Posts tagged ‘mormons’
This WTF moment is brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints…
Ok, first, read this.
Here is my favourite part of the article:
“If a student prays and they think that the tight ‘formfitting’ clothing is accepted by the Lord, they have not asked, or have not asked the right question, or they have chosen an answer for their own gratification. I don’t believe the Lord would give approval to anyone to be disobedient to the CES Dress and Grooming Standards.”
Wow.
So let’s get this straight. You need to go and pray but if you don’t get the same answer I do then you’re either lying or you prayed wrong. (This is the same approach they apply to knowing whether or not the Book of Mormon, or the church for that matter, are true. Pray and if you get the right answer it’s true. If you get the wrong answer, you’re not deserving and you need to try harder.) Also, God is backing up the Rexburg dress code nazis because, hey, he’s not busy.
There are so many things I could say about this article. In some ways it made me laugh because it is just so ridiculous. It also makes me feel sad and angry. To me, this is exactly what comes from asking people to put critical thought up on the shelf and stop thinking for themselves. It’s scary and let’s be honest, it’s a fundamental building block of all religions. My husband went to BYU Idaho (formerly Rexburg College) and when he was there, part of the dress code was that they couldn’t wear shorts on campus. The only exception was the school issued gym strip that they had to wear whenever they worked out. Oddly enough, this gym strip included shorts..
One day hubby (Bri) decided to buck the rules (what a rebel!) and make the short (2 minute) walk from his dorm to the gym in his shorts. When he got there, the student behind the counter refused to give him his gym strip because he was wearing shorts. Bri pushed him and said “Let me get this straight, you’re not going to give me my shorts because I’m wearing shorts?” I think he assumed that when faced with how silly that was, the kid would just hand over the clothes. Nope…he still refused. Eventually, Bri stopped a guy who was also there getting his strip, asked if he could borrow his pants and then put the pants over the shorts right in front of the kid behind the counter. The kid promptly handed over the gym strip because Bri was now wearing pants. (Which he was about to remove and give back to their rightful owner and then change into another pair of shorts. You couldn’t even make this shot up it’s so crazy.)
Another interesting sidenote to this article is that BYU Idaho and the main BYU campus in Provo, Utah have different dress codes. So the Lord is cool with certain items of clothing in Utah, but not in Idaho. It doesn’t take a genius to stop and think about that for a moment and realize something is fishy. It does however take someone who isn’t afraid to think their own thoughts, and there’s the rub.
In Defense of Polygamy
Today, a Canadian court upheld our anti-polygamy laws, in a case I have been following pretty closely. This case centers around the polygamous group living in Bountiful, British Columbia specifically and the law has been used to try and protect young women from being forced to marry. Now obviously, I think Bountiful and everything it stands for is sick, twisted and wrong. These young girls are born and raised in a sexist and abusive culture and have very little say in who they marry. Being wife number 6 to a 79-year-old man while still in your teens is wrong by anybody’s standards (well, I guess not everyone…yeah, I’m talking to you Warren Jeffs) and by no means do I support what those crazy Mormons are doing. (On a sidenote/rant: It drives me crazy to hear the rhetoric that the Mormon church and its members are using in order to distance themselves from all this muck. Do you know how many times I’ve heard people say “They aren’t Mormon!” or deny that they are a break-off from the Mormon church? This is what Mormonism looked like 100 years ago folks, deal with it. Ahh, that feels better.)
However, I don’t know that I’m really opposed to polygamy so much. I guess this is where some of my more libertarian views come crashing into my socially democratic ones. I don’t like the government telling people who they can and can’t be with. I’m a big supporter of gay marriage and straight marriage and any other kind of marriage provided everyone within said marriage is an adult and is happy to be there. I’ve looked into this a little and it turns out there is a whole community of people living in polyamorous relationships and they don’t look anything like they do in the cults/compounds of BC. There are women living with two husbands, men living with more than one wife…every configuration you can imagine (and I’m sure a few you can’t). They aren’t hurting anyone and if they want to have two husbands God help them that’s their choice.
Surely there are already laws in place to protect adult men from marrying under-aged girls several times over. I mean, really. If not then there should be. I’m just not sure that it should ban polygamy outright. There are days when a sister-wife would come in pretty handy.
