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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What Does It Mean To Believe In Jesus?

One of the biggest obstacles preventing me from simply embracing Christianity is that I am not entirely sure what it means to be a Christian.  Specifically, I can not wrap my head around what it means to actually believe in Jesus, to the extent that belief becomes faith.  By any reading of the New Testament, faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely fundamental to Christianity.  But what does it really mean, and how do you know when you have it?

I have no problem with a purely intellectual belief in Jesus Christ.  By this I mean that I can see myself thinking that statements like “Jesus existed,” “Jesus died and came back to life,” and even “Jesus was uniquely one with God” are true.  But is that all there is to it?  If I happen to think that Jesus is God, then I’m a Christian, and I have faith?  If I think it a lot?  If I think it really strongly?  What?

Is the difference between faith and mere belief simply a difference of quantity, or altogether a difference of quality?  I don’t know, but my intuition seems to be that it is the latter.  Really believing in Jesus has to mean more than simply concluding that Jesus is true.  So what is it?  It can’t just be thoughts that translate into action, either (i.e., thinking it enough so that I try to change my life), because any thought can lead to action.  If I think Borders has the book I want in stock, then I will go to Borders and buy this book.  That can’t be the same thing as faith in Jesus Christ, can it?

Similarly, faith can’t just mean thinking something is true even though you do not have proof enough to be sure, since “proof enough to be sure” is basically impossible anyway.  You can never be one hundred percent sure about anything–it could always be the case that your perceived reality is a complex delusion and nothing is really what you think it is, like the Matrix or something.  So if thinking that Jesus rose form the dead even though I wasn’t there to see it happen is faith, then I also have faith by thinking that I am typing at my computer right now, since I can never be really sure.  And that means again that faith in Jesus is really just the same thing as thinking that Jesus is true–mere belief–and not substantively different from any other thing I think.

The problem with mere belief is that mere belief is subject to change for a myriad of reasons.  What I think about anything today may or may not be the same as what I think about it tomorrow, depending on a variety of factors.  If thinking that Jesus is true is enough, then what happens when tomorrow I change my mind and decide that Jesus is not as plausible as I thought he was yesterday?  Does intellectual honesty somehow prevent me from having faith in Jesus?  If so, I’m not interested.

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Why I Do Believe In God (Sort Of)

Like I said in my last post, I’m extremely hesitant to just come out and say that I flat-out don’t believe in God in the typical atheist sense.  This isn’t hedging my bet; I absolutely don’t believe in hell, I’m skeptical about an afterlife anyway (and even if there is one, I doubt very strongly that the particulars can be known), and a quick scan of the state of the world tells me that it doesn’t look like people who believe in God are getting all the breaks.  Part of it is an agnostic approach to epistemology: I don’t see how humans can know anything for sure at all.  All our sensory input is filtered through the double-filter of sensation and perception, and there’s no particular reason to trust that either one of those filters feeds us objective data.  We can’t really be sure that we’re not in The Matrix, so we certainly can’t be sure of something as attenuated from our direct empirical experience as the existence or nonexistence of God.

As far as we know, there is a God who is simply cleverly making the universe look to us like there is no God (I call this “Fossil-Hiding God”).  How would we know?  If an omnipotent or even mostly-potent supernatural being with more or less total control over the universe wanted to cover his tracks completely, I imagine he could do it pretty well.  Either way, like I said in my last post, I’m not actually convinced by the logical arguments of atheists for the nonexistence of God.  Despite all out efforts to reason him out of existence, I think it possible that he nevertheless exists–C. S. Lewis’s fantastic novel, Till We Have Faces, had a proufound the way I thought about the existence of deity and made me extremely reluctant to flat-out deny that the divine exists, even if it is totally unlike the traditional Judeo-Christian conetption of Yahweh.

So in terms of the existence versus nonexistence of God, I’m really more of an agnostic with a theoretically rebuttable presumption God’s nonexistence, at least inasmuch as we’re talking about God as a distinct transcendant supernatural personal entity, with or without a flowing white beard.

That’s not the end of the story, though.  the word “God” can be stretched to fit an amazing diversity of theistic and quasi-theistic concepts, many of which aren’t anything at all like the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of the supreme being, and it turns out that I actually do believe in something that if pressed, I could call God (although I would be reluctant to do so because the label “God” would confuse most people by implying that there’s a beard in there somewhere).  I think it’s worth explaining what I mean by all of this, especially since I’m actually trying to get to a point eventually, but I’m not going to make this post more confusing than it already is.  So hold your horses a bit and wait for the next post.

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