quote:It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. .... The Book of Mormon, when it is not "chloroform in print" as Mark Twain unkindly phrased it, is full of vicious ingenuity.
Mad cult?? Convicted fraud (convicted by those who arranged his death by mob!)?? Supporting the allegation that the push-poll that maligned him to New Hampshire voters was started by Romney himself?? Are they not even pretending to be unbiased anymore?
I don't care about Romney politically and anyone attacking him for the switching views can knock themselves out and that's fine, but considering Slate's major beef against him seems to be his religion, this really bothers me.
[ November 26, 2007, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: Javert Hugo ]
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Oh, never mind. It's Christopher Hitchens. The knee-jerk, anti-religious vituperation is his bread-and-butter game.
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Isn't there a lot of evidence suggesting that the Romney campaign did comission that push poll? If I recall correctly, it was done by a Utah firm that has several prominent Romney donators to it, using a phone line that has been traced to people the Romney campaign paid around $1 million for consulting work and has been used for other Romney campaign calls?
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Scott, I agree. I wish he would too. Maybe he's saving it for later? I don't know.
Mostly, it was the rhetoric about the church that bothered me. Not that he says it, but that a news organization would put their editorial weight behind calling the church a "mad cult."
It helps that his name is up there, though. Since he says the same thing about all religion and proudly, it discredits this column specifically.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I wish Romney would answer questions about Mormonism.
Me too especially so that ridiculous publications, peppered with out right lies and half-truths, would be given less serious consideration.
edit: Maybe he is not confident in what sorts of questions he ought to field in regards to Mormonism. Being asked if Mormons believe the Garden of Eden is in Missouri seems pretty pointless IMO.
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: Why is that pointless? Why that question in particular, I mean?
How does that question have any bearing on whether Mitt Romney's beliefs will effect his presidency? It's like asking any other candidate with Christian beliefs if he/she really believes that the tomb preportedly to be the tomb of Jesus is the ACTUAL tomb.
edit: Or asking a Jew if they really think the Ark of the Covenant is perhaps hidden somewhere in Palestine.
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Mormons believe that Eden-- insofar as it was a literal place-- was in Missouri.
Joe Normal, hearing the answer to this question (heck, even hearing the question at all, and the implied answer in it), will be led to think Mormons have some strange beliefs. Joe Normal, presumably will be more inclined to think of Romney as not-presidential-material because of his weird religious beliefs.
It's true-- in comparison to run-of-the-mill Christianity, we're pretty weird.
HOWEVER-- Romney could, and SHOULD, turn such questions around to point out that all religions are weird when viewed from the outside, and that a particular religious doctrine doesn't necessarily detract from the believer.
"Yes. Mormons believe that, insofar as the garden of Eden was a literal place, it was in Missouri. We also believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Elijah raised the widow's dead child, and that Christ was resurrected. Also, I bet I get more questions about my underwear than any Victoria Secret model, ever, and there's just something...wrong with that. I'm sexy and all, but really..."
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The implication that there exist Mormons who are not "mere rank and file" Mormons is extremely weird.
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I think the Garden of Eden in Missouri is a couple of orders of magnitude more bizzare than the Jesus' tomb thing (edit: misread what was written).
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: edit: Maybe he is not confident in what sorts of questions he ought to field in regards to Mormonism. Being asked if Mormons believe the Garden of Eden is in Missouri seems pretty pointless IMO.
It is pointless in that there should be no religious test for any elected office.
However, it isn't pointless if you want to hear a presidential candidate say something silly.
And by 'silly', I mean only by comparison. Most Americans are familiar with Christian theology, and so nothing in there sounds particularly silly at least in part because we're used to hearing it.
Very few Americans, relatively, have heard of the tenets of LDS theology. And so "the garden of eden is in Missouri" will strike people as silly. And to some people, a president who says or believes silly things is not a good president.
The same thing happened when they asked Dennis Kucinich if he saw a UFO.
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Make sure you get to page 2 where the defenses are made. And, of course, keep in mind that NRO has it's own political agenda.
From what I can see, there's a possibility that what Squick says is correct. But more likely than not this is just what happens when one of the largest polling firms (which services hundreds of clients, including candidates competing against each other) is based in Utah.
