Last weekend, a Phoenix Catholic church ordained another female priest—the fourth woman ordained to the priesthood in that area. The Vatican has called these ordinations a “crime against faith” and promise excommunications.

The Washington Post debunks five myths about American mosques.

Trying to co-opt the civil rights movement and its legacy, Glenn Beck held his “Restoring Honor” rally at the same place and on the same day that MLK Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech. Beck argued that America has “wandered in darkness” and needs to turn to god. Christopher Hitchens called the rally “the Waterworld of white self-pity.” Hitchens’ Slate colleague William Saletan disagrees, writing that liberals should celebrate the fact that conservatives have embraced MLK Jr., a man they once perceived as a radical.

Austin Cline of About.com: Atheism/Agnosticism provides us with a helpful overview of the various explanations for why religion exists.

In his new book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking concludes that no god was needed to create the universe. The universe was instead the inevitable result of the laws of physics.

The Center for Inquiry (of which SHAFT is an affiliate) released a statement defending the right to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero. A couple of popular LDS blogs urge Mormons to support the center. Mormon politicians are divided on the issue. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) backs the center, while Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitt Romney oppose it.

All this talk about Obama being a secret Muslim is silly. We all know he’s a closet non-believer.  

TheoreticalBullshit recently posted a 30-minute video about morality without god. TBS, DasAmericanAtheist, and ProfMTH are among the most thoughtful and articulate atheists on YouTube. Subscribe to their channels.

Some missionaries burned dozens of copies of the Book of Mormon and have the pictures to prove it. (It’s not what you think.)

Contra the Word of Wisdom, an extensive 20-year scientific study found that both moderate and heavy drinkers outlive non-drinkers. A similar study found that a pint of beer is slightly better than water at rehydrating the body after a workout. Too bad it tastes terrible.

A new survey reveals that 1 in 8 Americans identify as “ex-Christian.” American adults are leaving Christianity at four times the rate they’re joining it.

Conservapedia would have you believe that Einstein’s E=mc2 is a liberal atheist conspiracy.

A Mormon bishop was senselessly murdered in California in between on Sunday. The shooter, Kenneth James Ward, was a former Mormon with many mental issues. He was bipolar and had post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in the Persian Gulf War.

The Council for Secular Humanism asks, “Are secularists less generous?” The answer: Yes, but it’s complicated.

Dean drew her conclusions from what she calls one of the most depressing summers of her life. She interviewed teens about their faith after helping conduct research for a controversial study called the National Study of Youth and Religion. [...] The study, which included in-depth interviews with at least 3,300 American teenagers between 13 and 17, found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith. The study included Christians of all stripes — from Catholics to Protestants of both conservative and liberal denominations. Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can’t talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found. Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good [...]

[Most] teens who are articulate about their faith [...] come from Mormon and evangelical churches, which tend to do a better job of instilling religious passion in teens, she says.

What ever shall we do to stop this horrifying new generation of “imposter” Christians whose takeaway from church is a nebulous belief in a God that wants them to be nice people and feel better about themselves?

I’ve been a lazy blogger this weekend, and so recent posts (this one included) have been image-heavy. But more substantial posts are in the works.

I look forward to what SHAFT will accomplish this new academic year. And despite my having graduated and moved to Salt Lake, I still hope to attend some SHAFT events throughout the year.

Not surprisingly, Mormons give President Obama the lowest approval ratings, and Muslims give him the highest. What I found newsworthy was that Obama’s ratings among atheists/agnostics was only 63%. I’m not sure how to interpret that statistic.  Does it mean there is significant political diversity among atheists/agnostics, or are we so overwhelmingly liberal that we are disappointed by how moderate Obama has been?

According to a poll conducted at this site, 48% of our readers are liberal, 23% moderate, 16% libertarian, 12% other, and 1% conservative.

Have we, as Moroni warned, “polluted the holy church of God?” (Morm. 8:38.) The auxiliaries of the Church are to be a help, not a hindrance, to parents and the priesthood as they strive to lead their families back to God. Do any of us wear or display the broken cross, anti-Christ sign, that is the adversary’s symbol of the so-called “peace movement”? – Ezra Taft Benson, October 1970 General Conference

Those of you who live or have lived in Logan know that its populated with quite a few tree-hugging, peace-loving Mormons. Well, the above quote may come as bad news to them. Benson is arguing that Mormons shouldn’t associate with the peace sign, because it is “the adversary’s symbol.” This isn’t likely true. Most trace the origins of the peace sign to the semaphore flag positions for “N” and “D,” standing for “nuclear disarmament.”

