Welcome to the new Don't do Anti-Thinking series.
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.
There are several videos under the page entitled:
mormon.org: How can I know this is true?
The page says:
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?
The Mormon church sure seems to think so.
- See the letter from the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on: Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families
- See NY Times Article: Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage
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.
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congrats on turning an "anti-thinking" article into a hate article
?? I don't think that I understand the comment. You mean how the Mormon church worked to outlaw gay marriage?
Interesting article. One of the things you'll hear Mormons say is "I know this church is true". However, it would be more correctly put that they "feel" the church is true. Prayer can tell them that a man named Joseph Smith translated "reformed Egyptian" from gold plates. He translated this unknown mystery language by using magic stones called the Urim and Thummim and also by putting his magic "peep stone" in his hat. This book tells the history of ancient America. Apparently ancient Americans were really Jews that acted and talked a lot like Christians and farmed, lived, worked a lot like people in 19th century America. And when you translate with rocks you write in poor Elizabethan English, and end up reproducing the KJV bible (errors and all).
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