Mormon Worldview

[Physics Guy]

The moral foundation of the Christian worldview is the only foundation that has any morality because it presupposes God's perfect morality. Any other moral foundation based on human reason is flawed.

The decision to accept the Bible as God's infallible Word was based on human reason and feeling. You only have a uniquely moral foundation if that decision turns out to have been perfectly right. If that decision was mistaken, then the worldview that you call Christian is in fact a mixture of right and wrong, good and bad. And that decision to accept the Bible as infallible was based on flawed things, so it easily could be mistaken.

So your moral foundation is no more secure than anyone else's. One difference is that because you spent your entire capital of human reason and conscience in one big lump sum, to buy the infallibility of the Bible, you can more easily forget that all your conclusions are still fallible, the way somebody who buys an expensive vacation at an all-inclusive resort, paying for everything in advance, can then easily forget that everything still costs money, because once they've paid their way into the resort everything there is just free.

Just because your worldview says that your worldview is the only moral one doesn't mean that it really is. Here's a rival moral foundation that consists of two principles.

1) Whenever there's a moral decision to be made, flip a coin. The mysterious workings of fate will ensure that the coin toss of a true believer will always show the morally right choice.
2) These two principles are the necessary and infallible truth and it is a sin not to believe and obey them.

If you somehow accept these two principles, then you will be believing that you have a perfect moral foundation, because that's what Principle 2 says you have. This moral foundation is nevertheless absurd. Just because your system claims it is perfect doesn't mean that you really have a perfect system.

[pgm1985]

The moral foundation of the Christian worldview is the only foundation that has any morality because it presupposes God's perfect morality. Any other moral foundation based on human reason is flawed.

Mormons make the same argument. If you presuppose that Joseph Smith was a true prophet then the LDS church is God’s true church on earth.

The problem is the unjustified presupposition, for both Mormons and you.

At this point, I feel we have hit an impasse. You refute my position that God and the Bible are the ultimate authority behind morality, but you have not provided what you hold to be the ultimate moral authority other than it is internal and experience based. That is the definition of relativism, holding that truth, morality, and knowledge are not absolute. What happens when what you believe to be moral conflicts with another person’s moral beliefs? Who has the higher moral authority? I hold that God is the Personal Absolute and it is only through the Christian worldview by which standards of ethics and morality can be achieved, but more importantly, it the only way salvation is possible.

God is a moral being and created humans in His image. God put His morality into us when we were created which gives us an innate knowledge of morality, hence our consciousness. But because the effects of sin, we suppress God’s truth and exchange it for a lie. It is only through the redemptive work of Jesus that we can know God’s truth revealed through His Word. As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 so explicitly states: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

[pgm1985]

The moral foundation of the Christian worldview is the only foundation that has any morality because it presupposes God's perfect morality. Any other moral foundation based on human reason is flawed.

The decision to accept the Bible as God's infallible Word was based on human reason and feeling. You only have a uniquely moral foundation if that decision turns out to have been perfectly right. If that decision was mistaken, then the worldview that you call Christian is in fact a mixture of right and wrong, good and bad. And that decision to accept the Bible as infallible was based on flawed things, so it easily could be mistaken.

So your moral foundation is no more secure than anyone else's. One difference is that because you spent your entire capital of human reason and conscience in one big lump sum, to buy the infallibility of the Bible, you can more easily forget that all your conclusions are still fallible, the way somebody who buys an expensive vacation at an all-inclusive resort, paying for everything in advance, can then easily forget that everything still costs money, because once they've paid their way into the resort everything there is just free.

Just because your worldview says that your worldview is the only moral one doesn't mean that it really is. Here's a rival moral foundation that consists of two principles.

1) Whenever there's a moral decision to be made, flip a coin. The mysterious workings of fate will ensure that the coin toss of a true believer will always show the morally right choice.
2) These two principles are the necessary and infallible truth and it is a sin not to believe and obey them.

If you somehow accept these two principles, then you will be believing that you have a perfect moral foundation, because that's what Principle 2 says you have. This moral foundation is nevertheless absurd. Just because your system claims it is perfect doesn't mean that you really have a perfect system.

The flaw in your argument is I am not claiming authority to my worldview, God has. If you do not accept God as the ultimate authority, what is your authority?

[huckelberry]

The flaw in your argument is I am not claiming authority to my worldview, God has. If you do not accept God as the ultimate authority, what is your authority?

Now if you only had a sure way to interpret Gods will or to interpret the Bible. People struggle with interpretation and on some moral issues people see differently. Perhaps you should have an interpreter with actual authority, perhaps from God. Perhaps you should consider Mormonism.

[drumdude]

Mormons make the same argument. If you presuppose that Joseph Smith was a true prophet then the LDS church is God’s true church on earth.

The problem is the unjustified presupposition, for both Mormons and you.

What happens when what you believe to be moral conflicts with another person’s moral beliefs? Who has the higher moral authority?

What happens when one person’s interpretation of God’s will conflicts with another person’s interpretation of God’s will?

We both live the same way with the same problem. Your declaration that there is an absolute moral standard does nothing to demonstrate what it is, because plenty of Christians disagree what that standard is. For example, Mormons.

From my perspective both you and the Mormon believe in different absolute moralities so there is nothing absolute about it. Even another Christian of your own denomination will disagree with you about moral problem, because you’re both using your relative subjective experience to decide what is right.