Cultural Mormon Cafeteria suggests that Benson got the idea that the peace sign is anti-Christian from John Birch Society propaganda.

Titled “Peace Symbols: The Truth About Those Strange Designs,” the [John Birch Society] article lambasted the peace movement by associating their symbol with a broken cross, Communism, anti-Christ, and a Satanism.

It was the upside-down broken cross. Such anti-Christian and anti-Jewish symbolism is common to Satanists…

The revolutionaries are pushing this business [of Satanism and black magic] like there’s no tomorrow. And those ‘peace symbols’ are a part of it. They are symbols of the anti-Christ!…

[T]he actual origin of this Satanic symbol can be pinpointed….

[I]n America, as thousands of radicalized youths parade that same symbol, the heretics of the Christian have all but adopted the ‘sign of the anti-Christ’ as their own. And you can be absolutely certain that the Communists planned it that way.

Ezra Taft Benson’s political rhetoric helped make the LDS Church the conservative bastion it is today. But as I have shown (and will continue to show) in my general conference series, some apostles have espoused surprisingly liberal opinions during conference.

A Las Vegas man is suing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for medical expenses after he injured his back in 2007 performing baptisms for the dead.

In a civil suit filed in 3rd District Court on Wednesday, Daniel Dastrup claims he suffered a severe herniated disk in his lumbar spine after performing about 200 baptism on Aug. 25, 2007. The then 25-year-old claims some of the young men and women he completely immersed in water in the name of the dead weighed as much as 250 pounds.

When he asked to be relieved, an officiator at the LDS temple in Raleigh, N.C., where the baptisms were performed, told Dastrup to continue, the civil suit states. Another man who asked the officiator twice to take over for Dastrup was also told no.

The day after finishing the numerous baptisms, Dastrup said he suffered so much pain he could not sit up. He later learned of the herniated disk and had to undergo two spinal surgeries, according to the suit.

Dastrup claims the church breached its duty by “not warning the plaintiffs that the repetitive motion required for performing baptisms for the dead could cause serious damage to a person’s back and by not allowing Mr. Dastrup to stop and be relieved when he and his replacement requested on multiple occasions that they be switched out.”

Dastrup, who also listed his wife as a plaintiff in the case, claims the injury has affected his relationship with her, and the pain has forced him to quit law school and change his lifestyle.

He is suing the corporation of the presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for, among other things, medical expenses, future loss of earning capacity and loss of household services.

Scott Trotter, a spokesman for the church, said, “I don’t have the details of the case at this time and therefore can’t comment.”

Something is awry in his argument from analogy, I think. That a particular number was the winning lottery number doesn’t strike me as “extraordinary.” There had to be a winning number—why not that one? Still, Craig’s objection is an interesting one. I’ve also heard him argue that, granting the existence of an omnipotent being, nothing is truly extraordinary.

First, consider what Mormon leaders historically taught regarding birth control:

The world teaches birth control. Tragically, many of our sisters subscribe to its pills and practices when they could easily provide earthly tabernacles for more of our Father’s children. … The first commandment given to man was to multiply and replenish the earth with children. That commandment has never been altered, modified, or canceled. The Lord did not say to multiply and replenish the earth if it is convenient, or if you are wealthy, or after you have gotten your schooling, or when there is peace on earth, or until you have four children. – Ezra Taft Benson, April 1969 General Conference

God made sex, but not for entertainment. It was provided for a divinely appointed act of creation in which we, to this extent, become co-creators with him. – Mark E. Peterson, April 1969 General Conference

[I]f anything were done to postpone [the responsibility of motherhood], the Church would become a party to birth control, and the Church will have nothing to do with that evil. – David O. McKay, April 1949 General Conference

Sexual laxity among young people, birth control, and intemperance are its insidious and vicious enemies. – David O. McKay, October 1947 General Conference

Another erosion of the family is unwarranted and selfish birth control. – Spencer W. Kimball, October 1979 General Conference

We hear so much about emancipation, independence, sexual liberation, birth control, abortion, and other insidious propaganda belittling the role of motherhood, all of which is Satan’s way of destroying woman, the home, and the family—the basic unit of society. – N. Eldon Tanner, October 1973 General Conference

The above is just a small sampling of the church’s statements on birth control. You can read many others at these links.

