How many times in the Bible and BoM does God not only punish persons or groups for their "sins" but also punish all their descendants? Why is punishing children for the sins of their fathers a strong component of those cannons time and time again?

"Laman and Lemuel, you're acting up again. I guess it's time to darken all your kid's skin. You leave me no choice."

"Okay. Turning the staffs to snakes and plagues of frogs didn't work too well. Time to kill all the first borns."

How can people buy into this BoM and Bible stuff and not see it for what it is?

I know I typed "Sayeth" not safety. So sick of autocorrect.

Could it be, possibly, because some people *like* the idea that people they don't like will not only get their own "justice," but that their family for generations will suffer too?

Yeah, that's what they get for not believing like me! :(

The modern Mormon version is insipid. Wasn't it Julie Beck who whined about generations being lost because of a cup of coffee?

The God of the Bible (and by extension, the God of Mormonism) is an evil, immortal, hideous monster. Luckily, he’s a fictional character.

Before I realized the futility of showing my wife the folly of the BoM, I asked her whether a loving god would indiscriminately slaughter thousands of innocent children.

She said, of course not.

I asked about 3 Nephi 9, and commented that surely there were innocents among those drowned, burned, and crushed in the cities destroyed by Jesus upon his arrival to America.

She replied that the people were wicked and had to be punished.

"Even the children?"

She explained that they were probably to be spared the wickedness of their parents.

"So, they died for the sins of their parents."

"Yes," she replied, "though Jesus' judgment may seem cruel to our modern eyes, it was a mercy."

"No crueler, I suppose, than God killing everybody but Noah and has merry band of floating zookeepers."

" . . . though Jesus' judgment may seem cruel to our modern eyes, it was a mercy."

I heard excuses like this all the time from my family and it feels like lead in the stomach. They can't hear themselves.

I like that you brought up Jesus coming to America. The reason I wrote this post is that I had been looking at that on line because I wanted to answer somebody's question, and the whole thing was way worse than I had remembered. Disaster movie producers should read it and take notes in order to up their game. I mean, talk about making an entrance!

Why do all the religious cannons have civilizations wherein every single person is so vile and sinful that they must be destroyed by the millions? It's just not human nature that every single person in a group is the same. But I was raised to see the world as evil, as Satan's territory. It was all good mixed with evil to trick us. But I could see nice people out there from my Mormon cage. I had a hard time buying it. So I parroted it, but never really believed it down deep.

You can go to the most dangerous places on earth still and you will find a lot of nice people mixed in. A lot.

But what is religion without evil? Religion is not at war with sin, they are dependent on it for their very survival. When all is based on scare tactics, somebody HAS TO BE the bad guy.

I don't know what the Catholic Church teaches now, but I remember my catechism teachers telling us that babies were baptized as soon as possible so they could go to heaven just in case they died before they were sprinkled.

The same wife who justified Jesus' killing of children for their parents' wickedness, is horrified by Catholics thinking that ANY child under 8 could ever do anything to deserve damnation if not for baptism.

At least the Catholic Church can justify it's practice of infant baptism due to original sin (or so I imagine). But I thought Mormons reject the notion of original sin, thus the children probably hadn't become wicked before Mormon Jesus killed them.

It's all so contradictory, and the mental contortions required to square it all defies logic.

TSCC uses fear to manipulate people. That’s where the love went. I’m so glad I’m outa there.