Beyond evolution and Christianity

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Good question, that. It’s been a while since I looked, but it seems to me that the original announcement avoided the “God is changeable” problem by suggesting, somewhat obliquely, that while the darkness of tone had always corresponded to a less-good spirit, this correlation had attenuated over time to the point that a distinction, for purposes of eligibility to the priesthood, was no longer appropriate.

It seems to me, too, that some of the basis of this whole Mormon race theory came from the secondary writings which have caused the Mormons some embarrassment, particularly the Pearl of Great Price, significant parts of which were “translated” from Egyptian papyri which we now can see the actual translations of. The Mormons were thought to have had good luck on this score, those papyri having burned up in the Great Chicago Fire, but then the doggoned things turned up. Someone noticed that a document with a headless Anubis had a sort of Mister Magoo head sketched in on the backing paper, and put two and two together, and the whole thing came apart. But nowadays the Mormon church tries to get you not to read the Pearl of Great Price, and the missionaries I had at my house were entirely unaware of some of its contents.

But the BoM itself contains sufficient references to skin tone corresponding to moral character to be quite embarrassing: “white and delightsome” is how it is put in at least one case. And there are, if I recall correctly, explicit references to people’s skin tone getting darker as they drift into immorality. Quite a document, that Book of Mormon.

Yeah. I think that the function of these missions, to a great extent, is actually to train them to do just that. There’s hardly any success at getting converts, but the combination of being forced to defend the faith against all objections and the sunk-cost fallacy that keeps people in the faith after they’ve gone on these absurd missions does seem to work, at least on some.

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The Church of LDS got a lot of bad publicity out of this incident. Not my Alma Matter’s shining moment.

The “Revelation” that Black people could be priests came in 1974.

If you didn’t know, every man in the Mormon Church is a priest. A Mormon service consists of members (often couples) taking turns giving “Testimony.”

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:laughing: That’s about it.

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Most of my formative religious experiences happened when I was quite young. But one day, in my 40s, I went to the Mormon church because my nephew had some sort of mission-related event. I can’t recall if he was about to leave or he’d just gotten back.

At his presentation I heard the most astonishing, compelling testimony ever of the power and the might of God (or “Heavenly Father” as they say at the LDS church, and at Denny’s). It was a joyful story, full of angst, drama and triumph, and it contained a genuine miracle: the kind of thing which could happen ONLY if there were a God, one who loves each and every one of his creatures deeply and dearly, and whose providence guides us, both when we are in Rhode Island and when we are not. I tell you this story, knowing that it cannot cause anything but the deepest and most profound contemplation of the nature of faith, and of God.

My nephew was shopping for clothes for his mission. He was with his mother, and had her credit card with him. Nature, ever the enemy of God, called, and he visited the department store’s restroom (or, for those who may be English, “toilet”). Some time after this period of rest, in the room designated therefor, he made a shocking discovery. Satan, ever wily, had caused him to leave his mother’s credit card in the restroom! O, evil! How comprehensive, how wicked are your ways!

And then, a miracle happened. Something inexplicable by any ordinary, earthly cause. Another customer, in the restroom, found the credit card and gave it to a sales clerk, who paged the store to see if its holder was still there. There was not a dry eye in the place: the power, the glory of the ineffable, now manifest for all to see!

Now, you may feel that the above is a bit sarcastic. It would be. But I swear, before the old gods and the new: it was described in very nearly these terms before the whole congregation. Nobody even laughed.

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At least your tale is mostly harmless. I think we have heard worse, and on a good day, better.

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My go to response was “God might not change but religion does. If religion didn’t change, I wouldn’t be teaching here.” (I was a woman teaching at a conservative Christian university, in jeans no less.) That made a few brains explode.

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You know, I think the churches see me coming. It doesn’t matter what the denomination is – if I am there, which these days is very rare, then something raging-crazy is happening from the pulpit. I have always found these places and their sermons, sacraments and rituals incredibly creepy in a skin-crawly Rosemary’s-Baby kind of way. The Mormons are actually a little easier to take because it’s mostly a kind of amateur-hour farce rather than anything more heavy-handed.

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The Mormons got lucky with these documents in another way: Joseph Smith
happened to study some ancient Egyptian texts his Mormon brethren had purchased from a traveling showman in 1835—and thereby found the Pearl of Great Price. How lucky can one get? Just when one is looking for another sacred scripture, a major Egyptology find comes to town.

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Exactly! It’s like those coincidences Denton writes about.

I found a ten-million-year-old femur in my yard. Undoubted Homo, the find of the century. But I’ve lost track of it just now. I suppose everyone will just have to take my word for it.

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