Writing on Mormonism in this Sunday's Times Magazine, Noah Feldman becomes about the eighteen thousandth writer to explain that non-Mormon Christians only find the LDS faith weird and implausible because its revelation is so recent. Even though "there is nothing inherently less plausible about God’s revealing himself to an upstate New York farmer in the early years of the Republic than to the pharaoh’s changeling grandson in ancient Egypt," Feldman writes, for most people "antiquity breeds authenticity," because "events in the distant past, we tend to think, occurred in sacred, mythic time."
To which Alan Jacobs retorts:
But this only makes sense under the assumption that the only reason people disbelieve Mormonism is its recency. It seems not to occur to Feldman to ask whether all propositions of all religions are equally plausible or implausible. Is “antiquity” really the only factor at work here? If only a handful were attracted to the teachings of David Koresh, is the recency of those teachings a sufficient explanation? Such an assumption is simplistic at best. Let me be clear: I do not mean to say that Mormon beliefs are anything like the crackpot tenets of Koresh; I am just claiming that if you want to understand why certain beliefs are not widely respected or admired, you might want to know something besides how old they are. You might want to inquire into the actual content of those beliefs.
Moreover, if the Average Joe takes Judaism seriously than Mormonism — a proposition that may or may not be true — “antiquity” isn’t the reason. If that were the case, then the Average Joe would find the worship of Ashteroth, Baal, and Isis and Osiris as plausible as that of Yahweh. Insofar as people-in-general concede respect to Judaism, that’s not because of Judaism’s “antiquity” but because of its continuity. If we ever have Mormons who have been saying the same prayers to the same God for three thousand years or so, then those Mormons will almost certainly get a hell of a lot more respect than today’s Latter-Day Saints do.
Well said. I don't want to dismiss the "antiquity equals plausibility" argument, since it obviously contains an element of truth, but it tends to function as a conversation-stopper in intellectual discourse these days - as an easy out for secular writers who assume that all religions are equally implausible, or at least equally beyond rational examination, and who don't want to wade into the weeds of history, archaeology and comparative theology to see whether it might be otherwise. In reality, though, the major plausibility issue facing Mormonism isn't when and where and how long ago the events crucial to the religion are supposed to have taken place, but whether the Mormon account of those events feels persuasive as a historical narrative. This is an issue that faces every major religion that claims God intervenes in history; Mormonism's problem - and a major reason why its tenets are often "dismissed as ridiculous" (as Feldman puts it) by mainstream Christians - is that the Book of Mormon doesn't seem to stack up nearly as well in this regard as, say, the Gospel According to Saint Matthew.
Obviously, this historical-plausibility question doesn't matter to every believer, but it does matter (as it should) to an awful lot of people, which is why so much ink has been spilled by foes of Christian orthodoxy, from Elaine Pagels to Dan Brown, arguing from the historical record (as they see it) that the events of the Gospels didn't happen the way the Gospels said they did. The idea that it should be otherwise - that it's "indefensible," as Feldman puts it, to suggest that Roman Catholicism is more likely to be true than Mormonism because Saint Peter really existed whereas the Nephites probably didn't - only makes sense if you assume the premises of a materialistic (or fideistic) worldview. Which seems like a bad way to set about analyzing the beliefs of people who don't assume that worldview, which is what Feldman's essay is supposed to be doing.
three points
1) as feldman notes, part of the problem is the perception by many evangelicals that mormonism is a heresy, not that it is a made up religion. specifically, it asserts it is authentically christian while contradicting some of the axioms which evangelical (and other) christians assert serve as boundary conditions of what christianity is (e.g., nicene creed & athanasian formula).
2) as you note, the "problem" for some secularists (e.g., me) is that not only does mormonism make an assertion about god which we reject, its ancillary details in the scriptures are totally implausible to us (the historical narrative part). the hebrew bibles are imperfect historical documents, as all texts are, but they reflect reality. the book of mormon seems a forgery to me. that being said, i actually find the mormon concept of god to be less incoherent and implausible than the standard mainstream christian view. so perhaps i should reexamine the weight i assign various parameters.
3) some secularists seem to like the antiquity argument because they're taking the montaigne position that the irrationalities of our society are simply something we accept, but deviant irrationalities are something we should reject. the only problem i have with this is that secularists tend to give a pass at non-western religions, some of which are also relatively recent in origin(though make less grand supernatural claims, e.g., sikhism and the bahai religion). so i think a bizarre form of cultural relativism is at work here: mormons are "WASPs" with weird religious beliefs so they should be mocked. if they were brown-skinned people with weird religious beliefs they'd probably have "different ways of knowing" or some other crap. their combination of exoticism and familiarity is simply hard to slot into the appropriate mental schema most americans are equipped with.
so feldman has a point.
Posted by razib | January 7, 2008 5:24 PM