Why I Am Sure That Mormonism Is False

Within the limits of possible knowledge, epistemologically speaking, I am as certain as a person could reasonably be that Mormonism is not True. Assuming, arguendo, the truth of Christianity, I believe that Mormonism’s claims to truth cannot possibly be true because of fatal flaws in the fundamental Mormon teachings about the Great Apostasy and the Restoration. As the new “discussions” reflect, Apostasy and Restoration are Mormonism’s lynchpins: without a Great Apostasy there was no need for a Restoration, and without a Restoration, Mormonism’s self-justifying truth claims fall apart.

For the Apostasy-Restoration to have happened, the following must be true:

1. Priesthood authority must indeed work the way the Mormon Church claims it does. This actually means that, in fact, the concept of priesthood authority is actually the most fundamental Mormon doctrine, because Apostasy-Restoration presupposes the existence of a priesthood authority that functions the way Mormonism teaches. The thing is, there is almost no evidence from the apostolic era or before (i.e., from the Bible or other contemporary sources) that priesthood authority–if it exists at all–works like that. Mormon scriptures do not count, because for them to be acceptable, Mormonism must be true which means that priesthood must work the way Mormonism says it does (which is what we’re trying to decide in the first place). That is, unless Mormon scripture was somehow independently verifiable, which it most certainly is not.

2. Said priesthood must have been lost in the manner that Mormonism claims. This requires us to believe a claim of Mormonism at face value, which we have no reason to do unless we first accept that Mormonism’s concept of priesthood authority is true and that the Apostasy-Restoration actually happened. Again, if we could verify this loss of priesthood independently, Mormonism would be more credible. But we can’t. Change in doctrine does not evidence loss of priesthood authority, because that requires us to first accept a Mormon understanding of how priesthood works. Ditto for basically every other Mormon evidence of the loss of priesthood leading to the great apostasy. The Bible verses appealed to by Mormonism do not really help, either: taken alone, without presupposing Mormon priesthood authority, and Apostasy-Restoration, they do not by any means necessarily mean what Mormonism says they mean. The fact that the idea of a Great Apostasy was common in the 19th century is also not dispositive. Nobody thinks that anymore. A vague semi-consensus among some–but by no means all–Protestant Christians in the 1800s that something like the Great Apostasy had happened cannot possibly be credible evidence now that it actually did happen. Furthermore, Mormon claims about the loss of priesthood–and what would have had to have happened for such a loss to occur–are facially implausible. Even if we do accept Mormon ideas about priesthood authority and how it works, the likelihood that it would be lost while Christianity would survive is completely unbelievable. I wrote a post awhile back explaining exactly why. I think it is well worth the read.

So we have no reason to believe that priesthood works the way Mormonism says it does or that a Great Apostasy happened, except for circular logic that requires us to first assume the truth of Mormonism. That means Mormonism’s claims are simply not credible unless we believe Mormonism’s claims of authority based on nothing but… Mormonism’s claims to authority. Even the official Way To Truth (read, pray, feel-the-spirit-confirming-the-truth-and-banishing-all-doubt-and/or-contrary-evidence, rinse, repeat ad nauseum) requires us to begin by assuming that Mormonism is right regarding how you find out what is true. Unless you independently think that the Mormon Way To Truth is the right way to truth, or even one of several reliable ways, we have no reason to trust Mormonism when it tells us the way to truth, since it does it based on its own authority, which is what we’re trying to verify in the first place. This is textbook circular reasoning.

As far as independently thinking–i.e. based on something other than Mormonism’s teachings–that the Mormon Way To Truth is in fact the right way, I have a lot to say about that. But for the moment I will merely point out that no other religion or religious leader teaches it. If it was independently verifiable or somehow self-evident, the chances are pretty good that someone would actually have come up with it on their own (and then if Mormonism was really true, it would have to lead them to Mormonism). Good luck trying to argue that this in fact happens.

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Concerned About Christmas

I absolutely love Christmas.  I love the music, the decorations, the cookies, the shopping, the presents, the smiles, and the colored lights. The commercialism of Christmas just doesn’t bother me.  It’s fun, and its only once a year (commercialism the rest of the year bothers me).

I can remember each Christmas distinctly going back to when I was six years old, and I have hazy memories of Christmases before that.  These memories are some of my favorite memories, some of the best and most important times I have shared with my family.  Christmas for me is the true mark of the turning of the year and the passage of time.

