduism do.
To get meta for a second, the reason that there's an analogy ban is that when you argue by analogy you end up arguing about whether the analogy is any good and what the distinguishing aspects are between the two cases. Arguing by generalizing and specializing, by contrast, does not have this problem because in stating the general case you've identified what you believe to be the relevant aspects.
Boy am I on team apo here. I have no patience for this kind of unicorn v leprechaun throwdown shit. Quit worrying about what the mormons are doing in their little mason outfits and try and enjoy your cheeseless deli sandwich.
Posthumous conversion isn't like telling someone you are praying for them to get over their cold. It's like telling someone you are praying for them to see the error of their sinful homosexual ways. It implicitly says that your current identity is wrong wrong wrong. It might be better to laugh it off if someone says they are praying for you to end your sinful homosexual ways, but I would also totally understand if you came back with a big FUCK YOU.
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I just left the AT&T shareholders meeting, where security was provided by our very own gswift. He looks awfully good in a uniform, laydeez.
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I actually have no problem with people praying that someone see the error of their sinful homosexual ways as long as they do it private and don't make a fuss about it.
Heebie is describing it well, but basically, it is rude to overrule people's important conceptions of self, presumably on issues they've considered, and act in ways dismiss the identity they held. Even if they don't know that you do it, it is still rude. It is a minor problem as problems go, but rude.
105: I bet it would be really annoying if you tell someone to take zinc to end their homosexual ways.
105 gets it exactly right. I couldn't put my finger on why it's irritating, but it's definitely this:
It implicitly says that your current identity is wrong wrong wrong. It might be better to laugh it off if someone says they are praying for you to end your sinful homosexual ways, but I would also totally understand if you came back with a big FUCK YOU.
To me, it feels like what one kid does to provoke a reaction from another kid.
But that's just it: kids can and do get upset at any damn random thing at all, regardless of whether it makes the least bit of sense. As any parent will attest. But adults getting worked up over it? Hey, I'm stepping on cracks! It's breaking your ancestors' backs!
But making claims about other people's identity counter to their self-identity is just what religions do. So you can't get too upset about it.
I don't see how baptism for the dead fits with the idea of the spirit prison. (Wikipedia seems to confirm with official sources here.) If those who rejected the gospel are suffering (non-eternally, up to the Resurrection) and simultaneously being given the opportunity to learn the gospel, repent, and be saved (which eventually happens for virtually all of them), what further good does a baptism do?
(The first word Google autocompletes following "Mormon" is "underwear".)
If you think all religions are fundamentally bullshit, there's no reason to get upset about it. If you have religious beliefs or feelings yourself, then being hurt or offended by that sort of thing is also 'just what religions do,' and it's unreasonable to expect people not to mind.
It implicitly says that your current identity is wrong wrong wrong.
Yes, but this is something that's true to all religions (or, really, all belief systems including liberalism) and it's silly to get worked up over this particular example. I mean, Tibetan Buddhists or hardcore atheists, if pressed, would probably say that the religious identity of religious Jews who died in the holocaust was wrong wrong wrong but as long as nobody's in your face about it the right response is "who cares."
Anyhow, the official Mormon church seems to in practice have taken lots of steps to avoid the rudeness to people who complain about it.
But making claims about other people's identity counter to their self-identity is just what religions do. So you can't get too upset about it.
Yes, it is obnoxious when churches do this.
This is why I draw a line at people who believe in hell. I have less respect for someone if they believe in hell.
(So I don't talk about religion IRL because I just don't want to know.)
There are christians who think that baptizing children makes them christian.
Multiply pwn'd, but I included hardcore atheists just to piss you all off.
This is why I draw a line at people who believe in hell. I have less respect for someone if they believe in hell.
Right, their identity is wrong, wrong, wrong.
but as long as nobody's in your face about it the right response is "who cares."
This is why upegti is right in 112. It is fine to pray for other people to give up their sinful homosexual ways, as long as you do it in private and don't make a big deal about it.
kids can and do get upset at any damn random thing at all, regardless of whether it makes the least bit of sense.
You'd think that our ancestors on the veldt could have someone used some sort of "directed natural section" to get rid of that, but they really dropped the ball.
They were killed because of their religion. Posthumous conversion is (I think) easier because the killers kept records, as if they were handling livestock. I can't see the balance of dickishness tipping even a little towards people offended by this.
People's metaphysical beliefs are fine and should be respected as long as they're not too far from mine just doesn't strike me as a very good position.
If you have religious beliefs or feelings yourself
...then you likely think all religions except your own are fundamentally bullshit. Which takes you back to the same starting point. It only makes sense to get upset if you think that the apostate surrogate baptizer is actually more powerful than your deity (cf: comment 53).
124: Talking about what a religious person should be offended by from the point of view of an atheist really doesn't work, I don't think. Again, see early Christian martyrs. Going to the lions rather than sacrificing to Jupiter did not imply a belief that Jupiter was real and would meaningfully benefit from the sacrifice.
Right, their identity is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Which is a belief I usually keep to myself, to avoid pissing people off.
101: Right, these days it seems like 99 percent of religious conflict is between the correct people and the deluded. There's no one worshipping the wrong god any more, it's all people worshipping the same god the wrong way, or trying to worship a nonexistent god. It's a shame that henotheism has basically died out. That would make religious controversies much more entertaining.
106: While he was commenting? He can't have been paying too much attention to security, then.
You don't actually have to believe that the apostate surrogate baptizer is actually more powerful than your deity, only that they have some power. It doesn't go very well with omnipotence (then again, nothing really goes well with omnipotence), but it is reasonable. I bet there are christians who think that Mormon baptisms are actually a satanic ritual in which satan's actual powers are being channelled to do actual spiritual damage. In the (fictional) world of "This Present Darkness" it would make sense to treat Mormon proxy baptisms as something that needs to be defeated.
Spirit prison and (pre-resurrection) paradise are not very well worked out in Mormon theology. I think the deal is that, if you're in spirit prison, you can't get into paradise until someone has done your proxy baptism. But I don't think it's clear what happens if someone does your proxy baptism, and then a little later on you accept it -- do you get to leave spirit prison immediately, or what? And why aren't all the other souls in spirit prison paying attention and clamoring to accept their Mormon proxy baptisms so they can get transferred to paradise? Perhaps needless to say, it doesn't make much sense. Although it's a more humane vision of the afterlife than some religions have.
I think there's an important distinction that most religions make between what people within the religion do and what other people do. Traditionally Judaism doesn't really care at all about what non-Jews do, as long as Jews don't do it too. Christianity is different, since it has an emphasis on conversion.
None of this is all that relevant to the posthumous baptism thing, though, at least from the Jewish perspective I alluded to in 82, which doesn't have anything to do with traditional Jewish law.
Yeah, 128 is probably right. I don't think it's an issue for orthodox Christianity, at all, but there are probably some religious belief systems where you can ascribe power to the rituals of nonbelievers. Which I'd argue is indeed a form of closet or overt polytheism, but plenty of religions are polytheistic.
My other favorite website has an amazing description of exactly when a Jew may or must martyr themself.
You don't actually have to believe that the apostate surrogate baptizer is actually more powerful than your deity, only that they have some power.
Or that your deity is importantly offended by the baptism regardless of whether it has any spiritual efficacy.
But you also need your deity to be offended at the proxy baptisms in a different or more extreme way than the deity is offended by other aspects of their religion. I've got no problem with people of one religion thinking that being in another religion is wrong and offends their God, but it seems weird to me to slice it up so that proxy baptisms are wronger than any other aspect of their idolatry.
I just left the AT&T shareholders meeting, where security was provided by our very own gswift.
We all thought it was extremely funny that they had 35 of us there for you and your little band of red shirted agitators and the off chance a couple Occupy types might try and crash the party. For all that at least one person should have rushed the stage yelling "don't tase me bro" or something. I was behind the stage guarding a bowl of pistachios.
I just wrote a comment that was totally pwn'd by 134.
134: Exactly. Posthumous baptism seems approximately a million times less offensive than Mother Teresa performing last rites on dying Hindus.
132: There's really a narrow set of circumstances where you get to pick.
Charley in 122 aptly summarizes the attitude I've been mentioning. I've still seen no evidence that there's any other argument actually being made against posthumous baptism.
but it seems weird to me to slice it up so that proxy baptisms are wronger than any other aspect of their idolatry.
People are sentimental about their ancestors. It raises their shackles for their ancestor to be invoked in that other guy's idolatrous ritual.
Posthumous baptism seems approximately a million times less offensive than Mother Teresa performing last rites on dying Hindus.
Isn't it about the same?
122 is indeed a good point. Using Nazi records as a tool is strongly distasteful, and using them as a tool in religious rituals for a non-Jewish religion is especially distasteful.
135: I have long observed that a very low freakout threshold is an apparent prerequisite for moving into the upper echelons of the corporate hierarchy.
I will say 122 doesn't get you to being offended over Anne Frank or Daniel Pearl.
141: Doing it while someone is dying in front of you seems especially heinous.
No, because the posthumous Mormon baptisms are being done in private. Last rites to a dying person involves having the dying person be right there -- it is more "in your face."
