“The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect; the priesthood is the guiding power.”

I got email from a young former Mormon who has been trying to puzzle his way through some of the craziness that comes out of Utah, and he sent me this strange document by Elder Boyd K. Packer, which is apparently representative of a lot of Mormon scholarship. I think he wants to know if I think it is as bat-rogerin’ insane as he does.

Yes. Yes it is.

Basically, it’s the Mormon version of the Courtier’s Reply. It goes on and on about how the only way to write a true history of the Mormon church is to fully accept all of its superstitions. It’s blatant and explicit.

Do you believe that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ personally appeared to the boy prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., in the year 1820?

Do you have personal witness that the Father and the Son appeared in
all their glory and stood above that young man and instructed him according to the testimony that he gave to the world in his published history?
Do you know that the Prophet Joseph Smith’s testimony is true because
you have received a spiritual witness of its truth?

Do you believe that the church that was restored through him is, in the
Lord’s words, “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole
earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased” (D&C 1:30)? Do you know
by the Holy Ghost that this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints restored by heavenly messengers in this modern era; that the Church
constitutes the kingdom of God on earth, not just an institution fabricated
by human agency?

Do you believe that the successors to the Prophet Joseph Smith were
and are prophets, seers, and revelators; that revelation from heaven directs
the decisions, policies, and pronouncements that come from the headquarters of the Church? Have you come to the settled conviction, by the
Spirit, that these prophets truly represent the Lord?

Now, you obviously noted that I did not talk about academic qualifications. Facts, understanding, and scholarship can be attained by personal
study and essential course work. The three qualifications I have named
come by the Spirit, to the individual. You can’t receive them by secular
training or study, by academic inquiry or scientific investigation.

I repeat: if there is a deficiency in any of these, then, regardless of what
other training an individual possesses, he cannot comprehend and write or
teach the true history of this church. The things of God are understood
only by one who possesses the Spirit of God.

I don’t believe any of that nonsense. I guess I can’t criticize the Mormon church ever, any more. Isn’t that handy? The only people who can comment on the church are those who have fully accepted all of its fundamental premises.

That Catch-22. It’s the best catch there ever was.

Boom-boom-chika-wow-wow. Amen.

The Catholic church has instructions for you before you get down to business with your sweetie: you’re supposed to say a little prayer. This one.

Father, send your Holy Spirit into our hearts. Place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes.

Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will. Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, forever and ever. Mary, our mother, intercede for us. Amen.

Ooooh. Gets me hot*. Maybe Kristin Maguire can write a story with this little fillip in it.

Hey, wait a minute…what are a bunch of old pseudo-celibates doing recommending prayers before sex? Do they teach this one to the altar boys?

*Actually, it doesn’t. I lied. I think it would be kind of a buzzkill.

Like ripe fruit, ready for the picking

If you’re going to build a massive con to defraud people out of $50 million, you want to pick your marks carefully. You want people who are gullible, don’t demand a lot of evidence, and are willing to go along with you as long as it takes to milk them dry, as long as you promise bliss. Where would you go to find a large number of such people? It’s obvious: go to church, like Tri Energy did.

Like those caught up in other get-rich scams — from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which initially snared wealthy Jews, to an alleged $4.4 million fraud aimed at deaf people — Tri Energy’s investors had something in common. Many were Mormons and born-again Christians who shared dreams and prayers on nightly conference calls. They vowed to use the profits for charitable works and kept raising funds, at times taking out second mortgages, draining retirement accounts and recruiting relatives.

No one deserves the fleecing these victims got, though. Elderly people had their savings cleaned out; at least one committed suicide after he realized how thoroughly he had been ripped off.

How dare you disrespect the Krishnas?

Steven Novella has an excellent analogy for the Sedalia evolution t-shirt nonsense: What if the Krishnas had complained about a t-shirt that showed a rocket going to the moon? Apparently, they don’t believe in space travel at all, so it would have been just as offensive to them — and it’s amazing how well the arguments the evolution-sneerers used would apply.

Except, of course, that non-Christian religions do not receive the degree of deference granted to even the wackiest dogma that has Jesus floating around in it somewhere.

Pope says it’s all our fault

The Pope has become an environmentalist, and he has figured out who is causing all our ecological difficulties: the atheists.

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the ‘final authority,’ and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, has a pithy reply.

This is rich coming from the leader of an organisation that has plundered the world to enrich itself. As he sits in his golden palaces, surrounded by unimaginable luxury and material wealth, he lectures the rest of us about restraint and greed. We have nothing to learn about environmentalism from this hypocrite.