Where Do Babies Come From?
For most people, this is a simple enough question. We know how babies are conceived but if you believe in a soul, then the questions becomes a lot more complicated. This question lies at the root of many pro-life/pro-choice debates as well as the many different religious stances on sexuality, birth control, AIDS, and homosexuality. Your take on this question informs your belief in humanity and the essence which separates us from all other creations.
If you’re Mormon, it’s even more complicated. The Mormons believe in the premortal existence. A place where all the little souls of all the babies to be born are hanging out with God. (In the strictest sense, most religions believe in a pre-existence of the soul before it enters human form but surprise, surprise, nobody has made it as weird and convoluted as the Mormons). They also believe in three composite aspects of the human form; spirit, body and intelligence. Intelligence is a common human essence that is put into a spirit body which is then turned into a physical body. So, souls are not just souls, they are spirit bodies with their own intelligence. Still with me?
Unlike so many other religions that just let non-sensical doctrine stand, Mormons take the bold step of trying to explain this one step further. This is where they lead us into crazy land. So, the Mormons believe that since all these spirit body’s are around, they too must have been created. And how did they get created? Why, the same way physical bodies are conceived. So, now we have the Heavenly Father up in the sky with the Heavenly Mother and their infinite spirit body offspring. This is one of those things that makes non-Mormons go “Whu!?” because it is so against what many other Christian religions teach. The introduction of a heavenly mother who co-created each of us is viewed as blasphemous by many and another example of how the Mormons are not truly Christians.
“Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like Him, are in the image of God. All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” MFP 4:203.
(As a point of interest, the Mormons also believe that there are spiritual tests and challenges in the pre-mortal existence that will inform your later position in life. These learning opportunities are discussed in “councils in heaven” – a sort of department meeting between uncountable spirit bodies and the big honcho, Daddy God. Up until fairly recently (1978) Mormons believed that people were marked with dark skin for being fence-sitters in the pre-mortal existence, in the War in Heaven. Religion is like the Rabbit Hole in Alice in Wonderland – the deeper you go, the weirder it gets.)
The idea of the Heavenly Mother is part of the doctrine of eternal progression. Ooooh, you’re going to love this one. So, the church basically believes that the Heavenly Mother and Father were themselves once spirit children who received a physical body and were then rewarded for their good behaviour by being given a universe of their own. They were begotten from a Heavenly Mother and Father, who also had their own universe. And so on, and so on. This one (obviously) gets murky and the church has made great efforts to distance themselves from this, at least publicly. This is true for many reasons, the most obvious being because the whole idea is insane. It also goes directly against the teachings of the Bible by implying that there is not one God by many Gods and that each of us (if you are a man of course!) can one day hope to be rewarded with a planet and Godhood. It destroys its own basic principle of the eternal family (hard to all be hanging out together when each male is off being a God to his own universe) and leaves the church out there in the same realm as Scientologists and Raeliens. Even some Mormons seem unaware of this doctrine, despite it being a fundamental plank in their Plan of Salvation.
Deciding how many children you want to have is a personal and sometimes difficult decision. My husband and I talk about it a lot and neither one of us is ure how many we want. There are so many factors to consider – the kind of family you want to have, how much money you have, how easy/hard pregnancy is on your body and how hard baby’s are on your marriage. As a Mormon, a third party enters the debate. God. Yup, you have to pray and reflect on whether there are more babies already destined for your family, hanging out in spirit land just waiting for this one chance to receive a physical body and realize their eternal destiny. No pressure there. My SIL has gone against the direct advice of Doctors and had more babies – all because she had received a revelation that there were more spirit babies waiting for her. (Her pregnancies make her sick, sick, sick for the entire nine months and risk her life every time. She has nearly died with three out of four births and I’m not convinced she’s finished.)
