Response To Dr. Michael Coe

[mfbukowski]

I'm not disputing that. However, anyone claiming the Book of Mormon wasn't historical would likely turn plenty of heads and raise a few eyebrows in just about any (U.S.) Mormon congregation.

Of course, Shawn McCraney has alleged that this is happening among the General Authorities of the Church too.

You'd have to be an idiot, in my most humble opinion, to say it wasn't "historical"- the only question is what that word "historical" means, and in what sense it is "historical".

I personally believe that it originated with ancient peoples who came to this continent and was translated by inspiration - but I don't think that such a view is necessary for it to be "scriptural".

Edited August 16, 2011 by mfbukowski

[Storm Rider]

Really? cuz I don't feel like I'm doing fine. I've tried to come into this forum with a semi open mind, willing to back off positions and conclusions I had reach over a decade of study and research. What I've found is a forum filled with many individuals who seem more interested in winning an argument than in building a bridge of understanding. Posters more interested in defendingindefensiblee positions than seeking an honest persuite of the truth. I've yet to find a single poster(am Iexaggeratingg?) who has backed away from a position or given an inch...while I have backed off many of mypreconceivedd positions.

Now granted on many positions I was wrong...and needed to change my position...but the dogmatistic nature of many posters here...is untenable for me. I just don't see the point of continuing the discussion...if I am always wrong and you (you know who you are) are always right. Whats the point.

I know how invested everyone here is in the church...heck I was once where you are...now look at me...but I just need to find a more pragmatic forum...this place is driving me crazy.

Expectations, as Gandhi said, is everything. Craig, if you are using this forum to "find the truth", I think the expectation will never be met. At the end of the day, this is a forum that is most often discussed in black and white; there is truth and there is falsehood. (yes, we do cover a lot in between, but convictions are clear) If you are looking for others to confirm your convictions or your positions, this is not the best forum. More than anything I think it might help you if you go back to the basics: Does God exist? What is faith, hope, and charity? Are these things worth having in your life? Forcing faith into a cerebral undertaking is not faith; it is its antithesis.

One book you might find worthwhile is John Paul II's "Fides et Ratio". He does a very good job of explain how faith and reason are eternal companions. I am sure there are many other books written by LDS that would be also of help, but this is the one that came first to mind. I would be curious to hear your thoughts should you read it.

Finally, it is best to never expect to understand all things and to "prove" the Book of Mormon, the Bible, or anything else. For those areas where you find problems, keep them, be patient, and let our Father continue to guide you.

[Ariarates]

This thread has taken an interesting turn. I came to the conclusion that the BoM is not actual history about a year and a half ago. Since then I have been inclined to take mfbukowski's view that historicity isn't necessary for the BoM to be scriptural. But right at the beginning of this journey, my wife asked: but if the BoM is not actual history, then Mormoni didn't exist and the entire foundational story of the church cannot be real. If so, what else is not real?

So this is what I'm chewing on at the moment, and it's very tough to swallow. People who go down this path are often derided for a lack of faith and trusting in the arm of the flesh and not praying enough and what not, but whatever you lack in faith, you must make up in courage because man, this is hard.

[Ariarates]

double

Edited August 17, 2011 by Ariarates

[Storm Rider]

This thread has taken an interesting turn. I came to the conclusion that the BoM is not actual history about a year and a half ago. Since then I have been inclined to take mfbukowski's view that historicity isn't necessary for the BoM to be scriptural. But right at the beginning of this journey, my wife asked: but if the BoM is not actual history, then Mormoni didn't exist and the entire foundational story of the church cannot be real. If so, what else is not real?

So this is what I'm chewing on at the moment, and it's very tough to swallow. People who go down this path are often derided for a lack of faith and trusting in the arm of the flesh and not praying enough and what not, but whatever you lack in faith, you must make up in courage because man, this is hard.

I am much more concerned about those who deride others for a lack of faith, than those who find a spiritual home in another Christian church. For some it is absolutely necessary to understand and find proof for everything in the Book of Mormon, for others, it is much more important to have a spiritual witness of truth; while still others need most the warmth of a people that embrace them completely. We all have different needs and desires. Those who seek to understand God in all that he does are very unhappy people and seldom are capable of being anything but an atheist. For those who want to find evidence for all that is in the Book of Mormon are unhappy, because so much does not exist. Some can be patient while others can't. Others conclude there will never be a more indepth understanding than what is known today; while others can be patient and wait for a science and archeology to unfold more fully.

