tilted Religion?
 

I'm not sure if this would be the right spot to talk about religion or not... so if not mods pls move to correct location.


I want to know about any expierences either about or from anyone mormon. I haven't seen too many good things regarding the religion and I want a more objective view of them.


Here's what I've noticed so far, please correct me if I've been misinformed, etc.. (also please forgive the spelling mistakes)

1) For the longest time caffeine of any kind was not allowed if your mormon. Then about 5-10 years ago I heard that the leader of the mormon religion had a vision and said that either coca-cola or pepsi (can't remember which) was now ok to drink. As it turned out the mormon church had invested a substantial amount of money into the stocks of that company.

2) A friend of mine informed me of this story. A friend of his lived in a neighborhood where most of the people living there were from the mormon religion. As it turned out the mormons did everything from harrasment to making it unbearable to live there. They basicly wanted the non-mormon out of the neighborhood. My friend being the non-judgemental type later in life was invited to come to the mormon church and while there asked some of the mormon people what the deal was regarding this story. They just smirked as if they did the right thing in dealing with the non-mormon.

3) I went out on a date with a girl that was mormon. Before she would accept a second date she basicly informed me that I had to become mormon. She was all ready to send the missionaries to my house to do it.

4) I've been informed by a few people now that women in the mormon religion are meaningless. They are only vessels to produce more kids.

5) The more kids that you have in this life the bigger world your god of in the "afterlife"

6) non-mormon people are not allowed to goto any mormon weddings.


This is all I can come up with at the moment.

I'm looking for comments, more stories, or anything. I'd like a better understanding of the religion than what I've got so far.

i lived in a mormon community for a while. i may not agree with them on many topics, but there is one good thing i can say about them: they are community and family oriented. when we moved in with nothing to our names they helped us feel at home.

The Mormon religion believes that some guy a while back in the USA got additional revelations from God. He started a cult, which eventually expanded into the Mormon religion.

These revelations where given to him by an Angel, and written on gold of some kind. The original revelations where relatively quickly taken up to Heaven, so there was no physical evidence/proof of the revelations.

Central to this relligion is the "Book of Mormon", the translation of the additional revelations.

Mormons where persecuted, and fled west to what is now the state of Utah. They where polygamists, and there was a strong strain of seperatism that went with the religion.

Utah eventually became a full state, but one of the requirements was that the Mormons stop practacing polygamy. There was a well-timed revelation from God that told them it was ok to stop being polygamists, so they did, and Utah joined the USA.

Mormons have sacraments that involve baptising your ancestors, and thus give them an opportunity to get into heaven. As such, geneology is very important to them. They have massive archives of people's ancestry which they encourage people to browse and help improve. They don't restrict this practice to believers: everyone's decendants could one day become a Mormon.

The deeper mysteries of the Mormon faith are quite strange to a non-believer. Like, gods from other planets. These mysteries are not talked about publicly by the Church, and they have been known to use legal means to suppress leaking of their internal documents. As far as I can tell, they aren't nearly as bad as the Scientologists. But that is like saying you aren't as tall as a giraffe.

Mormons are also known as the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS. You probably have seen there feel-good ads on TV.

Many Christian Churches consider Mormons to be non-Christian.

In surface beliefs, Mormon ethics doesn't seem all that different than other Fundamentalist Churches. Their dislike of coffee is somewhat strange, but not really beyond the pale.

Mormon men are expected to go on a few-year thingy where they walk up to doors and ask people to join the Mormon church. It tends to either break you away from the Church or turn you into a True Believer. There isn't really an equivilent for Mormon women, as far as I know.

The movie Orgamso contains some quite Mormon-esque culture. The comment from my Mormon-raised friend of mine is "they really didn't go far enough, but it was close". For example, "Jesus and I love you" as something you say to your beau is dead-on, but the main character on the mission had far too much contact: you are much more isolated than that while on mission.

(Orgasmo is a funny movie about a Mormon who becomes a porn-star and super-hero.)

Oh, and I have heard reports that Elephants in North America are mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

(the Book of Mormon details the adventures and hijinx of an ancient lost tribe of Jews in pre-pre-columbus North America, and Jesus visiting Native American's after he died and came back.)

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. Take everything anyone says about the Mormons with a grain of salt: Heretics are often treated badly by the main branch of their religion. Take anything a Mormon says about their religion with a grain of salt.

I dated a mormon once (let's say she was barely a mormon, but enough for me to get some insight into the "religion") and I had a few friends in high school who were mormon.

