Well, short anecdote...

I was visited by a couple of door-knocking Mormons yesterday and I decided that, for once, I'd invite them in.

Absolutely mind-boggling experience! They began and ended with a prayer. These sanwiched a lengthy (2 or so hour) questions and answers session (I asked the questions). Whilst fascinating, it was also quite terrifying.

Most is not worth mentioning as they appear to believe in the same Christian nonsense you hear about every day. But they also had some 'interesting' ideas...

I asked them to acount for dinosaur fossils. After a pause, one said to me - "Well we believe God created several planets with life so he may have used recycled material." So now dinosaurs are extra-terrestrials. I like it - it's original. It is also absolutely INSANE.

Another one of these moments came when I asked how these people 'know' they are correct - and every other one of the 10,000 or so large-ish world religions are not. Their answer?

"We pray to God and ask Him whether it's true."
"Ok, so, if I were to pray tonight, God would tell me that the Mormons are correct?"
"Yes, but you need to really genuinely want to know the answer."
"Hell I do!"
"And you need to ask a straight-forward question (God gets confused?)."
"Like a 'yes-no' question?"
"Exactly"
"Ok, I'll ask 'Are the claims of The Book of Mormon True (note capital)?"
"Yes, and you'll either be told 'yes, they are' or 'no, they're not'"
"Hold on a minute... If I'm told that they are not true, by whom am I being told this?!"

That actually made them pause... so I continued.

"In fact, you're telling me that there will either be an answer (yes) or none at all."
"Well yes - but, we don't mean anything profound. It might be very subtle and can be difficult to recognise (surprise, surprise)."
"So if I get no reply?"
"Keep trying."
¨
Let's recap - pray and ask the yes-no question. If you get a 'yes', all's well in Mormon Land, if you get no reply - NO you don't conclude they are incorrect (ever) - you keep asking!

Anyway, they're coming back with an extra person because they couldn't deal with certain (science-related) issues I brought up - and I get to make up alist of questions between now and then...