Is it difficult to walk by faith? Yes, it is, but only at the beginning. Once one fully surrenders to God, there are no more worries because we place all of those things in his hands. Prayer is not nor has ever been similar to rubbing the genie's bottle, as much as most of us would prefer that process. Prayer is much more personal and it is more listening than asking. Becoming like Christ is not an event, but is a process that is only possible by taking one step at a time. Don't worry about the end game, just try to take one step at a time. I would also offer one more piece of advice, listen to the Sacrament prayers. All that is necessary is that we be willing to take upon ourselves the name of Christ. It is that willingness that is of vital importance. If we are no longer willing, then in truth all is lost an we have willingly walked away from Christ.

Yes, faith demands courage. You are those who will hear, "well done thou good and faithful servant".

[Daniel Peterson]

As noted on another thread, but worth mentioning here, Mark Wright will be doing a fireside about archaeology and the Book of Mormon in Southern California this coming Sunday at 7pm (Long Beach East Stake Center, 4142 Cerritos Ave, Los Alamitos, CA 90720). While it wasn't and isn't intended as a reply to Mike Coe, many of the issues Coe raises will be addressed in the presentation.

Long Beach East Stake Center

4142 Cerritos Ave

Los Alamitos, CA 90720

[Craig Paxton]

Craig,

I don't really know what you mean by indefensible position. I have had my assumptions changed several times over the years as I understood more about what the Book of Mormon actually says about itself as opposed to what maybe a majority of people believe or have believed. I don't hang my faith on anything that has not been found yet or any discrepancies between what the Book of Mormon says and what we think we know.

An indefensible position would one that is...well...indefensible. For example in a recent post of mine regarding death before the fall...there were posters defending the position that there was NO death before Adam...I find this an indefensible position. With respect to the Book of Mormon, the book cannot be taken as a literal history of a real people...it must be nuanced and reinterpreted in order to make it believable. A horse must become a t tapir; a chariot must become a travois. In other words the Book of Mormon cannot be taken at it word...YET...there is the counter argument that the Book of Mormon MUST be taken at its word by NOT reading into it assumptions that have been made by generations of prophets, GA's and members.

The first part is my faith, and I always put it first. The spiritual experiences that I have had are as real to me as the earth beneath my feet.

I remember all of the things that were part of early Book of Mormon criticisms but have been discovered, such as the use of cement. Also, the internal evidences of the Book of Mormon itself. I like to read the articles put out by the Maxwell Institute, but they are not the bread and butter of my faith.

At what point do the scales of improbability tip to the point that faith is no longer possible. Sure I could continue to grasp at straws...perhaps small barley straws...and cling to a faith that seems more and more untenable due to lack of supporting evidence. At what point does one add it all up and just conclude that it’s not real and move on? For me and me alone it is so obvious that we've all been duped. When does one walk away from a life time of faith in Atlantis or the Middle Earth civilizations?

If you are seeking absolute proof, or even convincing evidence for the Book of Mormon, you will not find it. Nor will you find absolute proof for the divinity of Jesus. There are things that you are going to have to take on faith. That is where many people lose it because they see their reason overcoming their faith.

Not absolute proof...but something would be nice. I look at Rome or Carthage and know that they existed. I also know that there were both Mayan, Aztec and Olmec civilizations in the Americas, to name just a few. This is a firm knowledge. I cannot express the same knowledge in a Nephite or Lamanite civilization...based on evidence...they never existed, at least in the real world. How do we hold belief and faith in civilizations that left no footprint of their existence? Where are the museums full of Nephite and Lamanite artifacts? They don't exist because the civilizations never existed.

As for unbiased, objective people, there are none. As for pragmatic boards, I don't know of any. But maybe you can try the ex-Mormon board to see a different type of not giving an inch.

Glenn

I agree I'm asking a lot...and I believe that if the setting was different than this board...there would be many who would express their own doubts about the reality of these missing civilizations. As far as the ex-Mormon sights...I'm not looking for confirmation of my personal beliefs...but a place to test what I have concluded to be true. For the most part the members of this board have been patient and respectful to me and have been very welcoming. But for me it’s like I've left the world of reality where facts and reason don't matter...where answers are known before questions are asked.

