Mitt Romney for President -- Part Something plus One

You have lost me big time on the Genesis question. I can't see any room for cohabitation between the science of evolution and " the God created the world in 6 days". From what you are saying, the Mormons believe that both options are possible, but we just don;t know?
So basically, Noah's Ark is still a believable story for you (i.e. the mormon church)?

To get back on the response from yesterday about the posthumous baptism issue, while I appreciate the Mormons generosity and willingness to have everyone joining them in "heaven", I still find it totally disrespectful and reprehensible, particularly for people of different faith (christian, Jewish or buddhist for instance) who have strong views about their dead and the life after death.

Finally, while I agree with you that most if not all religions have their own rather unsavory stories with regard to race relations, I guess we can agree that mormonism may have been the slowest and perhaps the last one of the major organized religions to come to terms with their "shortcomings", (in lack of a better word..) on that matter.

To get back to the Romney campaign, just read this pretty interesting tidbit.

"No one in Boston thinks this can only be about the economy anymore."

-- A Romney campaign adviser, quoted by BuzzFeed."

So basically, 7 weeks before elections day, they are about to push the reset button.
That is a pretty staggering admission that their strategy is not working when their whole
campaign was based on "the economy, stupid" message. They are totally inept.
I guess at this point the strategy will be " let's throw everything against the wall and hope something may stick"
I have mentioned before, the Obama campaign seems to be playing chess, while the Boston folks
are still playing checkers.

More like tic-tac-toe.

This. The practice shows a level of arrogance and disregard for an individual's free will that I find to be irretrievably disgusting. Not to mention it's a ********ing mean-spirited thing to do to the deceased's family.

This absolutely baffles me. Its like people fear there will be cooties attached...

Either the Mormons are wrong, in which case nothing they do will have any impact on the deceased at all-- or they are right, and someone who was previously screwed will get a shot at salvation.

I suppose it is arrogant in a way, but it is generous as well. If Donald Trump contracts to pay me a million if he ever makes a trillion, I won't hold my breath, and it won't make me think much better of him-- but its hard to see why it would be scary or offensive. He's arrogant for sure, but there are more meaningful manifestations to object to.

Or do you think God will punish your Grandma for Mormons taking an interest in her?

If you posthumously baptize my dad into your faith, you're showing utter disregard for the concepts of freedom of and freedom from religion. Considering the number of people who've died in the name of god, the way the ultra-religious have co-opted our national debate, and the fact that atheists basically can't even run for office in the US, it baffles me that more people aren't incredibly upset by this.

No, it's not generous. It's arrogant and fatuous and contemptuous of humanity.

I'll defend their right to do do it, of course. But I think it's scumtastic.

It's not about fearing the result, or thinking that harm will come from it. I think what Matrim is describing is offense at being disrespected. And it is disrespectful, although Mormons obviously believe the opposite. It shows a lack of regard for the desires of the deceased and the desires of the living survivors. The dead person made his choices about religion while living. It's not right to choose things for other people without their permission, even if you're choosing heaven for them.

Well, yes, that's the sense in which it seems arrogant. But at the risk of sounding obtuse--

I also get that most of the folks who find it so will not know or find out enough to recognise that the theory is that Granpa will get another chance to express his free will and turn down heaven in favor of the void.

But still, its pretty much Paschal's wager, only the other guy is placing the bet for you, isn't it? If you really prefer perdition to accepting that Smith and Young weren't crazy, what does that say about you? (Let alone preferring perdition for your Mom?)

I'm old enough to have been told tales of Japanese aviators who drowned themselves rather than be rescued by the US Navy; tales from people who witnessed it. This response seems rather the same sort of thing to me.

If a religious group wanted to dress up your dead grandfather as a female hooker because they thought it would get him a chance to go to heaven, would you feel okay with that?

The point is that it's a matter of sensibility.

Of course it is-- but we're not talking about messing with burial rituals. It's not going to affect our memories of the funeral or the or records of the person. No one is changing the census record to claim that grandad was a Mormon not an atheist, or singing Mormon Hymns at the grave. (If it is my maternal grandfather, though, any help at all would be good-- no matter the cost.)

We're talking about something that happens out of sight and sense of the family aren't we? So it'd be more like talking behind one's back, only there's no ill-speaking involved.

