Kishkumen wrote:Any one of [the Religions of the Book] could be called out for being based on history that could be called bawdlerized or outright bogus. ... 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.
Sure, but the difference in degree may be big enough to matter.
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.
I'm not going to call anyone immoral just for urging me to believe something weird. As long as they let me see all the evidence that they themselves know, I don't see anything morally wrong in them urging me to believe just as they do. I may call Flat Earthers fools, but I won't call them immoral, unless they know about the Big Blue Marble photo and are deliberately hiding it.
At least in my understanding, Dehlin's complaint about the official Mormon story was not that it had supernatural elements, but that it was contradicted by available historical evidence, which Mormon leaders have sometimes concealed or distorted. There is no story about Moses having sex with a swan recorded in a Dead Sea Scroll that the Pope locked away in a safe. Or if there is, I don't know about it. Maybe Dan Brown does.
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.
Again this diverges for me from the theme of this thread. I don't mean to call the Mormon Brethren immoral just for teaching supernatural beliefs
per se. The concern is that they failed to publicize evidence that they themselves either knew or should have known.
Pursuing the digression at least a short way, however, I don't think I can accept a "mythological worldview" as a valid
alternative today, where by "alternative" I mean that one ignores or even rejects the scientific understanding of nature, in favor of accepting myths which are genuinely incompatible with science. I don't think one can sustain that kind of worldview today except by shirking due diligence, which does start to become immoral for me.
I think there is less genuine conflict between science and religion than either atheists or fundamentalists often suppose. Many of the really important questions for religious people, whether fundamentalist or not, are actually about what something means rather than about how it works. Some believers don't seem to realize that, and so they hold fast to particular theories about how the world works that their religion does not actually need to assume.
The jurisdictions of the two Magisteria do have some overlap, however, I think. Merely being convinced that Jesus lived and was crucified is certainly not sufficient to persuade one that he was God. That persuasion would indeed have to come from some source other than history. I think that history really could undermine belief in Christ's deity, though, if for example one somehow found strong evidence that Pilate actually let Jesus off with a fine of 30 denarii and Jesus then quit preaching and retired to a farm. And if this evidence had been lying in the Vatican archives for centuries, well known to all Cardinals, then I would certainly call those Cardinals immoral for not sharing the evidence.