Mormon Hypocrisy

13 October 2011 | Gamecock

[Gamecock]

I subscribe to a Mormon apologetic Newsletter titled FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research).

Normally it falls into my junk email account and I don't even open it, but today I had a few minutes and scanned the latest offering and was stunned to see the hypocrisy of the authors. Please note the entire email is posted below.

This particular issue has a great deal of whining about those mean Christians who make the spurious claim that Mormons are not Christians, but are a cult.

A couple of examples:

-"Mormons are a cult" epithets into the national spotlight. In his "On Faith" commentary this week, Church Public Affairs managing director Michael Otterson suggests why people make such claims and shares his own experience of being labeled not Christian.

Calling Mormonism a cult is old hat, and the voters are yawning.

-Texas Gov. Rick Perry's minister ally Robert Jeffress might think Mitt Romney's church is a cult, but a new documentary on the presidency and Mormonism suggests that Romney could snag the nation's top job despite the religious feud between Christians.

-....the "cult" of Mormonism means that you raise a solid family, work hard, make money and do good for the greater community of mankind, then by all means pass the Kool-Aid.

-It seems just too petty and small for a country as big as America to have. America, as a melting pot of many cultures and many beliefs, is supposed to be more tolerant of differences.

-Another woman in Texas remembers that her LDS congregation was banned from participating in a community-wide Christmas event and that non-Church members once barged into Sunday meetings shouting that Mormons were cult members and devil worshippers.

The reader will note, when comparing the above quotes with the below article, that the quotes originate from the MSM. Why would the MSM, a known enemy of Christianity, care if Christians consider Mormons a cult or not? I suggest that these quotes are really more of an attack on Christianity than some deep concern for Mormons. Notice how when Mormons talk family values the press fawns over them. When Christians do the same we are are intolerant of other lifestyles.

That being said, consider the above quotes. Christians who deny Mormons mainstream status are bigoted, intolerant, etc. But ask your self this: are Mormons not intolerant when they make the following claim: that Joseph Smith unearthed a book of golden plates from a New York hillside in 1827 with the help of an angel and translated hieroglyphics that detailed the true Christian faith.

So Mormons don't want to be Christians, but rather the "true Christian faith." Isn't that just a bit intolerant?

I suspect what is really going on here is that in reality the MSM sees Romney as a palatable Republican. They don't really care about Mormons, but are afraid of Cain and Perry.

Take a few minutes and scan the below and see what other nuggets jump out at you. There are more than a couple.

[sasportas]

You are probably twisting the facts on the Apocrapha just like everything else Papists twist - in order to make the Roman Papacy to be the one church (re: your screen name) the rest of us have to be subservient to. But I’ll let the issue lay for the time being.

For a thread that’s supposed to about Mormonism, in which I endeavored to make the point about Mormon extra-biblical authority (their writings), it appears you and I are hijacking it about the Papacy and it’s extra-biblical authority. Bye now, I’m sure you and I will meet on another thread someday.

[one Lord one faith one baptism]

no twisting of facts my friend. i am glad you realize there is such a concept as “facts”, based on your post on authority in the Papist Church, you seem like you and the facts have never met.
i am sure i will need to correct future fact free posts of yours, since you seem like you don’t know what you don’t know and more importantly, you don’t seem to care what you don’t know. “often wrong, but never in doubt” seems like a good way to describe you.

[Saundra Duffy]

“God had sex with Mary, Satan is the brother of Jesus, denial with the Trinity,”

Show me in LDS Scriptures where Mormons believe that God had sex with Mary. (I said LDS Scripture.) Show me in the Bible where God did not create Satan. The Bible tells us that we can become joint heirs with Jesus Christ. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and Peter said so, too. Were they both wrong? Show me in the Bible the reference to the “Holy Trinity”. I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

P.S. LDS folk are baptized by full immersion. And if it weren’t for my Church, Prop 8 would not have passed in CA. Good night.

[Cronos]

Saundra, God created Satan but Jesus was not created. Jesus is co-eternal God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He is not a created being.

Jesus said He was God -- and God is ONE. We follow in the tradition of the Jews who believe in the ONE God, not multiple gods (that would deny the monotheistic nature of the Judeo-Christian God.

Now either Jesus is NOT God or He is ONE with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He can't be one of many gods or we have to toss out the Old Testament and all of our Jewish heritage. And, if you say He was not God, just some created being, then He was a liar to say "I am" to equate Himself with God in the ability to forgive sins in His own name.

The scene of Jesus's baptism shows the Father and the Holy Spirit as 3, yet God is One.

The Mormon philosophy of multiple gods negates all of the OT and Christianity.

[Cronos]

P.S. LDS folk are baptized by full immersion. And if it weren’t for my Church, Prop 8 would not have passed in CA. Good night.

1. if LDS folk are baptised by full, partial, whatever immersion, they are still not baptised in the name of the ONE God, so it doesn't matter -- it is a Mormon baptism, not a Christian one.

2. If it wasn't for your religion (unfortunately, Mormonism is not a Church, it is a separate religion distinct from Christianity) Prop 8 would not have passed in CA -- thank you.

Mormonism is a separate religion, not Christianity for the simple reason that you do not believe in ONE God and that Jesus is God with the Father. Anything any proposition denies either Judaic belief or that Jesus is God.

