This past Friday (April 24th) I had my chance to have conversations about religion with a couple of Mormon missionaries at the local Mormon Missionary institute. They had given me homework to read a few chapters out of the Book of Mormon, which I did and more. I had marked down every chapter that I have read so far, and they were really happy with the effort I had put into it. Reading the BoM has been on my to do list for a while, and I’m making slow progress toward that goal. I’ve read the whole Bible and the whole Koran, and I’ve started BoM and the Bhagavad-Gita.
I had a great time. The only downside was that they showed a 15 minute video compilation of the Gospel accounts of Jesus.
The missionaries have been trained to convert people and it shows. Having an agenda in and of itself is not a bad thing. My website has an agenda. But they promote their agenda in only underhanded ways. The majority of the tactics that I write about on this site aim at driving down to what each party in a conversation thinks and why.
With the missionaries, it’s different. You ask a specific question, you’ll get a pre-canned story as an answer.
“Why doesn’t God just make it obvious that Mormonism is right to anyone who honestly asks?”
“Let me tell you a story about a young man in Africa who was praying to God… and he saw a sign… ”
Other things that were apparent: they have various conversion and pressure moves made to make you feel like the only socially acceptable response is to conform to any number of submissive commands.
They get this through asking you to read scripture out loud: “Would you mind reading Alma chapter 32 outloud please?”
And by really swinging the pendulum of control over to their side: “Would you be willing to get on your knees and pray to Heavenly Father to show you if this is truth?”
And through blatant appeal to emotion: said through choked back tears, “I promise you that if you ask God with an open heart that he will show you the truth.”
I asked and worked through a number of new questions and arguments that I’ve been thinking about.
One of the more amusing moments for me was when one of the missionaries said something that I happened to know the exact chapter and verse that contradicted what she had just said. So I said, “Sister ____, that’s just not true and you know it. Would you please turn to Jeremiah chapter 31 and read verses 31 – 33 out loud?”
An identical request made of me many times before, which I did without protest, threw them off-guard. They were the ones to teach me what the Word of God said, not the other way around. She started reading it, and realized that she was explicitly contradicted in what she had just said, and tried to wiggle out of it. We agreed to let her research this topic and to return to the topic in the future.
I think I’m finished with the Mormons for a while, though. I feel like I’ve learned as much from them as I can unless I start talking to some elder/priests or whatever the “higher ups” are called. I have exhausted the knowledge of the missionaries, and I think everyone in the room knew it. I have learned a lot in my interactions, and I feel that my time was well spent.
Several of the new questions and arguments will be posted in the near future. Be excited.
The book is focused: it systematically goes through the top 50 reasons people give for believing in a god, and it carefully explains why a skeptic finds these reasons severely lacking. It also argues that the believer himself should find these reasons lacking, as well.
The author has gone through great pains to keep the book respectful yet direct.
I could tell that the author had spent a bit of time actually interacting with believers in an attempt to figure what they believe and why. There are a number of tactics that you hit upon from the number of interactions. He happened to use or recommend an approach similar to a few of the tactics that I have written about, and a few that I have plans to write about.
One of my favorite tactics is to ask for the best example of whatever claim a theist is making. He mentioned this as a response when you get a claim like, “Hundreds of prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus…” Ask, “what is the most impressive prophecy that Jesus fulfilled?” You interact with the best case that the theist can give, you aren’t trying to defend from a shotgun blast of verses and prophecies, and often the person has not seriously thought about any of the prophecies.
On a side note, I heard a street preacher use the same tactic to devastating effect when a skeptic listening was talking about how much the words of the Bible had changed and how the message has been distorted over the years. The preacher said, “That’s a fair enough objection. What message specifically has been changed? Or what is the most blatant verse change that you are thinking about?”
It stopped the skeptic cold because he only had some nebulous idea about how the Bible was changed, and no idea about any of the specifics.