So there you have it in a nutshell. Where babies come from. That is, if you are part of a very weird religion. Everyone else just has sex.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
I was interested to read some of the comments to my recent post On a Mission. I thought my approach was very tempered and a good way to open a dialogue. Nothing feels less comfortable to me than never addressing a major issue. I know there are times to address it and ways to approach things respectfully and lightly but never? Never, ever? That just feels wrong. So while I appreciate the idea that I should just leave things alone and the sentiment behind it, that ain’t me. I feel too strongly about this to just sit back and watch someone I care about become a morg. :)
The good news is, I got a great response from my BIL. I didn’t really think he would take it badly but I guess you never really know until you try. I won’t repeat verbatim what he wrote because I feel like that would be bad form but basically he agreed with me that credit should be given to doctors, technology, science etc. but that crediting God is also important because for many, it really is their faith that keeps them going. Fair enough I suppose.
He maintains that he has seen prayer at work (and gave me an example of a woman in his mission who has been trying to get pregnant and only a week after receiving a priesthood blessing, found out she was expecting. Oh, and the missionary correctly predicted it would be a girl) and that it is the greatest outward expression of inner faith. He wasn’t the least bit offended and so I am happy that I have started a discussion at the very least.
It is too easy for myths and stereotypes about atheists to persist when we fail to identify ourselves as such. So, in my reply to his email, I thanked him for his response and told him I thought it was well-considered and respectful (which it was) and that as an atheist, prayer is likely not something we will ever agree on but that there is always value in trying to understand the people you love. Baby steps.
The example of “prayer in action” that he gave me is so typical and so pervasive. To be able to see the example for what it is requires a lot; an acceptance of true coincidence, an understanding of basic statistics and probability, an appreciation for the human brain to create what it wants (“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” – Mark Twain) and the maturity to recognize that a lot of stories, are just down right lies. How do you effectively deconstruct this example in a way someone of faith can grasp where you are coming from? I mean, I know that there is only one way to end a drought (whether it be of the moisture or the baby variety) and so a prediction like that will almost always be true with time. I know that there are only two options for a baby and that predicting it’s a girl is not statistically relevant – not even close. I know that people tend to count the hits and ignore the misses and that it’s just as likely that the missionary told her she was going to get pregnant several times before she actually did, or that the story was revised to be even more faith-promoting with each repetition. I know that by no means does this example prove that prayer works and yet, for some, it does.
I feel lucky to have a strong background in science and I credit that largely for my atheism. I studied neuroscience with some very impressive people with wicked minds and an almost universal lack of belief in God. I learned how to think, deconstruct, spot the faulty assumption or premise and apply the scientific method to the world around me. It is not realistic to think that everyone could (or would want to) have that kind of experience. So, how do you teach basic critical thinking to young people in a way that isn’t threatening?
This could be a whole other post, but I’m a big believer that this should be taught to every student in the world. At least it would be a start.
Will keep you updated on BIL.
larry king
I heard an interview with Larry King yesterday on Q with Jian Ghomeshi. I used to really dislike King and was often annoyed at his willingness to give crackpots like Sylvia Browne a platform from which to spew their crazy. He enever really asks the hard questions when he has religious or spiritual leaders on his show and it has always left a bad taste in my mouth. The interview was a good one and it gave me a lot more insight into the man and where he is coming from. I also learned a few interesting things about him.
He claims to be an agnostic but what could easily be surmised by his other comments, is that he is an atheist. Here are some examples of supportive statements:
“I don’t believe in an afterlife”
“I don’t believe in God.”
Pretty clear to me. If you don’t believe in God (or an afterlife) wouldn’t that make you an ATHEIST!? What is it about that word that in America at least, is so scary? Why is it better to say agnostic and mean atheist? He also said he hopes he is wrong – that isn’t enough to make you an agnostic either Larry. I really wish people, particularly influential ones like Larry King, could be honest and authentic and just say it like it is. It would do atheists a world of good to hear that there are plenty of others out there who aren’t ashamed to say so.
I thought it was very interesting to hear why Larry King is “agnostic”. Apparently he didn’t start out that way. He said that after many, many years of interviewing religious leaders he started to notice a pattern. He wasn’t getting any good answers.
Also, he’s married to a Mormon. Which in itself isn’t too weird. Except that they met later in life and still married which is sort of a no-go in the church. I mean, it isn’t outright banned but it’s certainly discouraged. Apparently the rules change if the non-member you are marrying happens to host a nationally syndicated talk show from which you can spew your own particular brand of crazy. Ahhh…nothing like the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.
mission impossible?
