Maksutov wrote:From Richard Packham's website:
FAQ: "Why don't you pray and ask God about the Book of Mormon?"
"The Book of Mormon says (Moroni 10:4) that if you ask God if it is true, with a sincere heart and with real intent and with faith in Jesus Christ, he will manifest its truth to you. I challenge you to do this!"
"Why don't you ask God whether the Book of Mormon is true? James 1:5 says, 'If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.' Are you afraid to ask God?"
"You will know that the Book of Mormon is true only by asking God. Only he (through the Holy Ghost) can prove it to you!"
My response:
I have not prayed to God for information as to whether the Book of Mormon is true or not. There are several reasons why. That I am fearful of what the result of such a prayer would be is most assuredly NOT one of those reasons.
There is no need for me (or anyone) to pray to any deity to find out whether the Book of Mormon is true, because there is abundant information already available to show quite clearly that it is false. Why, then, should anyone bother God to get information that is ready at hand? Should I ask God what the speed of light is, or the date that Columbus discovered America, or the time of the next flight to Chicago? Should I ask God about every fantastic claim made by faith healers and con men? If there is a God who created us, then I must assume that he (or she or it) gave us a brain for the purpose of using it to the best of our abilities. That is, to examine facts, to draw conclusions.
I do not accept James' advice as good, primarily for the reasons just stated, and because I do not consider him to be divinely inspired. But even if I did, I note that even James says to ask God only if you don't know already. He clearly does not seem to be saying that the only way to get wisdom is to ask God in prayer. In fact, the entire tradition of wisdom in Jewish thought, inherited by the early Christians (including James), indicated that wisdom was the result of careful and righteous reasoning and study, not of prayer. The believers at Berea (Acts 17:10) did this.
Trying to obtain factual information by supernatural means - whether by prayer, crystal ball, ESP, card reading, astrology, necromancy, ouija board, or esoteric interpretation of supposedly sacred books - is so unreliable that only the most gullible people would accept the results as conclusive. Their unreliability is obvious when one considers the following:
The results can differ and be contradictory: what Jack gets from his crystal ball contradicts what Mary learns from her cards, and neither agrees with what Phil sees in his dream after fasting and praying. Many religions urge prospective converts to "ask God" for confirmation of the truth of their claims, and one must ask, if God really uses this method to identify the "true church," why then do positive answers always seem to confirm the truth of the particular religion the supplicant is asking about? We hear no testimonies of someone who never heard of the Mormons, praying to ask God whether Church X is the "true church" (as suggested by the missionaries for that church), but receiving the unexpected message from God that Church X is false, but go check out the Mormons.
Jim's prayer about the Book of Mormon results in his feeling "tingly" all over, and he thinks therefore that God is telling him that it is true, but Ann's prayer leaves her feeling cold and uncomfortable, and she therefore thinks that God is telling her that it is of the Devil. Both are very typical experiences. And then there are the testimonies of hundreds of devout Mormons who prayed, fasted, and devoutly obeyed every commandment of their church for years, repeatedly begging God to give them the testimony promised in the Book of Mormon (Moroni 10:4), and they received nothing, and eventually came to the disappointing but unavoidable conclusion that perhaps God was indeed telling them - if only by silence - that it was not true.
We know, from our modern knowledge of psychology, that "altered states of consciousness" (that is, sudden physical feelings of elation, "highs," hallucinations) can be easily induced in many ways, including chemicals (drugs), sleep deprivation, lowering of blood sugar through fasting, suggestion (hypnosis), and even auto-suggestion. We know, too, that these altered states of consciousness seem very real to the person experiencing them. The reality is enhanced, of course, if there is also a strong desire to accept the experience as real.
The fundamental question, of course, is how one can validate the source and the trustworthiness of any "message" or "inspiration" that one might receive? Even devout believers in some form of the "prayer method" of obtaining knowledge must admit that some such messages cannot be relied upon. The devil can transform himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) and thus deceive "even the elect" (Matthew 24:24). Even in the Mormon temple "endowment" ceremony there is a scene where Adam prays to God, but Lucifer responds, rather than God.
The wise person, then, would validate anything which might claim to be a supernatural message. How? One suggestion, usually offered by defenders of "spiritual knowledge," is essentially that if the message says what you have been told it ought to say, then it is from God. If it testifies of Christ, then it is from God; if it does not, or if it is different from what I told you, it is false (Galations 1:8). This is, of course, basically fallacious: it is the fallacy of self-validation (also called "self-sealing"), a special form of the fallacy of circular reasoning (also called "begging the question").
