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Post by antichrist on May 7, 2009 9:36:57 GMT -5
My question is why does it matter? It's not like they dig up the body to baptise it.
I know my nieces or grand-neices are going to do it for me, I don't care. I'll be dead, no matter what's on the otherside (if anything) it's not going to make one iota of difference. Usually this information doesn't come to light, so I'm worndering how this got out.
Guess some mormon didn't get the message to keep his mouth shut.
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Post by Bezron on May 7, 2009 10:00:04 GMT -5
My question is why does it matter? It's not like they dig up the body to baptise it. I know my nieces or grand-neices are going to do it for me, I don't care. I'll be dead, no matter what's on the otherside (if anything) it's not going to make one iota of difference. Usually this information doesn't come to light, so I'm worndering how this got out. Guess some mormon didn't get the message to keep his mouth shut. Agreed, AC, why the hell does anyone care? If you aren't part of the faith, have no interest in the faith, etc, why does it matter what they are doing. Unless they are then harassing the living members of the family, who cares? It really has no effect either way, other than to add to the piousness of the (general) Mormon church.
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Post by dantesvirgil on May 7, 2009 10:17:52 GMT -5
Well, I agree with you both -- partially.
But funerals and things like that are really more for the living than for the dead. Will I give a shit how I'm buried, even if people deviate from my instructions? No, I won't be able to give a shit even if I wanted to. Will I be pissed that someone makes my child and immediate family submit to a JW style undertaking? Not after I'm dead -- but it pisses me off now to think about it. I would be royally pissed if my mom tried to give my sister a JW funeral -- sis couldn't care, but I sure as hell would.
It's like knocking over tombstones. The dead person isn't affronted -- their family is.
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Post by Yaezakura on May 7, 2009 10:25:22 GMT -5
What DV said. Sure, it doesn't matter to the dead person. But it matters to the living who still keep them alive in their memories. It's the desecration of those memories that are the crime here.
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Post by wackadoodle on May 7, 2009 11:54:18 GMT -5
I dont see how this is any better than grave robbing. To most people its WORSE than grave robbing. a robber just takes a watch or something, this is their soul thats getting labeled 'mormon' for all of the afterlife.
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Post by Death on May 7, 2009 12:29:12 GMT -5
I thought they changed the rules so that you could only baptize for the dead for a direct relative. Or is that put aside for famous people? My guess is that one of two situations happened: 1. Someone didn't get the memo. 2. Someone decided to be a douche. sky sky sky You write as if only one person is involved but that is just not true there are other temple workers and then there are the people who maintain the records
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Post by Bezron on May 7, 2009 12:36:24 GMT -5
this is their soul thats getting labeled 'mormon' for all of the afterlife. By whom? The Mormon church? They are fairly irrelevant, with their ever changing doctrines, in the spiritual world. Let me throw a few scenarios out there for you: 1. Mormons are the wrong sect and their members get damned to hell. 2. Mormons are the correct sect and any unbelievers get damned to hell. 3. There is no hell, and there is either no afterlife as anyone has imagined it or everyone goes to heaven or another plane. In any of those scenarios, the deceased being baptized did not make the choice to become Mormon so it does not really matter. One of the things trumpeted by most, if not all, christian sects is free will. YOU have to choose to devote your life to god, it cannot be chosen for you or forced upon you. YOU have to truly believe. So what someone does (spiritually) on your behalf after you have died means exactly jack and shit. While I agree that funerals are for the living, this is the Mormon relatives trying to do something to comfort themselves. Everyone else getting all up in arms about it is just silly (IMHO). People don't get upset about Catholics praying on behalf of the deceased to keep them out of purgatory (do Catholics even have purgatory anymore?). How is this any different? My own thoughts on the afterlife, for full disclosure: I don't know what happens after death, and honestly don't care. I prefer to spend my energies making this level of existence a little better. If that somehow means that I'm to be tormented for eternity, or reincarnated at a lower level, or even just left to return my basic structure to the Earth, then so be it.
