{"id":628,"date":"2014-05-13T01:05:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T08:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=628"},"modified":"2014-05-13T01:09:09","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T08:09:09","slug":"5-insanely-interesting-things-i-learned-about-mormons-from-cracked-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2014\/05\/13\/5-insanely-interesting-things-i-learned-about-mormons-from-cracked-com\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Insanely Interesting Things I Learned About Mormons from cracked.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/mormon_missionary21.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-629\" alt=\"mormon_missionary21\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/mormon_missionary21.jpg\" width=\"202\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>Clicking on a link to cracked.com is like opening a bag of chips\u2014one leads to another, and then another, and then another, and before you know it you\u2019ve <\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">polished off the whole bag<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"> spent hours tracking from <\/span><i style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">7 Disgusting Parasites You Didn\u2019t Know You Had<\/i><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"> through to <\/span><i style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">15 Terrifying Facts About Kittens<\/i><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">, by which time it\u2019s two in the morning and you\u2019re all out of chips.\u00a0 Normally, I would conceal this as a guilty pleasure, but a link I ran across today cries out to be shared.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cracked.com\/article_21109_5-hardcore-realities-my-time-as-mormon-missionary.html#ixzz31TlwsaMK\">5 Hardcore Realities of My Time as a Mormon Missionary<\/a> <\/i>looks at the world through the eyes of one of those short-haired clean-cut white-shirted apparent aliens who occasionally teleport onto our doorsteps to talk to us about Jesus and stuff.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great article.\u00a0 Here is what I learned:<\/p>\n<p>#1. The kids (they\u2019re mostly kids) not only don\u2019t get paid for their two years of missionizing \u2013 they pay for the privilege, to the tune of ten to twelve grand. \u00a0They are adjured to start saving up their pennies from, like, early childhood, so they can afford to spend eighteen months to two years as the cult equivalent of door-to-door salesmen.\u00a0 Families are also expected to help out, <i>on top of<\/i> their mandatory tithe, fast offerings, and other contributions.<\/p>\n<p>#2. The kids are prepared for their servitude at a missionary training centre, a kind of boot camp with overtones of \u00a0<i>1984<\/i> and Dotheboys Hall, where ten hours a day are spent studying the bible \u2013 which boils down to memorizing scripts for converting the heathen (anybody who is not a Mormon).\u00a0 Anything remotely entertaining, from snowball fights to masturbation, is verboten. So is privacy.<\/p>\n<p>#3. You can forget about trying to trap the kids into a doorstep conversation about, say, the <a href=\"http:\/\/mountainmeadowsmassacre.com\/\">Mountain Meadows massacre<\/a>.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not in the script, it\u2019s not on the menu.<\/p>\n<p>#4. The kids\u2019 results are achieved and assessed rather creatively in the Glengarry Glen Ross mode: Always Be Converting.\u00a0 Fortunately, a lot of the converted don\u2019t stay that way.<\/p>\n<p>#5. Mormon missionaries, contrary to appearances, are actually human.\u00a0 Who knew?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/I-Can-Prepare-post-card-copy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-630\" alt=\"I Can Prepare post card copy\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/I-Can-Prepare-post-card-copy.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"457\" srcset=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/I-Can-Prepare-post-card-copy.jpg 640w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2014\/05\/I-Can-Prepare-post-card-copy-300x214.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clicking on a link to cracked.com is like opening a bag of chips\u2014one leads to another, and then another, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-featured","category-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}