What Is The Minimum Someone Must Believe About The Book Of Mormon?

[altersteve]

Interesting or not, I fail to see how that "proves" an error in the Book of Mormon.

I never said it did.

But there are errors in the Book of Mormon. It was written, compiled, translated, and printed by human beings. Anything written, compiled, translated, or printed by human beings, inspired by God or not, will contain errors. No matter how small, insignificant, or unnoticeable those errors may be, they're still there.

Edited July 18, 2011 by altersteve

[thesometimesaint]

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/insights/?vol=22&num=8&id=317

[bjw]

While I don't think there are errors in the Book of Mormon, I think that it is translated in a way that will make sense to a 19th century audience. For example, the KJV language, quotes from the KJV, using the Westminster Confession as a pattern for Alma 40 (even though the doctrine in the BoM is much different), Gadianton Robbers described as clandestine masonry (which would have made sense to a 19th century American audience), as well as theological issues of the day being settled.

Many writers in the BoM did not know why they were writing, and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost told them what to write so that it would deal with issues that would be useful to the 19th century audience. After all, Isaiah 29 tells us that when the sealed book comes forth that people would learn doctrine. God knew what would be necessary to include for people to learn what they need to in order to gain a testimony of Christ.

[zerinus]

I never said it did.

But there are errors in the Book of Mormon. It was written, compiled, translated, and printed by human beings. Anything written, compiled, translated, or printed by human beings, inspired by God or not, will contain errors. No matter how small, insignificant, or unnoticeable those errors may be, they're still there.

There are no errors in the Book of Mormon as dictated by the Holy Ghost through Joseph Smith. The other kinds of errors I have acknowledged in my post #16. That is not what I am disputing.

I have asked someone here to show me one error in the Book of Mormon that cannot be attributed to the phenomena explained in post #16, and no one has done that. Don't you think it is a bit presumptuous to talk about "errors" in the Book of Mormon when you cannot show a single one?

Edited July 19, 2011 by zerinus

[Scott Gordon]

I have no problems with your general assertion about the Book of Mormon. One can accept a loose translation and be perfectly happy in the Church. But, I do want to caution you about a couple of your specific ideas. Sometimes critics of Mormonism like to come up with lots of ideas and throw them against the wall to see what sticks. It looks like you may have bought into some of those ideas.

I was wondering what the general opinion was on here about what the minimum is that you must believe in order to have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. For instance, what if you believe the following:

1. That JS translated using the stone in the hat method and the stone would bring the stories to JS's memory, and he then put the stories in his own words after studying it out in his mind. This would explain the usage of some redundant language in some verses. This would also account for JS telling the tales about the former inhabitants of this continent to his family while growing up, as well as the dream his father had about the Tree of Life. This could be explained because he was getting the knowledge either by angelic means or revelation.

Fine. I have no problem with this concept.

2. That JS, when writing about the Gadianton Robbers, used some characteristics of clandestine masonry when describing the group, since they had some of the same characteristics of the clandestine masons of the 19th century.

I don't really buy this. Check out this link Gadiantons, Masons, and anti Masonry

3. That JS, as a member of the treasure-digging group in his local area, used the idea of Captian Kidd's curse when writing about the curse God put on the land in the Book of Mormon, since it was a motif he was familiar with and would best fit what he was trying to convey that happened at that point in the history.

Also suspect. You will want to look at these two links.

Captain Kidd's treasure ghost

Larry Morris Review on Captain Kidd

4. That JS exaggerated some numbers of those in the battles for effect, since he didn't actually have the number of how many soldiers were in those battles or killed.

This may be a holdover from ancient ideas of communication. Ancient civilizations were much more poetic in their use of numbers and counting. That is where we get terms like the "Mother of all battles" etc. Think of the term Roman "Centurion." That is a soldier who is with a group of 100. One hundred is a century, hence the name Centurion. The problem is that there was rarely exactly 100 in that group. A term like 10,000 might simply be representing the idea of large number.

In other words, believing in a looser translation for the Book of Mormon seems to free up a person from a lot of the baggage imposed by critics. It also makes more sense that these items are in the BoM this way than coincidence. Could a person still retain a testimony of the Restored Gospel and believe this way? Does it make sense that JS would use external influences whenever they fit the motif he was trying to convey?

You really should be looking at Brant Gardner's article here: A Case for Historicity

Again, I don't mind your concept in general. But, I think more study will lead you to the conclusion that some of the so-called anachronisms simply aren't.

[altersteve]

There are no errors in the Book of Mormon as dictated by the Holy Ghost through Joseph Smith. The other kinds of errors I have acknowledged in my post #16. That is not what I am disputing.

