Last year there were a bunch of books analyzing Trump, the Big Lie, Jan. 6, and so forth, typically by journalists (academics take longer to analyze and publish). How did this happen? Where is this going? Now we’re getting books that look at post-Trump conservative politics in the same way, trying to understand how it happened and what the future holds. One I read last week: Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, by Robert Draper (Penguin Press, 2022). Worth a read if you can find it.
Of course, one man’s delusion is another man’s belief or conviction. It’s easy to label another person’s belief a delusion if you don’t share it. But we live in a tolerant and diverse society. Most of us acknowledge that the beliefs of others, whether political or scientific or religious, can differ from ours without at the same time thinking they are nuts or delusional. It has to be a belief for which there is little or no evidence, or even a bunch of contrary evidence, to get the label. Conspiracy theories, usually held by a small fringe element, generally qualify. What makes The Big Lie so unusual and so compelling is that it is widely held. The Big Lie has shown us an ugly truth about our present-day world: Just because a belief is widely held doesn’t mean it isn’t delusional. A sobering thought. Millions of Russians think Ukraine and NATO are the aggressors against Russia, despite the fact that neither NATO nor Ukraine conducted any aggression against Russia over the last seventy years. Millions of Muslims think Muhammad flew a winged horse from Mecca to Jerusalem. Millions of Mormons think … think what?
Let’s call the religious form of a widely held but delusional belief a doctrine of mass delusion. This would be a widely held religous belief for which there is insufficient evidence or no evidence or even contrary evidence. It’s easy to make a list for someone else’s religion or denomination, tougher for your own. But self-criticism is worthwhile. Someone else can look at Catholic or Muslim or Hindu delusions (beliefs to believers, delusions to outsiders). This is a Mormon blog. We’ll look at Mormon delusions.
There are plenty of defensible and worthwhile Mormon beliefs. The idea of Zion, a town where everyone is nice to everyone else, is a fine ideal and probably motivates some Mormons to be better people. Fasting doesn’t do any harm (unless you have a medical condition that warns against fasting) and kicking in a few bucks to help those in need seems like a good thing. You can think of others. Maybe a way to get at delusions is to think of what an outsider would roll their eyes at. If you gave a sheet of paper to a reasonable non-LDS person who knew a thing or two about Mormonism and said “write down the widely held Mormon beliefs you think are just crazy,” what would be on their list? And why are they widely held despite lacking evidence?
Here are a couple of candidates.
Golden Plates. Eight men hefted a heavy box (in which Joseph said there were plates). Three men had some sort of visionary experience (in which they said an angel showed them visionary plates). Emma riffed the edges of something under a sheet. Then an angel conveniently retrieved the plates so they are gone. (But left the seer stones now acknowledged and displayed by the Church.) It seems no one but Joseph actually saw, or even claimed to see, real-world plates as they are described in current LDS discourse and believed by millions of Mormons.
Organizational Revelation. I’m not going to talk about the whole broad topic of revelation, just the narrower 21st-century belief most Mormons seem to hold that all leadership decisions, all across the significance spectrum, are deeply inspired by God. From two-hour church to dropping the term “Mormon” to the latest directive to make sure you say a prayer at the beginning of Sunday School — these aren’t just good ideas or needed tweaks to the system, they are Revelation. The boss says “let’s limit our Friday meeting to 30 minutes,” it’s a good idea. The bishop says “let’s limit Ward Council to 30 minutes,” it’s inspired. The President says “let’s limit church on Sunday to two hours,” it’s Revelation. Even in cases where a noticeable change is made, then a few years later the change is reversed — most Mormons are happy to think *both* changes are revelation! I can see why leaders are happy to push this view. It’s not so clear why millions of Mormons accept it and repeat it with little or no reflection.
Now remember — this is self-criticism, a good thing. Think a bit and see what you can add.
- Any other candidates for Mormon doctrines of mass delusion?
- Are such beliefs harmless or harmful?
- One might think that, in the long run, mass delusions, in religion or elsewhere, would decline in our post-Enlightenment world. Right now, in 2023, I’m not so sure. The problem seems to be getting worse.
- Have you ever discarded from your own personal psyche a mass delusion? How did you accomplish this feat?
- Do you still hold a belief that others might consdier a mass delusion, whether doctrinal or otherwise?
- Can a religion, any religion, survive without at least one or two doctrines of mass delusion?
