The United States Constitution Allows Deception?

                Hey John, did you trip over a log or something?  What do you mean the Constitution allows deception? 

            I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s true.  It just depends upon how you look at it and interpret it.  Believe it or not, like it or not - permission is implied under the First Amendment, religious protection.  Consider the following quotation taken from the Constitution: 

            “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

            How many different religious denominations are there is the United States - hundreds, thousands?  Let’s just narrow it down to Judaism, Catholicism, Islam and Mormonism.  Each of those faiths have fundamentalist splinter groups, and each practice their religion as if they are God’s official mouthpiece.  If we take all four of those faiths along with their multiple splinter groups – excluding Protestantism, Hinduism, etc. we must have hundreds of unique groups.  Take Rev. Terry Jones for example.  He only has a tiny following of 50 but he claims God talks to him.

            Let’s break it down even further.  We have the LDS Church and the Mormon splinter groups:  FLDS, AUB, TLC, Kingstons, Church of the Firstborn, etc. etc. – each claiming to be the lawful priesthood of God – yet, the Mormon law book, Doctrine & Covenants, states in Verse 7 of Section 132 that only one man on earth at a time holds the keys to the priesthood.  That means somebody or someone is not telling the truth about authority.

            Under the Constitution each of these groups have the right to preach and teach their own special brand of religion and make any claim of authority from God they want.  If we take the Doctrine & Covenants literally, the crux of all this is that not all, and maybe none of the Mormon orientated groups have any real authority.  Someone has to be practicing deception. 

            All of the above mentioned groups collect tithing, they perform ordinances that are suppose to maximize the initiate’s chance for a celestial exaltation.  What is obvious is not that all of them have authority but that most of them, if not all, are deceiving – collecting tithes under false pretenses.  And the Constitution protects their right to deceive and use the deception to induce true believers to pay tithing.  It’s a trillion dollar worldwide business. 

            When you look at religion in the above context it makes Deism and Agnosticism look pretty good.