To finish my book review, I’d say that the book was worth the time spent reading it. It feels a bit repetitive in that he continues to make the point that there is no good reason to think that X is true; or to rely on faulty reasoning Y. I also really appreciate the effort he makes to emphasize the reasons people give to believe in all kinds of gods (not just the Big God). It’s all true, and he explains very carefully exactly what mistakes are being made.
In the end, I recommend the book, especially if you intend on engaging religious people. It gives you a good feel for what you will encounter, and demonstrates a tactful way of critically engaging them.
A German bishop has argued that atheism causes and has caused all manner of suffering/genocide/mass murder. Which is to say, he thinks that atheism is as evil as the God that he worships.
The story quotes several atheist organizations that attempt to correct the factual errors of what Bishop Mixa has said. By continually arguing the facts of the matter, we atheists are allowing our opponents frame the debate. When an atheist organization claims that the majority of Nazis considered themselves Christian, modern day Christians are likely to think something like, ‘well, they obviously weren’t very good Christians, but if they were atheists instead just think how much worse it could have been!’
I think a more fruitful approach for an atheist organization and atheists in general would be to respond with something like the following:
Hypothetical Atheist Organization Response:
The bishop can argue that atheism leads to behavior as terrible as that of the God that he worships. Of course, as atheists we have no issue condemning the mass murder that God commanded as well as the mass murder that Hitler commanded.
A major defining difference between our two organizations: the church is the only one seeking praise for the actions of a mass murderer.
We welcome any moral progress that the bishop wishes to demonstrate by condemning the acts of God that he would otherwise so rightly criticize: mass murder and genocide.
For reference I have included two very evil verses that demonstrate the actions and commands that the God of the Old Testament that the bishop has praised.
16But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. 17You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded, 18so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.
38Then Joshua, with all Israel, turned back to Debir and assaulted it, 39and he took it with its king and all its towns; they struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed every person in it; he left no one remaining; just as he had done to Hebron, and, as he had done to Libnah and its king, so he did to Debir and its king. 40So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.
When it comes to mass murder and genocide, we need to stop letting the debate be framed in a way that continually forces atheists on the defensive! There is a moral difference here, and we have the upper hand. Repeatedly demonstrate this fact!
Why is anti-thinking worse than not thinking? Because anti-thinking tricks you into believing that you have properly and carefully considered a matter. And the dangers, as Voltaire suggests, is that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire
There are quite a few people that think that they have come to a religious conclusion via some rationally defensible justification. Books like the Case for Christ/Creator/etc. are best sellers that attempt to rationally make the case for a specific religion.
There are also the types that boldly proclaim to know things about external reality based off of an emotional response.
I have found a bunch of videos over at mormon.org which proudly displays some of the worst examples of thinking I have come across. These videos are not some encounter that I had on the street and edited to my own purposes. They appear here unedited. Among other things, mormon.org and the videos are promoting belief in an internal warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector. They claim that people can gain reliable knowledge through faith because the Holy Ghost will whisper the truth to them. Lest you think I am oversimplifying the case, I will quote directly from mormon.org [my emphasis added].
You can discover for yourself that what you’ve been learning is true by:
Sincerely praying to your Heavenly Father and asking Him if what you are learning is true.
Continuing to study and give thoughtful consideration to what you are learning.
Listening with your heart for the Holy Ghost to whisper the truth to you.
Yes. Gaining knowledge is a three step process. If you are faithful, the Holy Ghost will whisper the truth to you.
It gets worse. The videos are astounding examples of proud anti-thinking.
Let’s look at another video [2 mins -- if you have trouble seeing this video please let me know what browser you are using, thanks! ]:
The video begins with the man claiming that he’s believed in Jesus his whole life, so when he was searching for the true religion, he knew that Jesus had to be a part of it.
This is an exercise in identifying examples of poor thinking; how many can you find in the first minute alone? I find at least three.
Searching for the Truth, but will only check if the answer he’s considering is the answer he wants (no others need apply).