- Can the average person get by in life without at least a few personal or mass delusions? If you truly stare into the abyss and it stares back at you, where does that leave you?
Wheat & Tares 
That we even have a prophet leading the church. There have been no “Thus Saith the Lord” revelations since Joseph Smith. But the delusion continues with the idea that the prophet can never lead us astray. A concept found nowhere in the scriptures.
“I know the church is true.” My son just turning 18 came to me distressed that he can’t get an answer to prayer that the church is true so he can serve a mission.
I told him the the church isn’t “true” or false. It’s a mixture of both. The church, the leaders, the teachings and the scriptures are all fallible and sometimes inspired.
I explained you don’t have to “know” anything to serve a mission. You only have to answer the recommend questions which ask if you believe. I pointed out you aren’t required to verify when you last saw Jesus Christ and what color shirt he was wearing. I told him to pray about whether he should serve a mission or not and if so when.
I told him “I know the church is true” is just something we say, but no one saying it “knows” anything for sure about “truth” claims of the church. It’s just something we say culturally to show we are part of the group because everyone else does. I told him it’s more accurate and scriptural to say “I believe in following Jesus Christ” or I hope, or I have faith in the gospel.
I told him that’s enough to serve a mission on if he wants to serve a mission. He said he is so glad he is my 4th child instead of one of my older ones. I am glad too, to have matured past the spiritual stage where I mourned my 3 older sons’ decisions to not attend church or serve a mission.
I don’t really see, knowing the church is true, being a group delusion. But maybe it is. I was certainly deluded into believing that if we read scriptures and prayed every night as a family, my kids would all grow up to check off all the “covenant path” boxes .
The classic dilemma that we face as members of a church is that the more delusional the belief, the more faith is required. And having a lot of faith is seen as an endearing quality. In other words, delusional beliefs are actually welcomed by those who thrive on the “just have faith” spectrum. We like to say we are a “peculiar people”.
And let’s admit something else: as the Church gently walks away from the delusional aspects of its history (Golden Plates, angelic visitations, etc.), some will criticize the Church for changing its narrative. Dropping the word “Mormon” and deleting Moroni from temples and backing away from “you can have your own planet” might help us externally, but the faith crowd will be disappointed.
Dave, sorry to divert from the main thrust of your post, but I have a serious question. Has this blog turned into a primarily “post-Mormon” space or even a “post-religion” space? I have always found this blog to be badly needed neutral ground for believers, nuanced and not so much, and non-believers alike. However, when you posit that religiously held beliefs that cannot be scientifically tested as “delusions,” you’re effectively slamming the discussion door on those who hold such beliefs or even just hold a space for those beliefs. It’s somewhat akin to throwing around the term “cult” to talk about a given religious group you may disagree with. It chills discussion.
There certainly are mass delusions held by younger members of the Church.
The greatest mass delusion is that spirituality requires no work to obtain and maintain. The prevalent notion is the spirituality should just come through osmosis. The belief is that one can spend all of one’s time watching Dua Lipa on TikTok and be just as spiritual as anyone else. The irrefutable truth is that it takes time and effort through study and work.
Another delusion is that all actions are right as long as the one acting believes it to be so. This is false. One cannot spends one’s time in a drunken state looking for the latest Cardi B look alike at 7-Eleven to take home and expect to avoid the destruction of spirituality.
The epistemological truth is that Spirituality requires work and study and it requires one to avoid debauchery. Any other belief is pure delusion.
@lws329 I like your attitude, much healthier approach for your son than “you got baptized at 8 so now if you don’t serve a mission you’re flaking out on your commitment to God. I do wonder though, what’s the point of going on a mission if you only have a nuanced belief as you describe.
“I told him the the church isn’t “true” or false. It’s a mixture of both. The church, the leaders, the teachings and the scriptures are all fallible and sometimes inspired”.
I probably agree with this but 2 of one’s prime years seems a high price to pay for such a flimsy conviction particularly with the inherent costs and risks to emotional wellbeing. I’m not criticizing your attitude, rather addressing the elephant in the room that if the LDS church is just one of many good paths which have some truth and some falsehood, how can we justify continuing sending missionaries off to proselytize to the world?
Starting to wonder if Julie Beck’s “little cup of coffee” will truly keep me out of heaven.
