A person visited a Mormon church and ended up getting into a fistfight with a missionary.

A few words on the charitable giving of the Mormon church from Nemo.

In a 1993 talk then-president of the Mormon church Boyd K. Packer warned that the three greatest threats to the church were “feminists, homosexuals and intellectuals”.

The first two are pretty much what you would expect to hear from any conservative Christian-aligned church but the third, intellectuals, is especially interesting.

Essentially, the church doesn’t want members that think for themselves, or that research and study various topics like history. They only want members that listen to and obey whatever the church and church leaders say, as if the church leaders were the gods themselves.

Athanasius Kircher and Egyptian Hieroglyphics

The name Athanasius Kircher might be familiar to those involved in Mormon historical scholarship because of his link to Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith’s description of the Liahona, though that’s a topic for another day.

It turns out Joseph Smith is also connected to Kircher through Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit scholar active in the 1600s, long before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and our ability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The DNA of the Teotihuacan People

In the Mormon church, the Book of Mormon claims the people of ancient America, the Indian and indigenous people, are the descendants of Jews that crossed the Atlantic ocean in ancient history. Multiple DNA studies have already shown this not to be true. However, until very recently the DNA of the Teotihuacan people was still a mystery.

This is an interesting little video explaining that we’ve finally been able to identify the DNA of the Teotihuacan people and guess what? They’re not from Israel either.

A Quick Pucker

It’s fairly well-known that most of Reddit is garbage. There’s a reason the stereotype of a Reddit mod exists. We seem to keep using it anyhow, for some reason.

Personally, I tend to use it as a way to check news headlines that might not show up elsewhere, though more and more I’m thinking it might be better to find an alternative way to find my news, perhaps curated through an RSS reader.

Agreeing With Everything

One thing about the Mormon church is the church and the leaders expect the members to agree with everything they do and say. Even if a member doesn’t agree with everything, the church expects them to ignore all that and agree anyhow.

The reality is you’re never going to agree with everything an organization has to say, and that’s a good thing. That shows you’re still having some independent thought instead of simply going along with everything you’re told.

This is how Mormon apostle David A. Bednar views himself.

Your Power is Your Own

In the Mormon church, the bishop is the leader of a congregation, and members tend to revere the bishop just like they revere any other leader. While perhaps not placing them on a pedestal as high as the upper church leaders and church president, they still view the bishop as the representative of God among the ward, or congregation.

They also tend to believe the bishop has supernatural spiritual powers above those of the other ward members. This tends to lead people to be nervous around the bishop, or it leads them to think the bishop has some sort of special insight that he doesn’t actually have.