Still, I suspect in practice many religious people are pretty tolerant of this kind of thing, so long as there's not a history of direct enmity between the religions; if I'm dying and someone performed a Hindu rite, I would think it's awesome, even though it's not my religion.
84: If this thread has not brought back the TOS...
Dammit Smearcase, I had a similar comment in my mind since about comment 48.
If there are offended Hindus, I wouldn't think ill of them for it. (If there aren't, my guess is that it's because Hinduism is polytheistic and so maybe less touchy about false-god cooties.)
I've got no problem with people of one religion thinking that being in another religion is wrong and offends their God, but it seems weird to me to slice it up so that proxy baptisms are wronger than any other aspect of their idolatry.
Because it involves a (possible) wrongful act or change of status by someone the offended person is attached to. If it worked, the Mormon baptism by proxy would make Anne Frank not-a-Jew, which seems like the sort of thing that would be sad for religious Jews attached to Anne Frank, who think of her status as a pious Jew as a meaningful thing. Even if it didn't work, it's a directed attempt (even if a pathetically ineffective one) to make something happen that would be sad for Jews attached to Anne Frank, and I'm not surprised they're irritated by it.
I also think that people's beliefs in magic should be given special consideration when discussing actual dead bodies. I wouldn't take that too far (I wouldn't extend it to hundred thousand year old fossils), but I do think there's a way in which dead bodies are genuinely different in terms of the level of respect you give other people's beliefs.
It's a shame that henotheism has basically died out.
It hasn't really died out. It is not a part of the official doctrine of the big churches, but plenty of people act as if they implicitly believed in henotheism. That's why we get this sort of argument.
In fact, most of the time henotheism is an implicit belief rather than an official doctrine. The whole of the Hebrew Bible can be read as an implicitly henothesitic document.
I think for a lot of American Christians, Allah is neither another name for their God nor is it name for a false, non-existent God. Instead, Allah is some powerful demon that will eventually be defeated by God, because it isn't really all-powerful.
To expand a bit, the objection to the posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims as I understand it is that they were killed (by Christians*) for being Jewish, which makes it particularly offensive for Christians** to then forcibly convert them to Christianity. Neither Jewish nor Mormon theology really enters into it at all.
*There's a common tendency for Jews to interpret the Holocaust as something done to Jews by Christians, and in many cases to object to overt displays of Christianity on that basis. I find this very problematic as an attitude, but it's definitely out there.
**Note that Mormons are considered unambiguously Christian in this formulation, which is again a common viewpoint among Jews, though obviously it's quite controversial among Christians.
128, 131: Or there could just be a matter of worldly power. Some religions declare that you are to use your right of publicity to endorse and never repudiate your religion. You could think of posthumous or other nonconsensual conversions as a violation of this right.
If there are offended Hindus, I wouldn't think ill of them for it.
Some of them are I assume, but she couldn't have started and continued without the active help of some Hindus and the tolerance of a great many others.
153: Right. There's arguably a Commandment about it.
154: I honestly don't know jack about Hinduism, but even if Hindus weren't offended by Mother Teresa, that's not necessarily a piece of evidence about whether it's reasonable for any religious person to be offended by the involuntary involvement of people they care about in the rituals of a religion they don't share, as opposed to a piece of evidence about what Hindus, specifically, are offended by.
Some religions declare that you are to use your right of publicity to endorse and never repudiate your religion. You could think of posthumous or other nonconsensual conversions as a violation of this right.
Nah, not really, at least not in mainstream Christianity, which is what I'm thinking of, because the posthumous or nonconsensual conversion would be completely without effect. Annoying, perhaps, if over-publicized, for the same reason that all fundamentalisms are annoying if you don't subscribe to them -- e.g., if Mormons were going around putting up placards everywhere that said "Anne Frank was a Mormon!" -- but as part of a private ritual, not a bigger deal than anything else that's a private ritual done by a sect you don't agree with.
Conservative Hindus can get offended over people kissing in movies. You'd think they'd be able to muster some ire for Mother Theresa.
Look, it's annoying that most of the world disagrees with me about most things. We're all just trying to shake the haters off, but that doesn't mean the haters aren't annoying.
because the posthumous or nonconsensual conversion would be completely without effect.
As said above, there's a ton of mushy magical thinking in mainstream America that would lead people to feel uncomfortable with it, even if that's counter to their own religious doctrine.
156: The relative power differential matters for this, I think is what I'm saying.
Anyhow, Teo gets it right as to what the actual real-world issue has been about these conversions.
Or, not conversions, but posthumous semi-baptisms.
It raises their shackles
Let us break their bonds asunder!
I'm a Mormon now? Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm dead.
The only ones going to hell in a Mormon afterlife are Bave and I, as apostates. Unless Gswift is also candidate for outer darkness? The rest of you should be just fine, even if you choose not to embrace the posthumous baptisms my well-meaning relatives will perform in your names; you'll just be further from God's presence, is all. Bave, Gswift, and I will be gnashing our disencorporated teeth in the vacuum of space, surrounded by devils and fallen spirits.
So don't fret.
164: When I typed that, I thought "I can't remember if it's shackles or hackles, and I know I've been mocked here several times for this mistake, but I'm p-r-e-t-t-y sure the right one is ...shackles?"
you'll just be further from God's presence, is all
I'm actually fine with that. He's a little too touchy-feely for me.
Yeah, I always end up sitting in the back row of the classroom.
Point to the place on the doll where God touched you.
Bave, Gswift, and I will be gnashing our disencorporated teeth in the vacuum of space, surrounded by devils and fallen spirits.
But in excellent company.
Mormons are considered unambiguously Christian in this formulation, which is again a common viewpoint among Jews
Hmm. In my own personal taxonomy, Mormons are about as Christian as Christians are Jewish.
They do have "Church of Jesus Christ" right there in the name of the religion. I sympathize with any Trinitarian Christian who thinks that it's not at all the same religion, but from a Jewish perspective it's got to look pretty Christian.
That's certainly the official position.
We've been over the "Are Mormons Christian?" question before. I say yes, but a lot of people disagree.
175 to 173, where "official" refers to the views of the larger, organized Christian denominations.
173 Glad you mentioned that. I was going to ask why, if Mormons are unambiguously Christian, Muslims aren't, being basically reinvented Ebionites as they are. But then I thought maybe that was a threadjack too far.
I was really surprised when I first learned that Christians don't consider Mormons to be Christians.
I'm with Teo, but I'm operating under the assumption that Mormons consider themselves Christians. Maybe that's false.
My belief is that Mormons consider themselves Christian, again, with the "Jesus Christ" right there in the name.
If you know what "shackles" means, doesn't "raises their shackles" make no sense?
It doesn't go very well with omnipotence (then again, nothing really goes well with omnipotence)
Omnipotence is like one of those ultra-hoppy IPAs.
We've been through this (last time Romney ran for President), and the formula I'm most comfortable with is that Mormons are Christian heretics.
My atheistic sense is that they're awfully different doctrinally, but it has been made clear to me that my atheistic sense is way, way off base in terms of whether any actually religious people give a shit about doctrine.
176: An actual FPP on the subject. With newly relevant political implications.
||
Hey, check it out, my friend's on Democracy Now!
http://youtu.be/DioGArj2Pzw
||>
Well, my math is add a testament to Judaism, get Christianity. Add a testament to Christianity, get LDS. I know there's a lot more nuance to the real-world differences, but in gross terms, one's the foundation for the next.
If you know what "shackles" means, doesn't "raises their shackles" make no sense?
Yes.
My general impression of Mormons for most of my life was 'some Christian sect based in Utah who used to be into polygamy'. Sure, some weird customs, but nothing quite so strange as speaking in tongues. I don't know if I knowingly interacted with any Mormons other than saying 'not interested' to missionaries before unfogged, and I'm not sure if that counts.
My main recollection of Mormonism from childhood was at the Pentecostal version of Boy Scouts we were learning about cults, and we were told that Mormon missionaries really don't like to talk about Joseph Smith's obsession with giant salamanders stealing Captain Cook's buried treasure.
Captain Cook is having a good run this week.
My main recollection of Mormonism is that they poured money and energy into opposing gay marriage in California in 2008.
I've known lots of Mormons. They're basically just like ordinary Christians.
I think Mormons are recognizably Christian in about the same sense that pre-Nicene, hetereodox Christians were Christian. Chris Y's position on how this is a relatively greater or lesser distance from trinitarian Christianity is a very good one, but at this point muslim belief and practice has diverged so much that I think Mormonism is comfortably seen as a heterodox form of Christianity where Islam is not. And I think that's also close to the self-definition of Mormons. so there's that.
Not too many Mormon Nazis, though.
Eh, proofreading. Relative distance of Mormonism, Islam, and Christianity is an interesting frame in which to think about doctrinal differences, but I think in any realistic sense Mormonism and trinitarian Christianity are much more closely affiliated.
add a testament to Judaism, get Christianity. Add a testament to Christianity, get LDS.
And add a different testament to Christianity, get Islam. Therefore, LDS is to Christianity as Islam is to Christianity?
188: Or you could just keep adding testicles and wind up with George Washington.
Captain Cook is having a good run this week.
He had a lot of good runs.
I thought Washington had 40 godamned dicks, but only the usual 2 testicles.
