Physics Guy wrote:It’s not about whether people are happy or not. It’s about whether they are being denied the chance to make their own choices based on honest information. If a child in a rich family sees something on TV about starving children, the parents could make the child happier by saying that it was only pretend and that really every kid in the world has a comfortable home and a full plate just like theirs. In most cases, though, that’s not the right thing to tell the child. In no case, it seems to me, is it right to deceive responsible adults just to make them happy.
I see your point, but the problem you are describing could equally apply to any "Religion of the Book." Look at the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the related sub-sects. Any one of them could be called out for being based on history that could be called bawdlerized or outright bogus. If the choice is "live a fantasy religious life or a life of real facts," which is essentially how Dehlin is framing things (albeit in a much gentler way because he does recognize that some will find a religious life healthy and worthwhile), then, sure, Mormonism more or less has the same problems and can be criticized in the same way.
But it all depends on one's starting assumptions. If one accepts a Biblical or Q'uranic foundation to one's faith, then that is freighted with all of the historical problems that are present in Mormonism, if not necessarily to the same degree. More people were once happy enough with that foundation and it was assumed to be solid. In the age of New Atheism, this has definitely changed. But I don't think it is fair for the people who adopt New Atheist-style assumptions to point fingers at the religionists as "People of the Lie" when what we are looking at is in no small part an incompatibility of worldviews.
Why would we not look more closely at accounts of Jesus being the bastard son of the Roman soldier Panthera? After all, we know that the virgin birth simply cannot be a thing. What do we do with the possibility that Mohammed married a nine-year-old child? I know how ex-Mormon critics would characterize this if Joseph Smith had done such a thing. What do we say to all of those Jews who insist that Abraham and Moses were real people? Look at the mythological elements of their lives! There is no way these can be real people.
We are happy to draw attention to these problems, but then we tend only to consider the morality of Mormon religious authority being based on its problematic narratives.
Perhaps the disconnect is between the authority of facts as understood in a naturalist worldview versus the authority of spirit/divine power as understood in a mythological worldview. Ex-Mormons redefine the spirit in order to rob it of authority. It is nothing but chemicals, neurons, and bodily reactions producing emotions. If one truly believes in the reality of divine power or the Spirit, then that is the authority from which faith and obedience flow. One follows Christ out of a conviction that He is the Son of God, not because of the existence of a historical figure who was punished by Pontius Pilate. That conviction does not follow on the facts; it follows on the spiritual impact of the myth of the Christ.
The same goes for Joseph Smith. The historical details are, from a believer's perspective, much less than the spiritual power of the narratives as they were canonized by the community of the faithful under the authority of his successors.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist