A few months ago, while at USU, I invited the missionaries over to my apartment for a discussion. I told them that I had several non-Mormon roommates who may be interested in learning about Mormonism, so we scheduled a meeting time. As soon as the missionaries arrived for the appointment, my roommates were all (suddenly and suspiciously) unavailable. That left me and another ex-Mormon friend alone with the missionaries.
Missionaries don’t typically meet with former members, because we are not the most receptive audience for the church’s message. But my friend and I were respectful, and we listened to them give their spiel and bear their testimonies. The junior missionary then asked if we’d pray about the Book of Mormon to find out whether it’s true. “Probably not.” was my terse reply.
That sounds closed-minded, I’m sure. Allow me to explain the reasons behind my answer.
First, it seems unfair to pray about the Book of Mormon when I have yet to accord the Qu’ran, the Vedas, or L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics the same diligence. I gave Mormonism 16 years of my life (more than that, really, given the time I devote to it at this blog). Don’t I have an obligation to explore other religious traditions before I retread old ground?
Second, even were it revealed to me that the Book of Mormon is inspired, that may not be compelling enough a fact for me to rejoin the LDS Church. Mormonism is a movement that produced many divergent sects, most of which claim the Book of Mormon, but only one of which is headed by Thomas S. Monson.
So it doesn’t necessarily follow from the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness that Monson is a prophet. Indeed, the Book of Mormon doesn’t require that you believe Joseph Smith to have been a prophet, either. David Whitmer, one of the three Book of Mormon witnesses, held that Smith’s divine commission largely ended with the translation of the gold plates.
I do not consider that the church was any more organized or established in the eyes of God on that day [April 6th, 1830; the date the church was officially founded] than it was previous to that day. I consider that on that day the first error was introduced into the Church of Christ, and that error was Brother Joseph being ordained as “Prophet Seer and Revelator” to the church. … When Christ came into the world, the doctrine of a one-man leader to the church was not taught by him, and we are under his teachings in the written word. In the old covenant in the Book of Mormon is a prophecy that a Choice Seer is to come forth of the seed of Joseph, of the seed of Lehi who is to bring forth the word of the Lord from the sealed records of the Nephites, and convince the Lamanites, and restore them and the house of Israel; his work is not defined any farther than this. (“Address to All Believers in Christ,” 1887)
The third reason I won’t pray about the Book of Mormon is that spiritual experiences are not reliable indicators of truth. For starters, epistemic defenses of spiritual experiences usually employ circular reasoning.
“How does your ‘burning in the bosom’ feeling confirm the Book of Mormon?”
“Because the Book of Mormon (specifically ‘Moroni’s promise’
says so.”
“And why do you trust the Book of Mormon?”
“Because I received a spiritual witness that it’s true.”
(A Mormon friend of mine contends that Moroni’s promise is not actually circular. You’ll find his argument in the comments here.)
Spiritual experiences are ubiquitous—they have occurred in every society in history. Many religions are mutually exclusive, so they cannot all be true. Mormonism and Islam, for example, have radically different conceptions of god. And yet, Mormons and Muslims both enjoy spiritual experiences that they understand to affirm their respective faiths. More problematic still, some claim god told them that Mormonism is false.
I have a hard time believing that a god who cares what we believe would permit the degree of religious confusion that exists in the world.
I know firsthand how unreliable spiritual experiences can be. I have always been prone to spiritual experiences, and I continue to occasionally have them as an atheist. Just last summer, I had two conflicting spiritual experiences. Listening to and playfully singing (for nostalgia’s sake) the LDS hymn “Praise to the Man,” I felt what I would have once identified as the Spirit. Then later that summer, while musing on the enigmatic Trinity, I received the overwhelming and paralyzing impression (almost audible) that the Trinity was a true doctrine, and the LDS notion of the Godhead was incorrect. This goes to show how fickle my spiritual intuition is, and that’s partly why I will never again consult it.
