Link.

Better link in the Telegraph UK.

ROF <20> L

(And "Thanks Gary")

I only played D&D for a short while when I was very young (maybe 1st and/or 2nd grade), but I've certainly enjoyed role playing games (Final Fantasy IV is my favorite game of all time), so thanks, Gary!

From Woot!:

Most of those are hilarious, but can someone explain the Lorraine Williams, Marilyn Monroe, and Marlon Wayans references?

Marlon Wayans was in that awful D&D movie.

Lorraine Williams was effectively the person who gained a controlling interest in TSR, the company that published D&D that Gygax cofounded, and forced Gygax out.

Marilyn Monroe: dunno, beyond the obvious that people would prefer to play D&D with Gygax on a Friday night than go out on a date with Marilyn.

Ah, thanks!

Wow. I played an awful lot of D&D back in junior high. I distinctly remember all the "going to hell" issues raised by the religious fundamentalist types, including our lovely (Dallas, Texas) school administration. We managed to do an excellent job of ignoring them, and I'm reasonably confident none of us went on to be Satan worshipers.

Wow. I remember in 1988 having a group (can't remember the name) that met AT our school after classes with the blessing of the school. Maybe my time was too late for the hysteria to take effect. Or maybe they didn't mind AD&D that much!

What, nobody there voted for Dubya? Twice?

How many have stories to tell of serious internal family strife arising because of this sort of thing? I had a fundie stepmother who capped it all off by "disappearing" my books and a friend's figurines I was painting for him, then denying she'd done it.

I guess she never learned that stealing is bad...

Therein lies the irony.

I got my start in '87, at a junior high school where the D&D club was GM'd by the french teacher. I spent the majority of the first campaign as a stone statue, after attempting to steal a pretty feather for my hat -- from a cockatrice. Oops.

Nice tribute by xkcd today.

Our GM was the "creative thinking and learning" teacher. We played in the school library, but I understand that she spent a non-trivial amount of time running interference on our behalf. I distinctly remember a shot that the yearbook photographer was setting up with a table with all the books on it. We decided to keep the DM Guide under the stack, since it had the big ugly demon on the cover...

It amazes me that Americans have such a problem with this very innocent stuff yet recognize the Scientology and Mormon religions...

I think the last time I played D&D was in grade 5 or 6 (it could have been 7 though). I liked it as did a number of friends, but other pursuits just ended up taking up the free time. I still have the original D&D manuals and dice, but never did get any AD&D materials myself.

It was a far bigger influence on popular culture than a lot of people would ever give it credit for.

Hail Satan!

Well, current Mormonism is kind of like Christianity++. There are, no doubt, some rather odd parts to it, but on the whole it boils down to "God didn't stop talking to us," and "the Book of Mormon isn't a replacement for the Bible -- it's just another historical document of Christ's witness in another land." Or something like that.

Scientology, on the other hand...

A woman started evangelising near me in town the other day. I was just reading a book whilst waiting for Mrs lbt.

I asked her to stop as I wanted to read quietly. Of course that started the chit-chat
Anyhow, when she asked my name so she could pray for me I asked for hers so I could sacrifice a chicken in her name on a flaming altar.

She went away soon after... no hard feelings though

Oh! It has to be flaming?
Dang- and I've been doing it wrong all these years!

I have several Mormon friends. My biggest problem with it is that, effectively, you buy your way into heaven. You can't get into heaven unless you have your secret name, you can't get your secret name unless you receive some particular sacrament, you can't get that sacrament unless you're a good Mormon, and you can't be a good Mormon unless you tithe. (And tithe actually means a full 10% to them.)

There are other problems, too, like baptising non-Christians in absentia and post mortem, even after having been asked to stop. That's just rude.

Random wackiness, like secret underwear, I couldn't care less about. It's mostly the strongarming people into paying money that's my issue with it. And that's my same issue with Scientology. Admittedly, Scientology is a thousand times worse about it, but it's the same scam, ultimately.

