I got an impromptu visit from two young Mormon ladies today, we’ll call them Mormon A and Mormon B. It’s been a while since I chatted with an evangelist so I thought I’d refresh my memory and sharpen my thinking and communicating skills.
After a brief introduction about how the Book of Mormon had changed their lives I introduced myself as a fundamentalist atheist. They seemed a bit puzzled but smiled broadly and continued.
After I said I was an atheist, Mormon B jumped in with, “How do you know the sun will rise tomorrow? It’s faith, you know by faith, so don’t say you live only by reason! I know the sun will rise because I have faith in my God who sustains us.”
Hmmm… this is not looking good, I was hoping for some new material but this is a typical religionist equivocation. Oh well…
“Actually, the sun doesn’t rise, the Earth turns. [You never know with these religious types, I just wanted to be clear.] I know it will keep on doing so and the Sun will appear to rise tomorrow because objects continue their motions unless acted upon by an outside force. That’s all based on evidence and logic, not on faith. I have an entire lifetime of evidence to that effect, that objects act according to inertial law and according to their natures. Not once in my life has an egg bounced when I dropped it, or a glass floated up into the sky when I let it go. The earth and sun are no different.”
So the usual topics were covered but then I asked one of my favorite questions…
I asked Mormon A, “Why aren’t you a Moslem? Or a Buddhist? Or a Hindu? Or a Bahai’st…. or any of the other thousand religions and sects out there? Have you studied any other religious texts?”
Mormon A who had started strong, was now silent. Mormon B took up the slack.
“No, I haven’t read any other books but I know BoM is true because I’ve read it and I know it’s true, John Smith is the authentic prophet and it changed my life and I’m so much happier now since God came into my life and filled it with love and purpose.”
“John Smith is a false prophet and you’re being deceived by the devil. Allah is the one true God. By the way Miss, as I said I’m an atheist, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. How do you know if you picked up the Koran and studied that that you wouldn’t think, ‘Ah, now I see I was led astray, Allah is the one true God!’? And how do you know that if you picked up a book on rational philosophy such as ‘Atlas Shrugged’ you wouldn’t realize that you’ve been duped?”
Of course there is no answer… except faith, which means “I feel it is true”.
After I briefly summed up the destruction wrought by faith throughout the world and throughout history, and contrasted it with the life-giving technology of reason and science, I bid them adieu and wished them well.
Sad to see mindless young people like that.
