Talk

[Sahaqiel 1232]

idk man, my view on religion is starting to get worse because of how often it's been used as a political tool in the country as of late. Getting exposed to more and more people who've been misinformed and incited to stay misinformed gets me so upset, because these are the people who vote on important issues. I had to learn to pick my battles because some people just really aren't willing to listen to information that contradicts what religious politicians have said.

 

In regards to Mormonism and polygamy, polygamy in itself cannot be a natural state of humankind; it is historically, and to most faiths that practice it, a man-serving institution. How can you promote polygamy as something looked well upon with your god if you also don't promote non-heterosexuality? It doesn't make sense. If every man on earth were polygamous, or even if HALF of them were polygamous or even ONE TENTH, there wouldn't be enough women to give to all the men. We're roughly 50-50. And the goal of any religion is to spread the word. So if a religion believes it is correct, it should believe everyone should believe it is correct, and if everyone did, then polygamy doesn't make sense unless the remaining men could marry each other as well. Just from Joseph Smith's treatment in the Book of Mormon, it looks like a religion entirely created to say America is awesome and Joseph Smith is as awesome as (or awesomer) than God himself, so awesome that he should have tons of women in a sister-harem around him.

 

So EVEN IF it isn't practiced nowadays, the fact that it was ever a part of the religion is a major logical flaw to me. I don't look down on those who are in polyamorous/polygamist relationships, but religions claim to preach facts that are fundamental to human nature. Since I don't agree with the concept of religions, this irks me, because if a flaw this glaring exists, why do people continue to believe in it? Like how the Bible claims that bats are birds, and the moon creates its own light.

 

Plus the whole multi-world space gods thing and black people being that way because they didn't take a side in the intergalactic Jesus debate.

[Iargely Iegendry 63]

Actually polygyny (males mating with multiple females) is natural. It's estimated to occur in up 90% of mammals, including humans. (According to article "Sexual conflicts in mammals" in Mammal Review magazine.)

Edited 2 May 2014 by Iargely Iegendry (see edit history)

[PrimaGaga 1025]

Yeah man. I dunno where I stand on polygamy. I wanna be against it but maybe I'm just ignorant? Like I really don't care. It doesn't seem to be an issue and those in polygamous relationships don't seem to be pushing it too much on the community at large. So long as men aren't marrying other men, more power to them!!

Intergalactic Jesus Debate is such a cool sci fi novel title

[Sahaqiel 1232]

I know that polyamory in general is prevalent in the animal kingdom. But I mean exclusive marriage amongst humans; I'm sure Mormonism doesn't promote non-married polygynies. Exclusive marriage between multiple women and one man being widespread makes no sense in a religion that wants you to be married at all unless Mormonism magically made the male-to-female birth ratio skewed hard for female births or killed a ton of the male population.

 

I don't look down on polygamy, I'm saying that, specifically, a religion that promotes a gender-biased polygamy whatsoever makes no sense (and is also incredibly sexist) because a conventional religion wishes to be widespread and believed by all. If everyone believed it was okay to be heterosexual polygamists, men wouldn't have enough women for everybody, which is a paradox if your religion prefers you be married.

 

Like in the simplest terms possible, how can, say, 100 men all get wives if there are an equal amount of women, and some of the men have more than one woman? Some men wouldn't get a wife at all. If your religion wants you to have a wife, widespread gender-biased heterosexual polygamist marriage makes no sense.

 

Fine if Mormons are nice people and they don't think polygamy is a natural state of humanity. But then that contradicts the belief system they live and die by. It's picking and choosing, and if you can pick and choose a document you base your whole life on, then why do you continue to believe it? It's supposed to all be 100% true because the literal omnipotent and omnipresent God of the Universe says it is. Like if I made a religion that believes the sun is actually a giant floating spotlight that is unidirectional and shines only on Earth, and that the Earth is the center of the universe. That is demonstratably wrong, so why would a religion that contains such a completely wrong error be allowed to proliferate faith over logic? Like why do people still use the King James Bible? Wasn't that literally acknowledged to have been tampered with to fit someone's agenda?

 

This isn't Wikipedia, you can't just say "Oh, that was just a typo", this is what wars are fought over. In my opinion, religious texts should be held to the highest level of scrutiny imaginable to be logically consistent, even moreso than scientific peer review, because you're not believing it based on any evidence or anything, you're believing it based on how your brain reacts to images and sounds, with emotions that are easily twisted and deceived. So if you want to believe on something based on nothing, you better be damn sure you're willing to agree with it, and say it's all true, or you should work towards understanding how reality really works so that we can fix realistic problems with realistic solutions.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

But the real question is "who cares?"

