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"(1) The power and value of a religion has nothing to do with the personality or probity of its founder. The best example of that is provided by the Mormons, who are today the most solid and stable cult in the United States, and who successfully resisted longer than any other large church the contagious decay that quickly reduced all others, with the exception of some small, scattered, and discordant Fundamentalist churches and some pockets of Traditionalist Catholics, to the contemptible quackery of a "social gospel" and hypocritical irrationality. This really astonishing and massive religious edifice was founded by one Joseph Smith, a petty swindler who began his career by fleecing suckers by means of a magic stone through which he could see treasure buried in the earth, but after he was arrested and got off with a promise not to do it again, turned to the safer and much more lucrative racket of dwindling suckers with religion. He founded a great church, but there is reason to believe that he didn't give a damn what happened to it after he was dead and probably didn't expect it to last. Smith, of course, was a man about whom we have a great deal of information, both about his life and about his doctrines, whereas we know nothing whatsoever about Jesus except the myths associated with his name, and these are so various, contradictory, and late that he is, for all practical purposes, a mythical figure, like Adonis or Mithra, even if there was a man by that name (as is likely) about whom the myths were assembled. If it were possible to ascertain who he was and what he did, it would not in the least matter if he were found to be a character no more admirable than Joseph Smith."

http://www.heretical.com/oliver/js12.html