www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Mormon belief

Mormonism is a cult. It if were directly of the Devil, it would be less goofy.

Some of the "history" to which Mormonism subscribes is false, and proven so by archeology, to say nothing of ordinary common sense.

I say, if the Devil or some other deceptive spirit were behind it, he would have had the good sense not to say there had been elephants and steel chariots in pre-columbian North America.

I consider the whole matter to have been a fraud by a chap who mostly wanted to get a lot of other chaps' wives into his bed.

I have to agree. I think Joseph Smith was a man with a good imagination and a charismatic personality. Mormonism is interesting, though. They have an answer for every imaginable theological question. Nothing is left to mystery at all.

Which prompts me to bring up the following question: Why don't Byzantine Catholics or Orthodox Christians go door-to-door as Mormons do?

I dare say there is no such thing as a totally false religion. Even stopped clocks are correct twice a day.

But, I have found it very insulting, infuriating and degrading when people have labeled my Church as a cult. Consequently, I do not want to insult the Mormons by using that word to describe their sincere and honestly-held religious beliefs. I respect their sincerity and the freedom of anyone to become or remain a member of the LDS Church. I admire them for the social good works they do; for their promotion of alcohol and tobacco-free lifestyles, for their zeal in promoting their beliefs (although I lament some of those beliefs) and for their concerns about pro-life, pro-family causes (although their doctrinal motivations are quite different to ours).

Still, I am highly critical of the LDS Church & it's unique teachings. They are unique precisely in that they deviate considerably from main-line Christianity; particularly from Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

The N.T. speaks of not only "THE" anti-christ but of many. And so if there are multiple manifestations of the anti-christ, so too are there anti-scriptures (Koran, Bk. of Mormon, etc.) and anti-sacraments (abortion is the anti-sacrament of Baptism, for example).

While we none of us can know for sure how Mormonism originated, we can know for sure that it didn't originate with the One True God, the Most Blessed Trinity. Mormonism denies the belief in that particular God we Catholics and Orthodox worship. If an angel was involved in the alleged visions of Joseph Smith, my personal opinion is that it was a fallen angel, in other words, a demon disguised as a good angel.

Check out Galatians 1: 6-9. It's a good place to start when we contemplate Mormon doctrines.

You admire them for promoting an alcohol-free and tobacco-free lifestyle? Really? I don't. That's got to be the worst of Mormonism. I mean, if they want to go around wearing secret holy underpants and marrying three and four women half their ages, I can understand it. I don't agree with it all, but it is a human kind of thing with which at least I can identify. But this no tobacco or alcohol thing is just right off the rails. It's inhuman.

But yes, every one I have known has been upstanding and impressive in his moral example.

Mormonism is a fully self-contained belief system that is internally logical but collapses completely when tested again any form of external truth. That our God is a man who lived a correct life on a planet that clearly does not exist should be enough to raise questions to any rational person. That there is clear proof that significant portions of the Book of Mormon were copied from other popular books of the day must raise some kinds of questions. And as someone mentioned the beliefs about the origin of native Americans which clearly contradict archeology and genetics as well as common sense have to be a serious obstacle to any rational person.

On the other hand one has to believe these are people who have great faith. It would have to take an immense faith to continue to believe what Mormons believe in the face of such obvious contradictory evidence. But as a friend of mine who was a Mormon Bishop told me when I asked about this, You either believe all of it or you believe none of it. We often hear similar comments about fundamentalist bible literalists. That if they question one word of the bible then the whole bible becomes false.

I never question the sincerity or the faith of Mormons. I don't question their commitment to family values or high moral standards. None of that prevents me from viewing their theology and historical interpretations as being utterly absurd and completely alien to the truth. I don't believe for a minute that there was any angel named Moroni. I firmly believe that Mormonism is a completely human fabrication begun by a delusional young man and refined by layer upon layer of "revelations" created by the church elite to address every new situation.

A good place to start trying to understand the cauldron that Mormonism came out of is to read about the so-called Burned Over District in New York in the middle of the 1800's. Mormonism was not the only bizarre movement to come out of there it just was the most successful one.

Jim,

Very true. And if one is at all familiar with the Burned Over District, it's easy to understand how anything that made life a bit more 'interesting' could gain a foothold. Even today, a century and a half plus later, much of it is a remarkably desolate and foreboding area devoid of almost anything that smacks of social living.

Having spent four years driving through large pieces of it while chauffering my eldest to and from college, I was constantly struck by the isolation that still pervades in the miniscule towns along the upper border of NY State. Not at all hard to see why those who embraced Mormonism, the Millerites, the Fox Sisters, and the utopian communities that flourished there, did so. What else did they have to do? While it might have been fertile ground for mainstream religious bodies as well, I suspect that it was generally so poorly populated as to not seem worth the investment of time and resources.

Many years,

Neil

Neil

I must say I prefer Saranac Lake. Maybe beauty is the anecdote to boredom there.

Jim

What qualifies a religious group as a cult?
Is there a set of common parameters that people agree upon.
There are fundamentalists that call Catholicism a cult. This mostly comes from Seventh Day Adventists and others on the fringe.
What's in a name?

For example, they deny the Trinity. Anathema
Their early disciples taught that each of the saved would be become like gods and given a planet (yes, a planet) to rule over. Alien
They baptize the dead through proxy. Heresy

Whether Mormonism is a cult or a religion is a matter of semantics: They are not Christian.

Good point. When I try to explain that the fact that we Orthodox and the Catholic church do not regard Mormons as 'Christians' I either get strange looks or dumb arguments.

For example, Chris Matthews on MSNBC, a man well educated by the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits I believe (LaSalle HS in Philly and Holy Cross College in Worcester,MA), really disparages those evangelical ministers who are making an issue out of that. Yet, as a schooled Catholic - he ought to know that since the fourth century AD and Nicea you are not Christian if you deny the Incarantion as defined by the Fathers and deny the Trinity.

That being said, it doesn't mean Mormons are bad people or that one shouldn't vote for a Mormon on that basis. What is disengenous on their part however is their insistance on being called a Christian denomination.