Among the answers he will consider, his highly tuned warm-fuzzy feeling truth detector lets him know whether he has found the right one. Perhaps we could call it the Goldilocks approach to truth?
If you ask him questions that he cannot answer about his new found truth, well, he expects that portions of the truth is hidden. The Holy Spirit will not whisper the answer to just any question. It’s a nice defensive tactic for maintaining faith in the face of reality.
I stop after the first minute and leave identifying the remaining mistakes to the reader.
When people spout this kind of nonsense to me in person I always ask some variant of the question: What kinds of knowledge can this warm-fuzzy feeling truth detector give you?
I think it’s important for both the person you are engaging and yourself to explicitly locate the limits of knowledge that faith can give a person. This truth detector only appears to works on questions that cannot be verified.
If the warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector gives them unverifiable answers to questions that cannot be checked, and never gives reliable answers to questions that can be checked. Make the case that he does not have a new way of gaining knowledge; he has a new way of fooling himself.
Now, I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong, and that their feelings based truth-detector could reliably give the right answer. But I’d have to see some evidence for it reliably giving verifiable answers before I’d trust the truth-detector on matters outside of reality.
In case you may be wondering, ‘so some people get a warm feeling from being superstitious, what harm is that?‘ There is a lot of harm that comes from this kind of thinking, and I’ll end by quickly mentioning the Mormon effort to outlaw gay marriage by voting “yes” on Prop 8.
It matters that people can be persuaded to take away the rights of others because they feel that a ghost has whispered in their heart. It matters because once they accept ‘faith’ as a valid way of gaining knowledge, there is no limit to the nonsense that can flood a person’s brain.
Note: the video is hosted locally so that it loads faster. It is left unedited and with a link back to the original. I consider this to be a “fair use” of the footage. Please email me if you have any concerns.
Religious people sometimes complain that atheists unfairly criticize their ilk for irrationally believing in a faith. There are quite a few that think that they have come to a conclusion via some rationally defensible justification. And then there are the types that boldly proclaim to know things about external reality based off of an emotional response.
The videos that I’m pulling claim that people can gain reliable knowledge through faith. They are promoting belief in an internal warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector.
You can discover for yourself that what you’ve been learning is true by:
Sincerely praying to your Heavenly Father and asking Him if what you are learning is true.
Continuing to study and give thoughtful consideration to what you are learning.
Listening with your heart for the Holy Ghost to whisper the truth to you.
Yes. Gaining knowledge is a three step process. In the end, the Holy Ghost will whisper the truth to you.
It gets worse. The videos are astounding examples of proud anti-thinking. Let’s look at another video:
The man claims to have conversations with God. To have dialogue with God. And lest he be unclear, to ask God things and God answers him.
I always ask: What kinds of knowledge can this warm-fuzzy feeling truth detector give you?
This truth detector only appears to works on questions that cannot be verified. Instead of a new way of gaining knowledge, it appears these people have hit upon a new way of fooling themselves.
Now, I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong, and that their feelings based truth-detector could reliably give the right answer. But I’d have to see some evidence for it reliably giving answers in reality before I’d trust the truth-detector on matters outside of reality.
Consider the kinds of knowledge this warm-fuzzy feeling has given Mormons on such topics as evolution.
Check out where Mormons rank on the following PEW result:
Perhaps the Holy Ghost whispers to the hearts of the faithful to outlaw gay marriage by voting “yes” on Prop 8?
The Organized Superstitions of the world are causing very real harm. Their warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector gives them unverifiable answers to questions that cannot be checked, and never gives reliable answers to questions that can be checked.
Note: the video is hosted locally so that it loads faster. It is left unedited and with a link back to the original. I consider this to be a “fair use” of the footage. Please email me if you have any concerns.
I know that there are much more violent and graphic videos that I could use, but this one should be sickening enough. The following disturbing video shows a 17 year old girl being held down by two men and being beaten by a third. The man is unashamedly beating this girl in public. Why?
