Les Bonnes Choses

Warning: if you believe in moral absolutism, please select another link from your bookmarks and click it. Yeah, that one there -- the one with the cats.

Still here? Okay, first, to forewarn you, I don't care what you believe in. I don't have a say in it, because I wasn't there. And, frankly, the thing about religion is that it's based on faith, and therefore no set of beliefs is any more justifiable than any others, objectively speaking.

Did you know you run the risk of an overachieving Mormon changing your beliefs behind your back? No, I'm not talking about Mitt Romney's election machine managing to win over so many Republican voters. At worst, that sort of hoodwinking will persuade just enough independent voters to wreck eight years of your life, and that's nothing compared to eternity. Apparently the Mormons have been running around baptising people in absentia. Dead people, even. This is, of course, an outrage to the millions of holocaust victims who had a date with the Patriarchs and found themselves instead talking with some guy named Peter, who naturally did not have a reservation under their names. That's awkward, and so the Mormons have agreed to stop. Or at least, stop making it so obvious.

This sort of thing isn't just a spiritual problem, either. Dungeon Masters have long have had to wrestle with the problem of what happens when Paladins from different pantheons fight each other. I mean, does their protection from evil aura still work?

The offensiveness of the proxy baptisms is obvious to me. What I don't get here is why it's a serious spiritual problem. Either these baptisms are done under divine authority, or they're not. If a Supreme Being is acknowledging the baptisms, then the baptised should be thankful they escaped eternal damnation. If not, then why are we concerned with the declarations of a bunch of crackpots in Utah? Furthermore:

But the practice offends members of many other religions, especially Jews, who have expressed outrage at attempts to alter the religion of Holocaust victims because they were killed based on their beliefs.

I'm skeptical of the efficacy of proxy baptisms on altering the beliefs of the living, let alone of the dead. If you know a Mormon, you go right ahead and send them whatever deets they need to baptise me. I assure you I won't be putting a Romney sign on my lawn in this lifetime. If metaphysical alteration of the soul was possible on someone's say-so, well, here, watch this, it's payback time:

Mitt Romney
Level 5/5/5 Succubus Aristocrat/Rogue/Arcane Trickster
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Religion: [see below]
Strength: 8
Dexterity: 10
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 9
Charisma: 15
Special Abilities: Mass Suggestion (1 x election season); Undetectable Alignment (at will)