I'm a Mormon, Not a Christian

[Xamonas Chegwé]

One swindle looks pretty much the same as another to me.

There is, of course, much truth in that. However, many swindles are more the perpetrator swindling him/herself, especially in religion. With Joseph Smith, it was outright, unashamed, blatant self interest.

The only difference I see is the smokescreen of history. Nobody knows who invented christianity, what his motives were, any details about his criminal record, his upbringing, how many religions he tried to start previously, etc. There's nothing but a bunch of garbled, contradictory accounts of the life of an individual that doesn't appear in any verifiable records of the time.

Meh, says I.

[DRSB]

Yes, religions have something delusional in them per se, don't they?

[DRSB]

Mormonism is not Christianity. It is a swindle perpetrated by the founder, Joseph Smith.

Smith was a convicted fraudster, who had a nice scam going, with a 'magic' stone he used to find buried treasure, on farms, for a large fee. By the time the victim got sick of digging, Smith was in the next county. After doing time in prison for fraud, he decided that starting his own religion was a better scam.

He wrote his own 'holy book', though he claimed an angel dictated it to him. He described lost cities in America, which remain lost to this day. He had a chunk of ancient Egyptian inscribed tablet (apparently often available for purchase in his day). He claimed it contained holy texts - thinking he was safe because no-one then could decipher hieroglyphics. We now know it was a mundane list, and the Mormon church has hidden it away from sight.

His scam worked. With his followers tithed to pay him lots of $$$$, and with female followers scooped up to become his private harem, he was doing pretty damn well - till angry citizens lynched him and his brother. He is, of course, claimed today to be a martyr. The truth is that he was just a criminal with a very successful con job.

Moronism, then!

[Audley Strange]

One swindle looks pretty much the same as another to me.

There is, of course, much truth in that. However, many swindles are more the perpetrator swindling him/herself, especially in religion. With Joseph Smith, it was outright, unashamed, blatant self interest.

The only difference I see is the smokescreen of history. Nobody knows who invented christianity, what his motives were, any details about his criminal record, his upbringing, how many religions he tried to start previously, etc. There's nothing but a bunch of garbled, contradictory accounts of the life of an individual that doesn't appear in any verifiable records of the time.

Meh, says I.

You would have thought after we had the decency to execute that fat troublemaking twat with the fish fetish and the donkey, would be prophets gurus and so called wise men would think twice. They don't, let's start killing them all again. Oh wait we already initiated that plan with the Branch Davidians.

[Svartalf]

What I don't get is how so many people could get caught in such an obvious one, or how they can pretend that they belong under the chretin umbrella... at that level, they are right down under the downs tard umbrella.

[Svartalf]

Mormonism is not Christianity. It is a swindle perpetrated by the founder, Joseph Smith.

Smith was a convicted fraudster, who had a nice scam going, with a 'magic' stone he used to find buried treasure, on farms, for a large fee. By the time the victim got sick of digging, Smith was in the next county. After doing time in prison for fraud, he decided that starting his own religion was a better scam.

He wrote his own 'holy book', though he claimed an angel dictated it to him. He described lost cities in America, which remain lost to this day. He had a chunk of ancient Egyptian inscribed tablet (apparently often available for purchase in his day). He claimed it contained holy texts - thinking he was safe because no-one then could decipher hieroglyphics. We now know it was a mundane list, and the Mormon church has hidden it away from sight.

His scam worked. With his followers tithed to pay him lots of $$$$, and with female followers scooped up to become his private harem, he was doing pretty damn well - till angry citizens lynched him and his brother. He is, of course, claimed today to be a martyr. The truth is that he was just a criminal with a very successful con job.

Moronism, then!

I always suspected that the name of "angel Moroni" was a jape from smith to his followers, who really needed to repeatedly say "Moron I" if they gobbled up his kool aid (yes, I know that one is anachronistic)

[MrJonno]

What I don't get is how so many people could get caught in such an obvious one, or how they can pretend that they belong under the chretin umbrella... at that level, they are right down under the downs tard umbrella.

Why would a nationalist religious population want to take an existing 3rd world/middle eastern religion modify it and then basically make god/Jesus American ?

Tricky one

Basically its the same as Islam and Christianity, take an existing religion modify it to put you rather than others at the centre of it (Islam is basically Christianity for Arabs, Christianity = Judiasm for Romans

[Svartalf]

so deliberately forsaking your own culture and dumbing yourself down for the sake of being a patriotard?

[MrJonno]

The use of the word patriot or tyrant in a positive way pretty much guarantees dumbness

[Ian]

Nope, it's not an Onion headline:

Mormons Baptized Obama's Mother: CONFIRMED
ABC News has confirmed reports that Mormons posthumously baptized President Obama's mother five months before the election.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints confirmed Tuesday afternoon that someone improperly, posthumously baptized the late mother of President Obama into the Mormon faith.
Last June 4 -- the day after then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nominee -- someone had the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995 of cancer, baptized.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/0 ... 97707.html

[Svartalf]

Wait, isn't the president's mother still alive and well?

I thought that he had, during his presidency, visited her in Hawai'i?

[Ian]

Wait, isn't the president's mother still alive and well?

I thought that he had, during his presidency, visited her in Hawai'i?

No that was his grandmother, who died in Hawaii just before the 2008 election.

His mother-in-law lives in the White House with the family.