Board index ‹ Jesus

[Brave]

I have a few questions for you:

1. Should we approach Christianity the same way we view all other religions and cults when attempting look for validity?
2. What is your best argument against historicity of Joseph Smith's encounter with the angel moroni?
3. Do you believe Area 51 contains a secret alien research site? Why or why not?

[jimwalton]

> Should we approach Christianity the same way we view all other religions and cults when attempting look for validity?

Yes. Christianity doesn't get a free pass, just as no religion should get a free pass. Truth has to be evaluated on principles of logic and on the evidence available, and Christianity is no different. And religions are no different from anything else. Religions need to be evaluated on criteria of logic, evidence, and sense.

> What is your best argument against historicity of Joseph Smith's encounter with the angel moroni?

Smith's alleged encounter with the angel, and the revelation about the alleged history of the Latter Day Saints in the Americas doesn't pass the tests for truth. There is absolutely no evidence for the presence of advanced Jewish cultures, great cities, or any of those people or events here in the Western hemisphere. The lack of any archaeological or historical corroborative evidence is a substantive argument against the historicity of Smith's encounter with Moroni.

> Do you believe Area 51 contains a secret alien research site? Why or why not?

I have great reservations. It's like this huge conspiracy theory kind of thing by people who just want to believe and who use circumstances and pieces of evidence to create a case. Back in the late 1960s-early 1970s, people were able to use evidence to create a huge and sort-of convincing case that Paul McCartney was dead. It was actually quite a big deal at the time, but, of course, turned out to be a total farce, despite all of the "evidence".

We have to be careful how we process evidence and use logic. I don't really believe in UFOs. The universe is too big, travel across that kind of distance is too prohibitory, and even the possibility of communication across those distances is negligible. It's more likely that if we find life elsewhere in the solar system/universe it will be microbial, not advanced. If another civilization were advanced enough to find us, get to us, and still be able to communicate with their home planet, they would likely have made themselves known. As Stephen Hawking said, even though the prospect of finding life elsewhere in the universe is exciting, we should probably be more afraid than anything else.

So saying, there is likely life elsewhere in the universe, but the odds of it being advanced are too slim to measure, and the odds of them actually coming to us is so minuscule we could logically consider it to be impossible.

While Area 51 could contain a secret alien research site, I doubt they have anything to research there except radio waves, sounds from space, and other such phenomena. The logic and evidence weigh against extraterrestrial life visiting us.

[Brave]

> Smith's alleged encounter with the angel, and the revelation about the alleged history of the Latter Day Saints in the Americas doesn't pass the tests for truth. There is absolutely no evidence for the presence of advanced Jewish cultures, great cities, or any of those people or events here in the Western hemisphere. The lack of any archaeological or historical corroborative evidence is a substantive argument against the historicity of Smith's encounter with Moroni.

Speaking strictly with Smith's encounter with Moroni and his acquisition of the seer stones, your position is that because some of the facts about the world are wrong in the Book of Mormon, we should not believe this claim either?

[jimwalton]

My claim is that the tests for truth are multiple and varied, and there must be both consistency and corroboration in a multiplicity of areas for truth to be confirmed. If we that something is true in education but not in science, we have a problem. If something is true, then it's got to be true no matter what the discipline. Truth is the whole package. There's no such thing as something that is true in the Mormon tradition but not true anywhere else. That's both absurd and impossible.

It's not that some of the facts about history and the world are wrong in the Book of Mormon: ALL of them are. There is absolutely no evidence for anything the book says. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. And since the book records nothing factual, we have every reason to doubt that whatever vision Smith had was a source or conveyor of truth. Truth has a distinct and personal relationship to what exists in reality. It includes both macro-concepts and micro-details. Truth includes coherence and objectivity. Mormonism fails at so many points we can consider it false.

[Brave]

I always assumed that it was obvious those parts of the narrative were meant to be taken as allegory—advice on how to live life. The key is understanding what type of literature the book is. The key fact is whether or not the text was divinely inspired, which we actually have very good evidence for.

[jimwalton]

I'll admit that I don't know what you're talking about here, so you can help me understand by explaining.

Are you saying that all of the historical parts of the Book of Mormon were meant to be taken as allegory, not historiography? That all of them would admit that the boatloads of Jews never crossed the ocean, there was no such civilization in the Americas, and that Jesus didn't visit here? It's all just allegory? Is that what you mean?

Are you saying that what looks like historiography in the Book of Mormon is really advice on how to live life?

"Type of literature": Are you saying the Book of Mormon is actually like a fable (a fictional story with a worthy moral)?

And on the bases of those understandings we can still perceive the Book of Mormon as divinely inspired (the golden tablets, the special glasses, the book of fables to lead us to a moral life that will result in our eternal salvation)?

Just help me understand.