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I finished Under the Banner of Heaven this morning. A chilling and very interesting book. Much bigger than just the investigation of a crime. It becomes an investigation of the nature of faith itself. No wonder the Mormon Church had a freak-out about it. Kraukauer interviews one Mormon man who had been a polygamist fundamentalist and eventually became an atheist because of one geology class he took. His story stunned me. He’s a very likable man, very interested in finding the truth – not something handed down to him, but his own truth. Some people can reconcile easily their faith and the unhelpful facts of reality. I can do so. It’s faith. I don’t need proof. Proof seems like a stupid thing to ask for, anyway, in my humble opinion. I’m all about the mystery, and I don’t have a literal faith. My faith has nothing to do with a literal interpretations of things. But I wasn’t raised in a fundamentalist right-or-wrong black-and-white atmosphere. The Mormon man who had to leave his faith because he realized he had been lied to by his church about the age of the earth made an enormous impression on me.
— Tonight, the Empire State Building will dim its lights for 15 minutes, in honor of the passing of Ms. Fay Wray. Pretty cool, huh?
— I’ve been very busy. Crossing things off a To-Do list, things I have procrastinated. It’s a good feeling.
— Overheard on the street. A grumpy guy said to his girlfriend, “You can’t even get a decent hangover with that girlie rose.”
“You can’t even get a decent hangover with that girlie rosé.”
Hilarious! You always manage to crack me up, even when it’s something you didn’t say/write.
Another book you might check out is “American Massacre” (don’t have the author’s name right at hand). It does not reflect well on the Mormon church either but it also shows us the tragic results of religious intolerance.
What constitutes a “decent hangover”? Seems like an oxymoron.
Having had more than one decent hangover, I’m not sure why the guy is so interested in them.
Also the history of the Mormon Church is literally filled with skeletons. I’ve always been amazed that they have been able to reinvent themselves as something largely unrelated to their origins.
Actually, thinking about the Mormons reminds me of an episode of “Stargate”, where the heroes show up on a strange planet where the ruling class has based their whole religion on the idea that the Stargate doesn’t actually work and people do not come through it to visit their planet. When McGyver & Co show up, it creates a very difficult problem for the people in charge of the religion.
oh my god! this sounds like a conversation I once had with my very mormon aunt about evolution. She said that “The Church” doesn’t accept the idea of evolution but after I quizzed her about it she said she just assumed they didn’t agree with evolution – she wasn’t really sure and hadn’t really thought much about it. This just freaked me out! How can anyone (regardless of religion) not be interested in investigating the world they live in??? I guess they’re just focusing on the next world (don’t get me started about that). Cripes.