I'll put it quite simply: in my opinion, mormons, like Yakk mentions, are not much better than scientologists. (Well, they ARE much better, because scientology is insurmountably fucked up, but relative to pretty much every other religion they aren't much better ;))

Based on stories I've heard from mormons, ex-mormons, and family members of mormons and ex-mormons (who are not mormon themselves), the mormon church involves a fair amount of subversive brainwashing (and I don't mean that in the way anti-religion people would say all religions brainwash).

It's unfortunately been many years since I've been involved in any sort of relationship involving someone connected to the mormon church, so I don't remember many details, but what Yakk says about their belief regarding Jesus and native americans is correct.

Here is some excellent information on the mormons from <a href="http://www.wikipedia.com">wikipedia</a>:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon">Mormon</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith%2C_Jr.">Joseph Smith, Jr.</a> (the founder of the mormon church)

A little excerpt from the entry about Joseph Smith, the founder of the mormon religion:

The way I see it, both the mormon church and scientology are great examples of people being manipulated in the guise of religion. This much can be said I think - L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith wre both excellent con artists.

Another site I just found: www.exmormon.org

Some stuff from it:
<a href="http://home.teleport.com/~packham/tract.htm">To Those Who are Investigating Mormonism<a/>
and
<a href="http://www.exmormon.org/fourteen.htm">The Fundamental Beliefs of Mormonism</a>

An interesting excerpt:

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but it's interesting nonetheless. Reminds me of scientology a bit.

All great information. Thanks all.. Keep it coming if you can.


I just remembered one other thing that I remember hearing.. The original mormon bible was written upon baby's skin. Was someone pulling my leg or is this a true story?

http://soyouwanna.com/site/syws/mormon/mormon.html

I've read this before and found it informative, so you might want to give it a shot.

It was coke!

I rember this from when I was a kid and I had a class-mate, a morman, just became allowed to drink coke... man he brought 12 packs to school and would drink all of it for lunch; but that only happened for teh first week or so after that happened.

I've always said, there are two sorts of people I don't trust to found a religion -- a convicted con artist and a science fiction writer...

Was Joseph Smith both?

L Ron Hubbard was a SciFi writer, and he founded Scientology.

As for the babies skin comment, are you joking? Think about it: the religion's goal is to convince people to join it. If they wrote the bible on a babies skin, that wouldn't make more converts. Small variations from that theme can happen, but nothing quite that insane is likely.

It was written on "miraculous gold tablets", and transcribed onto paper.

I can't recall having known any mormons in my lifetime. Except for those that show up at your door kind. I did take a comparative religions class in college. Actually several as religion was my Minor.

I do remember them discussing the Mormon belief in Polygamy. If I remember right the reasons they encourage it is that they believe that the MAN is the only one that can bring the women into heaven with him by marrying them. The more souls he "saves" the higher a being he will become in the afterlife. I believe that is part of the reason for their geneologies as well. The Man saves his wives and offspring. If you don't know who your father was then you can't be sure you are of "holy descent".

Regretfully, I forget much of what we learned. I wasn't entirely too interested in the Mormans. There are really fairly few where we live.

I was raised Mormon, and mostly followed the teachings of the Church till I was 18. Now... It has been quite a few years since I last went to church, and so I'm not fresh on everything, but 4 years of early morning seminary, and 3 hours of church meetings/sunday school every week and a lot soaks in.

I don't particularly enjoy defending the Church, but at the same time a lot of what I see on people's misconceptions about it get on my nerve. Same goes for when I hear about a Mormon neighborhood that made life miserable for a non-Mormon, so they left. This may break-down to my shpeal about organized religion and hypocrisy within any organized religion, but i will avoid going there. And, afterwards I'll even share my personal experiences after I stopped going to church, maybe this will help explain people's reactions to Mormons who haven't really known them before.

1) To my knowledge caffeine is still not allowed, well, let me rephrase that. In the Doctrine & Covenants it says "Shall not partake of hot drinks" or something along those lines, and the prophet of the church translated that as caffeinated drinks (tea and coffee), which became caffeinated soda down the road. It was still No Caffeine last time I went to Church, but that was over 4 years ago, they might've said "No Hot Drinks as in coffee and tea", but I don't know for sure.

2) I'll get to this later...

3) This falls into family values. Each Mormon who is fully enthralled with the Church believes it is their duty to convert EVERYONE on this planet to the "Truth", while most Mormon parents would like their children to date non-mormon girls, they also enjoy using the opportunity to teach anyone about the church, I believe some people take this into extremes, but there's no rule about not going on second dates with people. I dated a non-member for a LONG time, and I'd attend her church, and she'd attend mine, everyone was hopeful she'd become a member; I really didn't care, I was having more fun with ice cubes, whip cream, rope, and sexual exploration at that point than attempting to convert her to my religion so I could marry her and then do those things.

