And Something Else..,

Since I'm on the topic of absurd beliefs another one would have to be baptism for the dead. The LDS church believes that everyone needs to be baptized or they cannot "inherit the kingdom of god". Or in other words, get into heaven. This is a brilliant plan the church has, because where do you do these baptisms? In the temple of course. And how do to get the opportunity to go to the temple. With a temple recommend. And what do you have to do to get a temple recommend? Pay tithing of course. Everything is centered on the temple because you need to be a full tithe payer to go there (among other silly requirements). The main activity in these temples is, you guessed it. Baptisms for the dead. And once they are baptized then you have to do their endowments for them. For DEAD people. Come on, really? But I believed it for many years and I baptized lots of dead people and did endowments for many dead people. And yes I do realize how ridiculous that sounds. But it didn't think it was ridiculous when I was a member of the LDS church. I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
Now don't go thinking "holy crap, you dug up dead people and took them to the temple!" No there were no graveyard raids sorry to tell you. We did the baptisms and endowments in proxy. In the temple we would get their names and do the ordinances for them.
That would be kinda cool though. Digging up corpses and baptizing them. The LDS church is a master of making the ridiculous sound perfectly normal but I don't think even they could pull that one off.

Things I Can't Believe I Believed In...

I was reading the PostMormon site again tonight and something caught my attention. Someone mentioned how absurd some of the church's beliefs are and I got to thinking...how I used to believe some of most of this crap. Take the Word Of Wisdom. I followed it to the letter for years. I never drank a drop of alcohol or coffee/tea. Everyone was under the impression that it was the caffeine in the coffee. But there is caffeine in cola drinks and they weren't prohibited. Coffee and tea were called "hot drinks" but hot chocolate is a hot drink and its OK. Iced tea was not allowed but it was not hot it was cold. Talk about convoluted nonsense. One of the top health concerns today is not alcohol or caffeine. It's sugar. Pop is loaded with sugar and poses a serious health risk. But there's no mention of that in the word of wisdom. If it was so "inspired" as a health code there should be some mention of it. But there's not. Like I said. Convoluted nonsense. And I believed it for many years.