199: Captain Cook or Captain Kirk?
199: He really could have used one more good run.
201: The DOI filter blocks that site, so I guess we'll never know.
197: Well, whether they self-identify as Christian should factor in there somewhere. Mormons do, Muslims don't. And while degrees of difference between between religions are unquantifiable, I think Islam rejects some bits of the Bible that all (OK, practically all) Christians accept. Muslims reject the divinity of Jesus and just see him as one of a dozen or so prophets, right? It seems like that is a bigger deal than rejecting the usual understanding of the trinity. But like I said, unquantifiable.
197: Wait, both presidential candidates are secret muslims!
He really could have used one more good run.
Or just one less bad one.
201: That was harder thatn I thought.
I thought Washington had 40 godamned dicks, but only the usual 2 testicles.
This is a more interesting question than whether Mormons are Christians.
Three sets of testicles. (Six on the vine, so divine.)
It's like no one else did the reading.
The legends are wrong. None of his dicks were made of wood.
Captain Cook is a big deal up here. He sort of discovered the Anchorage area, with the claim for discovery even more tenuous than is usual in these situations because at that point not only were the Natives already here, so were the Russians.
157: I don't think "without effect" is quite right. Of course according to most Christian doctrines it has no effect on the soul of the dead convertee, because Christianity is an unusually philosophical religion. So the argument is weaker for Christian than for some non-Christian religions.
But if you're trying to obey your god for more than merely selfish reasons like saving your own soul - for example, if you are witnessing to others and helping them save their own souls - then you'd be pissed off to learn that someone's subverted your efforts.
For example, let's say you spent your fortune to build a great cathedral, for the greater glory of God, in the hopes that it would inspire more people to be Christians and lead Christian lives. Then one day some Muslims or Mormons or pagans or hard-core atheists acquire the building and use it as a mosque or temple or sex grotto or bookstore. This would nullify a fair amount of your life's work, and your heirs/co-religionists might feel offended, insulted, or humiliated.
I think it's the same sort of thing, that one might live a life of public Christian virtue, not just to save one's own soul, but to inspire others. And a posthumous conversion is a subversion of that work because it changes the image you left of your life, that you worked so hard to make a good example for others.
Mormons definitely think of themselves as Christians. I get why Christians who come out of the Nicene Creed tradition would say Mormons aren't part of that tradition. But the initial formation of Christian orthodoxy was a hugely political, contested process, and I don't see how simply being part of the tradition that won out gives credal Christians the moral right to continue to police the boundaries of "true" Christianity. Mormons have loads of recognizably Christian beliefs and practices, and they believe Jesus is Lord and Savior and all that stuff. I agree with Halford that the most accurate descriptor is "heterodox Christian."
Another way to think of it would be that your religion might forbid you to hedge your bets, and failure to strenuously and publicly object to others' offers of posthumous conversion implies some level of consent.
Since you won't be around to object when you're dead, you object to posthumous conversion of your co-religionists.
a mosque or temple or sex grotto or bookstore
Or all four at once!
In my mind, what it boils down to is that there are some Christians who assert that Mormons are not members of the Super Secret Treehouse Club, while Mormons assert that they are so members of the Super Secret Treehouse Club.
"Are not!"
"Are so!"
"Are not!"
[In other words, I endorse 208.]
217: I should have said "respectively," though a religion that managed all four simultaneously would be impressive (or incoherent).
that one might live a life of public Christian virtue, not just to save one's own soul, but to inspire others. And a posthumous conversion is a subversion of that work because it changes the image you left of your life, that you worked so hard to make a good example for others.
This only works if you think that the "posthumous conversion" in fact is a realistic subversion of your image as to others. In other words, people would have to think in some meaningful way that you'd become a Mormon. Which doesn't have much to do with the private, nonpublicized, ritualistic quasi-baptism that the Mormons are doing.
a posthumous conversion is a subversion of that work because it changes the image you left of your life
Except that nobody generally knows about LDS posthumous baptisms. When I was around 13 or 14, I was one of the proxy bodies who got dunked in the name of 20-40 dead people. They told me not to speak of what happened in the temple--there was no fear that I would remember any of the names.
Hell, for all you know, we've got all your ancestors already!
Mormons definitely think of themselves as Christians.
Sure, and definitely in a way that Christians don't think of themselves as Jewish. As an adherent of none of the above, I don't really have anything invested in policing the categories (hence "personal taxonomy").
But the initial formation of Christian orthodoxy was a hugely political, contested process, and I don't see how simply being part of the tradition that won out gives credal Christians the moral right to continue to police the boundaries of "true" Christianity.
Man is that ever true.
Count me in with apo and MAE: if you have your own scripture, you've got a new religion. To the extent that Mormons or Muslims think they're followers of the same God, but with new improved revelations, fine. But what they consider themselves doesn't necessarily drive the taxonomy I use.
Posthumous ordinance shows disrespect. Especially of someone who lived, or died, their faith. I don't see how this is even arguable.
And it doesn't matter if one or both of the faiths is bullshit.
216 to 220, 221
Under the Hobbesian framework, if it happens to you, you consented to it.
Calvin & Hobbes read jointly might suggest that posthumous conversion -> consent to conversion -> apostasy -> damnation, where the arrows represent logical implication (causality flows the other way, of course).
115: I don't see how simply being part of the tradition that won out gives credal Christians the moral right to continue to police the boundaries of "true" Christianity
Because that's how Christianity has worked for most Christians, most places, in most times?
Calvin & Hobbes read jointly might suggest that posthumous conversion -> consent to conversion -> apostasy -> damnation, where the arrows represent logical implication (causality flows the other way, of course).
Wow, this is Calvinball at its finest.
215 -- LDS is materially different from, say, Lutheranism or the Calvinisms, in that it involves a completely distinct and detailed divine revelation. Not merely a reinterpretation of revelations already accepted.
And I don't think the process of deciding on what purported revelations were in fact valid that took place in the first few centuries has any impact of people who think that the LDS revelation was (or more likely than not was) an invention, from whole cloth, by a known con man.
Obviously, people who believe in the validity of the new revelation have a vested interest in emphasizing the contingent, human and political nature of that 3d and 4th century process. People who believe, though, that the final product of that process was in fact the divine word -- and I think this is a fair description for a great number of practicing Christians -- may well not see this in the same light.
Apropos of stuff: I watched the first 3 episodes of This Is England '86 last night, and while I found much to praise, I thought that the characterizations & performances were not up to the standard of the original film, and the scenario was entirely too soap operatic. Also, even in some shitty Northern town, would people really have been impressed by a shop with a couple of dozen videotapes to rent in 1986? Like it was a new thing?
215: I don't have anything personal at stake here, obviously. But what I get stuck on is that you've got a group of sects that mutually agree that they're all Christians -- they have varying levels of belief about exactly how heretical the others are, and how much that heresy matters, but mostly, if you ask a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Baptist, and so on to list Christian sects, they're going to come up with pretty much the same lists, AFAIK. A Catholic thinks a Baptist is a heretic, but a Christian heretic, and the evaluation is mutual.
With Mormons, the mutuality falls apart -- while Mormons think of themselves as another Christian sect, non-Christian Mormons generally don't recognize that. Whether or not that boundary policing is legitimate, the fact that it happens seems to me to be significant: that there's a common recognition among non-Mormon Christians that non-Mormon Christians are all roughly similar in a way that Mormons aren't.
a justice of the peace, two witnesses, and an unethical ventriloquist go into a bar...
Further to 225 -- I can see the point, though, of someone who sincerely believes that a little disrespect of a mis- or unguided person is a small price to pay for the possibility of eternal bliss or whatever it is that Anne Frank is being offered. Just don't, as our Southern friends might say, piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
I don't see how simply being part of the tradition that won out gives credal Christians the moral right to continue to police the boundaries of "true" Christianity.
Because that's how Christianity has worked for most Christians, most places, in most times?
Well, even the latter has to accommodate a couple of big schisms and many smaller ones, whereby Christianity has divided against itself time and again, whether accusing the other side of heresy or just complaining that they aren't going with the program in quite the right fashion.
One wonders whether the rise of "non-denominational" Christian churches (which category comprises the charismatic megachurches, white, black and other in the U.S. and abroad) will eventually make accommodating Mormons easier for what used to be called "mainline Protestants," because the mainline will have become so attenuated that the distinction between the local Mormon church or temple and "the church over there" will be hard to see.
LDS is materially different from, say, Lutheranism or the Calvinisms, in that it involves a completely distinct and detailed divine revelation. Not merely a reinterpretation of revelations already accepted.
Also a very, and self-consciously, different outline of ecclesiastical authority (performance of christenings, offering communion, defining doctrine, etc.).
the distinction between the local Mormon church or temple and "the church over there" will be hard to see.
Umm... As long as there is a big, thick book which the local Mormon church regards as the word of god and "the church over there" regards as at best a piece of science fiction written in a poor pastiche of 17th century English (no disrespect to any Mormons present, I don't hold a brief for the Nicene canon either), I'd think that the distinction remained a bit obvious.
238: Your faith in the survival of literacy, religious sub-category, is moving.
