Utterly Meaningless

Did they run out of live people to baptize?

Nance

How would the Mormons feel about their ranks being posthumously converted to other religions? I bet it would’nt go over well.

Sorry. No caffeine yet. Wouldn’t. It’s supposed to be WOULDN’T.

I’m not sure either and I haven’t thought about this much, but it’s the kind of thing I do like to mull. I tend to see it as an ignorance issue, a systematic denial of reality that therefore hurts us generally as intelligent humans with a collective consciousness larger than the sum of a few billion individuals competing for survival. It’s power of story that affects humankind in many ripples out from the original seemingly small and harmless foolishness, so we all are affected, not just the dead individual’s reputation but the living society’s ability to progress. It is putting falseness into the world on a grand scale, of the same kind that causes so many of our intractable problems.

I’m not fully knowledgeable on why this upsets the Jews beyond the obvious, but remember that to be orthodox Jewish, you must come from an unbroken line of Jewish mothers.

And I do know that Israel has been getting more strict about it again.

From what I can tell, various Jewish groups find jewish names on our records, they get upset and raise a stink, our church removes the names. Then we fast forward a few years and the process repeats itself. With this thread, this’ll be the fourth iteration across a decade (since I’ve been paying attention).

Here’s our deal – we figure everyone from Adam on down, needs an earthly ordinance done for them for things to be good in heaven. I know, it sounds goofy, but the alternative is to be like the rest of Christianity, and just ignore those parts of the Bible that says baptism is required for salvation.

All this baptism for the dead stuff is what gets us around from the (valid and common sense) criticism “what kind of stupid god would create offspring doomed for eternal punishment because due to an accident of birth, they lived a lifetime without ever hearing the name Jesus Christ?”

Daryl, the way it’s set up now, we must not do any ordinances in the temple for people who have died in the last hundred years, unless we are their direct descendants. So to answer your question, as long as you can keep your kids from being LDS, you’re fine until you’ve been dead 100 years.

AND (and here’s the kicker) – our beliefs tell us that nobody is forced to accept these ordinances in the afterlife. We’re also very aware that some folks cheat and lie their way into the temple while living – and no, we won’t be forced to be around them in heaven unless they change their tune and turn themselves into someone you’d want to stand next to.

Funny story: As my non-lds dad lay on his deathbed, I told him I was gonna get him sealed to all three of the women he’d married, and I asked him if there was any particular order he wanted me to do them in. He thought for a minute and said “It doesn’t matter – they’re all in hell anyway.”

Rob

“How would the Mormons feel about their ranks being posthumously converted to other religions? I bet it would’nt go over well.”

Meh – I would care less. In fact, it’s already happened to me. Back in my rebellious teenage years, I became a member of the Church of the Subgenius. Then I started getting serious about my faith. So I officially renounced them and tore up my membership card, thereby paridoxically entrenching myself in the highest and most holy ranks of their order.

The FSM is just a JR Bob Dobbs wannabe. 😉

Both the FSM and Church of the Subgenius are a bunch of Discordian wannabes for that matter, and I hereby baptize all past, present and future commenters to Darryl’s blog as Discordians. Now that you are part of the wholly chao I think things will start to look up or down or possibly just an untrusting sideways glance or two.

I’m not fully knowledgeable on why this upsets the Jews beyond the obvious, but remember that to be orthodox Jewish, you must come from an unbroken line of Jewish mothers.

I’d qualify if I wanted to. Ashkenazi.

AND (and here’s the kicker) – our beliefs tell us that nobody is forced to accept these ordinances in the afterlife

Not good enough, IMO, as I’d still end up listed on the LDS roles. What I want is some way of making my wishes known to the LDS church now. A prospective veto, as it were.

Is there a “DO NOT BAPTIZE” registry?

You could always look on the baptism after death as an insurance policy. 🙂 If non-believers are right, np. If the Mormons are right, it’s like the ultimate do-over.

This has always kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I believe choosing and practicing a religion (or abstaining from religion) is a very personal DECISION. This just sounds like the choice being made for you whether you want it or not.

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No it doesn’t.