In his memoirs, apostle Hugh B. Brown (1883-1975) wrote:

[W]hile we have not taken the unyielding attitude of some other churches toward artificial birth control, we cannot officially endorse it because too many young people would stop having children. Even so, I think we will one day have to modify our position.

And modify it they did. The LDS Church’s current policy toward birth control is articulated in its 1998 Church Handbook of Instructions:

[Birth control] is the privilege of married couples who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for the spirit children of God, whom they are then responsible to nurture and rear. The decision as to how many children to have and when to have them is extremely intimate and private and should be left between the couple and the Lord. Church members should not judge one another in this matter.

How did birth control go from being “evil” and “selfish” to being a private “privilege”? Simply put, birth control became popular among Mormon couples. The LDS Church muted its long-standing denunciation of birth control so as not to offend or lose members.

The same thing happened with oral sex. In an official 1982 letter, the First Presidency stated that “unnatural, impure, or unholy practices” would prevent you from entering the temple. They explicitly identified oral sex as one such practice. A later letter, however, clarified that leaders shouldn’t inquire into members’ sex lives. Some leaders understand this as tacit approval of oral sex. I recently had two married Mormon friends independently tell me that their stake presidents okayed oral sex (though still forbid anal sex, inexplicably).

I’ve argued before at this blog that the church’s permissive stance on birth control and oral sex is at odds with its opposition to homosexuality. If homosexuality is wrong because it’s non-procreative, then so too must the non-procreative practices of birth control and oral sex be wrong.

A few weeks ago, I raised this point at a Mormon bachelor party (of  all places!). One of my friends there responded that the LDS Church understands sex to be more than strictly procreative. “Sex is also a means of expressing love and strengthen emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife,” he said, quoting the Church Handbook. This added nuance initially stumped me. It soon became apparent, however, that procreation is still at the crux of Mormonism’s objection to homosexuality.

“Can’t sex express love and strengthen bonds within gay couples?” I asked.

“Sure,” he conceded, “but the reason it’s important to have loving, committed relationships is for raising children.”

“Millions of children around the world are already being raised by gay parents, though.”

“Yeah, but they have to adopt them. Gay people can’t produce children.” he said with discernible annoyance in his voice.

“Ahh, so procreation is the dividing line after all.”

Realizing that the Mormon argument was losing, another friend ended the debate with an admission that the church’s opposition to homosexuality was arbitrary. We then continued our game of Risk (what else can you do at a Mormon bachelor party?).*

Here’s the point I’m driving at: In order to be consistent, the LDS Church needs to condemn birth control and oral sex—as it once did—or tolerate homosexuality. I bet it will eventually take the latter route, given the church’s history of abandoning controversial teachings and practices. And if the LDS Church doesn’t acclimate itself to changing attitudes toward homosexuality, it will find itself increasingly lonely and irrelevant.

*The friend I debated at the bachelor party begs to differ with my portrayal of our discussion. I remember and maintain that I won the debate, whereas he remembers that I lost. Go figure. I guess that’s a testament to the malleability of human memory. Ha ha. I invite him to share his side of the story, because I don’t want to be unfair to him or his opinion.

Also, I hope I did not convey that this friend is ignorant or bigoted. He is neither.

Michael Voris of Real Catholic TV argues that democracy empowers the ignorant at the expense of the common good. I buy that. His alternative, however, is less palatable. Voris advocates a “Catholic monarchy.”

A GOP candidate for the Iowa House says AIDS is God’s punishment for the sin of homosexuality.

Main Street Plaza has a fascinating post about how few chapters in the Book of Mormon are cited by LDS leaders in conference talks. Half of the chapters contribute almost 90% of the citations!

NASA’s video of a recent space shuttle launch from the perspective of a rocket booster is awe-inspiring. Eat your heart out, Kubrick.

It appears the LDS Church is trying to buy up land in Manti, Utah that has traditionally been used as a free speech area during the Mormon Miracle Pageant.

A group of moms devised a constructive way to protest the hate speech of the Westboro Baptist Church—”Pennies in Protest.”