Or am I misunderstanding something?

You definitely are misunderstanding something if you can't see how offensive and insensitive it is.

If a Mormon baptizes my grandfather in a forest and I never hear about it, should I be offended?

These religions are all superstitious as hell, so any sort of voodoo any other religion is doing to pull you to their side postmortem is playing the role of the devil to whatever god you have allegiance to. They are seriously endangering your immortal soul, and what could be more offensive than that?

Pascal's wager is also hopelessly naive by its own lights. Due diligence to avoid hell would involve not only getting your behind covered in the 21 major religions, but also in basically every assertion on an afterlife by every sect, cult, and lone prophet's assertion ever made and committed to writing, or still translatable by living transmission. You'd have to visit the stone age enclaves in the Amazon, and on an island off of India, and somehow pry the rituals out of them without being summarily killed. And even then the odds are that the true transmissions were lost in the massacre of a peaceful proto human group sometime in prehistory and there is no longer any technical knowledge of the secret sounds that grant admission to heaven.

Ismitje, I have a question going back to where this whole discussion started (or near it anyway). Someone was talking about being on a water taxi and a Mormon family discussing how they would never go into the water because Satan lives there. Is this correct?

I am cool with anything Mormons want to believe. I spent a little time in Provo when a friend of mine was at BYU. While I found some things to be quirky, I am all for people believing what they want to believe and then I respect when that belief is practiced as it was by the students and faculty at the university.

This is what troubles me politically. The oceans are a part of an intricate ecosystem. You really can't untie them from the rest of the planet and life as we know it. Understanding the science of the oceans (which is light years behind our understanding of much above sea level) is critical going forward. So, in this context (if true) I view Mitt's little joke about Obama stopping the oceans rise in a whole new light. More importantly, I think this belief can impact what Mitt might believe about climate change and the science surrounding it. Curious as to your thoughts.

Thanks for taking the time to explain a lot of this stuff. I have stayed away from being critical of Romney's faith and I don't like the jokes associated with the faith, although I freely admit that I really don't have much of an understanding of the Mormon faith. Your description of the symbols on the undergarments strikes me as not much different than a Catholic wearing a scapular.

There is one more thing about the Romney campaign that I think is a drag on his efforts, even if this is nitpicking.

Every time you hear mention of his campaign, it is, "a source in Boston," or "word out of Boston" or "there is concern in Boston." I realize Mitt was the Governor of Massachusetts and his roots and resources are there, but I have to think that in a base-driven election, that word "Boston" must be like finger nails on a blackboard for his base. Perhaps there was a much better choice available. Maybe something in Virginia would have made sense given its proximity to Washington and its status as a swing state?

Again, he won't win or lose on this, but I think the continual references to "Boston" when talking about the Romney campaign can't really be firing up the base.

Given your posts on Freddy Adu, I'm very, very shocked at your atheism. If there's any poster here whom I thought would believe in a higher power, it would be you.

It appears to be too late to edit my post above, but in an effort to invalidate the entirety of the Mormon religion, I would simply note that Dick Cheney and his evil spawn Liz do NOT live in the ocean.

Will the undecided simply tune out the increasingly inescapable noise from the late campaign ad barrage?

Anyone want to discuss how RMoney's campaign is imploding and that the info is leaking to the press?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81280.html

The mute button is getting a lot of use in our house.

This is good stuff. I want to see Game Change 2:

Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, knew his candidate’s convention speech needed a memorable mix of loft and grace if he was going to bound out of Tampa with an authentic chance to win the presidency. So Stevens, bypassing the speechwriting staff at the campaign’s Boston headquarters, assigned the sensitive task of drafting it to Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican White Houses and one of the party’s smarter wordsmiths.

Not a word Wehner wrote was ever spoken.

Stevens junked the entire thing, setting off a chaotic, eight-day scramble that would produce an hour of prime-time problems for Romney, including Clint Eastwood’s meandering monologue to an empty chair.

It's a good thing that we barely watch live TV at my place... We get to skip most ads using the DVR...


It is also handy to enjoy/suffer WCQ games without knowing the results...

Such is life in a purple state, eh? Ain't nothing happening in Illinois, I couldn't find a political ad if I searched.