Women are more invested in community. The community protects them and their children. Most communities are religious communities up unitl recently in the west and parts of the far east. The most dramatic example is female genital mutilation. It is performed by women assisted by other women on girls.
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At least they didn't blame it on a lack of valiance in the pre-existence.
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I was never a Christian or Mormon or ever tempted to be. But some of the better "purer" Christian hymns are very good. For example Jerusalem by William Blake. These things tap into some sense of awe, longing and hope. They are beautiful on their own without necessity of subscribing to any religion. I contrast this with the so called genre of Christian music, contemporary, rock etc.
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Do you hate Mormons? If not you aren't anti Mormon. You are anti Mormonism. Mormons confuse those things. That's part of the con: telling people that criticism of the Church is persecution. It keeps them from reading or listening to that criticism. Ask an African American or a Jew, what anti means. Its about hating people for what they are and doing them or wishing them bodily harm. Its a
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I think the idea of being a secular missionary is great. The trouble is that the most deluded people who need the good news the most are apt to get violent.
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I thought that "land of Jerusalem" was another smithism. I know that hebrew bible talks about the land of Israel as distinct from the people of Israel. And it talks about the "land of Egypt" etc. But I think "land of Jerusalem" just sounded good to old Joe. But I could be wrong. I'm not really a bible scholar.
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It's a shame for the church that they have such a rigid way of choosing new profits. They could select someone with some vision and energy if they picked new profits like Catholics pick Popes.As is it is they just rotate one half dead old white guy after another into the job. It's just a place to die. I bet Mittens would be a great profit.
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I'm sure the bible does mean it when it says that humans have dominion over the beasts. Its an old book. It says and means a lot of things that have been rethought since. Hunting,cooking and eating meat is what made us what we are. We'd still be like Gorrillas or Chimps spending 12 hours a day chewing. Hunting is a drive that is part of our species, though obviously not every individual.
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I'm reading an interesting memoir called "You Can't Win" by a guy named Jack Black who was a burglar and hobo around 1900 give or take. A lot of the action is in and around Salt Lake City. He wrote it in the 1920s. Anyway, there are a couple interesting Mormon references. At one point he and an accomplice attend services at the temple or tabernacle to ascertain if the tales of riches
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Why does God even need a prophet? Why does he have to secretly talk to just one guy? If he can appear to one guy, I'd think he could appear to whole congregations at once, or be a great thundering voice for all the world. There is just an inherent credibility problem right there. Then he can't even talk to the prophet except by some kind of crappy device with marginal reception. I don't know.
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And of course I'm really being anthropocentric here. It is not like some of our predecessor species like Homo Habilis, and Homo Erectus weren't people too. If God was really there, he would have been talking to them as well, so its really more like 2.5 million years of silence. My apologies to our predecessor species. I'm sure that there names aren't being found by genealogy researchers for pr
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Modern humans, as a species, have been around for 200 thousand years. Why did God wait until 5,000 years to talk to anyone, and then it was just to Abraham and his family. Why did he wait until 2,000 years ago to save humanity from eternal torment in hell, and then pick a weird way of introducing it, an arbitrary way of implementing it, and a shockingly inefficient means of communicating it to
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I bet one of the purposes behind the mysterious drive to build temples in the face of stagnant growth numbers is simply to diversify the real estate portfolio. Nice though agricultural land is, its nice to have a few prime urban parcels around the world. Here in San Diego, they own a lovely temple site in a prime upscale shopping district right next to a freeway. I'm sure it has appreciated hand
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The term "anti-mormon" annoys me. It's part of a protective persecution complex that immunizes them from outside information. The fallacy there is that a true "anti-mormon" hates or discriminates against Mormons. I don't know any "anti-mormons" and I never have. I know plenty of people who are "anti-mormonism" though. As has been pointed out already, i
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I think a side benefit of the increasing acceptance of people who identify as gay is that people that identify as straight are less likely to be alarmed by or ashamed of homosexual feelings of their own. I think lots of straight people have them. And I think that virulent gay haters and bashers are people who are frightened and alarmed by their own homosexual feelings and impulses. Or at least
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Quran has a sura that says righteous Jews and Christians will go to paradise before unrighteous Muslims who may not get there at all. Of course like all these books there is plenty of inconsistency in the Quran,but you won't find anything like that in the Christian bible.
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Classical Islam was pretty tolerant of Jews and Christians as People of the Book. They were second class citizens and they paid an infidel tax, but they were citizens protected by the law. It beat the hell out of living in Christian countries, where Jews lived essentially at the revocable permission of some nobleman or royal person. Isis doesn't seem very Islamic with all this killing of Christ
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I wonder why that Doc only got 15 years. It seems like he should have got life or death.
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Interesting thing about the B of A is not just that it isn't translated from the papyrus. It is that it couldn't be translated from the papyrus because the text is perfectly transparent 19th century homespun American fiction, starting with the absurd labeling of the figures in the facsimiles. The B of A is what first attracted me to Ex Mormonism.
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Hebrew and Arabic scripts are related to each other having come from Phoenician, which is where Greek alphabet came from too. They don't come from hieroglyphics by any stretch.
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It is partly a matter of degree and partly a matter of underlying value. The church is based on lies and has no underlying value beyond the value of other churches. The US is based and built on values derived and made popular during the Enlightenment,by people who subscribed to those values and knew history. In short it was built based on rational knowledge with the intent to deliver liberty an
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There was one billion people alive in 1804. There six billion people by 1999. If there is such thing as reincarnation, most people haven't participated. Do animals also reincarnate. I wonder why. I also wonder how. What is a soul separate from a body? I don't think there is one.
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True both are bible fan fiction. But the Q'ran has a bit more thought in it and some at least some semi real history. Both religions also claim to be restorations. Islam claims to be the first religion. The prophets Adam and Moses and Jesus all had the true faith. But the Jews and Christians messed up and lost a lot of true part. Finally Muhammad came and got everything right and written
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And when the levee breaks they'll have no place to stay.
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What mormons call anti mormonism is not like the other two things. Anti semitism is hatred of jews sometimes manifesting in lethal terms. Islamophobia too. Mosques get bombs thrown at them. Veiled women get called rude names in public. Anti mormonism would be hatred and violence to Mormons. Mormons think that criticising their religion is the same thing. Its not. If it was, then it would b
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And we are just big apes. True we have language and technical ability. But all you have to do is smell us to know. And most of us still spend all our time thinking about sex, food,status within the pack and being safe warm and dry. Like chickens, we'll attack and destroy ones that are week or injured or look different. If that's God, I'm not impressed.
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Testimony is weird way (to me) to say "faith". Faith is an interior thing that you can express or not. Testimony sounds kind of salesmanly like. Do you have a rap or spiel or routine to present about God? It is weird but it is not as weird as to use the word "witness" as a verb that means "to tell people about stuff in an ancient book".
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""We sometimes look back on issues and say, 'Maybe that was counterproductive for what we wish to achieve,' but we look forward and not backward."" I don't think they understand how that kind of language plays to the public. It sounds very sinister. If he said, "we look back and realize that we'd strayed from god's plan" or "we realize we were wrong and as
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Okay. I'll add a satire and ridicule exemption for people who believe that satire and ridicule are or have the potential to be humorous and/or of political or social value.
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I want to introduce a new law to protect Mormons from satire and public ridicule. It will also require them to treat gay people equally with other people including recognize gay temple marriage and giving women the priest hood. I'll call it the Mormon Protection and Respect Act. Watch for my press conference.
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