It’s offensive to posthumously baptize *anyone*, but it’s especially offensive to do it to people who were murdered for who they were — and who they were proud to be. I agree with the Jews who are worried that their entire history will be erased from memory if the LDS and their truly ungodly database of the baptized have anything to say about it.

And the Jews they’ve been going around “baptizing” weren’t born before Jesus’ time or raised in an isolated society where they never heard of him. 100 years ago or more? Hello? They knew who he was and they rejected his story and stuck with their own. Sorry the LDS doesn’t like free will.

What a bunch of assholes.

Bah, the first part of my post is invisible because I put it inside double brackets. Duh.

I was quoting Rob, who said:

All this baptism for the dead stuff is what gets us around from the (valid and common sense) criticism “what kind of stupid god would create offspring doomed for eternal punishment because due to an accident of birth, they lived a lifetime without ever hearing the name Jesus Christ?”

Sam! My new brother in Discord!

Daryl – I like this DNB preemptive order idea. Maybe this is what the phrase “passive resistance” was meant to describe?

Rob – love the story about the three wives in hell. Before Sam baptized me into Discord, I believed that heaven and hell coexisted right here on earth and marriage was the proof. Now of course I’m not quite sure what I believe – sam?

As a Discordian you are welcome to believe in the Golden Apple Corp and the idea that chaos is lovely and fun. Are you the fairest? Then perhaps Eris meant the apple for you. Either way it doesn’t really matter. Lick the spot down in the corner of this page and watch as all your worries shimmy away in a cascade of pretty.

Or go here
en.wik...ianism

Lick the computer? Shocking! 😉

I’m with Lori on this one.

It seems mean-spirited to lay claim to people who didn’t want to be part of your club. Unless, of course, their refusal to join you in the afterlife also allows them to erase their names from your list?

BTW, about that “100 year” thing…? Wasn’t there an uproar over the LDS “baptism” of Jew who died in the Holocaust? Wasn’t that long ago…

How does the refusal thing work?

Put me down for one of those. I don’t want to stand next to any of these crazies.

Nance

P.S. Daryl, I like the idea of the “no call” list but the do-gooder Christers would probably lobby to include some exceptions, just like the regular no call list and I’d have to hear from insurance companies. Like LDS and every other smarmy Christian who ever tried to push their religion onto me, saying that in case they are right, aren’t I just a lucky duck.

People often tell Nance they’re gonna prayer for her. 🙂
She has Christians in her un-school who feel the need particularly!

One could argue this isn’t different, really. Maybe if there also are people sticking pins in a voodoo-doll Nance, the prayers and pinsticking curses are all getting sorted out in the cosmos somewhere between rival gods and devils?

I don’t mind being prayed for, and if the good intentions of those doing the praying end up helping then I won’t argue. At the same time, since I don’t believe in the being to whom the prayers are addressed, I don’t really think it’s going to be a problem, nor to I imagine the intended “help” will actually come. The most recent prayers for me involve my family and the fact that they now know I’m gay. I can imagine the intent behind the prayers, and I can also guarantee they aren’t likely to be answered.

They do pray for me, JJ. And thank me for my “ministry.” (If you don’t charge for a service that, apparently, qualifies as a “ministry.”)

But I inform these folks that I am not running a ministry and am, in fact, not a Christian or a member of any other religion.

I’m a homeschooler helping other homeschoolers. And I try to include the information about how they could do the same. Only a few have ever followed up with me about that possibility.

I think the hsers who thank me and pray for me are simply uninformed and assume something and then I correct them.

Not one of them has written back to me to insist that they will continue to call my school a “ministry” just in case their belief, which I have explicitly rejected, is right. They are actually polite people, as far as I can tell, and know that that would be presumptuous and rude.

They may continue to pray for me in their private lives but they have the decency to keep it to themselves.

Nance

Teachers secretly smear prayer oil under public schoolkids’ desks before NCLB testing in FL, anoint legislative meeting rooms before abortion votes in TX, etc.

Related?

Shills for the olive oil lobby?

Asshats who think they know better than the law and anyone else.

And are allowed to get away with imposing their beliefs on others.

Nance

With rituals quite like the “witchcraft” we’re told Palin’s pentecostal preacher chased outta town.
I’m so confused! —