Mormon Worldview

[Physics Guy]

Deliberate genocide is not the same as accepting civilian casualties in war; but the two things are certainly comparable. The distinction can even be narrow.

It is all too possible to camouflage deliberate genocide as unintentional but unavoidable collateral damage. The Armenian genocide of 1915 is widely recognised as a genocide, but successive Turkish governments have contended to this day that it was only an unfortunate side effect of wartime conditions. The current Israeli operation in Gaza is an obvious candidate for this status as well.

Even if civilian casualties truly are not intended, pursuing a military strategy that is obviously bound to cause civilian casualties on a vast scale can be to genocide as murder by depraved indifference is to murder with malice. The difference is real but small in comparison to the scale of the crime.

(With news about Palestinians dying understandably taking up all the media space for Middle East news, we don't hear so much about the substantial anti-war protest movement in Israel. I have Israel colleagues who have been spending large amounts of their time organising marches.)

[Physics Guy]

You seem to have presuppositions that beg the question Christianity is false.

If it is a presupposition that Christianity is false, to presume that God would not really command mass rape and murder, then it is Christianity that makes itself false on its face, by presuming that God would indeed do that. If it is truly one of the bedrock axioms of Christianity, that God does not merely allow but actively insists upon massive cruelty, then every decent person must reject Christianity. The prosecution can rest; case is closed.

If instead the righteousness of Canaanite genocide is merely a conclusion that has been drawn by some Christians, and rejected by other Christians, then raising the Canaanite genocide as an objection to Biblical inerrancy is not begging a question. It is a perfectly legitimate challenge of the logical consistency of the inerrantist position.

[Physics Guy]

So you’re saying truth is relative to one’s experience?

No, truth is objective. We, however, are not. Our own experience is the most reliable standard we have for recognising truth, but it's still not a very good standard. It only gives clear verdicts in a few simple cases.

How do you differentiate between what is moral and immoral?

I try to do unto others as I would like them to do unto me. I feel that that's the right principle; perhaps it's the conviction of the Holy Spirit, or perhaps it's just a basic human sense of fairness, that other people deserve as much as I do.

Just because I got this principle from Jesus doesn't mean that I somehow need to accept everything else in the Bible. Even Biblical inerrantists all agree that not everything has to be based on some kind of infallible standard, because no inerrantist can identify the infallible standard upon which the decision to believe in the Bible is based. So if we are all allowed to adopt some principles—such as Biblical authority for example—based on human reason and feeling, then I can just adopt the Golden Rule in that way.

[Physics Guy]

How did Abraham see the sacrifice of Isaac as good sense?

God's command to sacrifice Isaac is the hook in that story, and Abraham's willingness to obey is the escalation to crisis. The resolution, however, is that God's angel stays Abraham's hand. What the story actually means, if we watch the whole thing and not just the trailer, is that this God will never actually demand human sacrifice—not even from the most important paragon of obedience.

I reckon the legend would have been a good deterrent to human sacrifice, which realistically is something powerful people do to show how powerful they are. For any Israelite ruler to sacrifice someone, with the story of Abraham and Isaac well known, would be falling embarrassingly far short of Abraham's legend. American Presidents don't necessarily all compare themselves to George Washington, but they also don't throw nickels half-way across the Potomac.

[Morley]

Thank you for these posts, Physics Guy.

[pgm1985]

The evidence that it’s man-made is actually in the New Testament itself. You can trace a lot of it through textural analysis, such as the longer ending of Mark added on after the gospel was written.

I recommend Bart Ehrman’s lectures on the evolution of beliefs about Jesus. Specifically how Jesus morphed from an apocalyptic preacher into God himself. That evolution shows this was not a doctrine handed down from heaven; but just human ideas morphing and changing the way human ideas always do.

I have heard of Dr. Ehrman’s theories about variants of the New Testament but have not looked into them before. I did listen to two of his lectures, Misquoting Jesus in the Bible and Factors for Christianity’s Success as well as look through his book Misquoting Jesus . He does bring up some creative arguments against the reliability of the Gospels and Christianity in general. One observation I have is how a professor of New Testament studies would think the sacrament of Communion is the Christian cannibalistic practice of eating babies. This makes me question what his motivation is in his critique and what presuppositions he holds. Nevertheless, it appears the main focus of his critique is the textual variants in the New Testament. Dr. Ehrman states there approximately 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts.

