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LDS, Mitt Romney, and the Relative Merits of Diffferent Faiths
Hachface
Not the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered User regular
Not the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered User regular
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has delivered a speech on his religious faith in the mold of John F. Kennedy. He proclaims that, although he is a devout Mormon, he will “serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause" if he is elected president. This speech comes in response to speculation regarding whether or not being a Mormon will affect his standing with the conservative Christian faction of the Republican party, and to a (much) lesser extent with secularists who see the LDS church as a special kind of batshit.
The question I pose to you all: Is the LDS church a special kind of batshit? Its tenets are routinely ridiculed -- see the relevant South Park episode. But what kind of metric can you actually use to evaluate one religion's beliefs from another's? After all, all three of the major religions (mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Islam) require you to suspend your disbelief and just take some things as articles of faith. This causes many people -- including a large number of the posters here -- to dismiss all religion out of hand. Yet even those who dismiss all religion often reserve a particular sort of ridicule and contempt for Mormon beliefs.
So what, if anything, makes the Church of Latter-Day Saints any crazier than mainline Catholic and Protestant churches?
The question I pose to you all: Is the LDS church a special kind of batshit? Its tenets are routinely ridiculed -- see the relevant South Park episode. But what kind of metric can you actually use to evaluate one religion's beliefs from another's? After all, all three of the major religions (mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Islam) require you to suspend your disbelief and just take some things as articles of faith. This causes many people -- including a large number of the posters here -- to dismiss all religion out of hand. Yet even those who dismiss all religion often reserve a particular sort of ridicule and contempt for Mormon beliefs.
So what, if anything, makes the Church of Latter-Day Saints any crazier than mainline Catholic and Protestant churches?
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Is this prejudiced, possibly.
He's the president though, and I would rather bet on a type of crazy I know than a type of crazy that is insidious and subtle.
Although, it is nice to see a Republican getting bitten in the ass by his parties own mission of co-opting religion.
Let's just say that gives me the tingles in a silly place.
One word - control. No mainline Catholic or Protestant branch has the amount of control these guys do over their flock. For instance, while the Bible calls upon you to tithe a percentage of your income to the church, the LDS makes sure they get their cut - they have accountants that calculate your tithe, and deny you access to the temples until you pay up.
There's other stuff, like how the FLDS (sick polygamous cult offshoot) was allowed to stay under the radar in Utah (it's only in the past 5-10 years that they've actually started to clean it up), or the influence they have on the Boy Scouts of America and how they've warped that organization into something evil (I actually began a thread on that very subject a while back.)
Muslims believe Muhammad rode up into the sky on the back of a flying donkey creature with the face of a beautiful women.
Most Jews don't even bother to believe in their retarded religion anymore. Those that do are convinced that a Mesopotamian god promised them a narrow stretch of desert in the middle east as part of a deity-consolidation deal with fictional ancestors.
By comparison, becoming the god of your own planet and Jesus-loving Native Americans Hebrews doesn't sound all that strange.
Most Mormons don't.
I'm generalizing but still.
This is a fairly good point. Mormons are often seen as secretive and yet, at the same time, extremely aggressive in their attempts at conversion. Last month, for example, I gave my address and phone number to the Mormon church because I wanted the free Book of Mormon they advertised. This was a mistake. Every day, at inconvenient hours, I get a phone call from Mormon missionaries, asking if I would like to schedule a meeting. I've declined a few times now, but they keep calling. Now I just ignore their calls.
Apparently the man is unfamiliar with secular Europe and the millions of American atheists who like freedom. He also must be ignorant of medieval Christian inquisators, the Taliban, and modern Christian theonomists who take Bible verses like Deuteronomy 13 to heart—which commands you to stone anyone who tries to entice you away from your religion to death "without mercy."
I don't know if Romney is actually that big of a moron or if he's just pandering to the lowest common demoninator of evangelicals in America, but that's a steaming pile of bullshit.
It's no crazier than other religions. More strictly controlled by their church? Certainly, which is what the real issue is.
Of course he's pandering. I mean, duh?
I didn't really expect him to say anything substantial, but I was still sort of disappointed when he didn't.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It would be nice if the US had a system where one didn't have to wear one's faith as a badge of pride to be flaunted and displayed to win presidential office.
