After Death Conversion

Sometimes, I swear, I just don't get it. I don't get people. What can they be thinking of?

This is the latest piece of information which has me reeling in sheer amazement:

The practice, sometimes known as “Temple work” involves a Mormon “standing in” for a dead person to allow said dead one to be baptized as a Mormon and enter Mormon heaven. It became an issue when it turned out that many Mormons were retrospectively baptizing Holocaust victims such as Anne Frank and other dead Jews including Einstein and Freud as Mormons in this way. Not only that, some Mormons had baptized less savory figures in history including Stalin, Mao, Ivan the Terrible—and even Hitler himself (along with Eva Braun so they could share Mormon heaven together).

While the Church did not encourage the baptism of Nazis, the doctrine was not changed until 1995 by which time Eichman, Himmler and Heydrich joined the Furher among the baptized. I know: this sounds too strange and offensive to be true, but Mormons are big on conversions and it’s a lot easier to convert the compliant dead than the living.

Somehow, religious people in the grip of some forceful dogma show a rare capacity for the most outlandish fantasies.

No doubt I prefer the ultimately harmless rituals of Mormons to the violent enactment of religious fantasies by Islamists. But still, I'm stumped, once again, by human will to pathological self-delusion.