When I was first looking into the cons of the church with my fiance's help, he indicated something about why mormons and catholics have so many babies. He says "numbers is power." What do you all think? Do you think mormons and catholics have so many babies so they can teach them their beleifs and rapidly populate the earth with their word? It makes sense to me, but I would like to hear your point of view.

Yes!
Mormons teach that every child is a blessing from God. Also that all of these children will be with you in the next life, providing you can all be perfect enough to make it to the CK. Your children will be even more of a blessing to you in the next life. The more children you have in this life, the more power and status you will have in the next.

Yes, I do think that's a big part of having children - to "raise a righteous seed" (aka, have lots of kids, teach them all that the Church is true and the only way, make them scared of life outside the Church - and you grow your membership exponentially and effectively.)

However, the way they teach it is that our time on Earth is a time to learn and grow. There are still a lot of spirits in the spirit world, or wherever, that are waiting for bodies. Our job is to provide them with bodies so they can get in on the Earth action - learning, growing, exercising agency, etc. - to experience the growth necessary to make it back to God, become a god, etc...

I don't like that doctrine cause I feel like, when considered literally, it detracts from the personal, incredibly intimate relationship I believe parents should have with their children. It means they're not really your children - you're just their guardian for a time.

This sounds exactly like the Heaven's Gate Cult.

You were "in class" on Earth to learn and grow but then when the mother ship (comet Hale-Bopp) came through the Solar System you had to be prepared "to shed your container" and "reach the next level beyond human."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSZhwu1Rwo

Forgot to add that financially and economically it's no longer feasible to have so many children per family in most western countries. Without foreign conversion the LDS church would collapse. The shock will come when the non-white masses that will support the church in the future start to wonder why none of the Brethren look like them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srYKbh4ASuw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDa2rwwZHeE

Italy birthrate is now below replacement level, and I think Spain is close behind. Quebec in the 1950s had the highest provincial birthrate in Canada. It now has the lowest, also below replacement level.

Mormons are maybe 20 or 30 years behind the Catholics, but I sense that the same trend is happening with Mormon 20-somethings. Early marriage and ten kids will become increasingly rare, and it is already pretty rare.

In my personal observation the mormon average was 5 kids about 30-40 years ago, and is now hovering somewhere between 3 and 4. If you go back 70 or 80 years I'm pretty sure the mormon average was around 7.

I'd guess higher than 7. Birth control was a big game changer on family size.

The more kids you have, the less time and energy you have. The less time and energy you have, the less likely it is you will see behind the curtain.

It’s just another form of Mormon busy-work, like the endless callings.

It's a battle for the evolutionary frame. More kids = win. But unfortunately, that's only the case if you can keep them indoctrinated. Satan (secularism) is stronger than ever. So many of these kids will be lost to rationalism.

Power and a cushy life; with no financial worries and retirement pay and care completely guaranteed, only for those at the TOP of the Mormon pyramid, of course.

Q. Why do mormons stop having kids at 35?












A. Because 36 kids is just too damn many!

;>)

Straight answer:

1) If you control sexuality, you control the members. Limiting BC choices, discouraging non-traditional family choices, etc., are all ways to control people. Encouraging people to have more children than they can afford keeps them shackled to the cult.

2) Tithing, tithing, tithing. First you pressure people to marry young and make as many babies as possible. Next, you discourage family planning and birth control. Third, you pressure people to not only pay their tithing first, but to teach their children the importance of paying tithing.

3) Profit!

Most Catholics in the US or other countries aren't having as many children as they used to in previous generations. Some traditionally mostly Catholic European countries have lower birthrates than Americans in general and have higher ages of first marriage than most Americans in general. That's not my point though so I'll keep it at that. The point is, even most (if not, nearly all) Catholics around the world (especially in the US and Europe) are not accepting what the Pope says about birth control and numbers of children. The pope's views are not representative of your typical Catholic today.

Maybe it's tradition. Maybe it's that many more Catholics are a lot more flexible about their religious beliefs than Mormons (average Catholics can disregard the pope's views on birth control and divorce etc without being excommunicated or disciplined).

I am doing my part to offset this by having zero. That probably would have got me excommunicated from tssc eventually had I not decided to leave on my own.

Anyway, that's what is taught in the "Eternal Marriage Student Manual," used by the Seminaries and Institutes of the Mormon church:

"Brigham Young emphasized: 'There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?—To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can' ( Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1954], p. 197)."

http://institute.lds.org/manuals/eternal-marriage-student-manual/u-w-women-3.asp


And--really--how can you argue against impeccable logic like that?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2012 03:06AM by Fetal Deity.

My mother had babies from 1954 to 1974, a twenty year span. Apparently she had a uterus like a clown car--they kept climbing out. My brothers and I had to sleep in the garage, piled next to the cordwood. And there was a U lock on the food cupboard. No allowances, no school lunch money. Too many mouths.

I was second born, so I grew up around squalling infants. There was a malodorous pail for soaking soiled diapers in the only bathroom. MY brothers and I fled the stench and ran outside to pee on the yard tree. But the family dog got there first, so there was a line up.