I accept that it could be me who is completely bonkers and crazy...but don't the crazy always think they are the sane ones while their foils the crazy town people?

[Craig Paxton]

I don't doubt your sincerity. But your experience is so fundamentally dissimilar to mine that it leaves me scratching my head.

I've tried to come up with a coherent, comprehensive counterexplanation for the claims of Mormonism, and I just can't do it.

Odd.

While I'm not about to place myself on the same level as you Dr. Peterson, I do find it interesting that I've tried to come up with a coherent, comprehensive counterexplanation for the claims of Mormonism, and find that not only am I able to do so...but it is the only way to make sense of the world in which we live. In fact...the world is a very differnt place and nothing works IF the claims of Mormonism are reality based.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

While I'm not about to place myself on the same level as you Dr. Peterson, I do find it interesting that I've tried to come up with a coherent, comprehensive counterexplanation for the claims of Mormonism, and find that not only am I able to do so...but it is the only way to make sense of the world in which we live. In fact...the world is a very differnt place and nothing works IF the claims of Mormonism are reality based.

I would love for you to lay this "counter explanation" out. Lets see how your theory jibs. So many people before you have tried and failed to come up with a theory.

[Craig Paxton]

I would love for you to lay this "counter explanation" out. Lets see how your theory jibs. So many people before you have tried and failed to come up with a theory.

Simply Put: The world works in natural ways not supernatural ways. Even those events claimed to be supernatural occured naturally. No magic, no priesthood, nada, nothing, period.

Mola Ram Suda Ram, if it works for you...great stick with it...part of me envies your ability to do so...my life would be so much easier were I able to do so but to me Mormonism does not work in a world where varifiable evidence exists. It only exists in an alternative Universe where facts don't matter, one of feelings, nuance, faith in the unseen, civilizations that leave no footprint, invisable beings unseen by observers and claimed magical powers unavilable to the uninitated, a world where both a univeral and a regional flood co-exist, a world where death and no death prior to Adam co-exist, a world were horses are tapirs, chariots are travois, Cumorah exists in two places, where prophets words don't matter and do matter at the same exact time.

I am NOT saying that Mormonism is not all that it claims to be, I could be raving mad and completely crazy and Mormonism could be completely reality based. But I can't see it And for me, I can not make it believable... At times I feel I've caught the Tolly to Crazy Town when I read the posts in this forum.

I'm just tired of trying to bend my brain into a pretzel to accomodate unbelievable Mormon claims...to you that can...congratulations...

So that I don't come off as totally highjacking John's OP...Dr Coe talks reality...Mormonism talks another language...one I can't seem to translate.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Craig Paxton

[mfbukowski]

This thread has taken an interesting turn. I came to the conclusion that the BoM is not actual history about a year and a half ago. Since then I have been inclined to take mfbukowski's view that historicity isn't necessary for the BoM to be scriptural. But right at the beginning of this journey, my wife asked: but if the BoM is not actual history, then Mormoni didn't exist and the entire foundational story of the church cannot be real. If so, what else is not real?

So this is what I'm chewing on at the moment, and it's very tough to swallow. People who go down this path are often derided for a lack of faith and trusting in the arm of the flesh and not praying enough and what not, but whatever you lack in faith, you must make up in courage because man, this is hard.

The entire question is not, for me, a question of if it is "real" or not- the question for me is what kind of evidence would it take to somehow "prove" that these events actually happened.

Frankly, I don't think that can be done to the satisfaction of "science". If Reformed Egyptian was a language spoken only in the temple or by a priestly, initiated, class for example, there might be no evidence for it whatsoever which has survived, or what DID survive could be misunderstood as some fluke, or some strange relic left by another culture etc.

The real question for me is what "Nephite" or "Lamanite" evidence would look like- we are searching everywhere- looking for nothing, in my opinion, not because it's not there, but because we would not know what it was if it jumped up and bit us.

There is plenty of evidence of "civilizations"- but are they the right ones or not? How could we know?

We can't even decide where to look for whatever it is that we are looking for- but we are not quite sure what that is anyway. Is it in Mesoamerica? Is it around the Niagara river? Is it in the "mounds"? Is it in South America?

I would say that is a rather big haystack to be looking for ....... well is it a needle? We don't even know.

