Question about the Race/Lineage ban.

[_Darth J]

Here's a start:

Elder George F. Richards
Of the Council of the Twelve Apostles
Conference Reports, April 1939

The negro is an unfortunate man. He has been given a black skin.

But that is as nothing compared with that greater handicap that he is not permitted to receive the Priesthood and the ordinances of the temple, necessary to prepare men and women to enter into and enjoy a fulness of glory in the celestial kingdom.

Nothing inherent I see to make him inferior.

Then there was no reason for the priesthood to be restored, and there is no reason to receive the temple endowment.

[_Darth J]

The law of chastity has nothing to do with sex.

The Word of Wisdom has nothing to do with smoking or drinking.

Tithing has nothing to do with money.

Darth J's arguments have nothing to do with logical, cogent argumentation, but with polemical argument mongering for its own sake in pursuit of a personal psychological and emotional agenda.

Now we're getting somewhere...

Let's have some of that logical, cogent argumentation.

First, we'll assert, as you have, that "race" and "lineage" mean different things. As a reminder:

lineage: lineal descent from an ancestor; ancestry or extraction: She could trace her lineage to the early Pilgrims.

Synonyms for lineage: birth, blood, breed, clan, descendants, descent, extraction, family, folk, forebears, genealogy, heredity, house, kin, kindred, line, offspring, origin, pedigree, progenitors, progeny, race, stirps, stock, succession, tribe

race: a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.

racism: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

Next, we'll delve into where the rubber meets the road. It seems that 6,000 years ago or so, the human race began with a single breeding pair in Missouri. One of their inbred sons murdered his inbred brother, because the god-man who lives on a planet near Kolob (whose light is reflected to all the other stars in the universe, because stars are basically like mirrors) wanted everyone to sacrifice animals to him instead of plants. This idea of murder came from the scary invisible man who wants us to masturbate and criticize our church leaders and vote for Democrats. The scary invisible man came to the plant-sacrificing son and made a secret pact with him to kill his brother. This angered the god-man, so he turned the murderous brother into the first Negro. The Negro's lineage persisted through one of the 8 people who were on a big boat along with all the surviving animals, as the entire planet was turned into an ocean. This explains the origins of black people (of African descent, even though not all black people in Africa are of the same ethnicity). And because of this history, men of black African heritage were denied the privilege to rub magic cooking oil on the heads of sick people and learn secret Masonic handshakes that are necessary for people to become gods. This changed in 1978, when a church president who believed that American Indians turn white when they convert to Mormonism had a warm, fuzzy feeling that maybe black people are okay, too.

You know, I can totally see your point about the need for a rigorous, intellectually serious discussion about all of this.

[_bcspace]

Nothing inherent I see to make him inferior.

Then there was no reason for the priesthood to be restored, and there is no reason to receive the temple endowment.

Why not? Is it LDS doctrine that man is so superior he can lift himself to the CK without these things?

First, we'll assert, as you have, that "race" and "lineage" mean different things

I happen to be differentiating between the reason for the curse and the effects of the curse which most of you seem incapable of. Since the reason for the curse is based on choices one makes and not something inherently inferior, the effects of the curse, including attempts to enforce it however flawed, cannot possibly be racist.

You know, I can totally see your point about the need for a rigorous, intellectually serious discussion about all of this.

Yep. Wondering when you're going to provide it.

Darth J's arguments have nothing to do with logical, cogent argumentation, but with polemical argument mongering for its own sake in pursuit of a personal psychological and emotional agenda.

Now we're getting somewhere...

Much closer to the truth.

[_Morley]

.... Since the reason for the curse is based on choices one makes....

No. It wasn't. Where does anything in Church doctrine say this? According to you, it was based on a choice Cain made. No one else got to make a choice. Or are you hinting at something else? Doctrine please.

[Guest]

And now, a brief recap.

--It's not racism if you discriminate against one specific ethnic group, instead of non-white people in general.

--There is nothing conveying the superiority of every other ethnic group over one specific ethnic group by saying that one specific ethnic group cannot be leaders or perform rituals in your church.

--The priesthood ban was about lineage, not race, but the dictionary and the thesaurus indicate that lineage and race are synonymous.

--The priesthood ban was not about race, but every single time church leaders addressed the priesthood ban, it was specifically in reference to Negroes.

--Ancient Greeks were leavened with the lineage of Cain (because human beings reproduce with yeast), but the Church never said that men of Greek lineage cannot have the priesthood.

--We've always been at war with Eastasia.

--Ultimately, what is at issue is the right to cast spells in the name of the Mormon god.

