I like to use the Mormons to evaluate religions. The entire religion was cooked up in the 1830's in the US, and there's a paper trail in english! If you examine it, the religion is totally ludicrous.
Take polygamy:
Joe Smith started lusting after his follower's daughters, so, God told him that HE could be polygamous! The elders of the church caught on to what ol' Joe was about, and he consulted God, who told him that THEY could be polygamous too! Well, a secret like that coldn't be kept from the hoi polloi Mormons for long, so, they got the divine right of polygamy too!
Then, to become a state and to stay out of jail, the Utah Mormons were given the choice - either give up polygamy (a major tenet of their faith) and become a state, or have all your patriarchs jailed and stay a territory. They quickly caved, even though some are still secretly polygamous today.
Mormon history is hilarious, but they haven't had thousands of years to scrub the record (although they're working hard at it!) as the older, more established religions have. So, I have extreme skepticism about ALL religions. |