The spiritual side of Christmas has always seemed incredibly important as well.  The religious side—the birth of Jesus and all it means for the world.  It is amazing to me.  Of all Christmas carols, I like the sacred ones the most.  While I love the glitz and the sparkle and the watered-down-TV-special stuff, the things about Christmas that are really meaningful to me—really meaningful, are the baby in the manger, no room in the inn, shepherds watching their flocks by night, a new star in the sky, angels proclaiming the birth, and the three wise men.  All that Christmas means, explicitly and symbolically, is precious to me.  For most of my life, the sacred meaning of Christmas has been enough to hold me to Christianity even when my faith was weak and other options seemed more interesting.

Because of my attachment to the sacred core of the holiday, last Christmas was hard for me.  It was the first Christmas in my life where I had serious doubts about whether or not I was a Christian, and so I was not sure what to think or feel about Christmas.  We weren’t going to church at the time, so there were no Christmas services.  I just wasn’t sure what to make of Christmas, and it made the holiday confusing and even a little bit painful for me.  If I am not a Christian, then what is the point of Christmas?  And Christmas has been so important and valuable to me, that losing it—or even losing just its sacred core, is something I don’t really know how to cope with.

So here I am, a year later, and not really any closer to figuring out what I believe—or what I want to believe.  I can’t call myself a Christian and feel honest about it, and so I don’t know what to make of Christmas.  But there’s something in that sacred core of the holy day that I yearn for.  What do I do?

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Narrowing Down The Issues

On the one hand, I’m sure it looks like I’m going ’round and ’round in circles with God and religion, retreading the same ground and getting nowhere. Sometimes I wonder if that is in fact what is going on, and if I can ever be satisfied and happy. Most of the time, though, I am pretty sure that I am slowly, carefully refining the issues, figuring out really what is at stake and what I think, and what decisions I really have to make.

At the moment, I think I have my religious question basically boiled down to the following ideas:

I’m inclined to think that there is a god, even though I have my doubts. I do not think that god is completely knowable by human beings. I also do not necessarily think that getting some (or even a lot of) things wrong about god is as big of a deal as human beings historically tend to. I’m not sure if god is personal or impersonal, or if god is maybe impersonal but with facets that can be personal-ish. Maybe. In any case, atheism does not suit me. I want both a religious identity and a path for spiritual development. Thus, I want a religion.

I really like a lot of things about Christianity. I find Christian theology appealing. I like the liturgy, the hymns, the architecture, the ritual, the idea of church, the liturgical year, the resurrection. I like C. S. Lewis, a lot. When I read C. S. Lewis, I want to be a Christian. Theoretically, I like the Bible, even though my attempts at reading it over the last two years have been most unsatisfactory.  I’m attached to Christianity as a religion, and am extremely bothered by the idea of giving it up entirely.  I even sometimes entertain the notion of going to seminary and becoming an Episcopal priest someday.

Unfortunately, despite everything I’ve just said, I don’t think I actually believe (in) Christianity. I like the idea of Jesus Christ as God incarnate quite a bit, but I don’t seem to actually believe that it it is so. I like the idea of salvation from sin through Jesus Christ’s supreme sacrifice, but I’m not sure I’m really all that worried about my sins, I find the idea of hell implausible, I don’t necessarily feel like I am in need of salvation (I feel plenty of wretched, just not necessarily wretched because of my sins or sinful nature) and I’m not convinced that this supreme sacrifice in fact happened. I think that the resurrection is plausible, but I don’t necessarily think that it means the whole package of Christianity is true.

I think I actually believe something a whole lot more like Vedanta, like the ideas expressed in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita about Brahman and everything, the world and people and you and me and God, all being really the same thing. I’m not culturally Indian, so Hinduism as a religion has no appeal to me whatsoever, and all of the New Religious Movements that have spun off from Hinduism in the west are, well, New Religious Movements. Pretty much they are to Hinduism what Mormonism is to Christianity (and Soka Gakkai is to Buddhism), and I am not interested in that at all. I’ve already done aa quasi-cult, thanks. I’m not really in the market for another one.

So I would prefer to read the Bible because I prefer the idea of reading the Bible, but in reality I find the Gita and the Upanishads so much more meaningful.

Also, I find various flavors of Paganism (neo and otherwise) extremely appealing: Asatru, Druidry, the Greek Gods, etc. I feel like all of that would dovetail a whole lot better with the Bhagavad Gita than it would the Bible. I’m European, not Indian, so actually becoming a Hindu is not interesting at all to me, but I think that the philosophy underlying Hinduism and tying it together can easily be applied to any Indo-European mythology.  I think that AODA Druidry as spiritual practice, Vedanta as philosophy, and European myth as a corpus of spiritual literature is an extremely reasonable combination, and probably a hell of a lot closer to what I actually believe than Chistianity ever will be.

