Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: November 18, 2016 11:56AM
We might ask, what is the point of the MST website anyway? Here is what is expressly stated:
"There are some who may feel that people of education and learning can’t be religious. It is hoped that these testimonies will help dispel that myth, educate, and give insights into the thoughts and feelings of LDS scholars."
Well, first of all the premise is empirically false. The fact that scholars can indeed be religious can be affirmed by a simple statistical survey, and no one believes that scholars cannot be religious. Moreover, the same method would reveal, as does the MST website itself, that such scholars can believe in Mormonism. But, of course, this is not the point.
The real question is whether such scholars can "rationally" be religious, or "rationally" believe in Mormonism. If such rationality allows the "evidence" of one's subjective feelings, and excludes only beliefs that are contradictory, then here again, we might say, O.K. in forming beliefs, it is arguably rational to follow the dictates of your experience and intuitions, so long as they are not self-contradictory. But do not confuse this brand of rationality with the rationality of objective evidence--which is what scholarship and education are all about!
In the purely subjective and personal view of "rationality" there is no nexus between the facts of one's education or academic expertise, and the accompanying religious or Mormon faith. This very disconnect makes MST entirely meaningless at best and fraudulent at worst. What MST is really trying to communicate is the proposition, "If Mormon scholars can believe, so can you." But that is the fraudulent part, because the beliefs of these scholars are not scholarly based, but rather psychologically based.
Suppose I said: "There are some who may feel that people of wealth cannot be Democrats. It is hoped that these testimonies will help dispel that myth." What then follows are "testimonies" of wealthy people who indeed profess to be Democrats. Case closed. But it doesn't follow that being wealthy somehow "supports" being a Democrat, or that there is some nexus between wealth and being a Democrat. The mere fact that such is possible does not have the slightest significance in supporting Democrats per se. Similarly, the mere fact that it is possible for someone to be educated and a Mormon has no significance whatsoever with respect to the validity of Mormonism, or even as a rational motivation for a non-scholar to believe in Mormonism; just as the observation that some wealthy people are Democrats does not provide any rational motivation for being a Democrat.