Satan’s Garden

Gordon B. Hinckley died yesterday. For those unfamiliar with the man, who live outside of Utah’s 24/7 coverage of the event, Hinckley was the living profit, er prophet, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - also known as the Mormon Church. (I still think there’s one “M” too many in that name.)

For a prophet and a seer, as Hinckley was known to the church, his track record was abysmal. By far there’s too much to summarize here, so I’ll provide links to one of the better resources out there. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The largest of the “prophet” scandals has to go to the entire Mark Hofmann “Salamander Papers” hoax and subsequent denial that the Church was even involved, because the forged papers were purchased with a “hidden” account outside of the church’s holdings. The fact still remains that Hinckley ignored several warnings from various people that the papers were likely forged and bought them up anyway - a strange act for a “prophet” to engage in. It can only be concluded that the Mormon Church was afraid that if the documents were true, it would show Joseph Smith for the fool and liar he was and tarnish the already shaky reputation of the religion. The legal wrangling that the Mormon Church attempted after Hofmann murdered two people and blew himself up in a failed third attempt, exposing the entire charade, is something else to behold.

Again, there is so much to read on this topic, this is just a tidbit.

Hinckley was to the Mormon Church’s adherents, a man to be revered, the same as the Pope is revered by Catholics. As such, you won’t find a believing Mormon who won’t ignore all of the data against Hinckley’s prophet status, nor will they believe he was willfully deceitful at any point. As faith in their religious beliefs support them, so does faith in their religious leaders. This shows, yet again, the power of faith over reason - the ability to ignore data which doesn’t support or contradicts the tenants of the faith. Faith is blind, after all.

For all of Hinckley’s issues, I cannot hold him in the same ire or contempt that I held men like Jerry Falwell. Hinckley lied, he avoided answering difficult questions which paint the Mormon Church in very poor light and generally acted as a well trained media man in public relations (which he was, by the way,) but he did not preach the fire-and-brimstone rantings that others with similar audience have. Whether or not he did so in the secret sessions of the Mormon Church, I don’t know, but he never did so publicly, and I have to give him some credit for that. Even his rantings against homosexuals was soft spoken, putrid as it was.

In any case, his legacy is over and once his funeral is done with, the church will announce the next prophet and so it continues. Maybe God will choose to be more accurate with the next one.

In some Protestant churches, mostly Baptist, the old becomes the new as churches return to the practice of shunning those it finds sinful and unrepentant.

Personally, I find this to be great news. The more medieval practices crop up, the more likely these churches will loose congregationalists. They’re eating themselves from within. Furthermore, as the various churches all move to copy this kind of thinking - and they will as they desperately try to restore themselves to “greatness” in society - the more repulsive their behavior will appear to rational people and the more polarized the argument over religion will become.

This will lead to turmoil, certainly, but in the end religion looses. Reason will eventually prevail over nonsense and this action on the part of these churches calls that dynamic squarely to attention and brings down the focus of reason, where it has been lackadaisical before.

Pat Condell has changed my thoughts about debating Christianity (and religion in general.) His points here are simply too compelling to ignore.

“I think to engage dogma in debate is to legitimize it…”

Pat, I think I finally agree with you. That nascent feeling that something was wrong with my approach, swimming in the back of my brain, has been nurtured by this simple message. There is no reason to be polite about this. It is time to stop giving superstitious nonsense anything but a sound, derisive tongue lashing. I’m done with appeals to logic, softly spoken words and side stepping comments that might cause pain through ridicule. Primitive superstition deserves nothing less than complete and utter ridicule and scorn.

I’m done being diplomatic toward nonsense. I’m done with my old hobby.

A sincere thanks, Mr. Condell.

Back in early August, 1964, Democratic Republic of Vietnam naval forces attacked the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. The first attack was on August 2nd against the USS Maddox, then August 4th against both vessels. President Lydon B. Johnson used the second attack to obtain approval from Congress for the Vietnam War.

The problem is, these two attacks never happened.

First came information in 2001, in the form of an audio tape recording by President Johnson himself, in which he admits that the second attack never happened. (This information was first revealed in Martin Fletcher’s article in the The Times, on Nov 7th, 2001.) Now, further information straight from the NSA shows us that none of the incident was real.

