Variations on a theme

Yesterday, I observed that the fact Glenn Beck is an adult convert to Mormonism tells you all you need to know about his critical thinking skills. Predictably, there has been a wave of protest along these general lines:

Just because he made the error of converting from Catholicism to Mormonism, doesn’t mean he is wrong in EVERYTHING. Where is your mercy and compassion. You don’t cut him off completely just because he isn’t a Catholic.

I am also informed the Mormons are lovely people as a general rule (perfectly true), that Catholics are, on average, no great shakes in the critical thinking department either (also quite true), that Beck is not evil (never said he was) and that I am despicable for saying what I said.

Duly noted. However, speaking of what I *said*, it remains the case that anybody who accepts, as an adult, the truth claims of Mormonism concerning, oh, the notion that the Book of Mormon is something besides a transparent forgery, that Jews lived in the New World in the time of Christ, that there was a Great Apostasy, and the multiple other fraudulent and bogus claims which constitute the founding narrative of Mormonism–that person is not demonstrating much in the way of critical thinking skills and it is inadvisable to trust that person as a mentor and guide.

Now: people who lack critical thinking skills can be lovely and nice people. They can make good judgment calls on certain matters in their lives. They can be decent, good, tax-paying citizens who walk their dogs, love their kids and give back to the community. They are, in all probability not devils in human form. But the fact remains that they lack critical thinking skills. It is neither merciless nor uncompassionate to observe that fact. It *could* however, be argued that it is withholding a work of mercy to fail to instruct the ignorant on the fact that Mormon doctrinal and historical claims are a load of rubbish that nobody with a serious grasp of the facts could take seriously for a second.