The paradox of Mormonism

The paradox of Mormonism is not that it's hard to disprove but that it's too easy to disprove. Joseph Smith is such a typecast conman that if some folks are still prepared to believe he's a true prophet despite his manifest chicanery, what is there left to say? It's like charlatan faith-healers who've been exposed, yet folks continue to send them money. These are the willingly deceived. 

So the most effective strategy for converting Mormons may simply be to befriend them and pray for them, waiting for an opportunity to present the Gospel, rather than apologetics in the usual sense. That said, there's the danger of overestimating how much the average Mormon knows about the history of their own faith. 

On leaving your cult

https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/on-leaving-your-cult/

Science as a candle in the dark

Thankfully, science is a cure for superstitious nonsense:

The film has a web-site, and there is a long article in Salon explaining that the whole thing is really the production of a cult based in the Pacific Northwest that believes that a woman named JZ Knight is able to channel a 35,000 year old mystic named Ramtha. She does play a large role in the movie and you can read all about her nonsense here.

The whole thing is really moronic beyond belief. One of the scientists interviewed is John Hagelin who, besides being part of the TM cult surrounding Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, and “Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace” is a rather prominent particle theorist. Prominent if you go by citations that is. His 73 papers are mostly about supersymmetric GUTs and considered quite respectable, with a total of over 5000 citations, including 641 citations for one of them alone.

Hagelin was a grad student at Harvard when I was an undergrad and I met him when we were in the same quantum field theory class. A roommate of mine was interested in TM and I think it was he who introduced us. I remember Hagelin wanting to discuss how quantum field theory could explain how TM’ers were able to levitate, something about how they did this by changing the position of the pole in the propagator. The fact that someone who spouts such utter nonsense can get a Ph.D. from Harvard and be one of the most widely cited authors on supersymmetric models is pretty remarkable.

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=83

Satan casting out Satan

1. Reports like this raise questions regarding the status of non-Christian or occult exorcism:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/devils-of-manhattan/

This issue crops up, not only in reference to Catholic exorcists, but also cult members and witchdoctors. (By non-Christian, I'm not necessarily including Jewish exorcists. God might well honor exorcisms performed by Jews in OT and Second Temple Judaism.)  

2. I assume the standard Christian objection to the possibility of non-Christian/occult exorcism is this:

25 Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? 27 If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. 29 Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered (Mt 12:25-29). 

3. Although I haven't done a survey, I presume many readers think what he says precludes occult exorcism. If their interpretation is correct, then we must summarily discount all reported cases of occult exorcism, however well-documented. 

4. Consider a different interpretation: Christ is using a tu quoque argument. Posing a dilemma for his accusers. Whichever way they answer they will lose the argument. Reinforcing this interpretation is the fact that v27 takes the explicit form of a tu quoque argument. On that interpretation, Jesus isn't ruling out occult exorcism, but responding to his accusers on their own grounds and putting them on the defensive–without endorsing the assumptions of the argument. A tu quoque argument is a kind of ad hominem argument or argument from analogy–where the speaker temporarily adopts the opposing viewpoint for the sake of argument. 

5. Assuming that leaves open the possibility of (successful) occult exorcism, what might be the motivation? One can imagine the dark side using occult exorcism as a tactic to delude the masses into following a false religion. The demon cooperates with the exorcist because that lends credibility to the false religion. So that wouldn't be a case of the dark side working at cross purposes. Rather, it collaborates with human representatives of a false religion to lead people astray. 

6. Here's another possible motivation. I guessing that many Christians think the dark side has a militaristic command structure with Satan at the top. Demons take orders from Satan and his lieutenants. The dark side is a unified "army of darkness". 

Perhaps, though, the dark side is more like rival crime families. The fact that they all hate God doesn't mean they like each other. Indeed, given the psychology of evil, demons may well detest each other. They hate everything. Maybe the dark side is riven with turf wars and competing power centers. 

Or it might be like a military dictatorship where betrayal is the mechanism of promotion. Subordinates collude to frag their commanding officers and take their place.  On both comparisons, the dark side is both united and disunited. United in common opposition to God and the good, but disunited insofar as they jockey for dominance among each other. 

