April 13, 2005

Nazis, the Holocaust, and Mormons

Instead of apologizing for his absurd post earlier, Jay Tea digs the hole deeper. Where do I begin to respond?

First, what is offensive is not the Mormon practice of baptizing for the dead, but bringing the Holocaust into the debate. This is offensive for the same reason that calling people you don't like a Nazi is. The Nazis were so evil that to call someone a Nazi flippantly is to minimize the evil nature of the Hitler regime.

To single out Holocaust victims when objecting to the Mormon practice of proxy baptism for the deceased likewise. The Holocaust was a crime of singular and spectacular evil. By bringing the Holocaust into a theological debate over what seems to be an odd practice trivializes the evil that was done.

Further, to compare the practice with forced conversions is, well, just plain dumb. As far as I can tell the Mormons aren't actually converting anybody. Had Jay Tea bothered to read his own comments, he would have seen that Mormons do proxy baptism just in case the deceased becomes converted in the afterlife. They do not believe the proxy baptism is the mark of a conversion.

Of course, Jay Tea is right, this is an arrogant practice. But, er, so what? All religions teach that their religions are correct. And that means what exactly? It's the nature of philisophical debates.

But as much as it is arrogant it is equally selfless. That's the nature of proxy work. You do it for the benefit of others. Just think of Fonzi standing in for Richie Cunningham when he finally gets married but is off in the Air Force. See, the Fonz knows all.

As to Jay Tea's final point that the Mormons' renigged on an earlier promise to not baptize in behalf of Holocaust victims, Tom at INFDL notes:

The Mormon church as an institution does not have alot of control over who turns up on the database of names of deceased. It's mostly done privately by church members themselves. So how is the church itself supposed to completely stop it? Plus, is it just assumed that mormon church members are stealing the names of jews, with no relation to themselves? Right down the street from my folks' house there lives a jewish convert to the mormon church. Yup, him and his whole side of the family were jews who converted to the mormon faith. They're very devout, and like most devout mormons they will do their own geneology and perform this particular practice for them. So if ancestor rights are presumably owned by descendants, then the whole argument concerning "leave my ancestors alone" becomes much more complicated.

They don't actually dig up your body, some dude just gets baptized on behalf of some dead guy. Again, they are not making you a post-mortum Mormon. They're just catching you. You know, just in case.

But what is really irritating is that a lot of people, like Sorta Pundit, take offense to Mormons telling dead people that they were wrong. I don't get it. Mormons are saying the same thing about the living. Yup, they think your atheism is wrong. Is that a surprise?

Why is it more offensive to say a dead person was wrong than the living?

The last time I checked the Catholics thought living Protestants were wrong, and vice-versa. Oh and Wesley had this slight disagreement with the faith of Calvinists, etc.

*****Exclusive*****Must Cite Jawa Report*****

Pope still Catholic. Archbishop of Canterburry still Anglican. Dalai Llama still Buddhist.

More breaking news as it happens......

Sobek and Aaron have the humorous take. And yes Aaron, very funny.