It seems to me like every religion in the world makes supernatural claims that appear to be “mass delusion” to anyone outside of the faith. At least part of the reason for this is that religions almost universally attempt to provide answers or solutions to questions like the meaning of life and what happens to us after death–questions which are (at least currently) unanswerable through any scientific process. Since any answers to these questions provided by religion are not scientifically provable, people outside of each religion easily label such beliefs as “mass delusion”.
Hinduism claims that people are reincarnated many times until they final reach a state where they can escape this cycle. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that this happens. Non-Hindus generally think this belief is “mass delusion”. Buddhism has similar, but not identical, beliefs about the afterlife that Hinduism has. Again, outsiders think these Buddhist beliefs are mass delusion. Christianity claims that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin mother and a supernatural God, lived a perfect life, and literally rose from the dead and, as a result, is somehow able to guarantee an afterlife and forgive the sins of all of humanity. Again, this seems like mass delusion to Buddhists and Hindus.
I served a mission in a non-Christian country using the old 6-discussion “rainbow” discussion booklets. Somewhere between 6-12 months on my mission, I came to the realization that the rainbow set of discussions was written with the assumption that we were teaching people who were familiar with Christianity and mostly needed to be convinced of the BoM, prophets, and the Church was God’s One True Church. However, the people I was teaching almost universally had no idea about the differences between our Church and other Christian churches–they were all basically the same to them. The people I was trying to teach simply thought that the whole idea of Christ’s supernatural abilities to defeat death and sin for all of humanity was foreign and delusional. I found that if I could find a way to convert people to belief in Christ and His teachings that the people I taught could almost always easily accept the whole idea of Joseph Smith, the BoM, prophets, “The One True Church”, etc. They simply didn’t care about all of different Christian sects because they were all kind of the same to them. In any case, I ended up changing from teaching the 6 rainbow discussions to basically teaching discussion after discussion to the same investigator about different aspects of Christ (customized to the investigator based on their interests and progress). If we were able to develop a faith in Christ in an investigator, then we generally just breezed through the content of the rainbow discussions (with an occasional hiccup on the law of chastity and tithing) and had a baptism.
Partly because of where I served my mission, I get very frustrated with Mormons who are critical of what they perceive to be the mass delusions of other religions. If the setting seems appropriate, I will occasionally point out to Mormons who criticize other religions just how delusional Mormons must appear to people outside of our faith. In my experience, I only have to mention the strangeness associated with a few of the items in this list before these people understand my point, get really uncomfortable, and ask me to stop (this actually happened exactly this way with a close friend just a few days ago–they couldn’t get me to stop pointing out Mormon mass delusions, as perceived by outsiders, fast enough):
1. Gold plates/seer stones
2. First Vision
3. Polygamy
4. Prophets who can’t lead the Church astray who endorsed racism (among other things)
5. Appearances to Joseph Smith from Elias, Elijah, John the Baptist, Moroni, Peter, James, John, Noah, Moses, Seth, Enoch, Isaac, Jacob, Raphael, Adam, Abraham, and even more
6. Adam-ondi-ahman
7. Kolob
8. The Book of Abraham’s (incorrect) “translation”
9. Word of Wisdom
10. Endowment ceremony heavy borrowing from Masonic rituals
Dave, you apparently haven’t read the 8- or 3-witness testimonies that appear in the BoM or their numerous other statements indicating they all saw the plates, not a heavy box.
Codeye,
It’s a great question. I really grew from my mission and so did my husband. No regrets. But it’s true I was approaching things from a different place then I am today.
All I know is that what I did with my first 3 sons didn’t work according to how members of the church think. Teaching that it’s a true/false choice is brittle and easy to break with a quick search on the internet. Maybe you can isolate your kids and tell them just to believe authority and never question. That isn’t a possibility in my family. I have been a questioner all my life and it’s a quality my kids have learned and I am glad they have. Loyalty to authority can of course backfire. We all need to know how to think for ourselves.
If my children are going to have access to the good things the gospel of Christ and the church community can bring they are going to have to be flexible thinkers.
As far as whether a mission remains worth it for a flexible thinker, I don’t have to decide that. That’s for my son to consider.
I do think more flexible thinkers are valuable to the entire church in any setting. They give permission to other people to think their own thoughts and be truthful about it. I know he would be a positive influence on any missionary companion or investigator.