My little brother-in-law has recently turned in his mission papers. That means that in a few months he will get his mission call and he will be gone for the next two years. Your mission is something that most boys prepare for for their whole lives. I have seen books geared to toddlers talking about “When I go on my mission…” It is a huge deal – it separates the “good” mormons from the “bad” for the rest of their lives (“Where did you serve your mission?” is often the first question asked by mormons upon meeting another male mormon), and many young women are looking exclusively for a RM (returned missionary) to marry. I won’t get into the details of a mission and what it entails in this post – suffice it to say that it is strict, long and focused entirely on baptizing as many people as possible.
My husband is grappling about whether he should say something to his brother before he goes. We have always been very hands off about the church and don’t really discuss it with the kid brother and sister because we want to be respectful (even though we technically aren’t because we think they are in a cult) and maintain the peace. But, now little bro is about to embark on a two year service mission where he is going to get laughed at and countered almost every day so my husband thinks that talking to him can’t be much worse. He wants to plant the seed so that he sees the things we want him to see: the fact that people outside of the church live happy, content lives, the fact that outside Southern Alberta and Utah, the mormons aren’t as important or as present as they claim to be (the church highly exaggerates both its membership numbers and its impact) and that a lot of his mission will be a numbers game. Get ‘em in, get ‘em counted, even if they don’t really know what they are signing up for. We want him to have something to think about so that he might, just might, give some credence to the objections that he hears while he is away.
Missions seem to have one of two effects on people; they either come back Super-Morm or leave the church all together. We would really prefer the latter and just aren’t sure how to go about it. We aren’t the only interested party waging war over this young man’s fertile mind. And while they have billions of dollars, years of brain washing and an entrenched political wing on their side, we have the truth.
ritual sacrifice
I missed going to church today. As a Catholic, Easter was always a big deal. I loved going to church…especially all the masses leading up to Easter Sunday. The priest washing our feet, the nails being driven into the cross, the sadness of the passion story and the wonder of Jesus’ resurrection. I remember the songs that we sung, the excitement I felt when I bought my Easter dress, the smell of incense, the joy of Palm Sunday and how all the kids would sit through mass, braiding our palms. How the entire mass competed against the quiet rustle of palm branches.
Rituals are so powerful. That is why churches rely on them as much as they do. Whether it is a Catholic mass, where everyone sings psalms as a group and you already know what words will come next, to the Mormon temple ceremonies, all churches are rich with repetition, tradition and synchronicity. It makes you feel safe, secure and like you are part of something bigger than yourself. You not only identify with the religion but with the group of people who belong to it – even those who you have not met. It connects you to your heritage, your future and in a sense, humanity.
My husband and I both find ourselves missing these things at times. Usually, for me at least, it happens at Christmas and Easter. I have thought about what I can do about this for our family. Do we need to put aside an hour each week to slow down, think and reflect on our lives? Should we make it a point to go outside, explore nature and connect with the larger world in an attempt to recreate our own “church”? Do our children need that ritual to feel secure?
I haven’t got an answer I’m afraid. I do think that there is a difference between the vacuum left by leaving a church and never having had one to begin with. I don’t think you miss what you haven’t experienced. Having said that, a lack of community and connectedness are probably one of the atheist’s biggest challenges. Truth doesn’t always compare to cheesy songs sung with 100 other people.
put aside your issues
I went to my first LDS funeral this week. My husband’s stepdad’s grandma passed away and the entire (and in LDS terms “entire” can result in staggering numbers) family came from all over to attend. While Grandma was a religious woman, she never pushed it down your throat. Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said about one of her sons. Uncle W got up to give the “spiritual” talk, only to launch into a sermon on the mount, and what made it worse was that a lot of what he said was said on behalf of Grandma. Who, incidentally, would have been mortified by his words. He addressed the “many people in the audience, both family and friends, who have either lost or are struggling with their testimonies” and encouraged them to “out aside their issues” and return to the one true church. He proceeded to bear his own testimony and made everyone feel, well, offended and uncomfortable.