I suppose it depends what 'non-denominational' churches are like. I thought they were standard evangelical Protestant, just unaffiliated with an umbrella organization. If they're a little more seriously 'non-denominational' in a Unitarian Universalist kind of way, I could see LDS not seeming all that different.
Mormonism is obviously different from credal Christianity in many respects. But in other respects, Mormonism resembles one denomination or other within credal Christianity more than those denominations resemble each other. Mormon worship practices owe a lot to various 19th-century American Protestant groups, and are much more similar to some Protestant services than either are to, say, an Eastern Orthodox service. At the same time, the Mormon church is hierarchical like the Roman Catholic church -- there's a guy who's clearly in charge and authorized by God, and everyone has to more or less follow his lead. That's something that Baptists find horrifying.
That isn't to say that Mormons should be considered Christians with no asterisk. But when you look at how the religion functions, at what Mormons themselves believe (and consider important), and also look at the theological stuff, it's just inaccurate to say that Mormonism isn't a movement within Christianity, albeit a weird and heterodox one.
240: Well, I think of them as the churches that de-emphasize Christian doctrine and dogma (the boring stuff) in favor of (i) prescriptions for stuff that the members of the status group must do to define themselves contra the larger world (hence all the mandatory "witnessing to...," praying in public, transparent political encouragement) and (ii) general, if not vague, statements about what the Big J wants for (rather than "of") you.
Multiply pwn'd, but I included hardcore atheists just to piss you all off.
Please note that at least one hardcore atheist has done this sort of thing.
Maybe a Catholic ought not be offended when PZ Myers behaves disdainfully toward something they regard as sacred, but surely it doesn't take much in the way of empathy to see why many are offended.
Remember, as teo in 152 points out, the baptism controversy wasn't merely about Jews, it was about Holocaust victims, whose religious affiliation was a matter of particularly grim significance.
That isn't to say that Mormons should be considered Christians with no asterisk.
The LDS are Christians who use steroids?
And what a disappointing digression this posthumous baptism thing has been! I'm late to the thread, but I was sure that by this point, we'd be talking about which dead celebrity we'd like to screw.
(Or alternatively, which stiff would be most fuckable.)
Yeah, at least the Mormons aren't posthumously fucking Anne Frank.
but I was sure that by this point, we'd be talking about which dead celebrity we'd like to screw.
By law, you've only got six hours. For those of us not in NYC or LA, we won't really see many chances.
which dead celebrity we'd like to screw
Audrey Hepburn.
But in other respects, Mormonism resembles one denomination or other within credal Christianity more than those denominations resemble each other.
The thing is, though, don't you think it'd be difficult to impossible to find anyone within 'credal Christianity' who agreed with you about that statement (if we strip out purely social resemblances like "how likely are they to be English speaking or to be socially comfortable in the FBI Academy")? Maybe I'm just flat wrong about this, but I'm pretty convinced that if you took a cleric from any denomination within credal Christianity, and gave them the choice "As between [some other credal Christian denomination] and the Mormon church, which is more similar to your denomination," the answer would never be "The Mormon church is more similar to my denomination."
248: Wouldn't have guessed that, somehow.
Back to the original post. It's so clearly bullshit. As the story about the Moroccan "cleric" as well.
If we are just talking personal taxonomies, I lump all the western monotheisms together. That's the only category I find robustly significant. After that, the little differences only make sense in specific contexts.
249: E-mailing the Flip-Pater now.
247: imagine the pumparazzi that would trail troubled starlets in LA.
252: I assume so, but if not you have to figure there are going to be a lot of very disturbed staff in the intensive care department.
"I'm sure you did everything you could. Could you remove the tubes and close the drapes?"
If we are just talking personal taxonomies, I lump all the western monotheisms together
Where do you draw the boundary of "western", out of curiosity? (I'm thinking, which side of Zarathustra?)
245: Presumably you get them at time of death, not at peak of hawt. I'll go with Marilyn Monroe on that basis. You want someone hot who died a non-messy death. Heath Ledger style, not Kurt Cobain. Or, you know, whatever cooks your beans.
The East starts at Calais.
He said, stroking his luxuriant cavalry whiskers.
It's undoubtedly true that Mormonism is an American restorationist movement. It shares the same derived characteristics with other protestant churches, with other American protestant churches, and with other American restorationist churches. Phylogenetically, each of those groupings makes a clade. However, Mormonism has it's own highly derived characteristics which it doesn't share with other Christian churches and which make it appear rather distinct.
Naming phylogenetic groupings always has this same problem. Would Hippos say that they're more similar to whales than they are to pigs? Probably not, but they do share a more recent common ancestor.
Would Hippos say that they're more similar to whales than they are to pigs? Probably not, but they do share a more recent common ancestor they'd just bite your leg off.
Being Hippos, and that.
263: Christianity is very much not an American movement.
Brooks. Louise Bollocks.
262:Looks etc are only part of it. Brooks doesn't have a reputation.
Hepburn does, as competent, enthusiastic, and non-committing. Also Grace Kelly.
Clara Bow and Monroe were too vulnerable. Mary Astor?
263: Now there's an analogy well worth the ban.
249: Unitarians?
It's really difficult to draw a line around "Christianity." Particularly one that excludes Mormons and includes Unitarians.
I cant put too much stress on the Book of Mormon, either. There's a whole bunch of Christian Pseudepigrapha which one group or other has taken more or less seriously. Even today, there are pukka-Christian theologians who are prepared to admit the Gospel According to St. Thomas as evidence of Christ's thought and behaviour. The difference between that and admitting the Book of Mormon is just one of degree.
Those of us without a dog in the fight should surely apply the principle of self-identification. If Fred says he's a Christian, we accept that. If Doris says she's a Jew, we accept that. If Vera says she's a Moslem, we accept that. If other Christians say Fred isn't one of them, or other Jews say Doris isn't a proper Jew or other Moslems say Vera's Islam isn't genuine, to us, that's an internal fight which has gotten ugly. There's no reason for us to get into the fight on the side of the establishment.
I'm not sure what 265 if supposed to mean.
Christianity first evolved in the middle east. This was followed by an adaptive radiation resulting in lots of different sects some of which have died out (e.g. Ebionites, Gnostics), some of which stayed small and did not spread much (e.g. Maronites), and two of which grew dramatically (the Catholic and Orthodox churches). This is the typical evolutionary pattern.
The Protestant reformation resulted in another adaptive radiation, this time centered in Europe, which later migrated to North America. Within America there have been later developments. In particular, there's an adaptive radiation in the late 19th century tied to the second great awakening. These are distinctively American churches which evolved in America. Mormonism is in this group.
It's really difficult to draw a line around "Christianity." Particularly one that excludes Mormons and includes Unitarians.
I don't think anyone would draw that line with Unitarians on the inside -- I'd think they're further out than Mormons. Of the Unitarians I know, none of them call themselves Christians. (I know some Unitarians do, but it's not a requirement.)
Where do you draw the boundary of "western", out of curiosity? (I'm thinking, which side of Zarathustra?)
This is a question I've wondered about, but never had the time to research. I certainly feel like I'd have a much better handle on the history of world religion if I knew more about Zoroastrianism.
Somewhat surprisingly to me, the full name of the Unitarian church in the U.S. does include the word Christian (Unitarian Universality Christian Fellowship).
If you want to talk about historically related and branching things, you want to have some more precise words to talk about ways in which they're similar and different. The history of religion must have it's own terms for things like "adaptive radiation" and "clade," but I don't know what they are. Without some additional precise words you can't work out what you're trying to say about weird cases.
The Unitarian church in Transylvania has Bishops!
All of you degenerates will remove your filthy thoughts from Audrey Hepburn.
276: I am unconvinced that the term "adaptive" is precise in this context.
275: I think you're crossed up. I'm looking at the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is the 'Unitarian church' in the US, and doesn't have 'Christian' in the name. The organization you're talking about, the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, is an organization of people who are Christians as well as being Unitarians -- Christians in a Unitarian framework.
274: One of those Billy Bragg/Wilco albums of unpublished Woody Guthrie songs has a very funny one that's just Woody getting all bent out of shape by how hot Ingrid Bergman is.
Indeed you're right. Excellent.
Where do you draw the boundary of "western", out of curiosity?
Indo-European languages.
There was a time, oh a century and a half ago, when Islam, Persia and India was not considered all that alien, not the Other. At least I could argue that, especially if I get out here and read that stuff on Said.
I actually considered making that analogy in the dinosaur thread, but decided against it.
I think a heretic Xtian can accept the Gospel of St Thomas, supposedly written in the relevant time period, by someone supposedly directly involved in the initial Xtian revelation, as valid. This is not one click removed from the Book of Mormon. It does not purport to be an in person account of events actually experienced in the founding era, but is a multi-century epic largely distinct from the rest of the canon, that has come from the very recent past.
I might be wrong, since I don't follow this particularly, but I would be shocked to learn that any non-Mormon organization has or is giving any serious consideration to whether the BOM should be added to the Christian canon.
I don't know enough about Transylvanian Unitarianism to have a sense of where they'd fit, but a quick google makes it look as if they're only historically related to American UU.
Anyway, I think UPETGI is on the right track here in terms of defining what it is that this argument is about.
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One of my students writing about a case where the family wanted euthanasia for their disabled mother because she "could do nothing but talk."
