Corpsegrinder wrote:I agree, it’s silly for Mormons to claim that they are the one “true religion”.
But how is this substantially different from…
…Pope Benedict’s claims that “Catholicism is the only true church”?
…CARM’s claims that “Christianity is the only true religion”?
…Christianity’s claims that “Christianity is the only true path to salvation”?
…the New Testament’s claims that Jesus is the only “true god”?
…and etc.
In other words, this isn't just a Mormon way of framing the question; it's basic human nature.
You are addressing a different issue. The issue is not that people are claiming to follow a true religion. As Rambo originally asked:
Rambo wrote:Anyways, Christians on the board how do you know you have the true religion?
There's a subtle philosophical distinction that you are missing or choosing to ignore in your response. Rambo's question was an epistemological question, a "How do you know?" question. Of course people claim to follow what they think is the right thing, but that's an ontological question, a question about the nature of the universe. You can't avoid having an ontology, everyone has a basic point of view of what the universe is and what the point, or lack of point, of it all is.
My response was narrowly focused on the epistemological issue, that Mormons really don't know what can of worms they are opening by framing the issue as an epistemological one. And I think that's one of the reasons Mormons have so many problems with belief after losing faith in Mormonism. Mormonism, at least the Monsonite/Salt Lake variety, frames the central problem of religion as knowing which one is right. Further, it posits that you can have epistemologically secure knowledge about objective reality based on a subjective experience of feeling. I think this is crazy. But, I think many ex-Mormons still want to frame all religion through this narrow Mormon lens. They still think their epistemological question is the right one and that the methodology is basically correct vis-a-vis religion. Well, no other religion goes about it in quite the same way as do Mormons.
In fact, that's probably one reason why Rambo was getting crappy answers, at least crappy answers as he saw it (They may have been giving objectively crappy answers, I don't know, I wasn't there). He was framing it as a Mormon frames it and that's just not how other people think about these things. I think this is made worse because Mormonism does set up the initial question, "How do you know the one true religion?", based not so much on a burning need that most people have, but based upon an answer that Mormons think they can provide. In other words, Mormons have an answer they want to give you, so they have to provide the question so that the answer makes sense. Most people really don't care about the one true church, they are for the most part content to get something that they think is basically right and move on from there.