Mormon vs. secular - where we're going

WHERE AM I GOING? WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I DIE?

We all ask ourselves these question from time to time, don't we? They're two of life's greatest mysteries... unless you're a Mormon. If you're a Mormon you're pretty sure that you're not going anywhere. Check it out. When you die you'll roam the Spirit World (probably just another dimension of our physical earth) as a missionary seeking to teach of Christ and convert the spirits restricted to Spirit Prison (yet another earth dimension?) to the One True Church. Then you'll be resurrected into a perfect body! Then you'll be judged by Joseph Smith or whoever he's delegated judgment to. But you'll be found spotless because you've truly repented and been saved through Christ's Atonement! And you'll be welcomed with open arms by Heavenly Father, the Great Elohim himself, into the Celestial Kingdom, which just happens to be... EARTH! But not like it is now. Earth will be exalted and perfected as well, which means it will be a gigantic seer stone, or Urim & Thummin. It will be beautiful and we'll all be immeasurably happy forever.

Now if you're not good enough you'll still have a perfect resurrected body (so that's good news) but you won't get to live on a crystal ball with the rest of us and if you're really, really bad (like, apostate bad!) you'll have to float around sadly in absolute nothingness with Satan and his defeated angels. That would totally suck, so for the love of God don't apostatize please.

Secularists really have nothing on this happy explanation. They think our bodies just decompose and enter that whole stupid scientific circle of life bullshit, and make no claims about an eternal spirit (because they're too afraid to make BIG CLAIMS without any backing evidence at all!). How is anyone supposed to be sold on something so... natural? It's like they think we're supposed to observe the world and somehow conclude that we human beings are just a part of it instead the purpose for it!

Mormons clearly have the better explanation. Never mind that it produces an endless string of unanswerable questions that quickly lead to ludicrous and infantile notions of what life after death must be like. Thinking too much about it might lead to doubt and we don't need any more of that!

Skylanders and The Book of Mormon

I found some Skylanders Skystones game cards in my cereal the other day and as I read the back of the little box they came in I was amazed at how familiar the story line sounded. I switched out a few nouns and a verb and this is what I got:

"The origins of [The Book of Mormon] go way back to the days of the [Nephites]. While experimenting with early [translation] technology and magic they discovered a form of enchanted stone that would allow anything [read through] it to become real. The Ancients worried that this power might fall into the wrong hands so they turned it into a [treasure hunt], purely for fun and leisure."

"Fuckin' A, dude, you found the magic stone! You win! Fun!!!"

It sounds like fun to me!

Kolob

I know the LDS Church doesn't like to emphasis this bit of doctrine and generally members don't feel much of a need to bear personal testimony of it, but that's no excuse for not acknowledging one of the most absurd aspects of Mormonism: Kolob, the star or planet nearest God's throne.

 God is no longer hiding among the clouds, but somewhere out beyond the nebulae of space! And yet Abraham and Methuselah saw this place thanks to the Urim and Thummim. So spare me all this modern science mumbo jumbo.

Oh yes, we also know that the Sun gets its light from Kolob, not from nuclear fusion. Thank God for modern revelation.

Sure, we haven't found God yet, but we can at least say we know what we're looking for.

Pulled from a hat

Supposedly God, in his infinite power, made the translation of the gold plates appear before Joseph's eyes as his face was hidden in a hat. (Originally we had been led to believe that the correct translation magically appeared through the lenses of the Urim and Thummim as Joseph scanned Moroni's text line by line.) In other words, the words Joseph dictated were not deciphered from a text - they were read aloud by Joseph as they magically illuminated in his hat.

This process of translation gets me wondering what kind of translator God is. How the hell did he get confused over the whole "white and delightsome" vs. "pure and delightsome" thing? One would think he would have had the foresight to avoid the whole racist debacle, right? Why's he translating tapirs as 'horses,' deer as 'cows,' and turkeys as 'sheep'? Why did he need the King James translation of the Bible so badly? And why the hell couldn't he come up with a better translation for curelom and cumom? Here's an inspired rendering, or maybe this one's more accurate:

Read from a hat? It's more like this stuff was just pulled from somebody's ass.