So I personally prefer to hope for some "smoking gun", and when I am in a particularly evidence-hungry mood, I go to guys like Bokovoy et al who see those amazing "parallels" and I think that is about all the "evidence" we will have- perhaps forever. This thing is ultimately about faith you know!

God gave us a brain for a reason, so I see nothing wrong with questioning everything- and trust me, I do- big time! I think one of the things we are to do here is to "create our own world" which for me is to create a world view which harmonizes all of our experiences- intellectual, spiritual, personal etc into one whole that gets us through the night, allows us to make moral choices, and work for what we think or know to be "right".

So in that process, the devil on one shoulder says "But there's no evidence!" while the angel on the other says "But God told you it was true!" and poor me, stuck in the middle of my left and right brain, suddenly realized that scientific evidence does not matter one whit in this case- (I am not saying there is none- but I am a "worst case" kind of guy- I am always going to extremes- I will ask "What if no one ever finds ANY evidence- what then?")- anyway, in this case, what matters is the fact that SCRIPTURE IS REVELATION, and we have very little evidence for the fact that the Bible is what it alleges to be, either.

Yes we have Bible archaeology, but all the archaeology in the world is not going to PROVE that Jesus rose from the dead and is God's son and the savior of the world who saves us from sin.

And here we have plenty of archaeology too- central and S. America are full of it- but is it what we call "Nephite"? Who knows? Will we ever? Does it matter?

THAT is not an archaeological question at all! Suppose on the other hand, suppose we found Zarahemla tomorrow- would it prove that Moroni was a prophet? NO!

So even if there was NEVER any evidence- (and again- we are already over that hump because there is all kinds of evidence imo) the important point is whether or not the BOM is scripture, just like the question of if the Bible is scripture. No difference whatsoever.

And in my opinion, the BOM survives that question without question!

So yes of course it is all "real"- but that doesn't mean that we would know what scientific evidence for proving that prophets existed in the New World would even look like. Remember it is all about faith and testimony anyway!

Fortunately my poor long suffering wife knew I thought this way before she married me.

Edited August 17, 2011 by mfbukowski

[cinepro]

I would love for you to lay this "counter explanation" out. Lets see how your theory jibs. So many people before you have tried and failed to come up with a theory.

If we're allowing supernatural explanations, than I can't come up with a single theory that better explains the origin of the Book of Mormon.

I can come up with a thousand.

[ldsfaqs]

Sorry, nearly any other LDS would be a better pick than "Cinepro". Again, sorry.

[cinepro]

I would love for you to lay this "counter explanation" out. Lets see how your theory jibs. So many people before you have tried and failed to come up with a theory.

If we're allowing supernatural explanations, than I can't come up with a single theory that better explains the origin of the Book of Mormon.

I can come up with a thousand.

[mfbukowski]

As noted on another thread, but worth mentioning here, Mark Wright will be doing a fireside about archaeology and the Book of Mormon in Southern California this coming Sunday at 7pm (Long Beach East Stake Center, 4142 Cerritos Ave, Los Alamitos, CA 90720). While it wasn't and isn't intended as a reply to Mike Coe, many of the issues Coe raises will be addressed in the presentation.

Long Beach East Stake Center

4142 Cerritos Ave

Los Alamitos, CA 90720

Wow- this is so cool- this is the stake right next to ours- I am so THERE!

This will get announced big time- thanks so much for posting this- I just have it listed as a "YSA Fireside" with no speaker! Pretty rare we get to hear this stuff in the boonies of LA!

Edited August 17, 2011 by mfbukowski

[ldsfaqs]

While I'm not about to place myself on the same level as you Dr. Peterson, I do find it interesting that I've tried to come up with a coherent, comprehensive counterexplanation for the claims of Mormonism, and find that not only am I able to do so...but it is the only way to make sense of the world in which we live. In fact...the world is a very differnt place and nothing works IF the claims of Mormonism are reality based.

Would very much disagree. I think the only reason you are able to come up with such an explanation counter to Mormonism is by ignoring a great many important details as well as misrepresenting Mormonism by in many important respects.

As someone who wasn't raised in any particular religion, but in several and none, seeing how none actually fit the Bible, and then coming upon Mormonism and seeing how it did fully so, and how it matches life and history etc., it makes total sense with the world we live in.