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I don't. The evolutionary biology analogy is going to be really misleading: in evolutionary biology, historical/geneological connection is necessarily going to be strongly related to how genetically similar two species are. When you're talking culture, when two groups split has nothing to do with how far apart they are. Catholics and Orthodox split nearly two millenia ago, but they're still very very similar -- much more similar than Catholics are to, say, Presbyterians, who split off much later.
Catholics and Orthodox split nearly two millenia ago, but they're still very very similar -- much more similar than Catholics are to, say, Presbyterians, who split off much later.
Depends what metrics you use.
I think the important point, though, is that whether or not you consider Mormons Christian they're clearly much, much closer to Christianity than to anything else. The analogy to evolutionary biology just demonstrates this effectively.
Which were you thinking of?
I'm by no means an expert on Christian theology, so I don't have any specifics to point to, but surely there are aspects of Protestantism that they share with Catholicism as against Orthodoxy. What were you thinking of?
292: well, right. Which is another reason the analogy is misleading.
And the final split between the Eastern and Western churches was actually more like one millennium ago.
I'm sure I asked this in the previous discussion, but if Mormons aren't Christian, what are they?
This is exactly what happens in evolutionary biology where things can be very distinct genetically while being morphologically very similar.
300: genetic distinctness is defined for religious groups?
298: They're Mormons? I mean, that's a silly question -- being unable to think of an umbrella category to put Mormons in other than Christianity doesn't mean there has to be one.
None of this is important to me, I'm arguing on the abstract basis of what makes sense to me, rather than because I have any reason to care. But the arguments for recognizing (what I understand to be) the trinitarian Christian consensus that Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox denominations are all versions of basically the same religion, while LDS is something different, seem very persuasive.
300, 303: Right. In evolutionary biology, there are historical connections (latest common ancestor) that are tightly related to genetic similarity, and sometimes but not always to morphological similarity. When the morphological similarity isn't there, you can turn to measurable genetic similarity to talk about the relationship between two organisms.
Religion, there are historical connections, and there's the equivalent of morphology, but there's no analog to a measurable genetic connection.
I'm by no means an expert on Christian theology, so I don't have any specifics to point to, but surely there are aspects of Protestantism that they share with Catholicism as against Orthodoxy.
Protestants are (with the Catholics) more likely to endorse the filioque clause than the Orthodox.
But Protestants mostly agree with the Orthodox about papal primacy, the immaculate conception, and priestly marriage.
I started writing a response to 304, but then I got bored with it and with this whole discussion. I've said all I have to say about it between this thread and the previous one(s).
295: I was thinking mostly transubstantiation and apostolic succession.
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"Many believe in the Catholic Church, which I am,"
Am I just being a snobby linguistic prescriptivist when I say that this sentence hurts me physically?
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308: Authority of the Church Fathers as well.
I don't think 309 even needed the pause-play.
287: Thomas and Mormon are both pseudepigraphic, both actually written well after the time they were supposedly written. We shouldn't be misled by the fact that the forgery of Thomas happened around two millennia ago, while the forgery of Mormon happened less than two centuries ago. Thomas isn't considered canonical by any group I can think of; Mormon is considered canonical by one group that regards itself as Christian. So Mormon is the more canonical :).
But don't fix on Thomas. There were a whole bunch of Gnostic sects in the second and third centuries who viewed, for example, Seth or the Acts of John as canonical. Few nowadays would deny that they were Christian, if heterodox. They were suppressed, though. Whereas the LDS, who were able to light out for the territories, escaped suppression (not that it wasn't attempted). The LDS seems to us to differ from Christianity because it's the only surviving example of its particular form of outlier.
One of my students. So it wasn't someone who should know better. Still, I frequently feel like I am fighting a losing battle against unclear writing.
Anyway, I vote that yes, you are being a snobby prescriptivist, but then I would.
270: I take comfort in the degree to which it isn't bound by American social/political whatnot.
because she "could do nothing but talk."
A frightening story for the Unfoggedtariat, to be sure.
Few nowadays would deny that they were Christian, if heterodox.
This seems like a statement that implicitly relies on a substantial population with opinions about the Gnostic sects.
One problem with the biological analogy is that in biology, once species split they remain distinct, so it makes sense to talk about clades and most recent common ancestors. You don't get the hippos uniting with the giraffes to form a new species, while being influenced by what the gorillas happened to be discussing at the time. But that sort of thing does happen among Protestant denominations, not to mention what goes on at the individual level.
They do have "Church of Jesus Christ" right there in the name of the religion.
They put that in later. It used to just be "Church of Latter-Day Saints."
I'm inclined to say that as practiced, they're basically really authoritarian Baptists, but theologically: God has a body, when you die if you're a good Mormon man you get your own planet that you get to be Jesus to and if you like your wife you call out her masonic name and she gets to go there with you, and they have their own special book of revelations. Counts as not-really-Christian as far as most mainstream and evangelical denominations are concerned, but in practice it looks mostly the same.
I think as practiced, it's rapidly becoming indistinguishable from most other largish conservative Christian churches. (This excludes the FLDS types, which are the creepy uncle no one wants to talk about.) Most people don't really get into the doctrines of their own faith, and LDS in particular is a little light on the philosophy and theology.
You don't get the hippos uniting with the giraffes to form a new species, while being influenced by what the gorillas happened to be discussing at the time.
Not a big reader of fan fiction, then?
The point is that if you are talking about historically developing groups you need more precise language than just "is similar to." Some things are similar because they developed in a similar time/place, some things are different because they come from very different traditions, some things are different because one of them changed rapidly and recently. I don't know what the language you're meant to use in this context, but without making the contexts more precise you're just talking past each other.
What would have happened if the animals had decided to cheer for Zoroaster?
The LDS seems to us to differ from Christianity because it's the only surviving example of its particular form of outlier.
This is an incredibly apt characterization (IMO).
If you posit a world in which Gnostics, Araian[ist]s, and Cathars were still active groups, and still called "Christians" by hoi polloi, then the Mormons would fit under the Xian umbrella nicely. But as it is, everyone called Xian (except Mormons) fits under a tiny umbrella*. To fit the Mormons in, you need to stretch it way, way out there.
Which makes it seem like special pleading.
That said, Left Behindism** was pretty universally considered heretical just 150 years ago, and it's now the primary faith of 1/4 of all American Xians; I'm not sure what that does to the (conceptual) unity of surviving Xian faiths. Maybe, in 500 years, that will be a meaningful rift between 2 branches of Xianity.
* Trinitarian, same New Testament, same basic premise of salvation; the key difference is works vs. grace, and even there, Calvinists haven't excised verses that argue for works-based salvation, nor have they promulgated a doctrine in which the elect could sin at will with no implications for their eternal souls. When the rubber hits the road, grace-only Xians implicitly admit the role of works. Other distinctions, like Papism and transubstantiation, are more like the difference between the American and National Leagues than between baseball and football.
** originally Darbyism
I'd say the Mormons are about as Christian as the followers of Marcion or other gnostic sects, or other weird ass quasi Christian heterodox movements that have cropped up recurringly (Sebastianists in Brazil). Heterodox, non-Nicean, but recognizably Christian is appropriate.
In a just world, 327 would be true.
As usual in these discussions, I endorse Cala's take, in this case as embodied in 321.
The argument that Mormons aren't really different from Xians relies on the same kind of soft soap argumentation that says that Dems are equally to blame as Republicans for disagreement in Washington. "They both have supporters who disagree with Sally Quinn, therefore they're equally extreme."
Not a big reader of fan fiction, then?
The Book of Mormon is, more or less, Xian fanfic, written by someone with only passing interest in the canonical stories. There's some overlapping character names, but not overlapping characterizations. In this version, Spock is passionate but dim, and a guy in a red shirt is the primary hero. Kirk and Bones make only incidental appearances.
Heterodox, non-Nicean, but recognizably Christian is appropriate.
I should say that I agree with this; I think that, if you grow up Mormon in a nice suburb of Salt Lake City, this will probably be more or less your experience. But it relies on ignoring vast swathes of doctrine.
Probably what's right to say is that Mormonism split, and that the primary surviving branch has hewed towards orthodox Xianity in despite of its ostensible doctrines. It was a go along to get along move, presumably because they were tired of being chased out of towns and/or murdered.
Pwnd, I guess. I agree with JRoth that Left Behindism is another weird American quasi-Christian faith that's on a continuum with Mormonism.
Are we still playing (re 248)?
Lady Hamilton.
They're no so unique... Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian science, etc.
Spock is passionate but dim, and a guy in a red shirt is the primary hero. Kirk and Bones make only incidental appearances.
Desperately trying to come up with a DS9 joke here and failing miserably.
336: Good point. However:
Ask any Evangelical about Unitarians, and you'll get the same scorn you'd get asking about Mormons.
I don't know what people think about Jehovah's Witnesses except that they're annoying.
Xian Scientists are largely viewed as crazy, IME.
For both of the latter groups, I don't think they're accepted under the umbrella of "regular Xian" any more than Mormons are. People who've never thought for one second about doctrine would accept them all as Xian because they talk about Jesus. People who are aware of any doctrine at all view them as heterodox at best.
Anyhow, it's a huge mistake to conflate religion with theological doctrine.
