Last night I had a bathroom dream about a Mormon Temple. The temple I dreamt of had a special Anglican cathedral looking wing, where a bookstore was & where anyone could visit. In the basement where the ceremonies happen the staff let me use the restroom.
I remember as a little chumplet 12 year old dreaming of going to the temple so that I could do baptisms for the dead. Then when I was 21 at Ricks College I was a temple worker at the Idaho Falls Temple, and then later while back in Salt Lake at the Jordan River temple. So temples do creep into my dreams sometimes. But often my dreams will make some modifications. Bigger, or with a gothic wing added. Hmmm.
[Above photo from a Jerry's sandwich shop near the D.C. Temple. Notice the Wizard of Oz theme appropriately and aptly added. Click on the photo to see a larger version.]
Why do Mormons build temples so close to freeways? The D.C. & Portland temples are right there next to the freeways. Huge buildings with bright lights - easily causing traffic accidents. And yet they won't let you go inside.
To go inside you must agree to:
1. Have no coffee.
2. Have no black tea.
3. Support & sustain past & present leaders, including Joseph Smith, Spencer Kimball, and Thomas Monson.
4. Not engage in oral sex.
5. Not engage in pre-marital sex.
6. Not engage in masturbation.
What an abusive requirements list. No wonder the people who do go inside are often so very anally-retentive.
Pay Lae Ell can go to hell. That's what I decided.
Hey, I remember as a kid in Mormon Sunday School learning John Birch Society conspiratorial stuff, such as:
A. Some day the U.S. Constitution will be hanging by a thread.
B. The Elders of Israel (ie: Mormons) will come to save it.
C. Some day we'll all have to move back to Missouri.
D. When that happens non-Mormons will be able to enter the Salt Lake Temple.
But in any case: Would that be so bad to letting people who aren't anally retentive bass ackward Mormons into the temples?
Hey, oral sex, masturbation, coffee, and cabernet sauvignon wine loving atheist exmormons do get to walk around the Salt Lake Temple, and check out the pretty little door knobs:
Brigham Young came up with the beehive symbol supposedly, the symbol for Utah.
It takes a big beehive to house all the wives of Brigham Young. He had to have TWO houses to house all his wives, the Lion & Beehive house. Hmmm. Plus some of his wives were still married to other men.
Anyway, not everyone who lives in Utah is a fucking Mormon. Attention, this is true!
Yes, some people in Utah like wine, coffee, tea, masturbation, and oral sex! It's true my friend...
Our neural networks are highly mailable. We can be swayed into various memetic-social camps due to various influences including: parental, social, educational, experiential, etc. When within one memetic camp we erect walls of defense to keep from being pulled into another camp. If pulled into another camp, we erect new memetic walls to keep us in the new camp.
I remember my time in Portland as being like an Alice in Wonderland. One of my experience paths involved going to weekly meetings for the new sadly defunct group United States Atheists. At those meetings a very nice man befriended me and we would often go to a nearby bar to talk, with a few of the others from the meetings. Also this man later headed up atheist group monthly visits to the OMSI Science Pub events, in connection with atheist related meetup.com groups & later with the Center For Inquiry, Portland.
Here's another video of my friend (who would go to the USA Atheists meetings & the bar afterward & to the OMSI Science Pub CFI events), from 2009. In that 2009 video he talks about going from being a Christian to an atheist.
Within the past few days from February 4, 2014 I found that my friend has converted back to evangelical Christianity. Here is a related video, and some additional debate notes I found about the issue.
The Mormon & Christian Memetic Whirlpool
Mormons wear nice clothes. That was the first comment from my wife as I drove her around downtown Salt Lake, especially during their General Conferences. But just wearing nice clothes doesn't mean you are happy.
As I have walked with my wife & son around Temple Square, I know she's felt the pull of the Mormon memetic whirlpool. I've felt it too, but I also get a huge icky poo feeling along with. A cult is a group which engages in a few key things:
1. Leader worship.
2. Excommunication of those who disagree - both from your own family if you disagree, and from the cult in general.
3. Active suppression of evidence that may discredit what the leaders are claiming.
4. Putting the cult first, above family & other human relationships.
A cult is an especially strong form of memetic group or camp with especially strong defenses, and strong belief maintenance to keep people in line.
Our path through the forest of competing ideas can result in our being sucked one way or another, based on how we are feeling & what's happening to us at any given time.
So, I won't be returning to Mormonism or Christianity any time soon. Why? Because I remember the deception, the lies, and the pain. I haven't forgotten the lies of the leaders or their hypocrisy.
My related video commentary on this whole situation:
While in Portland I was befriended by a man who went with me to weekly meetings for the now defunct group United States Atheists. After those meetings we often would go to a bar for a chat. Also the man became an organizer for Center for Inquiry, Portland and their past monthly OMSI Science Pub events. Also the man invited me to participate in a cable access TV show called Sciligion.
Here's one example where we're appearing together on the show:
In the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxjSAuLAG48 my friend talks about a differentiation between the the physical and the metaphysical, the normal and the paranormal. For me such differentiations are simply memetic camp defense mechanisms. If some god exists in another dimension as a "spiritual being," he or she or it would still be a physical entity. Does the so-called metaphysical item or entity exist? If the answer is yes then they are physical AKA a real thing with real physical properties.
It's sad that to belong to a human social group we have to a.) suck up to a leader, and b.) state that we believe in one or more joint-lies. Can we change this situation? Can we have human social groups where we don't all have to state that we believe in the joint lies?
When we leave conservative religion we may encounter what is essentially liberal-religion. Many atheist & "free thought" groups are essentially liberal religions. If you don't tow the party line in these liberal flavors of religion you will then undergo a heresy trial, one which almost exactly mirrors the heresy trials of conservative religions. In those trials you will be accused of having held onto tenets from your old religion, concepts which you should have just completely tossed according to them. But the key fallacies in their arguments can be revealed via the following activity: Going to China, where they know nothing about your religion, and see what they believe in & do. Do the same thing in other cultures. Religion is a NATURAL phenomenon, and so even tenets in conservative religion can still be fully natural.
