A Visit from the Mormons

I had a couple of Mormon agents stop over a couple days ago. Have you ever noticed how they never go by their first name, only by their title, elder so-and-so? They seem almost like agents from the Matrix, so I just started calling them agents.

At church we just finished a video series on Mormonism, which is perhaps a bit more fundamentalistic than I am comfortable with, but it still presents a lot of good information. Anyway, I had to let them in, having just seen the videos. I wasn't expecting them to be very open to what I had to say, but I wanted to at least try to find out why someone would believe such rubbish.

Since I have been dealing with epistemological issues recently, I was especially interested in what reasons they give for their faith. For both of the young men it all came down to, "I read the book of Mormon and I had a good feeling about it." Only one of them had experienced the "burning in the bussom," and that back when he was eight. The other converted from Roman Catholicism (with his mom) as a teenager. I asked questions like, "What makes your conversion experience different from a Muslim who reads the Koran and has a good feeling about it?" The only answer they had for me was that you just have to read the Book of Mormon and God will make it clear to you if you sincerely ask Him.

I am more convinced than ever that any truth-claim that is based on fideism (1)must be rejected as a claim to knowledge, and (2)leads to the logical problem of pluralism.