I have asked someone here to show me one error in the Book of Mormon that cannot be attributed to the phenomena explained in post #16, and no one has done that. Don't you think it is a bit presumptuous to talk about "errors" in the Book of Mormon when you cannot show a single one?

I think you and I are talking about the same thing. Like the Mosiah/Benjamin thing for example. Some have speculated that it was an error on Mormon or Moroni's part.

I do agree with you, though. As dictated by the Holy Ghost, there are no major or doctrinal errors.

Edited July 19, 2011 by altersteve

[zerinus]

I think you and I are talking about the same thing. Like the Mosiah/Benjamin thing for example. Some have speculated that it was an error on Mormon or Moroni's part.

Speculation is not the same as truth. So no, I don’t think we are talking about the same thing.

I do agree with you, though. As dictated by the Holy Ghost, there are no major or doctrinal errors.

There are no “doctrinal” errors in the Book of Mormon period, major or minor. And what other kinds of errors were you expecting?

[bjw]

I have no problems with your general assertion about the Book of Mormon. One can accept a loose translation and be perfectly happy in the Church. But, I do want to caution you about a couple of your specific ideas. Sometimes critics of Mormonism like to come up with lots of ideas and throw them against the wall to see what sticks. It looks like you may have bought into some of those ideas.

Fine. I have no problem with this concept.

I don't really buy this. Check out this link Gadiantons, Masons, and anti Masonry

I think that clandestine masonry better fits the Gadianton Robbers than standard masonry. The robbers have all the characteristics of masonry, such as aprons, oaths, modes of recognition (ex. signs and tokens), but they have the added features that were usually applied to clandestine masonry in the 19th century, such as being able to commit murder without getting caught, conspiracies to control government, perversion of standard masonry, etc.

A common belief during the 19th century was that there were two lines that masonry descended from, one from Seth the other from Cain. Seth's line was the pure one that had the correct rituals, whereas Cain's was the idolatrous perversion. Therefore, the "unofficial" or clandestine version was highly frowned upon by the mainstream masons. The Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price both contain traces of this idea, such as in the Book of Moses when Satan makes Cain swear an oath binding himself in a covenant to murder Abel and follow Satan.

This view makes sense also from the standpoint that our temple rituals restore some of what was lost over time in modern freemasonry. I have gone through the Endowment, as well as both the York and Scottish Rite masonic rituals and it makes perfect sense that the goal is to "recover what was lost" and that God has required His truths to be preserved against the tyranny and conspiracies that attempt to corrupt it, as well as idolatry.

The Gadianton Robbers to me represent a perversion of God's truths and would personify what is now considered clandestine. Joseph Smith may not have been stretching things much if this group was honestly perverting the ways of God in a way that would resemble clandestine masonry, but the critics would still argue that it comes from 19th century influences. The articles you linked to leave the possibility open that "secret combination" can refer to more things than clandestine masonry, but then you have to consider the Book of Mormon's description of aprons, oaths, modes of recognition, etc.

Also suspect. You will want to look at these two links.

Captain Kidd's treasure ghost

Larry Morris Review on Captain Kidd

I wasn't referring to the "Moroni as a treaure guardian" aspect, but was referring to the curse that God puts on the land, making their treasures slip through the ground so that they couldn't retrieve them, as was the case with the Captian Kidd legend. This curse resembles what happens to Korah in the Bible in the book of Numbers, but I was thinking JS may have expressed it more in terms with what he was familiar with than with the similar case in the Old Testament. This was one area that gave me doubts about the Book of Mormon until I considered the loose translation idea.

This may be a holdover from ancient ideas of communication. Ancient civilizations were much more poetic in their use of numbers and counting. That is where we get terms like the "Mother of all battles" etc. Think of the term Roman "Centurion." That is a soldier who is with a group of 100. One hundred is a century, hence the name Centurion. The problem is that there was rarely exactly 100 in that group. A term like 10,000 might simply be representing the idea of large number.

This makes sense.

You really should be looking at Brant Gardner's article here: A Case for Historicity

Again, I don't mind your concept in general. But, I think more study will lead you to the conclusion that some of the so-called anachronisms simply aren't.

Thank you for the link. I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon and I think that God intends it to not always be so cut and dry so we can rely on the Spirit to convince us and not always logic. Logical arguments can always sway us different directions but a testimony from the Spirit is more permanent.