7. Apropos (6), maybe some demons are more powerful than others. Maybe some angels are more powerful than others, by divine creation, and when they fall they retain the power disparity. If so, perhaps the most powerful demons are bullies who like to push around weaker demons. In that respect, a stronger demon might overpower a weaker demon and expel him from a demoniac just to throw his weight around. 

This is all speculation, but it's consistent with the phenomenon of occult exorcism. It proposes different backstories to explain the phenomenon. Although they go beyond revelation, they have a starting-point in revelation. A possible inference. 

8. What Christ says has specific reference to the demonic realm, but it may be the case that humans can be possessed by the souls of the damned as well as demons. If so, that falls outside the immediate purview of Christ's statement. 

9. Another issue is whether there are follow-up studies on occult exorcism. Is it permanent? Witchcraft can be effective, but there's a catch. It replaces one thing with something worse. Occult healing or exorcism is a curse in disguise.  

10. A possible objection to the alternate interpretation (4) is that if Christ's riposte is merely a tu quoque argument, then he failed to directly refute the allegation. So where does that leave the allegation?

Assuming the alternate explanation is true, perhaps he resorted to a tu quoque argument because a direct refutation would be too complex to articulate in that setting. But if his answer leaves the allegation hanging out there, is there a way to refute it?

i) From a tactical or strategic standpoint, one can understand how the dark side might play along with exorcism if that promotes an evil religion, steering people away from God and redirecting them into the hands of Satan. If, however, the Christian faith has the opposite effect, then the Jewish allegation is counterproductive. The Christian faith is liberating people from depravity and occult bondage.

ii) That allows us to differentiate purer forms of Christianity (e.g. evangelicalism) from more adulterated forms (e.g. Catholicism) or cults (e.g. Mormonism) or paganism (e.g. witchdoctors). So the success of exorcism in divergent religious contexts has different, but consistent explanations.   

iii) In addition, Christianity has a special relationship to Judaism that's lacking in paganism or even Islam. If Christianity is false, then God has allowed a false religion to completely obscure the true alternative (rabbinic Judaism), as the perceived successor to Judaism. In that case, rabbinic Judaism is like a candle at high noon. You can barely see it because the overwhelming brightness of the alternative all but drowns it out. Moreover, Muhammad wasn't an exorcist or wonder-worker, so there's no comparison at that level. 

Ufology: the religion of technocrats

https://theoutline.com/post/7215/american-cosmic-review-aliens-are-extremely-real

Good problems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK9wycYPUgQ&t=4s

The image of the invisible God

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1:15-17). 

This passage came up in a debate with a Jehovah's Witness. I was asked to comment on the following statement:

His argument (i.e. the Christian apologist) was that since Jesus is the image of the invisible God, He must be God since only a divine being can be a divine copy of God. The Jehovah's Witness responded that by definition no copy will be exact. And so Jesus didn't have to be divine to be a copy. And so there is no real argument from being a copy.

1. "The image of the invisible God" doesn't all by itself imply deity, although I'll return to that phrase momentarily. 

2. In the larger context, this passage presents the Son as the uncreated Creator in Gen 1. Indeed, it's even stronger than Gen 1 because:

i) It makes creation ex nihilo explicit, whereas that's implicit in Gen 1.

ii) It makes the Creator the maker of the invisible as well as visible realm. Angels as well as physical beings. 

So the Creator God of Col 1:15-17 is even more absolute than the initial revelation of Yahweh in Gen 1. 

3. In addition, 1:19 & 2:9 accentuate the deity and Incarnation of the Son.

4. To be the image of the invisible God involves a contrast between the discarnate Father and the incarnate Son.

5. A copy and a representation aren't interchangeable concepts. While every copy is representational, not every representation is a copy. For instance:

i) Humans exhibit bilateral symmetry, so the left side mirrors the right side and vice versa. However, the left side is not a copy of the right side, or vice versa. It's not an original/copy relation.

ii) Identical twins mirror each other, but one twin is not a copy of his brother. It's not an original/copy relation.

iii) Da Vinci painted two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks. Both are originals. 

iv) A bank account number can appear in a different font. So they don't exactly resemble each other. Yet each representation is exactly the name account number. The abstract content is the same. 

