Today's program was quite interesting. So, Patrick Kennedy's bishop doesn't believe he should receive the sacrament of communion. I believe it was Mike who defended the church by pointing out how crooked our politicians are. I believe he also mentioned the Mormons and Mitt Romney in his defense of religions.

Rather than take the heat for expressing my own opinions on religion I would rather take this opportunity to refer anyone who might be interested in religious history to explore a few topics I have read about over the years.

The first book I would recommend regarding the Catholic Church and the Vatican is David Yallop's In God's Name. Yallop investigates the death of Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani). Also, I would recommend reading John Cornwell's A Thief in the Night which is a rebuttal of Yallop's book. For those of you who don't wish to explore these books, you can piece together some of Yallop's thesis by googling: Propaganda Due (P2); Michele Sindona; Roberto Calvi; and Bishop Paul Marcinkus.
I emailed David Yallop several years after he published his book to ask if any new evidence had come to light that might cause him to modify his conclusions. He said no, and went on to say he had not yet lost any lawsuits made against him.

Not very long ago Frontline ran a program: Hand of God. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/handofgod/

Very few americans know the true history of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). Over the years I have corresponded with Dale Broadhurst who has an excellent website which delves deeply into the history of Joseph Smith Jr. (the founder of the church), Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdry, and Parley P. Pratt. Broadhurst's bibliography is as nearly complete as any I've found on the web.http://solomonspalding.com/

Also Mark Twain wrote an appendix in his Roughing It briefly describing his experience with the Mormons. Another story that might be interesting to investigate is the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I thought I might briefly describe in more detail what Dale Broadhurst's extensive work and documentation attempts to enlighten us about.

Since its publication, the origins of the story in The Book of Mormon has been the subject of a controversy. The Mormons believe that Joseph Smith Jr. was instructed by God to obtain an ancient manuscript written on golden plates that was buried near his home in New York which he was divinely inspired to translate into The Book of Mormon. But, not long after its publication, neighbors of a man named Solomon Spalding who learned of Mormonism, and became familiar with the book's contents said that Smith had plagiarized a novel written by Spalding 20 years earlier. The name of Spalding's story was "Manuscript Found."

A newspaper publisher named Eber D. Howe in Painesville, Ohio who had good reasons to dislike Smith, began to look into Smith's background, found out about Spalding's neighbors, obtained affidavits from them and wrote the first book that introduced the "Spalding Theory" to public scrutiny.

Mr. Broadhurst has one of the most complete archives of documents from the period, which is available on the web.

The Mormons contend that a manuscript written by Spalding, and presently is the property of Oberlin College, is the manuscript in question. But there is evidence supporting the skeptics' claims that it is an earlier work that Spalding abandoned in order to write his "Manuscript Found." The supposedly "real" Manuscript Found has never been discovered and may no longer exist.

My friend Jerome Knuijt, has researched this subject quite thoroughly and also written extensively on it. He's in the phone book if anyone would like to discuss his findings.

So we are left with the question: Did God speak to Joseph Smith Jr. and inspire him to write The Book of Mormon, and start a new "true" religion? Or, was he a fraud? And, if Joseph Smith Jr. was a fraud, what does that make the religion he created?

Yesterday's guest host (Jim Wall?), in my opinion, did an excellent job discussing our current economic problems.

Two callers made comments that historically relate to a book I'm about to finish. The name of the book is The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet.

The first caller was Joe who wanted to talk about emails that were "hacked" from climate scientists' computers in England. Sen. James Inhofe (R. Oklahoma) who is a member of "the Family," has led the fight against climate legislation and has called for an investigation into the contents of those emails.

Science doesn't rely on personal emails when it comes to the peer review process. For scientists to get their conclusions accepted, they must publish their work, empirically defending it so that the results can be tested and verified. Emails have nothing to do with that part of the process.

Now a little more on Sen. Inhofe's background. A mentor of his is mentioned in Sharlet's book: the late Sen. Frank Carlson (R. Kansas) who was a good friend of Abram Vereide founder of the Family. Sharlet says this about Carlosn:

"McCarthy's downfall and Ike's disdain for him have been chronicled at great length elsewhere. Less noticed was Eisenhower's careful use of McCarthy during his campaign. Carlson was the middleman. 'I fully expect that Senator McCarthy will be speaking vigorously for ticket,' Carlson told the press in September 1952. McCarthy did so, lashing out at Ike's opponent, Adlai Stevenson, as surrounded by communist sympathizers...After the election, the press assumed that Carlson would be rewarded for his services with a cabinet post. Instead, Carlson stayed in the Senate of his own volition, where he chaired a seemingly obscure subcommittee on civil service employees. It was a job that allowed him to quietly purge government of far more 'security risks'--most of them guilty of no more heinous a crime than loyalty to the New Deal--than McCarthy had ever dreamed of, thousands erased from the rolls through backroom bureaucratic maneuvers" (page 200).

Senator Inhofe's skepticism about the work of scientists in general seems to have a higher truth than empirical facts: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/s ... esus-thing

On pages 216-217 Sharlet writes:

"Coe (the present head of the Family) was as much of an elitist as Abram, but differently so. Aristocracy didn't impress him; more important, he never lied to himself about the virtues or lack thereof of the top men he was courting. Coe understood early on that he would be dealing with violent characters, and that didn't bother him. Indeed, it seemed to excite him. He dreamed of their power harnessed to the new American fundamentalism, a fascination with strength and influence given clearest voice in the words of one of his disciples, attempting to grasp Coe's vision. 'I have had a great and thrilling experience reading the condensed version of The Rise and Fall off the Third Reich,' a protege wrote Coe, following up on reading advice Coe had given him. 'Doug, what a lesson in vision and perspective Nazism started with 7 guys around a table in the back of an old German Beer Hall. The world has been shaped so drastically by a few men who really want it such and so. How we need this same kind of stuff as a Hitler or a Lenin.'"