Where do spiritual experiences come from if not god? The cognitive sciences have provided wholly naturalistic explanations for many of these phenomena. My strongest spiritual experiences appear to have just been episodes of sleep paralysis, which runs in my family. Canadian neuroscientist Dr. Michael Persinger has even induced spiritual experiences in volunteers by electromagnetically stimulating their frontal lobes.
There are also considerable psychological pressures that likely contribute to Mormons’ spiritual experiences. The Book of Mormon states that if you pray with a “sincere heart” and “real intent,” you’ll receive a spiritual witness of said book. The implication is that if you didn’t receive a spiritual witness, you didn’t pray sincerely or intently. Nobody wants to be accused of that. So you keep praying, priming yourself psychologically to receive a witness. And if you are susceptible to spiritual feelings and want a spiritual affirmation of the Book of Mormon (or any holy book, for that matter), you’ll get it.
I’m willing to entertain the possibility, however remote, that the Book of Mormon is true. But to be convinced of the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness, I’ll need more than feelings. I’ll need evidence.
For more about the LDS paradigm for spiritual experiences, check out this article by Mormon Think.
My entire life in the church I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me because I never got answers to prayer. I would pray and pray and pray, but never feel any differently, and not once did I get something I would have called an “answer” to my questions. I would sometimes have “spiritual” experiences (almost always when emotionally vulnerable or sleep deprived), but I never felt that I knew whether the church was really true, whether the Book of Mormon was truly inspired, or that there was even a god. I got especially worked up about it on my mission because I knew that I didn’t really know if I believed the stuff I was teaching.
I believed (because that’s what I’d been taught) that everyone else was having amazing experiences and getting clear answers to their prayers – so it must just be me. It never occurred to me until I left the church that my experience was totally normal, and that the vague, random emotional experiences were just about all anyone ever felt. It turns out that my threshold for what I would consider an actual answer or inspiration was just a lot higher than that of most others – believing Mormons might say impossibly high.
The second that I realised that the spiritual experiences I had were more or less the same as those experienced by people in or out of any religion around the world was the moment I became an atheist.
3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
These scriptures, especially verse four, are commonly misunderstood by the missionaries that present the challenge to “find out if the Book of Mormon is true”. The problem with the missionaries is that they don’t understand what they are asking people to do. It is my belief that missionaries should apply the scientific method:
1. Make an Observation
2. Ask a question
3. Form a hypothesis
4. Conduct an experiment
5. Analyze data
6. Accept/reject hypothesis (if hypothesis is rejected, then formulate a new hypothesis and start over from newly acquired observations.
7. Make a conclusion
Moroni’s promise follows the scientific method step by step. Moroni knows this which is why he concludes his statement by saying that through this method, “…ye may know the truth of all things.” This isn’t just a religious promise but a promise for all truths. However, the implementation of this promise is where the missionaries err.
One should never ask if the Book of mormon is true. This is poor science and is what makes the process “circular” as you state it, Jon. Step number 4 in the scientific process is conduct an experiment, but ask any scientist and they will tell you that you are supposed to try to prove that your hypothesis is WRONG. It is an inherent human flaw to believe that we are right all the time. Often times we will simply look the other way when we are addressed with opposing information. We consciously or subconsciously censor the information we receive. Mormons and all religious folk are notorious for this self-censorship. But scientists are as well. Half a century ago, there was a scientist named Michael Polanyi. Polanyi observed some properties of chemical absorption that were not accepted by the scientific community. Polanyi couldn’t even teach his own theories in his classroom at Oxford University. Years later at UC-Berkeley, a group of scientists came to the same conclusion as Polanyi. The scientific community once again dismissed the conclusion until the evidence was overwhelming. After being accepted, Polanyi was asked to comment on his ostracism from the scientific community. He said that science was a belief system like any other, and his theory was simply outside of that belief system. More can be read about his story here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23498.htm .
The genius of Moroni’s promise is in verse four: “I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are NOT true.” We are supposed to challenge the validity of the Book of Mormon, just like any other scientific experiment. If we can reject our hypothesis, then we use the newly acquired information to create another hypothesis and have another go at it.