Ask any Evangelical about Unitarians, and you'll get the same scorn you'd get asking about Mormons.
And Lord knows Evangelicals are the one true arbiter of what is and is not Christian.
Sure I wasn't disagreeing. I purposefully chose examples that are clearly in the Christian tradition and clearly heterodox (unlike say 7th day adventism, which I think a typical evangelical would classify similarly to catholicism: slightly heretical, but probably contains lots of individual Christians). The point is just that Mormonism isn't the only major surviving heterodox Christian tradition, just the largest one.
The Wikipedia article on Christian Denomination has a several charts attempting to show taxonomies. Also some decent discussion.
Google autocompletes "Are 7th day adventists..." with "Christian," "a cult," and "mormons." Of those, I can be pretty sure they're not Mormon.
OK, I have to go, but I want to throw out the following:
Even in mid-century America, mainstream Xians were still shitting on each other: Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals all hated each other. And they sure as hell all hated Mormons, Xian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.
Then, for whatever reason*, ecumenicism became more popular, and shitting on other Xians was viewed as undesirable.
And then, Xians decided to go all-in with politics, and suddenly Pentecostals loved Catholics with their slut-shaming and patriarchy, and Baptists decided that Pentecostals were just Baptists with a little pizzazz, and the dividing lines had much less to do with doctrine and everything to do with political issues that could drive voter turnout.
And it was in the latter context that Mormons were welcomed to the table with open arms. Nobody reread the Book of Mormon and decided it was pretty much standard-issue Xianity. They decided that the Mormons would make great Republicans.
* Communism?
If you posit a world in which Gnostics, Araian[ist]s, and Cathars were still active groups....
[Cracks knuckles.] Challenge accepted.
Can we stop with the annoying-ass phrasing "Xians." I guess it's special pleading but it's still annoying.
Even in mid-century America, mainstream Xians were still shitting on each other: Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals all hated each other.
C.f.: The Flip-Pater has long called Episcopalians as "the competition."
And Lord knows Evangelicals are the one true arbiter of what is and is not Christian.
Sorry, wasn't saying that at all. I was just saying that it's simply false to suggest that anyone thinks Unitarians are in the orthodox Xian club but Mormons aren't. Mainline Protestants don't care about Unitarians because they don't care about religionUnitarians are the right sort of people, but nobody who pays attention to doctrine thinks that Unitarianism is just one step down the spectrum from Episcopalianism.
347: Seconded. I don't see what Xtina Aguilera has to do with all this.
347: Wait, what? Do you also want us to spell out, "If you know what I mean, and I think that you do?"
I just associate it with asshole internet atheists.
I just associate it with asshole internet atheists.
IYKWIMAITYD.
Maybe wrongly. But there's a perceived affiinity between "Xian" "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "Sky Fairy."
An interesting example is "Baptist" and "Anabaptist" which are both distinguished by the same key doctrinal difference, but have very different histories and aren't at all close despite sharing a key doctrine. In biology, you'd say that their doctrines on Baptism are analogous but not homologous. Again, there must be some better precise terminology in this context, but it's a similar concept.
The point is just that Mormonism isn't the only major surviving heterodox Christian tradition, just the largest one.
Right. But I think that your examples are mostly (all) of recent vintage.
To get back to the cladistic discussion, it's a bit like how, for a long time, paleoanthropologists just sort of presumed that there'd only be one hominid species at a time, or perhaps one group in the horn of Africa and another in South Africa, but that you wouldn't have multiple groups in the same time and place. And that's because of a preconception of how humanity would be - no one remembered multiple hominid species.
In Xianity, you always had multiple groups, but the central authority was always trying to quash them, and the ones that survived fit, as I said, under a pretty small umbrella - no one with a feminine Holy Spirit, no one with a wholly human Christ, no one with a radically anti-works doctrine.
As a result, now, when offshoots arise, if they go outside that umbrella, questions arise as to whether they're "really" Xian. But if we had 1800-y.o. Xian groups with radically heterodox beliefs, but unquestioned antiquity (contra Smith), then maybe offshoots would be taken a little more seriously/respectfully.
Really? I associate Xian with written sermon notes, and other places where you'd see God abbreviated θ.
It's probably just me reading too many blogs.
Maybe wrongly. But there's a perceived affiinity between "Xian" "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "Sky Fairy."
Used it when I was devoutly Catholic. Perhaps more relevantly, it was ancient Christians who first used X as a shorthand for Christ.
Would you find IHSian less offensive?
You should use the actual Chi character.
Perhaps more relevantly, it was ancient Christians who first used X as a shorthand for Christ.
A fella can carve Χριστός into the stones of only so many infidel temples in a day, you know?
Surely there are some small ancient heterodox sects in the middle east? There was a "mass extinction" of religions in the region associated with the expansion of Islam, so it's not so surprising that a lot of them died off.
(Also, you could argue that Islam fits the bill of an ancient christian group with radically heterodox beliefs. But since muslims don't consider themselves Christian, I'm not going to make that argument.)
Syrian Christians, Coptics, the Syrian-converted Christians in southern India?
Wait. You had been. You want χ, not Χ as the last one is lower case.
In word processors they look more different from the regular X.
I don't have time to wade through all the comments but I'm assuming someone has noted that the necrophilia story is being called into question (to put it mildly), yes? Could an edit to the front page post be worthwhile?
That sucks. They look exactly the same except in the source. See XΧ.
368: A toe-dip would suffice in this case.
See XΧ.
Going to need another X and a link there, buddy.
368: The Daily Mail, Sullivan, and Huffington Post all didn't check something. That's unpossible.
They look the same in my word processor, except in fonts that don't have Greek, obviously.
X and Chi aren't different in Word for me now either. Maybe I need a new monitor? Maybe I just never use the capital X so I never noticed until now.
Yes, seconding Lord Castock at 368 here, (I should have thought to add such a request when I called BS).
I wonder how much time I've wasted getting the Chi Squared symbol just right to no visible difference.
I'm sure it makes a difference to Jesus, Moby.
Maybe I just italicized it because I wanted it to look different.
Jesus was all about lower-case letters.
I should drop out, and will presently. I do have to say, though, that in my taxonomy, the author of What Do Unitarians Believe? is firmly and emphatically Christian. This is obviously a different interpretation than that accepted by Augustine or Calvin, but it's not based a new revelation.
It's also somewhat shorter on pandering hokum than you find in some other religions (e.g. We believe . . . that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent).
Actually, Thomistic Christians in India are probably a good counter example. They are accepted as Christian in a way that Mormons aren't.
(Arguably gnostics (etc) aren't Christians in the way we use the word today. If the world was different, our words would be different too.)
The Flip-Pater believes that the National Council of Churches' stated position is that Mormons aren't Christians, but he'll check to make sure.
383 -- but the Indian Church of St. Thomas people are eastern church Nestorians, not truly weirdo gnostics.
I was just poking around and the best examples I could find where the Saint Thomas Christians (mentioned in 383) and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (which has a different canon and retains several Jewish traditions). But really neither of them is very different. No examples quite like Druze and Islam.
The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas has nothing to do with Indian Christianity, if that is confusing people.
The Cathars were a legitimate weirdo gnostic sect. Definitely Christian.
384: It looks like they're perhaps provisonal Christians who need to be watched. From the NCCC site explaining policy:
"It does not, for example, pronounce on whether or not Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are to be considered Christian. It is, however, interesting to note that the NCCC conducts its growing relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as an interfaith relationship."
I mean, they're both named after the same person, but so is the guy who founded Wendy's.
347, 351, et al.: If we have to use long-form "Christian" instead of the convenient "Xian," I guess we'll likewise have to write out "Christmas," "Christ-Games," and "Christ-rated movies."
The Catholic position, I think, is that Mormons don't count as Christian (the Trinity thing), but that matters practically only if a Mormon wants to convert (they need a baptism) or if a Catholic who married a Mormon seeks an annulment (different "privilege" to claim get-me-outta-here.)
I am unsure as to how weirdo they really were though --- our sources are primarily Catholic propaganda. But I think looking at bizarrity is the wrong way --- the real issues are around what rule of recognition is used for doctrine, I think. (Heretics are wrong conclusions, but other religions are wrong processes.) So the various Xtian groups that rely on the bible/tradition can accept each other, but because the Mormons break from that they can't be accepted. Likewise Islam.
The Native American Church (i.e., the peyote religion) is another interesting comparative case. It has a lot of Christian elements but also a lot of syncretism with traditional religious practices.
Or the Cao Dai in Vietnam. I believe they accept Jesus as the son of God.
Apparently only the Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma takes Swedenborgian writings as a Third Testament, and I suspect they mightn't be seen as really Christian.
the real issues are around what rule of recognition is used for doctrine
If that's the case, then the Catholic/Protestant divide is fatal. As it should be, everyone knows the Catholics are a bunch of superstitious papists.
392 into 393, "Christ-rated films" --> "The Catholic position" amuses me altogether too much as the random point at which to begin browsing this thread.