The other comment I heard on the show came from Larry blaming Obama and ACORN for our economic problems. Abram Vereide's original ideas for forming the Family came about from his intense dislike of labor unions, which historically has been part of the republican ideology since the days of the New Deal at least.

Well Larry, maybe you should listen to this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_E ... pisode=355

I'm not really against globalization, but I have long been worried about the state of the manufacturing sector in this country. Ever since the economic philosophy of turning America into a "service oriented society" I have wondered how it would affect us in the future. The future is now. Other countries are destroying our economic system because of our own stupidity. Obama and ACORN had little or nothing to do with our present problems as far as I'm concerned. Rose is at least partially right on this one. So, keep borrowing to buy folks. Only, don't get mad when those countries that we owe money come over to collect it, especially after Coe has made all his past deals with dictators who have been killed or deposed by their people, like Vietnam, Somalia, South Africa, etc.

By the way Larry, Labor really doesn't care if you think they're good or bad. When they're pushed too far they'll push back.

Oh, and I almost forgot, If lawyers who have studied law are not qualified to make laws, then who is, Joe the plumber?

It took the Catholic Church almost four hundred years to admit that science had described nature better than the Bible and the theologians.

Galileo lost his battle with the Pope but he won the war. He was right in the end:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... leo&hl=en#

I've read The Crime of Galileo by Giorgio de Santillana which corroborates the essential facts presented in this Nova video.

Sen. Inhofe (and his fundamentalist friends) evidently never considered that before he started his propaganda campaign against scientists on issues such as global climate change and evolution.

Science is tentative. As scientists learn more facts they will modify their conclusions. But, in my opinion, what they already know about climate change is enough for us to heed their warning.

As long as I'm the only one who want to breech this subject I thought I'd pass along a few more passages from Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Chapter Eleven, What Everybody Wants:

"The story they found in Colorado Springs is about newness: new houses, new roads, new stores. And about oldness, imagined: what is thought to be the traditional way of life, families as they were after the world wars, before the culture wars, which is to say, during the brief Cold War moment when America was a nation of single-breadwinner nuclear families.

"Crime, of course, looms over this story. Not the actual facts of it--the burglary rate in and around Colorado Springs exceeds that in New York City and Los Angeles--but the idea of it: a faith in the absence of crime. And of politics, too: Colorado Springs' fundamentalists believe they live in a politics-free zone, a carved-out space for civility and for like-minded dedication to commonsense principles. Even pollution plays a part: Christian conservatives there believe that they breath cleaner air, despite the smog that collects against the foothills of the Rockies and the cyanide, from a century of mining, that is leaching into the aquifers and mountain streams.

"But those are facts, and Colorado Springs is a city of faith" (page 292).

Colorado Springs is home to The New Life Church and James Dobson's Focus on the Family. It's also near the Air Force Academy. A few years ago, the Commandant of the academy was relieved of his command because of his failure to prevent persecution against non-fundamentalist cadets. What does that say about fundamentalists' beliefs in freedom of religion?

"In late 2006, Pastor Ted (Haggard of New Life Church) achieved a notoriety that surpassed the fame he had won as a preacher, when a middle-aged prostitute named Mike Jones played for the press answering machine messages from a regular client of his, 'Art,' whom Jones had just learned was Ted Haggard, one of the most powerful fundamentalist leaders in the country. That wasn't all. It turned out that Pastor Ted had been using methamphetamine--speed--as well... And yet the pulpit itself--the experiment known as New Life--endures. Pastor Ted's ideas survive, even prosper, for Ted's downfall was taken by many within his congregation as evidence of the great works he had been doing. So great, that is, that the Enemy, Satan himself, targeted Ted above all others. (pages 293-294)"

Go figure.

"His (Ted Haggard's) first job in professional Christendom was smuggling Bibles into Eastern Europe--a project with which the Family had been involved since the 1950s. As it had been to Abram (Vereide), it was important to Ted not to confuse America with Jesus, so instead of declaring the U.S. holier than other nations, he blended Jesus' teachings with American political aims and then convinced himself that the hybrid was objective truth, much like what Abram had once called the 'universal inevitable,' much like Sam Brownback's conviction that free trade is foretold in the Bible. The process of economic globalization, Ted believed, is a vehicle for the spread of Christ's power" (pages 306-307).

I don't know how Ted Haggard defines "objective truth," but his definition doesn't fit mine.

"For Ted, though, the battle boils down to evangelicals versus Islam. 'My fear,' he said, 'is that my children will grow up in an Islamic state.' That is why he believed spiritual war requires a virile, worldly counterpart. 'I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,' he said, 'of military might as a public service.' He was for preemptive war, because he believed the Bible's exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he was for ferocious war, because 'the Bible's bloody. There's a lot of blood.'"

That's what these people are teaching in their pulpits?

How about those being preached to--the believers? We got a little taste in the first quote. But, there are some other sources worth pondering. Jerome Knuijt has pointed out that in recent years Salt Lake City was the "Fraud Capital" of the United States. Not because the people living there (mainly Mormons) are dishonest, but because their religious indoctrination makes them more vulnerable to fraud:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... n21416754/

Then there is the strange circumstances behind the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case which has just gone to trial. I just happened to catch a short segment on This American Life that I found interesting (See Act 3):
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_E ... pisode=286

I heard this report this morning on NPR's Morning Edition:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =121485018

Jeff Sharlet wrote about The Family's connections in Uganda. I don't imagine the Fundamentalists in this country will find this story very disturbing.