Do We Need Temples?

Salt Lake City is built around a huge temple complex. The complex includes a temple, a tabernacle and a huge building known as "The Tower of Power" from which the LDS leaders control a financial empire worth several hundred billion dollars.

The Tower of Power is adorned with four huge images of the earth to emphasize the global ambitions of the enterprise. They have huge databases that track people. I have know people who have used the databases in hiring decisions. I have seen them used to decide who gets health care. The picture above shows two of the globes.

The second image shows the Temple itself (with a monument to Brigham Young in the foreground).

The LDS Community hold that we are supposed to build our lives around the temple complex.

But, to be frank, the complex gives me the willies.

The temple is covered with occult symbols. In the building people hold secret rituals where they make secret oaths to advance the church.

My experience is that this complex is a center of power and not spirituality. My direct experience is that the power is often abused. As the activities that take place in the temple secret. I do not see this complex as a cultural center.

I want to make a map-based game. As I live in Salt Lake and this building is considered to be the center of town and arguably the center of the earth, one would expect that I would make it the first stop on the map.

I stumbled on a video by a "Talking to Mormons" that talks about the role of temples in the Christian Tradition.

The video is critical of temples. The video claims that that Christian Church sought to temple worship.

I am sympathetic to the view. Temples seem to me to be about consolidating power and not about spirituality or about improving the condition of man.

The Christian Church established the Body of Christ as the true temple. As a result, people of the Christian traditional focuses less on accumulating power and more on spirituality.

BTW: the idea that people must start building temples for secret ceremonies started with the Masons. Joseph Smith's father was a Master Mason. According to former Masons, the secret rituals of Mormonism appear to be based on the secret ceremonies of the Masons.

As mentioned. The Temple Complex freaks me out. They have extremely detailed databases on people that I have seen people misuse.

But I don't see myself as the standard of truth. I wander what others think of such temples.

I want to create a map based game. I will give all of the dots on the map a number. I will put this point on the map, but I want to find a better first point. If you were to create a map, what point would you start with?

What do you think about temples? Should religions be organized these towers of power or should they focus on spirituality and ethics?