Thinking

I'm trying to figure out why I find Mormonism so fascinating.  Part of it is due to the fact that I've lived in close proximity to large Mormon populations for most of my life, but I've never known very much about the history of the church or what they believe.  Part of it is due to the Mormon church's absolutely criminal involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign here in California, which still horrifies me.  Another part of it is due to my reading of a few blogs written by Mormon women around my age, to whom I can relate.  Mostly I suppose it's about reconciling all of these different aspects.

I decided to do some reading on it.  I started with Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which I finished about a week ago.  {If you're not familiar with the book, it uses two murders by Mormon fundamentalists as a jumping-off point to discuss the entire history of the church.}  It's been on my mind ever since, especially this excerpt, which Krakauer uses to introduce Part III of the book:

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous.  So I am told; I have not noticed it. ...

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward the better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. ...

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius.  I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.  I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contribution to civilization.  It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that they became able to predict them.  These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

--Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

There's a lot to digest that that passage, especially after just finishing Krakauer's book.  So that's what I'm doing--digesting, as I read Mormon Country by Wallace Stegner.