A Newly Re-Energized Hamblin Pinches Off Another One

[Guest]

The bottom line is that the LDS church has always taught that the events in the Book of Mormon really happened. As Analytics just brought out, these claims are interwoven with all other Mormon truth claims in fantastically complicated and comprehensive ways. Trying to sever those claims while leaving the rest intact would be like trying to operate on stage 4 brain cancer to remove all the cancer while not harming anything else. In most cases, it can't be done and the focus of treatment becomes the alleviation of suffering while waiting for the end.

The bottom line is that the LDS church has always taught that

1. America is God's Promised Land
2. It was reserved for God's Chosen People
3. It was only inhabited by
a. Adam and his decsendants until the Flood
b. then by Lehi's decsendant's until the Colombus
4. Colombus came so Joseph Smith could restablished the true church in God's Promised Land which God had reserved for his Chosen People

One could bring out, these claims are interwoven with all other Mormon truth claims in fantastically complicated and comprehensive ways. Trying to sever those claims while leaving the rest intact would be like trying to operate on stage 4 brain cancer to remove all the cancer while not harming anything else. In most cases, it can't be done and the focus of treatment becomes the alleviation of suffering while waiting for the end.

Now, about all those Asians.

During the Mormon Moment.

[_Kishkumen]

I don't know (as in, I am insufficiently informed, not as in I disagree with you) if Homer's works were really regarded as divinely revealed or inspired in his day, but regardless, today they are studied and admired, yet acknowledged to be the work product of the human mind.

It's much more complicated than that, Sethbag. In the first place, the Muse was a goddess. And the invocation was a call for the goddess to inspire the poet in crafting the poem--a poem about supposedly historical events. Over time, attitudes changed toward the poem and the invocation, but attitudes varied. People still sought metaphorical truth in Homer long after they dropped a literal belief in his presentation of the past or his formulation of divinities. The fourth century AD Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who banned Christians from teaching the Classics on the grounds that they did not believe in Hellenic religion, obviously did not believe or behave exactly as Homer did, but that did not make him less genuine in his spiritual reverence for the poetry.

The thinking you and Hamblin are engaging in makes sense to you, but it does not reflect the reality. And people will engage the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture in ways that do not make sense to you, do not satisfy the orthodoxy of Hamblin's concoction, but are nevertheless legitimate to them.

[_Sethbag]

So, people admired the work of Homer long after they had given up belief in its literally divine origin, is that what you're saying?

If so, you seem to be saying the same thing is happening now, but I don't think that's strictly true. People admire Homer's works today knowing them to be the work product of the human mind, regardless of what people may once have thought about them. What the revisionist mopologists are trying to do with the Book of Mormon is to admit that it's not literally true, but still claim that it was nevertheless of divine origin.

I guess I may be wrong if we can show revisionists claiming that the Book of Mormon may well be entirely the work product of Joseph's mind, yet Joseph still saw God for real, and really was tapped by God to be his viceroy on Earth. Are there such around?

[_Sophocles]

One of the problems with Hamblin's comments is that it underscores a basic Mopologetic hypocrisy. These guys are more than happy to emphasize the strangeness, illogic, or incomprehensibility of God's actions when it suits them: e.g., Why did God move the Gold Plates from Latin America clear up to New York? Why did He change the Lamanites' skin color? Why did He prohibit Blacks from having the priesthood? Does Hamblin genuinely think that these things constitute logical behavior? Or is he going to shrug and say some variation on, "God works in mysterious ways"?

Exactly my thoughts as I read through some of the posts on the MDDB thread. Someone mentioned that maybe the Book of Mormon is fiction but Joseph Smith thought it was historical. Hamblin derisively responded:

I see. God was able to reveal the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith, but forgot to tell him it was fiction.

It reminded me of so much apologetics surrounding the Book of Mormon—especially the LGT—which require that Joseph Smith didn't completely understand everything about the book he translated. And the critics were the ones deriding the implication that God would reveal so much to Joseph and yet he remained so ignorant of what the apologists are able to learn simply from reading the text.

Maybe Hamblin needs to go back and read what he's written about the Zelph problem if he really wants to understand where people who imagine the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction are coming from.

[_Darth J]

It reminded me of so much apologetics surrounding the Book of Mormon—especially the LGT—which require that Joseph Smith didn't completely understand everything about the book he translated. And the critics were the ones deriding the implication that God would reveal so much to Joseph and yet he remained so ignorant of what the apologists are able to learn simply from reading the text.

And also the Book of Abraham Magic Feather Theory (euphemistically referred to as the "Catalyst Theory").

[_Darth J]

If so, you seem to be saying the same thing is happening now, but I don't think that's strictly true. People admire Homer's works today knowing them to be the work product of the human mind, regardless of what people may once have thought about them. What the revisionist mopologists are trying to do with the Book of Mormon is to admit that it's not literally true, but still claim that it was nevertheless of divine origin.

Sethbag, you're aware that the Community of Christ holds the Book of Mormon as scripture while allowing that it isn't necessarily a true story, right?

And Heinrich Schliemann, the guy usually credited with starting the search for Troy, really believed The Illiad was a true story, and sincerely worshiped the ancient Greek gods.

