Actually, the origins of the secret handshakes, etc. is of a different nature altogether. IMO, based on books like "Born in Blood", it all started with the Templars- specifically, when the Templars suddenly became wanted outlaws and needed methods to identify each other. As far as medieval stonemasons, it was eay to tell who was one and who wasn't, based on expertise in stonework. The T
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I think we should organize an excavation of Cumorah- then the whole world would have access to the words of God, who is the father of everybody, not exclusively the Mormons.
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Such a double standard,isn't it? Mormons demand that other "isms" toe the line 100% or dissolve themselves, but Mormonism is allowed all the leeway in the universe to make mistakes. The fact is that any and all "isms" say good things. Rastafarianism, Marxism, Catholocism, Lutheranism, Buddhism- all say good things. Hell, even Nazism said good things. Where do the Mormons get o
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Lots of civic organizations (such as retired military groups- the early versions of what we in the US call the American Legion, etc.) had women's auxilliary groups called Relief Societies. In those cases the societies' main job was indeed providing and coordinating charitable relief initiatives for the service people and their families. Maybe JS wanted a name for his organization that made it sou
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None of this has any basis in fact. Iis basis is to be found in several areas. The Fall is a myth, which is the same thing as a metaphor for psychological transformations. The specifics vary from indivudual to individual, but usually relate to leaving behind the security of childhood for the terrors of adulthood. We are to leave behind ouir old gods (representations of our parents) and acquire ne
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If they balk at the wine thing, just remind them that BY instructed the Saints coming across the plains to make sure to include a large barrel of whiskey in their list of supplies. Along with coffee and tea.
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In the mid-sixties, the head of the University of Utah Institute of Religion boasted of how he was prepared (i.e., with firearms) to defend his person and property against all the "blackbirds" (his word- not mine) that he was convinced were going to attack those of the true way.
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Silly people. Everybody knows that the world began when coyote and grasshopper climed through the hole in the sky and became blue corn man and white bead girl. I mean, how much more obvious could it be?
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Dear BC: I don't know that gravity "exists", in terms of being a universal physical constant. I don't even "know" that the earth revolves aound the sun. I know that these ideas seem to work for all phenomena predicted by the theories so far. I also know that the track record of phenomena predicted/promised by TCSS is vanishingly small.
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I think it won't backfire and here's why: the church is taking every precaution it can to ensure that those young missionaries are 100% aware of the opposing viewpoints, and it is inculcating in their minds that all those other voices are from the Prince of Darkness himself. So the Internet is just a red herring. The real problem, IMO, is the same old bunker mentality that drives people to religi
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My parents never discussed sex wit me, either. They left that job up to the inspired leadership of the LDS church. When I was 16 I thought it best to chop off my you-know-what. I didn't, but part of me thought that was the only moral thing to do. I was the home teacher a certain fairly new Apostle for a while when he was a grad student at BYU (I think he was a student at the time- he may have
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You raise a larger question: what is the Mormon position on anything? For they are free to "believe" anything they want until it makes them look stupid and leaves them standing all alone sociologically, at which time they never taught that. There is no "official" Mormon position on anything. Mormonism is a bunch of egos all trying to be top dogs, and those on the bottom must p
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The key, IMO, will be trying to get the news media on board. It seems to me that the deciding event will be a Walter Cronkite-style declaration by a news reporter as to his/her concurrence in your thesis (refering to the social wake-up call that took place when Cronkite openly delcared his disgust with the Vietnam war thing). The news media are in a lot of ways "merely" reflections of t
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And where was this God of Miracles when Pinochet and the CIA overthrew Allende and was butchered anybody who dared oppose him? Apparently hte only thing God cares about is numbers of Mormons.
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For me, it was hell. There were some Stake Conference talks about how it was incumbent on all Mormons to be the epitome of effervescent gregariousness. I kid you not. My parents, unsurprisingly, took it to heart and teased me about being too quiet. There were mutliple reasons for that, including inferring from the general tone of the church that I was worthless,but somehow they didn't quite get t
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They choose people who have spent their lives performing some sort of service to the public. The problem, as i see it, it this: in the LDS mind, dedicating one's life to the church is performing a service to the public, and not just any run-of-the-mill philanthropic endeavor. In the LDS mind service to the church is the only kind of service that matters or indeed has any meaning whatosever. It is
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rationalguy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Many people who are either agnostic or atheist > celebrate Xmas simply as an enjoyable holiday and > take the good parts of it. After all, it has > evolved into mostly something else besides a > celebration of Jesus anyway. Many of the symbols > of modern Xmas are things like trees (pagan >
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They already have a cheap tacky one. It's been there as long as I can remember...
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Let's not forget backmasking and Lynn Bryson! And (horror of horrors) Dungeons and Dragons! Clear evidence of the increasing power of Satan in these Last Days! (funny how the Last Days are always the ones we happen to be living in- or is that just coincidence?)
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Several years ago, when I was a student at the University of Utah, I saw in my department's office an offical University of Utah letter that got sent to all newly hired faculty members. It stated (and I really and truly quote verbatim): "Unless you are also LDS, you will never get to know any of your Mormon neighbors".
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It all sounds just like some of the things I heard in the sixties regarding "colored people"- that they were fine as long as they knew their place, but woe betide any that became "uppity"!!!
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And they make them pay for health coverage!!!!!!
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The Mormons have painted themselves into a corner. If Moroni is (was) a real person, then he is available to anybody onthe planet, the same as with Julius Caesar or Aristotle. The Mormons do not, and cannot, control him or his image. That canonly be done with copyrightable- that is, fictitious, characters. So which is he?
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This was great! And it fits in so well with my experience. Girl after girl tried to latch onto me- and it was plain, evenin my Asperger's condition, that not a single one of them card a whit about who I was inside or what I wanted to be when i grew up. Or about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Getting married was the beginning and end of their life goals.
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One personal effect of the Vietnam phenomenon was mission farewells. From what I was told, in the early 70's the church instructed the membership to downplay mission farewells to avoid the publicity attendant on so many of its young men going on missions and thereby depriving the military of their services. There was also a bit of class friction, as the mission-vs.-military decisionwas frequently
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