The church has a lot to offer in spite of the problems we have. Serving a mission is an opportunity for growth a young person in many ways. My son will have to decide if it’s right for him.
Tom, I’m like 99% sure Dave has read them. I’m 99% sure that you don’t know much else besides that. The whole story behind those testimonies is much more complicated. It’s not as cut and dry as you think.
I think all of us use a healthy dose of delusion to survive.
I delude myself daily that my 18 years of loyal service at my company means they won’t drop me like a hot potato on a whim. I delude myself into thinking that capitalism is working even though I’m one catastrophic event away from bankruptcy. I delude myself that all the stress in my life can be managed with a mindfulness app and a piece of See’s chocolate after dinner. I delude myself that money has inherent value. I delude myself that my retirement investment isn’t a mere gamble.
So I likewise try and respect the delusions of others. If people want to believe in pseudepigrapha or that Hebrews built ships and sailed to America that’s fine by me. The only time I get visibly upset is when these delusions cause serious avoidable harm to others (all delusions cause some harm I suppose). So the delusions I have little patience for include the prosperity gospel which is still very alive in our faith tradition, and the delusion that the prophet speaks directly to God because that delusion often allows intelligent people to outsource their morality. Also delusions about worthiness and purity culture and delusions that my decisions can override another’s agency. I see all of these delusions as harmful and manipulative. Strip them away and you can still have a healthy religious organization centered on a mystical divine.
As Elder Price says, I am a Mormon, and a Mormon just believes.
In speaking to the delusion aspect of the OP, I would like to quote Bart D. Ehrmann by saying that “One man’s heresy (delusion) is another man’s doctrine (belief). I agree that many aspect Latter-Day Saint beliefs when seen outsiders do seem delusional and many beliefs held by others may seem delusional at least to the more conservative and orthodox members of the LDS community. To those other traditions those beliefs are just as important to them as our beliefs are to us. Maybe we need to show as much respect to those other traditions as well hoping that they respect ours as well.
Nice post. I like your cautions in the beginning about not thinking folks are delusional just because you disagree with them. For that reason, I don’t want to just call out the usual stuff when it does seem to be a matter of faith for some folks. One thing that makes me think some Mormon beliefs are delusions is when I sit in Sunday school and listen to the tortuous logic being employed by the class members to try to justify stuff like polygamy, etc.. I understand that losing or complicating one’s faith is terrifying to many Mormons, but to throw all reason out the window to justify that which can’t be justified is, to me, a sign of either delusion or desperation.
The polygamy example brings to mind one thing that I do think is a delusion, and that’s women and the priesthood and the status of women in the church generally. It’s so obvious to an objective observer that the entirety of the church rhetoric surrounding women’s agency, their role, and the priesthood is a combination of gaslighting, institutional abuse and delusion. It is simply unconscionable and wrong to say bullsh*t stuff like, “women already have the priesthood” or “women don’t need the priesthood because they’re so spiritually superior to men” and all of the rest of that crap just to try to ensure that women have only second-class status in this church. THAT is a delusion. And one of the saddest parts of all of that is just how much all of that harmful rhetoric ends up affecting women in all sorts of ways. And how many members, both men and women, take that kind of rhetoric into their hearts and minds, thinking that it’s part of growing their faith.
Two Words: “Prosperity Gospel”. While many will strongly declare that the Church doesn’t teach this…..the reality within the culture reinforces it every single day. Just come to my Ward in Alpine (on any given Sunday) and the line of Porsche’s, BMW’s, Mercedes, Jaguar’s etc….is a great “object lesson”.
Brother Sky,
What you are saying about women and the priesthood makes sense. I remember the moment I came out of that delusion. I knew I was thinking something that I couldn’t look closely at for years. I finally had to to write down everything I was thinking to try to figure it out. I came to see that what I was taught doesn’t match what I know from my own experiences.
It does feel like a mass delusion among the women and gas lighting from the men for me. Once you see it, there’s no going back to seeing it the old way. And there’s no way I can or will teach my sons the patriarchal way of thinking ever again.
Men presiding while saying women are equal is false, mind twisting and deeply harmful for both women and men in the church.
Where to begin with the plethora of Mormon mass delusions? I am fascinated by Mormon views on the nature of God. We are taught that God knows each of us individually to the point where we can expect divine intervention in order to find lost car keys, help with the outcome of sporting events, choose our friends, etc. You know, all the really serious stuff.
