Atheist and Christians, Your comments about Mormons LDS?

I don't dislike individual LDS members. It is the teachings about America's indigenous peoples that the prophet and apostles need to renounce and throw away.

The Book of Mormon claims that god was with the Europeans and his wrath was on America's indigenous peoples. It teaches that god was behind the loss of lives and lands.

1 Nephi 13:

14 And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten.

15 And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain.

The majority of the nations of the world have agreed that such ideas based on religion are morally condemnable.

"all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust"

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIP...

Consider the genocide in the Old Testament -

Deuteronomy 20:

16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee

The Old Testament god is supposed to be the same god whose wrath is on America's indigenous peoples. The same god whose spirit is with those of European ancestry.

The Book of Mormon takes the wrath of a genocidal god to a level far beyond the story of the Canaanites. The lands promised to Abraham were only about the size of New York and Vermont. The Canaanites lived in an area smaller than New Jersey. North and South America combined are larger than all continents except Asia. And it is not all in the past. The Maya people of Guatemala suffered horrible genocide as recently as the 1980s and people in Brazil are suffering death right now.

Mormonism goes further than any of those mythical genocidal events of 3,000 years ago. The Mormon god's wrath includes all the death and suffering of America's indigenous peoples in only the past 500 years up to and including the present.

Since 1492, more people were destroyed over a greater expanse of land than anything found in the Bible excepting the mythical flood. But unlike the Bible's bronze age fables, the actual events of the past 500 years in America are confirmed matters of factual history, having nothing to do with any god.

The LDS church teaches that America's indigenous peoples were not righteous and for that reason they have suffered god's wrath while he has cleared his special land for a new people, sweeping away up to 90% of an entire hemisphere's inhabitants beginning in 1492 (1 Nephi chapter 13). The Book of Mormon teaches of a god who brought other nations and gave them power to scatter, smite and take possession of the lands of America's indigenous peoples. It teaches of a god who afflicted innocent women, children and elderly with his wrath.

Those teachings are not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The World Council of Churches and many Christian churches throughout the world have renounced those ideas of manifest destiny (Doctrine of Discovery).

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/ex...

Mormon 5:20 teaches that after all of the violence, then the lord will remember the covenant made with America's indigenous peoples. But reality does not work like that. Genocide survivors often become atheist.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201303040084.html

If the Book of Mormon were written today it would be categorized in extremist publications and soundly criticized.

sources

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIP...

The World Council of Church's Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery and its Enduring Impact on Indigenous Peoples

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/ex...

Genocide by Norman Lewis, 1969

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00086794/00001/11j

Guatemala Memory of Silence, February, 1999

https://hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CEHre...

The Trial of Efrain Rios Montt & Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, 2013

http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/

Worldwide protests demand stop to Brazil's assault on indigenous rights

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9611

Edit

I am NOT saying to "take a piece of the Book of Mormon and throw it out". The whole damn book needs to be renounced and discarded. But of course it is the keystone of the LDS church, so that will not happen unless the church openly admits that Joseph Smith was not a prophet and did not translate alleged engravings from gold plates to write that racist fiction.

I have given you sources to show exactly how your book is racist and condemnable. If the best you can come up with is "sounds to me like you take other peoples opinion to collaborator your own" then there is really no point in you asking this question. You don't want truth or valid answers.

First off, I don't dislike Mormons. I do think the theology "leaves a lot to be desired".

But, this would be my biggest gripe. Mormon missionaries often "break the ice" by saying something like "we have a message of good news" AND that "we (Mormons and Christians) serve the /same/ God".

Now, one does not need to be a real deep theologian to know that the God(s) of Mormon theology are not at all the same as those of Christian theology. Though the names used may be the same, the necessary attributes are entirely different.

For instance, God the Father in Mormon is an exalted being. This means that God was not always God and was made God by the one doing the exalting. It also means that this God the Father is not the uncaused First Cause of our realm of existence. Or that this God is eternal and non-contingent. (and a number of other things).

So, my greatest frustration with Mormons is that Mormonism is a faux Christianity. The names of the players is the same, but they, and it as a whole, is something entirely different - and very few of them even look deep enough into the history and theology to know it.

That said, Mormons are some of the nicest people I have known.

(I spent 9 weeks one summer studying with the local missionaries, then one of them said "You too can be like God". To which my wife said "It seems like I've heard that somewhere before." They abruptly left and never came back.)

I'm an atheist, and dude, your beliefs just aren't believable.

Researching mormonism had me come out thinking to myself how could anyone who claims to be rational believe in this church? I know full well people will believe almost anything, and fool themselves into believing in nonsense superstitions, mormonism including. And when you talk to most of the pairs of men and women walking around peddling the Book of Mormon, you can clearly tell that they believe in mormonism because they just aren't aware of the nonsense.

The South Park episode on mormonism was astonishing because it pretty much just told the mormon story without trying to make it look any more or less ridiculous than it was. Joseph Smith was visited by God and Jesus, an angel came and showed him the location of plates. Most people couldn't see the plates. The manuscript of the first 116 pages were taken by Martin Harris's wife and Joseph Smith couldn't reproduce the exact translation of those lost pages, and he came up with the plan to translate from another plate that told of the same story in a slightly different way.

