"White and Delightsome" isn't all that it's cracked up to be:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153611/Shocking-photo-reveals-damage-sun-does-face.html

One of the biggest turn-offs about Mormonism for me was the wacky theological explanation for different human skin colours. When you think about it, it's about the same as the ancient Greek mythological story about how Phaeton stole the sun chariot from his father Helios and drove too close to the ground in Africa and blackened the skin of the Ethiopians. It's just another emotional crutch the church uses to make people think they are better off than they really are.

Having melanin in your skin isn't a "curse." It's there for a reason. If you are not living in the cloudy and cold climate of Northern Europe you need to protect yourself from the sun. The different races of man exist because humans adapted to various climatic conditions over long periods of time in different parts of the world.

But when the BoM was written, light skin was best. Having a good bronze tan was a sign that you were a farmer or someone who toiled under the hot sun.

If you wanted to look educated and wealthy, you prized light skin. That showed that you spent your time indoors. Other people did the hard work out in the sun for you. Light skin was prized enough that men all work wide brimmed hats, and women of means went out with sun umbrellas to help keep their skin light. They didn’t want to run the chance of having a tan and looking like they worked outside.

Of course it has all flip flopped now. Everyone works indoors for the most part, and a tan signifies that you have time to go out and spend time in the sun. Time in the sun is a luxury now, so there isn’t a stigma to having spent time out in the sun.

Back in JS’s time, the whiter the better. Milky white was best. White and delightsome meant very white.

Now with rampant skin cancer and wrinkles from the sun, I wish we could bring those cute little umbrellas --parasols, as they call them -- back in style.

They were convinced they were fabulous. Since they were paler than everyone else, pale must be best.

A while back someone posted on a thread about MLM scams about a guy who made everyone ooh and ahh because he said he only put the skin cream on one side of his face and that side was considerably more free of wrinkles than the other. Anyone want to bet the guy used to be a truck driver like the guy in this photo?

Dark skin prevents nasty sun damage in warm environments. White skin prevents rickets in cold environments. As far as I can tell, that is basically the only difference.

Let's see...as a "white and delightsome" person speaking here....

Let's see how many white-bred mormons are blessed by God if they moved to Africa and lived in mud and thatched huts.....

I am 60 and Irish-Norwegian. I've lived in the Intermountain West all my life at high altitudes. I can vouch that skin cancer is a bitch. Being this white is because of a fairly recent mutation that occurred in Europe during or shortly after the last glaciation of the current ice age. (Yes, we are still in an ice age. Google it.)

Many scientists theorize that the mutation proliferated because it assisted the synthesis of Vitamin D, a sunlight driven process that occurs in the skin. During the cloudy era, this was more advantageous than sun protection.

Think this theory makes more sense than the BoM explanation?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2012 12:38PM by rationalguy.

I'm about as white and delightsome as you can get - so white and delightsome, in fact, that strangers routinely stop me on the street to ask if I'm feeling alright.

I'm so white and delightsome that "fair to light" tinted moisturizer is way too dark for me.

I'm so white and delightsome that people often ask, upon seeing me next to my prone-to-a-healthy-glowing-tan TBM siblings, if I am adopted.

And yet I'm the one who left TSCC. The Tan McTanned twins are still deep in it.

Even as a TBM teen, it used to perplex me how God all of the sudden changed someone's skin color. Like they just woke up one morning and they were dark. I took several college-level biology classes before I got to God's College and University and heard these wild theories about melanin and dark men from Africa eventually turning white instead of the other way around when we all knew man(woman) started out white in Missouri and then turned dark because their ancestor killed his brother or because many years later their formerly white ancestors were wicked Lamanites.

Course, that's when I was also trying to figure out how and why people called the Book of Mormon some literary work of wonder when it seemed like a child's story book written by someone who was stoned. Little did I know how right I was.

I am stealing it from another poster, but someone once said on the board, "If we are not punished for Adam's transgression then why are blacks punished for Cains?"

It was American Protestant Churches, especialy Southern Confederate state churches, who interpreted the "Mark of Cain" as a dark skin tone.
The Israelistes were instructed not to marry non Jews, not due to race, but to preserve the Jewish faith.

It does not say God changed any races in Christianity. There was never officially any racism in the CATHOLIC or ORTHODOX Churches, and or Judaism.. Dont get me wrong there was Im sure, some racism by some members, but not in doctrine.. Some of the earliest large Christian Communities. and Bishops were in and from Ethiopia, Egypt. the Middle East and Turkey, before the pallid Europeans.. There are still some Arabic (Sephradic) Jews, and Black Jews.

It does say that people lost a common language due to the Tower of Babel.

where is tanning mom when you need her ?

http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/10933313-large.jpg

the Nephites were all that white either. Weren't they Israelites? I would think that they were more or less kind of dark.

What always seemed so strange about the Mormon kids I went to school with was if being "white and delightsome" was so important then why would they want a mixed-race tan like mine?

http://way2tan.com/uploads/tan-girl-at-dinner.jpg