[Cronos]

Finally, Saundra, Mormonism rests on the fiction that there were Semitic peoples in pre-Columbus America and that the Native americans are descended from these Semites.

This is wrong

There is zero archaeological evidence for Semites in pre-Columbus America, no trace of such cities, no trace of Old World technology among the Mayas, Olmecs, Toltecs, North Americans, nothing. There is no story in Native American history of these Semitic peoples or their customs

The Native American people are genetically not at all Semitic, rather Tungushic

The Native American peoples speak languages which are quite distinct from Semitic -- completely different language families

I'm afraid, Saundra, that J. Smith was the L Ron Hubbard of his day, even positing a fake language like "Reformed Egyptian" (no one ever explains why Israelites who had left Egypt centuries earlier and had their own language and the Aramaic script would use Egyptian -- and the examples of this writing given are little more than scribbles.

[Elsie]

Who ISN’t??

(Well... them folks in SpaceLab are ABOVE it....)

[Elsie]

Show me in LDS Scriptures where Mormons believe that God had sex with Mary. (I said LDS Scripture.)

We know you did.

Why do YOU disavow all of the TEACHING that MORMON leaders have said about it?

Spirit of Apostacy is POUNDING on your door!

[Elsie]

Why do YOU disavow all of the TEACHING that MORMON leaders have said about it?

Brigham Young said,

"I have never yet preached a sermon and sent it out to the children of men, that they may not call scripture."

(Journal of Discourses 13:95).

[Elsie]

I'm afraid, Saundra, that J. Smith was the L Ron Hubbard of his day, even positing a fake language like "Reformed Egyptian" (no one ever explains why Israelites who had left Egypt centuries earlier and had their own language and the Aramaic script would use Egyptian -- and the examples of this writing given are little more than scribbles.

---

The "Caractors" are the only tangible evidence in existence related to Smith's story. No gold plates, no brass plates, no peep stones, no Urim and Thummim... only these "Caractors," not a single one of which is in the purported languages.

---

 

Smith's translation of the Caractors. According to Martin Harris (Joseph Smith - History, 1:64), "I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated,* and he said they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters."

Speak right up now in all truthfulness. Isn't it revealing how Smith started out making a stab at creating believable "caractors" but quckly gave up and produced nothing but squiggles, ending up wih a series of nothing more than crude little scribbles? Yet Professor Anthon supposedly translated them!

---

*Harris must have had two or three pieces of paper with him—one with characters and a translation of them (on the same paper or a separate one) and one with untranslated characters—quite likely the "Caractors." Some Mormon "scholars" have gone out on a limb, sawed it off, and knocked themselves out trying to translate from these true Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic characters a segment that would correspond with a verse from 1 Nephi.

---

Modern-day experts in Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic. In 1829, any knowledge of these languages possessed by U.S. scholars would have been rudimentary at best. Expertise in them has vastly improved since then. So go ahead, do it. Get any modern expert in these languages to identify which of these "Caractors" are Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic. Better still, accept the claim of Mormon apologists that Anthon did indeed so testify and that his appraisal of the Caractors was correct. (Op. cit, pp. 73-75)

Save your money! Samples of Assyriac/Aramaic and Arabic writing:

     .
 

     .
 

      .

 

What say you? Which of Smith's "Caractors" resemble the Assyriac and Arabic ones? No need to pay experts for their analysis. A child could accurately check this out. These writing systems have remained constant for well over 3000 years.

[Notary Sojac]

The doctrines of conventional, trinitarian Christianity were not codified until several hundred years after Christ.

Many of the earliest Christians held to concepts that you would probably consider heretical.

Speaking personally as an atheist, I don't see much difference between doctrines compiled by Catholic bishops in the fifth century and doctrines compiled by Mormon bishops in the nineteenth.

[reaganaut]

The doctrines existed and were taught, the codification came as a result of the Gnostic twisting of Scripture in very similar ways to the LDS.

Give me an early Christian (not Gnostic) doctrine I would disagree with.

[Cronos]

The doctrines of conventional, trinitarian Christianity were not codified until several hundred years after Christ.

False. the doctrines of trinitarian Christianity were confirmed 300 years after Christ, but they were held from Apostolic times as orthodoxy.

Christians from the beginning held that:
1. Jesus Christ is God
2. Christianity is the fulfilment of Judaism and there is ONE God

Put those two together and you have doctrines that do not hold to Mormonism or Gnostic views

Catholic bishops in the fifth century -- the Nicene Creed dates from the 300s, what are you talking about the 5th century?

Mormon doctrines are:

1. contradictory to the Judaic concept that there is ONE God
2. contradictory to all that Christians or even heretics have believed since Apostolic times
3. Based on a piece of fiction -- that there were Semites in pre-Columbus America

[Elsie]

Speaking personally as an atheist, I don't see much difference between doctrines compiled by Catholic bishops in the fifth century and doctrines compiled by Mormon bishops in the nineteenth.

Of course.

[Elsie]

Do you have the reference about Satan,

I don't exactly what you mean.

[Elsie]

Anyone else just HATE all the idiotic reference links that are on so MANY of the words of the BoM online?

Let me clean it up:

1 And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

2 But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.