The fact that Mormons the "smarter" we get, we tend to remain and become stronger believers, and that the sciences supports Mormonism on many fronts, and the fact that most of other religions the smarter they become the more likely they tend to leave their faith, and that science tends not to support their claims, tells me that Mormonism fits very well with both scripture and the world we live in.

[Calm]

I'm just tired of trying to bend my brain into a pretzel to accomodate unbelievable Mormon claims...to you that can...congratulations...

I would get tired of trying to bend my brain into a pretzel as well. However, for me the experience of studying LDS claims is more analogous to finding missing puzzle pieces as well as the places that other puzzle pieces fit in a complicated puzzle. Perhaps this is because I don't see reality as something simple, most likely because my experience of reality that I have been able to pretty much verify demonstrates that truth can be very complicated, especially if that truth is dependent on human behaviour. If science was as simple and straightforward as it appears some people expect it to be, Newton's laws would be sufficient to describe all of reality and not just be a good approximation, medicine would have found cures for cancer and the common cold at least a century ago and oh so many other anticipated discoveries would be things of the past and not the future.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Okay, so I finally found time to finish all the podcasts, and wow. I am actually stunned. The false assumptions, the blatant misreadings, the ex cathedra pronouncements, the high school obsession with social acceptance, the laughably groundless "percentages" of the likelihood of certain claims, the completely needless misinformation and speculative innuendo and groundless accusations of racism, the amateur psychologizing and undergraduate-level philosophizing, the appeal to a monolithic "scientific" or "intellectual" or worldview ...

I was aware of the LDS scholarly material on practically every one of these issues as a skeptical teenage atheist. I wasn't expecting too terribly much from Coe, but I was pretty broadsided by Dehlin's comments. I like and respect both dudes (I know Coe is certainly not an anti-Mormon, as Dehlin was worried faithful LDS would think), but their perspectives on these issues was just ... vicariously embarrassing, really.

I do hope FAIR/FARMS gets a qualified respondent quick - Coe's sheer authoritarianism (which this interview has demonstrated to be completely irrelevant in the narrow niche of Book of Mormon intersections with secular archaeology) has the potential to hurt people who are struggling with their faith, and it's entirely avoidable if we would all just do our own homework.

In fact, when you think about it, this is actually a great opportunity: if we simply respond (in list-form, basically) to every point Coe and Dehlin make, we'll essentially counter almost every false claim about Mormonism out there and have it all recorded in one nice, tidy package.

This was seriously eye-opening on the state of "educated" opinion on Mormonism. Absolutely incredible.

Edited August 18, 2011 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[mfbukowski]

This was seriously eye-opening on the state of "educated" opinion on Mormonism. Absolutely incredible.

Shhhhhhhhhhh...... keep them as stupid as they are!

[Xander]

The fact that Mormons the "smarter" we get, we tend to remain and become stronger believers, and that the sciences supports Mormonism on many fronts, and the fact that most of other religions the smarter they become the more likely they tend to leave their faith, and that science tends not to support their claims, tells me that Mormonism fits very well with both scripture and the world we live in

That you actually believe this is pretty scary stuff.

You're the same guy who tried to tell me all apologists tell the truth whereas all critics lie and misrepresent the facts. When I proved otherwise, you went silent.

From what I can tell, the Church doesn't convert a lot people who already have advanced degrees. Most of the scholars on Mormonscholarstestify, for example, were raised in the church from birth or at a very young age. This means they were not joining the Church based on an educated view of the world, or of anything else for that matter. The correlation - causation fallacy is immediately employed by apologists, as we're expected to believe that these folks are in Mormonism because of their advanced education, when the reality may very well be they're devout Mormons despite their advanced educations.

After all, going to school at a young age and moving on to earn advanced degrees is something the Church highly encourages. If stats remain the same as they did ten years ago, then Utah has the highest level of education per capital. In which case, people are merely following Church counsel; following the LDS culture of what is expected of them. Obviously, those who are obedient tend to be more devout.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Xander

[morgan.deane]

I listened to most of it. I was extremely unimpressed. For example he says that John Gee is a BoM archeologist for FARMS. So he doesn't even know the extreme basics about scholars that publish with FARMS (such as the fields about which they are publishing) but we are supposed to trust his opinion on them anyway? I've often said that most criticism of the BoM results from a combination of shallow reading of the text, straw men interpretations of it, or ignorance of current scholarship. His podcast is a prime example of that. While I respect Coe on archeological matters the strength of his opinion is severely weakened when I can easily tell that he doesn't know much about the scholarship upon which he is commenting.