I mean if we wanted to take the conspiracy a step further...
What if one of Romney's competitors (or an anti-Romney freelancer) commissioned the push poll knowing that the company had all these ties to the Romney campaign and that they could then foment a reverse scandal.
I'm not saying that that's the case at all. That would take a certain level of sophistication that I'm not sure any of the campaigns have. But it's just to say that if you let circumstantial evidence about any campaign be a deciding factor, then your probably aren't giving the candidate his due. I mean, I probably should give Giuliani a closer look instead of just dismissing because of the Bernie Kerik business.
Frankly, I hope Romney loses so we can be done with all the silly Mormon coverage. I also would have liked to see a Republican candidate I could get behind (moderate social views, strong foreign policy experience/interest, fiscal conservative, semi-libertarian*).
As weird as it sounds to me, I think John Edwards is the only candidate I'd consider voting for right now.
*Which is not to say that these accurately reflect my views but they do describe the type of Republican candidate I'd probably find appealing.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I think the Garden of Eden in Missouri is a couple of orders of magnitude more bizzare than the Jesus' tomb thing, assuming that you just made a mistake and aren't using a trick question (i.e. Jesus, by traditional Christian belief wouldn't be buried anywhere).
He laid in a tomb during 3 seperate days. So there is a tomb out there somewhere.
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Yeah, somehow I thought you were implying he was still buried in it. I edited my earlier comment.
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I think maybe the best analog would be if there were a Scientologist candidate running. Would it be wrong to ask if he really believed the stranger things that Scientology teaches?
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I'm pleased to see you rate us a step above Scientology, Squick.
Edit: silly, outdated UBB tags.
In defense of Squick, I'd like to state that personally I put all the religions that I have studied (Christianity, Catholicism, LDS, Islam, Judaism, etc) on the same level of strange. Scientology, however, is definitely stranger.
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I don't think how I see you is really relevant. It's the public's perception that is important here, and many of them see you as essentially Scientology for Christians. If a Scientologist's beliefs would be fair game, I don't see how an LDS's wouldn't be.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: In defense of Squick, I'd like to state that personally I put all the religions that I have studied (Christianity, Catholicism, LDS, Islam, Judaism, etc) on the same level of strange. Scientology, however, is definitely stranger.
Ditto. The idea of a scientologist president... *shudder*
Though I kind of like like the "Don't ask. Don't tell" religion thing they seem to have going in Canada.
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Oh come on. We all know that once a Mormon gets elected we'll all be ordered to give up our coffee, marry multiple wives and eat green jello.
Just like if we ever had a Catholic President we'd all become robots to the Vatican and the Spanish Inquisition would be used on illegal aliens.
Oh wait, that didn't happen when Kennedy was President.
I haven't seen a lot of forced baptisms when Evangelicals were president.
I don't recall many churches being burned down during the hey-day of some non-believers.
But you have to admit, it does happen. We had a Quaker for president. You know them Quakers with their silly non-violent attitude. Well that Quaker president seemed to spend a lot of his time ending the only good war we had going at that time.
I am of course, referring to President Nixon.
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I have to side with Squicky that Mormons are pretty strange. I don't really know enough about Scientology to draw any comparison. But I'd find it hard to ignore the beliefs of a Seventh Day Adventist, a Christian Scientist, or a Jehovah's Witness seeking office, or a "Jews for Jesus" Adherent.
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I'm thinking that squick's "stranger" comment was misinterpreted, though I could be wrong. I read it as he was speaking of the stranger beliefs of scientology as compared to other scientology beliefs, not as compared to mormonism.
This is like, if I believed that the sun were carried across the sky on the back of an elephant. And I also believed that gravity somehow keeps me on the ground. An outside observer might percieve my sun travel belief as one of my stranger beliefs.
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Oh, Happy Camper is probably right about what Squicky meant.
I'm not sure the location of the Garden of Eden is doctrinally important to Mormons. I could be wrong. I mean, if you believe Joseph Smith is a prophet, and you know he said it was in Missouri, then it's important - or at least becomes an issue if one were to prevaricate on the issue. Though Joseph Smith said a lot of things, kind of like St. Paul and that bit about baldness being a reproach to women.
