The Problem with the Mormon Pragmatic approach to Religion

The problem with Mormon Pragmatism as explained by Alfred North Whitehead.
Perhaps you have seen the now famous Mormon Episode of South Park. At the very end the new Mormon kid cops to the fact that he doesn’t believe his religion is true, but “what difference does that make?” he asks. “Look at all the good we are doing. And we are really just about teaching family values.”
Those of us who have a lot of truck with Mormons and Mormonism get a lot of this sort of drivel. One merely has to read the book of Mormon and compare it to what they say they believe to understand it doesn’t hold much water in their overall religious system. But when you talk to them about why they are members you find a good many of them if not a majority of them do so for reasons other than believing it is true. Many do it for family or society reasons. They don’t really want to upset family.
Some just think religion is all about family values any way, and they all share the same morality at heart. They believe Christianity is no different.
They say things like, “well you have to go with what works for you.” Or they attend because they don’t want their children being harassed on the playground. The social pressure to be Mormon in Utah is immense. All the cool kids are doing it. Rarely do you find a person arguing for the veracity of the more metaphysical aspects of Mormonism. In reality, many of them don’t bother to even think about that. Many seem to believe that all metaphysics is on equally shaky basis to believe in truth.
In short they fall back on an argument that says “believe’ it is good for you. We are against smoking and drinking, and you know people die of liver disease and lung cancer.” Of course this totally ignores that one does not have to be Mormon to be against drinking and smoking.
This all struck me as I was reading this Whitehaed quote in “Tractatus Logico-Theologicus” By John Warwick Montgomery on pg. 40. White head very aptly points to the problem of such thinking. “We want assurance that the soul in reaching out to the unseen world is not following and illusion. We want security that faith, an worship and above all love, directed towards the environment of the spirit are not spent in vain. It is not sufficient to be told that it is good for us to believe this, that it will make better men and women of us. We do not want a religion that deceives us for our own good.”
Indeed, most of us innately know that if there is an ultimate good, it is inextricably bound with Truth. Ultimately if it is good for us to believe it, it must also be true. The only reason to believe something is that it is true. The only way that we would ever know that in fact what we believe is good for us, is if we also know that it is in fact true. For this reason Jesus not only makes a claim to be Good, but also to be the Truth, the way and the life, apart from whom no one can come to the Father. He then gave us every reason to believe this when he died to forgive sins, and rose on the third day to give us life.