[Physics Guy]

The claim that God has asserted the authority of the Bible is a human claim. I can easily add a third principle to my absurd coin-flipping doctrine:

3) These three principles are endorsed by God.

Then I can go around saying, “Hey, I’m not the one asserting the authority of coin-flip morality! No, it’s from God. It says so right there in Principle 3.”

That doesn’t make my three principles actually infallible. They’re still ridiculous. And the same kind of argument doesn’t work any better for the Bible, because it’s an invalid argument.

You can’t dodge the question, “How do you know that God really endorses the Bible?” by saying that the Bible says so and the Bible carries God’s own authority. That’s like me claiming to be king, because I use my authority as king to appoint myself king. It’s just circular.

[huckelberry]

What happens when what you believe to be moral conflicts with another person’s moral beliefs? Who has the higher moral authority?

What happens when one person’s interpretation of God’s will conflicts with another person’s interpretation of God’s will?

We both live the same way with the same problem. Your declaration that there is an absolute moral standard does nothing to demonstrate what it is, because plenty of Christians disagree what that standard is. For example, Mormons.

From my perspective both you and the Mormon believe in different absolute moralities so there is nothing absolute about it. Even another Christian of your own denomination will disagree with you about moral problem, because you’re both using your relative subjective experience to decide what is right.

Well you could decide not to deal with all the odd detailed laws in Numbers or Deuteronomy. Just stick with the ten commandments they are pretty basic. Perhaps it is not necessary to kill the witch any longer.

Yes, but then what can you do or not do on the Sabbath? Then there is the little matter of what day is this sabbath? I live in an area where there are a lot of folks certain the Sabbath is Friday sunset till Saturday sunset. A certain amount of human created compromise can ease the pain of not knowing. In fact people can cooperate on days off when some want Saturday and other Sundays. That applies to jobs that have to continue on the Sabbath, however whoever figures out which those must be.

[drumdude]

What happens when one person’s interpretation of God’s will conflicts with another person’s interpretation of God’s will?

We both live the same way with the same problem. Your declaration that there is an absolute moral standard does nothing to demonstrate what it is, because plenty of Christians disagree what that standard is. For example, Mormons.

From my perspective both you and the Mormon believe in different absolute moralities so there is nothing absolute about it. Even another Christian of your own denomination will disagree with you about moral problem, because you’re both using your relative subjective experience to decide what is right.

Well you could decide not to deal with all the odd detailed laws in Numbers or Deuteronomy. Just stick with the ten commandments they are pretty basic. Perhaps it is not necessary to kill the witch any longer.

Yes, but then what can you do or not do on the Sabbath? Then there is the little matter of what day is this sabbath? I live in an area where there are a lot of folks certain the Sabbath is Friday sunset till Saturday sunset. A certain amount of human created compromise can ease the pain of not knowing. In fact people can cooperate on days off when some want Saturday and other Sundays. That applies to jobs that have to continue on the Sabbath, however whoever figures out which those must be.

The social contract seems to be sufficient to keep society going without religious guidance. It may have been built on a religious scaffolding, but it stands alone without the scaffold now that it’s erect.

[yellowstone123]

Thanks pgm1985. I do want to ask if seeing things through a Christian lens is the proper way to see things. Growing up I went to Sunday School, early morning Seminary for a few years, and took classes at the church's Institute of Religion which was right across the street from the community college and University I attended. As I looked back, it seems to me they cherry-picked verses to support their so-called version of the truth. Now that I'm older I can see that you really need to understand the culture and time and what the preceding and post chapters were about to understand the scripture(s) being quoted.

I like to read different Bible sections from Bibles translated at different times by different people, or compare the scriptures being said and if they saying something different. Today I'm reading a new version of the Bible. The Complete Jewish Bible translated by David H. Stern. At the beginning he writes:


“An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the B ’rit Hadashah (New Testament)”

He further writes:

“Why is this Bible different from all other Bibles? Because it is the only English version of the Bible fully Jewish in style and presentation that includes both the Tanakh (‘Old Testement’) and B’rit Hadasha (new Covenant, ‘New Testament’) Even its title, the Complete Jewish Bible, challenges both Jews and Christians to see that the whole Bible is Jewish, the B’rit Hadashah as well as the Tanakh. Jews are challenged by the implication that without it the Tanakh is an incomplete Bible. Christians are challenged with the fact that they are joined to the Jewish people through faith in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus) – so that because Christianity can be right understood only from a Jewish perspective, anti-semitism is condemned absolutely and forever. In short, the Complete Jewish Bible restores the Jewish unity of the Bible. Also, for the first time the information needed for the synagogue reading for the Torah and the Prophets in completely integrated with similar use of the B’rit Hadasha.”

[Res Ipsa]

The claim that God has asserted the authority of the Bible is a human claim. I can easily add a third principle to my absurd coin-flipping doctrine:

3) These three principles are endorsed by God.

Then I can go around saying, “Hey, I’m not the one asserting the authority of coin-flip morality! No, it’s from God. It says so right there in Principle 3.”

That doesn’t make my three principles actually infallible. They’re still ridiculous. And the same kind of argument doesn’t work any better for the Bible, because it’s an invalid argument.

You can’t dodge the question, “How do you know that God really endorses the Bible?” by saying that the Bible says so and the Bible carries God’s own authority. That’s like me claiming to be king, because I use my authority as king to appoint myself king. It’s just circular.

If anyone has been able to make the argument without begging the question, I haven’t seen it.