What is the Curse of Cain?

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_Mercury
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Post by _Mercury »

Coggins7 wrote:Actually the curse of Cain was that the descendents of Cain would be denied free, universal health care, free, federally funded access to family planning services, free or reduced school lunch, A guaranteed annual income, racial preference in government hiring and college admission, low interest loans at below market rates, a chicken in every pot, a condom in every pocket, RU-486 in every purse, Nacho cheese for all, and all of their children would be left behind.


So the curse of cain is progressive thought.

See what I mean about you trying to be funny making you still look like a tool?
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
And lost in space...and meaning
_Mercury
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Re: Curse of Caine

Post by _Mercury »

moksha wrote:Another variation of this is Truth Dancer's view that Cain and Abel represented the Agrarian and Hunter Gatherer parts of our past.


that's a really interesting interpretation.

TD? Can you expound on that or point me in the right direction?
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
And lost in space...and meaning
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Re: What is the Curse of Cain?

Post by _Sam Harris »

KimberlyAnn wrote:As what Dr. Shades refers to as a Chapel Mormon, I believed the Curse of Cain to be twofold: dark skin and being denied the priesthood. It was clear to me that a skin of darkness was indeed a curse and a sign of God's displeasure. I understood that descendants of Cain were "fence sitters" during the war in heaven and were given a skin of blackness as a punishment. Those of us who were more valiant in the pre-existence were of a fairer complexion.

It was also quite clear in the Book of Mormon that the Lamanites were given a skin of darkness as a punishment for their wickedness, while the more righteous Nephites remained white and delightsome.

Here's my question: Were Lamanites ever denied the priesthood? Or is being denied the priesthood a part of only the Curse of Cain, along with dark skin?

And by the way, I know several people in my former ward who believe to this day that they witnessed American Indians (Lamanites) turning lighter-skinned when they joined the Mormon church. They truly believe God is removing their curse.

Also, I was specifically taught as a youth that mixed-race marriages were discouraged by the Lord and we should marry within our "kind". I even remember the name of the man giving the lesson and know that he is currently a Bishop here in Oklahoma.

In my experience, Mormonism is a racist institution, though I do not doubt that others have differing opinions. I am curious to know if the denial of the priesthood extended to Lamanites or was specifically a part of the curse that was placed on Cain and his progeny. I do not recall ever hearing that Lamanites were denied the priesthood and know that there was, at one time, an American Indian/Lamanite Placement Program which placed American Indian children in the homes of Mormon families. What was the motivation behind that experiment?

KA


I have a hard time explaning to TBM friends just how difficult it is for someone like me to belong to an institution that equates God's love and one's behavior with the color of one's skin. They just don't get it. The Bible doesn't speak of dark skin as a curse, garments are stained, not skin. Only one's garments become white, not one's skin.

The race issue is not new to the church, but they're still (quietly) carrying on the stigma in 2007. I have co-workers who can't believe that the Bible was used to justify slavery. Cain's mark was not black skin.

Many within the church would like to believe that the problem of racism is over and done with, but it isn't. Not even in the country as a whole is done with the idea of race, as asenines like Loran can attest to. I think we overreact on both sides a bit these days (rappers using the "N" word versus Kramer and his tirades). Free lunches, what a prick you are, Loran. Take your meds. Yeah, only black folk get access to free, undercooked and underseasoned food twice a day, because we're too busy gang posturing, having illegitimate children, and killing each other to work.

Most of the white LDS I've come across just cannot understand, because it's not them God is supposedly cursing, it's not them who have to deal with being representatives of Satan. How can you not see someone as inferior for being dark-skinned when studying day after day about unrighteous people becoming dark-skinned?

And it amazes me how people like to justify this obviously ungodly teaching. Do you have to be so correct that you would degrade another group of human beings? What if it were you? What if the Book of Mormon cursed white people, would you be so eager to defend it then?