6. There's a like-reveals-like principle. The more that B is like A, the more B reveals what A is really like. To be the definitive "image" of the Father, the Son must be maximally similiar while remaining distinct from the Father. But that's far above a creature.   

The Book of Mormon

Daniel C. Peterson a top Mormon apologist. I'm going to comment on a case he makes for Mormonism:

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2001/the-divine-source-of-the-book-of-mormon-in-the-face-of-alternative-theories-advocated-by-lds-critics

As a leading Mormon apologist and scholar, this is an example of the best case that can be made for Mormonism. It's downhill from there. 

I don't claim to be an expert on Mormonism. If, however, a Mormon asked me why I'm not a Mormon, Peterson is a good foil to express some of my reasons:

One God or many gods?

Some liberal scholars think the OT contains residual traces of polytheism. Divergent theologies which the editors and redactors failed to expunge. For instance:  

One God or Many Gods? 

Several key passages in the Old Testament speak of Yahweh alone as God [Isa 44:6-20...Jer 10:1-16]...But...the Old Testament paints a more varied portrait of God..."Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord..." (Ps. 86:8)...[In] Joshua 24:2,1-15 Joshua is exhorting Israel to serve Yahweh alone. To serve him alone means not to serve other gods...The first commandment says not "There are no other gods" but "you shall have no other gods"... The way [that the second commandment] is phrased seems to imply that idols can be real rivals of Yahweh The Israelites of the exodus were... taking their first baby steps toward a knowledge of God... .At this point in the progress of redemption,... the gods of the surrounding nations are treated as real. Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, 97-102.

Some Mormon apologists deploy similar arguments. Responding to Enns, Bruce Waltke said:

A more tenable explanation, I suggest, is that the first two commandments, which tacitly assume the existence of other gods, belong to the genre of religious commandments, whereas Moses' statement in Deut 4:39 ("there are no other gods")—not cited by Enns—and the monotheistic prophetic statements that he does cite, pertain to the genre of theological statements. The statements about other gods in the Psalms and inJosh 24, as well as in the first two commandments, pertain—so it seems to me—to the epistemological reality that people fabricate non-existent gods and fatuously worship them (cf. 1 Cor 8:4-6); the theological statements pertain to the ontological reality that other gods do not exist. In other words, the statements about other gods tacitly assume human depravity, not henotheism (i.e., the worship of only one God, while assuming the existence of others).

Moreover, Enns's interpretation opens the door both to a liberal definition of progressive revelation and to open theism. According to the liberal definition, "progressive revelation" refers to an evolutionary development of religion wherein earlier revelation is primitive and rudimentary and its teachings about divine reality and morals must be assessed and corrected by later revelation. Schleiermacher (1768-1834), an extreme example, places the OT on the same level as heathenism (Greek and Roman thought): "The Old Testament Scriptures do not . . . share the normative dignity or the inspiration of the New" (Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith [ET of 2d rev. ed. of 1830; ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928], section 132). The notion of progressive revelation, when defined in this way, is inconsistent with the doctrine that all Scripture is inspired of God. WTJ 71 (2009): 88-89.

3 Mormons

I finally watched the whole debate between James White, Jeff Durbin, and Mormon Kwaku:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbJ3954HW8

I don't normally comment on Mormonism. I usually defer to Christian apologists who specialize in Mormonism and other cults (e.g. Islam). In that regard, here's a good general resource:

http://mit.irr.org/

http://mit.irr.org/category/joseph-smith

It takes considerable stamina to watch the whole thing, not just because it's 2 ½ hours of talking heads, but because it's such a train wreck. I'm sorry to report that in terms of overall performance, I think Kwaku won the debate. There were so many missed opportunities. 

One problem is that White and Durbin often spoke at cross-purposes. Durbin would challenge Kwaku to demonstrate his position from the Bible, then White would interrupt to change the subject. Nothing was ever nailed down.

