I have recently been researching the geography options of the book. Given I have lived in Ohio for a number of years, I had developed a partiality toward the Great Lakes geography. Recently, as I prayerfully pondered the complexities, the thought came strongly to me that these geography considerations are a distraction. What was reinforced to me was that the message in the book was the important aspect.

Since I have carried with me for a number of years a strong testimony of the inspired contents of the BoM, I had, perhaps naively, assumed that there was a clear historical component to the book. I have weakened somewhat on that.

God has used symbols in many of his messages to man. Lehi’s Dream is a good example. I would softly align that with the idea of the book as a parable. Would I be happy to see the geography clarified through further research? Yes. Would it effect my life significantly if the book were provided as a symbol of man’s ability to receive revelation? Likely not, for the message of the book is, in my mind, anchored to the simple message of “come unto Me.”

I enjoyed Bruce’s link to the Sunday School class lesson experience. I agree that there is a lot of doctrinal and spiritual food in the BoM that we sometimes discount. I am reminded of Elder’s Maxwell’s characterization of the BoM as a great mansion with many rooms. Some people, like hurried tourists, quickly scan the various compartments and hurry on their way. Others linger, slowly moving room to room, to absorb the richness of each rooms decorations. Such is my approach; I no longer act like a sightseer.

The Book of Mormon, regardless of it’s origins, remains a constant reminder that there is a higher plane to which I strive.

“Some things, I believe, are always going to be matters of faith in mortality”

No argument here…

Having said that, some things that are a matter of faith today may become knoweldge tomorrow and some things may just need to go away, period.

Just to clarify, my understanding of God was developed we’ll before that movie came out. Some of my previous posts here will bear that out. Interesting though, that an LDS writer would seem to support my view…

On the subject I was discussing with bookslinger and Ray, about scientific evidence. I found another LDS author who would seem to recognize my point about having to face up to certain truths once enough evidence is uncovered. In the June 2007 Ensign, Elder Robert Wood makes a point of stating that sometimes even “basic truths” get over come with additional scientific evidence. His point was dealing with scientific truths, but in reality the world of religion has been revising its beliefs for thousands of years to conform with new scientific evidence as well.
Last year I made a similar statement and I still believe it has merit… (see #5)

http://mormonmatters.org/2007/11/09/episode-17-book-of-mormon-introduction-lamanites-and-native-americans/#comments

Bill, good one (#78}. You did get me to crack open and read my BOM, which I confess was probably only the second time this week.

Korihor’s philosophy (which I largely share) was never given a fair hearing in the book of mormon. I guess my lesson from the book of mormon is that I must really know that there is a god, but that I’m just possessed with a lying spirit.

Thanks for your interest in my posting! I didn’t really know if anyone actually read that long thing…

To your point, this obviously goes to the core of how each of us perceives God. As a belief in God is actually a very personal thing and also a work of faith by every definition I know about, I don’t pretend to say I “know” what He would or would not do. So this is now a matter of faith and my faith perceives God as the ultimate loving force in the Universe with no hidden agendas. I guess I see Him as completely accepting of who I am without judgment. I believe those that choose to live with Him in the next life will need to be just like that themselves.

So why does God withhold information from us and the rest of mankind, as you’ve used in your examples? The answer is very simple for me, because when it’s all said and done, knowing the answers to questions of where I came from and what heaven’s going to be like are not relevant to us here in the present. I suspect they’re not even in the realm of our finite minds ability to understand. Rather than present something we can’t understand, I think he chooses to focus us more on what is actually important. (The two great commandments. Everything else is man-made by people who want to provide you all the answers, or sell you something.) He can do that by working within all of our hearts to find the good and inspire us to love one another.

In some ways, organized religion is the enemy to this plan. It attempts to set strict standards of do’s and don’ts with lots of meaningless works that don’t help anyone. It creates an atmosphere of judgmentalness for adherence to the do’s, avoiding the don’ts, and allows some to look at their neighbor and say with conviction, “because you don’t believe in _____________ (fill in the blank), you’ll never be accepted in heaven”.

Rigel, I don’t know if I actually answered your question to me or not, but thanks for letting me describe my own personal belief in God. Of course, mine is the correct one…I’m just certain of it…:)

Good scripture Bill. The verse begins by talking of testimonies and ends by saying that the earth and the planets ‘witness’ that there is a Supreme Creator.

But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

It doesn’t seem to be a very effective argument for an antichrist until you read on and discover that Korihor always knew there was a God. At any rate, the evidence described is still testimonial, not scientific. The scriptures laid before him were also evidence.

Yes, that’s absolutely correct, Bruce. I apologize for (unintentionally) mischaracterizing your comment.

Well, Bill, I was going to protest, but then I realized that our logic here was no weaker then yours. So then I felt like there was no need. (Especially since it wasn’t a comparison between Mormons and other Christians.)

