Retweeted by Dawkins

This morning, I was pleased to learn that Richard Dawkins had retweeted (to his almost half-a-million followers) my latest message.

Consequently, if ever Mitt Romney were to become the US president (Heaven forbid!), my chances of obtaining a Green Card have just been annihilated. Happily however, after my death, the Mormons will surely baptize me, and I'll be able to toil in God's Own Country for the rest of Eternity.

Maybe there are non-Mormon readers who won't understand what the hell I was talking about. After all, outside the USA in general, and Utah in particular, not everybody has heard of the angel Moroni who led the prophet Joseph Smith to a hillside where he was able to dig up gold plates containing the words of the Book of Mormon.

It's a delightfully amazing tale. What a pity that you have to be a credulous idiot to believe a single word of it.

There's an anecdote that has amused me ever since I heard it for the first time a couple of decades ago. The Holy City of Jerusalem has always been the home of adepts of every imaginable variety of monotheism. Indeed, if the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti were to reappear in the Middle East today, the Israeli authorities would surely authorize them to set up some kind of temple in Jerusalem where they could worship their sun god.

The only notable exception to this spirit of tolerance in recent times concerned the Mormons, who had purchased land on Mount Scopus. After bitter discussions that dragged on for ages, the Israeli authorities only allowed the Mormons to erect their outpost of the Brigham Young University after they had signed a declaration confirming that they would refrain from all missionary activities in Jerusalem. These days, though, Bibi Netanyahu and Mitt Romney are old buddies.