The man read a magic book called the Koran which says:
“The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”
That pesky human emotion “compassion” has to be kept in check after all.
I am frequently asked why I maintain a site like this. Why do I argue against religion and superstition. These questions are fair enough. I have a partial explanation in a rather long writeup called: Why I engage in religious debates.
Occasionally, and much more insidiously, my fellow atheists occasionally try to protect the poor theists of the world from the bullying atheist who keeps insisting that reality be consulted. Some atheists will defend religious belief against criticism because they feel that some people need religion in their life. If you find yourself with this kind of “the theists need to be shielded from critical thinking” notion as though you are protecting someone, watch the video on this page and ask yourself which person you are defending.
If you try to stifle criticism of religion, are you defending the girl being held down and beaten? Or are you defending the man with the whip in his hand?
If you are unsure, play the video again, and as you listen to the screaming girl, explain to yourself exactly why this man’s beliefs deserve to be shielded from criticism.
Part of the problem with people using the “warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector” method of deciding which book is God’s word, is you get people who feel justified in dictating other people’s lives. Sometimes this manifests itself as a warm feeling that convinces Mormons to give money to revoke the rights of homosexuals to get married. Sometimes this manifests itself as a warm feeling that convinces a Muslim guy to beat a seventeen year old girl if she is merely found to be in a house with a seventeen year old boy. What business is it of this guy? He whips this girl and feels completely justified because his magic book is very clear on the subject matter.
I’m going to start the series by taking videos from various places within mormon.org and examining the kind of “thinking” that gets a person to become a Mormon.
You can discover for yourself that what you’ve been learning is true by:
Sincerely praying to your Heavenly Father and asking Him if what you are learning is true.
Continuing to study and give thoughtful consideration to what you are learning.
Listening with your heart for the Holy Ghost to whisper the truth to you.
Yes. Gaining knowledge is a three step process. In the end, the Holy Ghost will whisper the truth to you.
It gets worse. The videos are astounding examples of anti-thinking. Let’s look at the first one on that page:
On the one hand, it’s rare to see such honesty when a person talks about how they came to believe in the religious claims that they do. On the other hand, how bad is this?
As she talks, the number of errors in thinking stagger the mind.
It seems that she’s really happy about making important decisions without evidence.
God talks to her. (But I’d venture that He never tells her information that she doesn’t already know.)
“It wasn’t anything that was logical…” (I agree.)
“I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling.” (I agree.)
Yes. I agree. One of the main criticisms people give is that they are knowledge finding based on emotional response. I think I’ll call it a warm-fuzzy-feeling truth detector.
I always ask: What kinds of knowledge can this warm-fuzzy feeling truth detector give you?
Because this truth detector only appears to works on questions that cannot be verified. Instead of a new way of gaining knowledge, it appears these people have hit upon a new way of fooling themselves.
Now, I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong, and that their feelings based truth-detector could reliably give the right answer. But I’d have to see some evidence for it reliably giving answers in reality before I’d trust the truth-detector on matters outside of reality.
Consider the kinds of knowledge this warm-fuzzy feeling has given Mormons on such topics as evolution.
Check out where Mormons rank on the following PEW result:
Perhaps the Holy Ghost whispers to the hearts of the faithful to outlaw gay marriage by voting “yes” on Prop 8?
Let me end by giving a shout out to the information packed: mormonsfor8.com
Note: the video is hosted locally so that it loads faster. It is left unedited and with a link back to the original. I consider this to be a “fair use” of the footage. Please email me if you have any concerns.
Sorry kids. Turns out Jesus isn’t what was expected or wanted. I delve a bit deeper in to the Bible and theology than usual, and explore what the heck is going on with what Christians think Jesus accomplished when He got Himself killed.
I had a meeting on Friday with 3 Mormon missionaries at a mission-house.
I had such a good time I almost feel guilty writing about it. Don’t get me wrong, they had a good time as well, and they’ve asked me back next week (I’m going to try to make it). I mostly talked with 3 missionaries, but some elders walked by a few times and said, “that’s a really good question!”
