Dennis Prager at Townhall.com defends Romney from the charge that Mormons hold irrational beliefs. Not by rationalizing all the irrational things Mormons believe, but by pointing out that Mormons are no more irrational than anyone else. Which isn’t much of a defense, but it’s the only rational defense I can think of.

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.

First, the irrationality of the Jews:

I believe the Torah is a divine book. I believe that God took the Jews out of Egypt and that He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. To atheists and secularists, these are not necessarily rational beliefs. And they are certainly not scientifically provable. As for practices that many would consider irrational, traditional Judaism has quite a few. Just to cite one: Orthodox Jews believe that they are not permitted to drink wine or grape juice poured by a non-Jew.

Then the Christians:

As for Christianity, non-Christians cannot be expected to regard the belief that God has a son who was born of a virgin as reason-based. (If they did, they would probably be Christian.) Nor do outsiders consider rational the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief that the wafer and wine consumed during Communion literally become the body and blood of Christ.

And the Muslims:

As for Muslims, the belief that the Koran was dictated by an angel to an illiterate man (Islam holds that Muhammad was illiterate) is surely not rational to a non-Muslim. Nor are myriad post-Koranic beliefs such as the requirement that women wear a veil.

And finally, the non-religious:

As for the secular world, irrational beliefs permeate the left. For example, a generation of Americans has been educated to believe that men and women are, beyond physical differences, the same. Boys don’t inherently prefer trucks and toy guns and girls don’t naturally gravitate to dolls and tea sets, we have long been told. Give boys dolls and tea sets and give girls trucks and they will love to play with those things. Is that rational?

Or how about the tens of millions of people who believed Marxist claptrap about the inevitability of socialism? It was “scientific fact,” the world’s left believed, that every society goes through three stages: feudalism, capitalism, socialism.

And given the inability of any welfare state to sustain itself economically, is it rational to advocate the continuing expansion of government, as supposedly rational New York Times columnists do?

Is the belief that 50,000 Americans die each year from secondhand smoke rational? Is the certitude that we know what the climate will be in a half century rational? Or declaring sixth-graders guilty of sexual harassment for engaging in innocent, normal-boy behavior?

His claim about boys and girls strikes me as a straw man. Does anyone really believe the difference between boys and girls extends no further than physical differences? Likewise his claim about the inevitability of socialism. No one believes that any more, do they? That claim is tantamount to claiming that Christians still believe the sun revolves around the earth.

I disagree philosophically with our drift toward bigger government, but I’m not sure that advocating the continuing expansion of government is on par with the virgin birth in terms of irrationality. Likewise for the effects of secondhand smoke and climate science.

He may have a point regarding sixth-graders and sexual harassment. Although from what I can see, this has been limited to a few, high-profile instances.

Antisocialdarwinist - 19 June 2012 06:50 AM

Dennis Prager at Townhall.com defends Romney from the charge that Mormons hold irrational beliefs. Not by rationalizing all the irrational things Mormons believe, but by pointing out that Mormons are no more irrational than anyone else. Which isn’t much of a defense, but it’s the only rational defense I can think of.

I’m with Sam on that one, personally.

His secular “claims” are nonsense and I reject the whole article as backhanded rubbish.

This doesn’t happen too much, but I’m going to agree with GAD on this one.

All of his “irrational” claims by secularists are only irrational if you have a conservative viewpoint.

Not sure where his 50,000 number for secondhand smoke comes from, but there are plenty of studies that show the harmful impacts of secondhand smoke. It’s only irrational to refute scientific studies if they are written by Andrew Wakefield. Here’s what the National Cancer Institute has to say on secondhand smoke

People who believe in the truth of Marxism are called Marxists not Secularists. The fact that most of them didn’t believe religion is not relevant. Also, how does he know that capitalism won’t eventually give way to socialism. It’s hard to say what can happen over the next few hundred years. Maybe Marx was right all along, we just don’t know it yet. Not saying I really think that will happen, but it’s a possibility.

Also, nowhere have I seen the “inability of the welfare state to sustain itself economically.” I think the US, Canada, UK, Sweden, Norway, etc. are actually doing pretty fine. The countries who are experiencing economic hardships currently are experiencing them because a massive credit bubble burst. The credit bubble was generated by capitalist practices, not a welfare state.

I don’t know what the sixth-grader comment refers to, but when I was in sixth grade, we new what sexual harassment was and not to do it. “Normal-boy behavior” did not include groping girls, exposing ourselves, or anything else I can think of that might be construed as sexual harassment.

Having said all that though, I will agree with him that the Mormon religion is no more silly than any of the others. It just has different quirks.

GAD - 19 June 2012 09:23 AM

His secular “claims” are nonsense and I reject the whole article as backhanded rubbish.

Yeah, a lot of jibber-jabber about jibber-jabber. Where exactly is that language loophole exit, burt?

Dennis Prager specializes in that sort of pseudo-intellectual faux-reasonableness. Never had much respect for him.

No disrepect to ASD for linking that article intended—and I tend to think that it would really be counter-productive to pick on Romney for his wacko religious beliefs while still accepting that any candidate for President must “have faith” in order to have any chance of winning. We would simply be playing into legitimizing orthodox religions, not eroding faith in general. IMHO.

I don’t disagree with anything said here (except one nitpick, below). But I still find it ironic that the only defense of Mormonism’s irrationality is to claim that other religions are just as irrational.

b00ger - 19 June 2012 10:07 AM

Also, nowhere have I seen the “inability of the welfare state to sustain itself economically.” I think the US, Canada, UK, Sweden, Norway, etc. are actually doing pretty fine. The countries who are experiencing economic hardships currently are experiencing them because a massive credit bubble burst. The credit bubble was generated by capitalist practices, not a welfare state.