Frequently, Kwaku wanted to talk about a passage from the Bible, but White and Durban wouldn't let him. The dialogue was utterly chaotic. Let's try to run back through the topics. I'll give my own answers to issues raised by Kwaku:

Mormonism and Michael Heiser

Mormon apologists have tried to make use of Michael Heiser's divine council paradigm to provide exegetical justification for Mormon polytheism. Heiser responded: 

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1461&index=13

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1461&index=15

Debate With A Mormon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbJ3954HW8

Witnessing to Mormons

I could do without the politically correct title of the podcast. That said:

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/latter-day-saints/

The Mormon multiverse

This is related to a recent post I did, but I'd like to narrow the focus. It's my impression that some Mormon apologists invoke the multiverse to sidestep monotheistic passages in the Bible. The argument is that passages about idolatry pertain to the god of our universe. Yahweh is the god in charge of our universe. As members of this universe, we must confine our worship to Yahweh. But other gods have jurisdiction over other worlds in the multiverse. The monotheistic passages don't apply outside our universe. 

i) To my knowledge, the scientific evidence for a multiverse relies on one particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. Because quantum mechanics conflicts with the theory of relativity, there's the question of whether quantum mechanics is a final theory. And even if quantum mechanics is a final theory, there are competing interpretations. 

The multiverse might be true or it might be false. So it's a precarious foundation on which to build theology.

ii) I'm sympathetic to a version of the multiverse, but the same God who made the multiverse. One Creator of the multiverse. 

iii) In classical theism, God preexists the world he made. In Mormon theism, the world preexists the gods. The gods are contingent rather than necessary beings. The gods are products of a preexistent reality. A Mormon multiverse fails to explain the origins of the multiverse. It simply pushes the cosmological argument back a step.

iv) Is the idea that each god only exists in one universe? No god exists in more than one universe?

But according to the logic of the multiverse scenario, each parallel universe corresponds to changing one variable, with whatever adjustments that requires, while leaving other things intact. In one timeline I'm raised by my parents. In an alternate timeline I'm an orphan. In another timeline I'm raised by my dad. In another timeline I'm raised by my mom. In one universe I have a brother, in another universe I'm an only-child. In one universe my hometown is New Orleans, in another universe my hometown is Albuquerque. 

However, it wouldn't be a different god for each parallel universe. Changing the god is one variable, with a parallel universe (or more) corresponding to that altered variable. But many altered variables don't entail changing the god in charge. So the same god would exist in more than one universe. Even if we play along with the thought-experiment, Yahweh will have jurisdiction over a vast number of parallel worlds. 

Just run through OT history and mentally change a variable. Suppose Yahweh calls Abraham's brother out of Ur rather than Abraham. Suppose Isaac runs away rather than submitting to sacrifice? That creates alternate timelines, but Yahweh is the same deity in those alternate world histories. 

Can you be sure?

From what I've read, in the history of philosophy the quest for certainty extends back at least as far as Plato. For Plato, as I understand him, the physical world is not an object of knowledge because the physical world undergoes constant change, which means the object of knowledge is in a state of perpetual flux. For Plato, the object of knowledge is abstract archetypes. 

This had counterparts in Indian philosophy. Take the stock example of whether a coiled object is a snake or a rope. In a land with a superabundance of kraits, cobras, and vipers, that question is of more than academic interest!  

Augustine baptized Plato by relocating archetypes in God's mind. Divine ideas.

Aquinas was more of an empiricist. Ockham was more skeptical regarding the fortunes of religious knowledge. 

Descartes renewed the quest for certainty, with austere results. Some Counter-Reformation apologists revived Pyrrhonian skepticism to deploy against Protestant theology, but that backfired. John Locke and Bishop Butler shifted to probability arguments.  

Is the quest for certainty a mirage? If you combine a Reformed doctrine of providence, which you subscribe to, with a reliabilist theory of knowledge (like Plantinga's proper function account), then special providence is a trustworthy belief-forming process. Of course, reliabilism is disputed, but every thing in philosophy is disputed. One objection to reliabilism is the Cartesian demon, but every epistemology is prey to that artificial thought-experiment.

It's necessary to distinguish between what we know and what we can prove. It may well be the case that no apologetic method can yield absolute certainty. That's due to the fact that not everything we know is reducible to proof. We know more than we can prove. 

