The LDS church loves its genealogy program, obviously. I understand part of its interest- to provide a means of documenting names for temple work. Having each person research his or her family certainly makes sense in this regard. But there is another motivation, which IMO requires a bit more caution. When you trace your lineage, you are at each step limiting the set of ancestors to one member of a family. The attraction is to determine the illustriousness of each ancestor- and the implication is that those illustrious ancestors all passed on their increasingly illustrious genes to make you the most illustrious of all.

What all this overlooks, of course, is that everybody is the same. We all have ancestors of the same degree of illustriousness. WE ARE ALL RELATED. That is the message of Darwin. Somebody calculated that, within a 70th-cousin spread, you are related to every other person on the planet.

As the world gets smaller and smaller due to improved communication media and better means of transportation,the clan model implicit in the LDS genealogy initiative is becoming outmoded. It's time to expand our definition of who does and doesn't belong to "our" family. Everybody belongs to my family.

They do it so they can baptize you in their secret rituals, the missionaries had me go to lds.org and look up my family tree! They know everything about everyone

Genealogy work allows one to feel a sense of accomplishment, and usually provides for a sense of entitlement, too.

No one would accept as a critique, "you spend too much time doing that dang genealogy!" I think this is why mormon genealogy work that is done simply to find names is so often riddled with mistakes, with no sense of penitence, much less any desire to correct the errors: "Hell with it! Dead-dunk'em and we'll straighten it out during the Millennium!"

I find it endearing that no one ever mentions the 'cousin' who was hung for crimes against nature, or the cousin who led a gang of horse thieves, or the cousin who made a fortune shanghai'ing men to sell to ship captains.

My cousin Montezuma let the rest of the family down...way down.

For what it’s worth. My family came by wagon. My Mom is a G-nut. She found the history of an uncle who was a horse thief and had a couple of wives. One of them was a prostitut and ran a bodello in SLC. He shot a guy over prostitution. She even got the newspaper articles and court records. Somehow he got off, redeemed himself and guided T Roosevelt through Yellowstone.

It’s not one of her ancestors to talk about at reunions...

That's a good point. I can't count the times my genealogy-nut sister brags about how great our ancestors were (most of them were nothing great). It makes her feel special somehow taking the credit from their accomplishments.

I know most religions have some sort of ancestor worship and provide a link to an afterlife. I suppose people like the idea of not being forgotten when they die. It ensures traditions are passed from one generation to the next. The Mormon version of including ancestors in their scheme is especially annoying because it implies that the ancestors are dependent on you so they can be allowed in CK (guilt and dependency).


Of course most of it for Mormons is to keep busy and focused on temple hamster-wheel rituals.

The point you made about "our genetic family" is why I am not all that interested in genealogy. After about 3 generations, what is "you" is a diluted mix of humanity. Plus, a larger percentage of women than I would like to admit would lie about who the father of their child was (for all kinds of reasons). Maybe 1 in 10 (I can't find the study now) people could have a father different than who they think. So, it seems especially inaccurate that the paternal line is followed for genealogy rather than maternal. Most of the generations in history did not have the luxury of having a DNA test done to know if their mom told them the truth.

I know one of my relatives lied about who knocked her up (she fessed up to me and the kid definitely looks like who she said). Sure enough, the official records and genealogy list a different guy as the father.

Add to that the fact that Mormons will follow genealogy lines based on who is "sealed" to who which is completely bogus.

Like you, I view it all as one big genetic pool of the human family once you go back a few generations. We are related. We have common ancestors. We are lucky to be alive.

I do get the hobby and interest people have in it though. I just don't think it is as accurate as we like to think.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Plus, a larger percentage
> of women than I would like to admit would lie
> about who the father of their child was (for all
> kinds of reasons). Maybe 1 in 10 (I can't find the
> study now) people could have a father different
> than who they think.

As someone with an "inconvenient"/"awkward" biological father (which was a total surprise to me...I did not have the remotest idea of even the POSSIBILITY), I absolutely agree with this...

...especially since, had my Mom not been literally forced to tell me by circumstances she could not control, I would NEVER have known!!!

In my case, since either way I wind up with the same paternal grandparents (something very, very important to me---I miss my paternal grandparents still), it was okay...it's just kind of an "also true."

Had this information meant that I had different paternal grandparents, though, it would have been an enormous shock to me in ways I wouldn't even begin to know how to explain.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2017 12:12AM by Tevai.

Learning about family history is rewarding for its own sake.

As a Mormon I didn't take much of an interest in genealogy. Maybe because doing temple work for the dead even then seemed so detached from the real value of connecting the dots between generations. My mom was the genealogist in my family since she was ten years old and that was long before she became a Mormon. I grew up with her doing genealogy. As a child I associated it with her life work. She did a great deal of it during her lifetime.

Now I have a great deal of interest as I've learned more about my family history - it brings the past to life in a way studying history didn't do. Now when I look at photographs of ancestors I associate their history with their names and faces - it adds dimension to the narrative.

Have learned more in the past six years since I began my research, that built upon the years my mom invested in her research. Much of hers is now online. She compiled hers before there was the Internet, and laid the groundwork for me. I know more about our ancestors than she did in her lifetime from what I've been able to find via online research. She'd be thrilled if she were alive today with all the resources available.

