My (very unofficial, perhaps incorrect, and almost certainly incomplete
and/or oversimplified) understanding is one of the central tenets of
LDS/Mormonism/Latter-Day Saints/Latter Day Saints, and one that I think
is unique to it within Christianity, is that people can be Baptised
after they die, and that this apparently squares everything with the man
in charge in a manner no different that would be the case had one been
baptised before one had died. Something like that. I believe that this
is what has driven this staggering push for geneology research,
records and systems development. It’s basically an extension of what
Tim said about the importance of family, your Eternal Family, I believe.
That is, one of the thing highest on your to do list is to studying
your roots, because you’re supposed to do that in and of itself, but in
particular, you’re supposed to be looking for family members (at any
distance, I believe) that were not Baptised before the died, so that you
may grandfather in some salvation, on a kin by kin basis. Something
like that. I believe that whether they were Mormon, et. c. or not has
nothing to do with it, and while I’m not asserting that any of the
following is either true or not true, from what I gather, this is part
of where the reputation for being ‘converters’ comes from, as it does
sound like amping up being a missionary. The part about not having to
be Mormon has gotten them in to trouble a few times. I believe that in
the not to distant past (1990’s), the church agreed to remove the names
of something like a few hundred thousand Holocaust survivors from its
records, and it was only in the past couple of years that someone found
‘Simon Wiesenthal’s’ name on the record books. Whoever tried to save
his eternal soul was apparently very zealous, and very, very stupid.
Aside from being a tough name to not notice, I think old SW has
demonstrated pretty cogently that he won’t take any shit from people
regarding his religion, and more power to him, so it’s hard to imagine
who thought this was a good idea, considering that there was some sort
of legal agreement made in the 90’s that the church would stop doing
this fore those of Jewish decent, without their permission or something
like that.
Wildest off topic? Certainly, but as we’ve also discussed the role of
divinity in the design of x86 assembler syntax, it’s not totally
unprecedented.
Cheers,
mm
Tim Roberts wrote:
Maxim S. Shatskih wrote:
>>> Of every LDS follower? or every person in the whole world?
>>>
>> Their target is every person in the whole world, from Adam until today.
>>
>
> Amazing.
>
> Is it related in some way to the modern theory of haplogroups and to
> the human
> genome project?
>I don’t think so. To be honest, I don’t know the fundamental reason for
the fervent interest in genealogy within the LDS Church. As a rule,
Mormons have a deep commitment to family, and it could be something as
simple as an extension of that commitment.This is one of the wildest off-topic tangents of any ntdev thread in a
long time…
