Is Mormonism the least plausible form of Christianity? – Emerson ...

Growing up, I didn’t know much about the LDS Church. I heard it described as a “cult” during the 2012 presidential election. Even as a good protestant, I disagreed. After becoming an atheist a few years later, I still viewed Mormonism as a breakaway sect of Christianity, though I shared the following sentiment with Sam Harris:
“Mormonism is objectively less credible than Christianity, because Mormons are committed to believing nearly all the implausible things that Christians believe plus many additional implausible things.”
Christianity plus a lot of weird, implausible things. I think that’s an accurate summation of how many view Mormonism. But I’ve come to believe that it’s entirely mistaken.
Due to their differences with other Christians regarding the nature of God, Latter-day Saints don’t defend the ontological argument. Their rejection of perfect being theism and their analysis of omnipotence (which effectively renders Mormon God less powerful than Catholic and Protestant God) opens up new avenues in responding to arguments from evil that are not available to other Christians. For me, this is a pretty big deal, since arguments from evil provide the best reasons for rejecting theism.
Moreover, Latter-day Saints are on at least slightly better footing in making design arguments, since the designer they posit has a greater basis in experience relative to the supernatural, non-physical, maximally perfect designer posited by other Christians.
Rather than forwarding creation ex nihilo, Mormons – along with many atheists – believe the universe is eternal. For Latter-day Saints, God is a part of nature rather than outside it. God organized our universe from pre-existing material. Consequently, Mormons do not defend the kalam cosmological argument.
Strikingly, Mormons reject the notion of eternal conscious torment for non-Christians. Universalism (or something like it) is the default view in the LDS Church.
This is not “Christianity plus implausible stuff” – this is Christianity minus implausible stuff. Unless, that is, you consider eternal conscious torment, creation ex nihilo, and the baffling notion that our world was created by a perfect being to be valuable aspects of Christianity that somehow increase its plausibility.
Of course, Harris is correct in saying that Theory A is objectively more plausible than Theory B if Theory B is just Theory A + a few additional implausible claims. He’s wrong, however, in thinking that this maps on to Christianity and Mormonism in the way he presents it. If anything, he has it backwards.
Many of the shortcomings of the LDS worldview are shortcoming of all forms of Christianity. For example, a literalist approach to the holy text will yield numerous conflicts with history and science. (Many theists seem to think this is a unique problem for Mormonism.) This is an important point if we’re playing this game of “Which version of Christianity is the most plausible?” In nearly every case, Mormonism is either on equal(ish) footing with other forms of Christianity – and therefore no less plausible – or it has an advantage over its Christian rivals.