There's a difference between certainty in terms of knowledge and certainty in terms of proof. Formal arguments suffer from that limitation.

I can recognize someone's voice on the phone. I couldn't begin to present a rigorous philosophical justification for my recognition. Not everything we know is susceptible to stringent analysis.

That said, I'd like to reframe the debate. In general, that's not how I assess Christianity. I don't begin with whether we can achieve certainty regarding the claims of faith. I think that's a worthwhile discussion, but it sucks up too much oxygen. 

Another approach is to look at the competition. And the competition isn't that impressive. I don't think it's hard to dispose of naturalism. That leaves religious options. The major religious options are Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism (although that's technically atheistic), neopaganism, and Taoism–along with some cults (e.g. Mormonism). In a sense, Judaism is a serious contender, but Christianity incorporates Judaism. Likewise, Christianity incorporates the "truth" of paganism (i.e. witchcraft) into its own worldview. What's evil and diabolical can still be true. 

My point is not to make the case here and now. My point, though, is that if by process of elimination, Christianity is the last man standing, then it's pretty irrelevant to ask whether it's a sure thing. If that's the only viable option, then whether or not it's a sure thing is beside the point.

To take a comparison, suppose I'm on the 40th floor of a skyscraper that's on fire. Suppose my floor has four doors leading to emergency exits. I try each door, but three of the four doors are locked. Suppose I'm unsure if the unlocked door leads to an emergency exit. What if I'm misremembering? What if I mistook it for another door? But if all the other candidates are locked, then my level of certainty is irrelevant. Even if they did lead to an emergency exit, they're not live options. The remaining door, the unlocked door, is the only viable choice. Even if it doesn't lead to an emergency exit, I'm not going to stand there, with flames licking at my heels, while I calculate the probabilities. 

Likewise, if the ship is sinking and there's one lifeboat left, I'll jump into the lifeboat. I won't sink under the waves debating whether the lifeboat is seaworthy. By default, that's what I'm left with. 

Exploring Islam

http://www.proginosko.com/2018/07/exploring-islam-teaching-series/

Engaging Hinduism

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/hinduism/

"Our Lady of Fatima"

About 10 years ago I did a long post on Fatima, with special reference to the "miracle of the sun":

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/miracle-of-sun.html

Now I'd like to revisit the issue of Fatima, with special reference to the purported Marian apparitions:

i) I don't have antecedent objections to angelic apparitions, apparitions of the dead, or visions of Jesus in church history. In a sense I don't object to "saintly apparitions". However, by that I mean, not individuals canonized by the church of Rome, by crisis apparitions in which a departed Christian might appear to a friend or relative who's going through an ordeal to lend strategic, timely encouragement at a critical juncture in his life. 

ii) I don't have antecedent objections to children experiencing God in miraculous ways. But by the same token, children are less reliable witnesses than adults. Children are suggestible, impressionable. Less able to distinguish imagination from reality. 

iii) In addition, there's a difference between firsthand experience and secondhand information. Suppose you say you had a private supernatural experience. If in fact you did, then you're warranted in believing what happened to you. But an outside observer can't vouch for your purported experience, even if it happened, since he didn't experience what you did. 

Mind you, we rightly believe many things on the basis of secondhand information. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with that. And sometimes secondhand information from multiple independent sources is more reliable than one firsthand experience. 

But in general, I don't have the same epistemic duty to believe your reported observation than I have to believe my own observations. I'm not necessarily obligated to believe you. 

Indeed, there are situations in which I'm obligated not to believe a secondhand account. For instance, Muhammad, Swedenborg, Joseph Smith, and Lucia dos Santos all report supernatural encounters, yet they can't all be right, although they can all be wrong.  

iv) I admit that I rule out Marian apparitions as a matter of principle. I don't think Mary would appear to people because that usurps devotion to Jesus. Indeed, the Fatima cult is a classic example of Mary supplanting Jesus in the hearts of Catholic devotees. 

A Catholic might object that I suffer from unfalsifiable skepticism regarding Marian apparitions. No kind of evidence would convince me otherwise.

