Seeds Of Organized Religion

The Mormons

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)

Founder, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

A PBS Biography web page states:

Early one morning in the spring of 1820, Joseph went to a secluded woods to ask God which church he should join. According to his account, while praying Joseph was visited by two personages who identified themselves as God the Father and Jesus Christ.

In 1823, Joseph Smith said he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who told him of an ancient record containing God's dealings with the former inhabitants of the American continent. In 1827, Joseph retrieved this record, inscribed on thin golden plates, and shortly afterward began translating its words by the gift of God.

The resulting manuscript, the Book of Mormon, was published in March 1830. On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and became its first president.

He was a controversial figure in American history--beloved of his followers and hated by his detractors. Joseph was persecuted much of his adult life and was killed along with his brother Hyrum by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844.

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My Opinion

The entire divine revelation is no more than a wholly fictional invention of an immature and possibly defective mind.

But even so, it raises another question: How can so many supposedly intelligent thinking people be persuaded to accept and believe such juvenile twaddle as is promulgated by The Mormons? One imaginative boy at age 14, obsessed with religion, fabricates a fanciful tale -- and it apparently is swallowed whole in the year 1820 by some of the citizens of 19th century Manchester, New York.

Three years later Smith proclaims that an angel (named Moroni) revealed to him a fantastic history of never-before recorded events regarding both Man and God -- and again it was accepted and believed by the gullible and innocently credulous seekers of meaning and purpose in life, some of whom (without a doubt) being motivated more by profit-seeking greed than by pious naivete.

And now, after the first decade of the twenty-first century, millions of people continue to swear by and live by the unsubstantiated precepts of this ridiculous religion.

It's almost as unbelievable and laughable as the notion that the simple Bogey-Man parables and child-rearing lessons (commanding obedience to authority) -- quoted by simple, ancient shepherds and goat herders wandering in the desert -- were direct commandments from Almighty God Jehovah. So...

What Should We Make Of This?

. . .

A relevant poem goes here
but I haven't written it yet.

. . .

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