I've heard people get annoyed about this before -- though mainly non-Mormon Christians rather than non-Christians -- and I couldn't see why. Either these baptisms are valid or they aren't. If they're valid, presumably it's important and beneficial that they're done; if they aren't, presumably it makes no difference whether they're done or not. So why is there a problem?

Peter

The particular instance I remember was them baptising Jews killed in the Holocaust.

From my entirely vague understanding of what Judaism might have to say about this, there's no religious problem, per se. If you want to baptise me in absentia, go knock yourself out. Just don't expect it to mean a damn thing to me or my family.

On the other hand, the act is still deeply offensive. These people died because of their religion and you've got the nerve to try to retroactively change their religion? When you're stomping like a bull in a china shop through somebody else's sacred history, the results can never be good. You might as well try to retroactively convert past Popes. I'm sure Catholics might take some exception with that.

This is interesting reading as I am a Mormon... I couldn't comment on everything such as the proxy baptisms for Jews killed in the Holocaust, as I don't know. My mom is a professional genealogist so I could probably find out from her. I know there are a lot of rules as to which deceased individuals can have the baptisms performed that an unfortunate number of members don't heed.

For me the religion does make sense, but I was brought up in it. I can definitely see how things would look to others though, especially with the fanatical members of the religion (every religion has them). I generally do try not to comment online about it as I don't want to start debating the points of the religion, but not all of us are crazy fanatics.

OT: Did ya see that Mythbusters?

With you so far...

...no, lost you, sorry. Surely it would be more offensive if they deliberately excluded Jewish people from an act which they believe they're doing for the baptisee's benefit?

Why? Again, if these Catholics believe that the Mormon baptism is metaphysically meaningful, then they must believe it's beneficial. If they don't believe it's metaphysically meaningful, isn't it just empty words, a stage-play signifying nothing?

Caring whether or not adherents of your religion, are posthumously claimed by another religion, surely only makes sense if you believe that the Mormon god, the Catholic god, and the Jewish god all exist as separate, competing entities, and that it's important whose team you're on. Perhaps some people do indeed believe that, but it's hardly mainstream in any major Western religious tradition.

Peter

I would have to agree with DWallach on this. It would be deeply offensive in that it is disrespectful and patronizing. Like "those poor little ignorant jews need our Mormon help" offensive.

Being a former mormon myself, I can say that they believe that they are the only ones with the full "Truth and Authority" from god. And also that it cannot be shared with other churches/religions except to the extent that they convert to mormonism. Just a bit assuming, if you ask me - and that is the part that I would find offensive.

There is not much that can be done about it - and they have the right to do what they want in their temples with the name of any one of us or our ancestors. Whether or not it is appropriate is another matter.

I wonder how some mormons would feel if another church had sacred rights that "undid" any ordinance that the mormons did in their temples. Kind of an interesting exercise to see the response, if any. I'm sure that some mormons would be deeply offended to hear that someone was "undoing" their parents celestial marriage in some other secret religious building.

Robotic - truth is: I couldn't hurt the chicken.

Maybe in future I'll sacrifice an effigy of a chicken at a flaming virtual altar....

Heck - there's a website in there somewhere.....

Hmmm. Need to speak to the Flying Spaghetti Monster church about hosting it.

bbowman : maybe we could sacrifice chicken effigies for all the Mormons whilst they're at it. That should play with their heads.

It could host google adverts and give away the revenue - truly an anti-church...

It's not the religious authorities that are complaining about this, it's the families of the deceased. And not only did they do this without asking, they did it even after asked to stop.

Here's some more detail on that situation.


I think you're being remarkably naive about this, personally. I mean, I couldn't care less, as I think it's all mumbo-jumbo, but let's say it does have personal significance. Let's say that instead of religion, it's nationality, and some folks in Japan decided that they were going to posthumously declare your grandfather, who fought against the Japanese in World War II, a Japanese citizen and then publish the fact that he was a Japanese citizen in a book.

To understand a bit of the outrage, look at the open source outrage over SCO claiming to have invented/owned Unix. We all know it's bogus, and as much as we might try to ignore them, they use the claim to try to stick their noses into our business.

