What Does Romney Believe In?

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a practicing Mormon. As such, one must conclude that he believes in the edicts of the Book of Mormon, an addendum to the Christian Bible. So he not only believes what the bible teachers, but also what the Book of Mormon teaches. So what exactly does the Book of Mormon teach? What does Romney believe in?

As already mentioned in a previous post, Romney believes in the power of magical underwear to protect him. But beyond that he also believes that it is mandatory that he tithe to the church. Christians also tithe, but for them it is only highly recommended. To a Mormon, not tithing means you don't go to heaven. In fact, Romney tithes well over the required 10 percent. His contributions to the church have been nearly double that amount.

Romney believes, because he's a Mormon, that Native Americans are actually the descendants of ancient Jewish tribes who, somehow, made it to the New World long before Columbus, or even the Vikings. He must also believe that horses, steel, and wheat were all commodities that existed in ancient America, even though history shows that they were introduced by Europeans.

Romney believes that God is a resurrected man who lives on a planet orbiting the star Kolob. He believes this god had sex with many wives to produce spirit offspring and that all humans are inhabited by one of these spirits, the spawn of God.

Mormons, and presumably Romney, believe that a 19th century charlatan named Joseph Smith found "golden tablets" in a cave in New York. These tablets contain the history of Jesus' ministry in America contemporaneous with his ministry in the Middle East. Smith apparently was magically able to decipher the ancient Egyptian language in which the tablets were inscribed and produced the Book of Mormon in 1830. But no one (other than Smith) has ever seen these tablets or even any evidence that they existed. Romney apparently does not care about lack of evidence, though.

Some of the Mormons' most beloved leaders, including Brigham Young, believed that if a man marries a black woman he should be killed. And, of course, until it became politically unwise, Mormons also believed that a man should have more than one wife. I'm not suggesting Romney believes this, but it is part of his church's dogmatic history. Joseph Smith was supposedly commanded by God to take 33 wives, some of them young teenagers and some were already married.

He believes that heaven consists of three levels and that the level your spirit enters after you die depends entirely on how good you were while living. But even the most evil Mormon might get into the lowest level of heaven, called the telestial heaven. Hell is reserved for those few who constantly reject Mormonism and who do evil against it.

Now these are things that all practicing Mormons, including Romney, actually believe. This is on top of the silly fairy tales that fundamentalist Christians also believe, such as original sin came from the first woman ever created listening to a talking snake and that one man and his family built a wooden boat big enough to house a pair of all the creatures on Earth.

If someone believes this mythology and takes it seriously, are they really someone who should occupy the White House and have their finger on the nuclear button?