All this stuff about whether or not to take religious stories literally isn't quite as simple as you're saying. It's the difference between the Book of Mormon is "True" and the Book of Mormon "contains truths." I can see the point you're trying to make. In my believing days, I also would have disagreed that Joseph Smith could still be a prophet even if he made up the Book of Mormon. But my disagreement would not mean it is logically impossible for someone else to decide that pious fraud is an acceptable means to an end. As I already noted in this thread, the LDS Church teaches that God does this with many other religions in the world.

It's one thing to say you disagree with the proposition that the Book of Mormon could be a made up story but still inspired in some sense. It is quite another to say that you intellectually can't even wrap your head around that proposition. The latter is what Hamblin explicitly says in his blog post. "I simply can’t understand people who say none of this matters." That's a very shallow understanding of human behavior. Understanding a different point of view does not equate to agreeing with that point of view. Hamblin's own statements show that he can't fathom understanding an idea without adopting it, and that is one reason---but by no means the only reason---why he is ineffective at being an apologist. That is, unless "apologist" just means preaching to the choir (which, in LDS culture, it pretty much does).

What it comes down to is that a professor at BYU and self-appointed defender of the faith is admitting he does not have enough metacognition at his disposal to consider why other people have different views about the nature of religious experience than he does.

Or maybe he really does understand it, even though he explicitly says otherwise. That would mean he's either being disingenuous for polemical purposes, or he's just a horrible communicator. Neither of those are particularly good qualities for rescuing testimonies.

[_Blixa]

It's one thing to say you disagree with the proposition that the Book of Mormon could be a made up story but still inspired in some sense. It is quite another to say that you intellectually can't even wrap your head around that proposition. The latter is what Hamblin explicitly says in his blog post. "I simply can’t understand people who say none of this matters." That's a very shallow understanding of human behavior. Understanding a different point of view does not equate to agreeing with that point of view. Hamblin's own statements show that he can't fathom understanding an idea without adopting it, and that is one reason---but by no means the only reason---why he is ineffective at being an apologist. That is, unless "apologist" just means preaching to the choir (which, in LDS culture, it pretty much does).

Yes. Precisely.

But, I expect it's all just a disingenuous bit of empty rhetoric. If not, then....

[_Kishkumen]

What it comes down to is that a professor at BYU and self-appointed defender of the faith is admitting he does not have enough metacognition at his disposal to consider why other people have different views about the nature of religious experience than he does.

Or maybe he really does understand it, even though he explicitly says otherwise. That would mean he's either being disingenuous for polemical purposes, or he's just a horrible communicator. Neither of those are particularly good qualities for rescuing testimonies.

Darth, I am in awe.

You have written any number of trenchant, incisive, impassioned, and devastating criticisms of LDS apologetics, but this one tops them all.

That is perhaps the most perceptive and insightful assessment of the problem with the Hamblin/Peterson self-presentation I have ever read.

Kudos. What else can be said?

[_Kishkumen]

So, people admired the work of Homer long after they had given up belief in its literally divine origin, is that what you're saying?

No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that Homer continued to be valued, in different ways, as a repository of truth, and the wellspring of poetic inspiration, long after people quit taking it in precisely the way many LDS literalists take the Book of Mormon.

These Greek appreciators of the divine Homer would have been incomprehensible to either you or Hamblin, or so it seems.

If so, you seem to be saying the same thing is happening now, but I don't think that's strictly true. People admire Homer's works today knowing them to be the work product of the human mind, regardless of what people may once have thought about them. What the revisionist mopologists are trying to do with the Book of Mormon is to admit that it's not literally true, but still claim that it was nevertheless of divine origin.

Sethbag, we live in a Western world that has, for the most part, converted to one of the Abrahamic faiths or passed into secularism. How we feel about Homer is not comparable to the Book of Mormon at all. I was trying to help you see that back in the days when there were still large numbers of Hellenic pagans, deep thinkers still thought of Homer as a source of divine truth without necessarily being literalistic simpletons about it.

I guess I may be wrong if we can show revisionists claiming that the Book of Mormon may well be entirely the work product of Joseph's mind, yet Joseph still saw God for real, and really was tapped by God to be his viceroy on Earth. Are there such around?

Uh, I have no idea, nor do I care. That was not my point.

[_sock puppet]

As to Mormons that

• do not take the Book of Mormon as literal history
• believe that god inspired JSJr to produce the Book of Mormon, and thus
• the Book of Mormon is 'truth' (defined as from god) despite not being literal

what do these propositions suggest about their concept of how god, the author of all truth, operates? And about how this conceived god regarded JSJr?

This so conceived god set his 'stories' to Biblical prophets in places and peoples that survived archaeologically, but with JSJr, the prophet of the restoration, this so conceived god made up a 500+ page narrative untethered to real places, real peoples. If this god is a reasonable being (?), what accounts for such a profound difference in his M.O.?

I think the position of such Mormons raises more perplexing questions than it answers, and it runs counter to what the modern 'prophets' have proclaimed the Book of Mormon to be, and to what it's official, LDS introduction proclaims it to be. It is a stance towards the Book of Mormon that places such Mormons in quite a conundrum.

It is a stance that in my opinion is a level 1 attempt to reconcile faith (hope in that for which there is not evidence) with evidence that cuts contrary to that hope, and does not account for the problems that lurk in levels 2 or 3. It is a 'weigh station' position, in my opinion, by those who for decades invested emotionally in the rehash of Bible principles that are set forth in the Book of Mormon, and now upon learning that the Book of Mormon's setting is contrary to ever mounting archaeological evidence, are taking the first step of demoting the Book of Mormon in their esteem.