Also at some point you run into a weird Industrial Revolution continuum of religious thought that runs from slightly reformist Anglicanism, through Methodism, into the various quaker/shaker/etc groups, French Revolutionaries, Masons, saint-simonianism, Theosophy and so-on, atheism, vegetarianism, socialism, positivism, and then Buddhism and Hinduism practiced in the west, often more doctrinally pure (except not really, but you know what I mean) than as practiced elsewhere. And it can be very hard to draw bright lines between these groups, and in fact I would even say it is wrong headed to try.
I don't think that's entirely true --- I think the divide there is really between Calvinism and the rest, and even there Calvinists aren't really as strict as they are made out to be.
OPINIONATED LUTHER said sola scriptura, and it's a pretty core Protestant doctrine. Certainly there is a vast difference in what texts are recognized as providing authoritative doctrine.
Nothing comes between me and my Calvinists.
Like Annie Besant! She was a Fabian, a scularist, a theosophist, president of the INC, etc. Drawing arbitrary lines is slightly pointless.
The Armenian church practices animal sacrifice.
But Luther also accepted church practice and the episcopacy as a source of doctrine, although a subordinate one. And departures from scripture are heresies, but not different religions. The decision to accept a new revelation is of a different character.
Also unclear how far Anglicanism goes along on the whole sola scriptura thing.
(Yes this is a different argument to my previous one.)
For example of scriptural but accommodating, see the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
a legitimate weirdo gnostic sect
Hardly weirdo other than the being hunted down and killed like dogs part.
Just meant that they are genuinely theologically different in a way that Mormons are, but still clearly Christian.
Are s/b were, for genocidal reasons.
I think the new revelation issue is the problem --- no? If the mormons just said that they had biblical authority (or even tradition) for mormonism, they'd be fine. But because of the new revelation thing, they're seen as out the tent.
Sure, that's what makes them extremely heterodox. But they still see themselves as accepting scriptual authority and acting within the Christian tradition, in a way that makes them recognizably a nonorthodox movement from within Christianity.
I mean, that's my position anyway.
If Christianity had a copyright, would it make a difference to you?
Yeah, I'd be pretty wary of saying that they absolutely definitely were not Christians. But I think the extra-revelation issue is probably the biggest issue there. (Mind you maybe not.)
Actually, I suspect if Mormon religious innovation had been confined to the Book of Mormon, Mormons wouldn't have such a hard time being counted as Christians by other Christian groups. The Book of Mormon is totally loony, of course, but it's firmly grounded in American Protestant theology of the time. It's trinitarian and anti-polygamist. But Joseph Smith kept making up new shit, from proxy baptisms to polygamy to becoming-a-God as the end state of the faithful. Kolob. God having a body. Non-trinitarianism. It's superficially heretical that Mormons accept non-Biblical scripture, but the deep weird stuff came after the Book of Mormon. (Of course, if Joseph Smith had been less creative, or if he'd given up the religion gig soon after publishing the Book of Mormon, Mormonism probably wouldn't still exist.)
400: It's a shame that I omitted from my list the popular recreational device that will henceforth be known by its full name, the "Christ-Box."
Hmm, but arguably you can only get to the truly weird after you accept new revelations.
The Book, you see, is a gateway drug.
(Can you tell I really ought be doing something else right now?)
415 -- I am starting to finally see my divine purpose in this world.
The Book of Mormon is totally loony, of course, but it's firmly grounded in American Protestant theology of the time. It's trinitarian and anti-polygamist. But Joseph Smith kept making up new shit, from proxy baptisms to polygamy to becoming-a-God as the end state of the faithful. Kolob. God having a body. Non-trinitarianism. It's superficially heretical that Mormons accept non-Biblical scripture, but the deep weird stuff came after the Book of Mormon.
Damn, imagine what he might have come up with if he hadn't been killed.
As the theme of the OP is basically hard to believe shit that happens in other lands, this is on topic. And much, much more frightening than sex with dead people.
Has it been confirmed that 422 is true? Judging from the OP, HuffPo is not necessarily a reliable source.
I don't care if it is true or not. It's my new main worry.
Fortunately, China is even farther away than Egypt.
The link from HuffPost goes to to China News 24 with two pictures consistent with the aftermath of a significant . The role of the testicle squeeze in the death might be questionable since, The two parties soon fell into a quarrel, and then the physical confrontation began. The furious woman called up her husband and brother to come help her, which resulted in a fight.
424: It's my new main worry.
That you'll get a new main squeeze?
Media induced castration anxiety isn't in the DSM-IV. Maybe I should checkthe IV-tr.
Anyhow there's an interesting issue about copyright of religious scripture that I know a fair amount about but can't discuss. Would make a good law review note for someone.
For example, for someone who could discuss it.
Agreeing on the date of the author's death?
Scientology has typically used copyright as the cudgel with which they batter their critics.
But it's going to be all testicle strikes from here on out.
Obviously, the woman was a trained squasher. No way you do that on accident one your first try. She must be part of an elite squad. If just one tenth of one percent of the women in China have this skill and are able to infiltrate the U.S., that's nearly a half a million dead in the first minutes of the attack. The neocons were right about China.
Give me those peaches, you peach-havin' monkey fucker!
I presume I am the only one who is put in mind of YAZ's "Goodbye Seventies" by this post title?
Really? I know that the Authorised Version is crown copyright which is kinda weird but basically dull.
420: "Mama! I found my special purpose!"
389: I wonder if there's some Gnostic analogue to the $80 yoga mats I saw advertised in one of the big yoga magazines?
Also, thinking about weird religions and stuff, it's interesting to read The Dain Curse and a couple of the Continental Op stories where Hammett looks at typically Californian cults of the day. All of that was barely a century after the Book of Mormon, and much closer still to a bunch of the mid-1800s Burnt-Over Country stuff.
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If I snap and strangle the people across the hall from me in this hotel, please assure the appropriate authorities that it was justified.
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I associate Xian with written sermon notes
It occurs to me that I actually know somebody named Xian. He pronounces it like a Z, so it rhymes with Brian.
snap and strangle the people
Have you been doing Crossfit too?
440: You're going to have to give us more details than that.
Two really bro-y sounding dudes talking so loudly I can just about make out their whole conversation from across the hall in what seems like a reasonably well-soundproofed hotel. A short while ago they left the room and walked down the hall, talking just as loudly, talking about going to the bar. Then they came back laughing uproariously fifteen minutes later. Now they're back in the room talking again. So fucking loud.
125
Talking about what a religious person should be offended by from the point of view of an atheist really doesn't work, I don't think. ...
I judge people by my standards not by their standards.
I judge people based on the content of Shearer's character.
I judge people by the color of my skin.
422: And tying that back in to discussion about scripture, here's what Deuteronomy 25:11-12 has to say about the matter: "If two Israelite men get into a fight and the wife of one tries to rescue her husband by grabbing the testicles of the other man, you must cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
Yeah, let me be the 5th or so to say that 85 is wonderful.
but if Mormons aren't Christian, what are they?
If Mandeans or Samaritans aren't Jews, what are they?
"Farewell, Intercourse!" seems like a great launch-point for the Unfogged Poets amongst us.
If someone were leaving Pennsylvania and getting their testicles squashed, it would be doubly relevant.
"Farewell, Intercourse!" has been the story of my life for far too long now.
Adieu, farewell intercourse!
The world unhorny is
(Yechh, nevermind)
I am sick, I must die
Lord, have mercy on us!
Sums up the thread, especially if the original is read, comments are closed
456: The rule is six hours and you're at one and a half centuries.
1: It looks like the story might be bollocks.
So NMM to the NMM Loophole.
Bonus poetry award if you manage to combine the recent ATM thread, the cooties thread, and the OP of this one.
If Mandeans or Samaritans aren't Jews, what are they?
Did I say they weren't?
So farewell hope and with hope farewell fear.
Farewell intercourse: all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good!
I am woman and you snore,
with gingivitis furthermore.
And I know too much to go kiss you again.
'Cause it's intercourse no more.
And I've been to the morgue next door.
They promised to closely guard my corpse within.
The wife breathes her final goodbye.
Her husband proclaims with a sigh:
I have one remorse:
Farewell, intercourse!
Just a quick one to remember her by?
464 is way too literal. I'll do better.
Ah, now the thread's getting interesting.
Ya Habibi,
You never let me kiss your
Lips when warm and red
Like pomegranate seeds
In late October;
I need no longer now pay mind to your fibromyalgia,
So I shall now kiss you coldly
Until the muezzin sounds al-Fajr.
oops, extraneous "now" in the penultimate line I think. (and the antepenultimate line), ah well.
464 is good but I think it should be "recourse" instead of "remorse."
I wrote one in octameter, but it was too gross to post.
470: Depends on whether there is a comma in line 4!
Put it in a YouTube thread and link to it.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands,
Intercourse you, clown.
I wrote one in octameter, but it was too gross to post.
Post it anyway!
474: But wouldn't that imply that he was sad some fault of his, not the impending sexlessness.
473: it was too gross to post
I'd like to discuss the epistemological status of this assertion.
461: Well, they aren't. (The problem is subtly different from Mormonism, though, in that neither group has ever identified with Judaism the way Mormonism does with Christianity.)
Farewell intercourse with a horse? Of course!
But no one can roger a corpse, of course,
That is, of course, unless the corpse is the famous Mister Ed.
Go right to the source and hump the corpse,
He'll give you a ride that you'll endorse.