[Monster]

Thanks everyone for the responses so far. Reading these posts got me to thinking that maybe God allowed imperfections in the book so that we could get our testimonies from the Spirit and not from any supposed evidence from the text itself. The BoM is unique in that it gives a way we can test its truthfulness in the last chapter of the book, and maybe God intends for that to be the only way to get a testimony. After all, being convinced of something by the Holy Ghost leaves a more lasting impression, whereas evidence from the text itself can be swayed by whatever findings or opinions are being tossed around at the time.

I think that is a Mormon fallacy. Belief by the spirit is not stronger than belief by evidence. That is a concept that is perpetuated to allow believers to trump reason and logic and replace it with emotion. Somewhere along the line religions co-opted the emotional feeling that humans experience in certain situations and claimed it was God speaking. Only anecdotal stories confirm this but just as many or even more experiences contradict it. To have a true belief in the literal truth the BofM it must pass the scrutiny of history, science and reason. I think the jury may still be out on that but it does not look good for the the BofM. That does not mean it does not have some good things to say, just as many books do, but is it a history of Native Americans, probably not.

[Kevin Christensen]

I think that is a Mormon fallacy. Belief by the spirit is not stronger than belief by evidence. That is a concept that is perpetuated to allow believers to trump reason and logic and replace it with emotion. Somewhere along the line religions co-opted the emotional feeling that humans experience in certain situations and claimed it was God speaking. Only anecdotal stories confirm this but just as many or even more experiences contradict it. To have a true belief in the literal truth the BofM it must pass the scrutiny of history, science and reason. I think the jury may still be out on that but it does not look good for the the BofM. That does not mean it does not have some good things to say, just as many books do, but is it a history of Native Americans, probably not.

Good old positivism. And a dash of miss-characterizing the grounds of religious belief as mere emotion. Alma 32, for instance, talks about experiment, minds expanding, and enlightenment. I notice that "it does not look good for the BofM" is a blanket assertion in passive voice. The assertion comes without evidence, and the passive voice conceals and denies responsibility for the element of personal perspective.

From John Clark, for instance, we get this:

To this point, I have shown that the content of the Book of Mormon fits comfortably with Mesoamerican prehistory, both in general patterns and in some extraordinary details. Many things mentioned in the book still have not been verified archaeologically, but this was true just a few years ago for some items just reviewed. The trend over the last 50 years is one of convergence between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican archaeology. Book of Mormon claims remain unaltered since 1830, so all the accommodation has been on the archaeology side. If the book were fiction, this convergence would not be happening. We can expect more evidence in coming years.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=14&num=2&id=376

But to get back to the original premise, what is the minimum. Alma 32 refers to taking even a portion of his word, and applying particle of belief, even no more than a desire to believe. The important thing is not so much the portion, but the way the person subsequently performs the experiment and nourishes the seed. Putting the seed on bare rock, and pounding it with positivistic assumptions, while shouting, "See! I knew it wouldn't grow!" is not a method designed to produce results.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Olavarria]

I think the absolute minimum is that an ancient American named Mormon wrote a history of his people in the early 400's AD. His son Moroni buried the record, which was written on metal plates. Joseph Smith unearthed the record and translated it by the gift and power of God.

[Monster]

Good old positivism. And a dash of miss-characterizing the grounds of religious belief as mere emotion. Alma 32, for instance, talks about experiment, minds expanding, and enlightenment. I notice that "it does not look good for the BofM" is a blanket assertion in passive voice. The assertion comes without evidence, and the passive voice conceals and denies responsibility for the element of personal perspective.

From John Clark, for instance, we get this:

http://maxwellinstit...14&num=2&id=376

But to get back to the original premise, what is the minimum. Alma 32 refers to taking even a portion of his word, and applying particle of belief, even no more than a desire to believe. The important thing is not so much the portion, but the way the person subsequently performs the experiment and nourishes the seed. Putting the seed on bare rock, and pounding it with positivistic assumptions, while shouting, "See! I knew it wouldn't grow!" is not a method designed to produce results.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Would it help if I yelled and and stamped my feet while I made a comment? You make being passive sound evil. Sorry I have a different opinion, I do think most spiritual experiences are emotion. To much evidence in my life to treat it any other way. Alma does not offer any evidence that what he is saying is true. He just tells you to think about it and ponder and you will get an answer. Every religion tells you that to get you to believe their particular slant on things.

[altersteve]

Would it help if I yelled and and stamped my feet while I made a comment? You make being passive sound evil. Sorry I have a different opinion, I do think most spiritual experiences are emotion. To much evidence in my life to treat it any other way. Alma does not offer any evidence that what he is saying is true. He just tells you to think about it and ponder and you will get an answer. Every religion tells you that to get you to believe their particular slant on things.

