I am not the only one who thinks this. Up until about a year ago, I spent about three years almost daily contributing to a Mormon Apologetics message board now located at
www.mormondialogue.org. Throughout that period, one staple of my apologetic was to identify materialist presuppositions in Mormon arguments, showing how Mormons were critiquing the Catholic worldview by uncritically presupposing assumptions from their own, rather than ever dealing with Catholicism it on its own terms. In doing so, I characterized Mormonism as materialist on a regular basis. BYU professors and students, lawyers, average joes, ex-catholics – I interacted with tons of them along the whole gamut, and asserted that Mormonism is a materialist religion many dozens of times. I did that for three years, and in all that time and ever since, you are the first person who has ever challenged me on whether Mormonism is materialist. They would pick apart my posts for any flaw they could find, yet no one ever called me out on that one.
There’s a reason. Mormons are not only materialist, but throughout their history, they have specifically criticized traditional Christianity for “Immaterialism.” Take, as a respresentative, though not authoritative example, the following McConkieism from
Mormon Doctrine:
*Atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God. Such takes various forms, and there are many degrees of atheism. In the absolute sense, it is doubtful if there is such a person as an atheist, for even though one denies the traditionally taught concept of Deity, yet he probably worships at some other shrine as, for instance, the shrine of false intellectuality. At the other extreme, those who profess belief in the sectarian God are in a position at least akin to atheism for their God is defined in effect as an immaterial nothing.
Reasoning along this line Orson Pratt wrote: “There are two classes of atheists in the world. One class denies the existence of God in the most positive language; the other denies his existence in duration or space. One says
There is no God'; the other says God is not here or there, any more than he exists now and then.’ The infidel says
God does not exist anywhere.' The immaterialist says He exists nowhere.’ The infidel says, There is no such substance as God.’ The immaterialist says
There is such a substance as God, but it is without parts.' The atheist says There is no such substance as spirit.’ The immaterialist says `A spirit, though he lives and acts, occupies no room, and fills no space in the same way and in the same manner as matter, not even so much as does the minutest grain of sand.’ The atheist does not seek to hide his infidelity; but the immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the atheist’s, endeavors to hide his infidelity under the shallow covering of a few words. The immaterialist is a religious atheist; he only differs from the other class of atheists by clothing an indivisible unextended nothing with the powers of a God. One class believes in no God; the other believes that Nothing is god and worships it as such.” (Cited, Articles of Faith, p. 465.)*
If it seemed excessive of me to compare Monson with Dawkins, notice with what directness the same comparison is made here of us. The irony of course, it that McConkie’s reduction of immaterialism to atheism, depends on a premise he shares with most atheists: materialism. For the materialist, immateriality is the same as non-being, and so McConkie and Pratt simply jusge Christian thinking in that light. Another person, that most everyone can agree was a materialist, who did the same thing was Thomas Jefferson. See how favorably he is quoted by an early Mormon radio personality Heber C. Iverson:
What a fearful indictment of Christian teaching. This knowledge like their conviction of the immortality of the soul, and their instinctive turning to God in the hour of danger, is an organic instinct, and in spite of teachings to the contrary concerning the true character of God. They have deeply rooted in their soul instinct a belief in the true God. In the Church of England prayer book we have these words, “We believe in one living and true God, of infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, without body, parts or passions.” In other words, an incomprehensible, immaterial being! Thomas Jefferson expressed himself in a letter to his distinguished friend, John Adams, in this wise, “When we speak of an immaterial existence, we speak of nothing; when we say that God, angels, and the human soul are immaterial, we say there is no God, no angels, no human soul.” I cannot reason otherwise. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism or veiled atheism crept in, I do not know, but heresy it truly is. Christ taught none of it. True, he said, “God is a spirit!” but he had not yet defined what spirit is, nor hath he said that it is immaterial. And the Fathers of the first four centuries believed it to be material–fine, and ethereal, in very deed, but nevertheless material. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared that spirit is matter, that it is pure and elastic, fine and ethereal, but it is matter. Hence they found Christianity teaching an incomprehensible, immaterial, impossible God. Their belief in him is not founded upon the teaching of the past half century.
If the implications of this argument are not plain enough, consider as well that the same quote from Jefferson is also cited favorably by Richard Dawkins in
The God Delusion (2nd ed., p. 63).
Don’t you know “how did all that is come about,” Ahimsa?