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One of the things I've always considered interesting about Moroni's promise is the starting assumption that there is a external being that will give positive answers when petitioned in prayer. Ignoring all the logical fallacies and circular reasoning of the promise itself why can't we simply test the initial premise?

One example would to give 100 people 10 boxes. 9 boxes contain a package of blank paper and 1 contains the Book of Mormon. Each person 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."

With the above scenario we would have a statistical measurement if there is a external being answering petitions of prayer on the Book of Mormon.


Phaedrus

Phaedrus Ut wrote:One of the things I've always considered interesting about Moroni's promise is the starting assumption that there is a external being that will give positive answers when petitioned in prayer. Ignoring all the logical fallacies and circular reasoning of the promise itself why can't we simply test the initial premise?

One example would to give 100 people 10 boxes. 9 boxes contain a package of blank paper and 1 contains the Book of Mormon. Each person 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."

With the above scenario we would have a statistical measurement if there is a external being answering petitions of prayer on the Book of Mormon.


Phaedrus

God, like Oz, gets angry when you try to look behind the curtain.

This sounds like a job for Penn & Teller.Here are a couple of other way to test this.

You could place two identical unmarked books on a table in front of people and ask them to identify which one is the Book of Mormon through a quick prayer.

Or you could place a book under a cloth on the table and allow people to feel it. See if they can tell if it is a Book of Mormon or not. This seems to be a proven method for identifying . . . something.

If you were to make one of the books bright shiny blue and new and the other a little more ragged and worn it would be interesting to see how the test results would change over using identical books.

In the end you could show how easily people, even now days, are affected by suggestion and presuppositions.

Penn & Teller did a bit, like this, on organic foods. Taking a banana cut in half they placed the two parts on separate plates on a table, labeling one half as "Organic" and the other as "Not Organic" and had people taste test them. The "organic" one won in a landslide.

Buffalo wrote:God, like Oz, gets angry when you try to look behind the curtain.

Well we are commanded to live by faith. he's not about to play games just because some people are suspicious of Him. Ultimately that's not His take on how to best operate for the benefit of mankind.

stemelbow wrote:

Buffalo wrote:God, like Oz, gets angry when you try to look behind the curtain.

Well we are commanded to live by faith. he's not about to play games just because some people are suspicious of Him. Ultimately that's not His take on how to best operate for the benefit of mankind.

Exactly.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

God has better things to do than help people make informed decisions about him.

Buffalo wrote:God has better things to do than help people make informed decisions about him.

My only concern is that the 1000's of prayers as part of the test might occupy bandwidth for God to answer the prayers of dying children in Africa. Oh wait nevermind, God doesn't care about African kids he wants a shopping mall with a Baby Gap and a food court.


Phaedrus

Buffalo wrote:Exactly.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"

God has better things to do than help people make informed decisions about him.

Or as is probably more accurate. He has better things to do than help those who don't want His help. He's placed in you, for your own benefit, Buffalo, a universal spirit that is designed to lead you down your own path of truth finding. If you don't buy into the "you can pray to Him and find out" thing, then perhaps He has other designs for you--and no I'm not saying He hopes you go to hell or whatever. You could, afterall, end up being exalted and me end up in a SoP. Whose to say otherwise? He'll lead you as He knows best. You may not even believe in Him throughout your life, but He still cares and wants the best.

Phaedrus Ut wrote:One of the things I've always considered interesting about Moroni's promise is the starting assumption that there is a external being that will give positive answers when petitioned in prayer. Ignoring all the logical fallacies and circular reasoning of the promise itself why can't we simply test the initial premise?

One example would to give 100 people 10 boxes. 9 boxes contain a package of blank paper and 1 contains the Book of Mormon. Each person 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."

With the above scenario we would have a statistical measurement if there is a external being answering petitions of prayer on the Book of Mormon.


Phaedrus

That is a pretty god scientific test, but I don't think you even need to go that far. I would just do what Mormons claim they do. Pray about it and wait for an answer. I've already done it, and the answer is it's a fraud.

