Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 10:57:19 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] L. Ron . . .
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

> sgs at aginc.net 08/23/02 10:54AM
>>Ted White wrote:
>
>> The advantage of most of the world's major religions is their
>> antiquity which allows them to shroud themselves in myth (as well as
>> to co-opt and incorporate older religions, of course).
>>
>> The Mormons are at a disadvantage:  their history is relatively recent
>> and fairly well documented -- including their slaughter of wagon
>> trains' of settlers heading further west and their (still extant)
>> polygamy (which was the reason Smith founded his church and he and his
>> followers got kicked out of successive states until they found, in
>> Utah, a land no one else wanted).  "Nut cult" is a *kind* description;
>> I've heard much worse.
>
>Coupla nits.  The Mormons weren't the only 19th century sects practicing=

>polygamy, by a long shot.  There were a number of Mennonite sects that
>  practiced polygamy; they didn't get a tenth of the hassle the Mormons =

>did.  The big problem that folks had with the Mormons was with their
>whole concept of "latter-day revelation" -- ie, the Bible isn't
>considered the only Holy Book and Yeshua ben Yousef wasn't the Last
>Prophet.
>
>We have the same thing in the Islamic world with the Baha'i.  I =
remember
>a few years back that the government of Iran proudly announced that
>Baha'i was now extinct, the Iranians having hunted down and killed the
>last ones in Iran.  (They still exist outside of Iran -- I've met a few.)
>
>> The Mormons find an interesting parallel roughly a hundred years later
>> in the Scientologists, who have turned an outright tax scam into a
>> "religion" and are now crying "religious persecution" in Germany,
>> where that government has them accurately pegged.
>
>Actually, the Scientologists in Germany pushed it even further.  They
>weren't just a tax scam -- they had gotten into out and out real =
estate
>fraud.  In the US, they're the only "religous" organization that has
>fixed-price "services" that are tax deductable.  Thank you, George =
Bush
>the Elder.

Curiously enough, this came up at the party at the Bungalow Saturday night =
for Andrew Adams.  Judy Kindell would only say that there are folks at the =
IRS who still shudder at the mear mention of Scientolgy.  Apparently a =
real bloody fight - that the IRS lost.

mjw
>--
>Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
>Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
>"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."