Mormons Have Irrational Beliefs? Who Doesn’t?

 

 

Commentators on both the right and left and both secular and religious note with disdain that Mormons (Latter Day Saints, as Mormons refer to themselves) have irrational practices and beliefs. The former, we are told, includes the wearing of sacred undergarments and the latter includes posthumous baptisms and the claims by the prophet of Mormonism to have found and deciphered engraved golden plates in New York State. I 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.Let’s begin with the religious critics.

There doesn’t exist a religion without such beliefs. I say this as a believing and practicing (non-Orthodox) Jew, so I’ll begin with my own religion.

I believe the Torah is a divine book…