But while he was governor here it wasn't an issue at all. Like, not even a little.
If your religion tells you that nonbelievers should not have fundamental rights—as both the Quran and the Bible explicitly say—why should this not matter?
Bush's religion matters to him. He's used it as justification for his opposition to abortion, stem cell research, and teaching evolution as scientific fact in schools. He's even refered to his conversations with Yahweh as cover for his Iraq War, albeit in a rather convoluted way.
Religion is just like any other ideological belief. I'd rather have a president whose ideological beliefs aren't batshit crazy and based largely on moral vestiges from 2,000 years ago.
Most of the older religions get more slack simply because records are worse. It's not as obvious whether their hoaxes.
And even that shouldn't be an issue, because Mitt Romney shouldn't even be a viable candidate for President regardless of his religion.
Sorry, what I meant was... Religion in general doesn't matter. It should have no bearing on our policy, decisions, or anything else having to do with government. It should stay the hell out. Frankly, I think that mentioning religion at all during a campaign should automatically disqualify you.
And frankly, the idea that freedom requires religion is asanine and stupid... and there are a lot more examples of religion destroying freedom then there are of it helping freedom. Romney's failure to recognize that is just one of the many reasons he isn't qualified to make me a sandwich at Subway, let alone lead the nation.
I][COLOR="Blue"][U]CITATION NEEDED[/U][/COLOR][/I
Because aside from some evangelicals and athiests, their religions don't tell them that nor do they interpret their religious books literally where that would be a concern.
A bug in every mosque.
Do you seriously need citations for this?
This should be the very definition of COMMON KNOWLEDGE
Also, does anyone else find it ironic that Romney says religion shouldn't matter, yet not a week ago he said he wouldn't have Muslim's in his cabnet?
The Bible and the Koran say a lot of things in a lot of ways. Unless we know exactly what passages are being talked about, how can we possibly discuss them intelligently?
Edit: To elaborate, for every quotation from the Bible or the Koran you cite that demands blood from infidels, I could easily point out an equal number of humanitarian, lovey-dovey passages. Discussion of religion in the public sphere that cites the Bible is almost always useless; we should focus on the religion as it is practiced today.
Why does it matter what the Bible and Koran say? Whatever it says is twisted and filtered by the religions leaders, and they have a long history of using those books to subjugate and deny rights to various groups. Notice Quingu said "religion" not "religious texts." Frankly, the texts may be the least important thing about religion.
But we aren't talking about religious leaders, we're talking about 1 man. A man who is a politician, and a poor one at that.
It shouldn't matter because a person's spiritual beliefs only matter insofar as they shape his policies. What we should care about, then, are the policies themselves.
Would Bush be a better president if he had secular justifications for his opposition to those things? Of course not. As long as he's upfront about his policies, we have all the information we need, and the reasons behind his stances become moot.
Unless you're willing to argue that one's religious beliefs correlate to how likely one is to lie about what policies he'll endorse - and I think that would be hard to argue - there's really no issue outside the possible one of Romney being controlled by the church. And based on his record so far, that doesn't seem to be a problem.
So then prodcue evidence of these religions subjugating and denying rights to various groups sometime recently.
(ie - I][COLOR="Blue"][U]CITATION NEEDED[/U][/COLOR][/I )
Yeah but Mass doesn't really have a significant evangelical movement.
What made Romney a rotten governor was that he developed presidential ambitions and decided to fuck stuff up just so he could get on a stage in Iowa and talk about "those lib'ruls in Massachusetts"
Are you freaking kidding me?
http://www.hrw.org/women/overview-mena.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_marriage
I'm not sure what the point of this story is, except possibly to point out that even people who were raised in a certain religion, even one as controlling as the LDS church, do not necessarily hold every official tenet.
If... only there were enough gays for all the Mormons.
Guys.
I'm LDS.
And guess what.
The LDS Church has an active policy of not getting into politics. Sure, individual members may support one political thing over the other, but the church itself is politically neutral. Heck, Romney has quite a few things I disagree with in terms of politics. I wouldn't vote for him just cause of his religion.
Heck, if he really did start forcing his beliefs on others (Which I don't think he will) I would definitely not vote for him and a lot of the people I know wouldn't either.
So, what you're saying is that Mitt Romney is a fag hag?
We have that healing touch.