Wynn LeGrow is running against ultra-conservative incumbent Randy Forbes (R-VA). He recently told the press that he’s a “non-believer.” If he wins, LeGrow would be only the second admitted atheist in Congress, the first being Democrat Pete Stark of California.

The Deseret News reports that Mormons have a serious image problem. Five times as many people have a “strongly unfavorable” impression of Mormons than have a “strongly favorable” one. It’ll take more than an ad campaign to invert those sentiments.

Atheist blogger PZ Myers calls out futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil on his claim that we will be able to reverse-engineer the human brain within the decade. Kurzweil stands by his prediction.

Check out these charts of generational religion changes in Britain in the US. The “no religion” group gains the most in both countries.

YouTuber ProfMTH has a couple of videos explaining the legal reasoning behind Judge Walker’s decision that overturned Proposition 8.

David Silverman, Vice President of American Atheists, debates Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff over the memorial crosses for fallen troopers.

Listverse compiles the top 10 religious scandals in history. Another list of 10 worth reading is philosopher Bertrand Russell’s “Liberal Decalogue.”

On his show last week, Glenn Beck called Charles Darwin “the father of modern-day racism” and hinted that Native Americans are of Hebrew descent. I wonder where he got that notion…

Nearly a hundred soldiers were forced to clean their barracks for failing to attend a Christian concert at a Virginia military base.

The SHAFT site has been a success that far exceeded anyone’s expectations. It has strengthened our group’s sense of community and served as an important forum for critical religious dialogue. And the site largely owes its success to you, the readers. You voted it “Best New Blog” in the 2009 William Law X-Mormon Awards, and your continued readership and participation have made this among the most popular sites of its kind.

Here are some of the site’s stats over one year of activity:

• 66,938 visits
• 124,045 pageviews
• Average time on site: 2:58 minutes
• 255 posts
• 2,812 comments
• Top content: Worst superhero partner ever, If Eve had a sassy gay friend, A tragedy close to home
• Viewed in 141 countries/territories (56% of the visits came from the US, and half of those from Utah)

Again, thanks for all your support!

If you’re a USU student and interested in writing for the site, please let us know.

The tall crosses memorializing fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers will not come down anytime soon — even though a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that they violate the U.S. Constitution.

The decision, which holds implications for roadside memorial crosses across the nation, likely will be appealed by the state and the nonprofit group that erected themonuments.
They could either ask the full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. – http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50132157-76/crosses-utah-memorials-highway.html.csp

From what I understand, government land was being used to display 12-foot-high crosses donated by the private organization UHPA to honor officers that died near that location. The decision could still be appealed to higher courts, so this isn’t necessarily the final result. I suggest reading over the court’s decision for more details.

What do you guys think?

I’d love to hear your thoughts—they’ll help me better articulate my own.

I actually disagree somewhat with Plait’s contention that we (atheists/skeptics) need diplomats, not warriors. As Greta Christina argued at the Secular Student Alliance conference, both are important. My approach is to try to balance the roles by being a ‘diplomatic warrior.’

The above ad is from 2009 and was part of a Scientologist ad campaign. Now compare that to this more recent (and near-identical) LDS commercial. Granted, “I am…” campaigns are nothing new in advertising, and the LDS Church could have come up with theirs independently. Yet even the style of the ads is similar! It really looks as though the LDS Church took a page out of Scientology’s playbook. And there’s nothing egregious about that, I just find it amusing.

But in light of this and yesterday’s post, maybe I’m engaging in parallelomania—seeing parallels where none exist. What do you think?

Update: A friend of mine in the comments wrote that the “I’m a Mormon” ads were thought up in 2006. If true, they were probably not modeled after the Scientology ads, which didn’t air until 2009.

The Comoros Islands are located off the east coast of Africa and just northwest of Madagascar. This small archipelago nation would have never caught my attention were it not for its capital: Moroni.

Now, the Mormon connection with the name Moroni is obvious, but the connection with Comoros is probably less so. Before the French colonized the islands in 1841, the Comoros Islands were known by its Arabic name “Camora.” And it’s this name that bears a resemblance to Cumorah, the hill where Moroni deposited the gold plates—a resemblance made all the more striking by the fact that in the first (1830) edition of the Book of Mormon, Cumorah was uniformly spelled “Camorah.”