In researching Dr. Ehrman’s points about the textual variations, I found there are numerous New Testament scholars who provide a critical review of Dr. Ehrman’s work. According to Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, professor and Vice President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 99% of these variants are insignificant as they include spelling differences, word order differences, or grammatical differences. Dr. Craig Blomberg, New Testament professor at Denver Seminary, puts the textual variant issue into perspective in his book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels:
What he [Ehrman] fails to do is to put these variants in perspective by informing his readers that only two variants anywhere affect more than a couple of verses, that only eleven involve even a full verse or two, and that the consensus among textual critics is that the modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament we have, either in the text itself or the footnotes upwards of 97% of what the original authors wrote reconstructed beyond any reasonable doubt, and that no doctrine of the Christian faith depends solely on one or more textually uncertain passages.

Dr. Ehrman is right about one thing, a substantial amount of people who claim to be Christians do not read the Bible. I like how Dr. Jones concludes Dr. Ehrman is not a threat to Christianity: “What he poses is an opportunity for believers to become more aware of the beautiful struggles by which God brought us to where we are today. Ehrman has created an opportunity for us to ask difficult questions – questions like, What do I really mean when I say the Bible is God’s Word? and What are we actually claiming when we declare that the Scriptures are without error?” Dr. Ehrman has done nothing to prove the Bible is divinely inspired but he has shown how crucial it is for Christian to read and study the Bible and its historicity.

[huckelberry]

The evidence that it’s man-made is actually in the New Testament itself. You can trace a lot of it through textural analysis, such as the longer ending of Mark added on after the gospel was written.

I recommend Bart Ehrman’s lectures on the evolution of beliefs about Jesus. Specifically how Jesus morphed from an apocalyptic preacher into God himself. That evolution shows this was not a doctrine handed down from heaven; but just human ideas morphing and changing the way human ideas always do.

I have heard of Dr. Ehrman’s theories about variants of the New Testament but have not looked into them before. I did listen to two of his lectures, Misquoting Jesus in the Bible and Factors for Christianity’s Success as well as look through his book Misquoting Jesus . He does bring up some creative arguments against the reliability of the Gospels and Christianity in general. One observation I have is how a professor of New Testament studies would think the sacrament of Communion is the Christian cannibalistic practice of eating babies. This makes me question what his motivation is in his critique and what presuppositions he holds. Nevertheless, it appears the main focus of his critique is the textual variants in the New Testament. Dr. Ehrman states there approximately 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts.

In researching Dr. Ehrman’s points about the textual variations, I found there are numerous New Testament scholars who provide a critical review of Dr. Ehrman’s work. According to Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, professor and Vice President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 99% of these variants are insignificant as they include spelling differences, word order differences, or grammatical differences. Dr. Craig Blomberg, New Testament professor at Denver Seminary, puts the textual variant issue into perspective in his book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels:
What he [Ehrman] fails to do is to put these variants in perspective by informing his readers that only two variants anywhere affect more than a couple of verses, that only eleven involve even a full verse or two, and that the consensus among textual critics is that the modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament we have, either in the text itself or the footnotes upwards of 97% of what the original authors wrote reconstructed beyond any reasonable doubt, and that no doctrine of the Christian faith depends solely on one or more textually uncertain passages.

Dr. Ehrman is right about one thing, a substantial amount of people who claim to be Christians do not read the Bible. I like how Dr. Jones concludes Dr. Ehrman is not a threat to Christianity: “What he poses is an opportunity for believers to become more aware of the beautiful struggles by which God brought us to where we are today. Ehrman has created an opportunity for us to ask difficult questions – questions like, What do I really mean when I say the Bible is God’s Word? and What are we actually claiming when we declare that the Scriptures are without error?” Dr. Ehrman has done nothing to prove the Bible is divinely inspired but he has shown how crucial it is for Christian to read and study the Bible and its historicity.

