So When Did The Pope Become Hot Shit?

[Minimalist]

Ramen.

[Won2blv]

Since the Mormons let the religion play book slip into the public domain

Just curious what you meant by this?

[vorlon13]

The Mormons felt they were tasked by God to be a record keeping people. So, almost from day one, they've had a propensity to publish most everything they've vomited up in regards to their religion. Since their movement is less than 200 years old, that means with some digging, in regards to the Mormons, we get to see how the sausage is made, and in unprecedented detail. Most other religions are ancient and their early records are lost to history, or the records never existed in the first place, or, they might have been smart enough to not publish everything, unlike Joe Smith and his tribe.

Mormonism therefore, is a peek behind the curtain, for all religions, in how men (and women) bang together a religion and make it work.

That's the 'play book'.

Don't study Mormonism, study how Mormonism came to be where it is today, and you'll understand how all religions come to be.

The major thing to realize is, no matter how rigid or dogmatic a given religion is now, during its formation it wasn't. There is back and forth, negotiations, give and take, and a whole lot of making shit up as you go along.

Obviously, God doesn't work this way (or wouldn't if he existed). God should be entirely able to gestate a working, functioning religion all by his little self. Any hint of 'making shit up as you go along' falsifies the religion doing it. As time passes, a given religions poobahs realize this, and ret-con (retroactive continuity) their texts accordingly.

Since the Mormons bizarrely published everything, we get to see the back and forth, the negotiations, the wholesale and repeated 'making shit up as they went along' all that doubt inspiring crap other religions either dodn't reveal or won't admit too.

(We even see that in the Mormon 'playbook'. Despite copious evidence of their contrivance and chicanery, current Mormon administrators will not admit to any skullduggery even though their 'pious' predecessors proudly published every jot and tittle of it)

So, there isn't an actual 'playbook' but we have extensive, copious, even redundant documentation of how the Mormons cobbled, tweaked, pieced together, modified, evolved, hammered, revamped, reordered, revised, and rehabilitated their cluster fuck of a religion. Anyone can research it (get a copy of The Changing World of Mormonism for starters) and once one is up to speed on how the sausage is made, anybody can start their own religion now, and have a pretty good shot at success.

Just don't spill the beans on how you're doing it. Yeah, it worked for the Mormons, but it did make it much harder for them than it had to be, and of course, anyone who spends even a few minutes looking in to how the Mormons did it will instantly realize the whole mess of it is runny, drippy, bullshitty diarrhea, but you can learn from that one mistake they made, and have a pretty smooth time making up your own religion for fun and profit.

Look how well it worked for L. Ron Hubbard !!!

[Minimalist]

The Mormons felt they were tasked by God to be a record keeping people.

Conveniently they were in a post printing press world unlike the poor old illiterate fucking jews of the OT.

Why is it that god is always constrained by the available technology?  If jaysus came back today just think what he could do with an Iphone?

[vorlon13]

or petri dish insemination . . .

[abaris]

If jaysus came back today just think what he could do with an Iphone?

I'm sure he would have an assbook page.

[vorlon13]

and a Learjet with gold plated faucets

[Minimalist]

[Minimalist]

A note about this video.  It ran on BBC Channel 4 in 2008 and stirred up quite a controversy as there is nothing that xtians hate more than having some guy come along and cast doubt on their bullshit.  Nonetheless, Beckford is a believer at least to the extent that he seems to buy the original story of fucking jesus and his disciples even though an inordinate amount of time is spent on "paul" who Beckford concedes was not there.  Anyway the segment on 'peter' is most relevant to this thread but the rest of it has value, too.  It does show that the early church were Drumpf class liars!  It is an hour and 42 minutes but it has its uses.

[Jehanne]