Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 3:14 am
I was saying that when people say the Church is true, I don’t really think they are primarily saying that the Church is factually correct. They are saying that they have a spiritual conviction that is true, and that spiritual conviction comes straight out of the Book of Mormon’s guidelines for how to obtain spiritual knowledge.
But the two aren't mutually exclusive. Mormons typically say both things. The Church is factually true, and they know this
because of their "spiritual witness." This is what I had been taught before joining the Church and the first time I had heard of any Mormons teaching that the Church was only true in a metaphorical sense, was well after my mission years when I saw apologists trying to come up with other paradigms to salvage their faith in the face of contradicting evidence.
When anachronisms are found in the Book of Mormon, the members just say well those things haven't been
discovered yet. Meaning, they still believe it is factually true, and we all know the Mormon paradigm includes self-defensive mechanisms like assuming Satan is behind everything out there trying to prove it false. So when I bring up the fact that horses didn't exist in America at the time of the Book of Mormon wars, they don't say, "Oh it isn't factually true, only spiritually true." No, they typically say one of two things. My personal favorite is, "Archeology is in its infancy so we may still find horse remains from that time period." The other defense is to blame Satan for inventing all kinds of evidence because, being the one True Church on the planet means Satan has devoted all his time and effort to keep people from joining it.
Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 3:14 am
It is not a science experiment or a history class.
Well, it sure seemed like it to me. One of the first pro-Mormon videos I was shown as an "investigator" was of a Mormon archaeologist combing through Mesoamerica, drawing all sorts of parallels between things like Quetzalcoatl and the teachings of Jesus. I went to a symposium at the Stake center where some "expert" of some kind talked about newly discovered glyphs which we were told translated to sentences that only appear in the Book of Mormon, etc. When Spencer Kimball said Missionaries were donating blood to help accelerate the process of converting black people and Indians (Lamanites) into white and delightsome saints, or when he dedicated a page of his book to talk about Cain existing today in the form of Sasquatch, or any of the dozens of stories told by authority figures about garments stopping bullets, etc. It all seemed to be quite literal to me.
It is about having faith in true principles, testing them through living them, or asking God for revelation, and acting on the results to build stronger faith.
I'm fairly certain that for most Mormons it is about both, which is why the vast majority of people baptized into the Church end up leaving it. They appreciate the warm fuzzies they initially experience, but then later realize it was self induced because the premise of those warm fuzzies was factually untrue. God isn't a man with literal bones, Indians aren't descendants of Jews, the entire concept of families are forever is incoherent and just silly, etc.
I mean, you can certainly play contrafactual history, but I prefer to look at the text and make sense out of what it is saying over this nonsense.
The Book of Mormon has meaning to whomever decides to read meaning into it. You say it is nonsense but the fact is Church leaders have stated several times that the truthfulness of the Gospel hinges on the Book of Mormon being what it purports to be. And that only makes sense given the extraordinary claims made by the Church. Claims that purport to be factually true. Like it being the ONLY True Church on the face of the earth. There was nothing figurative or metaphorical about this proclamation.
In my view the reason the Church wants members to constantly reaffirm their testimony because it serves as a defense against the evidence against it. Self delusion is a powerful tool. But I don't hold this against Mormons. As I've said before, I think many people are better off in the Church. Hell, I wouldn't mind paying tithing if I thought the money would actually go towards charity, and not funneled into another business venture.
"I am not an American ... In my view premarital sex should be illegal" - Ajax18