My take would be, if ever I could have a decent conversation with Dan again, its all perspective. How can someone outside of a position tell another an alternative if that one inside is convinced they already have the best? What is an alternative to what is perceived as the best? And people are only convinced if an interlocuter is able to play by their rules--as arbitrary as our individual rules tend to be. That makes it a very difficult conversation, I think. I recall, years back, a GA of sorts (can't remember his exact position in the company that is the Church, nor his name) basically said (summarizing)
'miracles happen all the time. Each time someone comes into this Church its a miracle. If you really stop and think from a convert's perspective its near impossible to be converted. Thus God.' He's right on the one hand...it seems near impossible for most people. But that's why most do not convert, nor give it the time of day. But its simply bound to happen that some people will bite, and some fewer of them will see it through to baptism and beyond. That's simply our world, though. That's not God. That's not miracle. That's nothing more than reality, probability, and predictability...mundanity.
We may want to say being a rational person is best. But to those who are convinced on grounds other than the tools of rationality there is little convincing. You must first get them to be rational people, or grow a desire to be. That's a taller order than it sounds at first glance. We simply happen to be prone to irrationality. Even as we set a goal of rationality, we fail all too often. Its way too easy and convenient to move on a hunch rather than plan things out, and I say that is true even for meticulous planners. Additionally we can be wholly rational, or as close as we can be, in one area and as the great compartmentalizers we are, and be nearly as wholly irrational in any other area of our lives. This is the type of thing that is at the heart of the failure of Dan's Mormon Scholars testify campaign (did that die? I forgot all about it until this moment). Anyone can be a rather rational scientist and simultaneously believe our bodies have spirits inside them that will continue on after we die, with no reason except religious hope to believe such. Some may say there's nothing irrational about believing, often quite dogmatically, something that grows increasingly unlikely as the days move on. But I'd disagree. That's basically what being irrational is. If the proposition of your religion (given any one of them) is unlikely, then its only rational to accept its unlikely and thus not believe it. That doesn't mean you say without a doubt that belief is impossible, particularly philosophically, no...it means you suspend belief until you find good reason to go back to it. But you see, to believe in religion is to play by different rules. And that'd be the point. How to convince those who are simply playing by different rules that there is an alternative? I'm not saying it's impossible...it happens to be difficult.
In
KevinSim's thread asking for an alternative I had said, "Yes, if you think about it’s a pretty odd question, almost like—“what’s the alternative to believing these unreasonable things?”
I mean….not believing them?"
What more can be expected? Some people simply won't be convinced that they are accepting unreasonable things if they think they are assenting to reasonable things. If one is convinced there is a God, he is Mormon (meaning is the author of Mormon teaching and practice), there is no alternative. To that mindset of Dan's, one who believes without doubt that God is there and is Mormon, there is no alternative. The question then is posed rhetorically only. And of course, what's the alternative to Dan's religion? Being rational. Doing so may leave one out of the Mormon social club, and may mean one has to drop the belief that there is a God and one might be crowned as gods for eternity. I mean I wonder what kinda narcissism it takes to want that anyway, but being, no matter, rational means you lose that. One may say, as many atheists have, but you gain a perspective that is rational. You may not have hope for an eternal salvation some day, but you get to live life in a real world and emphasize the importance of what we have rather than hope for things that seem nothing more than make believe. I don't know...I guess its the choice we have.