The Mormon church likes to waste its members' time on a regular schedule, but the cake-taking time waster is the twice a year snore festival known as general conference. I disliked Conference growing up, but ultimately grew to despise it as an adult. My least favorite meeting was the Saturday night Priesthood session where no one actually had any permission from JESUS to do anything, but we liked to pretend for 2 hours that we did.
This latest round of tomfoolery included the announcement of 15 new temples. Temples that will be built in some far distant future, but in the works nonetheless. For those of you keeping score, that is 50 temples announced in the last 3 general conferences.
In the first 120 years since the St. George temple opened, the church built exactly 50 temples!
On the day I was born in 1965, the church had 13 temples in operation!! It took until 1972 for the 14th and 15th temples to open.
Who are all these temples for?
The church's "lies, damned lies, and statistics" department released the church falsified figure of 17 million members as of January 1, 2023. Even if this number were magically correct, it does not create a need for 300 plus temples. More than 70 of these temples have not even started construction, and more than 60 are still being built. There are only 170 or so operating temples in the world, except of course Salt City, St. George, and Manti, but who is counting. The 3 pioneer temples are closed until further notice, or until GOD drops some fire and brimstone on them.
There is also the issue of the non-readers in the LDS church ignoring the fact that GOD historically only allows one temple per hemisphere at most. When JESUS visited the Lehites after the great destruction that accompanied his death in the new world, the Christians there did not have to ask which temple JESUS was at, because there was only one. JESUS ministered to the Samaritans in the Old World, but He did not condone their temple. JEHOVAH made his people carry their first temple around with them it the desert. No one in Palestine ever thought how convenient it might be to have temples in Capernaum and Nazareth. Most of their high priests were usurping idiots, but none of them were dumb enough to think about building multiple temples.
Finally, the most laughable moment of general conference was the announcement of a temple in Bakersfield, California. I say that as a life long resident of the area. Some of the hardest working people in the state work either in the ag or oil industries near Bakersfield. Unlike Utahns, I did not have to wait until my mission to see a black person in person. I had non-white friends, and non-Mormon friends, because I was the only LDS kid at any school I ever attended until going to BYU.
What makes the announcement ludicrous is the fact that in all of Kern County there are three stakes. Kern County, home to Bakersfield, is an area larger than the states of Connecticut and Delaware combined. In that 8,100 square miles (90 miles by 90 miles) are just under 1 million people, but still only three stakes. Three. Three stakes in a city that is the 51st largest city in the US. I estimate there are 5,000 "members" in each of the stakes, but only 2,000 of them are even nominally active. That makes 6,000 semi-active members, of which at least half are children. I would guess there are at most 2,000 or so adults with current temple recommends. I predict the "Bako" temple will only be open on Saturdays, when it opens it 2035.
General conference had one of its 2 days fall on April Fool's day. It has a 3 in 7 chance of happening every year. Very fitting. If you are going to keep announcing 50 temples every 18 months, you are going need a lot of rubes to buy the lie you are selling.