Now some will say that people did see the plates, some in a spiritual vision and others tangibly, all of whom were close associates with Joseph Smith. Where are the plates now, and can their authenticity be verified today? No, because the plates are now safe and sound in heaven!

You see what I'm getting at? I haven't even gotten to the part of how Joseph Smith really translated the plates. By putting a seer stone into a hat and reading with his head in the hat! I mean, come on now. Then you research further and find out Joseph Smith was taken to court for previously trying a seer stone in a hat fraud before all this Book of Mormon stuff. Why was polygamy really started? There's a rumor going around that he was caught by his wife messing around with his housemaid, and the polygamy revelation came afterwards. That might explain why his first wife never really accepted the idea of bringing polygamy into the church.

So those are some of my comments and views about mormonism. You can believe whatever you want, I just think it's all a bit silly.

Mormons are not Christians, by definition, but a cult.

They follow false scripture, outside the whole church.

Revelation ended with the time of Jesus Christ.

There are no latter day prophets after John the Baptist.

I dislike LDS for a couple reasons. Active proselytizing is a big problem. The history of institutionalized racism is a problem (yes it's true the BoM specifically says it's the Indians who were cursed with darkened skin, but the Church broadened that out to blacks until 1972 IIRC). The crazy strong pressure on church members to toe a certain line and to follow certain specific paths in their lives is a problem. The really goofy stuff I've read in its holy book makes parts of it seem laughable (which is also true of other religions). But also just that I find LDS, like other religions, is a failed attempt to explain the universe, that it gives answers to the big questions which: some we know aren't true, some we're pretty sure aren't true, and others we have no reason to think are necessarily true. It discourages critical thinking on critically important issues. Much of the above it shares with other world religions, of course; I'm saying most of this to single it out, but just answering your question what I see wrong with it.

Edit: What I'm saying, if I understand your question right, is that it's bad to try to funnel young people into specific preset paths whether they're right for those paths or not. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, but that's a choice we made--I don't expect my daughter to necessarily become one herself. In fact I encourage her to get her education and have a fulfilling career. Then she'll have to knowledge, ability, and understanding to decide for herself if she wants to stay at home with her kids--and whether she wants to have kids at all, for that matter.

just to help out - there is no "skin" cursing in the Book of Mormon at all, the cursing and the "curse" was an abandonment of the spirit due to their departure from the word of God.

EDIT - hey buddy, I'm a Mormon, and I'm just trying to help you understand what it says and doesn't say and no, I'm not mistaken at all.

The "curse" is clearly "because of iniquity" and is lifted when people repent. The skin in that verse is metaphorical, so unless you want to convince me that their hearts actually turned to flint as well, it's pretty obvious that it's metaphorical.

Furthermore God didn't turn their skin black, it's just genetics. These are only the ones who left the group and married the natives; and their skin didn't turn back when they converted (like the people of Ammon who remained looking like Lamanites because they lived in a group) but only when (like the people of anti-nephi-lehi) they mixed back with the normal population then it's said that the sign of the curse (dark skin, a result of breeding outside of the "covenant") began to disappear from their children.

We believe that man will be punished for his own sins, not for a father's transgression.

It's a bit embarrassing to read that somebody thinks that God cursed all of the Indians - that's who the promises in the Book of Mormon are to, they're clearly not cursed by God, nor would God be just to curse all others for a choice by their fathers.

I think you ought to chill out, you're ranting and raving and making arguments that are pretty embarrassing. nobody wins by fighting about this stuff.

So you're not a cult because you *say* you're not a cult?

That sounds like a cult.

Again, you are not a cult solely because you claim you're not.

A cult is an organization that is (1) factually wrong on the face of it, (2) lies to get recruits, (3) lies to and about critics to fend off serious criticism (without substance, as you just did), and (4) would be extinct tomorrow if everyone knew what the leaders of it hope no one finds out.

That the Mormons hoard property, attempt to control food and farm production in this country, and smear critics as "ignorant" all the while covering up child molestation in its own ranks does not help your case.

So, the Mormons are as much a cult as the $cientologists. And I think that's obvious in this day and age.

My good Christian neighbor won't give me the time of day because he thinks I'm not a “Christian”. My atheist neighbor is friendlier than my so-called Christian neighbors. But my Mormon neighbors? I could worship the Radish Spirit for all they care, they still love me and accept me as I am. When times get rough, the Mormons are the ones on my door step to help out. I see Mormons as being more Christian than those so-called Christians that like to point the finger and cry "non-christian cultist!".

I don't know much about the religion, and I haven't met too many Mormons, but the ones that I did meet were very nice people. I also know that Mormons have the highest life expectency of any religion in the USA.

I don't dislike mormons any more than I dislike other religions. I don't know why some do though. I guess it is because it is a newer religion and people think mormon beliefs are crazy even though everyone elses' beliefs are just as weird.

Hello,

Brave question, JWs don't dislike you, but feel that your founder was mistaken.

The teachings you adhere to are not totally in harmony with the inspired Scriptures, i.e. that it's ok to fight (Isa. 2:4).

Kind regards, Gunter. www.jw.org