I bring this up, not only because it is fascinating news, but to put into perspective the current goals and “reactions” which will come from the Bush administration in their desire to attack Iran and Syria. The recent incident reported in the papers of our ships having a “close brush” with Iranian boats brings this issue to a head. I ask you to consider this simple question: Are you going to trust the government at face value when they say we were attacked?

This government has a long history of going to war under the pretext that we were innocent and attacked without provocation. From the sinking of the USS Maine by an explosion of unknown cause, which started the Spanish American war; through FDR’s goading of Japan and now argued topic of foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor; to the now proven faked attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. Why is it that we still trust the government when they claim we were attacked without provocation? It has a proven modus operandi which betrays any such trust!

It seems to me that the record of lying, on all areas of government behavior, would have produced a certain level of healthy skepticism in even the most ardent lapdog by now. It hasn’t. Instead the modus operandi of the American public is to trust the government’s take on every incident, the general assumption being that they would not mislead us.

They have misled us. They have misled us into sending our young men to the far corners of the world to die for fictional causes. It cannot all be swiped away with a gesture, claiming that it was an accident of circumstance or simple negligence or incompetence. We’ve been lied to and we are being lied to, all the time.

It seems to me that approaching anything the government claims with a heavy dose of skepticism, is the only sane course of response to have anymore. As difficult to swallow as it may be, it is long past the time to stop giving our own government the benefit of the doubt.

Some things are just so spooky, that no added description needs be written.

Back in March of 2007, I bemoaned on how the Democratic victory in congress meant nothing as far as stopping the Bush administrations atrocities. I asked what we’ve seen from the Democrats concerning Iraq, Iran and our loss of liberty from the current administration. The answer then is what I expected at the time: nothing.

I received some criticism for “not giving the Democrats enough time” and “expecting too much for such a short period”. It’s been a year now since the Democrats have held congress. Have my expectations been appeased?

Hardly.

Let’s review the workings of the Democratic Party controlled congress over 2007. The war in Iraq is still going strong. In fact the Senate unanimously confirmed General “I’ve never seen a surge I didn’t like” Petreaus. The Democrats haven’t forced a retreat, haven’t cut funding to the war effort, nor have they done anything about the horrid Guantanamo facility. FISA was renewed in full force, without any concern for civil liberties. Michael Mukasey was given a free ride on his nomination for Attorney General over his inability to decide whether or not waterboarding is torture. Finally, at the end of 2007, Bush was handed $70 billion in war funding, which means that the war will go on until at least the end of Bush’s term, as no one is going to rock the vote-boat at the end of this summer when the funding runs out - so more will be provided. Honorable mention must also be given to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as news has now come out showing that when Pelosi was a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, that the CIA informed the committee as early as 2002 that waterboarding and other torture techniques were being used. Far from objecting, it has been reported that Pelosi cheered on such tactics and supported the initiative to continue.

Even the Democratic Presidential candidates don’t meet the mark. Clinton and Obama battled against each other to prove how “anti-war” they were over Iraq, while their voting records reveal that both voted for a $301 billion increase in war spending and both voted against setting a withdrawal date. Chris Dodd likes to talks as if he supports liberty, being the only Democratic Presidential candidate with a stated “return to the Constitution” position, but his voting record betrays his totalitarian nature. No one who believes in liberty and the Constitution would vote for the PATRIOT Act, the FEMA Amendment, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as well as the Implementing 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act. Congress should have just bundled them under the “Repealing the Bill of Rights Act” and saved time.

No, the Democrats have merely proven once again that they are ineffective in achieving their stated goals at best, or lie about their stated goals at nominal.

Republican and Democrat: Two sides to the same evil coin. Until Americans stop voting via partisan politics, we will continue down the same horrid path until the USA simply falls apart from its own seditious weight.

Addendum: I should have written this 37 years ago. Moron. (Yeah, that’s me. Thanks to Adam for pointing out the obvious.)

Let this be a lesson to everyone, especially me, to read the faint print… I might as well remove the original response, as not to cloud the issue any with Google hunters.

Now, where did I put that plate of crow?

I’ve decided to move this site to its own domain. (Users may have noticed problems for a couple of hours today, related to my being an idiot and trying to move too quickly…)

In the near future, this The old URL will auto-redirect to http://www.satansgarden.org and I will keep the redirect in place on the old server to make sure that people are forwarded properly when examining old listings in Google, etc.