4) Women, this is a fun topic, and it's even more fun getting a women's rights activist and a devout mormon down together and letting them argue this one out (I like getting opposites together and seeing what happens in my spare time). Well, there is the Priesthood, every WORTHY male member of the Church can have the Aaronic and Melchizedik Priesthood, there's a variety of blessings and practices they can do with this "power". Women do not have the ability to have the priesthood, but that does not make women useless. Every person has a different take on this, like with any group of people, some will say "A woman belongs at home", and some will say "A woman can do what she wants, she just can't have the priesthood". I don't like when people use one jack-ass Mormon machovinist pig to define the whole religion.

5) Afterlife - if you want to get into detail with this IM me, or MSG me, I can go into every detail as far as the various levels of heaven, oh, this breaks down bigtime.

As far as having more children to grow your afterlife godliness, that's wrong. The amount of children you have is up to the family. This really has nothing to do with the teachings of the church.

6) This is true in a sense. These ceremonies are called cealings. An eternal bond between a man and a women, not until death do them part, but forever. This ceremony is held in Mormon Temples which only WORTHY members are allowed to go, you are deemed worthy by meeting with your Bishop, and your Stake Leader. I wasn't old enough to attend my brothers and sister's cealings. Most Mormons have a formal reception which is more like a normal marriage ceremony so that those people who weren't able to attend the ceiling can at least get the wedding ceremony feel.

Now, as far as stories...

Being raised Mormon... I can't complain, that sense of community the family closeness, that's what the religion is really about, that is sometimes what I wish people would see when they think of Mormons, instead of religious fanatics/cultists. My family was close to each other, and we still are (even though two of us kids have since stopped attending church and have quite different ideals). I was always the kid in sunday school questions who would question the teachings, and would really try to keep the teacher on their toes, but deep down I really did believe the teachings being taught me. Now, one thing I must say, being in a Mormon Temple, great feeling, just a warm comfortable feeling, be it simply a feeling created by my brain by the values and beliefs instilled in me by that religion at that time, it was a very good and overwhelming feeling.

Now, the things I don't like about the Church that caused me to really put it behind me and not look back...

After I graduated I moved out of my parent's home within a week. I still went to Church, still participated in activities with my Church friends and non-Church friends, and worked full-time like I always had throughout high school, just was on my own. I'd occasionally work setting up networks for hotels during that summer, and would miss out on Church on Sundays. Then, I moved once again, and was in a different Ward, where people did not know me. I stopped going, not because people didn't know me, or because I didn't have any friends at that Ward, but because I had started drinking, and smoking pot, and enjoyed sex, and didn't feel like being a hypocrit who went to Church although I didn't live by the Commandments. Well, the Missionaries, or stake missionaries would stop by, and at first I'd sit with them on my porch, and listen to what they had to say, agree with their teachings, and at the end when they asked if I'd promise to come to church the next week I'd say "No, that's alright", eventually these bi-weekly visits started getting on my nerves. One time, I had literally just finished a large sunday afternoon smoking session, and DING-DONG. Get up to get the door thinking it's some of my friends, and see two men in suits with nametags. "Is Kurt Home?" I looked over at my friends, and back at the missionaries "No, he's not" I said, as my roommates started busting out laughing in the background. missionaries: "well, would you like to hear the word of christ", me: "no", it was probably the fact that I was high, but I really didn't want to deal with them, but they felt it was their job to bring me back to the "fold", and would keep stopping by. I just stopped answering the door for them, you can recognize them, I'd go to the door, see it was them, they could see someone went to the door, and would just go back to what I was doing, and ignore their ringing of the doorbell. Sometimes they'd purposely wait till I'd be sitting on my porch, and drive up then, and ask to talk to me, I'd say No. One time they even dropped by while we were drinking on the roof, and asked if I wanted to listen to a lesson. No... Eventually I broke down and told them "I'm doing my own thing, if and when I want to come back to church I will, on my own accord, not because someone else wants me to." The visits slowed, but they would still drop by.