He's always on a steady course.
Stick it to Mister Ed!
People blappity-blap and fappity-fap and waste your time of day,
But Mr. Ed will keep putting out til he's utterly rotted away...
That horse is a corpse, of course, of course,
And you'll shout his name 'til your voice is hoarse.
You never heard of farewell intercourse?
Well, time to meet Mister Ed!
I assume the Salt Lake City LDS Mormon church does not consider any of the three other groups that emerged from the succession discord after the death of Joseph Smith as Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite)(Alice Cooper's childhood church) and the Community of Christ.).
Or any of this whole lot, actually.
484 had me getting some very dirty looks on account of my laughing out loud in the library.
Turns out Mr. Ed was actually "Bamboo Harvester". And there was some controversy about his death.
[Alan] Young wrote that he'd frequently visit his former "co-star" in retirement.
I don't see why 484 is offensive at all.
I like 484.
This group, the Community of Christ, is pretty unambiguously both Christian and Mormon. Arguably more Mormon than the LDS church itself. And has 250,000 members!
Unambiguously is weird there. They're separate from the main LDS church, and distinct from them in many ways. They also accept the Book of Mormon as divinely inspired scripture. I'm not really seeing how they're unambiguously Christian in a way the main LDS church isn't -- I mean, someone who thinks the main LDS church is Christian would think Community of Christ is, but I'd surmise that someone who thinks the main LDS isn't Christian would think Community of Christ isn't. I don't know what anyone actually thinks of them, of course, never having heard of the sect until you linked it.
This group, the Community of Christ...
I thought they were kinda cool back when they were the Reorganized Church of JC of LDS, but I dunno, this new name seems a bit sell-out-y.
If I accept the Hebrew Bible, the book of Mormon, and 484 as divinely inspired scripture, can I count as a Christian?
I am starting to be reminded of Patrick Kielty's joke about the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the I Can't Believe It's Not The IRA ...
493 -- They are a recognized member of the National Council of Churches (i.e., other Christians clearly accept them as a variant of "Christian"), are Trinitarian, accept the book of Mormon somewhat ambiguously as scripture, and are the Mormon church most closely linked to descendants of Joseph Smith. And have been in Missouri since the 19th century.
492.2: Turns out they have a church on a major street about a mile or so from where I grew up. Recognize it from Google street view, but don't recall knowing anyone who attended and I assumed with the anodyne name I must have thought it was just some minor Protestant denomination except for The Community of Christ, known from 1872 to 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). Hmm, it might have been another denomination.
CoC/RLDS is very mainline Protestant these days. Utah LDS don't think much about them; the Utah church always considered them apostates, and now takes some glee in their liberalization and continued decline in membership numbers. ("That's what you get when you give women the priesthood!") I think Halford is right that it's more unambiguously Christian than the Utah church is; not sure it's more or less Mormon. They adopted the name "Community of Christ" in recent decades to emphasize their commonality with other Christian denominations, and my understanding is that the progressive leadership of the church (not some old-school factions among the membership) doesn't really buy the historicity of the Book of Mormon. The movement has been marked from the beginning by a denial that Smith ever practiced polygamy, which also means they are not bound to some of the more esoteric late Joseph Smith doctrinal innovations.
My sense is that the Utah church doesn't mind acknowledging the Mormon-ness of the Community of Christ, as long as they get to make it clear that they consider it a totally apostate organization.
FLDS and other polygamist offshoots are trickier. They're closer doctrinally and in worship to the Utah LDS church, but of course there's the polygamy thing, which the Utah LDS church has spent a century trying to live down. So LDS officials are really vehement about distancing their organization from the FLDS and other fundamentalists. But in private, everyone in the church recognizes that the fundamentalists are pretty close to LDS doctrine and practices in many respects. Once you posit the existence of a "Mormon" or "Restorationist" movement that's bigger than just the Utah LDS church, it's clear that the fundamentalists and the Community of Christ are part of that movement. (And the Strangites, etc.)
This conversation is renewing my desire to start a cult.
428: Only a year 'til DSM V! The excitement is surely too much to bear.
497: They own and operate the old temple in Kirtland, Ohio and there was a lawsuit back in the 19th centruy which (not really) established their claim, and which clearly gets up the nose of the LDS Wikipedia trolls.
(I'm not sure if DSM V is the one with media-induced castration anxiety but hopefully it's not like Star Trek movies where the even numbered ones are the good ones.)
501:I saw that while doing some research for the Cooties thread. And there appear to be a lot of juicy things for various advocacy groups to get exercised about. I guess no surprise that the control of the definition of sanity brings all sorts of heat. Which of the current criteria will be in retrospect take its place alongside DSM-II 302.0?
but if Mormons aren't Christian, what are they?
If Mandeans or Samaritans aren't Jews, what are they?
If they were not pigeons on the grass, alas, what were they?
504 -> 503.last. Inadvertently.
I no longer need the DSM for professional reasons.
If ifs and buts were unsquashed nut...
505.last: Dogs on the grass, look out, dogs on the grass, look out, look out, dogs on the grass, look out Jesus.
As any right-thinking person does!
The Temple Lot church is kinda fascinating. As it really does seem like a piece of real estate that the other Mormon churches should want, and there really aren't very many of them left. But yet they've managed to hold on this long.
Thurber studied at Ohio State without getting the degree for which he enrolled, as all right thinking people have done.
"Farewell, Intercourse!" seems like a great launch-point for the Unfogged Poets amongst us.
For reasons involving numbering conventions, I had to post mine in the Garblahnzo thread.
Sorry. It's late, I'll go to bed now.
heebie-heebie: creepy?
Not nearly as creepy as her evil twin, geebie-geebie.
Bravo Mr. Smearcase! I am not worthy. Nonetheless:
A Farewell to Intercourse
I was walking on the Lido with a copy of the Phaedo under-oxter-tucked; my lady chose that moment to discourse
She'd been reading Lysistrata and - this is no laughing matter - well, she told me she'd decided that she wanted a divorce
Or at least to give relations a Platonic elevation just until such time as nations would no longer think of force
As a suitable solution when mere verbal disputation has exhausted every avenue and voices have run hoarse.
I said, "My dear you must be kidding; do you not recall our wedding and our courtship? - we'd make love among the heather and the gorse.
We did it every which-way and which-where from that to this day, you can't tell me that you look upon our passion with remorse.
Why not just make a donation and give up this foolish notion that your abstinent devotion can quell violence at its source?
You know I'm no warmonger, and not even quick to anger, so depriving me won't win you any prizes from the Norse."
My girl replied, "I'm willing, quite unlike, say, Thomas Schelling, to back down from my position when I'm too high on my horse.
It's not really peace I'm wanting but escape from all your quoting of choice bits from classic texts in media res and 'vhat is vorse'
I hate it when you ape a Magyar accent in a cape - see, there I've told it to you straight I'll no more hint at things in Morse
Code. If I don't quite dig it from now on I'm going to leg it - and unless you're up to reg it's our farewell to intercourse."
I don't even know what paeonic octameter is but that was great.
I don't know what paeonic octameter is either, but it seems well suited to rapping. I demand a throw down between One of Many and M/tch!
Tweety suggests that perhaps writing Gilbert and Sullivan pastiches would also be an occupation to which One of Many and zir paeonic octameter skills would be suited.
It's almost never found in English--it's a metrical foot with only one stressed syllable for three unstressed, usually with the stressed syllable in the final position. So if you see the first stanza in unstressed (u) and stressed (/) syllables, it goes perfectly like:
uu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/
uu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/
uu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/
uu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/uuu/
The anapestic substitution at the beginning of each line (uu/) offers room for a strong pause at the end of each line so they don't just run together or break the rhythm. Very skillfully worked.
The other two stanzas are a bit more complicated, but it's a good idea when writing in an uncommon meter to establish the prevailing rhythm extremely clearly before doing anything dancy with it.
I don't know what paeonic octameter is either, but it seems well suited to rapping.
Poe well understood this, resulting in the line:
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
from The Raven.
(Actually, come to think of it, the relevant bits of Poe seem to be technically paeonic tetrameter, but that's just a matter of the line-breaks.)
Unfortunately, I have to be away from the internet for a bit, but thanks again, guys.
I feel as though the sixth line would begin better in either of these two alternate forms:
"We did it every which-way and which-where from that day unto this day,"
"We did it every which-way from that day unto this day,"
The "which-where", followed just by "from that to this day", throws the line off for me.
522: Awesome. And now I have paeonic tetrameter (the rhythm, not the literal words) stuck in my head and will be drumming it out through my fingertips for the rest of the night.
Oh, I think I meant the stress in the sixth line to be somewhat at odds with the natural stress in speech, as:
We díd it every whích-way and which-whére from that to thís day, you can't téll me that you lóok upon our pássion with remorse.
535: I suppose that's "technically" correct from the modern perspective that treats line breaks as part of the poem proper, rather than a convenience for the reader.
Lines seem to be naturally paired into paeonic octameter in that poem more often than they stand well alone.
How is the last line supposed to scan? I can't quite read it.
Whatever, GM Hopkins. It does work better with the emphasis on "where", I admit.
Whatever, GM Hopkins.
I like to call it 'bung rhythm'.