Forget about the God of Mormonism intervening to stop such horrifying events as the recent family murders in Enoch, the war in Ukraine, starvation, childhood diseases – the list is endless. Tragedies not affecting us personally are rationalized as the poor exercise of free agency or ‘accidents’. But please allow me to expect a direct answer to a prayer for a BYU athletic victory.
Then there are Mormon delusions related to “God told me to….” – typically used in order to justify abnormal behaviors. During the last two years of my service as a Bishop, the sitting Stake President kept a loaded 9mm Glock handgun in his desk drawer at the Stake Center – along with two loaded ammo clips. To him, it was a divinely inspired act designed to “protect his flock”. He didn’t hesitate to pull the gun out of the drawer to illustrate an object lesson – typically related to tough love and the need to be intolerant of evil. And we wonder why the majority of the world thinks Mormonism is bizarre.
I had previously titled it a ‘disappointment’; now I see that ‘Mormon Delusion’ is more appropriate: that we Mormons are truly Doing Church, while the rest of the Christian community is Playing Church. Every time I see that written, I am struck anew by the audacity of any truly spiritually aware person, or indeed any person with empathy, saying such a thing.
I agree with Not a Cougar’s comment. I don’t think we should NOT get into the practice of declaring various religious beliefs delusions. Can we ease things back to neutrality and tolerance of various ideas and beliefs within or about the LDS community?
With that said, I do have a problem with what the OP called “Organizational Revelation.” It seems we have taken revelation to such an extreme that it is unsupportable by LDS tradition and teachings. Every whim, hunch or choice of leaders general and local are now described as “revelation.” Is there anything left that is not “revelation?” This can’t end well.
Oops. Double negative in my comment above. Should have been single. My high school English teacher would be so embarrassed…
Reading scriptures (esp. BofM) more, praying more, attending temple more, etc. will restore a lost delusion.
Sasso,
I disagree with idea that reading scriptures and praying will return delusions. I find that reading the scriptures convinces me even more of some of the current church’s errors. For instance, how did I make it 55 years without ever hearing about the prophetess Huldah whom King Josiah consulted and she said “Thus saith the Lord” to him? That happened because the church isn’t interested in discussion about female prophets leading reform in the church. I could go on about this in several topics. Often the scriptures do not support what the church is doing as far as I can tell.
When I watch conference it can actually erode my faith instead of bolstering it, when the Spirit cannot always confirm to my heart the truth of the things leaders say, but may actually tell me to hope and wait for change. I can only take it in small doses.
I have read my scriptures and prayed every day of my life. It’s an error to believe doing that will reverse an understanding from complex to simple, or protect you from seeing things in a more complicated way. Scriptures can be understand in multiple ways and often conflict.
For me, it’s the idea that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the entire “Kingdom of God” on Earth. To me the idea that just 0.02% of the world’s population is part of the Kingdom of God is delusional. I believe the quote that President Oaks shared in the last conference, “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. … It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.”
I believe that the LDS church is part of the Kingdom of God, but I also believe that the other religions are also part of the Kingdom of God too. They should be respected and learned from. We’re not in competition with each other, we’re all part of the same team.
just a historical-political footnote here
“Millions of Russians think Ukraine and NATO are the aggressors against Russia, despite the fact that neither NATO nor Ukraine conducted any aggression against Russia over the last seventy years.”
That’s…. not quite true. Russia and the USA have been poking, prodding, and bothering each other for over 100 years. And it certainty didn’t stop with the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine has unfortunately been caught in the middle of middle of the continuous global power struggle. Both the USA and Russia have been messing around in Ukraine trying to pull it into their respective spheres of influence. Both sides have been doing underhanded things in Ukraine for decades now, but Russia has definitely been the more aggressive force.
This is of course, not to say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified in anyway (it’s not), but it’s also incorrect to say that there hasn’t been any aggression from the USA (via NATO), limiting/dismantling Russia is literally the purpose of NATO.
One of the more recent delusions is “Covenant Path.” If there is such a thing, it needs to be plural: Covenant Paths. It is the ultimate conceit to believe that we have the only path to heaven or the CK. It is also absurd to think there is only one path for Church members.
aporetic1, I can guarantee you that Oaks was only talking about humanitarian service and not meaning all churches being part of the kingdom of God. We are told by our leaders all the time that we are the only ones with all the truth and we have the only way to get back to God.