P.S.(Does anybody else think that the host sounds like the talking half of Penn and Teller?)

And I just heard the part where neither Coe nor the host knows what Chiasmus is!!!!!! They literally googled it during the interview so he could comment on it. (about 27 minutes in the third podcast) But somehow his opinion is supposed to matter to people who have read and researched on the subject extensively?

Edited August 18, 2011 by morgan.deane

[KevinG]

That you actually believe this is pretty scary stuff.

You're the same guy who tried to tell me all apologists tell the truth whereas all critics lie and misrepresent the facts. When I proved otherwise, you went silent.

From what I can tell, the Church doesn't convert a lot people who already have advanced degrees. Most of the scholars on Mormonscholarstestify, for example, were raised in the church from birth or at a very young age. This means they were not joining the Church based on an educated view of the world, or of anything else for that matter. The correlation - causation fallacy is immediately employed by apologists, as we're expected to believe that these folks are in Mormonism because of their advanced education, when the reality may very well be they're devout Mormons despite their advanced educations.

After all, going to school at a young age and moving on to earn advanced degrees is something the Church highly encourages. If stats remain the same as they did ten years ago, then Utah has the highest level of education per capital. In which case, people are merely following Church counsel; following the LDS culture of what is expected of them. Obviously, those who are obedient tend to be more devout.

I'd like to see the stats on converts and education as you have presented it here. "As far as I can tell..." isn't very convincing.

Either way the original quote contended that LDS don't lose their faith as their education increases - there is no correlation/causation issue there. That has nothing to do with convert v. born in the church numbers or conversion of people with advanced degrees.

You did get it right when you noted the Church encourages education. They certainly don't fear their membership being educated which you would think church leadership would discourage if indeed people were devout "despite their advanced educations".

[Xander]

sorry, double-post.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

I'd like to see the stats on converts and education as you have presented it here. "As far as I can tell..." isn't very convincing.

It is an anecdote based on my experience in the Church and as a former LDS missionary. The less people know, the more likely they are to convert to something like Mormonism. I'm not talking about knowledge concerning chemical engineering, accounting, computer programming, or (pick your field of expertise). I'm talking about controversial information that has led to a number of people leaving the faith. This is also based on my own perusal of Dan's website. Most of those folks joined the Church at a very young age, which means their decisons to be baptized were not informed decisons beyond what they were told by missionaries. It is really as simple as that. In many missions the vast majority of converts are teens, usually girls. I served in two areas, Spain and California. In Spain most discussions involved teens who loved talking to American boys, and in California, Latinos who were overwhelmingly uneducated. It isn't a coincidence that baptisms are high in poorly educated areas of the world where internet access is scarce, while baptisms are low in higher educated areas where people have more access to information the missionaries are not inclined to share.

Either way the original quote contended that LDS don't lose their faith as their education increases

This is not true, as many people certainly do leave the faith due to further education. I'm one of them, and I know more than a few others who are in the same boat. When I say education, I am referringto knowledge about things that was otherwise undisclosed to me during my membership in the Church. It had to come from independent research. Ironically, my involvement in apologetics led to further research that began to open the critical thinking aculties of my mind, and I decided one day to apply the same standards to my own presuppositions, as I expected of the anti-Mormons.

That has nothing to do with convert v. born in the church numbers or conversion of people with advanced degrees.

Using the advanced degrees as a standard is really silly. Does getting a degree in Nursing - as so many Mormon women tend to do after the kids move out of the home- somehow expose them to information that would have dissuaded them from joining the Church at a younger age? Of course not. Does becoming a Mathematician or Political Scientist in some way expose a person to information that would have otherwise dissuaded them from converting at a younger age? Of course not. So this whole argument about education and apostasy is misleading if you're going to use college degrees as a metric. For example, I've met Mormons with advanced degrees who couldn't tell me the first thing about where the Book of Abraham came from.

You did get it right when you noted the Church encourages education. They certainly don't fear their membership being educated which you would think church leadership would discourage if indeed people were devout "despite their advanced educations".

