The Book of Mormon is in the realm of faith. It has enough evidence for those who want to believe, he said, but not enough to prove it or force others to believe.
"That's by design," Peterson said.
How does he know that this is Elohim's design? This appears to me to be a post hoc excuse to explain away a serious problem - that the evidence to prove that the Book of Mormon events actually happened in real life, and not just in the minds of some 19th century Americans, is incredibly thin to non-existent, and then only in the minds of true believers.
Joseph Smith doesn't seem to have believed this. He saw physical evidence all over the place. Adam's altar. The bones of Zelph. The mounds. The Mesoamerican cities that were discovered. Joseph explained all sorts of things as physical relics from that time period and context, and wasn't shy about naming and explaining them as such.
The problem for LDS seems to be that, as we learn more about the ancient Americas, the Book of Mormon story, as described and taught by Joseph Smith, has become less and less plausible, and the theory has instead grown up in apologetic circles, that we were never actually meant to have any proof of the Book of Mormon, because then we wouldn't have to have faith.
But nobody has ever justified this claim with anything convincing. Such as what exactly is so great about faith without evidence, that makes it actually more desirable than rational belief based on evidence? Did Joseph Smith really regard the Book of Mormon stories as some untouchable but yet real historical phenomenon that we would never prove because the geography was too small? That the biological fingerprints of the Book of Mormon peoples would be swallowed up in a veritable ocean of "others"? There's simply nothing in the history of Joseph Smith that shows that he saw things that way.
It appears to me that Joseph Smith made up all kinds of claims about things, explaining them in terms of the Book of Mormon stories, or else in terms of Adam and the Garden of Eden, (or Abraham, or Joseph of Egypt, etc.), which he justifiably thought nobody could ever contradict because enough was not known by the arm of flesh. Then the arm of flesh learned a lot more, and started casting Joseph Smith's claims in a pall of high improbability, and now the LDS apologists are reacting by claiming that evidence never can prove the Book of Mormon events really occurred, and that that is, for some reason, what we should actually expect from God.
Not so fast, I say.