Every black LDS that I've talked to about this who insists on being LDS will not deal with this issue head-on. They dance around it, and I think it's because they feel they have nothing to hang onto but the church. If they face this, a meltdown might ensue. It wasn't easy for me to leave over this, but I knew there was life before the church, for me there was God before the church, and those two things would exist after the church...and luckily for me, in much better condition.
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. -Ghandi
_Coggins7
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Post by _Coggins7 »

And this prejudice was quickly and probably unconsciously incorporated into Joseph's text of the Book of Mormon.


You're problem here is that your have not a shred of documentary evidence to support this claim. Its an assumption, and nothing more. Joseph, in fact, called and ordained several black males to the high Priesthood when he was alive.

(hint: you don't understand the body of church teaching on the subject)


Not sure whose comments you are addressing here, but as I did a cursory glance of the topic and noticed I was the only one to invoke the term "genocide", perhaps you are vaguely addressing mine. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you are having a conversation with yourself, in which case, I should leave the two of you alone.


I could care less to whom it is aimed.


Not sure who has committed the transgression you've just described, on this thread. When I used the term "genocide", I meant the actual, wanton, deliberate annihilation of another race. Sadly, time and again, condoned by God, as even a brief glance through the Old Testament will prove, and still more often, justified by followers of a God, using scriptural references.


Yes, and so?


Now, I speak German, and yet I am not quite sure to what you are referring when you invoke the term "Kulturkampf". Perhaps you could clarify. I do not need a definition, I need a context for its usage. I am a little mystified as to what you are referring to in your statement.


Yes, I'm sure you are. Kulturkampf means of course, culture war, but the specific manner in which this is used, in English speaking countries at least, usually carries connotations of secular ideological warfare against the presence of religion in those societies. I use it also as a generic term for the overall cultural struggle that began in late sixties and continues today.


Point being...? The wars that Indians waged among themselves in no way mirrored the savage and brutish acts that they later learned from European settlers. Typically, they raided other tribes for the purpose of capturing slaves for their tribe. They did not murder and destroy in their "wars". The journals of both John Winthrop and William Bradford are most enlightening in this regard. The natives of this continent were quite taken aback by the White method warfare.


You're mind, has been raped. This is ahistorical, PC mythology, and your have swallowed it whole. Amerindians fought genocidal wars for many centuries among themselves, which included the obliteration of entire tribes well before Columbus ever set foot here. Many entire Indian cultures, such as the Apache, to name but one, were based to a great degree on war, conquest, the glory of battle, and a cult of bravey or, what me might call machismo.

Scalping, regardless of the PC myths we were all taught in public school, was a known practices among various tribes (whites picked it up from them, and then spread it to other tribes, in a kind of refertilization). Ritual cannibalism was well represented among Amerindians, as was human sacrifice, mastery of the most horrific torture of thir enemies, and slavery.

Yes lurker, for the serious minded, the myth of the peaceful, gentle ecosavage is long dead, never existed, and we bid it good riddance. Whatever Europeans brought to America that was less then noble, the Amerindians had already been well acquainted with for thousands of years. European treatment of the Indian was very bad, in many cases. Indian treatment of whites and other Indians, was, in many cases, bery bad. There was good and bad on both sides. Cultural clashes are like that, not so simple as interested ideologues would like to have it.

The one thing European treatment of the Indian was not was unique or especially depraved.


Get over this? My, it is so tiresome that nearly ninety percent of Natives along the Eastern seaboard were wiped out as a result of Pilgrim settlers, with their smallpox, and their syphilis, and their their pitting tribe against tribe.


Please, this is getting tedious. Again, the Indians had been fighting and conquering and killing each other for thousands of years with gusto, and didn't need Whites to teach them anything about it. The smallpox epidemic was an accident of biology, not something carried out by whites against them. It could very well have gone the other way, but it didn't.

That, of course, in no way takes into account the horrific annihilation of the Indian tribes in the south or west of this continent, although sadly, the stories are much the same. Frankly, I don't want to get over it, because I fear that it will turn me into something inhuman.


Oh please spare me...

"The Israelites killed millions too! So did the Romans! And what about Ghengis Khan? So it's okay!"