She started from scratch. Both her parents were orphaned as young children. Mom grew up not having any aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc. It was really important to her to try to find her roots. Her dad had two identities - one before he married and had a family, and one after. That side of her family is still shrouded in mystery. But grandma's was easier to trace. Our German Jewish ancestors were astute genealogists in their own right and preserved what they could before the Holocaust, to pass down to their posterity.

Elderolddog wrote: "Genealogy work allows one to feel a sense of accomplishment, and usually provides for a sense of entitlement, too."

I agree. And it keeps people busy.

I used to live in Houston. Years and years ago I went to a Hispanic genealogy meeting...it was nice, a dinner at a restaurant and maybe a speaker and then talk about ancestors. I was by far the youngest there.

Once we passed around family trees. There were only about five in the group of about 20 that brought their papers (I was one), but two of the five I found had a common ancestor either five or six generations back.

Yes, we are all related.

for developing genograms, which go beyond family trees to provide data on relationships among individuals, hereditary patterns, and "inherited" traits (either genetic or epigenetic). Children often 'reproduce' character patterns, emotional tendencies, views, or ways of acting from parents, and them from their parents, etc. Traits like alcoholism, depression, diseases, and maybe domestic violence run in families, too. Used in medicine, psychology, social work, and education.

Yess, helpful to priceless, on the physiologic level it does not hurt to know, is helpful and we understand all the physical inherited traits.
For some certain physical ailings, it was a jump up to already have seen others and know what to do to save time, energy, money and life to deal with these booboos.
Guess, could venture, the type of dirt you are made of (;-) ???

So you find a relative who is waiting, waiting, waiting (all this time) for you to do “their work.“

Thus:

You pay TSCC to be worthy of taking this name to the temple.
You pay to rent Temple clothes.
You pay for marginal food in the temple cafeteria.
You pay for garments to arrive and leave in.

The last three products were made by people who paid for the privilege of producing them for no pay.

All your ancestors are just shills for the $mormon$ Church.

Yes, and if god is such the big boy they claim him to be as allpowered, he does not need all this busy work.
Another control mechanism.

Yes, it's pretty silly to claim that people in an afterlife can't fall in love and make their own promises to each other, such as "we'll stay together" forever. It's silly to think that promises can only be made while in a physical body.

Right. We "fought in the war in heaven" (eye roll) and will learn many things supposedly. They taught at church that this life was just a blink of the eye and our knowledge was taken away from us (add veil BS) to test us. Yet, the rest of eternity is supposed to be based on decisions and actions made here? That seems unfair. Go figure.

It's all so ridiculous. As itzbeen20 points out, the god who is running this rodeo doesn't seem horribly bright. He can do whatever he wants without us having to do proxy-nonsense. Besides, he could have one person, say, his son, do the proxy work on behalf of everyone and call it good. Oh wait, that's sort of what Christians believe which is silly enough. Or, god could have had his special pet, Joseph Smith do the "endowment" on behalf of all people who have or will ever live and be done with it. But no, Mormons have to amp it up and invented a more exclusive club in heaven. And people eat it up 'cause they are so special and righteous.

The whole idea of this (besides keeping everyone busy doing church activity) is to keep the focus on the past and your mind on church. Authority, traditions, and control depend on people following "the path" they are told.

I'm with Amyjo. Doing family genealogy is a way of making history more personal. I remember finding one colonial ancestor who lived only a few blocks from where I once lived. I found another who had lived in the "wilderness" of Connecticut.

But at the same time, how many generations do you go back before the family ties become so tenuous as to be virtually meaningless? That has been a question that I have confronted as I have traced my lineage.

For one ancestor, I had a huge question mark about why he made the decisions that he made. In his day and time, his decisions probably made sense, but I found it almost impossible to relate to his way of thinking. It made me wonder how much I might be able to relate to my family's descendants a few hundred years from now.

I have found qualities of character in my ancestors -- bravery, leadership, adventurousness, etc. that can also be found in a number of their descendants. It makes you wonder what exactly it is that we pass on into the future and deep future.

The pursuit of genealogy can be thought-provoking, that's for sure.

Is it fair to say that the atheist/agnostic crowd yawns when the subject of genealogy comes up?

If we were spirit children of Elohim, I would be more curious about THAT genealogy than the psuedo-familial ties to my spirit siblings. Were I to meet my great-grandpa Olddog in Spirit Prison, would I recognize him first as my great grandpa, or might I recognize him as a younger sibling, from the pre-existence?

If mormonism were a real thing, I think we'd all be on pins and needles, waiting to find out which Mrs. Elohim was mom. Our earthly genealogy wouldn't mean much by comparison. JS would have eventually got around to teaching about some Mrs. Elohims having more standing, with one wife being number one... Jesus's spiritual mommy!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2017 02:05PM by elderolddog.

Well, my sister DID trace one of our lines back to Adam (I know, talk about credulous). So, since Adam was created by god playing in the mud, we have traced ourselves back to the OT god himself! Isn't it marvelous!?

Good point, someone— not m— told me, that if you find someone with a same/similar family name, you will have a common ancestor within 5 centuries previous.
Donot know the source.
Sounds fair.

Long before the Mormon Blight entered my life LDS was in my town taking DNA samples for genealogy purposes. I was going to participate because Why Not?
Then found out the requirement that you had to have your family researched back 7 generations for LDS to want your DNA so I didn't qualify.
Having spent some time around occultists I find the whole thing sort of creepy.