MG wrote:Anyway, I completely understand the fact that you and others that don't believe in God have your own particular ways of viewing the world.
The Book of Mormon can't be proved in a purely materialist way. The pages in the Book of Mormon make it pretty clear that God has to be involved in the process
Again, the vast majority of people who have actively engaged the Book of Mormon and then rejected it are likely firm believers in God. Phillip Jenkins believes in God.
MG wrote:After leaving the church critics generally change their views of the Book of Mormon from a book which testifies of Christ and that leads towards Him, to a view that the book needs to pass every 'sniff test' from a materialist point of view.
It's actually the apologists who say the book needs to pass every sniff test from a materialistic point of view in order to lead to Christ.
Some critics believe the Book of Mormon can be inspired fiction and lead people to Christ, or at least lead people to be good Christian people to the extent that there are in fact good Christian people.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
Again, the vast majority of people who have actively engaged the Book of Mormon and then rejected it are likely firm believers in God.
Is this your opinion or is this a factual statement? (I am not challenging the statement; I am asking because I don't know and what you are suggesting surprises me) - Can you point me to a resource that supports this?
Again, the vast majority of people who have actively engaged the Book of Mormon and then rejected it are likely firm believers in God.
Is this your opinion or is this a factual statement? (I am not challenging the statement; I am asking because I don't know and what you are suggesting surprises me) - Can you point me to a resource that supports this?
The church reports that over 200 million copies of the book have been published. If ten percent of them are read, then that would be 20 million readers which exceeds the active membership of the church by about 4 times. That’s around 15 million people rejecting the book.
The odds are that most of those 15 million are believers in God. Atheists only account for 3-10 percent of the population.
MG wrote:After leaving the church critics generally change their views of the Book of Mormon from a book which testifies of Christ and that leads towards Him, to a view that the book needs to pass every 'sniff test' from a materialist point of view.
...It's actually the apologists who say the book needs to pass every sniff test from a materialistic point of view in order to lead to Christ...
This is an important point. The Jenkins Hamblin debate boiled down to this, over and over. Jenkins repeatedly said, as a believer in God himself, he has no problem with a person telling him it is their faith that leads to their belief in the Mormon religion. It is the factual claims of historicity that he has a problem with. Here's an excerpt from one of his columns that seems directed exactly at mg's thought process:
My recent columns have concerned methods of academic debate, and the gulf that separates true scholarship from pseudo-scholarship. It’s only fitting here that I should refer to the gold-standard for discussing such issues, namely David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward A Logic Of Historical Thought (originally published by Harper, 1970).
Fischer describes good historical methodology by sketching its evil twin. He outlines and catalogues examples of “fallacies”, that is, errors or bad practice that result in bad or inaccurate history. Every word of his argument applies wholeheartedly to the examples I have been describing, whether we are dealing with silly claims about supposed new insights into Jesus’s life and career, or bizarre conspiracy theories.
Among the fallacies he lists, we find the following:
The fallacy of the pseudo-proof: “a verification statement which seems at first sight to be a precise and specific representation of reality but which proves on close inspection to be literally meaningless.”
The fallacy of the irrelevant proof.
The fallacy of the presumptive proof: “advancing a proposition and shifting the burden of proof or disproof to others.”
<snip>
I stopped at the first three fallacies, because they apply completely to mg's apologist posts in this thread. There was one last relevant comment, however:
On a related matter, I also like this from the endlessly quotable Daniel Patrick Moynihan — “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... fallacies/
Is this your opinion or is this a factual statement? (I am not challenging the statement; I am asking because I don't know and what you are suggesting surprises me) - Can you point me to a resource that supports this?
The church reports that over 200 million copies of the book have been published. If ten percent of them are read, then that would be 20 million readers which exceeds the active membership of the church by about 4 times. That’s around 15 million people rejecting the book.
The odds are that most of those 15 million are believers in God. Atheists only account for 3-10 percent of the population.
Ceeboo wrote:Is this your opinion or is this a factual statement? (I am not challenging the statement; I am asking because I don't know and what you are suggesting surprises me) - Can you point me to a resource that supports this?
Pure conjecture on my part. As Drumdude pointed out, atheists are a minority. Add agnostics and still, 80% plus Americans believe in God. Unless agnostics and atheists are substantially overrepresented in investigating the Church, then the Book of Mormon is mostly rejected by people who believe in God.
Having served a mission myself, I can only recall teaching the discussions to a single agnostic/atheist. It's memorable because during the first discussion, we tell people to read certain passages and pray about them, and that the Holy Ghost will manifest the truth. If the investigator is a born-again Christian who have an inkling of what they believe, they reject the offer because the Bible is complete. If they are broadly Christian or believing but don't know anything about us, they will accept the offer at least initially because it sounds more or less reasonable. That could change drastically on a second visit. But try telling an non-believer to read and pray and God will manifest the truth. It turns into a long argument about epistemology. Of course they aren't going to agree with that. This guy was still interested in hearing the other discussions though out of curiosity but no chance he was going to pray. That's a really unusual situation. Not to say atheists don't convert, my dad converted two atheists. But my conjecture based on my own life experience as a missionary is that the majority of investigators are believers of some kind.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
Ceeboo wrote:Is this your opinion or is this a factual statement? (I am not challenging the statement; I am asking because I don't know and what you are suggesting surprises me) - Can you point me to a resource that supports this?
Pure conjecture on my part. As Drumdude pointed out, atheists are a minority. Add agnostics and still, 80% plus Americans believe in God. Unless agnostics and atheists are substantially overrepresented in investigating the Church, then the Book of Mormon is mostly rejected by people who believe in God.
Having served a mission myself, I can only recall teaching the discussions to a single agnostic/atheist. It's memorable because during the first discussion, we tell people to read certain passages and pray about them, and that the Holy Ghost will manifest the truth. If the investigator is a born-again Christian who have an inkling of what they believe, they reject the offer because the Bible is complete. If they are broadly Christian or believing but don't know anything about us, they will accept the offer at least initially because it sounds more or less reasonable. That could change drastically on a second visit. But try telling an non-believer to read and pray and God will manifest the truth. It turns into a long argument about epistemology. Of course they aren't going to agree with that. This guy was still interested in hearing the other discussions though out of curiosity but no chance he was going to pray. That's a really unusual situation. Not to say atheists don't convert, my dad converted two atheists. But my conjecture based on my own life experience as a missionary is that the majority of investigators are believers of some kind.
The world would be a lesser place without the restoration. Members of the church have had positive influence in the world at large and in the lives of individuals scattered throughout the globe.
I would agree that many members have had a positive influence in the world but at what level? Mormon's reportedly make up 0.2% of the population but so do Jews. Many Jews have also had a positive influence in the world and they seek to discover truth in others ways.
"Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population, meaning their share of winners is 110 times their proportion of the world's population."
MG, what do you think of these Mormonism and Unique Science observations:
1. Theory of Relativity - Because time is relative, a case can be made that the Garden of Eden in Missouri existed on Pangaea before the continents broke up, placing the Adamite inhabitants as well as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, while hundreds of millions of years passed around them. With the eventual drift, the Tigris, Euphrates, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers separated.
2. Human Anatomy and Physiology - Women cannot hold the Priesthood because they lack the requisite priesthood antennae.
3. Kinetic Potential - When Mayan Elephant is on a thread, John Dehlin is not the elephant in the room, but he has the kinetic potential of being on the thread.
4. Chemistry - Under the right circumstances, humor and LDS message boards have the makings of an 8th-grade volcano eruption propellant.
5. Abnormal Psychology - Evidence and belief Trump each other.
