Obama's Mama Converts to Mormonism...

...whether she likes it or not.

Apparently, some, er, genius, without permission or authorization, "baptised" the late mother of Mr. Obama as a Mormon, in spite of the fact that she was rather stubbornly Protestant. They "baptised" her using an obscure (and somewhat offensive) rite under the Mormon liturgy allowing for living people to baptize the dead without so much as a by-your-leave.

Bad idea, really.

Seriously, I have to admit that the Mormon practice of posthumously baptising the dead is a rather pointless practice. It's not as bad as simultaneous and multiple wives (Hey, this is America! Load your wives in series, not in parallel!), but, still. It annoys many of the relatives of the deceased (particularly if the deceased were Jewish or, especially, Holocaust victims) and seems to lack the primary ingredient of any conversion effort, i.e., volition. After all, you have no say in baptism (either way) if you are already dead.

But while I find the practice rather silly, I don't think it's a show stopper in human relations. If someone wants to wash away the sins of my dead relatives, wunnerful wunnerful. Just don't send me a donation request or ask that I waste a Saturday afternoon to witness it.

OTOH, my friend P.R. (whose full name will go here if he authorizes it) has written me to say that Mormonism is *the ONLY religion* in history which has made it unnecessary to convert to it. In fact, it is NOT IN YOUR INTEREST to convert, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE. Here's why:

-- If Mormonism is a false religion, it is 100% stupid to convert to Mormonism, as it will avail you naught and you will go to Hell.

--Therefore if Mormonism is a false religion, you should therefore convert to some OTHER religion that is (or may be) the True Religion, whatever you perceive that to be, as you will have a >0% chance of picking a religion that is the True Religion.

--If Mormonism is the True Religion, you should therefore convert to it. But....

--...if Mormonism is the True Religion, and you do NOT convert, then your descendants will eventually baptise you posthumously anyway (it being the True Religion), thus assuring that you get into heaven in any event.

Get it? It's sort of a reverse Pascalian logic:

_________MORMONISM TRUE?
_________YES_________NO

CONVERT?
YES:______HEAVEN____HELL
NO:_______HEAVEN____???*

Therefore, in order to maximize your chances of Heaven, do not convert to Mormonism even if it is true.

Makes perfect sense to me.

*Please forgive the sloppy look; BLOGGER doesn't like html table functions....