This part is amusing --> American fundamentalism has one huge problem which is that the United States is nowhere pre-figured in the Bible. It worries them a lot, they keep trying to find it there, they try to interpret prophecies to refer to the United States, but they can't succeed - even to their own satisfaction - in getting it to come out right.
Enter Mormons & Joseph Smith who looks into his hat containing the magic "seeing stones" & of course the obligatory Angel sent just for him for that ever important direct link-up from above . Problem solved , for here's a new "revelation" that the the Garden of Eden was in Louisianna & we find that the true believers all migrated here to discover America 3,000yrs earlier (sorry Leif Erikson) carrrying the real Bible & true testament of some shallow fanastical historical code with them . Sailing all the way from Palestine on a never-never land adventure , ships filled the chosen people , who had the golden tablets dictated by God and you can be a part of this holy Hallelujah hoooey just place your order today !
But all about invention mixed with obvious scantily hidden literary plagiarism of earlier James Bible, born out of the imagination of some 19th century Peter Pan who grew up in a rural fundamentalist revival in America who's living was made searching for buried treasure & grew up filled with fantasies of swashbuckling pirate stories .
Memes feed on earlier memes , the heroic & religious themes . What is thought is knowledge codified by picking & choosing the prophets who's messages survive only for the lineage that survived & here the game is played of "connect the Oracles" & "pick the Prophets" which is as old as mankind itself . And who gets to pick the Prophets & choose the Saints was the way of demonstrating the truth of the power of the Holy unseen to that power one swore his allegience . Unfortunately & fortunately in the parade of human history this selection of who will be remembered & beautified and who demonized or excommunicated , this religiously based form of artificial selection has been blown assunder in the growing expanded modern secular world . |