That being said, to not take Moroni up on his promise is to be intentionally ignorant. There are arguments between spiritual evidence and temporal evidence, but in my mind they are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if the Koran hasn’t been examined. It doesn’t matter if every religious text isn’t examined. As Polanyi has shown, there is a hypocritical double standard in accepting scientific truths and not accepting religious ones because both are part of a belief system. Einstein told us that we should always go back to the foundational building blocks and challenge them so that, “we may not be unconsciously ruled by them.” That is a hefty statement considering the guy proved the “Law” of Gravity wrong and had it reduced to a theory with his own Theory of Relativity. However, I’m sure that the people reading this post have always accepted the idea of gravity. Hell, even Stephen Hawking still erroneously calls it the Law of Gravity. So in my opinion Jon, until you take up Moroni’s promise and follow it verbatim, everything you do here is in vain (vain meaning self-indulgent and from the Hebrew root for “vapor” expressing the worthlessness of it).
That being said, it is important to note that the Book of Mormon isn’t a perfect book. Nobody ever said it was. Joseph Smith said it was the “most correct book”. And you’re right, finding the truth in the Book of Mormon does not necessitate that the truth lies within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Moroni doesn’t even say that. We know that the Book of Mormon wasn’t written by God, it was written by men. Men that under different circumstances preached different truths, or relative truths that would benefit society at the time (i.e. The Book of Mormon is a patriarchial blessing for the last dispensation. Alma is all about wars, rumors or wars, and sorcery, which is Hebrew for drug use. The book of Alma seems to condone violence and war in the name of freedom, which makes sense if it is parallel to the time between 1860 and 1960 where we had opium (sorcery) wars, wars to end slavery, wars against facism, and excessive drug use. But if look near the time when Christ visits the Americas war has become abhorrible and political corruption has overwhelmed the righteous so that the Nephites don’t even know that they are committing horrendous acts (Helaman 6:37). Mormons should take heed to the Book of Helaman because according to James E. Faust, that’s where we are today.) Moroni says that, “He [Christ] will manifest the truth of it unto you…” He doesn’t say that you will know the book is true or that the LDS faith is true, he says that the truth within the book will be manifest unto you.
The Book of Mormon is a foundational tool that must be constantly challenged. It must be read and re-read so that as Einstein says “we won’t be unconsciously ruled” by it. And the Church tells us to continually read the book and use Moroni’s promise. Finding the truth once, even if one could actually find absolute truth will never suffice because based on new experiences, our perceptions of truth change. Moroni simply gives us a scientific method that will put us on the right path if it is implemented correctly. If we do not use Moroni’s promise to find the truth of all things, we will be lost forever…
Thanks for another thoughtful contribution to the blog, Landon. I’ll try to respond a bit later when I get a moment. I also need some time to digest your arguments.
“Moroni’s promise follows the scientific method step by step. Moroni knows this which is why he concludes his statement by saying that through this method, “…ye may know the truth of all things.” This isn’t just a religious promise but a promise for all truths.”
It appears to follow the scientific method, but it in fact does not. The problem is that none of the “evidence” collected can be verified by outside parties, it cannot be reliably duplicated, and that same “evidence” is often self-contradictory.
Science may be a belief system, but it is one based on objectively verifiable evidence by many parties over a period of time. It is normal for a new scientific theory to not gain traction until there is a great deal of evidence behind it. You need enough evidence to show why the prevailing theory is flawed. If it were easy for the scientific community to adopt a new hypothesis based on only a little evidence we’d have a big problem. Requiring overwhelming evidence for claims is good and normal.