But, Christianity is more appealing for some reason.  And for a lot of reasons, Vedanta+Druidry+Mythology, although it might actually be what I believe, is extremely unappealing.  There’s a lack of clear religious identity, for one.  There’s no Christmas.  Druidry as spiritual practice sometimes seems shallow and empty to me–it is missing the millennia of tradition that Christianity has.  There are the social and cultural problems with identifying as an odd religion.  Treading a new path means missing out on the guidance of people who have gone before.  There’s the worry that I’m really just cherry-picking the things I like.  There are issues about the source of morality and the source of values (that I am exploring in another series of posts).  And in my head, Vedanta+Druidry+Mythology just doesn’t have the same, I don’t know, pow! that Christianity has.  And it doesn’t have C. S. Lewis.

So I know what I probably believe, but it doesn’t happen to be the same thing as what I would like to believe.  But my desire to believe Christianity is subtly undermined by the things I actually do believe.  I’m not sure how to resolve this painlessly–there may simply be no painless resolution–but I think it is extremely important that I have arrived at (or at least I’m getting closer to) the central question in my search for God.

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Searching For A Source, Unfinished Notes on Part III: Religious Choices And Their Values

I was going to continue this series of posts, but it stopped seeming as important after awhile.  In the itnerests of continuity, I will publish the rest of my notes on the parts I didn’t finish.  Forthe record, I am writing this in April 2009, in the process of going back and filling in the blanks in this here blog o’ mine.

These notes are incomplete, and probably really vague in spots, but they were only meant to be an outline. Maybe they make sense in this context; I’m not sure. Anyway, here they are.

III. Religious Choices and their Values

So to recap, at this point in my life I am more interested in religion as a pathway to a source of objective morality than I have previously been. Objective morality is not the only factor I am considering—many of the elements in my thought process can’t properly be described as “factors” or things that I am “considering” at all. More than anything else, I am drawn to particular faiths or aspects of faiths because I find them compelling on some level. But once I feel that draw, I have to evaluate the faith somehow, and right now a faith’s access to a source of objective values is extremely important to me.

A. Christianity

In terms of objective morality, Christianity seems at first to be relatively unproblematic. This should not be entirely surprising since my rubric for evaluating values is largely informed by C. S. Lewis, a Christian apologist. This may indeed mean that I have made an a priori decision in favor of Christianity and thus this entire inquiry is a sham, unless of course I am willing to reject my ideas about morality, which I am unwilling to do. If that is so, then this is indeed only a phase in my development as a Christian, an important reassessment of what is important to me.

However, I do not think that this is necessarily the case. While Christianity generally comes down on the side of objective values, there are enough significant exceptions in areas of Christianity that are formative or important to me that the conclusion is not foregone. Furthermore, Christianity certainly is not the only faith or point of view that asserts an objective source for Ought. Additionally, there is enough of the pagan in C. S. Lewis to admit paganism as a distinct possibility, even under C. S. Lewis’s own ostensibly Christian rubric.

In any case, Christianity as I understand it and—as I would believe if I am already a Christian or am to become one—posits a God that is the source of all creation, a self-existent being that is the source of all light, truth, and meaning. In terms of sources for Ought statements, the Christian God is the ultimate Ought.

Unfortunately, I think too many Christians don’t actually have a very good handle on just what God’s moral principles are. The Bible and traditional Christianity are so full of prohibitions and admonitions ranging from the general to the hyper-specific that it is entirely possible to get lost in the details and miss the forest for the trees. If God is the ultimate source for Ought, then by Ought we have to actually be talking about the principles that lie behind the specific commandments, not the commandments themselves.

Christianity’s obvious source
The problem with most Xians
Emerging Xity
Liberal Xity
Latitudinarianism in Anglicanism
Mormonism’s radically different outlook
Atonement
Not fully explored elsewhere

Asatru and values
Nine Noble
Asatru: old but new
The source of values?
Implied in the Lore
If Jesus is a virtue ethicist, Xians should do this
But they get confused by the commandments.

Druidry
Recon vs. revival druidry (no values prob with recon, but not interested in it)
Revival druidry’s values
Pluralism and liberalism?
Enviromentalism
Utilitarianism as an explanation: same problem
Other approaches to Environmentalism?
Theological—stewardship
Pantheism? Paganism?
Still, why?
Assertions about what it good for humans
Might be wrong—see the social sciences
What to fill Revival Druidry with?
A theology as source of value?
If so, it has to be one that supports Druidry.
What theology then?
Paganism? What kind?
No hard poly!
Neopaganism? Liberal/plural problem.
Brahmanism? Maybe. That’s good stuff.
Christianity? Then why be a druid?