Yup. I've got a real live LIBERAL here. Classic mind set, classic argument structure. No, its not OK. There, do your feel better now? All I'm saying is that war and conquest have been the norm throughout all of human existence and the north and south Amerindians were as much a part of this as any other people. The European attitude toward them was nothing unusual for the times.

Thanks, I think I'll just plug along reading primary sources where possible and forming my own conclusions, if the alternative is to "just get over" something.


Just be very careful regarding which "primary sources:" you use.

Yes, but they would not become white and delightsome, contrary to Mormon thought. Instead, we humans will all look like Halle Berry one day. Not a bad prospect for our species.


It would be an even better prospect for you to stop wasting your life and mind of ideological comic book history written by people whose purpose is not to educate but to indoctrinate.

Or would you rather be a duck?
Last edited by Dr. Sunstoned on Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.


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_Coggins7
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Post by _Coggins7 »

uih
The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.


- Thomas S. Monson
_Coggins7
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Post by _Coggins7 »

I have a hard time explaning to TBM friends just how difficult it is for someone like me to belong to an institution that equates God's love and one's behavior with the color of one's skin. They just don't get it. The Bible doesn't speak of dark skin as a curse, garments are stained, not skin. Only one's garments become white, not one's skin.

The race issue is not new to the church, but they're still (quietly) carrying on the stigma in 2007. I have co-workers who can't believe that the Bible was used to justify slavery. Cain's mark was not black skin.

Many within the church would like to believe that the problem of racism is over and done with, but it isn't. Not even in the country as a whole is done with the idea of race, as asenines like Loran can attest to. I think we overreact on both sides a bit these days (rappers using the "N" word versus Kramer and his tirades). Free lunches, what a prick you are, Loran. Take your meds. Yeah, only black folk get access to free, undercooked and underseasoned food twice a day, because we're too busy gang posturing, having illegitimate children, and killing each other to work.

Most of the white LDS I've come across just cannot understand, because it's not them God is supposedly cursing, it's not them who have to deal with being representatives of Satan. How can you not see someone as inferior for being dark-skinned when studying day after day about unrighteous people becoming dark-skinned?

And it amazes me how people like to justify this obviously ungodly teaching. Do you have to be so correct that you would degrade another group of human beings? What if it were you? What if the Book of Mormon cursed white people, would you be so eager to defend it then?

Every black LDS that I've talked to about this who insists on being LDS will not deal with this issue head-on. They dance around it, and I think it's because they feel they have nothing to hang onto but the church. If they face this, a meltdown might ensue. It wasn't easy for me to leave over this, but I knew there was life before the church, for me there was God before the church, and those two things would exist after the church...and luckily for me, in much better condition.



Yup. I should have known. GIMR is attracted to discussions where the term "race" is the topic of discussion as Mako Sharks are attracted to chum. GIMR sees a honkey and her eyes light up. Notice the last paragraph. What she does not understand is that most Blacks in the church are intellectual grown ups. They have a testimony of its truth and have moved on. They understand that human fallibility, in the matter of race, lurks on all sides of all fences, among blacks as well as, historically, whites. Most blacks in other countries, such as African countries, also do not have all the ideological and psychological hang ups that hang like a millstone around the necks of so many Black Americans. Like the Children of Israel, I fear many of them are going to have to wander in the wilderness until another generation takes their place before they'll be able to enter the promised land.

GIMR is a racist. She is a provocateur. She is a demagogue. She is a bomb throwing gasbag.


Bah, humbug.
The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance.


- Thomas S. Monson
_harmony
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Post by _harmony »

Coggins7 wrote:Yup. I should have known. GIMR is attracted to discussions where the term "race" is the topic of discussion as Mako Sharks are attracted to chum. GIMR sees a honkey and her eyes light up. Notice the last paragraph. What she does not understand is that most Blacks in the church are intellectual grown ups. They have a testimony of its truth and have moved on. They understand that human fallibility, in the matter of race, lurks on all sides of all fences, among blacks as well as, historically, whites. Most blacks in other countries, such as African countries, also do not have all the ideological and psychological hang ups that hang like a millstone around the necks of so many Black Americans. Like the Children of Israel, I fear many of them are going to have to wander in the wilderness until another generation takes their place before they'll be able to enter the promised land.