The Church is organized, they don't want to lose their members, and they want to grow. After my bout of wanting peace and freedom, a life away with the church, well, that just turned me off to it even more. My parents still try and get me to attend church, but they're polite, I simply say No, and they say "we gotta try", my sister-in-law's a little sneakier about it, she'll invite me to dinner, or to breakfast, then after I agree she'll say "Oh, it's at the church", or when I show up "Oh, the missionaries are coming over", I simply grub, and afterwards when they want to teach a lesson I am polite and say "Sure, I'll listen", at the end when their hopes are up, cause I can answer ALL the questions they ask me, and they think I'm turning back to righteousness I say "Thanks for the lesson, keep doing what you're doing, but I won't be attending church anytime soon".

I have this thing against organized religion in general now. It's groups of people pushing their believes on the world, cause they are right, and everyone else is wrong. I like to take bits and pieces from what I know from my religious background, and from other religions and do what feels right to me. Now, some people do need organized religion, they do need strong rules and guidelines to make it through life, to get day to day. At this moment, I'm not sure what I believe, but I know what I've experienced, and I know what feels wrong, and what feels right. A lot of the things religion teaches are so strict, cause if you give some leeway, some people take it out of proportion.

NeoSparky, if you have any other questions send me an IM or a MSG, I'd be happy to answer any to the best of my knowledge.

I like what phukraut had to say, a decent mormon person, no, a decent person in general will be accepting of others, and will make them feel right at home. Now, too bad when some people become fanatics they take a "holier than thou" attitude, and this happens with any religion, it's just most people who are strangers to the Mormon religion only see this part of the religion, cause their "holier than thou" Mormon neighbors spend all their time and energy trying to convert everyone on the block.

Thankyou Kurty - that was very informative.

This is also how I feel. I've never had any real "organized religion" in my life either. I was brought up without religion but I am still able to tell right from wrong. When I was in high school my GF at the time invited me to church with her. after a few months of dating I ended up becoming part of her church. It was a lutheran(sp?) church. I enjoyed the company of everyone around but I found that I wasn't paying attention to what the pastor was really saying. Most of what he was saying were things I already knew about right and wrong. It was almost as if he would read the bible and then relate it to common day things.



Thank you for the very informative post. I believe in the basic principles of most religions.. love thy neighorbor but not thy neighbor's wife n such. But I dont feel I need to spend a few hours out of my week congregating and listening to someone preach to me to keep my belief's in check. Thats what friends are for.



anyway, thanks again.

I don't have time to explain my experience s or position on mormonism, but i'll say this:

Me and several other non-mormons were invited to and attended a mormon wedding recently.

Technically, I think that Scientology was based on Hubbard's books, but he didn't specifically start Scientology.

Not the way I heard it. Used to hit a lot of science fiction conventions back in the '70s and early '80s, and talked to a old of old LA fans and writers who'd tell me stories about Hubbard recruiting science fiction fans for his new religion at cons in the late '40s and early '50s. There may be a more to the story, but he was definitely in at the ground floor of the organization.

Lots of info on scientology: http://www.xenu.net/

Well, I've looked intothe Mormon religioin a bit, as one of my friends went and married herself a mormon man. I wanted to find out what she was geting into. I am no expert by far, but I can say this. The mormons I have met have all been very friendly, nice, down to earth people. they seem to have more focus towards family values then most other people I've know. I myself think Smith was a con man, and have no respect for the mormon church itself, based more on my hatered for all churchs then anything they preach, but whatever they have going, it seems to be working for them, so they should keep it up. Most of the missionaeis I 've had to deal with were rather polite about knocking on my door. Soon as I told them I had no intrest, they said thankyou for my time, gave me a way to get ahold of them if I changed my mind, and left. i'm not going to hold it against them for doing what they see as trying to help me. There have been one or two pushy ones that wer a little over zelous in their attempts, but as soon as you start trying to explain the benifits of converting to the church of satan to them, they tend to go running for the hills. ;) No, I'm not a satanist, but it is one of the many religions I've studied up on. One thing I did find intresting about the book of mormon. The missing first chapter. Seems when Smith was writing it one of the people helping him took it to show someone, and it got stolen or lost some how. Now, instead of rewring it, and and risking the stolen copy showing up so people could see they don't match word for word and use that as proof it was a con(not saying it is or isn't here, that is just the logic that was explained to me by the missionaries I was talking to about it), Smith left it "missing". The chapter that is now the "first" chapter of the book of mormon is the Book of Neaphi(sp?). The lost chapter was supposed to have been writen by Neaphi's father. I kind of wish I hadn't read the book of mormon though. Now I know how all of Orson Scott Cards books are going to end. The Home Comeing series was the book of Neaphi done Sci-fi.

The South Park on episode about Mormonism is among my favorites. Check it out.

I've been trying to catch that one for about a month now... haven't gotten it yet.