I think I’d have a few questions for this pope. Like, “What about over-population, Ratzi dear? What’s the devout Catholic plan for dealing with that rather serious environmental issue?” and “Hey, have you noticed all those hell-holes of destruction in Africa? How does catholicism help people achieve economic and individual autonomy, huh?”

Shame on Washington state

My home state! In a region with some of the highest percentages of godless people in the country! And they have this awful law on the books.

Washington’s law specifies that a person treated through faith healing “by a duly accredited Christian Science practitioner in lieu of medical care is not considered deprived of medically necessary health care or abandoned.” Other religions are not mentioned.

Christian Science is not science, and it is definitely not medicine. I presume some religious lobby got this evil exemption on the books years ago, but now it’s time to remove it—it’s killing people. The mention of the law comes from a story about a young man, Zachery Swezey, who died a slow, painful death from a ruptured appendix, with his parents looking on.

The day his son died, Greg Swezey told sheriff’s investigators he knew Zakk would die 10 or 15 minutes before the teenager passed away. His condition had gotten much worse about an hour and a half before Zakk died, he told the investigators, and he realized Zakk was exhibiting some of the symptoms of death he’d seen when older church members died.

He did not consider calling an ambulance, he told them.

Who did he call instead? Elders of his church, who showed up to splash oil on the poor kid and pray.

I can only imagine what that was like. I had severe appendicitis as a child, and their description of it is mild: sure, there was vomiting — like an acid geyser firing up your throat. They don’t even mention the agony and the fever and the intermittent loss of consciousness. And I didn’t even get to the point of having a rupture, because my parents did the sensible, reasonable, intelligent thing that any decent human being would do, and rushed me to the doctor, and then to the hospital.

I’m very happy to say that my parents loved me more than some insane primitive dogma, although, you know, that really isn’t saying much.

I’m very sorry that young Zakk isn’t around to say the same.

Change the law, Washingtonians.

By the way, you can find out more about this lunatic cult, The Church of the First Born, on their web page. They’re incoherent and nuts. Warning: the page fires up religious music as soon as it loads. Yeah, one of those.

Wikipedians might want to take a look at their Wikipedia entry, too. It’s pretty clearly written entirely by one of their acolytes — you can tell by all the exclamation points.

Church of the Firstborn – A Phrase/Title found in Scripture! – (Hebrews 12:23).

Not a Denomination! Not an Organization!Founded Much Earlier than any of the groups mentioned below!

The Head of This Church/Assembly is The Very One that you read about in The Holy/Qodesh Scriptures! (Romans 8:29, Colossians 1:15, Colossians 1:18) Members in This Church/Assembly Serve Him & His Father (To Whom we regard as Our Heavenly Father and HIS Son – The Messiah/Our Master & Savior) The First Born from the Dead – Leading the Way for all those that Believe & Follow Him/HIM, Never To Die Again!

It Is Not A Denomination! And It Is Not An Organization In Scripture!

Morality doesn’t equal God

Shorter Robert Wright: All we have to do to end the conflict between science and religion is convert the Christians to deists and get the scientists to pretend that evolution is teleological!

Who knew it would be so easy?

Unfortunately, from my perspective, knowledge is not one of those things on which one can compromise — you’ve either got evidence for something, or you don’t. We do not have evidence for purpose in evolution, and if anything, all the evidence is against the idea that evolution has a direction or that natural selection can be anything but an unguided response to local conditions.

Furthermore, his example doesn’t work. He’s all hung up on the “moral law”, and even cites C.S. Lewis. He wants to argue that the existence of morality, even if it isn’t derived from a god, is still an indication of the existence of a general directedness or overarching nudge from the laws of the universe, and therefore we should all just get along and accept this awesome pan-galactic force.

Nope, says I. First, there is no moral law: the universe is a nasty, heartless place where most things wouldn’t mind killing you if you let them. No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest (it is very destructive to your personal bliss to knock down your social support system) and the self-interest of others, who would try to stop you. There is nothing ‘out there’ that imposes morality on you, other than local, temporary conditions, a lot of social enculturation, and probably a bit of genetic hardwiring that you’ve inherited from ancestors who lived under similar conditions.

Jerry Coyne has addressed the same silly op-ed at much greater length. It really is wrong all the way through, but as Coyne suggests, maybe Wright is just taking a practical approach to winning that lucrative Templeton prize. It’s not because the universe drives his argument, but because he too is responding in a self-interested way to local conditions.

Steve Anderson, hatemonger

Brace yourselves: Glenn Moon is plainly mentally ill, but what are we to make of Pastor Steve Anderson? He has a job, he has a congregation, people actually respect him…but if you go to that link, you will hear the most astonishingly deranged, hateful, creepy nonsense in his sermons.

It’s all bible-based, too. You can use that vile old book to support any evil you can imagine, I think.