In a sense that's true, but keep in mind that there's conflicting prima facie evidence. I can't be equally and simultaneously open to the reputed revelations Muhammad, Swedenborg, Joseph Smith, and Lucia dos Santos. Even if I wanted to believe all these reports, they involve contradictory messages by competing religious claimants. I can't be equally and simultaneously open to contrary lines of prima facie evidence. At the level of opposing reports, unfalsifiable skepticism is inevitable because it isn't even possible to credit all of them. 

Of course, that doesn't mean we should discount all reports of supernatural encounters. But it does mean we must bring certain criteria to bear when sifting the putative evidence. And that includes theological criteria (e.g. Deut 13:1-5). 

v) In my experience, Catholic apologists treat Fatima as a package. Now, from what I've read, the "miracle of the sun" was a well-attested event. I'm prepared to credit that event. Of course, there's still the question of how to interpret that phenomenon. 

By contrasted, the purported angelic and Marian apparitions which preceded that event are not nearly so well-attested. I believe the primary source material consists of newspaper reports, interviews with Lucia and her two cousins, and Lucia's memoirs. And from what I've read, Lucia's memoirs contain key details that are missing from recorded interviews and newspaper reports.

But in that event, some of the central claims narrow down to a single conduit: the testimony of Lucia. To my knowledge, there's no independent corroboration for many of her claims. 

vi) In addition, she wrote this down years after the fact. Yet the claims include Marian prophecies. Oracles of doom. 

But even if Mary actually spoke to Lucia, unless Lucia was blessed with verbatim recall, what we're getting isn't a statement in Mary's own words, but in Lucia's own words. Suppose Lucia remembered the gist of what Mary said. Yet when reporting what Mary told her, Lucia must put that in her own words, paraphrasing the ideas. That's even assuming Mary actually appeared to the three children.

vii) There's also the vexed question of how you'd verify a Marian apparition even if you had direct experience of a putative Marian apparition. Suppose you have an encounter that's unmistakably supernatural. An apparition that's recognizably the Mary of traditional Catholic art. As if she stepped right out of a Raphael painting. Suppose she has a nimbic aura and identifies herself as the mother of Jesus.

But once we grant the realm of the supernatural, there are other candidates who could presumably impersonate Mary. What about a malevolent ghost or fallen angel? Catholics might regard that as sacrilegious, but once again, reported numinous encounters are hardly confined to Mary. How do Catholics assess the claims of Muhammad, Swedenborg, and Joseph Smith? 

viii) It's interesting to compare purported Marian apparitions with purported dominican apparitions in that regard. Unlike Mary, Jesus, by virtue of his divine mind, as direct telepathic access to whoever he might appear to. He can make his identity known in a way that Mary cannot.

ix) If we take the reports at face value, Mary is quite the linguist. She speaks so many different foreign languages, depending on the audience. Does she speak foreign languages with an Aramaic accent? 

You don't have the same issue in the case of purported dominical apparitions, since Jesus, by virtue of his divine mind, is fluent in every dead and living language. Indeed, the Son knew all those languages before any humans spoke them. 

x) By the same token, why are major Marian apparitions confined to Catholic witnesses? Compare that dreams and visions of Jesus by Muslim and Jewish recipients? 

Religious pedigree

This post is occasioned by the question of whether Ahmadis are real Muslims. Because the late Nabeel Qureshi was the most high-profile Muslim convert to Christianity, Muslim apologists attempt to discredit his witness by claiming that Admadis aren't real Muslims. 

Since I'm not Muslim, I don't have a personal stake in that debate. But here's a defense of the Muslim pedigree of the Ahmadiyya sect.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/10-fabrications-muslim-leaders-need-to-stop-making-about-ahmadi-muslims_b_5854492.html

This also goes to the question of whether Islam is essentially violent. Is the jihadist tradition baked in the cake? 

But it goes to larger questions, like Newman's theory of development. How do we distinguish authentic developments from inauthentic developments? 

