From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: MORMONISM ??????
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:19:49 GMT

In article <1992Apr9.014210.6279@hellgate.utah.edu> jwindley%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Jay Windley) writes:
>Well, here's a problem.  Those who go to the temple make covenants not
>to reveal certain details about some of the temple ceremonies.  These
>promises are renewed every time one attends.  Someone who is a temple
>worker must have attended the temple often enough to be familiar with
>the rite, and so must have made this promise dozens of times.
>
>Now these authors are promulgating information which they had
>previously promised not to divulge.  Either they are deliberately
>going back on their word, or they were never serious about the
>promises they made.  However you look at it, these individuals are
>clearly dishonest.  Can they be trusted to tell the truth about
>Mormonism?  Hardly.

Isn't this a catch-22?  The fact that someone is willing to tell us about
your secret ceremonies automatically means his testimony is no good?

An oath isn't an unlimited license to get away with anything.  If someone
takes an oath not to tell about something, and then discover that keeping the
oath entails something immoral--for instance, keeping quiet about prejudice
against other religions, internal dishonesty about the sources of your
religion, etc., they are now in an moral quandry.  It's "wrong" to disobey an
oath--but it's also "wrong" to cover up prejudice, and "wrong" to keep people
from finding out the actual sources of your religion.  Under these
circumstances is it dishonesty to "break" the oath?

>Hm, your authors (or you) seem to be pretty well versed on Free
>Masonry and "ancient Babylonian religions."  Care to substantiate
>this?

There is no substantiation you would accept, since there is no source whose
statement about secret Mormon ceremonies (or about Masonic ones) you would
accept, as per the catch-22 above.

>Further, I have in my possession (but not in hand) a pamphlet written
>by a Mormon who has also been a Mason for fifty years, discussing the
>alleged similarities between the temple ordinances and the Masonic
>rites.  He is quite certain of himself when he writes that the
>purposes of the two practices are so divergent that equating them in
>any but the most trivial way is ludicrous.
>Of course there are the superficial similarities.

The Mormon and Masonic ceremonies are similar in some respects.  This can be a
an objectively determinable fact.  But to say that the similarity is
superficial or not is far less easy to determine objectively.  For a Mormon to
come to the conclusion that the similarities are more than superficial would
mean that his entire life was wasted on a religion that wasn't really the
divine revelation he believes it to be.  Could it be that such a person may
have a rather large motivation to see as superficial a similarity that a
non-Mormon would see otherwise?
--
This is a newer version of the memetic .signature infection.  Now that's an
idea.  Copy it into your .signature today!

Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc