Mr Deity (aka Brian Dalton) has a laugh at the expense of the Book Of Mormon in the latest episode of Mr Deity. Close to his heart – he’s a former Mormon (or FoMo) himself as you would already know if you listened to my interview with him back in 2007.
Seriously though – my dear Mormons – your book is so far removed from historical fact – how do you take it seriously?
I’ve been wondering lately about why we are so deeply affected by stories about religious martyrs.
I’m guessing it goes back to worshipping bronze age gods and deciding to sacrifice a prized calf or first-born daughter in return for a bountiful crop or success in the battlefield. The person willing to sacrifice their child (or themselves) was doing it for the good of the tribe and we learned to treat them as holy figures. Fast forward a few thousand years and people still go weak for the idea of “he died for our sins”. It seems to have a very powerful effect on their Paleomammalian brain.
I was thinking about the Mormons yesterday and postulating that one of the reasons their particular cult survived was because Joseph Smith was assassinated and martyred. Religious types like nothing more than a martyr.
Sam Harris wrote about blood sacrifice in his afterword to “Letter To A Christian Nation”:
Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. Countless children have been unlucky enough to be born in so dark an age, when ignorance and fantasy were indistinguishable from knowledge and where the drumbeat of religious fanaticism kept perfect time with every human heart. In fact, almost no culture has been exempt from this evil: the Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Canaanites, Maya, Inca, Aztecs, Olmecs, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Teutons, Celts, Druids, Vikings, Gauls, Hindus, Thais, Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians, Maoris, Melanesias, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Balinese, Australian aborigines, Iroquois, Huron, Cherokee, and innumerable other societies ritually murdered their fellow human beings because they believed that invisible gods and goddesses, having an appetite for human flesh, could be so propitiated. Many of their victims were of the same opinion, in fact, and went willingly to slaughter, fully convinced that their deaths would transform the weather, or cure the king of his venereal disease, or in some other way spare their fellows the wrath of the Unseen.
The Ca$holics of course take it a step further. They literally believe (well, they are supposed to) that they are eating the actual flesh of Jesus when they take communion. Holy Cannibalism, Batman! It’s a wonder there aren’t religions devoted to Hannibal Lecter. Oh no, wait, he’s the eatER, not the eatEE.
So anyway, I’m interested in understanding more about the evolutionary reasons for our fascination with blood sacrifice. If anyone knows anything about it, please educate me. Oh and I’ve started a Branch on the topic, too.
My guest today is Brad Heitmann. Brad lives in Utah, has a background in investment banking and start-up strategy and loves history. Today, however, he joins me to talk about his religion – The Church Of Latter Day Saints aka Mormons. To all those people asking me for years “when are you going to a show about Mormons” – you can now shut the hell up.
Brad and I discuss the life of the founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith – I especially wanted to focus on his trial for being a conman (he was found guilty), his polygamy and the reasons behind his eventual murder. We also discuss the methods by which we search for Truth.
I’d like to thank Brad for having the balls to come on the show. He was a good sport and I hope he takes me up on my offer to come back soon. You can follow him on Twitter @bradheitmann
If you’re interested in the Mormon religion, here’s a few links I recommend:
MormonThink.com
Wikipedia’s many entries on LDS
Reddit’s Ex-Mormon Group
The Annotated Book Of Mormon
I caught up with a guy for a cigar last night and, as usual, we ended up talking about politics and philosophy. I mentioned that I believe Australians (well…. white Australians) are the luckiest people who have ever lived in all of human history (about 107 billion according to a recent estimate). We are one of the wealthiest countries per capita and live in a country with one of the lowest densities per capita. We have very low unemployment, very low rates of violence and pretty good political stability.
And yet… most people don’t seem to FEEL lucky. They bitch and moan constantly. They have been imbued with this sense that they don’t have enough, they should have more, they aren’t keeping up with the Joneses. It’s a sign of a sick society.
Anyhoo, the point being that we, as the luckiest people who have ever lived, have a responsibility to help out the less fortunate.
Here’s a great video that demonstrates how far we, as a species, have come in the last 200 years.
I totally endorse this rant by Penn Jillette. Sure, what Mormons (and Scientologists) believe sounds batshit crazy to most of us. But is it really any crazier than what mainstream Christians, Jews or Muslims believe? Hell no. “Just more modern, not more crazy”, as Penn says.
I’m as confused as Penn is about how otherwise intelligent-sounding people can just spout crazy stuff and act like it’s totally normal. It’s especially scary when you hear it from politicians, the people who are supposedly running the country. Surely there should be a sanity test that you have to pass before you can be elected to public office.
We understand and accept this fact in sport. I tell my kids all the time “every member of the team is important”.
The same is true in socio-economics. The CEO can’t run a billion dollar company without the rest of the employees. The brilliant entrepreneur can’t bring that new gadget to market without the people who sweep the streets, pick up the garbage, grow the food, staff the supermarket, wait tables, and manage the petrol station. It’s all a giant web of interrelation. If we all need each other to make the whole damn thing work, then we should share the profit as well. This whole bizarre idea that the people who run companies or invent something deserve the 1% because they worked harder or are smarter is complete bullshit and easily falsifiable. I love Ayn Rand’s book, but the premise of Atlas Shrugged works both ways. Yes – when the entrepreneurs pack their bags and move to an island, society feels their loss. But if the rest of society up and left the entrepreneurs alone on the mainland, how long do you think they would survive on their own, without anyone to sweep the streets, grow the food and, by the way, BUY THEIR WONDERFUL PRODUCTS?
We all need each other. As Lester Freamon might say “All the pieces matter”.