From what I can tell, the Ahmadiyya sect is a variation or extension of Shia Islam, with its doctrine of the hidden Imam or occultation of the Madhi. But that just pushes the question back a step. Is Shia Islam an authentic or inauthentic development? When I read Muslim writers like Henry Corbin, René Guénon, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, with their esotericism and Neo-Platonism, a chain of intermediary Intelligences, and other paraphernalia, that's far removed from the provincial outlook of the 7C desert founder. Yet Ibn Sina was very eclectic. Conversely, Ibn Rushd was passionately Aristotelian. Are these authentic or inauthentic developments?  

Are members of the LDS the true Mormons, or members of the RLDS? 

Which is more authentic: Theravada Buddhism or Mahayana Buddhism? In Buddhist tradition, Gautama undergoes legendary embellishment, morphing into a surreal figure that's far removed from the historical Buddha. 

What about Hinduism? That's such a mishmash. 

There are different ways to analyze the question:

1. One criterion is logical consistency. For instance, modern Catholicism has undergone drastic reversals on major issues. Take salvation outside the church. The whole raison d'être for the priesthood is the presupposition that saving grace is channeled through the sacraments. To be saved, to be in a state of saving grace, you must receive valid sacraments. To receive valid sacraments, you must receive them from validly ordained priests. And valid holy orders is contingent on apostolic succession, the Roman episcopate and papacy. 

Once, however, you say that people can be saved apart from the sacraments, then the whole rationale for the sacraments, priesthood, episcopate, and papacy begins to unravel. And it's not just the occasional exception. Contemporary popes are verging on hopeful universalism. 

Likewise, contemporary popes are increasingly pacifistic. On a related note is their opposition to the death penalty. 

Yet another example is the contrast between the policies of anti-modernist popes regarding evolution, historicity and traditional authorship of Scripture and popes from Pius XII onward. 

From a logical standpoint, we can say these are inauthentic developments. "Inauthentic" in the sense that they are not valid inferences from traditional positions. To the contrary, they are logically inconsistent with traditional positions. 

2. Another criterion is truth. Muhammad, Swedenborg, Sun Myung Moon, and Joseph Smith were false prophets. From an alethic standpoint, it's nonsensical to ask what represents a true development of a false premise. All the sects of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism are factually false. That, however, is distinct from the question of logical development (see above).

From a Protestant perspective, Biblical revelation is our touchstone of truth. That's a way we distinguish authentic from inauthentic developments. 

3. Finally, there's the criterion of historical development. That's a loose criterion, but not meaningless. 

Let's use the metaphor of a card deck. The standard deck with 52 French cards. Four suits of clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. 

Many card games are based on that standardized card deck. Even though different card games have different rules, what they all share in common is the same card deck. 

Compare that to Tarot cards. That's a different deck.

Another differential factor is the card sequence. That depends on the shuffle. How the game plays out dependends on the sequence of the cards that are dealt. If you reshuffle the deck, the game will play out differently. Likewise, if you deal from the bottom of the deck rather than the top of the deck. And, of course, how skilled the players are will affect the outcome.

In terms of truth and logical consistency, many developments in modern Catholicism are inauthentic. They are, however, distinctively Catholic developments in the sense that given the hand they dealt themselves, there are only so many ways to play that hand. The Catholic deck has certain cards that can be combined or recombined in different ways. A theological paradigm generates the available options. 

Catholicism has always been eclectic and syncretistic. It's possible for Rahner or von Balthasar to accentuate and elaborate a particular strand of Catholic tradition. Tradition can take on a life of its own, detached from fact and logic. 

But certain developments are not in the cards. Different religious traditions play with different decks of cards. If you reshuffled the deck, historical theology would take a different turn. 

Dropping the metaphor, if Christianity had originated in ancient China or India or Mesoamerica, that would reshuffle the deck. Church history would take a different course. Because Christianity originated in the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, historical theology interacted with, and adapted to, Greek philosophy as well as indigenous socio-economic, scientific, and political influences or challenges. 

As the Christian center of gravity shifts to the global south, that will reshuffle the deck. Closed questions in theology will be reopened. New heresies will arise, which generally duplicate old heresies. Christians in the global South will have to assess for themselves whether the legacy of Western theology represents an authentic development of the authoritative source (Scripture). 

A Response to Cindee Martin Morgan From an Ex-CRI Employee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHLQVr0eBuw&feature=youtu.be

HT: Perry Robinson