I guess I’m just one cool, laid back mutha.

But, you don’t hear people referring to other 19th century historical figures in quite the same way.

Like Abe Lincoln?

They don’t work on mammals, so I don’t know their thoughts on human population biology and the utility of the techniques they are using for testing hypotheses about Smithian origin myths. It could be an interesting discussion, or not.

If you accept that the question is valid and give a Yes or No answer, you are implicitly accepting that “Mormonism” defines a homogeneous set of beliefs that are shared by all Mormons, and that this definition is accepted.

If you accept THAT, you imply that any fundamentalist Mormon would agree that a member of the LDS church is a “true Mormon”, and vice versa.

Or we could sit back, remember that this is an article praising a post-apocalyptic FPS game for the accurate portrayal of a particular religion’s beliefs, blink a few times, and promptly facepalm.

I think you’re asking if it is impossible, in my opinion, for an avowed member of the Mormon faith to understand and apply the Scientific Method.  If that was your question, I would say “No, I do not think it is impossible.”  This is probably not a satisfying answer, but your original question was a Straw Man built out of your assumptions about the nature of my assumptions, and I don’t think spending the next several days analyzing your question and enumerating all of the possible meanings and responses would be very satisfying to me.

If you wish to discuss this further, please unambiguously define your intended meanings of the words “Mormonism”, “science”, and “incompatible”.  I don’t want to be pilloried for answering a question that I wasn’t asked.

Doesn’t get much more Mormon than that…

So in that regard I’m kind of shocked the writer even submitted this article there. The staff over there seem to be trying to push the site into a more intelligent, broader direction though. Maybe this sort of thing will have an effect in the long run.

But  like many people of his day, he confused nihilism with atheism and so was reluctant to call himself an atheist.

HA HA HA HA HAAA!!

He mentions the Followers of the Apocalypse; but not their (occasionally slightly creepy, especially Ignacio Rivas) distinctly Utilitarian flavor. 

No response to the surprising fact that one of the Courier’s dialog choices, when first meeting Graham, is complete puzzlement at the notion of ‘god’. Unless that line is a non-canonical throwaway, Mormonism, along with various emergent cults, survived the war; but the nebulous cloud of approximately-christian-ish monotheism background knowledge apparently hasn’t. Other than the Mormons, who are pretty specifically mormon, overall religious activity is strikingly low.

An apparent lack of the impression that Graham is one of the more genuinely scary guys in the game. The fiends? I wouldn’t want to meet one; but they, along with the raiders, exist largely because Mad Max teaches us that the apocalyptic wasteland will have crazed psycho gangs. Caesar? Nasty piece of work; but childishly petulant even within his first dialog tree if you push him a bit. The Think Tank? Like the fiends, too dedicated to playing out B movies to really have that Dr. Mengele vibe that their actions should earn them.

Graham, though, guy is intense(and he isn’t even an antagonist). Bam, step into a dark cave and a guy swathed in horrible burns is talking about darkness and smashing babies heads against rocks. Then he has you going from collecting lunchboxes to launching a war of extermination and executing prisoners as though there was barely a change of pace(after all…). 

Especially when compared to Daniel, who is all bleeding heart, even post-legion reformed Graham is a really disconcerting character.

Which one is the more accurate depiction of Mormon faith?

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer is a very interesting and unbiased read on the subject.