The Book of Mormon

Seriously, I've only heard the soundtrack and seen a couple of interviews but holy shit. Nine Tony awards and a fucking hell of a soundtrack. I so badly want to see this thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tggtPHDmrR8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjBi1eEaAA

The blonde-haired, blue-eyed gift of God!

i was like "this is moderately funny" until that line "i believe that in 1978 god changed his mind about black people" after that i was lollin

fuckin mormons. that whole 1978 thing was one of the big "okay, getting the fuck outta this religion" things.

ps i still hate musical theater

Second one is fairly funny, hakuna mutata was just asking for a send up

  On 6/25/2011 at 4:40 PM, disparaissant said:

i was like "this is moderately funny" until that line "i believe that in 1978 god changed his mind about black people" after that i was lollinfuckin mormons. that whole 1978 thing was one of the big "okay, getting the fuck outta this religion" things.

  On 6/25/2011 at 4:49 PM, disparaissant said:

ps i still hate musical theater

I endorse the viewpoint expressed in both of these posts.

yeah this looks totally awesome for sure. lets hope it will stick around for a while

  On 6/25/2011 at 4:49 PM, disparaissant said:

ps i still adore musical theater

Sadly i either have to wait until this hits the westend or fork out for a ticket to Newyork....

I enjoy musical theatre and have a morbid fascination with mormons and religion in general so this thing is sucking my dick and making me so happy.

Thanks for the heads up about this. Hasa Diga Eebowai

At first, I didn't get some of the jokes of the "I Believe" vid, mainly because I realized I don't know anything about Mormons. I don't think many Europeans do. We might have heard about the polygamy thing, but no further than that. There's barely any mention/jokes of it in American shows/movies. Why's that?

I looked up some things, and... seriously? Jesus appeared in America? The Jospeh Smith golden plates bullshit story? God is a dude with eternal life residing on some planet, and after you die, you'll also become a god with your very own planet? Did I get that right?

I once read that mormonism is like "the bible + fan fiction" ... didn't know how true that was.

But I'm (also morbidly) fascinated! Can anyone fill me up on more details about Mormonism and what they really believe in? Skimming wikipedia is tiresome, they seemed to have filled it up with extensive information about the history, and long articles that don't quickly get to the point.

Also, I've been playing this song a few times, it's so fucking catchy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BO46-7jymA

edit: i still hate musicals, but i really want to see this. hope the show comes out on dvd. or maybe a movie version?

Yes. It's easier to just not think about logic and using your brain when it comes to Mormons.

  On 6/26/2011 at 11:53 AM, triachus said:

words

ahh that hello one is good, the way he says "AWWWWesome" is just so perfectly mormon

here are some bullet points to fill you in:

-basically christian except no belief in the trinity - god is separate from jesus is separate from the holy ghost. also don't believe in original sin.

-jesus magically teleported between the middle east and america so he could teach all the people in the world after his resurrection.

-what we know as native americans today where actually at one point israelites who came across the ocean in some boats some time around 600 or so BC

-they used to be white because white is a good colour to be but they rejected god and lost all their magnificent technology (the wheel, iron, steel, etc.) and had their skin turn the ruddy brown of nonbelievers (i was adopted and raised mormon and am 1/4-1/2 native so this was a weird point for me as a kid)

-this split the peoples of the americas into two warring factions, nephites (good, white god-believers) and lamanites. the lamanites won in the end, at least.

-the last nephite, moroni, wrote down/compiled a long history of all of this garbage on gold plates and put them in the ground near palmyra, new york.

-some 1300 years later he appeared to joe smith - a known charlatan who sold fake "mystical artifacts" and doused (unsuccessfully) for water for local farmers - and told him where to find these plates. i guess he showed up a couple times, starting from when joe was 14.

-joe read the plates with mystical goggle-stones called "urim" and "thumim." sometimes he read the book while it was in a hat, sometimes behind a curtain. in the end only 12 people ever claimed they saw these mystical plates, and a lot of them were related in some way to joe. conveniently, only 12 people saw it because - no joke - those twelve people were the only people capable of seeing the plates. they were invisible to everyone else. god made it that way. so it must be true, right?

