I've been hanging out at a.e.d. and here at DegreeInfo for a few years now. Yet I'm not really interested in distance learning. It is a bit strange. The reason is that I enjoy the laughs, just about everyone has a great wit and sense of humor. I also find academic fraud hilarious. The other day I discovered a deeper reason for my amusement with academic fraud after a post I made. Here's a copy of that post that was enlightening to me. ***** Start of my old post ****** I was brought up in the church and decided very early on that I wasn't a Mormon. It's kind of an amusing story. I was sitting in primary class at the age of 7. (Assuming that I remember correctly and they babtize at 8 in the church.) I was listening to the story of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates for what seemed like the umpteenth time and I got an almost religious flash of inspiration that Joseph Smith was a con man. It just seemed like the far more reasonable explanation to me compared to that story about the golden plates and magic glasses. I thought I should best test my new theory somehow and asked the primary teacher if people could go see these golden plates and magic glasses at Temple Square or someplace. Well her answer convinced me that my flash of inspiration was probably correct. Yea right an angel took them back, I laughed to myself and remember thinking, "That grownup lady actually believes this stuff that she's telling us." (I know, I started my asshole ways at a very early age.) Now I don't ever bother telling stories unless there's a funny part. This is at least what I consider the funny part. The church had seemed to make a big deal about not babtizing members until they're 8 years old which is supposed to allow the person to believe in the church before being babtised into the church. The church also made a big deal about total immersion being the only correct way to do it. I must have still had some small doubt about my conclusion being correct. I thought, what if they hold you under water so that the unbelievers are drowned and weeded out! Therefore the church membership would remain pure. (Hey I was only 7, give me a break.) Now at some level I knew that this was very silly but I started practicing holding my breath every time I took a bath just to be on the safe side. I started taking really long baths and practicing holding my breath over and over until the water would finally get cold and I'd have to get out. After I finally turned 8, the big day came. I stepped into the pool, panic took over and I forgot all my training. I decided I was not even going to let them try to drown me. They had to dunk me 3 times before it counted because the first 2 times I fought to get back to the surface and therefore wasn't ever fully submerged. Well, by the third time I remembered my training and it counted. I hadn't drown so I figured that was all the evidence I needed that Mr. Smith was a con-artist and I haven't questioned my "faith" in the church since. ******* End of my old post ********** Here's the rest of my story that relates to why I participate in the DegreeInfo forums. My mother would have to force me to go to church, but at 8 years old I extracted a promise that she would no longer force me to attend after I turned 14 years old. So everytime I went off to church for the next 6 years I would remind my mother of her promise. Now I still had to make the best of it while I was in church. That meant to me that I would entertain myself by looking around the room and laughing to myself, all these people were fooled by the same sneaky con-artist. I would laugh to myself which speaker was most utterly fooled and tricked. I'd look around the room and think that now all these silly people in church are tricking each other! So I guess that academic frauds here on DegreeInfo have taken the place of my early LDS experiences. Happy holidays, everyone!
The terrific early response to "Catch Me if You Can" suggests that the fascination with scams and con men is very widespread indeed. But not universal. My wife has near-zero interest in academic fraud (which she calls academic pornography and suggests my fascination is comparable to that which others have for nuns in bondage or naked Icelandic cabinet ministers.
John, your wife is a very wise woman. Let me know if she ever comes up with a cure for our affliction.
I guess I'm fascinated by the business model(s) employed, just as I am about the ones used by casinos, fast food restaurants, advertising of all sorts, and television evangelists.
Bill, Two quick observations: 1. To whom are you referring on DegreeInfo as being "academic frauds?" 2. Were those "early experiences" LDS or LSD?
Re: Re: My DegreeInfo Testimonial 1. Okay, I admit that it is much more common to get the victims here and we just talk about the frauds but, that's the way it was in church also! Except then I had to keep my opinion to myself. Now I probably just should but rarely do. (I do recognize that my opinion of the church is strictly my own and that many people do get moral strength and other real value from their experiences in the church.) 2.
I do understand their rationale for doing it, but I still find it a bit unsettling that my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, the Rabbi Jacob Klempner, of Riga, Latvia, who died in 1821, was baptized into the Mormon church by a woman in Stockholm 150 years later (without, of course, the knowledge or permission of the family). (I learned this at the LDS geneaology center in Oakland, CA a couple of years ago, when doing family research.)
I had to write a very nasty letter to the Mormon Bishop in order to get them to stop coming over to my house and calling me to invite me to Mormon pot-lucks and such. Whenever they would come over to the house, I would tell them that I'm not a Mormon and that they needed to leave me alone. They would ask if I was ever baptized Mormon and when I said yes they would say that I was mistaken, I was a Mormon whether I liked it or not. After writing my letter I got a response that said that I would need to be baptized again if I wished for them to renew their persecution. So now I'm finally safe as long as I'm alive. After I'm dead then they will probably baptize me all over again and the persecution will begin again in the after life.
Great story, Bill! I became a convinced atheist at 14. (Sometimes I think that liberal Lutheranism is a training ground for disbelief.) But my petulant militancy toward organized religion waned in my 20s because experience promotes psycholgical realism, and education, tolerance, and the humility born of tragedy and suvival leads to understanding the empathy and comfort that religious Belief provides. Even atheism arose in reaction to Christianity's searching intellectual devotion! ("Loyal opposition" did I hear someone say?) When I moved to Salt Lake City for the skiing in the late 80s, I had two jack-Mormon (i.e., dissenting Mormon) girl-friends. They were neurotic by different degress with regard to their faith and morals, the one from my native Minnesota, and half-Mormon, significantly less so than the one growing up in Utah. The latter was much more tortured: she didn't look Mormon, but was adopted in Minnesota (where her dad was in grad school before teaching at the "Y") as a baby, and, even as an otherwise beautiful 26 year-old, was still huanted by this difference. She was taunted at school as a child by "Real" Mormons--and these lacerating scars still stung her as an adult. And it was true. She didn't look Mormon: she looked like a tall younger Carly Simon, with a big wide mouth, big facial features, instead of "Mormon" ones like the little French nose on my other girlfriend.) At any rate, if I recall Mormon doctrine correctly, the problem is that the family orientation of the LDS faith exends to the after-life where family members will eventually be reunited--hence the necessity for posthumous baptism. For her the issue was presonal, existential, as well as theological: as an adoptee, she didn't know her real parents, yet if she Believed, she would be reunited with these abandoning strangers! So--"what is my Fate?" no doubt haunted her, making her life more schizoid than I could survive. The tragedy, as you well know, is that Mormons who grow up in Mormonland (Utah and border states) don't know that there are places in American where one need not be so hyper-Mormon counscious...PLaces where Bishops leave you alone...places where the Mormon Mafia won't "out" you and one may fully and freely find oneself! But they don't seek this alternative out because the intrusions put up with are also familiar and strangely comforting--just as the abused child finds another child abuser to marry as an adult! THANKS for another great Mormon story, Bill! --Orson
I don't know what to make of that practice. One half of me says that it is an act of total disrespect, ignoring and attempting to undo everything that the deceased once believed in and found holy. It's only decent to leave them that much. But the other half of me says that there are a multitude of faiths out there, and that there is absolutely no way for us to tell which of them, if any, is true. So if there really is an afterlife, then perhaps I would like as many religions as possible to be baptising me posthumously, praying for me, saying mantras, sacrificing sheep or whatever it takes to advance me to the next round.
