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The polygamy thing works great for new religions because it is a sure fire way to easily create more adherents from a small amount of stock. Indoctrinating children from birth is way easier than converting adults.

I believe that Satan has a hold of you.

I believe that the Lord God has sent me here.

And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people.

-"I Believe" from The Book of Mormon (the musical)

I don’t think anyone was framing Mormons as the good guys

Even by the standards of organized religion, Mormonism is very weird. Cf Ruby Franke. The early history is absolutely wild, and in Utah they still have tons of money and power and everyone acts like it’s just a normal thing.

Now imagine how much the christian god's mind was changed by the roman government

To be fair, Joseph Smith wrote "The Articles of Faith" well before polygamy was abolished, which states:

12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

So the belief that polygamy still has value may remain. Or it may not. It's hard to tell without a change in the law.

Why is polygamy even illegal in the first place?

Note that slavery was abolished in 1865 and the civil rights movement started in 1950s-1960s.

And in 1978 mormon god said that black men can have the priesthood which is mormon god's way of saying black men are treated as equals now. (Women, regardless of race, never were treated equally and still aren't).

The Mormon church likes to celebrate the fact that black men are treated equally but they never mention that this was 110 years after slavery was abolished and still ~3 decades after the civil rights movement started. Mormon God sure has great timing.

But polygamy is actually still alive and well in the Mormon church, and i mean the actual Mormon church and not an offshoot. The Mormons stopped practicing polygamy outright but it is still alive in how they actually treat marriage.

Under mormonism they marry you for eternity. Except if your spouse wants a divorce or they die then you are no longer married from a civil law perspective. If a woman wants to get married again then she needs to have special permission from the Mormon prophet which i believe they do to release her from the Mormon eternal sealing. To do this they also try to get the ex-husbands approval (and too bad if he's dead). Where this gets interesting is that if the husband wants to remarry then he can. No strings attached. He can have as many eternal sealings as he wants. No permission needed from the prophet or wife. Just can have only one civil marriage at a time but if you get a civil divorce then a man can easily get another eternal marriage and a woman cannot. Basically this means that Mormons are letting men practice polygamy in the afterlife. It's wild.

But this just one example of how women aren't treated equally in the Mormon church. And don't get me started on LGBTQIA+. But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you. They believe that being gay is a sin and you can only be accepted at arm's reach if you're gay, but never do anything gay, and conform to your gender. Telling someone you accept them while believing part of them they can't change is a sin is Olympic level mental gymnastics. But welcome to Mormonism!

The Jehovah's Witnesses have this problem too. Their workaround is that "their [anonymous] governing body has had new revelations and insights" so now it works like this.

For a cult to survive the death of its founder, it needs to be picked up by a strong right-have man who can reform it into something that'll survive - but not in a way that will alienate all the followers.

I suspect the Mormans do something similar. Do they have a patriarch or use an elder counsel?

As for the last part they must of had some awesome power to enslave "demons" for so long. I wonder how the mental gymnastics worked on that one?

My favorite argument is that I was given access to Super God when I a child. Which gives me access to Super Heaven when I die. It's waaaaay better that regular heaven. You keep praying to regular god or whatever, you mud dwelling peasant. I'll be looking down on you from Super Heaven and laughing for Extra Eternity.

When you realize that the Mormon church is a business it makes more sense.

This actually makes Mormon God sort of more reasonable compared to other, stubborn gods, right? I mean making their followers lives easier by letting them to not confront civic government makes sense...