tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post5252592376814491744..comments2024-03-28T16:35:26.665+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Old books about Mormons - more anti-Mormon than I could possibly have imagined...Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-30829025461464129372013-12-01T00:14:22.762+00:002013-12-01T00:14:22.762+00:00I love exhuming this old nonsense. I hope I'm...I love exhuming this old nonsense. I hope I'm never too mature to refrain from dancing on the grave of old errors.Adam G.http://www.jrganymede.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-70620562267263040742013-11-29T23:07:43.123+00:002013-11-29T23:07:43.123+00:00Following-up JP's lead I looked again at A Stu...Following-up JP's lead I looked again at A Study in Scarlet (which I think I read in my teens, but do not recall) and found the following:<br /><br />*<br /><br />The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the secret societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the state of Utah.<br /><br />Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.<br /><br />At first this vague and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about — rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders — women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and recorroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a sinister and an ill-omened one.<br /><br />Fuller knowledge of the organization which produced such terrible results served to increase rather than to lessen the horror which it inspired in the minds of men. None knew who belonged to this ruthless society. The names of the participators in the deeds of blood and violence done under the name of religion were kept profoundly secret. The very friend to whom you communicated your misgivings as to the Prophet and his mission might be one of those who would come forth at night with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. Hence every man feared his neighbour, and none spoke of the things which were nearest his heart.<br /><br />*<br /><br />All very reminiscent of Macavity the Mystery Cat.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-18459319604785847182013-11-29T14:16:59.973+00:002013-11-29T14:16:59.973+00:00@JP - It's that kind of propaganda when the *l...@JP - It's that kind of propaganda when the *less* evidence there is for it, the more secret and sinister and wiespread and powerful that conspiracy must be. <br /><br />And when there is *zero* evidence, the conspiracy must be infinitely pervasive and powerful. <br /><br />I think it was Cannon and Knapp who commented that the assassinations and human sacrifices did not show up in the murder statistics, which were in fact low - presumably because the 'normal' murders were so rare as to be almost non-existent.<br /><br />For the Kauffmanns, the massive economic exploitation of rank and file Mormons by their leaders (which they desribed) had to be squared with the almost complete lack of poverty and high level of general prosperity...<br /><br />- But (as typical socialists) they regarded the problem of production as trivial, and the economic conditions of that place and time as intrinsically so favourable that goods and services pretty much grew on trees; and therefore presumably the Mormon leaders managed to extort (supposedly) vast wealth for themselves by relious power, while leaving plenty for everybody else - and this would hardly be noticed by those whom they exploited. <br /><br />The fact that the Mormons had, almost uniquely for that era, solved the problem of poverty gained them essentially no credit from their critics. Very few people *really* care about eradicating poverty. Indeed they care so little, that they do not even notice when it has been done. <br /><br />For the anti-Mormons, the decency and good order which were up-front observable in Salt Lake City (even in polygamous households) simply meant that the real evil was extremely cleverly hidden, and that the population had been duped and hyponotized and terrorized. <br /><br />Several authors regarded the Mormon War of 1857 as a sadly missed-opportunity - when the Federal government really *should* have exterminated the Mormons when they had the chance; but failed to finish the job (or even start it) due to incompetence and cowardice. <br /><br />The general tone of these books was based on the assumption that Mormonism was a kind of cancer afflicting the USA ("a thorn in the flesh of the great American Republic" "one black page in the story of the United States" "the abominations of Mormonism"), and the problem was simply how best to extirpate it.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-12198264381962547622013-11-29T13:48:23.636+00:002013-11-29T13:48:23.636+00:00One of the very first books I ever read about Morm...One of the very first books I ever read about Mormons was in the Sherlock Holmes compendium I read as a boy. The story A Study in Scarlet (published 1888) depicts the Mormons as an evil, relentless global conspiracy of kidnappers, murderers, and white slavers. Kinda like the way a certain other religious group has often been portrayed - especially the despoiling of innocent Christian maidens part.<br /><br />At the time (age 12 maybe) my reaction was, "wow, who the heck are these monsters?" To this day I can't think of the Mormons without recalling this story. Very effective propaganda, indeed!JPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-52693578468082749122013-11-28T21:51:12.908+00:002013-11-28T21:51:12.908+00:00Don't try reading physics in old books - by go...Don't try reading physics in old books - by golly they made heavy weather of it. I don't know whether there was golden age of physics writing, but if there was I'd bet it would be well into the twentieth century.<br /><br />One qualification: I have never got round to reading Maxwell's account of the kinetic theory in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: it has a high reputation.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-90781053877555628942013-11-28T20:25:02.490+00:002013-11-28T20:25:02.490+00:00One consequence of this lurid anti-Mormon literatu...One consequence of this lurid anti-Mormon literature was felt by the young Dylan Thomas (1914-53) who wrote of his childhood: "most sinister of all, ... the far-off race of the Mormons, a people who every night rode on nightmares through my bedroom."Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-75185542888039023812013-11-28T20:20:15.006+00:002013-11-28T20:20:15.006+00:00@Greg - If you didn't see it, this was my post...@Greg - If you didn't see it, this was my post on the theme outlined by Froude. <br /><br /> <br />http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/mormonism-poised-between-incredibilities.htmlBruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-55394582456593721612013-11-28T19:28:12.157+00:002013-11-28T19:28:12.157+00:00Choice passage from Froude's Oceania (368-371)...Choice passage from Froude's Oceania (368-371):<br /><br /><br />"The idea of the buried gold plates on which Joe Smith the First declared that he found the first book, was borrowed <br />from Lucian, whose false Prophet of Galatia pretended to have dug up plates near Byzantium on which were written <br />the revelations of Apollo. How Joe Smith knew anything about Lucian is another mystery, but the whole thing is an extraordinary paradox. Not spiritualism, not table-rapping or planchette-writing, exceed Mormonism in apparent absurdity. Yet hundreds of thousands of men and women believe in it as a new communication sent from heaven, and — as is far more strange — in worldly wisdom, in practical understanding, in industry, patience, and all the minor virtues which command success in life, neither America nor our own colonies can produce superiors to them. The plain of the Salt Lake, when Brigham Young halted his caravans there after the pilgrimage through the desert, was bare as the shores of the Dead Sea. From the Snow Mountains and from the Sweet Lake of Utah they brought fertilising streams of fresh water and poured it over the soil. They fenced and drained, they ploughed and sowed, they built and planted ; and now literally the wilderness is made to blossom like the rose. Our train ran on among orchards of peach and almond, pink with the early blossoms. The fields, far as one could see, were cleanly and completely cultivated, and green with the promise of abundant harvests. Cattle, sheep, and horses were grazing in hundreds. The houses were neat and well constructed, each with a well-kept garden round it. Place and people <br />formed a perfect model of a thriving industrial settlement, and all this had grown in a single generation from what, to human intelligence, is the wildest absurdity, initiated by deliberate fraud. One can only conclude that man is him- <br />self a very absurd creature."Gregnoreply@blogger.com