So if you read the Book of Mormon and conclude that it’s not true, what you’re saying is that you have to read it again, and again, and again until you conclude that it actually IS true, right? This is also nothing like the scientific method. You’ve predetermined the “right” outcome. You’re not open to the possibility that the BoM is a fabrication and a rather poorly written, boring novel. What reading the Book of Mormon over and over and over does isn’t reveal new truths, it reinforces brainwashing and lessens critical thinking skills – just like having people repeat over and over every month,”I know the Book of Mormon is true… I know Joseph Smith is a prophet… I know…” That’s reinforcing the in-group mentality and standards of community.
As Jon said, you cannot discern what is and is not true or real through prayer or other spiritual experiences, your intuitions, your feelings, or your gut. That has been incontrovertibly proven (through the scientific method). None of those methods can have a better than chance rate at returning a true result – which means that it’s just a crapshoot. This is as much of a fact as gravity. The same method and result which is described in Moroni is used in religions (and cults and MLM schemes) around the world to testify of THEIR truthfulness. Anyone can and will get an “answer from god” telling them that what they want to believe is true really is true. That’s the way the human brain works. It can be Mormonism, Scientology, the Moonies, Amway, Catholicism, Islam, or Libertarianism – it doesn’t matter.
“One should never ask if the Book of mormon is true. This is poor science and is what makes the process “circular” as you state it, Jon. Step number 4 in the scientific process is conduct an experiment, but ask any scientist and they will tell you that you are supposed to try to prove that your hypothesis is WRONG.”
Your statement is incorrect. When conducting the ‘scientific method’ you outlined you are required to have 2 hypotheses for a proper statistical analysis, and the 1 hypothesis you gave is incorrect. I’ll outline both below:
Alternate Hypothesis: “Personal spiritual experiences provide evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_hypothesis
Null Hypothesis: “Personal spiritual experiences are unrelated to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
I forgot to finish my previous post.
In science, scientists are required to try to prove their hypothesis incorrect. The Book of Mormon could be a hypothesis, however you are skipping an important step, you have to verify you methods.
What I outlined in the example is the experiment that would determine if spiritual experiences could be used as evidence.
I’ve tried to simplify this a bit to try and explain it, so for more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing for starters.
http://stattrek.com/Lesson5/HypothesisTesting.aspx
This is a better explanation than the Wikipedia article I posted above.
the real reason you won’t pray about the Book of Mormon is because you’re afraid you’d learn the Truth then, and be accountable. But you’d rather sin.
let’s sin
together.
Jon, as a faithful Mormon, thanks for writing a thoughtful and respectful outline of the reasons you don’t consider Mormon spiritual experiences valid.
I don’t have too much to add at the moment, but thought credit ought to at least be given for behaving well in an arena (the online world in general) were so much of the stuff written about the LDS Church is not respectful, and at times, downright hateful.
That’s the thing Seth, the LDS church doesn’t deserve to be respected. No institution inherently deserves respect – it has to earn it, and that’s something the LDS church and its hierarchy has utterly failed to do. Respecting bad behaviour and even worse beliefs simply because they’re done by an institutional religion is idiotic.
When discussing Mormonism with Mormons, I try to be polite and civil–not because I respect their beliefs per se, but because I respect them as human beings. So don’t confuse my politeness and civility as respect for the LDS Church and its teachings.
Jon, I didn’t confuse your post for anything other than what it was.
I’m was just happy to read someone outline their disagreements respectfully. It’s rare enough in this area of the Internet to deserve comment.
Thank you, Seth. And my last comment was more in response to Craig.
Oh, I know Jon.
Evidence is as unlikely as truth in this sphere of discussion. A sure-fire avenue towards a spiritual experience is some good old-fashioned LSD.
Craig- Moroni’s promise follows the premise that one by reading the book in a controlled experiment will believe that it is true. Just as the scientific method suggests you have to make observations that would humor a hypothesis. By going in as a skeptic without an open mind, or from an athiest and not agnostic point of view, no scientific evidence, temporal or spiritual will be valid. You just confirm your own hypothesis which is as flawed as the logic in asking if the Book of Mormon is true over and over again. That being said, he charges us to challenge that notion, not read it and re-read it if we believe after our first experiment that it is false.