Or, if you prefer, how about somebody who might start retroactively claiming that you or your ancestors were criminals and you're now living with ill-gotten gains. That kind of defamation can have legal consequences (and you have legal rights to sue for slander/libel, in response). While it doesn't directly injure me if you start saying that my mother was a hamster and my father smelt of elderberries, it's really something that I can legitimately take as an insult aimed at myself (i.e., it's a grown up version of school-yard taunting). While there may not be legal liability, it's still very poor behavior.

The interest I have in the apparent concern these people have with the Mormons, is not that it's mumbo-jumbo, but that it's internally inconsistent. It's a bit like being a Christian (or, at least, the sort of Christian who doesn't believe in the reanimation of dead people's physical bodies at the end times) and still reverentially burying or cremating dead bodies: your actions give the lie to what you say you believe.

First off, as long as it was widely known that the organisation in question made a habit of unilaterally and indiscriminately declaring people to be Japanese, nobody (no living person) would ever take an entry in such a book as good evidence of Japanese citizenship, or of lack of British citizenship. Secondly, even if the Japanese government declared this hypothetical grandfather (both mine were in the war, but in Europe/Africa) as a citizen, what's important to his/our sense of patriotism is whether or not the British government still think he's a British citizen -- and that would especially be true if "patriotism" included the belief that Japan doesn't exist. Or, de-allegorised, what's important to a Jewish person's sense of Jewishness should be whether the Jewish God thinks they're Jewish. A posthumous Mormon baptism can only de-Jew somebody if that's what Jewish law says happens, if Judaism gives that baptism authority, and given the history I'd expect Jewish law to be pretty solid on the point that forced, involuntary conversions don't actually count.

Peter

But forced involuntary conversions of Jews were de rigeur throughout history, usually accompanied by at least the threat of violence, and this all rather harkens back to that, albeit without the violence.

In addition, genealogy is very important to both Jews and Mormons. Some of the largest sets genealogical records in the world belong to the Mormon church. If they start polluting those records with religious falsehoods about Jews, real-world things like the Israeli Law of Return can be affected.

I don't think anyone is scared that they are no longer going to be Jews in reality because of that sort of totally involuntary "conversion", but, rather, that others will be misled to think that they aren't Jewish, and also, it's just incredibly presumptuous to convert someone when the only possible explanation is that they think that the people being converted were too dumb to join the Mormon faith. If they had wanted to do that, then they would have done it themselves. The whole reason the posthumous Mormon baptisms exist is so that people who were unable to join the LDS church, but were likely to have wanted to could do so, like infants and the ancestors of current Mormons.

You also seem to assume that a rite in one branch of Christianity should be equivalent to rites in other branches, and that's not true. Most (if not all) people who convert between branches of Christianity will rededicate themselves in the new branch. I'll give you that a Methodist converting to Presbyterianism probably isn't likely to, but certainly someone crossing between the Mormon/Catholic/Protestant barriers would.

I'm still waiting for Jonathan COulton to bring out a tribute song - he's gotta be the only guy to do it.

There was a lot of paranoia at the time with anything "satanic" and in fact, Satanism was a bit of a fad at the time. Suddenly, every rock song was suspected of having reversed messages in it and/or responsible for suicides. Like someone mentioned, just having a picture of a "demon" on a book gave people the wrong idea. The fact that the demons were the bad guys we were all trying to defeat was lost on them. Luckily, it was a small number of people frazzled by this stuff but unfortunately, they were given plenty of media attention from shows like 20/20, etc.


It's called religious tolerance. Our country was founded on it. I'm more amazed that multi-cultural folks, or at least people from multi-cultural countries, are still allowed to be a bigot about religion and not called a bigot by their peers.

I'm totally fine with people having whatever religion they want. I am opposed to any organization manipulating people for gain, which is what I believe that many churches do, but Scientology especially and Mormonism more than the average.

