zeezrom wrote:You know the story of Jesus being killed? He could have saved himself but he chose not to. He could have shown the whole world his majesty and might. He could have proven to the world that God is real. He didn't. It just wasn't supposed to be that way.
Similarly, God could have provided the world with clear, historical evidence for the Book of Mormon. He didn't and He *shouldn't*.
This is the world view of a TBM. We are not supposed to find evidence of the stories in the Book. To search for the evidence would be akin to asking Jesus to save himself from death at Golgotha.
I'm assuming you're trying to suggest something about apologetics. Is that right? If so, then I think the appropriate response, and it's one I think most apologists would agree with, is that their project is
not one of offering compelling non-spiritual evidence that Mormonism's unique claims are
true. Rather, their project is to demonstrate that Mormonism's unique claims are plausible or even likely given the best available evidence across relevant fields of serious inquiry.
One of my main criticisms of Mormon apologetics is that on the ground the project of demonstrating plausibility or likelihood is actually cashed out in terms of demonstrating something much closer to
mere possibility. There is, I think, a sort of hand waving going on where the product offered (i.e. plausibility or likelihood) is not delivered. In its place a different product is delivered (i.e. possibility), which, if you pile on enough dressing, can be made to look like the offered product.
It's just trivial and should be obvious that
it's possible that the Book of Mormon is an authentic and mostly accurate record of events that really happened in a place and time on this earth and people who actually lived in a place and time on this earth. All you really need to get somebody to accept that claim is give them a proper understanding of what it is for something to be possible. Most reasonable people have this already, and so getting people to accept that claim shouldn't be any harder than uttering it. You don't have to say anything about the actual history, or best available history to our present understanding, of the world on the American continent or anywhere else. You
would need to take such history into account to argue successfully that it is plausible.
The hand waving is this. Apologists say a lot about history or the best available history to our present understanding. This sets readers up to expect a plausibility/likelihood conclusion. What ultimately gets delivered is closer to a mere possibility conclusion, which readers mistakenly interpret as plausibility/likelihood because they've been made to labor under a lot of fancy research.