Second, obviously as you have stated from your first post, you confuse emotion with spirituality or at least you have in the past. Jon mentioned psychologists that can send magnetics impressions through the frontal lobe process to imitate a spiritual witness. But the flaw in that logic is that the scientist assumes he knows what a spiritual witness feels like and that the subjects of his experiments do as well. You make the assumption that spiritual experiences happen all the time in your statement, “If it were easy for the scientific community to adopt a new hypothesis based on only a little evidence we’d have a big problem.” The fact is that even the Bible addresses very few spiritual experiences that yield the truth. Instances such as the converstion of St. Paul rarely happen. However, it is interesting to note that Saul was an enemy of Jesus’ church, he had his hand in the murder of Christians as a member of the Sanhedrin. So why on Earth would he be called as an apostle of the church? Peter throughout the New Testament proved to be a very reactionary person and very distrusting of those around him. Yet it is obvious that Peter trusts that Paul has been truly converted, but not only converted, he has actually been called as an apostle, or a special witness to the divinity of Jesus. How do you explain this inconsistency in the character of Peter? How do you explain a Roman citizen suddenly having a change of heart which forfeits all of his temporal wealth and stature? How can you explain this when these same church leaders were preaching about wolves in sheep’s clothing? There had to be a spiritual witness given to both of them in completely different locations. So to say that a spiritual witness can’t be confirmed by objective parties (or even opposing parties) doesn’t make any sense in this example.
For strictly argumentative purposes, I would ask you to examine something as “concrete” as mathematics. In most instances, math yields one answer, these answers are tangible. Far into calculus you can use integration to find the area under a curve. You can physically and with calculus find out how much volume is in a milk bottle, you can also find out how long it will take to empty that bottle with a restricting opening and neck. But there is a part of math that you cannot show physically, conveniently called “imaginary” numbers. Imaginary numbers have essential concrete applications in a variety of sciences and related areas such as signal processing, control theory, electromagnetism, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, cartography, and vibration analysis. But I challenge you now to show me an imaginary number. Show me the tangibility of the substance. Imaginary numbers are expressed in another dimension that cannot be recognized by the five senses. By assuming that a spiritual witness is not evidence, you have condemned us to a level of thinking no greater than ninth-grade alebra 2. I’m not here to say that every person claiming they have received a spiritual witness has actually received one. I would be the first to argue that claim. However, I will make the claim that there are people on this Earth that have more experience in judging what a spiritual experience is and what it is not. For my part, I have to follow the words of Christ in that “by their fruits, ye shall know them.” I have been put on a path or have been given a direction and until that is disproven with a proper scientific method and not by those with presupposed ideas and agendas, I’m gonna go by that. And hopefully with the spiritual witnesses and the tangible “fruits” I’ll be going in the right direction.
Being a sceptic means one has an open mind, if presented with enough convincing evidence which is repeatable by neutral 3rd parties, I’m willing to believe just about anything. What you’re calling an open-mind is actually called being biased in favour of a particular outcome. Science is fundamentally based on scepticism. Science doesn’t work if scientists aren’t sceptical about everything.
“Second, obviously as you have stated from your first post, you confuse emotion with spirituality or at least you have in the past.”
You’re assuming they’re two disparate things. There’s no evidence they are. You’re proving my point in suggesting that I don’t really know what a “real” spiritual experience is. They’re incredibly subjective, and vary widely from person to person. If you interview 10 different people about what they experience during what they call a “spiritual experience”, you’d likely get 10 different answers. This is part of why they are not indicators of truth. The fact that there is such a diversity of religious belief, even just within the narrow scope of Mormonism, shows how capricious and subjective personal beliefs are when they’re based on spiritual experiences.
Oh, and trying to contradict my logic with examples from the Bible isn’t a very good tactic. You’re presupposing not only that the Bible stories actually happened, but that they have any bearing on the present. That’s a lot of fact-free assuming.
“How do you explain a Roman citizen suddenly having a change of heart…”
The same way you explain how a Cinderella’s pumpkin turned into a coach and then back again.