I was raised by Catholics Our parrish regularly sent out sets of weekly collection envelopes. If I remember right they were serially numbered (so they could track each family's contributions?). Most of these religions seem to have *some* fiscal component (like giving your neighborhood Tibetan monk a flaming chicken or something).

Beyond the financial scam, my test for heinousness, cultishness comes down to: how much does the organization do to hide its actual beliefs from outsiders and newcomers; how much effort do they expend to use front organizations to obscure their activities; do they love bomb newcomers but then persecute defectors when they spit out the hook?

For large, well-known organizations, Scientology and the Moonies win the prize. If you are at this moment eating sushi, stop and ask the restaurant where they got it. The Moonies, most likely; sushi keeps deceitful front organizations like CARP alive.

I invite any Mormons who are listening to baptize me and then report back on my progress. I will say that if I was somebody who had any sort of religious feeling, having somebody presume to baptize me would really tick me off. Despicable. How much more insulting and hurtful could some virtuous true believer get?

Jon Krakauer's book _Under the Banner of Heaven_ was nominally about *fundamentalist* Mormons, but I found the long historical sections quite illuminating, quite entertaining.

I guess I find all this stuff weird, puzzling and somewhat creepy now. But one thing I find remarkable is that Mormonism seems to take as many digs and hits from more traditional religionists as from unbelieving no-hopers such as myself. I am thinking it is because Mormonism makes them nervous. Sure, the Catholic Church, for example has all of this strange stuff going on -- resurrections from the dead, Ascensions, water-into-wine scenes, but all of that weirdness is blessed with the patina of age, gilt illuminated manuscripts, awesome cathedrals, jewel-encrusted reliquaries, Swiss Guards, et cetera. And it could be argued that the Catholics had decent script writers.

Mormonism, by contrast, suffers from a certain gauche newness. Nice, big cathedrals, but obviously "new money". And then you have, what, "Moroni"? Was there a writer's strike???

So I think all this makes mainstream religionists nervous because of the sense that, were it not for a certain patina that bestows a respectability of antiquity, all of their sacred happenings would be adjudged 100 percent as strange by the casual observer.

Now the Catholic Church no longer tortures defectors, nor am I aware of them baptizing unwilling Mormons in absentia or setting up sushi front companies. They just spend their time shuffling priests around to parishes with fresh altar boys.

When I was growing up, my parents gave money to our church in serialized envelopes, too, but that was because they had pledged to give a certain amount of money throughout the year and the church's budget was based on that information from all of the people who pledged. There was no penalty if you didn't pay, but they legitimately needed to know if there was going to be a shortfall.


Well, sure. Almost all organizations require funding. Unless it's some sort of communal club meeting at the food court. Churches have buildings they have to pay for, employees that they have to salary, etc. But most churches don't expect, much less require, your money. Scientology certainly requires your money. Mormonism doesn't require it to attend, but it does require it to get to heaven.


The second of those is just an aspect of the first: hiding true beliefs. There's a term for that: mystery religion. Okay, that really refers to a specific set of Greco-Roman classical religions, but the idea is the same. You have to be a member and work through the ranks to learn what the religion is actually about. Scientology clearly meets that criterion, what with all the Xenu stuff. But Mormonism does, too. After all, it's, in part, a creole of Christianity and notoriously mysterious Freemasonry. It's not nearly as bad as Scientology; I don't think that they hide their ultimate beliefs, just a lot of the random wackiness along the way.

As for persecuting defectors, again, Scientology is the gold standard, but Mormonism has some pretty strong suppression of dissent, too. Yes, it's pretty much limited to being excommunicated, but if your belief is that you will go to hell if you aren't a member of the church, that's pretty severe.

Again, though, I don't really care what kind of crazy nonsense you want to believe as long as you don't force it or its results on anyone else, and you don't coerce people into sacrifice solely for the good of the organization. (And I want to point out that there are certainly legitimate reasons to sacrifice for a group, but there is never a good reason to sacrifice for the organization itself. Sometimes the two things can be the same, but many times they are very distinct.)

It's the necessary paperwork for tracking charitable contributions, for eventual tax refunds to the givers.

Cheers