Yeah, people making lazy analogies to anti-Semitism are both misunderstanding the ethnic dimension of Jewish identity, and trivializing the tremendous persecution Jews have faced through much of the 20th century. There’s PLENTY of irreverent, jokey gag-gift-like stuff about religious traditions such a Catholicism, but no one’s clutching their pearls over that. This is much closer to, say, a stupid wind-up firebreathing “Nunzilla” toy than to an ant-semitic cartoon/product/whatever.
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Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you.
- Ever since I was three, I’ve wanted to have magic underpants.
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This right here is the kind of authoritative voice we could all benefit from, hereabouts.
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Being an LDS member, I’m not offended at all. Freedom of speech is a two way street, and people expressing criticism towards my religious beliefs is their God given right to do so. Besides, critism stirs people to have open conversations with each other; which helps us obtain new information, and/or let go of faulty preconceptions. I consider that a good thing to have happen. Just my two-cents anyways.
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The “intertwining with history” is the sort of wrongheaded conception of religion which makes fundamentalists intolerant troublemakers. Religion as a discipline involves different ways of thinking and acting, not rationalizing some BS based on a misinterpreted story of some guys from long ago. It’s the difference between adherence to dogma and a way of life. That it is obviously “made up” needn’t bother anyone, since everything else about human culture was likewise made up. In any case, these things are much better understood as one possible belief system than they are any sort of history lesson.
My favorite examples of this outlook are chaos magick. You are supposed to make up your own deities which reflect your realities, or find them wherever. If you want to focus on the fact that you want to joke around, have a nice time and be unperturbed by others - you can adopt Bugs Bunny as your actual deity. Pray to Bugs, stage elaborate invocations of Bugs, whatever. If you dismiss it as a foolish waste of time, then it is. But if you pour all of your attention into it, it works. This is why people don’t usually pray to their workmates or neighbors, because they are real. Religious figures tend to be idealized, archetypal. The fact that they are made up is what makes them effective for what they are.
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I read that as “Mormon’s Secret: temple garments for genitals”
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Why are you talking about Utah? Is this blog in Utah? Is Cory Doctorow in Utah? Are all of the commenters in Utah?
Which parts of Utah? Do we get to pick and choose, or do you pick and choose for us?
Call me a pearl-clutcher, but if CD referred to Catholic “magic wafers” in a front-page post I’d be irritated as well (NB: I am RC).
Bigotry is bigotry, and when it’s on the FP, it’s coming from the bully pulpit.
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They also like to convert the old Jews into “new Jews”…
I forget how many times they have baptized Anne Frank.
Mormons warned against baptizing Holocaust victims – USATODAY.com
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It amazes me how people can say out of the one side of their mouth that “this is pretty silly” and at the same time be upset about it. I presume you don’t believe in post-mortem replacement baptism. So what is the problem?
Mainline Jews aren’t too happy about some Christians adopting the tallit for their services, so I understand your point.
“Yeah, I know jewish people becoming ‘white’ is a recent thing, but I think there’s sitll some weird pale-skin-is-inherently-more-pure shit going on with the Book of Mormon having the ‘wicked’ israeli-offshoot tribe that rejected the second coming of Jesus in america and may be the ancestors of native americans be ‘cursed with skin of blackness’ for their transgressions, to make them unattractive to the light-skinned, ‘righteous’, still-christian Nephites.”
I may be wrong about this, but as I recall the Good Guys and the Bad Guys in the Book of Mormon were both descended from Hebrew/Israeli/Jewish immigrants. Indeed, the same group of immigrants. Some "kept the faith"and some became corrupted. The Good Guys were killed off, and, hence, it is a bit difficult to compare their skin color with that of Native Americans (who, of course, vary greatly internally). Perhaps some of the actual Mormons posting to this thread can clarify.
There certainly was a “mark of Cain” doctrine going around in Mormonism for some time, but I understand that their authorities have now rejected that doctrine.
It seems like spiritual rape to me. It is incredibly callous to “convert” somebody who died because of their beliefs.
What it boils down do to for me is “If they don’t respect the beliefs of others then why should I respect theirs?”
or in Boing terms, Christ, what an asshole.
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As I understand it, no one is being converted. Traditional Christian doctrine, as well as Mormon doctrine, requires that you be baptized in order to have a chance to be saved. The unbaptized don’t go to hell, but they also don’t have a chance to “be exhaulted.” All that is being done is giving those baptized by substitution the chance to choose. Being baptized does not make you Mormon.
Being Christened as a baby doesn’t make me Christian. Doesn’t mean anything, really.
Doesn’t mean I’m not unhappy that my parents did it to me though. I feel somehow tainted by it.
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This. Their beliefs are no crazier than many but their fundamental lack of respect for the beliefs of my ancestors coupled with their requirement to interrupt my dinner/sleep/work/life to sell me their religion means they’re one of the few religions to get no tolerance from me.
Live and let live. Keep away from my doorstep and out of the beliefs of my ancestors and I’ll accord you some respect. Until then, GTFO.
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Which of the beliefs of your ancestors are they trampling upon?
But Mormons have never been persecu… oh, never mind. They have!
(Not a Mormon but my mom lives in Salt Lake and I attended local middle school there with required state history. All the Mormon kids are still taught about how mobs drove them out of various places in the 19th century.)
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I shall quote Edward Gorey, in a rather silly attempt to cheer you up by pointing out how it could have gone so much the worse for you:
(ahem)
The Babe, with a cry brief and dismal,
Fell into the water baptismal.
Ere they’d gathered its plight,
It had sunk out of sight,
For the depth of the font was abysmal.
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