Liberal Mormon

Well.. the Devil is sure working overtime to piss me off this week. Saturday afternoon my wife and sat down to watch a movie that NetFlix.com had recommended, Sunshine Cleaning. The movie is about two sisters who start a crime scene cleaning business to make money. At one of the client's houses the younger sister finds a fanny pack filled with photos of a young girl. She takes it upon herself to find the girl, now a woman, and give her the photos from her deceased mother. Along the way she befriends the lady. During one of their conversations the lady confesses she is "weird" because she doesn't drink alcohol or smoke as it causes her spirit to weaken, or something along those lines. The sister then replies "you might as well be Mormon" laughing. The both laugh and scene ends. I took this as rather odd that in an Indy film they'd take a shot at Mormons but I kinda smiled and forgot about it. Well, until Sunday.

Sunday night I sat down and finally watched Bill Maher's new special on HBO called "But I'm not wrong.." And it was actually pretty decent. I agree with a lot of what Maher has to say about current events and politics, but as one might guess, I disagree heavily with him on religion. In his comedy skit he's going on about religion and the problems it causes with fanatics and yada yada, he says something along the lines about examining America's religions to see just how nutty and weird religion is or something to like and of course he brings up Mormons and Scientology. Fortunately, he goes for blood on Scientology instead of Mormons. But yet, another weird pop at Mormons and their "weird religion". 2 days in a row now. Strange.


Having recently signed up for Netflix, I have been watching a lot of tv shows I'd never heard of including a rather funny cult comedy on Shotime called Dead Like Me. The show is about a young girl killed at the age of 18 by a space station toilet seat that fell from space. Instead of passing on to the afterlife she gets recruited to become a "Grim" or a soul middle man. She essentially shows up at the exact place and time someone is going to die and helps the newly dead soul pass into the afterlife. She is Undead, not alive but not dead. Anyway in one episode, one of her "co-workers" pisses off their boss by yanking out the soul of someone who pissed her off but wasn't scheduled to die. The Boss then goes on to explain that by giving this person an out of body and surreal experience, it is going to create a nut of him and probably a new religion just like "Joesph Smith and his gold plates " her boss explains. Weird, someone has a forced out of body experience and all of the sudden they're Joesph Smith. Riiiggghhhhtt. Now, it's totally weird. 3 days in a row, 3 different sources.

Finally, Tuesday I sit down to continue reading Dan Brown's new book "The Lost Symbol". To my surprise on page 79 Mr Brown decides to take his own pop at Mormonism: "As are many equally improbable beliefs". Langdon often reminded his students that most modern religions included stories that did not hold up to scientific scrutiny: everything from Moses parting the Red Sea to Joseph Smith using magic eyeglasses to translate the Book of Mormon from a series of gold plates he found buried in upstate New York. Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity." Now while I agree with Brown's characters point, that wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity, why the hell rag on Mormons? Aren't there dozens of, if not hundreds of other sects, religions he could have chosen? The Roman Catholic Church has some widely crazy ideas about things that have no physical validity, or documentation in the Bible but the ideas are accepted by the masses.

Yes I feel picked on, maybe Mormons have a persecution complex and I'm being a bit over sensitive. True I shouldn't care about other peoples opinion about my religion but when I have a week like this, someone has to be working over time to irritate me.