I definitely learned a few things from the encounter. First, I was impressed with the way that they tried to control the social pressure of the room. For example, I was hammering on how they thought that they could gain knowledge by faith. And after a while, they asked very solemnly, whether I would be willing to get down on my knees with them and pray to Heavenly Father to see if I would get an answer to my questions.
I knew that once we were going down that sideshow we weren’t coming back. Another time, one of the missionaries was talking about how a friend of hers didn’t go with some other friends of hers because the Holy Ghost was giving her a bad feeling about the trip. And then two of those friends ended up dying in a car crash that night. It was a very emotional story, and it was a delicate situation to explain why I wasn’t compelled by that example. I essentially said that her friend did not have knowledge of a car accident, otherwise her friend would have called her other friends and warned them.
But the biggest breakthrough to me came from when we were circling back on arguments a few times because they were not understanding my objections to their faith as a way of knowing things.
It went something like this:
Me: I look at you Mormons, and you have a special book. And you tell me that when you read it you get a warm feeling inside. I listen to Muslims say the same thing about their book. I hear the same thing from Evangelicals, and so on. You could line up 10 people who each have a special warm feeling inside from reading their own speicial book and praying and asking if the book is God’s word. Now, to a skeptic, this looks like there exist certain books that give people warm feelings inside. I believe you when you state your experience. I also believe all the other religious people as well. This suggests to me that this warm-feeling is not a very good truth detector if people can get it wrong so easily.
One way to test whether you do have a truth-detecting warm-feeling sense inside of you would be to test it out on questions that you don’t know the answer to right now, but that we could find the answer to in a second via Google. And if your knowledge-generating truth-detecting warm-feeling never reliably gets the right answer to any question that you could ever check to see if it was right, you might have just discovered a new way of fooling yourself, not a new way of gaining knowledge.
Them: It does give verifiable knowledge to things that we don’t know the answer to.
Me: All right, you choose the subject matter and I’ll choose the question. Historical? What year was Mozart born? Mathematical? What is 1.20143^37 ? Personal? What is my license number?
Them: But are those questions really important to you? Why would you really care about the answer to those?
Me: The answers are not important. Not at all. If you could reliably answer the questions that I could come up with it would show that you have an utterly NEW WAY OF GAINING TRUE KNOWLEDGE! That is enormous. That is huge!
Them: But if we could answer those questions, would you then have faith?
Me: I’ll put it this way. You start answering the questions that I’m asking correctly, we have made a huge first step. You have a chance of convincing me that you aren’t just talking to yourself when you pray, which is what it looks like to me. Why? Because God never tells you anything that you don’t already know.
Them: Yes he does, there was a guy in Africa once who…
Me: Look, I know you have your stories and anecdotes of people who gained knowledge somehow. I can’t argue with a story. All I know is that there is a 100% failure rate for any person of faith to ever get an answer any of the questions I ever ask them. Every person of every single faith fails identically to the simplest challenge I can throw at them. You have to admit that from my viewpoint, it looks pretty bad.
Them: No. I totally get what you’re saying and what you’re having problems with…
I didn’t realize before how important it was to emphasize the point that the questions that I ask to test whether their warm-feeling detector can give a right answer, is to check the detector!
Anyway, afterward they bought me a delicious lunch, and we parted ways with smiles all around.
Look forward to future Mormon Lunch meeting updates from me!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=149b93cd-61d6-4a3c-b2fa-6f3ab309688c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6c90b315-c36b-4ae5-8bbf-2221f6849295)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=cb7696cf-117b-4c9f-8e49-5f6eef2153db)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f09ae12c-4600-4d11-ab28-ba1cf99fea75)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1da73f5d-be40-45b5-995c-57e2af83b8bb)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d7eb3daa-2e59-468e-afe6-8bea09b864a6)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0c3910d9-1cf1-4647-9446-360c10fe33d3)