“However, I will make the claim that there are people on this Earth that have more experience in judging what a spiritual experience is and what it is not. ”
That’s a common logical fallacy called “argument from authority”. Don’t do it.
“By assuming that a spiritual witness is not evidence, you have condemned us to a level of thinking no greater than ninth-grade alebra 2.”
No. That’s hilarious, but just, no. I’m no mathematician but there is just such a huge, ginormous difference between imaginary numbers in mathematics (which have, as you admit, real-world, scientifically proven applications), and the premise that someone feeling a subjective spiritual experience can in any way be an accurate indicator of what is and is not cosmically true.
The basis of the problem is this: I assume that you’re simply describing the way you got your testimony. You think that because it’s true for you, it ought also to be true for others. That premise is flawed.
Another problem is that we cannot test your theory. You say you experienced something and that experience told you the Book of Mormon was true. How do we know you’re telling the truth? How do we know you didn’t just have a relatively common psychosomatic reaction brought on through stress because you’re raised in a culture where it’s not acceptable to not believe in the Book of Mormon? There’s no way to duplicate the experiment because it’s fundamentally based on your subjective experiences. That’s the opposite of what science is and does. I have no illusions that I’ll dissuade you from your belief. I’m simply saying that spiritual experiences cannot indicate truth.
The only presupposed idea I have is that the only way humans have found of discovering truth is through scientifically rigorous testing and multiple verification of the results by neutral 3rd parties. That idea is based on millennia of accumulated knowledge and experiences of our species.
Lastly, I have done as you suggest Moroni wants and challenged the notion that the Book of Mormon is true. Guess what I came up with? It’s totally and completely false. I also arrived at that conclusion after years of believing the exact opposite. In fact, it was only because I examined and re-examined it that I found out it was false.
The realm of science is only concerned with falsifiable premises. It is concerned with hypothesis that can be proven false in the external world.
Subjective ‘feelings, spiritual experiences, and thoughts’ are [currently, in my understanding] in the internal world, and thus unfalsifiable by external scientific methods.
LP: “But the flaw in that logic is that the scientist assumes he knows what a spiritual witness feels like and that the subjects of his experiments do as well.”
It’s taught in church that everyone can utilize Moroni’s promise to find the truth for themselves through a spiritual experience.
Is the experience a “burning in the bosom”? if so, what exactly is that?
If the public can not agree on what a “spiritual experience” is, then there is no use in arguing about who had one or not. The reason that this is crucial is that you claim Moroni’s promise is a promise for all truths. How is the truth delivered? By internal feelings?
Moroni’s promise can only be considered scientific if it is falsifiable and externally falsifiable.
Consider this: Consider that Moroni’s premise is false. You pray about it, and in order to know if something is true or false, you need evidence, a feeling or something right? The problem is that Moroni claims the evidence will be given from God. If God isn’t there to answer, then no data will be sent to your brain. There will be NO falsifiable data to work with.
So since we are not dealing with any data or falsifiable evidence, Moroni’s promise is actually the antithesis of science.
Imaginary evidence is only convincing in Imaginary Land.
Arguing that unfalsifiable, subjective emotional experiences are really the scientific method was certainly novel.
Thanks for sending a little traffic my way!
Mr. Adams,
Just a few thoughts:
“the Book of Mormon doesn’t require that you believe Joseph Smith to have been a prophet, either.”
Actually, the Book of Mormon, in Second Nephi, Chapter 3, requires that you consider Joseph Smith a prophet.
“So it doesn’t necessarily follow from the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness that Monson is a prophet.”
Book of Mormon is true -> Joseph Smith was a prophet -> the 12 he ordained before his death possessed the same authority -> this line has continued to present day.
“Many religions are mutually exclusive, so they cannot all be true.”
I agree. So did J.S.
The fact that “spiritual experiences” are ubiquitous suggests that God loves and wants to speak to all of His children regardless of their “religious” affiliation, or lack thereof.