Go back to the Introduction and Index

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Searching For A Source, Part II: The Problem With Pluralism

Pluralism in a normative sense (as opposed to pluralism as a matter of description which is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion) means valuing subjectivity over objectivity by declaring all cultural viewpoints (including religious viewpoints as a facet of culture) equally and fundamentally valid. The problems with this popular viewpoint-framework include first, that pluralism is itself a value that undermines all other values, and second, that it generally fails to be subject to its own scrutiny.

The value of pluralism is not somehow self-evident, regardless of whether it is treated as such. Even if it can be justified by rhetoric or evidence, pluralism is itself a value. The problem is that it is a value that undermines all other values. If I ascribe to pluralism, I cannot at the same time hold any other values, because that would be an assertion that those values were somehow true or the best or the most valid, which is inconsistent with pluralism. In fact, under the rubric of pluralism, there is no need to hold any other values at all: if all values are equally valid then no value supersedes another, and all values are thus also equally invalid. Pluralism, in its admirable desire for fairness and equity, swallows up everything else.

Furthermore, in practice, pluralism generally fails to live up to its own mandate. Most pluralists reject exclusivist or fundamentalist viewpoints. In other words, to the pluralist, all viewpoints are equally valid except for when they undermine pluralism itself. Thus all viewpoints actually aren’t equally valid because no viewpoint other than pluralism can ever be valid, since any statement of value necessarily implies the non-validity of contradictory values. Thus, under the rubric of pluralism, no value is valid because all values other than pluralism denigrate other values by not recognizing their equal worth and validity. But that is not even true: in fact, under the rubric of pluralism, no value is valid at all, not even pluralism, because rejecting say, Fundamentalist Christianity in the name of pluralism means recognizing that the pluralism is more valid than Fundamentalist Christianity, a situation that is impossible under pluralism.

Thus pluralism is undesirable as a stance because it not only undermines all other values, but in practice, pluralism even undermines itself. It is subjectivity taken to the logical, but absurd end. This end means the inability to make moral judgments of any kind, because it results in the rejection of all Ought principles. Even if not taken to the extreme, pluralism undermines strong Ought principles conceptually and thus undermines all moral imperatives, i.e., all statements of Should.

This lies at the heart of my unease with liberalism, at least liberalism as commonly articulated in America today. Liberalism is all passion but no principle. Certainly liberals have articulated a significant number of values couched in moral terms, and many liberals are extremely passionate about these values. But the problem is that liberalism includes and embraces pluralism as not just a value, but as a fundamental premise, and so liberalism fails to be able to articulate reasons for its values without rejecting a premise that it is unwilling to reject.

American conservatives, by contrast, get the force for their Ought statements from their belief in Christianity, pragmatism, or market economics. I may not agree with their Ought statements, or even acknowledge the validity of their sources, but they are articulating policies based on principles that are at least alleged to be objective. If you acknowledge even the possible validity of the source and the derivation of the Ought, then their Should-conclusions have a great deal of moral force. I’m not entirely sure about the source of libertarians’ Ought-principles.

Now, to be fair, many people are proponents of the same causes as liberals without being liberals in the sense that I am using it. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury is socially progressive but theologically conservative. His Ought-principles, whether they are true or misguided, come from a set of objective moral standards. Ditto for my friend Bryant: as a faithful Mormon, he believes in absolute morality and objective values, but he concludes that those values—that set of Ought-principles—lead him basically to the same Should-imperatives that liberals advocate.

However, people like Bryant occupy a perilous place in the American left. Because their moral reasoning is based on objective standards, by definition they reject full cultural pluralism, which means they are treated with suspicion by fellow-liberals. It’s not always easy being both religious and a Democrat in the United States: conservatives think that your Progressive politics is a betrayal of your religion (because you derive a different set of Ought-principles from what is ostensibly the same source), and too many liberals think that your objective values are the antithesis of pluralism and thus inherently invalid (and since pluralism is fundamental to liberalism, your objective values are the antithesis of liberalism even if you advocate the same set of policy goals; the feeling is that you happen by lucky coincidence to advocate the same policy goals in one particular instance, but since you reject pluralism you can’t really be counted on).

Yes, I know that political reality means that Democratic candidates have to use religious talk to get elected. But it is also true that they suffer derision and scorn from liberals when they do. This is because for the kind of liberal I am talking about, anything that even potentially undermines pluralism is the mark of the enemy.

Next: Religious Choices And Their Values

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