Recently, I had the repeated experience of dealing with an online Mormon, “Tom,” who did what he could to defend the Gospel According to Joseph Smith, which entailed a whole lot of lying, evading, and distorting.
Unfortunately for Tom, because he did engage in so much duplicity, he ended up also doing what other Mormons have done, which was to attack the messenger, rather than the message and validate everything I had written previously.
The whole exchange began when he took umbrage over a statement I had made that equated Mormonism with Islam and how both worldviews ultimately devolve into atheistic thought.
Because Mormon theology is predicated on naturalism, meaning the Mormons believe that its deity (“Heavenly Father”) is the product of natural processes, whereby he evolved unto his current status as a “god,” and yet without any finite being at the head of the deity chain, then who they believe to be god cannot really exist.
Although Islam is not naturalistic in its conception of God, no one in Islam can know “Allah,” since it is too far removed from it creation to be personal.
Oh, Allah has attributes and names, but it resembles something more along the lines of what one might find in Gnostic thought than something a person might find in Judaism or Christianity, which some often credit or confuse Islam with, even though the reality is there is no similarity or relationship between Islam and Judeo-Christianity.
Anyway, Tom did his usual Mormon thing by first attacking me, personally, and then when offered the opportunity to explain himself, simply dodged and weaved his way around questions, that he knew if he answered them, would cause him to stand condemned by his own words.
You see, according to online Mormon apologists (Mopologists for short), no one can know a thing about Mormonism, even when Mormon authorities are quoted verbatim to support the premises.
Moreover, no one can really know anything about Mormon thought, unless one quotes only from the five pillars of Mormonism (sounds Islamic, does it not?), the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, the living prophet when he speaks during General Conference (now we are sounding Roman Catholic), and the Bible.
Interestingly, the Bible is only cited to supposedly corroborate Mormon beliefs. Otherwise, it is considered “corrupted” when it contradicts them.
Also, it makes a person wonder if the Mormon really wants to play that game, why he would want to claim to be a Christian, when there is nothing Christian about Mormonism, which is why for the longest time the Mormon did not want to be recognized as one.
When Tom was asked to define his terms, like “literal,” “father,” and “son,” instead of providing those scriptural sources, he deflected by saying that the scriptures do not provide a definition.
So, Tom, just how does a Mormon believe that God is the “literal Father” of the “son,” when you do not know what any of those terms really mean?
Of course, Tom would go on to claim he gave responses and answers, which is something the Mopologist regularly does or lies about, all in an effort to shy away from the truth, not come to it.
At the end of the day, it was more of the same nonsense that I have experienced during the past 35 years of dealing with online Mormons, who do a terrible job of representing historic, doctrinal Mormonism.
Not only do the Tom’s know nothing about Mormonism proper, they know nothing about the basics of Christianity either.
Instead, what they know about both is a caricature, whereby Mormons leaders are implicitly called liars or simply “unwise men” who made mistakes, and persons like the Apostle Paul just did not get it right in certain instances.
The Mopologist, in other words, is what Jesus would call a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and should be avoided by the unwary, because their real motivation has nothing to do with care and concern for the soul, but the theft, killing, and destruction of it.
