I wonder if the greatest benefit of LDS missionary service isn’t recruiting new members, but instead dirtying their children with outside memespace to prevent an autoimmune reaction when they mature.
From what age do the Mormons do this?
It sounds plausible that a small child would not be able to evaluate new arguments correctly, so it will just ask an elder and receive some bullshit excuse which sounds okay. And at later age, it will not even listen to the arguments, because “I have heard it all before many times”.
EDIT:
There is a traditional atheist way of bringing up children to faithlessness, where you first read them about the Greek gods, and later some Bible for children. Both in context of “stories that people believed in the past”. So when they encounter the meme in real life, they have some antidotes.
Compare to various Chick tracts, where the story often ends with the good guy asking the villain “have you ever heard about Jesus?” and he’s like “never, who’s that?”, “well, let me give you this book”… and soon the villain is begging to get baptized. I don’t know how much that is wishful thinking, and how much that happens in real life, but… maybe there is a reason why this was considered plausible by his audience.
From what age do the Mormons do this?
It sounds plausible that a small child would not be able to evaluate new arguments correctly, so it will just ask an elder and receive some bullshit excuse which sounds okay. And at later age, it will not even listen to the arguments, because “I have heard it all before many times”.
EDIT:
There is a traditional atheist way of bringing up children to faithlessness, where you first read them about the Greek gods, and later some Bible for children. Both in context of “stories that people believed in the past”. So when they encounter the meme in real life, they have some antidotes.
Compare to various Chick tracts, where the story often ends with the good guy asking the villain “have you ever heard about Jesus?” and he’s like “never, who’s that?”, “well, let me give you this book”… and soon the villain is begging to get baptized. I don’t know how much that is wishful thinking, and how much that happens in real life, but… maybe there is a reason why this was considered plausible by his audience.
18-19 (formerly 18-21).
When I wrote “children”, I meant “next generation descendants”. Missionaries are young adults.