No matter how hard I try, I can’t understand why any non-Mormon is upset by this. I mean, how strong are your beliefs that you think the Mormons (motto: You can’t spell Moroni without “Moron”) can destroy them by putting on some magic underwear and mumbling some secret words? Isn’t your God smart enough to see through these pretenders?

Criminy. I’m an atheist and my god can whup yours.

Well, I say “fight fire with fire”. This lapsed-catholic-current-agnostic has a codicil in his will allowing his local Temple to throw him a posthumous bar mitzvah. I spend so much time kvetching about my health, it’s really only a formality at this point…

Won’t the post-mortem baptizers just go underground like the latter day polygamists, and all-e all-e in come free everyone all the way back to Adam?

Also too, if Superman and Jesus got in a fight who would win?

OT-
Heh, simply adorable troll-minion of the Rage Imp has entered the comments two posts back. It’s all mouth-frothy and fang-bearing, so things are hard to make out, but it seems unhappy.
Maybe it resents gravity??

Amen, so to speak… For an atheist the whole thing is a study in five year olds comparing pretend friends in a sandbox: “well MY god just pulled out his golden tablets and whacked your fake god in the head…” Honestly, are we supposed to give a shit? They can baptize me all they want, it just makes them look all the more stupid, pathetic and desperate.

Also too, if Superman and Jesus got in a fight who would win?

Supes would kick Jeezus’s scrawny ass.

Baptizing dead folk is about the least objectionable thing the Mormons do. Resources spent on posthumous baptisms aren’t sending creepy missionaries door to door, supporting policies like prop 8, or running a vulture capitalist for president. Considering the billions of people that have died in the last 150,000 years or so I think it’d be a great idea is the Mormons dropped the rest of their agenda and concentrated on baptisms for the next couple of hundred years. As far as any effects the baptisms are having, if I know God, and I think I do, She’s laughing her ass off at those silly Mormon twits.

I’m an atheist too, but I think it’s an awful practice. I know the person is dead, but then at least the family should have some consent rights for something like that. I look at it this way, how would it feel to your family if, after you die, someone renamed you? That someone took something you self-identified by and changed it, even posthumously, is presumptuous and disgusting. It’s like desecrating a grave.

how would it feel to your family if, after you die, someone renamed you?

Look, unless you’re Napoleon or the Queen of Sheba, after the people who knew you die you’re 99.9999% forgotten. In 300 years your tombstone is unreadable, if it’s still there. What these clowns do to my religion after I die is about as unimportant to me as having my name properly spelled in the Calcutta phone book. The problem with religionists is what they try to do to you while you’re still alive.

I find the post-death baptisms offensive because of the presumptiousness quality of the sneak attack, but…if they baptized a family member of mine, or me, I’d get about as worked up as I would if some witch cast a spell on me.

In as much as anyone else’s beliefs neither break my bones not pick my pockets, the prospect of post mortem baptism doesn’t make me lose sleep, but given the fervently held belief of the Mormons in what they choose to believe and of Jews, particularly those who were exterminated because of that belief, I find myself perturbed by what it says about those who support the practice.

It seems to me a matter of basic respect of one’s fellow human beings that something they themselves consider an essential and core aspect of one’s identity should be respected and not erased, even in death.

This is undoubtedly one of the silliest religious rites of all times. I think the Scientologists should launch a counterstrike and redirect all dead Mormons to whatever planet they’ve set aside for their post-appocalyptic existence. Good Lord, these people are gullible.

On another note, is making a tin foil hat considered origami?

I like Mitt. Ok he’s a sleazy SOB but this mormon shit is gettin cooler by the minute. My local bishop says that polygamy laws dont pertain to the afterlife so I said sign me up. Got 12 virgins waitin for me.

That’s real nice, tbagga.

Obama’s got 72.

Argonaut–

I agree with everything you say, but it still bugs me. My dead relatives are none of their idiotic, crackpot business–especially and explicitly because they’ve been selected because they were Jewish. It’s a combination of galling presumption and anti-Semitism-by-other-means. In practical terms it means nothing–but so would calling a black person by the N word, and I’m sympathetic to someone who would angered and outraged by that.

Memo to Mormons: Focus on your own silly souls and your own ludicrous religion. Include us out.

