To be truly religious, it isn't enough to believe in something that's unknowable, like life after death. You have to believe in things that are palpably false, like people are miraculously changed when they're "born again", or that God helps people who ask Him.

Some folks talk a lot about "tests of faith" and how God is constantly testing your faith. Funny thing about tests of faith: To be a real test of faith, the correct answer can't make sense! If the answer made sense and you could arrive at it by any kind of rational means, then it wouldn't really be a test of faith. To really test your faith, the answer has to be irrational. I think this goes right along with the Twain quote.

That quote is so powerful!

would finish that quote nicely. Wishful thinking is what keeps bullshit going and a dandy way to cash in on the hopeful.

“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.”

We had three choices to read: Letters we got. The babble. And the BoM. I'd already read the others, so I tried out the BoM, just to see what it had to say.

I didn't go to sleep because I was either groaning at the awful writing, or laughing at the "history" and other silly assertions.

It was so obviously written by a conman who tried to make something sound "ancient," by oddly doing a poor imitation of the 16th century KJV writing style.

All the verses starting with "And..." grew tiresome, though.

Such a lazy way of writing. Sort of like John Grisham and his overuse of declarative sentences. I've seen entire paragraphs from him of nothing but noun verb direct object, as many as 10 of them at a time.

Still, even though Grisham isn't the greatest writer in the artistic sense, at least he's a great storyteller. Joseph Smith, or whoever else helped him cobble together the BoM? Not so much.

The BoM is an obvious con job, but it only goes to show how dumb most people are that they would read it (or hear it read) and say, "Yep, that's the kind of book and moral philosophy I want to follow!"

a predecessor of L. Ron Hubbard (Hubbard: "want to know the best way to make a million bucks? Start your own religion" ). You got it right on how it tried to make it sound ancient, so it would seem more authentic to the gullible. Smith conned so many people. And nowadays I still bemoan how many gullible people there are in this country, who fell for a Con Man named Trump:

Faith rejects doubt and embraces delusion.

It's the nature of the beast.

Ignorance, is most certainly not bliss in my experience.

In point of fact, I actively avoid interactions with individuals that embrace their ignorance, preferring delusion instead.