A test proposed to see if the spirit is reliable?

We propose the following two tests to attempt to examine how accurate listening to the spirit by faithful members may be:

TEST #1)
Stake Patriarchs are generally considered some of the most spiritual people in the church due to the nature of their calling of being guided by the spirit to give patriarchal blessings. Although we would expect patriarchal blessings to vary depending upon who gave them, there is one thing that should not change. Everyone receives the tribe that they are descended from. The tribal designation appears to be spiritual label as opposed to actual genealogy as members of the same family can come from different tribes. However the tribe given should not change if you received a second patriarchal blessing.

Almost everyone is from the tribe of Ephraim, however perhaps 1 in 20 people are from the tribe of Manasseh or another rare tribe. We propose finding 50 people from a tribe other than Ephraim and have those people obtain a second patriarchal blessing from a different patriarch and see if they give them the same somewhat uncommon tribe that they each received when they got their first patriarchal blessing.

Naturally both patriarchs should give everyone the same tribe if they are really getting the information using the spirit. If these are really just random picks then the odds of picking 50 correctly would be astronomical. If the chances are even 10% of someone being from a non-Ephraim tribe then having 50 patriarchs choosing the same correct tribe again would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Those odds would be so far above chance that everyone would have to conclude that the patriarchs are getting their information from some unearthly source. Of course it would have to be controlled so that the patriarchs would have absolutely no knowledge that the members already had been given patriarchal blessings. This would be a fascinating study and a real opportunity to test the spirit.

If you are a faithful Latter-Day Saint would you be at all apprehensive about a study like this being performed? Why? Do you perhaps suspect that the Patriarchs are not really getting accurate inspiration from God? This study has never been performed (to our knowledge) but we suspect that many apologetic-type of members would already be trying to think of ideas to explain why the patriarchs did not give the members the same patriarchal lineages that they received the first time. An experiment like this would go a long way to validate the patriarchal blessings that many people take so lightly.

TEST #2
Find 50 good, spiritual Latter-Day Saints that are very righteous but do not know the more disturbing details of our church's history. Ask each one to pray about whether or not certain events really happened and see if the spirit guides them to the correct answer. The questions would have to be ones that the answers are definitely known and agreed to by the church leaders but seem very unlikely to faithful but naïve members. It would also have to be established that these members don't already know about the actual history of the events being asked about.

For example a question might be to ask somebody about the temple ceremony before 1990 and see if they would correctly answer whether or not the saints really performed those rituals. Or say that some critics contend that Joseph married some women that were already married and see if they agree with those statements.

If the members were really inspired by the Holy Ghost to answer the disturbing questions correctly, that they would have otherwise thought were in error, then this would lend credibility to the idea that the spirit can really help people ascertain the truth.

We personally have witnessed faithful members saying such things as 'they know' Joseph didn't marry 14 year-old girls and women already married to other men because they received a confirmation of the spirit as such. Yet, they were wrong. A more formal study using this approach would be very interesting.

http://www.mormonthink.com/testimonyweb.htm

stemelbow wrote:

Buffalo wrote:God, like Oz, gets angry when you try to look behind the curtain.

Well we are commanded to live by faith. he's not about to play games just because some people are suspicious of Him. Ultimately that's not His take on how to best operate for the benefit of mankind.

It sounds like this test is set up to give positive results to those who want to believe, for some reason. Would you agree with that?

I reject out of hand any notion of a God who sees it as a virtue in his subjects that they accept and believe things about him on insufficient evidence. Such a notion of God is a notion for dupes, and such are ripe for harvesting by charlatans, as history has demonstrated over and over. I even more firmly reject any notion of a God who sees it as a virtue for people to believe not just on insufficient evidence, but despite evidence to the contrary. This is so indistinguishable from wishful thinking that such a God would be setting the unreasonably credulous up for success at the expense of the careful and reasonable. Does that not look like the kind of God notion preached by people who want to cheat others and usurp power over them? This is not a coincidence.