Let them puppy and have kids and do what they please. And Mormonism? Whatever it's creepy but if it makes them happy then I guess it's none of my business! As someone who once identified as something other than heterosexual, you aren't in any position to judge. And neither am I! I remember you once defended incest, it's crazy that polygamy is where you draw the line.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Polygamy isn't the line I'm drawing, you are misunderstanding my argument; I am of the opinion that you can love whoever you choose in whatever quantity if you're in a consensual relationship and you're not potentially ruining anyone's lives.

 

I'm angry that people can believe in systems that are demonstratably false or broken, and then project that view onto the general population as if it has bearing in reality. In other words, if your religion claims to have the One True God that literally knows everything, everything that god puts into your religious text better check out as 100% true.

 

So the reasoning for my irritation with Mormon (or Islamic or any other man-serving polygamy) is: IF your religion wants everyone to follow your religion AND IF everyone follows that religion AND IF your text prefer all people to be married at some point AND IF men can take multiple wives, AND IF divorce is not allowed THEN there are not enough wives for everybody, violating the preference that all people be married at some point.

 

That is a broken system. So why proliferate such a dangerous ideology as this faith? Pretty much I'm mad because faith is weaponized so easily, and it's inherently built like that, because you're believing something that isn't based in demonstratable reality. I'm mad that people continue to hold onto faiths that hold contradictions despite claiming to know everything. If I point out any passage in your religious text and you have to stop and think, and then come up with some convoluted reason for why it's still true, then you should not be in that religion. Get out of there. Learn about fossils and plants and stuff, and maybe vote on politicians based on what good they actually plan to do in the world and how little they bend the rules to achieve it, rather than their religious affiliation. It's easy to claim you're a man of God. What's hard is proving it with your actions.

 

This is a time-sensitive anger for me. I'm normally very positive-neutral for religious beliefs.

 

For context, I was recently in a debate with a woman who believes:

 

• That Obama is either a Muslim or an atheist (and only one of those two things)

• That he's out to destroy the Constitution
• Most criminals are atheists
• Atheists are causing the moral decline of our country
• Gay people marrying is the nail in the coffin to her for the nation's morality
• The four blood moons coinciding with the Jewish holidays are a sign that the world is going to end soon

 

Pretty much anything you'd hear from the far right as of late. I gave her the Snopes page debunking Obama being a Muslim, I gave her statistics showing that most prisoners in the US are Baptist or Catholic, and I told her why people who believe doomsday theories are inherently bad for civilization. There are obviously a lot more points you could make but this is the gist:

 

Doomsday prophecies tell us we can't work towards the future, because we don't have a future.

 

She said they don't because they teach us to live as much as we can. She told me that there's a difference between converting after you're incarcerated and living a "true Christian" life. The assumption that all religious inmates convert after being jailed aside, I tried to level with her, and I told her that I was under the impression a "true Christian" would say Christ is willing to listen to your prayers anytime you're ready, and I asked her if being a true Christian is only something for people who don't already have anything wrong with their lives. I told her that I was under the impression that in Christianity, everybody is a sinner, and Christ is willing to forgive you for it; that she is just as good to Jesus as the guy who murdered a man as long as they both accept him in their hearts. She still said there's a difference between TRULY following the book and just wanting salvation for free. Which is funny because she told me she'll be up in heaven looking down on me once she's proven right in the Judgment. Which is a dangerous and disturbing attitude to have.

 

And I can't even comprehend gay marriage being the line SHE drew.  My sociology teacher is spiritual at the very least and even he acknowledges that in the deep south, way deep in the boonies, all a politician has to do to keep power is to thump his Bible and scapegoat some other group of people, because people are uneducated; all they have is faith. People exploit the ignorant this way, and they keep them down, claiming to be men of God but really only serving their own selfish needs. Even locally, people are institutionally kept homeless by a cycle of ticketing, jailing, and homelessness, followed by more ticketing and more homelessness because you have to break the law to be homeless through trespassing and begging. Health care corporations in the US are designed to fuck people over. Sickening acts like this happen all over the world and we let it happen. And letting a man marry another man is the moral mudslide?