That one’s experience or interpretation contradicts another’s experience or interpretation does not indicate that both are unreliable.
“I have a hard time believing that a god who cares what we believe would permit the degree of religious confusion that exists in the world.”
All He requires is that one ask and He’ll clarify the issue. The “degree of religious confusion that exists in the world” is unsurprising, albeit sad, when you consider, as an example, that you’ve devoted an entire post detailing multiple reasons why you won’t even ask.
“The cognitive sciences have provided wholly naturalistic explanations for many of these phenomena.”
As all spirit is matter, I would expect “naturalistic” explanations for spiritual experiences. Consider the grand flaw in your reasoning, as illustrated by the following:
1. God institutes Law A.
2. According to Law A, whenever B happens, C will occur.
3. Bill, unaware of B, witnesses C and exclaims that it is caused by God.
4. Tom, unaware that God instituted Law A, discovers that C occurs whenever B happens and names it, coincidentally, Law A.
5. Tom tells Bill that he was wrong; that B, not God, caused C.
Hopefully you can see that a scientific explanation of a miracle or a religious phenomena does not discredit the existence of the maker of the scientific law discovered. All that has occurred is that man now understands, at least partially, the medium through which God’s will manifests.
“I’ll need more than feelings. I’ll need evidence.”
First, feelings are evidence. Second, most (if not all) evidentiary sources suffer from the same weaknesses of contradiction and alternate explanations.
As always, thanks for your time.
“Actually, the Book of Mormon, in Second Nephi, Chapter 3, requires that you consider Joseph Smith a prophet.”
Where? Of course the BoM commits you to the view that Smith through revelation translated the BoM, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility of Smith having been a fallen prophet after his divine commission to translate the BoM. And if that BoM prophesy does mean that Smith had to be a prophet all his days, then that arguably poses a problem for Smith’s free agency.
“Book of Mormon is true -> Joseph Smith was a prophet -> the 12 he ordained before his death possessed the same authority -> this line has continued to present day.”
That assumes that Brigham Young inherited Smith’s church, but that’s certainly contentious given the succession crisis after Smith’s death. And nothing requires that the church always maintain the same form–the 12 apostles, etc.–especially since Mormonism teaches progressive revelation.
“The fact that “spiritual experiences” are ubiquitous suggests that God loves and wants to speak to all of His children regardless of their “religious” affiliation, or lack thereof.”
Yeah, I’ve never discounted that possibility to my knowledge.
“That one’s experience or interpretation contradicts another’s experience or interpretation does not indicate that both are unreliable.”
I didn’t argue otherwise. I merely argued that it’s difficult to determine whose spiritual experience is ‘truest’.
“Hopefully you can see that a scientific explanation of a miracle or a religious phenomena does not discredit the existence of the maker of the scientific law discovered.”
My argument against spiritual experiences has never been that reductionist. I’m just applying Ockham’s Razor, suggesting that where natural explanations are available, supernatural ones are superfluous (though still possible).
“First, feelings are evidence.”
Do explain.
Thanks.
Verse 8 and Verse 24. And there is no issue with free agency. That one can predict how you will behave does not remove your ability to choose how to behave.
Brigham Young did NOT inherit Smith’s church because Smith had no church. It was/is Christ’s church. Christ gave authority to Smith and the 12. When Smith died, and the 12, in accordance with Christ’s will, exercised that authority to appoint Young, that line continued. And I agree that God could reveal a different church order, but he hasn’t.
Its quite easy to determine which is truest. You ask the source. You have three friends, Bill, Sarah, and Joan. Bill tells you Joan said to do X. Sarah tells you Joan said not to do X. You would go directly to Joan and ask her.
Ockham’s Razor does not require that God not be the source of “natural” laws. (Sorry for the double negative.)
Lastly, as an example, my feeling very anxious can be evidence that I took a dose of Ignatia. Since feelings are generally precipitate from some event, the existence of the feeling is evidence of the event.