“For me, it’s the idea that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the entire ‘Kingdom of God’ on Earth.”
Even writing as one who has spent the majority of his life with a firm belief that God has far more to do than to work solely through His covenant people, I find that idea no less delusional than believing that God essentially has multiple personality disorder. That a loving God doing everything in His power to bring us into His presence couldn’t possibly make an organization He calls his own. That truth is simply “your truth” and that religions stating A, B, and C with regard to X can all be right at the same time.
But again, even if I relegate the Kingdom of God to mostly mean the Church, I won’t deny that his sphere of influence goes well beyond that, and beyond Christianity for that matter.
Edit: no MORE delusional.
Priesthood blessings of healing are another candidate for a Mormon “mass delusion”. I don’t mean to offend anyone that might have their own personal experiences with priesthood blessings of healing that mean something special to them. That said, I’m 99% sure that if you were to take a random sample of otherwise demographically identical people where one group had had a Mormon priesthood healing blessing and the other group had not, you would find statistically identical medical outcomes for both groups. If this is true, then while it could still be possible for a few very, very rare outlier cases where a priesthood blessing actually does heal someone, this means that priesthood blessings almost never heal anyone.
Another interesting point is that almost no Mormon would ask for a blessing for a medically impossible healing. Rather, most Mormons only ask for healing blessings where our current medical capabilities leave the outcome unknown. For example, most Mormons aren’t going to ask for a priesthood blessing to grow back a leg that was amputated and irreparably destroyed in a terrible car accident. Pretty much no Mormon disputes the fact that humans don’t have the ability to regenerate limbs, so they won’t ask for a blessing to do the “impossible” task of regenerating a limb, even though limb regeneration really should be possible when an omnipotent God’s power is wielded by a member of His priesthood. On the other hand, Mormons have no problem asking for healing blessings when they have stage 4 cancer. Stage 4 cancer may be almost hopeless, but current medical professionals have no way of determining if any given patient is going to be the one in a million cases of stage 4 cancer that actually beats the odds and survives. In other words, most Mormon’s only ask for priesthood blessings of healing in cases where the medical outcome is not already 100% predetermined even though an omnipotent God should seemingly be able to heal any person no matter how hopeless their medical situation is with current technology.
@lws329
“Sasso,
I disagree with idea that reading scriptures and praying will return delusions.”
Me, too. My intent was to present this common advice as one of the “doctrines of mass delusion” requested by the Dave B. If I had intended to use it as actual advice, I would not have used the word “delusion”. I probably would have used a word like faith or testimony.
When the unhelpful advice was used on me, it felt so absurd. Once you see something, you cannot just return to your prior simple belief.
Read the book
“The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” by Mattias Desmet (2022).
I’m a firm believer in the grandest “delusion” of them all–that Jesus rose from the dead. Any other “delusion” is an easy sell comparatively speaking.
Re: The Eight Witnesses:
From Wilhelm Poulson’s 1878 interview with John Whitmer:
I — Did you handle the plates with your hands? He — I did so!
I — Then they were a material substance? He — Yes, as material as anything can be.
I — They were heavy to lift? He — Yes, and you know gold is a heavy metal, they were very heavy.
I — How big were the leaves? He — So far as I can recollect, 8 by 6 or 7 inches.
I — Were the leaves thick? He — Yes, just so thick, that characters could be engraven on both sides.
I — How were the leaves joined together? He — In three rings, each one in the shape of a D with the straight line towards the centre. …
I — Did you see them covered with a cloth? He — No. He handed them uncovered into our hands, and we turned the leaves sufficient to satisfy us.
Amazon’s related recommendations to the book @Travis tells us to read are by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, someone openly promoting Christian Nationalism, etc.
Hard no for me.