 

Artificial controversy over Obama's faith, denial of gay marriage, doomsday prophecies; they're all political tools used on the weak-minded, and it's all tied into religion, because faith can be so ingrained, can cloud your judgment so much. So it's been making me angry that people can be so foul to each other, so corrupt, over systems that have obvious flaws they only have to think about rationally for a couple seconds. I would prefer we just let go of these ideas so we can help each other and teach everyone to think rationally. Faith is not inherently positive, not by a longshot. It's something that was invented to survive, just like hope, just like hatred, just like grudges, just like love. And they're all fallible.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

"Polygamy is bad because people believe in the blood moons." 

 

Whenever I pull bullshit moves like "Im just angry because *context*" you always call me out. So yeah, im calling you out now. There are no longer facts involved in this debated, its all *context* now.

Its weird that im defending polygamy when this all started out as "Mormons are hella creepy"

[Sahaqiel 1232]

You have again misunderstood my argument. I am saying that polygamy is not logically consistent with the religion, so the fact that the religion is still followed despite it being part of its inception irritates me. It really looks like you just skimmed over the important parts ("I am of the opinion that you can love whoever you choose in whatever quantity if you're in a consensual relationship and you're not potentially ruining anyone's lives")  where I explained precisely why I think (specifically) religious institutional sex-based exclusive heterosexual polygamy is broken, and why it should mean the religion is likewise broken, because religions claim to have all the facts, and if even ONE of those facts is wrong, the religion's claim is wrong, and the religion should be seen as wrong.

 

The latter portion is context over why I'm being so aggressively anti-faith at the moment. It's an I'm-sorry-for-being-so-insensitive-but-I-stand-by-it statement.

[Cheez 55]

And then I was all like

 

Hey Arcane man how's life

[Sahaqiel 1232]

o hey cheez how's life

[PrimaGaga 1025]

o hey cheez how's life

but Saha. Polygamy isnt inherently bad! The blood moons prove nothing. And even though Obama is a Muslim, ushering in a new homosexual era into our once great nation, that doesn't mean he's gonna force you to become Mormon and marry multiple women! I dont understand why you can't see this.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Are you really just trying to bait me now or what? It looks like you read a few words and thought "how can I mad lib this to make it so I can still contradict Saha?" I didn't ever say polygamy was inherently bad. Actually read my posts before you respond to them.

 

I'm not trying to offend Arcane or anyone else, this is something that I've wanted to talk about for awhile. Sorry if I deeply offended you or anything, Arcane. Hope to see you around more; I promise I don't go off on anti-theistic tangents even with semi-regularity. You too Cheez. Particularly with those girls being kidnapped, that kind of ruined my day.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

[Arcane 12]

Pretty swell, Cheez. How about you?

---

*sigh* Ok, there's a lot of little things I want to address in your argument, but I'm just going to focus on the polygamy issue for now.

 

First off, I want to say that it is also something that bothers me about our past and have no interest in every being a part of. As such, I've done a lot of thinking on the subject.

 

To begin, it's important to understand that in our church, when we are married in our temples, our marriage is eternal. But what happens if your spouse dies, and you are still alive for many years? That sucks, and people should not be deprived of companionship. So you are allowed to remarry while still on earth. And when you're all finally in the next life, both marriages must be considered valid, so there sort of is a de facto plural marriage. And this happens just as often with women; it's not one-sided and sexist which is pleasing to hear.

 

There's an important point that I derive from this: from an eternal perspective, polygamy must be acceptable, and not inherently wrong.

 

As far as marriages in our mortal life go, it is taught that single marriage is standard and we should not engage in polygamy unless God allows it for a time. Which has happened briefly in the history of our church, as well as in the Bible. For example, Abraham, who all of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam trace back to, had multiple wives.

 

The main reason why God would implement polygamy here is for reproductive purposes. It was beneficial for us, as a relatively small and very persecuted community, to grow rapidly. Especially considering how common it was for babies to die before or recently after birth. Polygamy in that time period also allowed women to marry into more financially stable households. It was a rough time, and if I'm not mistaken, there were more women than men for a while due to our missionary program, unfortunate deaths, and because a lot of our men agreed to aid the U.S. Army in the conflict against Mexico.

 

Anyways, since mortal polygamy is primarily for reproductive growth, it makes sense that it's usually men marrying multiple women. If you have 1 man and 3 women, that's potentially three pregnancies at once. If you have 1 woman and 3 men, that's still only one pregnancy.

 

I don't expect that this will entirely convince you, but I hope it makes sense and lessens your negative opinion on us.

---

Edit: No worries Saha, I'm pretty difficult to offend, and I see where you're coming from. Heck, I even agree with you on a few things you've brought up.

[Iargely Iegendry 63]

Is the soul of a woman always reborn into a woman body?

Serious quesh