Steve Smoot on Book of Mormon Musical Do Mormons Just Believe?

[_Philo Sofee]

Steve Smoot is offended, or at least amused by an awful reality from the Book of Mormon Musical.

The message of “I Believe” cannot be easily misunderstood: Mormons are nice, lovable, gullible, naïve buffoons who–God bless their incorrigible hearts–cling to hilariously preposterous beliefs for which they can provide no sort of rational justification, and so they “just believe” their farcical religion as a sort of coping mechanism to deal with harsh challenges in life (all the while blissfully unaware that non-Mormons are laughing themselves to stitches over how ludicrous Mormonism is). “But hey,” the musical essentially says, “these affable idiots are still alright, since they are so sincere and unspoiled by this cynical, grown-up, adult world.”

Do you just believe (since there is fundamentally no actual evidence) that the God Elohim has a Father and his Father does also?

Do you just believe (because there is fundamentally no actual evidence) that God is eternally married and that human spirits are his actual and literal children?

Do you just believe (because there is fundamentally no actual evidence) that God used to live on an earth as a man before he was actually God?

Do you just believe (because there is actually no evidence) that a literal council of heaven occurred with embodied Gods and unembodied spirits before there was a physical cosmos?

And these mere 4 of many I could come up with, are only a few of the reasons I think the musical is entirely correct. Mormons actually believe in their version of the Gods and God without any actual evidence whatsoever anywhere for anyone to see, learn from, and come to know themselves.

In fact, I am more than sure myriads of other posters here can come up with myriads of other issues that Mormons merely believe because they are told it is true, and of which there is no actual evidence we can sink our teeth into. It is educationally interesting to see that bothers some Mormons. Who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs other than this is the way the leaders have given Mormonism to its own masses? When have you ever heard General Authorities in General Conference actually give evidences and reasons to believe in the more preposterous stuff?

[_Polygamy-Porter]

The way I explain TBMs to my never-mo friends:

Imagine grown ass adults who vehemently defend their shared belief that Santa Claus is a real person.

[_EAllusion]

He's misreading the target of that song. The lyrics rely on repeating a device where the singer triumphantly proclaims a religious faith the audience would find normal and inspiring, then punctuates it with Mormon-specific beliefs that read as kooky to that same audience's ear. On one level, yes, this pokes fun at those farcical beliefs. That's where the humor comes from. But what the song really is doing is saying that those proclamations of faith in vanilla Christianity are very much like the ones in specific odd-sounding Mormon beliefs. They function the same way.

Ultimately, the idea is that those beliefs give people confidence to stand up even if they aren't based in reality. The main theme of the musical is that religion motivates people to do hopeful, courageous, and good things even if those narratives aren't literally true using the absurdity of Mormonism as its vehicle. It's a nonbeliever's attempt to say something nice about religion. The song is its most naked example of that theme until you get to the end.

[_Gadianton]

He needs to take it easy with the modifiers. He's in grad school, right?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The young lad Smoot just had the most massive Freudian slip known to mankind.

- Doc

[Guest]

Smoot is a character alright.

[_Philo Sofee]

He needs to take it easy with the modifiers. He's in grad school, right?

It's his style, it adds to the intellectual poetry...

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Smoot is a character all right.

It was better before you edited it.

- Doc

[_deacon blues]

He needs to take it easy with the modifiers. He's in grad school, right?

That's purdy durn funny, Gad.

[_moksha]

But as the song progresses, Elder Price’s testimony becomes increasingly outlandish. It starts out simple enough, with Elder Price singing innocuously,

“I believe that the Lord God created the universe / I believe that he sent his only son to die for my sins.” But things quickly turn bizarre with affirmations such as:

“And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America!”

“I believe that God has a plan for all of us / I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet / And I believe that the current President of the Church, Thomas Monson, speaks directly to God!”

“And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people!”

“I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob! / I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well / And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.”

In the eyes of apologetics, have these items indeed become canards from the realm of untrue anti-Mormon accusations?