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Post by devilschaplain2 on May 7, 2009 12:41:40 GMT -5
More signs that the LDS Church sucks--they have no respect for the dead, almost as little as the Westboro Baptist Church.
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Post by mice34 on May 7, 2009 15:55:41 GMT -5
WTF! I feel the urge to slap someone.
ETA: "It matters" in the sense of imposing yourself on a corpse against the wishes of the family. Beyond rude. Post-death baptism--like necrophilia, in a way.
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Post by dantesvirgil on May 7, 2009 16:09:47 GMT -5
yeah, it is a lot like spiritual necrophilia in some way. Perhaps there are Mormon relatives that are somehow "comforted" by forcibly doing it their way after the fact.
I know when my mom wanted to move my uncle's funeral to inside a Kingdom Hall and not tell anyone else about it but JWs so they could do their own private send off, irrespective of family wishes, I was totally cool with it. [/sarcasm] The fact is that death, even if you don't believe in an afterlife, is still a very personal and powerfully emotional thing for the family. I don't believe in the JW concepts about life and death -- why would I want it represented that my uncle stood for the same thing? At the funeral, there are plenty of other people there to respect the family and to symbolically respect the person who died. As the next of kin, I want that portrayed a certain way -- not in a way that makes some distant relative more "comfortable" somehow. Who gives a crap about that? If they weren't intimately involved with the person's life, they have no right to make decisions after that person's death. It's really not about spiritual beliefs. Because trust me, when my mom pulled the shit she did with my uncle's funeral (my dad's brother, her inlaw), it had nothing to do with what I thought would happen to him after death and everything to do with the emotional impact it makes on the living.
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Post by Old Viking on May 7, 2009 16:11:11 GMT -5
I see the practice as having the same significance as the ceremony performed by the local witch doctor, chanting monosyllabically and shaking rattles. Who gives a rat's ass? It is characteristic of religion to do things that, by any objective standard, are moronic. So be it. Now it's time for my nap.
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starbrewer
Full Member
God can go to hell
Posts: 226
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Post by starbrewer on May 7, 2009 16:14:56 GMT -5
I thought they changed the rules so that you could only baptize for the dead for a direct relative. Or is that put aside for famous people? My guess is that one of two situations happened: 1. Someone didn't get the memo. 2. Someone decided to be a douche. Why don't you get the fuck out of the LDS? Why do you stay? Leave and find another church, or be a Christian who doesn't go to church. And tell them they can keep their magic underwear!
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Post by Bezron on May 7, 2009 16:29:38 GMT -5
Just to be clear, they aren't actually touching the body here. They appoint another person to act as a stand-in for the deceased, and perform the ceremony at a local temple (might even be the main one, not sure).
Bear in mind, I am not a Mormon apologist, but I guess I just don't understand why people pick THIS issue to get all up in arms about. It really is no different than Catholic prayers related to purgatory.
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Post by Yaezakura on May 7, 2009 17:07:26 GMT -5
It really is no different than Catholic prayers related to purgatory. Actually, it's quite a bit different. Generally, the people being prayed for by Catholics are other Catholics. Since they believe any non-Catholic goes to hell, and that purgatory is basically a waiting ground for the saved to be fully purified before entering God's realm, what they're praying for is simply that it happens quickly. That is rather far removed from postmortemly claiming someone as a member of your religion when they previous held absolutely no ties to it at all. And while yes, the dead person can't care, what matters is the impact it has on the dead's loved ones. It's the same as someone walking up to a widow and saying "Oh, now that your husband is dead, I'm going to claim he was my husband, not yours." It's an absolutely sickening practice.
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Post by A. Sapien on May 7, 2009 17:22:53 GMT -5
I know this much, when I die, I'm making sure there's a section of my will that specifies if a practice like this is done on my 'behalf' there is to be a lawsuit filed on behalf of my estate.
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