Gadianton wrote:Mormons aren't acting out of respect and selflessness. Historically, or in rare instances today, being baptized for a close family member who has passed on "makes sense" but even then has nothing to do with respect or selflessness. Today, it's an act of process control. A bizarre melding of technology, corporate infrastructure, family history hobbyists, and vans full of youth telling off-color jokes on the way to the temple, having narrowly preserved their innocence just hours before by evading the bishop's questions about ...
Withholding baptism is not debilitating because it can be finished during the Millenium, after Jesus has torched the planet and pretty much silenced any concerns that the act is not God's will. If Noah and his generation could wait several thousand years to receive their ordinances, people today can wait another 30 years for the Millenium.
Mormons aren't honoring their heritage anymore than cooking a Sausage McMuffin honors food. Interestingly, McDonald's and Arctic Circle are the favorite post-baptism food stops for hungry youth. I think there is some symbolism here.
Yep. Gadianton or Sidewinder or whatever you are, you've still got it man.
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond
Chap wrote:Umm ... so if you think fluorescent pink is a cool color, and when I go away for the weekend you come over and paint the whole outside of my house fluorescent pink, because you like me and want to share the best of all possible colors with me and my family, then I am not entitled to take offense at the thoughtless effrontery with which you interfered with my property? Just because you meant no offense, and had none but the best of intentions?
I don't think so.
Would it make any difference to you if the symbolic fluorescent pink was also invisible?
Penguin subtlety at work! The equivalent of that would, I suppose, be if the proxy baptism took place with the baptizing person not saying the name of the dead person aloud, but instead saying something like “for and in behalf of the person known unto God whom I now remember before Him, who is dead.” But the problem is that the names are uttered aloud, listed, and easily become a matter of public knowledge.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Would it make any difference to you if the symbolic fluorescent pink was also invisible?
I understand that the Emperor unveiled his newly redecorated house to rave reviews.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."