No this is not true. When it comes to information that would naturally dissuade people from conversion, the Church tries to keep the people ignorant. For example, the KEP. This was something that was instrumental in my deconversion process, and the Church sat on this information for more than a century, knowing fully well of the implications. There was a conscious effort to suppress it, and it was only published after the critics let the cat out of the bag. At some point the Church decided there was no point trying to disarm a bomb that had already exploded. The Church knows that if people were aware of this information, fewer people would convert - in my opinion, none of them would. The Church would have to rely on children of record, where baptisms are essentially a given - thanks to cultural conditioning and familial pressures that are involved.

The Church is also careful to control the environments where missionary discussions are given. It is not interested in evenhanded treatment or discussion about LDS matters, because they know they cannot win minds in these kinds of discussions. They have their scripted version of Joseph Smith's history and the beginnings of the Church that they want to tell and that is all they want the prospective convert to hear. This is a fact. If someone sits on a discussion to offer a critical viewpoint, the missionaries are instructed to leave and return only when the situation is under their control. This is rationalized as leaving a spirit of contention, but in reality it is just a conversion strategy.

The idea is to convert them while they're ignorant, pressure them to commit to baptism during the second discussion, and then if they have doubts during discussions 3-6, tell them that they already commited and remind them that they already agreed that God told them it was all true. Again, as times have changed, people are becoming more critical in their thinking. Missionary techniques are not much different from those of insurance salesmen or any salesmen trying to sell you that extended warranty. People who don't know the downsides, are typically those who end up buying them.

The Church has a self-defense mechanism built into the system which conditions its members to view all other information, not approved by the church, as Satanic or Anti-Mormon, and so members will never hear anything that is actually said from this viewpoint. It is why so many LDS members are scared to death of "anti-Mormon literature." I mean literally afraid of it. I've seen Mormons scream and/or get teary-eyed when asked something from an "anti-Mormon" book. I had one Mormon lady debate with her husband whether she should let me stay in their home because she found out I had with me a dozen copies of an "anti-Mormon" book I intended to donate to FAIR members so they could offer a review and refutation. Ultimately, I was allowed to stay in the house, but the books had to stay in my car. But only if it was parked in the street, not in their driveway. Once you convince the members that the critical view is nothing but lies and satanic deception, then you're essentially limiting their exposure to other viewpoints, which is effectively keeping them more ignorant.

The Church knows that people who get baptized and then deeply involved in Mormon culture, will likely put critical thinking on the backburner as the only thing that will matter to them is the good feelings that come from believing they are members of the one true Church. To use the same example as before, knowledge about the KEP is something that would prevent people from ever joining the Church as it would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Joseph Smith could not translate ancient languages.The apologetic carnival involving J-Red, Ciphers and missing scrolls, may sound appealing to those members who have a strong need to maintain belief in their paradigm, but the point is no one would ever be convinced of this stuff unless they already began from a "testimony" based perspective. The leading LDS apologist in this area, Will Schryver, once admitted to me that if he didn't already have a testimony that the Church was true, the KEP would probably convince him that Joseph Smith was a fraud. His exact words were: "If I were an outsider looking in at all of this, I find it difficult to believe that I could be persuaded that the production of the Book of Abraham was anything other than a clumsy imposture perpetrated by Joseph Smith upon his followers. But, of course, I’m not. I came into the discussion already possessing a conviction that the Book of Abraham was divinely-inspired scripture."

The point is well taken, and I agree completely. The Church convinces people that conviction and loyalty to the Church is more important than knowledge obtained via independent research, which is why it is important to convert them in ignorance and culturally condition them so that they will dismiss what would otherwise dissuade them. Mormons often view anything that challenges their religious presuppositions as the "reasoning of men" which is universally represented in a very negative manner throughout LDS literature and including LDS scripture. I don't know how many times I've been lambasted because I chose to deny God and instead relied on the "arm of the flesh." For this reason I think the Church is, in many ways, anti-reason. It only wants you to use your God-given capacity for reason, when reasoning over Church approved materials. It doesn't want people to independently research the controversial issues that have led to so many people leaving the Church.

[Xander]

Ok, I just read through the first fifty testimonies on Mormon Scholars Testify, in alphabetical order going through all names beginning with A and B. Not a single scholar in that group joined the Church after becoming a scholar. Most grew up in the Church, others joined at a very young age.Of course there might be an exception somewhere on that website. But so far I haven't seen one.