-at one point, he lent the partially translated book of lehi to a friend. the manuscript went missing. now, if this stuff were true, what would have happened? he would have just retranslated the bit he translated and it would have been word-for-word to the original presumably stolen by nonbelievers manuscript. that'd shut em up! but nope, god told joe that he should not translate that part again because the nonbelievers would mangle his words and point out the differences and make a mockery of THE LORD so he should just skip the book of lehi and go on to the book of nephi which, to quote the south park episode about mormonism, tells "pretty much the same story, just worded a bit differently." for some reason, this is a giant faith boosting story, which i never understood, even when i was real young.

-after a bit joe realized he could get away with a lot because people were actually believing him so he brought up the idea of polygamy (or "plural marriage" as the mormons like to call it) and started marrying other women. mostly in secret (his wife hated the idea) and a lot of the time he was marrying other people's wives which didn't make him any friends. except his closest friends, who also got all the good wives and shit. anyways, it's probably stuff like this that caused the persecution the mormons faced because i mean really, that's pretty fucked up. so he got arrested and put in jail and a mob showed up and shot him to death. sooooooo he's a martyr.

-then brigham "bring 'em" young became the new prophet after a bit of infighting, and decided that, being that joe was now dead because of an angry mob and everyone in illinois hated them and was out to get them (there was an incident somewhere near there that involved a shootout and other stuff) they should head out west! so they did. and the ended up near the great salt lake. hence salt lake city. then they pretty much went apeshit with the whole plural marriage thing (brigham had like 55 wives i think? at least 55.) basically, if you were rich or high up in the church you were swimming in wives.

-i guess i could go on with the history but i won't. in short, in the late 1890s, the mormon church gave up polygamy, ostensibly because god told them to, though more realistically it was because they were pretty much surrounded by US territory at that point, and the US government wouldn't let them become a state unless they stopped with the creepy plural marriages thing, and if they couldn't become a state they would probably get invaded so god's timing was bang on with that one.

-oh right also black people are the cursed spawn of cain and weren't allowed in the church for a long time until, in another display of epic timing, god decided that maaaaaybe black people weren't all that bad so let's let them have the priesthood how about? that was in 1978 and was well timed as the naacp was starting to make waves about the exclusionary practices of mormonism.

-a lot of this stuff is pretty much a "don't talk about it" kind of thing with mormons. like, if i bring up the "no black people" thing to my dad, he won't deny it, but he will be visibly uncomfortable. so if you know any annoying mormons bring up how racist the church is a lot, it'll shut em up.

oh and as for the reason you rarely see mormons brought up - they do actually have quite a lot of clout. every member gives a minimum 10% of their income (AFTER TAXES) directly to the lord the church. a lot of that money has been very well invested, i think the lds church owns quite a bit of pepsico and quite a few other companies. it's essentially a for-profit organisation at this point...

here's a fun quote for you

"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so"

-brigham young, racist, polygamist, and hero to mormons everywhere

oh dammit important part left out

they believe in getting baptised as a proxy for a dead person.

so like, you go to the temple, and you get baptised in someone else's name

and then do a bunch of rituals in their name

and they go from "spirit prison" aka purgatory

to one of the lower two heavens. (there are three, to get into the highest one - and get a planet - you need to have been mormon in life and gotten married in a temple [and arguably, practised polygamy. it's in the texts but is conveniently ignored])

this caused a huge uproar when they started getting baptised for holocaust victims because i mean godDAMN that's a little insensitive.

it is also where the mormon focus on genealogy comes from - your father's father's father's father couldn't have been mormon because it wasn't around then, so he's not in mormon heaven so you go and get baptised for him and whatnot.

hell (aka outer darkness) is just being cast into darkness, after meeting god. and it's reserved solely for apostates. so in the incredibly unlikely event that mormonism turns out to be the one true religion, well. outer darkness for me!

