All that wasted time and gas money and safety issues driving far distances to a temple to do dead dunking.

So much money wasted on dead people

Because the dead need the benefit of the IDOLS that the baptismal font rest on.

It would be too hard to transport of the live eight year old and converts to the temple.

At the same time the church needs the revenue from those who want TRs. So they do the dead rites and higher live rituals in the temple.

Also, they wouldn't want to allow all of those many, many, many little kiddies and low level converts access because it would undermine the specialness of the place.

Since we know it's all about mindcontrol and you need a TR to go into the temple it is a good method of bonding the youth to the cult, in an age where they start to become "difficult"- but still easy to have an influence on them. Besides the "worthiness"interviews, we talked alot about how they harm children, it is also a duty to pay your tithing to earn a TR. And most wards or even stakes are doing youthtempleweeks, where they stay for a whole week together with other mos and their leaders. 2 or 3 times a year. Nice activities, firesides and testimony meetings plus deaddunking. A whole week to get an deep impact on the kids, to brainwash them and to tie them tighter to the cult. It's a winwin Situation for the Cult.

It's such a good point, and the answers above all make sense.

I know this isn't exactly on-topic...but this got me thinking. Isn't baptism for the dead another example of a mormon doctrine that is in conflict with the idea of free will? Or has TSCC come up with some spin to put on this where the dead person is somehow choosing to be mormon-baptized?

They teach that the Spirit can choose to accept the baptism and following ordinances or not. As they teach the spirit continues with the same behavior like here on earth and needs to repent and be worthy also. So I always wondered, how he can get baptized or take out his endowment by being still a sassy nasty being? .... Maybe he is not ready the time a proxy acts for him.... and then? He will never learn about the secret handshakes and his new name no matter he decides to become an afterlife morg... Right? ! Oh wait I know the answer: God will sort it out, right? He'll have a lot to sort out with all the mess TSCC produce over the years.

Thx.

Really weird for me any religion that still in this day and age makes all these detailed claims about things that are supposedly going to happen after death. My Mom and Dad are X'tian, elderly, long time members of the ELCA, but I have heard my Mom especially say so many times over the years: no one knows what happens when we die, absolutely no one knows.

Still thinking about this. So a non-mormon can still (according to mormonism) choose after death to be mormon. But this free choice is not enough on it's own. That dead person's spirit is dependent upon earthly mormons baptizing them in a Mormon temple to somehow validate their choice. It's not an autonomous situation, your choice is dependent on the actions of others.

This is a vitiation, a debasement of free will. It says: Free will is not enough.

I'm sorry, everything about mormonism, to me, every angle, any way you slice it, it's a manipulative racket.

You are right. It is just a twisted cult with twisted rituals to manipulate the person. Thats why deeper questions are not allowed. The whole system will blow up, the shelf will collapse.

Because the temple is a portal to the lands of the dead. They would have to be ghosts to get baptized in a chapel.

1. Because you can only be baptized once for yourself and can be dunked innumerable times for the deal.
2. Note: Early Christians NEVER dead-dunked anyone in a temple.

Dead dunking in the temple initiates the kids that this is a normal, wholesome ordinance; just like a baptism in a stake center building. Then when they go in for the shock of their life, the endowment, they're pre-conditioned that it too is somehow normal.

I don't think there is a valid doctrinal reason. If you are smart enough to ask the question then you are smart enough to put it on your shelf.

In honor of the sacrifices made by our pioneer ancestors who crossed the plains in the dead of winter and buried their frozen children in shallow graves, latter-day Mormons should fill the temple baptismal font with liquid nitrogen and dunk young Mormons to freeze them by proxy for the dead.

The frozen proxies could be stacked up like cord wood around the font. After they gradually thaw out, they can be frozen for the dead again.

Yikes! Did not need that image in my head. Sounds worse than the worship of Moloch.