I agree with Bionic’s take on this. It’s disrespectful to the dead and the surviving family to try to erase or change the deceased’s identity. It reminds me of a silly thing we were taught in parochial school – if you see someone gravely injured, say by being hit by a bus, the first thing you are supposed to do is find some water and baptize* them, so they have a chance at heaven in case they die. If the person survives, the church considers them officially catholic, regardless of their own belief. It’s pretty stupid on the face of it, but wouldn’t you find it irritating to have someone insist that you’re not really an atheist, you’re a Mormon?

*in an emergency, it was ok for a layperson, even a grade-school student, to perform a baptism.

I realize that it is a stupid and offensive policy to baptize someone after their death without even a descendent’s permission. But I still now want to go through rites to make Mormons’ any or all of the following: Muslim, Hindi, Rastafarian, Scientologist. And I want to start with Brigham Young and George Romney. Even though these would be made up rites, who cares. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was made up too. (I mean lost tribes of Israel, lost gospel on golden plates found in a mountain in Palmyra and translated by looking into a hat…hell L. Ron Hubbard didn’t even go that.)

Thanks nosy liberalz and jewz. After suffering and dying in the holocaust, now the victims will be excluded from an eternity of Mormon bliss. I hope y’all are happy.

I dunno. The whole outrage over this seems a little overblown. Let’s say there really is a God in Heaven. Is he really gonna tap Anne on the shoulder and say, “Sorry Ms. Frank, but you’re now a Mormon. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave”? I think pointing and laughing at the Mormons is more appropriate.

The whole Mormon “pray ‘em into heaven” thing is really offensive to me. Not because of religion but it’s intrusive, sanctimonious, and over-bearing. It’s “we’re in charge and you’re not.” It presumes that anyone cares what they believe. What a bunch of self-righteous whackos.

I can’t explain completely but I am offended by their going back and baptizing some of my ancestors. None of which were Mormon but rather Puritan. It is like they are stealing or defining our identity. I find it disgusting.

I am not Jewish but they claim some of my ancestors were royal; a claim that is very dubious and with no good primary sources…….. yet listed as such in their data base.

I see this as simply extreme religious audacity, totally irreverent and also totally useless. No God is going to fooled by this superficial pretense. But, however, insignificant it may seem, it represents an ethnocentrism that is far more
offensive than those silly flag label pins.

You realize that the Catholic Mythology has consigned Anne Frank to Hell, don’t you? As a Jew she never accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior, thereby condemning her to Hell. In fact, there’s a better chance of Hitler having made it to Heaven than Anne Frank having it made it.

It’s like desecrating a grave.

Actually, unless one pre-arranges their own grave/headstone business, the whole burial thing seems not much different than a post-mortem/no-consent baptism.

I think what you’re describing is a thought crime nowadays.

In this case it would be someone’s presumption in carrying out an arcane religious ceremony. In other words, that should be disallowed assuming it poses an existential threat to a non-believer’s hereafter (assuming there is one).

Unless you believe in witchcraft, what happens in the “ceremony” makes not one whit of difference.

I don’t know why anyone is intimidated by all of this hokum. As a kid I recall some of my schoolmates fearing barns with hex signs painted on them — that would be in the mid ’50s. They would walk a detour down a road where the barn couldn’t be seen (and presumably where the malevolent barn, likewise, couldn’t see the kids).

Get over it.

It’s just disrespectful. I’m not upset about it. I’m not Jewish and that seems to be their target group right now. If I were Elie Wiesel I would be filing a lawsuit.

Should we address you as Baron/ess?

This is an abhorrent practice, but at least the Mormons are only god-bothering the dead. Their atrocious treatment of the living is what needs exposing: counseling gay teens to suicide? Are we all okay with that?

I’m not, and they do it. Regularly.

At least. :-) Duchess of Wales and the Garter will do nicely. It’s a great story with poleaxing Richard the Third, beheadings in the Tower and betrayals etc. All true but absolutely no connection to the bunch in this country that bear only a similar name.

They can mumbo jumbo over my dead ass all they want, but if they want to really work some magic. There is a pile of dirty underwear on the floor by the washing machine. I have but one “wife” an she says that pile is a personal problem. How could anyone want more than one wife tellin you about your “personal problems”. Mormons need to work on their marketing a bit. Is their magic underwear union made?. Mittens could be missing out on a big selling point.

Gosh, I hadn’t thought about that aspect. One on each floor with a honey-do list.

There is a way to fight back.

http://alldeadmormonsarenowgay.com/

:-)

Feeding on the corpses of Holocaust victims…what a religion!

UNsurpassed self-righteous arrogance.

Whoa…whoa!!!! They’re really doing this? Can you cite your source?
It’s an atrocity, if they’re doing this.