Urim and Thummim

Though I feel it's common knowledge now, I had no idea that Joseph Smith discarded the Urim and Thummin as translating devises in favor of one of the magic, treasure-finding peep stones he had collected throughout his teens and twenties. He would put it in his hat and the words of the translation would appear before his eyes.

The Urim and Thummin approach with the gold plates at Joseph's fingertips is already pretty fucking magical, but removing the plates completely is totally fucking nuts.

And yet the LDS Church still defends the peep stone in a hat method even thought the Urim and Thummim framed in spectacle-like frames attached to a breastplate has been dragged around by Moroni for the sole specific purpose of translating the 50 lbs. (or more) plates 1200 years later. The Church even dares suggest that Joseph's heavy involvement in early American folk magic could have been used "for the higher purpose of translating scripture."

They must be joking. Seriously, it has to be a joke. How does bullshit treasure finder magic suddenly become a legitimate tool of God for the sake of translating ancient languages? This is like believing a tarot card reader turned bishop can use his card reading skills to better conduct worthiness interviews and lead the ward under the divine inspiration.

"I've also got some impressive stones, sister, should you be interested."

This is where Mormonism starts to feel like a gullibility contest.

The Celestial Kingdom

Remember how Mormonism is so great because it answers those three really important questions: "Where do I come from?", "Why am I here?", and "Where am I going?"??? Thank God we have such awesome answers to share with the World because that whole Christian thing about there being no Pre-Earth Life and the Afterlife being either Heaven or Hell just didn't make any sense at all!

Mormons have answers! We know what to expect! That's why early on in my mission I really wanted to develop a seriously kick-ass spiritual thought about what's really in heaven to share with our many English class students who would come to the Church twice a week for free lessons.

We've got the three kingdom thing going on so Heaven's totally fair for everyone. Plus! if you make it to the Celestial Kingdom you get to learn and progress on into the eternities! WITH YOUR FAMILY!

"Welcome to Cloud City, Joe!"

We also know that the Earth will "receive its paradisiacal glory" and be turned into a giant Urim and Thummim (similar to one that God currently lives on) that we'll all live on it with Heavenly Father. Just think, you and every generation of your family living on a crystal ball! So cool!

I have to confess I never shared the spiritual thought, though. I just couldn't work it out. I think I got hung up on a few other questions. How will we be learning? Are there classes and stuff like that? Are they going to be more informative than Sunday School, Seminary, Institute, and BYU religion courses? What about all the science we'll have to learn? Will we have to sign up for labs? How is everyone going to live with their family? Will I be in my parents house, stuck with my in-laws, in my own house, or in one of my children's houses? I've heard that we'll still enjoy food even though we don't have to eat. Isn't that a little Hedonistic? Won't we have the power to Priesthood some delicious taste bud action right onto our tongues without all the mess of cooking? Will we still have to shit what we ate? What does the perfect shit look like, a type 4 maybe?

If we get to enjoy the things we enjoyed here on Earth, will they really be just as fun in the next life? I can't imagine riding a horse will be quite as fun when you can go inter-galactic whenever the hell you want, and hiking will be even less of a thrill than say crawling to your friends house when you could be flying a jetpack or something instead. I bet sunsets are going to be a total bore.

What do people do if they're not into the science of making worlds without end? Do they hang around making babies or something? How much baby-making happens in the Celestial Kingdom? If we already know everything down to its most intimate detail, why would we be wearing any clothing? Will we be so prudish that we'll be bothered by someone's nudity even when we are perfectly aware of each and every molecule of every fluid pulsing through each other's genitals? That might take the thrill out of climaxing.

Just what exactly do we expect of the next life? How does anything that has been revealed about it not sound absolutely absurd, like the kind of silliness little kids might dream up? What's really to look forward to? Why is hanging with the Father so great? Is he particularly funny or entertaining? Is he a good hugger? Is he just so smart that merely standing next to him makes our brains bigger? What is it we want from Heaven?