Wow! I knew a mormon kid in highschool. He was about as interesting as a piece of plain, white toast. This makes him seem a lot less boring.

  On 6/26/2011 at 3:57 PM, Candiru said:

Wow! I knew a mormon kid in highschool. He was about as interesting as a piece of plain, white toast. This makes him seem a lot less boring.

honestly, to this day, that is the weirdest thing about mormonism to me. they all seem so normal and nice, but boring as hell. it's like stepford wives or something. but behind closed doors they're hating on gay people and praying to their space lord. it's just such a bizarre juxtaposition.

If anybody's reading this thread that has a real interest in learning about the Mormon religion, I suggest the following:

- read the actual Book of Mormon

- hang out with some Mormons to get to know them (they're good peeps, even though they may not drink with you)

This is always better than reading anti-Mormon half truths on the Internet or talking with Mormon haters. There are a lot of religions out there that believe some seriously wacky things, but for some reason the Mormon religion always gets the lion's share of the hater miasma on the web.

Peace

If you had read the thread you would know that an actual mormon just posted all that stuff. The only even possibly "anti-mormon" one was her. (which she wasn't. she was just giving some background info) everyone else in this thread was merely curious or amused. Don't interpret for

I did read the whole thread, and I doubt disparraisant would even consider herself Mormon at this point. Based on your response, you are obviously not part of the target audience for my comment. If you disagree and are genuinely curious, then you should realize I was making a good suggestion rather than running to disparraisant's defense, when I wasn't even directly attacking her.

i have a huge family in salt lake city on my dad's side

no polygamy though

I don't hate mormons at all but you can't be angry at me for laughing at them. I laugh at every one. Mormons just... it's just not something i can't take seriously. There is nothing wrong with Mormon people and I never wanted to make others think that. I know plenty of Mormons! They kind of weird me out but they are decent and kind human beings. But seriously, lol. And lol at religion in general. Not in offence, but in joy. Also, do some research on this musical.

Scientology is modern Mormonism when it comes to level of crazy. You'll never see a cross in any Mormon temple, none of them

The problem with calling Scientology bullshit and a cult, is that it makes Mormonism the same thing, then really that could open the flood gate for any organized religion to be called such.

When thinking about it, all religions truly are based on bullshit. Unfortunately, I'll never get to see the day when all people stop believing stupid bullshit they're fed as a little kid.

Dualism is bullshit too.

  On 6/27/2011 at 6:02 AM, tronicphace said:

If anybody's reading this thread that has a real interest in learning about the Mormon religion, I suggest the following:

- read the actual Book of Mormon

- hang out with some Mormons to get to know them (they're good peeps, even though they may not drink with you)

 

This is always better than reading anti-Mormon half truths on the Internet or talking with Mormon haters. There are a lot of religions out there that believe some seriously wacky things, but for some reason the Mormon religion always gets the lion's share of the hater miasma on the web.

 

Peace

Not gonna argue that Mormons aren't good people, the majority of Mormons I know are great, just kind of boring and frankly their beliefs are outright whacky.

But honestly, this isn't half truth. It's all there. Not so much in the BoM (though the natives = sinners thing certainly is) but in Doctrine and Covenants, Journal of Discourses, The Pearl of Great Price, basically all the books that they don't really advertise to non-members.

And you're right, I'm definitely not a Mormon anymore. Well, technically I am still on church rolls, but that's a long, complicated story. But I was raised with this stuff, my parents are incredibly active with the church. My dad's a bigwig, my mom taught seminary. I'm not just regurgitating stuff I read on some anti-mormon website, i'm just throwing out the stuff that made me question everything in the first place.

  On 6/27/2011 at 6:02 AM, tronicphace said:

There are a lot of religions out there that believe some seriously wacky things, but for some reason the Mormon religion always gets the lion's share of the hater miasma on the web.

it's new, so it's easier to recognize it as bullshit.

on the flip side tho, props to joseph smith for being all like "why is prophecy a dead art? I'll just make some crazy shit up and see if people believe it."

he's laughing all the way to the bank.