this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Religion is a monstrous evil. Especially the Abrahamic cults.
Bizarre and unique, the Abrahamics' specific (yet general enough) characteristics. And evergreen! See only the Mormon church, a recent cult, for example - unbelievably successful. Invented out of whole cloth within the last 200 years. Tax exempt and owns ~4% of the land in the US today, to say nothing of their business interests (cuz it's even harder to know).
They venerate Jesus.
And if Jesus were alive he would be aghast.
If the Bible was non-fiction, he's probably been like that since not too long after Constantine.
It was less than 100 years between Constantine declared Christians could practice without persecution and Theodosius first declaring it the official religion of Rome and then later banning public practice of any other religions, which started up the persecution of non-Christians.
That didn't really lose momentum until the enlightenment, when people started talking about religious freedom, and then the American and French revolutions, which involved adding religious freedom as a legally protected thing.
Not that that stopped the hate, it just meant state resources weren't supposed to be openly used to support that hate.
They don't? They're all about Joseph Smith. Jesus is kinda there win the background.
They revere Joseph Smith for sure (and some other made up folks like Moroni or whatever) but I think it's incorrect to say Jesus has taken a back seat in their faith. I just toured one of their temples (which they allow only briefly before they consecrate it), JC was everywhere. Not sure I saw any imagery of Joseph Smith, but it was a lot to take in and I may have missed it.
Thanks guys I learned something today! I really thought it was Joseph > Jesus but it makes sense you wouldn't talk about the bro every Sunday. lol.
I could be wrong about things, to be clear, I'm mostly just making inferences from my personal observations, which is gonna come with a lotta holes lol. Cheers, have a good one!
Edit to add: for a fun tidbit, we Mormonized our profanity a bit for grins, it's not uncommon in my household to hear "Joseph fucking Smith!" or "ah thank Joseph Smith" in response to bad or good news, respectively. But that's just us being equal opportunity religious critics, diversity and representation are crucial!
Atheist here, but grew up mormon: Jesus is definitely the main character. I'm hazy on the details but it's even mormon canon that a lot of events in the old testament involved Jesus in pre-birth spirit form (or something idk), or were at least analogous to his life. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are to Mormons as any notable dead pope is to Catholics - revered, spiritual authorities, allegedly could talk to god, but they're not worshiped and they didn't come up every Sunday, they were kind of in the background