This is a very sloppy use of the term(s) delusion and delusional. A delusion is not just a belief that is not grounded in empiricism. For a belief to be delusional an individual must hold onto a belief despite clear and unequivocal evidence to the contrary. Categorizing “Gold Plates” as delusional is categorically inaccurate. What unequivocal evidence exists that the Gold Plates never actually existed? Or what evidence exists to explicitly controvert the claim that Mouhamed flew from Mecca to Jerusalem on the back of a winged horse. I’m sure there are religious beliefs that qualify as delusions but none of the examples I have seen either in the OP or the comments qualify.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
I was travelling and could not respond to comments yesterday. Here are a few quick replies:
Yes, “delusion” is a loaded term. I was riffing off of the book title I was referencing, so I used it. But it is an English word, so there is nothing wrong with using the word. We all have a good sense of what it means. No, PaulM, use of the term is not limited to cases where definitive disproof of a belief is lacking. By your standard, “Muhammad flew a winged horse to the planet Jupiter” is not a delusion because, hey, you can’t provide 101% proof he didn’t fly to Jupiter. There is such a thing as burden of proof in an argument, and one who proposes and advocates a fantastically unlikely or miraculous claim has the burden of producing some sort of evidence to not be dismissed out of hand. To accept a claim with no evidence whatsoever is the very essence of a conspiracy theory, after all.
Not a Cougar, this is just one post. I span the whole Mormon spectrum on my posts taken as a whole, as do most other permabloggers here.
Tom, go take a look at and re-read the statement of the Eight Witnesses as printed. Who wrote it? I’m serious: Can you tell me who authored it? Is there an underlying document written by say one of the witnesses themselves that supports the printed version in current Books of Mormon? It was a statement they apparently allowed their names to be attached to (with some cajoling and pressure) that someone other than one of the “witnesses” drafted. It was a case of, “Here’s what I want you to say. Now sign it, all of you.” When pressed as to what the somewhat vague phrasing means precisely, there are a variety of answers the “witnesses” gave at various times. “We lifted a box. Joseph said there were plates in it” becomes “We lifted a box with the golden plates in it” becomes “We lifted and hefted the golden plates.” One can believe or not believe, but pointing to the printed statement of the Eight as if that is conclusive proof is simply unwarranted.
Everything we believe without evidence can be considered a delusion. When Chris Hedges was once asked to define religion, this is what he said, “Religion is an attempt to deal with the non-rational, not the irrational, the non-rational, those powerful forces that inform all of our lives; love, beauty, the search for meaning, our mortality, grief, alienation. These cannot be empirically measured. Religious systems are human creation, God is a human concept. All religious systems are flawed. All of them are finite attempts to deal with the infinite, to deal with those transcendent forces and need that all humans beings have for the sacred. What religion is trying to do is acknowledge and preserve and to a certain extend explain these forces that make up a complete human being.” I want to couple this quote with a quote from Sam Harris. He was asked what was his opinion of the Mormons. His reply was, “they’re just like any other Christian religion, except more stupid.” What I’m trying to say is that all religions are delusional. Mormonism is a bit more delusional.
It’s an age old conflict. The world has always believed that the prophets — and even the Lord himself — are delusional.
For those who may be interested–here’s a counter to the “New Atheist’s” counter:
https://interpreterfoundation.org/conference-talks-answering-new-atheism-and-seeking-a-sure-knowledge-of-god/
Dave B.,
It’s interesting that you flip the presumption about the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses from how we typically view signed statements. In a legal setting, it’s common for an attorney to draft an affidavit or written declaration and then have the declarant sign. Before doing so, the declarant has an opportunity to review, make changes, or ask for clarifications. By signing, the declarant is stating that the declaration is true and accurate and is adopting that statement as their own. Because of the formal process, the opportunity to make revisions, and the gravity associated with making an official statement, such declarations usually have more evidentiary value than an off-hand comment.
You appear to be flipping the normal presumption about these kinds of statements by assuming that the statement is not true and/or does not reflect the description of the declarant unless it can be proven otherwise. You may not believe that the T8 is true or accurate, but it is, in the absence of any recanting statement, a written statement attributed to each of the eight. So your statement in the OP that the eight witnesses lifted a heavy box but did not see the plates is directly contradicted by their own statements to the contrary. You can’t simply ignore evidence you find inconvenient.
There’s another clear error in the OP, which is this statement: “(But left the seer stones now acknowledged and displayed by the Church.)”
This is a misunderstanding of the what the Church has. The “seer stone” that the Church has is a stone used by Joseph Smith before the translation of the Book of Mormon, which, according to witnesses, he also used for the translation of the Book of Mormon. This is a separate object from the “Urim and Thummim”, “spectacles”, or “interpreters” (all referring to the same object or objects) found with the plates, and which were also sometimes referred to as “seer stones”.