Fair enough. And I’m glad to hear that. (And with your further clarification, I feel it’s only fair to retract my comment. )

>>> The first one, however, doesn’t read that way.

I think Bookslinger should speak for himself what he meant. It’s possible he does believe God “removes evidence” or at leasts allows evidence to be removed or not found. I believe the last: he makes sure certain evidence is not found as to spoil the plan of salvation and faith.

But I see no reason to believe he thinks God places counter evidence to try faith. I still think you don’t have a good example here as per your original comment of people finding video taped proof that Jesus didn’t perform miracles and then avoiding that evidence by claiming there was a miracle to remove it to try their faith. I don’t see those as closely related at all.

Also, you need to be fair and admit that you misrepresented me. I said nothing about no faithful LDS person saying such a thing. I even admitted some do. I said I’ve never heard of someone on the bloggernacle (which I assume to be better educated over all in general) advocating a position similar to the example you used.

That’s the beauty of this, we can ask Bookslinger to clarify his personal views and we don’t have to act like scholars trying to parse out his words and then claim (with certainty ) that we know what he meant.

So Bookslinger, enlighten us as to your meaning. This is in reference to this comment from Nick and my follow up.

This business about ‘we aren’t any worse than the rest of Christianity’ is reall weak. This card seems to be played in dealing with race relations (‘we weren’t any more racist than anyone else’), general apologetics (‘our arguments aren’t any more absurd than the rest of christianity’), and historical issues (‘there’s little evidence to support the book of mormon, but the bible has just as many historical issues’). This isn’t some comparison between us and everyone else–lets leave them out of it.

#70–”Since the plan of salvation requires that the evidence of God, heaven, pre-mortality, and the spirit world be deliberately hidden”

I’m not so sure that this is clearly required by the plan of salvation. The book of mormon seems to teach that ‘all things denote that there is a god’. Doesn’t sound like God went around hiding evidence.

In a significantly unenlightened age, all things DID denote there was a god. Science has provided much more reasonable explanations for most of these things, so these ‘proofs’ now seem somewhat empty.

As for the “Certainty” post, I must not have communicated very clearly with you there. The post was not, by any means, directed solely at certainty among the LDS. It was intended (and I thought, written) as a generalized statement about life, not a specific statement about LDS individuals.

I wanted to ask you about one of your comments, and hope you can help me see your point of view more clearly. I’m not trying to argue a counter-position here, although that could be assumed.

“First, if the God of miracles actually did deliberately hide the evidence from me…obviously he doesn’t want me to know. I guess my actual point here is that I can’t believe in the kind of God who would engage in that type of behavior.”

Since the plan of salvation requires that the evidence of God, heaven, pre-mortality, and the spirit world be deliberately hidden, what is it about the theoretical act of “deliberately hiding evidence” in this instance that is divergent enough from the overall plan to change one’s attitude toward God?

If one is assuming the motive of God can only be deception, there are other scriptural examples where one could attribute deception to the motive of God. How can one decide whether these acts have a motive of deception or follow a plan of opposition and agency?

If evidence is in fact “hidden”, wouldn’t, in fact, the deliberate nature of the “hiding” be the same whether it occurred by a natural disaster, epidemic, famine or whether it was direct concealment?

Judging the “behavior” of God is a tricky business. There are a number of conditions where individuals come to a decision that they can’t worship a God or belong to a church because of a set of circumstances. Assumptions about the motives or qualities of God are often involved. “How can a loving God let this happen?”, etc. The pain the individuals feel is immense and I could not begin to judge the course someone has taken because I have not felt the same pain. Nevertheless, I have to internally reconcile my decision to maintain my own belief in God or my continued activity in the church with awareness of those extremely difficult circumstances. I know individuals who have remained involved in church after losing a child to cancer, but am aware that they have been forever affected in a way that their course back to a testimony has not followed the same route. They have had to let go of some assumptions they had about God and acquire a reworking of their relationship with God.

I’ll let Bookslinger speak for himself on this. I am not seeing his post suggesting God plants counter evidence though. Also, although I don’t believe God hides evidence either, that isn’t the same as planting counter evidence to try faith. One is lack of evidence and the other is evidence against. Those are distinctly different issues. I was responding specifically to your example of a video type of Jesus not walking on water or positive proof that the miracles didn’t happen. That’s evidence against, not lack of evidence.

Also, he seems to be only making a comparision to the alternative of believing God inspired a fraudulent individual. It seems to me he might have been mocking the point of view that God plants counter evidence to try people’s faith. You have no right to read in more without asking him directly to clarify his point, so you shouldn’t be acting so certain yet.