CFR please. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only religion that I have studied that actually encourages all people to not just pray, but also to think, ponder, meditate, evaluate, research, analyze, test, study, reason, and examine—and to do so seriously, carefully, thoroughly, completely, fairly, intelligently, critically, and logically—to know of the truthfulness about every single one of its doctrines, scriptures, and claims. Every other religion I know of simply expects its adherents to believe it because they'll go to h*** if they don't. But that's not how God works. God wants and expects us to use both our heart and our brain. He gave us both for a reason.

And, of course, your claim that "it does not look good" for the Book of Mormon is ridiculous, and I'm going to need a CFR on that, too. Anyone keeping up on Book of Mormon scholarship (which, funnily enough, no critic of the Church ever does) would know that that is 100% false. Things are actually looking very good for the Book of Mormon.

Next.

Edited July 21, 2011 by altersteve

[Kevin Christensen]

Would it help if I yelled and and stamped my feet while I made a comment?

Nope.

SNIP

Sorry I have a different opinion, I do think most spiritual experiences are emotion. To much evidence in my life to treat it any other way.

My life includes too much evidence that spiritual experience includes expanding of the mind, and enlargement of the understanding to treat any other way. See for instance, my essay on "A Model of Mormon Spiritual Experience", linked in my profile. Joseph Smith talked about how when attuned to the spirit, he could feel "pure intelligence" flowing into him, giving sudden strokes of ideas. There are spiritual experiences that affect the emotions, some that touch emotions, but dismissing it all as emotion does not account for much that I have personally encountered.

Alma does not offer any evidence that what he is saying is true. He just tells you to think about it and ponder and you will get an answer.

Alma 32 explains how to perform an experiment on the word, and how to recognize and interpret the results of such experiments. One of my personal experiments on Alma 32 involved comparing it with Thomas Kuhn important book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I found that both appeal to the same values in assessing different paradigms. In my personal spiritual journey, that moment of intellectual enlightenment was very important, and has been fruitful in my life for twenty years since. (If you are curious, see, for instance, my "Paradigms Crossed" essay in RBBM 7/2.)

Every religion tells you that to get you to believe their particular slant on things.

And that of course, leads directly why I value the intellectual content of Alma 32 so highly. It describes the process by which I can compare and evaluate the different slants. It involves same process by which science operates (as comparison with Kuhn demonstrates to me), appealing to experiment, planting and nourishing, trying things out, evaluating results. Kuhn places a high value on whether a paradigm provides puzzle generation and solution. That is the point of my citing John Clark's review of progress in the puzzles that the Book of Mormon generates, and how solutions have come over time.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[altersteve]

Deleted. My mistake.

Edited July 22, 2011 by altersteve

[Ariarates]

CFR please. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only religion that I have studied that actually encourages all people to not just pray, but also to think, ponder, meditate, evaluate, research, analyze, test, study, reason, and examine—and to do so seriously, carefully, thoroughly, completely, fairly, intelligently, critically, and logically—to know of the truthfulness about every single one of its doctrines, scriptures, and claims. Every other religion I know of simply expects its adherents to believe it because they'll go to h*** if they don't.

I'm not going to answer this CFR for Monster but I recently read something by self-proclaimed "cult-expert" Steven Hassan that might be relevant to this. In a chapter about conversion (Hassan calls it "change") he discusses conversion processes that he says are common to many religious movements, such as denigrating one's previous self (I wrote about that here in response to the OP doing just that), being paired with existing members, inducing spiritual experiences, feeding the convert "formula" rather than "thick pieces of steak", and this one:

"Another common technique is to instruct people to ask God what He wants them to do. Members are exhorted to study and pray in order to know God's will for them. It is always implied that joining the group is God's will".

Hassan was a Moonie so maybe you haven't studied that religion (I haven't either); I disagree, though, with the all-encompassing nature of your statement. It's usually "milk before meat" (or "formula before steak") rather than that investigators are encouraged to analyze every single doctrine - they aren't even taught every single doctrine. In fact, if you analyze Preach My Gospel, you'll find surprisingly little doctrine there at all, and the missionaries are even explicitly forbidden to teach all they know - which often isn't much to begin with when you're 19). Like President Packer said, it's all about behaviour, not about knowledge. That's why, to get back to the OP, it doesn't matter one bit what you believe about the BoM. It's not a question in baptismal interviews, nor in worthiness interviews. You can think and believe all you want, it's what you say and do that matters.

Edited July 22, 2011 by Ariarates