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Notes -
I think the man who classifies muslims as christians will make more mistakes in his daily predictions (ie, navigating daily life) than the man who classifies mormons as christians.
The validity of the categories is independent of the subject's self-identification, or of the ur-trope-namer’s decision as to who is allowed to use the name.
To make the obvious analogy, some kid may think they're 'nonbinary', but to the outside world, and to me, they will be put in one of the two original buckets, I'm not creating a new bucket for this nonsense. And in this case I'm not creating an extra mormon bucket when the christian bucket will do.
The things Mormons think are not the same as what Christians think, though. This isn’t a case of like…Protestants disliking the pope but still having more or less the same core ideology, or Eastern Orthodox Christians not agreeing on “the filioque” or whatever it’s called. Mormons think god is an actual physical being with skin and bones that you could touch with your hands from near the planet Kolob, and that there were major mass civilizations in North America where most of the mythology comes from. That’s not me being hyperbolic to make point, that’s literally what they actually believe. It has almost nothing to do with Christianity. Muslims have more in common with Christians than Mormons do. “Unitarian Universalists” have more in common, as far as beliefs are concerned at least, with Christians than Mormons do. When Mormons talk about “god” they aren’t talking about a mystical unseeable unknowable entity like Christians are, they’re talking about a physical person who traveled here from another planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Mormonism
Mormons also don’t share the same creation myth as Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
It’s just seriously not the same religion. Again not because of some minor disagreements over interpretation, it’s just fundamentally a different religion.
The whole reason I’m probably being so annoying in this thread is that I had always heard of Mormons, had some ex Mormon friends, live around Mormons, and had honestly no idea what they actually thought or taught each other. Looking into their beliefs was a WILD experience to me because of how insane it all is. It’s a group of people, who are rapidly growing, who have made a religion out of what essentially comes down to worship of actual fucking space aliens. MAJOR WTF experience learning this.
Here’s a hymn about traveling to kolob: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music/songs/if-you-could-hie-to-kolob?lang=eng
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