Mate, give it a break.
---Give trying to figure out why people believe what they believe a break? Why should I, any more than you? Mormonism - along with other patently fraudulent belief systems - provides an excellent opportunity for trying to understand how the human brain works. Why should I refrain from exploring it as much as I want?
Okay, you no longer believe, but can you respect the fact that your family might still believe for reasons beyond you?
---I'm not sure what you mean here. Virtually all of my family now knows the whole thing is a fraud, too, even though a few still go. Though my mother did say once that even if Joseph Smith lied about the plates, lied about Peter James and John, and lied about seeing God and Jesus, that "the church would still be true". But basically, I don't know what you're referring to here. Almost everyone knows.
Come on Tal, don't assume you've found all the answers.
---Well that's quite rich coming from a member of "the only true religion in the universe!". Anyway, of course I don't think I have all the answers - but I do think that believing in things which require a denial of the force of logic or empirically-established facts to believe them,
requires a denial of the force of logic and/or empirically-established facts to believe them. I'm not sure why that should be controversial. Yet there are guys on this board who deny that almost at the same time they acknowledge it. As far as I can see, we've got a few good studies in deep confusion on here.
The least you can do is allow some latitude here
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---If by that you mean, acknowledge that some of what Mormon prophets have taught is true...I've always acknowledged that. But then, the same could be said of anyone - even the most unreliable person says some things which are true. What I think is most interesting here is how seemingly intelligent people can almost spontaneously disengage their critical faculties when their religion pops up.
Take myself, for example. I like to think I wasn't all that dumb, but literally, I now think that the very first time I ever really thought critically - I mean, really really - about the religion I had devoted my whole life to, was when I was 35, the father of seven, and holding down two callings (GD teacher and branch counselor). It was the summer of 2003 before I asked myself something as simple as, "If Mormonism weren't what it claimed....how would I know?".
And do you know, I couldn't think of an answer. I tried for a couple of days...and I just couldn't think of a test I would accept as showing the thing I'd based my life on to be a fraud. One part of my brain said, "there had to be, theoretically, a reliable way of disconfirming what I believed"...but the other was blank. I was like John Sorenson, who once said, "any evidence FOR the Book of Mormon counts, but any contradictory evidence just means 'more research needs to be done'". I began to wonder then if maybe, just maybe, the reason I'd always felt so certain about all those things I thought I knew, had a lot more to do with my brain, my own humanity and subconscious longings perhaps, than with, say, the creator of the universe telling me I was right.
When you are on your deathbed, will you call upon Hume?
---?