I don’t think capitalist practices caused the problems now being experienced by debt-laden countries. The root cause was that some countries were—and are still—outspending their revenues. The Euro exacerbated the problem for Greece, etc. by enabling them to borrow money at interest rates which failed to reflect an appropriate level of risk.

The real problem is not “welfare states,” it’s outspending revenues. Welfare is obviously only one way for governments to spend money. I’m pretty sure our foreign policy over the past dozen years has contributed more to our debt than all the welfare queens since the New Deal.

And do you really think the US and the UK are “actually doing pretty fine?” (And that the US is a welfare state?) I suppose you’re probably still thinking of MMT and how we can fix our debt crisis by jiggling numbers in a spreadsheet.

The majority of economic growth over the past 30 years has been driven by the growth of private debt. Private debt growth is unsustainable because eventually you reach a point where you lose the ability to repay. When that happens on an aggregate basis, you see a severe collapse in asset prices. This is what happened with the housing market. The price of homes was driven artificially high by the increased demand which was generated through relaxing lending requirements. The industry term for subrime mortgage loans is “liars loans” Studies have found that the fraud rate on liars loans was over 90%.

At the point the bubble burst, you saw large numbers of people now unable to sell their houses for what they owed on them, which in turn triggered massive amounts of defaults, which in turn triggered the activation of Credit Default Swaps (CDO’s). CDO’s were being bought and sold without proper underwriting or enough assets to back them up. When they actually activated several companies were forced to pay out or go bankrupt. Thus lead to the downfall of several major investment banks.

The two primary drivers are both capitalist in nature.

1. the constant desire for growth.
2. Relaxation of oversight and regulations leading to fraudulent business practices

Banks were not growing fast enough with existing sound loan practices so they relaxed the requirements to go after crappier loans, artificially and temporarily boosting profits. At the same time, these new derivatives (CDOs) were introduced and not properly regulated, artificially and temporarily boosting profits.

The capitalist desire for exponential growth requires an expanding money supply. In our current system, money is created by government deficit spending. In order to sustain even a modest (say 3%) growth rate in GDP requires expansion of the money supply. You can’t spend/earn more money if there isn’t more money to spend/earn. It’s mathematically impossible.  Lucky for capitalists there is an infinite supply of money which can be produced and distributed.

Government debts will continue to expand, because they have to for the system to work. If we were to pay back all outstanding US government debt (say by taxing everyone 100% of their money), there would be no more dollars in circulation for anyone to spend. How stupid would that be? The economy wouldn’t work very well without any money. Debt is money. Money is debt. No debt equals no money. More debt equals more money, etc.

There are other compounding factors in the Eurozone, however this post has gotten long enough.

b00ger - 19 June 2012 10:07 AM

This doesn’t happen too much, but I’m going to agree with GAD on this one.

That’s because you are wrong most of the time.

I created a new thread for MMT maths. I’m sure GAD will have a thoroughly devastating, well-articulated, thoughtful response.

http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/24584/

b00ger - 19 June 2012 04:28 PM

The majority of economic growth over the past 30 years has been driven by the growth of private debt. Private debt growth is unsustainable because eventually you reach a point where you lose the ability to repay. When that happens on an aggregate basis, you see a severe collapse in asset prices. This is what happened with the housing market. The price of homes was driven artificially high by the increased demand which was generated through relaxing lending requirements. The industry term for subrime mortgage loans is “liars loans” Studies have found that the fraud rate on liars loans was over 90%.

At the point the bubble burst, you saw large numbers of people now unable to sell their houses for what they owed on them, which in turn triggered massive amounts of defaults, which in turn triggered the activation of Credit Default Swaps (CDO’s). CDO’s were being bought and sold without proper underwriting or enough assets to back them up. When they actually activated several companies were forced to pay out or go bankrupt. Thus lead to the downfall of several major investment banks.

The two primary drivers are both capitalist in nature.

1. the constant desire for growth.
2. Relaxation of oversight and regulations leading to fraudulent business practices

Banks were not growing fast enough with existing sound loan practices so they relaxed the requirements to go after crappier loans, artificially and temporarily boosting profits. At the same time, these new derivatives (CDOs) were introduced and not properly regulated, artificially and temporarily boosting profits.

The capitalist desire for exponential growth requires an expanding money supply. In our current system, money is created by government deficit spending. In order to sustain even a modest (say 3%) growth rate in GDP requires expansion of the money supply. You can’t spend/earn more money if there isn’t more money to spend/earn. It’s mathematically impossible.  Lucky for capitalists there is an infinite supply of money which can be produced and distributed.

Government debts will continue to expand, because they have to for the system to work. If we were to pay back all outstanding US government debt (say by taxing everyone 100% of their money), there would be no more dollars in circulation for anyone to spend. How stupid would that be? The economy wouldn’t work very well without any money. Debt is money. Money is debt. No debt equals no money. More debt equals more money, etc.

There are other compounding factors in the Eurozone, however this post has gotten long enough.

A lot of your economic posts are…questionable to put it mildly. Your theory that the size of the money supply is meaningless (yes, I realize I’m oversimplifying) is pretty out there, if you don’t mind me saying. But you’re pretty on-the-nose here. The recent economic collapse was a function of private debt, not public debt—something our friends in the modern GOP seem oblivious to.

Prager is a fuckwit, so of course he defends anybody’s religious belief as not any more irrational than any other.

Prager’s commentary is about as useful as Ben Stein’s.