JLHPROF wrote:Proving religion, even for a believer such as myself, always seems a futile effort.
You make this statement as if it were a good thing. Does this admission not raise red flags for you?
None?
JLHPROF wrote:Likewise, disproving something not based on measurable evidences seems like a strange goal.
Again, secularists on this board, in the main, are not trying to disprove religious belief. They mainly question the faith-based assertions of others, and point to evidence that such assertions are contrary to the facts.
The "Gospel of Jesus Christ", as purveyed by the LDS Church, can no doubt engender warm, comfortable feelings in those who have been properly conditioned. This has nothing to do with fact, or objective reality. Any affirmation of the beliefs from which these feelings arise is a product of the conditioned brain - nothing more.
Out in the real world, many affirmative truth claims made by the LDS Church are falsifiable. Most of these, including foundational truth claims, have been falsified.
In order to believe in Mormonism, one must be able to handle the cognitive dissonance (some would say delusional ideation*) that arises as a consequence of the large number of critical foundational truth claims of the LDS Church that have been shown to be false.
Certain LDS truth claims are not falsifiable - no doubt. But to maintain faith, or indeed build a worldview, based on unfalsifiable claims would seem to require an exceeding high level of gullibility - and perhaps poor judgement or inadequate critical thinking skills as well.
This is especially true when considering all of the closely associated, and often contingent, foundational LDS truth claims that
have been clearly falsified.
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In a peer reviewed paper on a study comparing new religion members (religious cultists) to psychotic patients, researchers found that the religious
"-- did not show as much florid symptomatology as the psychotic patients, but could not be differentiated from the deluded group on the number of delusional items endorsed on the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory. " *
Br J Clin Psychol. 1999 Mar;38 ( Pt 1):83-96.In a 2006 review on the subject, Freeman noted that some 20% of the population that would not be classified as psychotic, (i.e. the non-clinical population) nonetheless exhibited clearly delusional ideation to an extent that caused them emotional or social difficulties.
*
Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2006 Jun;8(3):191-204___________
Post edited several times.