I'm in a really bad mood right now, so the venting will be extra sour.

Who in their mind would EVER think, that if there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God, he would give a rat's ass if someone on Earth did a baptism ritual for a dead person in (theoretically) heaven, where He could instantly find that spirit/person and judge whether they were worthy of extra-special mojo from the Mormons!? Hell, if God gave Joe Smith all the instructions needed to "restore" "His Church" on earth, then why the additional paperwork needed to give someone in heaven a "second chance"??

THEY ARE IN HEAVEN.

You're telling me that God/Jesus can't simply say: "Hey, you were a pretty good guy, even though you weren't Mormon, so here, join the rest of your family; besides, I knew before you had a physical body and I decided to send you to a family that wasn't LDS, so....sorry about that."

Wait a minute, back up, you're supposed to be judged and admitted to heaven on the way through the Pearly Gates (partly by JS, unless that got thrown under the bus, too), so what extra goodies get thrown your way if your family does "ordinances" for you--as I understand it, you're never getting into top-tier tithe payer polygamist CK anyway, so why bother? And god took almost 2,000 years to fix this problem of the "church" being screwed up, so all that ancestor work has to be done!?

It's sorta like getting to a major university, the best in the world, as a matter of fact, and the chancellor says, "Well, I see your grades and know everything you've done since before you were born, but your family has to fill out all these forms before I can make decision about the university recruiters (missionaries) talk to you about getting a nicer dorm room. Oh, also, they need to pay in order to fill out that paperwork before I can do anything."

It makes NO GD sense, even in the stretchiest stretch of the imagination, unless it's in a "Oh, Almighty and Omniscent Heavenly Father, please, please be nice my Aunt Helen who never was a Mormon, and my other ancestors who lived in 2,000 B.C.--you are powerless to do anything unless we bow before you and stick our teenagers in water!!" Such bullshite.

I feel bad that the Smith family, and other families in that era, lost so many kids, but *that's* the real reason TSCC has the dead dunk (and money aspect as well). And the excuse that one line from Paul in the NT backs it up--barely, and in many opinions in contradiction to what Paul wrote. B...S!!!

Rant fading.....fading....fading.....

And to make them feel special for being worthy enough for a temple recommend.

Dead dunking is one of the CULT most dis respective things they do in a seriously long list of dis respective things. F*CK them, seriously. None of it means a damn thing anyway.

I have got to the point where I actually laugh watching the TBM morons run around in the hamster wheel trying to get to the imaginary CK. It is funny when you think about it. A waste of life, but hey it's their stupid life.

The only time I set foot in a temple was to perform this ritual when I was 16 or 17. I lied during my worthiness interview as I had already fornicated, drank, etc.. I wasn't about to admit to that stuff and get my parents involved.

Afterwards, I felt some sort of guilt about the dead people I represented that day, like they were cheated because a sinner and a liar was their proxy and maybe their baptisms were null and void.

In addition to the rituals being fake and ridiculous, they have the potential for creating unnecessary guilt for the proxy. It's definitely another scheme for extorting money from tithe payers.

When visiting TBM extended family, this is one of those things where I realize how far from mormonism I've gone. Family will talk proudly about their kids' recent 'baptism for the dead' trip, and I'll think, "Gawd, that is so weird. I can't believe I used to think there was some value in that."

Baptism as the Mormons do it is a ritual of subjugation. The initiate is allowing the church to deprive them (temporarily) of the most critically important substance necessary for survival - oxygen. The initiate is trusting the leader(s) to let them up. In other words, the church now owns you and you can't even breathe unless they say so. It's like a kind of waterboarding.

What is unique about the LDS church is that unlike other churches who do this to a member only once, under the guise of so-called baptisms for the so-called dead, it can be done over and over, reinforcing the church's dominance each time.