I also like your assessment of temple work for the dead. If traditions help people feel connected to the ones they love, then what’s the problem? (As long as those traditions don’t involve ritualistically sacrificing people or animals.)

But I also find Bill Maher amusing every once in a while… apparently I’m a bit confused…

They think the only thing that matters is having absolute certainty over metaphysical matters, like what happens after you die and how you should (or shouldn’t) relate to God. The problem is, no one can have that certainty, so instead of being the voice of reason and/or skepticism both sides breed assholes who spend half their meetings mocking everyone who has a different belief system.

At least, that’s how it was in my ward.

They don’t see that or some people, unlike them, it’s not a matter of whose God is bigger or who can bear the best testimony of stuff that they can’t prove to anyone. (Like “I know that when I die I’ll be gone,” which I’ve seen two separate atheists bear their freaking testimonies of and I swear it was just like on Fast Sunday.) These beliefs that they mock satisfy people’s deep needs. They help people connect with the sacred.

“The facts” can’t do that. That’s not what they’re for. And the people who put them above everything else are ignoring the needs and experiences of other people, and turning themselves into assholes.

I have no problem with atheists. I have a problem with assholes. Bill Maher doesn’t viciously mock Mormonism because it’s recent. He does it because he’s an asshole.

The reason why Bill Maher “picks on” Mormonism specifically is because it is a very recent religion. It is also one of the only religions that literally believes all Mormon doctrine. This in itself is very different from other religions (such as when a Christian realizes evolution is factual and still considers themselves a Christian).

I have worn pants to services at many other religions: no big deal. But to a Mormon service, it certainly was.

For instance a Mormon searching for the scoop on polygamy would eventually find the Emma and Joseph Smith corroborated each others words on the matter.

Emma Smith who defended Joseph Smith reputation till her death bed?

She defended Joseph Smith 35 years after his death saying he never practiced or taught polygamy.

Emma said:

“No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publically or privately, before my husbands death,that I have now, or ever had knowledge of”
( Emma Smith Feb 9, 1879, Church History Vol. 3, p.355. )

And Joseph agreed with his wife Emma saying:

“I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the Gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives…. I am innocent of all these charges…. What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers.”

—Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6:410–411

Brigham Young also agree!

” Joseph was not killed because he was deserving of it, or because he was a wicked man; but because he was a virtuous man. I know that to be so, as well as I know that the sun shines.
I know for myself that Joseph Smith was the subject of 48 law suites, the most of them I have witnessed with my own eyes; but not one action could ever be made to bear against him. NO LAW OR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT DID HE EVER VIOLATE. HE WAS INNOCENT AND VIRTUOUS. HE KEPT THE LAW OF HIS COUNTRY, AND HE LIVED ABOVE IT; out of 48 law suites, ( and I was with him in the most of them ) not one charge could be substantiated against him. HE WAS PURE, JUST, AND HOLY, AS TO THE KEEPING OF THE LAW”

( Brigham Young, July 11, 1852. Millinial Star, Vol. 14, p. 675. )

So why the Polygamy Revelation 132?

Brigham Young and company lied.

You see Bigamy and Polygamy was a crime in the United States in 1844.

God Bless