It made me so mad that he could be so dismissive of people’s “issues”. By issues did he mean the lack of geographical, DNA, or archeological evidence for the validity of the church, or the historical inconsistencies and contradictions? Maybe he was referring to the revisionist practices of the modern day church, or the obvious fraud and polygamous practices of early church leaders? Yeah – those are definitely “issues” that need to be put aside. Don’t think, just jump.
a long time coming
This blog has been a long time in the making. As a former Catholic, now atheist, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about (and debating) religion, it was only natural that I provide myself a soapbox from which to scream.
I was raised Catholic and truth be told, I loved going to Church. I loved the songs and the smells and the rituals. When I was in University (studying Neuroscience which no doubt, played a large role in my “conversion”) I met a young Mormon man and we started dating. He wasn’t just your run of the mill quasi-Mormon – this guy was hard core. He went on a mission, he paid his tithing and a lot of his self-worth was wrapped up in his church and beliefs. Despite our differences of opinions we manged to make it work and just avoided the topic of religion all together. I researched his religion and church obsessively hoping that I could find something to believe in. I loved this man and I thought that if this church was true and I could believe it then that would be the easiest way to make sure we could be together. I read the Book of Mormon, I prayed, I read “faith-affirming” church-sanctioned literature, I looked for signs and waited to hear a still, small voice. What I heard was my inner voice telling me that this was the weirdest religion I had ever encountered. Quite frankly it creeped me out.
That research into the Mormon faith also made me look at my own faith in a different way. Catholicism, unlike the LDS (Latter Day Saints) faith, allows you to pick and choose what you or don’t believe. There is no church authority that will come and knock on your door because you hadn’t paid tithing or taken the Eucharist. If you wanted to believe that the Pope was a creepy old man playing dress up as opposed to God’s human representative on Earth that was fine. You could still go to church and call yourself Catholic. I started to examine my own beliefs and found myself lacking in some very important areas – I didn’t believe in transubstantiation or in the virgin birth. I didn’t believe that Mary remained a virgin until she died (poor woman!), or that the Pope was infallible. Truth be told, I found him especially fallible. I didn’t really understand the trinity and was revolted by the church’s stance on contraception. All of this made me wonder what it was exactly that made me self-identify as Catholic.
From there it was a long, sometimes painful, and bumpy road to atheism. If the Mormons all believed a bunch of blooey and the Catholic church wasn’t true either, was any religion real? Unbeknownst to me, my boyfriend was going through the very same thing. He had taken the opportunity to go to Africa and study baboons for 6 months and as he spent his days watching them interact with each other he couldn’t ignore the similarities between them and humans. Evolution was his sticking point and like most lies, once they start to unravel it is hard to stop.
We were fortunate to have some people in our lives who were already atheists and they offered us insight and hope when all we saw was darkness. Over the next few years we would become part of a community through the Council for Secular Humanism and other atheist organizations. My (by this time) husband spent a lot of time on exmormon.org and decided to have his name officially removed from the church records. I wish the Catholic church provided the same service but as far as I know, it doesn’t.
Fast forward nearly ten years and here we are. Becoming atheists was the best thing we have ever done. My husband often comments on what a better person he is now that he is out of the church. He no longer sees people as “members” or “non-members”, Christian or Muslim. He is less judgmental, less restricted, less afraid, more hopeful and happy. As for me, I now value critical thinking more than ever. I the world for what it is and do my best to ensure that the world will be left a better place for my having been in it. I live in a world of actualities and light rather than conjecture, blind faith and fear. I live in the now because there is no after. I do not pray for the hungry, I feed them. I don’t thank God when something amazing happens, I thank the people and the technology that made it possible. And above all, I live each and every day to the fullest because I know I don’t get a second chance.
My goal in this website is threefold. First and foremost, I want to offer a different perspective on atheism. It is not a mere absence of belief. It is an exchange of beliefs from the supernatural to the man-made, from blind faith to personal accountability. Secondly, I want the people who are already atheists (some of who might not even know it yet) to feel proud. There is no need to hide or be embarrassed about your choice. And lastly, I want parents, atheist or not, to think twice about what they tell their children. What stories do we feed them, what values do we uphold? I strongly believe that children who are raised to think for themselves and critically analyze the world around them will not only live fuller, happier lives, they will make this world a better, brighter, place to live.
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