It doesn't appear to be canonical.
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If we wait a while, Matt will show up and say where the reference is from and where it stands in regards to accepted canon.
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quote:I wonder what sort of stuff they'd say about an atheist presidential candidate.
That's an easy one: "What did he think he was doing, running for President? Everyone knows an atheist has no chance."
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I think that it's hard to objectively judge how weird a belief is. We're biased by what we grew up hearing, what the culture around us believes, and what our own beliefs are. On the whole, I'm willing to tolerate a few harmless "weird" beliefs as long as they don't affect policy. So if Romney thinks that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, fine. If he starts treating Missouri differently from other states or orders the government to go digging around for the remains of the garden, that's a problem.
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Some people argue that all our great presidents actually were atheists... Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington.
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: I wonder what sort of stuff they'd say about an atheist presidential candidate.
How about a list?
-Immoral. -Cold-hearted. -Going to hell. -Doesn't believe in anything. -Wants to burn down the churches. -Will turn this into an atheist nation. -Will put believers in camps like Hitler or kill them like Stalin. -Will let doctors abort babies in the ninth month. -Will worship Satan in the Oval Office. -Will allow homosexual marriage, and then let people marry animals.
quote:Originally posted by pooka: Some people argue that all our great presidents actually were atheists... Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington.
As much as I would love to claim Jefferson for the atheists, it seems pretty clear he was a deist. No friend of organized religion, and not a believer in any sort of personal god or anything supernatural, but not technically an atheist.
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Shig, I basically agree. most religious people hold beliefs that I think are very, very unlikely to be true. But that's true of most non-religious people as well. The religious beliefs are often more strange and more likely to be easily countered by fact, but in the wash, they are often not that big a deal. For example, I don't think Dennis Kucinich is any worse a candidate because he said he thinks he saw a UFO.
But, as I said before, my individual beliefs aren't really what I'm talking about here, but rather the general public's perception. There's a lot of poor decisions and prejudices that go itno how we select our candidates. It is likely that if Mitt Romney came out endorsing his religion's out-there beliefs, it is going to hurt the public's view of him. It may not be what we, personally, would agree with, but there you go. I don't think that this means that this should therefor be out of bounds.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: Trying to sneak a little Godwin's law in there like sanitary napkins in the grocery list?
Not at all. I'm an atheist, remember. And I've had the Hitler/Stalin argument thrown at me before, so I don't see any reason why people wouldn't say it to or about an atheist presidential candidate.
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quote:Not at all. I'm an atheist, remember. And I've had the Hitler/Stalin argument thrown at me before, so I don't see any reason why people wouldn't say it to or about an atheist presidential candidate.
It's not as if people don't routinely make wildly stupid claims about what certain Presidential candidates will do already. Atheists are nothing special, except in degree and in specific complaint.
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quote:Not at all. I'm an atheist, remember. And I've had the Hitler/Stalin argument thrown at me before, so I don't see any reason why people wouldn't say it to or about an atheist presidential candidate.
It's not as if people don't routinely make wildly stupid claims about what certain Presidential candidates will do already. Atheists are nothing special, except in degree and in specific complaint.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: For all the talking about God that Lincoln did, if he was an atheist, he was also a liar.
Well, a thing we have to remember is that these are presidents of a country that has a majority of Christians in it. Jefferson makes many public references to god and Christianity in his speeches, but in his private letters routinely harangues it.
I also forget the particular speech off the top of my head, but I remember reading about Lincoln being essentially forced by Congress to read a statement supporting a day of prayer (or something like that, I'll look for the specifics later tonight if anyone insists). And if you read the beginning of the speech, he essentially says he's saying it because Congress wants him to.
Not that I happen to know if Lincoln was an atheist, or particularly care if he was.
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kate: he might have had various faiths, over time. He did have significant mental problems, which might have influenced him religiously.
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I'm pretty sure there have been atheist candidates, just probably not front-runners for the two major parties.
Is it possible Lincoln opposed the day of prayer because he felt it violated separation of church and state, and not because he felt it was wrong for people to pray?
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kmbboots: True. But it becomes understandable if we look at the context. Maybe not forgivable, depending on your opinion of lying, but certainly understandable.
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