--The absurd mythology and meta-mythology that Mormons have invented to explain all this is worthy of serious intellectual analysis, as is the idea that Elvis and Bigfoot conspired with the U.S. government to pull off the inside job of 9/11.

[_Darth J]

Darth J's arguments have nothing to do with logical, cogent argumentation, but with polemical argument mongering for its own sake in pursuit of a personal psychological and emotional agenda.

Now we're getting somewhere...

Much closer to the truth.

According to the same reasoning that the priesthood ban had nothing to do with race:

The law of chastity has nothing to do with sex.

The Word of Wisdom has nothing to do with smoking or drinking.

Tithing has nothing to do with money.

[_Drifting]

In what way can we interpret this literal recounting of the religious history of God's dealings with His people in the America's as not meaning a black skin is inferior to a white skin as far as God (Mormon) himself is concerned?

2nd Nephi 5
21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

[_ludwigm]

Members like me will often become extremely disturbed by the fact that the LDS worldview posits a history of humanity that has been blown out of the water by modern science. Apologists and other appeasers will then say that hey, none of that is pertinent to our eternal salvation, and just doesn't matter.

But here we have an actual situation where the worldview of the church lead to real-world actions, which in light of modern science were entirely unjustified. They didn't merely believe false teachings, but acted on them too in ways that had very large consequences for people.

Here's what I'm talking about. The church has long taught that:

1) Adam and Eve were the first human beings on Earth, and were white.
2) Cain killed Abel, was cursed for it, and either the curse, or else the mark of the curse (because that changes everything...) included his skin, and the skin of all of his descendants, being turned black.
3) Noah's flood was real, and global in scope, and killed all human beings on the face of the planet, save for those who were aboard the ark.
4) Because Noah was a white guy, and presumably his wife too, the black "race" would have disappeared from the Earth with the flood, except that Ham, one of Noah's sons, married a black woman named Egyptus, and thus preserved the black race through the Flood.
5) The African peoples all descend from Egyptus, and inherit the curse of being banned from the priesthood, and the mark of the curse, which is the black skin.
6) Historically, all it took to be banned from the priesthood in the LDS church, prior to 1978, was to be black and descended from Africans, or even look white but have known African ancestors who were black.
7) 6) was justified by LDS by reference to the scriptures underpinning 1) through 5), and vague hand-waving exercises appealing to "revelation" which, surprisingly, nobody can actually document as having really taken place.

Now we know that:
1) The human race apparently originated in Africa, and moved out from Africa into the rest of the world.
2) There was no global flood which bottlenecked the human race just 4 or 5k years ago.
3) There was apparently no "Egyptus" who was the mother of all Africans, who lived 4 or 5k years ago.
4) There are distinct African lineages going back many thousands, even tens of thousands of years. I used the example of the Khoisan, because I find it striking that the Khoisan are further genetically related to the black Africans commonly brought over to the US as slaves than white Europeans are, which makes the whole concept of them as inheritors of Cain's curse laughable.
5) The simple attribution of "lineage of Cain" on the basis of being black and of African descent, or knowledge of any black Africans in one's ancestry, is risible in light of 1) through 4).

I'd say that the real-world vs. the Mormon fantasy version of the world played a pretty frickin huge role in this priesthood ban debacle. Let nobody claim that the issues of Noah's Flood, Adam and Eve, and so forth have no relevance to the LDS Church's truth claims. That's just pure, unadulterated b***s***. They are intimately connected to the LDS Church's past practices, as well as intertwined in LDS scriptures, which LDS claim are inspired directly by God as his word to humanity. They cannot escape it.

If I could fit this entire quote in my sig, I would. Bravo!

You can do it.
1. Make a picture.
2. Insert the text above into the picture.
3. Put the picture into Your sigline.

... wait a minute ...
4. I put You into my foes list. (Side effect, I don't like book volumes in the sig line...)

I didn't and won't change my sig line. It is a correct description of my thoughts.

[_moksha]

The Priesthood Ban was as incorrect and non-doctrinal as the Adam-God theory. Wouldn't you concur Brother Bcspace?

[_bcspace]

.... Since the reason for the curse is based on choices one makes....

No. It wasn't. Where does anything in Church doctrine say this?

Do you not sometimes on your own call it "the curse of Cain" doctrine? If so, you have answered your own question unless you don't really believe the scriptures say Cain offered an incorrect sacrifice because of Satan's influence and then killed Abel. That was all a choice.

According to you, it was based on a choice Cain made.

According to you as well and by your own logic I'll be willing to bet. I suggest you take another approach if any exist.

No one else got to make a choice.

Sure they do. But as you well know, according to the Bible example, the choices of an ancestor can result in consequences for generations to come. Numbers 14:18 for example or Jacob and Esau.