>>> Remember this…

I’ll tell you what, Nick. I’ll give you credit for 1 believing Mormon on the bloggernacle out of hundreds on this *after* you get bookslinger to admit he wasn’t just making a comparision to illustrate his point, if you give me credit for the, oh, 20 or so post-Mormons (out of 20 or so) since your Certainty: Blessing or Curse? post that have proven you should not have only scolded believing Mormons on that front. (As per my comment to your post. Not that I think there is anything wrong with your post, btw. It was excellent. It just needed to be extended a bit broader.)

and…

For God to create “fake” plates for Joseph and the witnesses, and send an angel to tell Joseph falsehoods would be harder for me to swallow than believing God hid the archaelogical evidence of the Nephites, and miraculously changed Lamanite DNA to match that of Asians.

Argh….Okay, for those of you who’ve been following my comments on a couple OTHER threads in this blog, do you see what I mean? Remember this, when you tell me “no” faithful LDS think a certain way, okay folks?

Doug,

I’m not supposed to be posting… or even reading… but couldn’t resist to say thanks.

And yes, it must go both ways.

I once asked myself what level of scientific evidence would be required to “prove” the Book of Mormon non-historical if we assume a limited geography theory and assume the translation fit a modern expanasion/midrash/loose translation theory. Based on these two assumptions, it would be tough but not necessarily impossible to conceive a scientific disproof.

For example, (to use a SF example) if science allowed us at some future date to go back in time (or view back in time) and tag every person in the Americas and verify none of them were from the Book of Mormon, I’d imagine that would do it for me and I’d drop my beliefs in the Book of Mormon. (I also imagined doing the same with Jesus. Tagging every Jesus at the right time period that started a religious movement and then recording His life. Then of course following the flow of time to figure out which Jesus is the one the Bible is written about.)

But obviously, it’s hard to imagine science like this happening in my life time, or maybe ever, which is why I feel it’s difficult to imagine it ever actually becoming a real issue for someone that is believing on faith anyhow.

Ray, your point here is well taken. There has been a huge amount of work on the cultures and civilizations that existed here in the Americas for thousands of years. As these studies have been done in large part by scholars with no bias for or against the BoM, I believe the research is valid. What I was asking for above is just one of these type peer reviewed papers that has found any evidence of Judo-Christian culture in the new world before Columbus. (To most this would be huge news especially for Christians) I fully acknowledge that you don’t know what you don’t know and therefore why I agreed that there still is not a smoking gun against the historicity of the BoM. However, to make the leap of stating that the BoM can never be proved as a 19th century creation makes you as guilty as those who are “certain” that it is. Hence my point, it still could actually be a historical record, I just thing the probability is very low.

Bruce uses this logic many times in reverse and I’m learning from him. That’s a complement to you Bruce, as I think you make an excellent point with it. I’m just saying it goes both ways…

The “archaeology can’t disprove it” argument rests on the fact that the BofM doesn’t tell us where it happened. All we have are educated guesses when dealing with this hemisphere, but we could be off by an entire continent. That’s not trivial. There have been some interesting discoveries about ancient plates, however, that point toward the possibility of what Joseph claimed to have found.

Archaeological and geographic evidence can support the descriptions in 1 Nephi, however, since we are dealing with a known and limited space there. There have been some interesting discoveries in that area – some quite astounding discoveries when you consider that many of them simply could not have been known to Joseph at the time. Also, other stories similar to the Tree of Life add to the evidence for the small plates of Nephi.

The Jaredite record is critical, imo, for a discussion of this topic – and it is literally the oddest part of the entire book in many ways. It makes very little sense at first read to find it there, but, based on most modern discoveries, it seems to have been found and translated specifically to bolster certain findings now. The Jaredites appear to have been from the Asian continent, and they appear to have been the largest and most wide-spread civilization described in the BofM. DNA findings might require a change in assumptions about the Lamanites’ progeny, but they also open up a whole new door to consider the Jaredites’ descendants. In a truly ironic way, the principal ancestors of the American Indians might just be a people described in the BofM – just not the people everyone assumed when it was published. If that people mixed in any way with even only a few Lamanites, which happens all the time in history, then the new wording could be perfectly true, as well. That’s not a stretch – not when you look only at what the book actually says in light of how things are worded in the Bible and other historical records, as well. (the use of hyperbole to make a point and universal claims appearing to apply only to limited localities)

Linguistic evidence is fascinating, and for every “this obviously was Joseph’s language” example there is a “this obviously was not Joseph’s language” example. Those examples tend to make it much harder to disprove, especially when the actual translation method is understood as not “reading” the plates. In that limited sense, inspired fiction might be appropriate – if you mean that he was translating perceived meaning sometimes using his own words but don’t mean he “made it up”.

Finally, no serious scholar outside of Mormonism/anti-Mormonism has undertaken the kind of project that Nibley and groups like FAIR/FARMS have done. Nobody outside that paradigm really has cared enough to do it. Again, the archaeological effort could be useless – lacking any real clue as to exactly where it might have occurred – so why in the world would someone not emotionally attached to Mormonism even try?

As you said, we can agree to disagree. I just think the assumptions of what the book says should be laid aside, and we first should go back and lay out better what the book actually says.