What defense is there for secular criticisms of Mormonism?

[_Bond...James Bond]

The defense against Christian critics of Mormonism is easy: "The Bible isn't historically accurate either.....You can't prove God's nature....prove we're going to Hell....etc", but what about secular critics of Mormonism? I don't care about doctrine, or the Bible vs the Book of Mormon or whatever else Christianity vs Mormonism can cook up. I don't care if Jesus and Satan are brothers, I don't care if Isaiah is quoted nearly word for word in the Book of Mormon or if God's eyebrows are clipped, plucked, or dyed neon green. That stuff doesn't really effect me.....what I think about are things like:

1) unqualified people giving important life advice.

2) people basically being forced to give away 10% of their money to take part in the most important ceremonies in Mormonism.

3) the questioning of kids about their private behavior (including sexual behavior) by unqualified people outside their parents/doctors/therapists company.

And so on. These type of things just irritate me. How bout you?

[_The Dude]

These type of things just irritate me. How bout you?

Those things irritate me too.

Now about your question: "What defense is there for secular criticisms of Mormonism?"

Your answer is two words:

The truth is, it's a matter of special pleading. Believers, most of whom are perfectly rational, would never apply the same kind of reasoning they use to justify their faith to anything else.

[_Some Schmo]

These type of things just irritate me. How bout you?

Yeah, me too. I also don't like what it does to families. To me, it's sickening that the church creates a culture where members are willing to sacrifice relationships with their family members in hopes of being together when they're dead. It's the most senseless crock of s*** imaginable.

[_Jason Bourne]

1) unqualified people giving important life advice.

Mormons will respond that the leaders are guided by the spirit. And leaders (Bishops) do receive a bit of training though it is limited. I wonder though if a trained minister of any other church is any more qualified to give advice on important issues.

2) people basically being forced to give away 10% of their money to take part in the most important ceremonies in Mormonism.

Mormons believe God commands to give 10% and they are not unique in this. What is unique is it is mandated to get into the temples. But all you will get here is opinions. Some think it isn't good to have tithing as a requirement for the temple. Others think it just fine and will say like it or lump it.

3) the questioning of kids about their private behavior (including sexual behavior) by unqualified people outside their parents/doctors/therapists company.

Most Mormons think personal accountability interviews are fine. I do not see much difference between a teen meeting with and LDS bishop and a teen going to Catholic confession. Confession is part of Christian dogma.

[_Sethbag]

Bourne, my response is that these criticisms apply just as well to every other church out there, to the extent that the practices are the same or similar. Ie: I'm not sure how cool it is that teens are revealing intimate details to priests in confession either, or getting life decision advice from ministers, and whatnot. I guess one thing is that most Catholic teenagers don't actually go to confession and bare all very often, whereas in the LDS church it's inevitable they're gonna get sucked into the interviews.

For what it's worth, I will add that my friend the Catholic seminarian has told me that the priests in training actually do get quite a lot of training in dealing wiht people and their issues. Apparently it's a heck of a lot more training than LDS bishops get in that kind of thing.

As far as secular criticism goes, I find that a lot of the secular criticism of the LDS church that I am really attracted to is the kind that applies more or less equally across the whole religious spectrum. I'm talking Dawkinsesque criticisms like "where's the evidence?", and not having any truck with the crap explanations of personal revelation from the Spirit using a lot of hand-waving obfuscation, special pleading, and in general not being able to reliably differentiate between everyone else's spurious "personal revelations" from the Spirit and your own "true" ones.

This last point is important. I think that one of the strongest criticisms of the church, and of religion in general, is the notion of feelings being used as an indicator that God confirms some bit of information to you as "truth". TBMs will say it's not merely feeling or emotion, that it's something stronger than that, but I'm convinced that in the end, however moving or powerful the feelings are, they're just feelings and emotional and intellectual responses generated within someone's own mind. In this light it makes sense that so many other zillions of people out there are receiving their own spiritual witness from God that their church is true, or their beliefs are true, and they're not LDS.

This also helps me understand why so many LDS have personal revelations of truth involving things that contradict what other LDS have received revelations on, or things that I know are simply dead wrong. For example, an LDS who "knows" by the Spirit that Adam and Eve really were the first human beings on earth about 6000 years ago, or that Noah really did save humanity from extinction in a global flood about 5000 years or so, and so on. In fact, it's "revelation" like this that serves as a sort of control group, where the rest of us already know through other means (science) that the answers are false.

[Guest]

I find secular criticism to be the most effective, at least for me. When I was TBM, I was never moved by the "your not really Christian because of X" or "You're a cult because of Y" backed up with Bible verses. I had to mentally wipe the slate clean, pretend like I had no religious upbringing and then look at the LDS church as an outsider would, using logic and reason. It seems this is the most effective, who knows?

The difficult thing is getting TBMs to first accept the possibility that there NEVER was a true christian church at any time in history and there may not be a God. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but just pretend for a minute that there is no true church and no god. That's a difficult thing to get a TBM to do.

When discussing religion with TBMs I often hear that there can only be 2 true churches: The LDS and the catholic church, because if there was no apostacy the Catholic church is true, if there was an apostacy, then the LDS church is true. It is very hard to get them to think outside of that box and consider maybe neither is true and religion is all made up, but once they do, there is a very good chance that they will leave the church, much better chance than just comparing religions, in my opinion.

[_Coggins7]

Mormons will respond that the leaders are guided by the spirit. And leaders (Bishops) do receive a bit of training though it is limited. I wonder though if a trained minister of any other church is any more qualified to give advice on important issues.

This statement is pregnant, so to speak, because it requires one through extrapolatory exploration to ask another, similar question: are those who we moderns consider to be 'qualified" to give such advice or counsel, Psychologists and Psychiatrists, really so qualified, and how much of the advice they have given over generations could be considered, psychologically and morally speaking, iatrogenic?

[_Coggins7]

I will only add that, much of our culture has been taking its sexual advice, when not from Bishops or Priests, from the likes of Hugh Hefner, Ruth Westheimer, Alfred Kinsey, and Madison Avenue, and then from psychologists deeply steeped in the Sixties and Seventies Dionysian Zeitgeist, none of which have had less than a disastrous effect on the moral and psychological health of the culture, let alone its spiritual healthy and well being.

[_Sethbag]

If, Coggins, by spiritual well-being you mean the ability of people to remain steeped in superstition and subjugated to the mental prison of false beliefs handed down from generation to generation, then yes, I agree with you. The 60s and 70s did indeed have a disastrous effect on the nation's (and world's) spiritual well-being.

[_Bond...James Bond]

As far as secular criticism goes, I find that a lot of the secular criticism of the LDS church that I am really attracted to is the kind that applies more or less equally across the whole religious spectrum.

I agree, most secular criticisms can be expanded to any type of religious way of thinking.