And why shouldn't she? She lived with it for as long as she was a member. Why should she not give us her perspective, since she lived it first hand?

GIMR is a racist. She is a provocateur. She is a demagogue. She is a bomb throwing gasbag.


Stones... glass houses... you get the idea, Loran. Live the golden rule, and surprise us all.
_Valorius
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Seed of Abel

Post by _Valorius »

I believe it was Brigham Young who said the descendants of Cain would not receive the priesthood until after the seed of Abel were redeemed. He did not say it was just his 'opinion,' so he was either truly prophesying or knowingly lying.

So, if the presumed descendants of Cain have the priesthood (but are discouraged from intermarrying with the families of less loathesome priesthood holders), where are the seed of Abel?, and how were they redeemed?
"[The Lord] doeth NOTHING save it be PLAIN unto the children of men" 2 Nephi 26:33

"Then why tell us not to seek after the 'mysteries' of the Lord? What mysteries?" - Valorius
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Post by _Sam Harris »

harmony wrote:
Coggins7 wrote:Yup. I should have known. GIMR is attracted to discussions where the term "race" is the topic of discussion as Mako Sharks are attracted to chum. GIMR sees a honkey and her eyes light up. Notice the last paragraph. What she does not understand is that most Blacks in the church are intellectual grown ups. They have a testimony of its truth and have moved on. They understand that human fallibility, in the matter of race, lurks on all sides of all fences, among blacks as well as, historically, whites. Most blacks in other countries, such as African countries, also do not have all the ideological and psychological hang ups that hang like a millstone around the necks of so many Black Americans. Like the Children of Israel, I fear many of them are going to have to wander in the wilderness until another generation takes their place before they'll be able to enter the promised land.


And why shouldn't she? She lived with it for as long as she was a member. Why should she not give us her perspective, since she lived it first hand?

GIMR is a racist. She is a provocateur. She is a demagogue. She is a bomb throwing gasbag.


Stones... glass houses... you get the idea, Loran. Live the golden rule, and surprise us all.


Harmony, I'm sure you knw not to hold your breath when it comes to Cog-dis.

Cog cannot stand people like me, just like Juliann could not, because I provide proof that their system isn't working.

The following shows just how little Cog knows about African and African american history:

Cog-Dis wrote:Most blacks in other countries, such as African countries, also do not have all the ideological and psychological hang ups that hang like a millstone around the necks of so many Black Americans.


This person, in a psychopathic need to be "right" and "the best" tends to block out information that doesn't allow him to ignore reality. No African LDS is going to tell someone like Cog the truth of what they feel the priesthood ban to be. They've told me, however. The word commonly used was "lies".

Human frailty? Cog, how can you provide excuses for vitriol like the Curse of Cain and the Priesthood ban out of one side of your pathetic little mouth, yet spout all sorts of conspiracy theories about black americans out of the other?

No one here hates people of other colors but yourself. And that has been pointed out plenty of times. Again, take your meds, society is starting to fear you again.
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. -Ghandi
_Ubbo-Sathla
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White-Black Intermarriage, Go Team!

Post by _Ubbo-Sathla »

Well, I say, that as long as Mormons are 100% willing to participate in and support interracial marriages, they can't be accused of being racists. Ya just can't do that.

Only people who discriminate primarily o n the basis of race on issues of universal social significance like slavery, (full) church membership, and marriage can rightly be suspected of harboring racists sentiments. Even if they weren't racist to begin with, institutional requirements to treat races differently will develop personal discrimination. It may not be "hatred" of a race; it may be hateless discrimination. It's effect will be the same.
"Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be?
Verily I say unto you, even as I am." - 3 Nephi 27
"And now, because ye are compelled to be humble
blessed are ye" - Alma 32:13
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