Mere coincidence?

This observation isn’t new. It has been discussed at various ex-Mormon sites for years. Because these sites are not always reliable, I was hesitant to conclude anything. It seemed unlikely that a young Joseph Smith would have been aware of an obscure archipelago thousands of miles away. And despite being a very old Arabic settlement, the city Moroni didn’t become the capital of the Comoros until 1958. Few maps before then even made reference to it.

Upon further research, however, it became increasingly plausible that Joseph Smith could have known about the Comoros. Last night, I read an article in the Mormon studies journal Dialogue entitled “From Captain Kidd’s Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni.” The author Ronald V. Huggins argues that the angel Moroni might have evolved from folklore about treasure guardian ghosts. It’s a lengthy article, so I’ll only address those points relevant to the Book of Mormon-Comoros connection.

The article details Joseph Smith’s familiarity with the infamous pirate Captain William Kidd. This is important in establishing the plausibility that Smith knew about the Comoros, because Kidd and other notable pirates visited those islands. Kidd in particular lost a third of his crew to cholera there and was hanged for crimes he committed in the vicinity of Moroni.

Consider the following evidence from the article that Smith was aware of Captain Kidd:

Palmyra natives Philetus B. Spear and Pomeroy Tucker both recall (though decades later) that Smith enjoyed reading about Captain Kidd and his adventures. Historian James H. Tucker, in his 1888 book Early Day of Mormonism, writes that the autobiography of Captian Kidd “made a deep impression upon [Smith].”

Joseph Smith and his family were intimately involved in “money-digging,” a practice where hidden treasure was sought using diving rods or seer stones. On some of their money-digging ventures, it appears the Smiths were after Kidd’s treasure. Several sources attest to this, but the earliest is an 1844 letter to Joseph Smith by his former Vermont neighbors: “If you studied piracy while digging for the money your Father pretended old Bob Kidd [William Kidd was also known as Robert or Bob] buried, you should also have studied the fate of the pirates.”

And lastly, the early Mormon hymn “How Precious is the Name” is set to the tune of a popular song about Captain Kidd.

So what does all this prove? Nothing, conclusively. But it does strongly suggest that Smith was familiar with Captain Kidd, and—through Kidd—might also have been familiar with the Comoros and its capital Moroni.

To be sure, my argument is not necessarily that Joseph Smith deliberately plagiarized the names “Cumorah” and “Moroni.” Rather, I just think this adds to the heap of evidence that the Book of Mormon reflects a 19th-century environment where legends about pirates and buried treasure were pervasive.

Hat-tip to Main Street Plaza for the video.

By the way, I saw the movie Kick-Ass last night. Loved it!

On Fox News last night, Bill O’Reilly asked Beck why he wasn’t more of a “culture warrior”—why he doesn’t discuss issues like gay marriage and abortion. Beck explained that “the country is burning down” and that social issues are basically a distraction. “Honestly, I think we have bigger fish to fry,” he said.

O’Reilly then followed up with this question: “Do you believe gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?”

“A threat to the country? No, I don’t,” Beck responded. “Will the gays come and get us?” he asked mockingly. “I don’t think … the government actually has anything to do with [marriage] … that is a religious rite.”

Beck said that he isn’t concerned about gay marriage so long as it doesn’t infringe upon religious freedoms. He quoted Thomas Jefferson in saying, “If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?”

That’s a pretty admirable position for Beck to take, considering that it not only puts him at odds with many of his coworkers at Fox News, but also with the members and leadership of his church (the LDS Church).

Now, Beck said a couple of things in his interview with O’Reilly that I disagreed with. And I still believe that Beck’s enormous influence is dangerous. Yet occasionally he surprises me and I realize that he, like everyone, shouldn’t be pigeonholed into my tidy preconceptions. More than that, I sometimes find myself even liking both Beck and O’Reilly.*

Liberal SHAFTers needn’t worry, though. We can still call out Beck when he makes bat-shit crazy remarks. All I ask is that we temper our criticisms of him (and others) with humanistic restraint—according people the basic respect they are due.

*I was a huge O’Reilly fan when I was younger. He’s one of the saner personalities at Fox (he supports a repeal of DADT, for example). Plus, who can hate the guy responsible for the funniest meltdown in television history?