As a Christian believer I have found some interest in Ehrman's books. I agree they do not really present reason not to believe Christianity. He does discuss how Christian understanding grew. People thought about its implications over time. The business about eating babies is most certainly not something Ehrman believes. It was a slander that passed around among some nonChristians in the first centuries. Ehrman speaking as an historian could report the existence of those slanderous rumors.

[huckelberry]

So you’re saying truth is relative to one’s experience?

No, truth is objective. We, however, are not. Our own experience is the most reliable standard we have for recognising truth, but it's still not a very good standard. It only gives clear verdicts in a few simple cases.

How do you differentiate between what is moral and immoral?

I try to do unto others as I would like them to do unto me. I feel that that's the right principle; perhaps it's the conviction of the Holy Spirit, or perhaps it's just a basic human sense of fairness, that other people deserve as much as I do.

Just because I got this principle from Jesus doesn't mean that I somehow need to accept everything else in the Bible. Even Biblical inerrantists all agree that not everything has to be based on some kind of infallible standard, because no inerrantist can identify the infallible standard upon which the decision to believe in the Bible is based. So if we are all allowed to adopt some principles—such as Biblical authority for example—based on human reason and feeling, then I can just adopt the Golden Rule in that way.

Physics Guy, I thought this basic statement should be made for pgm1985 question.Best you answered it directly. Relativism was brought up which is something of a common thing to warn against and reject. It however is not at clear as to what relativism might be. In probably more than a few sermons it seems to mean people saying do whatever feels good. Sounds a bit like what a teenager might say when drinking. Sober even the teenager remembers evaluating goals that are worthwhile and what builds towards those goals are necessary guides. One must try and understand objective reality.

[pgm1985]

You seem to have presuppositions that beg the question Christianity is false. This is clear when you use the term genocide of women and children and God called for raping. Your objection is to what you perceive to be how the Bible depicts God based on your moral standards and presuppositions, not God's moral standard. By viewing Scripture through a Christian worldview, I must allow that God has the authority to carry out His judgement on the Cannanites in method and time of His choosing. Deuteronomy 20:17-18 states: "Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God." God commanded their killing because of their sin.

In the end, all of us are sinners (Romans 3:23) who deserve the punishment of death (Romans 6:23). Is God a moral monster for sending His son, Jesus, to suffer and die? No. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17) God loves us that despite our sin, He has given us a way to salvation through Jesus.

William Lane Craig provides a more detailed response here:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writing ... canaanites

1 Samuel 15: 3
"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

I have a moral intuition that this is wrong. I also have an education that leads me to believe this is just a man made fiction, or an exaggeration of what happened historically. The Christian has to do a lot of mental gymnastics to reconcile it, whereas I can see it for what it is. A barbaric relic of humanity’s past.

In your world, if you think God is telling you to kill an infant you will do it because you believe he has the authority to. That’s immoral to me.

You claim to have a moral foundation but that foundation is often rotten and is worse than no foundation at all. I can make a better foundation now by saying intentionally killing infants during war is always wrong.

Part of the Christian worldview is recognized the omniscience of God. When interpreting these tough passages, it is crucial to recognize they must be viewed through a Christian worldview and not a literalistic fundamentalist. While I don't claim to have a complete understanding of why things happened int the Bible, I acknowledge God has superior moral reason for his commands. Part of understanding is taking into account the contexts of these stories. They occurred when Israel was a nation-state under direction by prophets. This is much different from the context of Jesus' and the Apostles teachings in the New Testament, which is a much similar cultural context to what we have today. In Job 38:4, God responds to Job's questioning of God's methods: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." Who are we as created beings to question the Creator? There are theories to why God commanded the killing of the Canaanites, such as the nephalem were still present and this was the way to eliminate them, but it is only speculation.

The moral foundation of the Christian worldview is the only foundation that has any morality because it presupposes God's perfect morality. Any other moral foundation based on human reason is flawed.

[drumdude]

The moral foundation of the Christian worldview is the only foundation that has any morality because it presupposes God's perfect morality. Any other moral foundation based on human reason is flawed.

Mormons make the same argument. If you presuppose that Joseph Smith was a true prophet then the LDS church is God’s true church on earth.

The problem is the unjustified presupposition, for both Mormons and you.