Reposted from www.skepticmoney.com
Mitt Romney tithes to his church, the LDS or mormons for slang, as detailed by Rachel Zollin the AP News. Keep religion out of politics unless you wish it examined on its merit… I continue.
“Romney reports he will give a total of $4.13 million to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over two years as part of his overall charitable donations. The former Massachusetts governor reported income of about $43 million for the two years. Separately, over the past decade, Romney and his wife, Ann, have given more than $4.7 million to the denomination through the Tyler Charitable Foundation, a multimillion-dollar trust the couple leads.
The LDS are a full family function for its members; they want your soul and your life. Their churches, wards, stake houses, and temples provide welfare, emergency services, and near all show necessary support. They also recommend members keep a two-year food supply for when the rapture, uhh, second coming, comes though they tell gentiles it’s for emergencies. Monday is family home night and on at least two other days a week there are Ward or Stake functions to attend. Additionally, members must “seal,” baptize, fifty or so dead people so they can be saved and there is a tremendous amount of genealogy performed, unfortunately some of it bad (many pro’s say terrible), to find family to save. This means Lincoln, Washington, probably Hitchens now, all baptized mormon.
I wonder how those dead people feel about being baptized, sealed, and saved without their knowledge–thank goodness they are dead. That’s the great thing about sheep and dead people, you can do anything to them. Piss on em even but that’s another story only religious people care about.
It is not a church so much as a culture and harkens back to preReformation Catholicism, modern Hasidic Jew, and modern Muslim (I’d say orthodox or fundamental Islam but Koran suffers no living apostates). Mormons thought I was a “golden prospect” as I didn’t smoke or drink at the time and being of Jewish descent was from another all inclusive tribal culture, Israelite tribe, that is a fellow descendent of their tribe.
I can’t help taking up space for this but… Laminates, Indians, Polynesians, Blacks, whoever dark, are colored because of past sin, uhh, curse (they fought and lost a good and evil battle with the light-skinned Nephites) and once forgiven by god they will lighten up–or when the Supreme court makes them equal. My doctor friend insisted that they lightened during their stays in mormon hospitals–as if blacks and Indians don’t tan. It would be a giant article to discuss the absurdities and oddities of this wanna-be Christian church founded by a traveling patent-medicine man receiving bastard, uhh reformed, Egyptian hieroglyphics on golden tablets somehow lost. Why do modern people descended from obviously false faith insist it’s true? Reputation rules!
The hardest cultural exclusion is to be excommunicated or become a jack mormon, there is no such thing as a secular mormon, and still live there. Nevertheless these often unhappy (from familial isolation or castigation) apostates abound, they call them excommunicated, either for abominations to material laws like drinking, blasphemy, nonattendance, witnessing to bad character, homosexuality, or lack of tithing 10% of your income not counting all of the other things you have to buy into.
My first wife a social worker was furious that mormon bishops served as counselors, untrained, unprofessional, and prosthetically unreliable. My high school teacher said “teen age pregnancy isn’t a problem here, they just get married.” Right out of the old testament where a rapist must marry his victim–as if that made it Ok–and let’s hope no one hers her scream or she gets stoned and worse.
Romney may claim he is a good church guy because he tithes but it’s the mormon law and, more intrusive than the IRS, church auditors and accountants come to your door and help with your budget and accounting to be sure they get their share. It happened to my family in West Granger every year and when they found we weren’t mormons they’d mumble away. 80% of members tithe according to the above article. The rest are probably in the process of being excommunicated.
Rick Warren the megachurch demigod who prayed for Hitch at death, calling him friend, when Hitch blasted him, claims he reverse tithes by donating 90% of his income. But Rick has more money than god and need never work again for his palace and it is his current pillaging and financial raping of his members from which he pays 90%. Maybe he should have a tax, I mean indulgence, uhhh, tithing refund, or just stop pillaging people’s savings and give his own money to all of the people without prejudice. Oh wait, he wouldn’t have any of his own money if he hadn’t robbed it, uhh, had it donated.
Romney and other LDS claim the bible says to tithe but there is nothing in the new testament on tithing. It is all from Leviticus the old testament which mormons tend to dislike for it’s confusing and often terrifying myths, as well as those multiple food and social sanctions that maker theirs look like playground stuff. Jesus hated taxing and tithing from what I can tell in spite of rending Caesar’s to Caesar. He’s hanging out with poor people, telling them they are poor and it’s good to be poor. Near everything I see says to shed wealth to be poor and nary a word to says give it to temple.
As an aside, I can’t help it, the weirdest mormon food sanction is not to drink cold water and my doctor neighbor used to try to convince me that current research showed it was bad to drink cold water–so bad that it is an abomination? Mormons laugh that since they can’t drink alcohol they eat ice cream, vat fulls from what I can tell.
Mormons love to say how it is all about self reliance and good will (god will) to their members but nonmembers don’t get it and I can’t tell you how many mormons I knew were terrified of the rapture, umm, return of the messiah, when the gentiles will gather to Salt Lake City, the streets will flow with blood, and their houses will be raided by heathens.
What they don’t get is their superior attitude and exclusiveness, surpassed only by the Amish (who are at least passive), Hasidim (not socially passive) and FundoIslamists (not passive), caused them to be hated by their neighbors just because they were such arrogant bastards and like the chosen ones (Jews) bragged about how they were going to heaven and you weren’t and then proving it here on earth by becoming far more successful than the average citizen, such that few would suffer them, even though they may have started out as oppressed or a minority.
The Romans get a lot of shit for oppression but the Christians were insisting on disobeying the law and attributing it to god, swearing that polytheism would take every Roman to hell, and looting and tearing down pagan images, temples, and public gatherings everywhere. Some of the poor were Christians and they used their religion to gain power rather then seek justice. It’s not until the Catholics revoke from the book no graven images that western European society suffered religious icons again.
It is 787 AD (After Despot) at the Seventh Ecumenical Council where they approve graven images in spite of the many biblical admonitions against it. Islam is more true to the bible in this respect! Technically, truly, any Christian creating a graven image is damned! It was all about crapping on the Roman iconography of polytheism present everywhere. Just like burning a library because you don’t agree.
If you want advice on how to avoid welfare, prepare for retirement, and avoid emergency indebtedness save 10%. My grandfather, FL Watkins, President of Dakota Business College, praised the value of duration in compound interest. No matter what when you start earning put 10% away and keep doing it. It’s the last few years that count the most and why accounts don’t pass through death to survivors except through usurous inheritance taxes or capital trusts without fixed interests–bankers aren’t dumb.
If I had done that even though I was a rather low earner I could retire at 54. But I didn’t so I won’t judge you on the equality bias. The other thing he said is always keep working; persevere to success and be open to opportunity; you make your luck. It doesn’t matter if it is for money but always work towards money through education, volunteering, or other preparation. Giving 10% to a cosmic salesman is like buying a car with sawdust in the transmission.
The only thing worse than a rich asshole is one who says he’s so rich because he’s more moral, more pure, more true, more naturally better. Even Aristotle warns of hubris, pride, the original confirmation bias, the down fall of most people. Only Mary Poppins gets away with that bullshit.
Jim Newman, bright and well