I recently finished Under The Banner of Heaven, and they dipped into the founding story of that religion a bit.
Drank like fish on the bus from Chicago. I guess they hung up the rules for a day or two.
Most who follow a religion want to be good people but are led astray by ignorant zealots.
circa 1982
Line 1: "God is dead" - Nietzsche
Line 2: "Nietzsche is dead" - God.
even the renowned...and to the best of my knowledge "Non-Marxist"...Carl Sagan...had some thoughts on this...read a few of his notes from the link.
A bit early in the game for any one religion to be staking out "BFF" status with God when so many people of different faiths - or no faith - would qualify as "Saints" had they been baptized in the Catholic Church.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1816628-pale-blue-dot-a-vision-of-the-human-future-in-space
judgmental.
It was a pompous statement designed to provoke. Nocal's M.O.
No doubt you would direct him to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity...
Mostly really nice people. A little bit clique-ish.
My daughter (Catholic at the time—pretty much agnostic now) went to public school with a lot of Mormons. (Same school district as Ian Book, but about a decade earlier.)
Some of her friends tried to introduce her to it, but the parents never really pushed on us. She even went to a few events.
The Mormons all seemed to do business with one another. For example, if one had a tire store, all the Mormons would go there. I think there was some preferential pricing or treatment that was not explicit, but certainly evident.
I found it funny.
Also available for purchase on Amazon Prime now.
My daughter just discovered it, and has had it on in her home studio recently.
Sure, some are goofier, such as Mormonism, but catholics don't have a ton of room to talk.
We just watched the show on Hulu, as a buddy had praised the Krakauer book. Homicides are a true story.
Mitt Romney is very typical of the Mormons I have met -- industrious, family oriented, kind, unselfish, bright, law abiding, and easy to like. [They do kick up a good chunk of their quid to their minders ... sort of like the mob, but OK.]
My sense is that the Mormons have evolved into a religion that resembles many other Protestant religions. But, as the TV series presents, the Mormons have seemingly figured out how to march on, notwithstanding that their founder was a fraud/snake oil salesman, who after being killed, was followed by a rapist. How does one attend Brigham Young and turn a blind eye that its founder liked having sex with teenage girls, all in the name of their faith? Weird.
Love the scene where Joseph Smith is called out by his wife for cheating, and Joseph says, "I had a a vision that God wants my to have multiple wives." The wife replies, "Funny ... I had the same vision commanding me to have multiple husbands." She was then told doing so would require blood atonement -- death .... meaning, "Shut your whore mouth!"
The metaphysics is... "different."
The core belief is that we are evolving as individuals (as compared to as a species).
The key saying is "As man is, God once was and as God is, man shall become."
They beleive that marriage is forever... even after death.
They have the world's greatest geneology resources because they marry off their ancestors who died before the founding for eternity in the Temple.
The men wear "garments" under their clothes... which are a bit like one piece long underwear.
The women emphasize beauty and BYU coeds are among the hottest anywhere.
Their church tends to be their life.
Mormon fundamentalists are as wacko as all other fundamentalists. Maybe more so.
Overall the religion is a bit screwy, but I’ve met plenty of perfectly nice, normal Mormons.
The Book of Mormon, though, is the only musical worth spending Broadway prices to see.
It'a a story about how Jesus came to the Americas after he rose from the dead and converted Native Americans who later lost the faith or died out.
Mormon was an angel/Indian who told this story to Joseph Smith in a vision in upstate New York in the 19th century.
Ironically, the original Mormons were communists and were persecuted for this {now they are supercapitalists and the richest religion per capita in the country).
They got chased out whereever they went and their men slaughtered, which is why they adopted polygamy to deal with all the widows).
They also became racists while living in Missouri during the border wars as a defense (they claimed black skin was the mark of Cain) to no avail as they got chsed out there as well.
They "evolved" this position after they began converting so many mixed folk in the 1970s.
They only denounced polygamy so that Utan could become a state.
