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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Why so much work into storing genealogical records?

Mormon belief is that baptism is one of the few strict requirement for entry into Heaven, but that it can also be performed for the dead by volunteer proxies. Even the most obstinate sinners and nonbelievers will gain entry into the lowest-but-still-pleasant level of Heaven if they haven't committed the unpardonable sin[1]... so long as they've been baptized, in person or by proxy. Combine those premises and it becomes an obvious moral imperative to gather as much historical genological information as possible to perform proxy baptisms for as many deceased people as possible.

Of course, this presumption of religious axioms also has a history of upsetting people of other religions, and the extensive information-gathering involved often uses borderline unethical methods, such as the various geneology research service websites that are run in one way or another by the LDS Church and include terms of service that let them use the info you piece together however they like.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin#Mormonism

The unpardonable sin seems quite... vaguely specified, and open to endless debate. What sin is a sin against the Holy Ghost? What sin is not?

In Mormon culture it's understood to be something you can only do if you've had life experiences that should convey extraordinary faith. (IMO GP makes a bigger deal of this particular quirk of Mormon doctrine than is needed for the topic, fwiw.) Judas Iscariot is commonly referenced as an example of someone who as a disciple of Jesus should have believed in His divinity but betrayed Him. Most Mormons aren't concerned about accidentally committing an unpardonable sin, and most teaching in the Mormon church focuses on the idea that all sin is forgivable because of Jesus' atonement, with scant mention of the idea that there might be sins that could be unforgivable.

(Note that despite commenting on this thread and being a Mormon I'm hardly an examplary Mormon in a variety of ways. It's rare that a topic comes up on HN that I know much about though, so may as well contribute some info in the spirit of satisfying intellectual curiosity!)

I'm not Mormon, but I was married to one. I got that I was safe as long as I never believed. But that once you believe and then renounce, you're at least at risk. Or maybe that was belief as documented by baptism.

and here I was thinking Roco's Basilisk was the original

Roko's Basilisk is just a technology-flavored reinvention of Pascal's wager: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

Sure, but "feigning belief" is not "belief". I mean, any deity worth believing in would know whether you believed or not. So they'd also know if you really believed, and then renounced. It's like manslaughter vs premeditated murder.

The one sin is to, as far as I can tell (not a Mormon here), refuse God's light once you have seen it.

It would take a crazy man, the kind that would say "the sun does not shine when he sees it", to deny a revelation.

Arguably... Anyone who doesn't believe because they have not seen anything has not sinned. The sin would be, for example, to realize "the Mormons were right!" as you face the gates too paradise and say "I don't believe this. I am an Atheist." As you are staring down the pearly gates.

Basically, knowing you do the wrong things, since you ignore the truth in front of you, and doing it anyway. But you have to see it to really unforgivably sin.

It seems pretty well-specified. It's about internal peace, not external vision.

Seems rather uncharitable. If you are not rational enough to recognize divine truth, are you really in a position to be condemned for your ignorance? Seems like it's targeted towards the mentally ill and disabled.

I think the point is it can only be committed if you understand it rationally and still reject it. So seeing the pearly gates and believing it to be a hallucination, for example, would not qualify.

I am a (non-theistic) Satanist, and I find it easy to understand. The sin in question is to know that there is a God, but reject it even so - or, more broadly, to consider the possibility of God existing as described, but then to conclude that even if it did, one's moral duty is to oppose it.

Mormons believe that some religious ordinances (like baptism) are necessary for salvation and that if a person isn't baptized while alive then a baptism can be performed for them after death. Members of the church are encouraged to research their own family history and perform these ordinances for their deceased ancestors.

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