{"id":908,"date":"2012-06-20T19:06:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T01:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/?p=908"},"modified":"2012-06-20T19:06:46","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T01:06:46","slug":"prager-irrationality-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/prager-irrationality-and-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Prager, Irrationality and Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his latest column, \u201cMormons Have Irrational Beliefs? Who Doesn’t?<\/a>\u201d Dennis Prager falls into some common errors concerning the concepts of faith, belief, reason and irrationality.\u00a0 First, let me point out that I do not disagree with all of the claims in his column and those made during the discussion of his column on his radio show, in particular the importance of behavior.<\/p>\n

Where I do disagree can be seen when Prager says,\u00a0 \u201cI read and hear these dismissals of Mormonism with some amusement — because everyone who makes these charges holds beliefs and\/or practices that outsiders consider just as irrational.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 While true, this is completely irrelevant, and in fact only makes sense if one accepts a sort of intellectual relativism. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Unless one is to deny the existence of objective truth, which unless I am really mistaken Prager does not do, what outsiders, or insiders for that matter, think is rational is irrelevant. What matters is what is true. \u00a0Granted this is not always easy, or at times even possible, to determine.\u00a0 But that we cannot always know does not mean that we can never know.\u00a0 More to the point here, it does not mean that there must be some sort of equivalence in disputed claims where all are \u201cjust as irrational.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

A key problem is that Pager, or at least his argument, seems to accept the atheistic view of reason that sees reason as 1) a system of thought and 2) as materialistic, applying only to the natural world. Both views are false.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reason is simply a tool, a set of principles and practices for eliminating error.\u00a0 It cannot stand alone as a system, but requires a framework in which it can be applied.\u00a0 When atheists say that religious belief is irrational, what they are really saying is that religious beliefs do not fit within their naturalistic understanding of the world. \u00a0Reason actually has little to do with it.\u00a0 They get away with this because they are conflating their world view with reason, as if there was no difference, and unfortunately many religious people have simply accepted it.<\/p>\n

To see this consider one of the examples cited by Prager, and one where I would agree with him; that is the Mormon practice of wearing sacred undergarments. \u00a0\u00a0Within the Mormon world view this is perfectly rational. In fact, one could easily argue that it would be irrational to disobey God, or to demand that God always give us reasons that we can understand, as this would put us in the position of judging God.\u00a0 To ridicule this practice is not some indication of rationality, but simply bigotry.<\/p>\n

If that was where the claims of Mormonism ended,\u00a0 I would probably be\u00a0 in more agreement \u00a0with Prager.\u00a0 But their claims do not end there. The core problem \u00a0can be seen with an example Prager gives of his own \u201cirrational\u201d belief cited to demonstrate \u00a0his are \u201cjust as irrational.\u201d\u00a0 Prager says, \u00a0\u00a0\u201cI believe the Torah is a divine book.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0The\u00a0\u00a0 corresponding Mormon claim would be that the Book of Mormon is a divine book.<\/p>\n

Unlike other beliefs, these are very foundational, and they are vastly different, not just in their end result, but in theirbacking, and thus their rationality. \u00a0Both the Book of Mormon and the Torah,\u00a0 purport to be not just religious texts containing religious teachings, but books that are at least to some degree grounded in historical events. \u00a0<\/p>\n

While we cannot demonstrate the historical existence of everything in the Torah,\u00a0 neither can we disprove it, and in fact there is a lot of evidence to support\u00a0 the Torah.\u00a0 However we do not need to demonstrate the validity of the Torah to show the distinction with the book of Mormon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Torah fits, at least to some degree, into known history.\u00a0 There is no dispute, for example, that there was an Egypt ruled by pharaohs, and in fact that many of the places mentioned existed. \u00a0Nor is there any dispute that the Jewish people settled in what is currently Israel.\u00a0 The bottom line is that while one might not be able to demonstrate that\u00a0the Torah is a divine book, it would be irrational, and just flat out wrong to claim that there was nothing at all historical about its account.\u00a0 Even if a myth, it was myth that drew on at least some history. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But even this cannot be said of the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 It also purports to be a history of peoples, \u00a0in \u00a0this case\u00a0 those in\u00a0the New World.\u00a0 The problem is that not a single New World person, peoples, place, nation or event can be collaborated. At the time Smith supposedly translated this book, this was not necessarily irrational as very little was known. But that is no longer the case.\u00a0 We know a lot about the history of the new world, and the descriptions in the Book of Mormon simply do not fit, and in fact often run counter to what we do know. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus there is a vast difference between the two claims. \u00a0Our ability to know is not binary, but comes in many degrees.\u00a0 Some things we can say are established, such as Obama is currently the President of the United States.\u00a0 Others are not as clear, such as what caused the Maine to explode in Havana Harbor.\u00a0 Still others are probably unknowable, some are unlikely, and some the evidence it pretty strongly against.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The claim that the Torah is a divine book may go beyond what the evidence supports, but it does so into the gaps in our knowledge.\u00a0 It may be a leap of faith, but it is a leap of faith that has a lot of evidence to support it.\u00a0 To believe the book of Mormon is divine may also be a leap of faith, but it is one that not only has no evidence to support it, it runs contrary to what we know, and in fact is pretty clearly false. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The equivalent would be for Prager to hold that the Torah was divine,\u00a0 even though there was no mention in history of an Egypt, Canaan,\u00a0 Philistines,\u00a0 Sinai, Red Sea, or anything else mentioned in the Torah, and in fact some the things mentioned were only introduced into the Middle East much later.<\/p>\n

Having said this, I probably should conclude by addressing a related question: \u00a0how does this apply to Romney running for President, which I suspect was somewhat the background for Prager\u2019s column. \u00a0\u00a0As I wrote last October<\/a>,\u00a0 \u201cThe simple answer is that it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0 The Constitution is pretty clear that there should be no religious test for office.\u00a0 The office of the president has no religious function, and therefore the religion of the candidate should be largely irrelevant.\u00a0 It would only become relevant if the candidate chose to make it an important part of their campaign, but this would in and of itself raise red flags.\u00a0 But Romney has not done this, and nothing in his career would indicate that he would.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his latest column, \u201cMormons Have Irrational Beliefs? Who Doesn’t?\u201d Dennis Prager falls into some common errors concerning the concepts of faith, belief, reason and irrationality.\u00a0 First, let me point out that I do not disagree with all of the claims in his column and those made during the discussion of his column on his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15,34],"tags":[165,2000,882,1024,1078,1127],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-election","category-secularism","tag-belief","tag-faith","tag-mormonism","tag-prager","tag-reason-and-irrationality","tag-romney"],"yoast_head":"\nPrager, Irrationality and Religion - Politics and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/prager-irrationality-and-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prager, Irrationality and Religion - Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his latest column, \u201cMormons Have Irrational Beliefs? 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