I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
As a historian, here are just a few issues I have with the Book of Mormon and the whole tale:
National Geographic Society has stated that they’ve never found any evidence from the Book of Mormon. The cities Joseph Smith names have never been found. He mentions writing systems; none have been found. He mentions coinage; none have ever been found. He talks of great battles being fought, yet no graves, no weapons, nothing has been found. He mentions horses and steel, which didn’t exist in the ancient Americas. He mentions a temple like Solomon’s built be the Nephites. It has never been found. In fact, he claims they are lost tribes of Israel, Jewish people. Jews can’t have a temple anywhere on earth but the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The whole tale is fanciful! Why anyone believes it is a great mystery to me.
LDS is not part of Christianity.
In the interest of being tolerant and nice, we've let this nonsense claim persist for too long.
When you take elements of one religion and then pile up a bunch of contradicting novel elements on top of them, you've created something else.
Which is fine. But Mormons need to move on and stop the charade that they're part of Christendom.
Sure, one or two heretical claims wouldn't necessarily place it outside Christianity, but polygamy enthusiast Joseph Smith loaded up his sect with claims that God was once a man (and is married to a female goddess), Jesus and Satan are brothers, there are an infinite number of gods, there is no original sin, and that every historic Christian creed should be rejected.
And when you add stuff like the planet Kolob, baptizing the dead, special underwear, an ancient Israelite presence in the US (along with the "Egyptian" language and Jesus himself)... well, you get the idea.
I was raised Mormon and it took me a long time to understand how fundamentally different it is from historic Christianity. Even as recently as 3 years ago, I didn't get why it was a big deal that we didn't believe in the Trinity
Mormon theology does not present God as an "uncaused cause", existence itself, the "Logos". In Mormonism, God *is* a "man in the sky", a created being, someone who was once human but is now exalted within our known universe. This opens up a lot of problems imo. For example: what happens when death and evil are overcome on our planet, and you reach exaltation? You are now a God of a new universe/planet to create a new race of humanity and evil arises all over again and the drama continues into eternity? There is no message of the ultimate overcoming of death/evil as in historic Christianity
In all my childhood and young adult instruction in the LDS church, I never learned that Jesus was "God in the flesh" or anything like that. Jesus really was taught as a distinct BEING from God the Father (who again... Is a *created being*). It is a fundamentally different Christ that is believed and worshipped.
NEW: @GregAbbott_TX says the spread of New World screwworm into Texas poses an “imminent threat” of widespread damage to the state's livestock industry and economy.
He's now declared a disaster for all 254 Texas counties.