The only way to validate information is to check it using reliable information that we already have. That means using the facts, using our own experiences and the reliable experiences of others. And it requires a healthy skepticism.
Anyone who asks us to believe some message obtained by prayer (or any other such supernatural means) which is contradicted by facts is asking us to be gullible and to abdicate our responsibilities as rational beings. Prophet Poopidoop's missionaries have presented you with a collection of his inspired writings. You read them, and they are obviously self-contradictory nonsense. Will you pray to God anyway, and ask for confirmation of what your common sense tells you?
The test given in the Book of Mormon (Moroni 10:4) is: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."
There are several reasons why one should question the reliability of this test, in addition to the general objections mentioned above about trying to obtain information by means of prayer or by reliance on something "feeling good" or "feeling right."
First, why should one be required to use only the method of validation which the claimant (here, the writer of the Book of Mormon) offers? Is no other method of validating (or invalidating) it allowed? If not, why not? If not, then you are also bound, when Prophet Poopidoop presents his own collection of religious writings, to use only the test which he proposes: place Poopidoop's book on your front lawn and ask God to send lightning to destroy it if it is not true!
Another objection to the Moroni 10:4 test is that it requires you to have already a "faith in Christ." If one already has "faith in Christ" then one does not need the Book of Mormon, since the purpose of the Book of Mormon, according to its cover (at least in recent editions) is to serve as "Another Testament of Jesus Christ." This requirement also apparently does not permit a Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or atheist from testing the book by this method, since they do not already have a faith in Jesus as the Christ.
As for the challenge: I challenge you to kneel with your head on the ground facing Mecca, and thus to pray with sincere heart and with real intent: "O Allah, in the name of thy prophet Mohammed, give me assurance that the Holy Koran is true!" If you refuse - for any reason - to do this, then you have no right to suggest that I pray about your sacred book.
http://packham.n4m.org/pray.htm.................
MORONI'S CHALLENGE IN THE Book of Mormon
Moroni 10:3-5:
3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
Believers in the Book of Mormon ("Book of Mormon") read the above passage at the end of the final chapter of the book, and interpret it to mean that it is possible for the reader to pray about the Book of Mormon in order to find out, directly from the Holy Ghost, whether the Book of Mormon is true.
As many of us already know, there are several issues with the passage referred to as Moroni’s Promise or Moroni’s Challenge, so I decided to compile all the issues I could think of in a single place.
1. It is to the Lamanites only
This consideration alone invalidates Moroni’s Promise. In Verse 1, Moroni informs the reader that he is not addressing the general readership, and starts the Chapter by saying “Now I, Moroni, write somewhat as seemeth me good; and I write unto my brethren, the Lamanites..."
In verse 23 he is still speaking solely to the Lamanites ("And Christ truly said unto our fathers…") and does not return to the general audience until verse 24 when he “speak[s] unto all the ends of the earth..."
When speaking to the general readership, the author doesn’t seem to require the same high standard as laid out for the Lamanites, because for the general readership (verse 28) “…God shall show unto you, that that which I have written is true.”
When read in context, we discover that Moroni’s Promise is a promise only to Lamanites. And considering that, even if they once existed, they have essentially disappeared (especially from LDS publications and discourse).
If we “liken the scriptures unto ourselves” and presume that the promise applies to non-Lamanites we are interpolating something that is not warranted by the Book of Mormon, and simply reading a meaning that we’d like to be true into the passages.
2. There is no reason to accept the promise as legitimate unless you already accept the Book of Mormon as legitimate.
If, upon reaching the final chapter of the final book of the Harry Potter series, you found a passage that claimed that if you prayed about the Harry Potter books, the spirit of Dumbledore would let you know that it’s true, would you do it? Of course not, but why not? Because you have no reason to believe that the Harry Potter series is true. Why would you accept a promise or a challenge from a character for whom you had no reason to think is anything other than fictional? You would not.
Yet upon reaching the final chapter of the Book of Mormon, many people do pray to find out if it is true. Why pray about Moroni’s Promise when you would not extend the same courtesy to Dumbledore’s Promise? The reader must have already accepted the idea that Moroni is somehow less fictional than Dumbledore.
The very act of making that prayer requires that the person accept that the author is likely not fictional, and Book of Mormon is what it claims.
3. The challenge takes advantage of Cognitive Dissonance
Leon Festinger’s theory of Cognitive Dissonance says, in a simplified nutshell, that we do not like it when our attitudes and beliefs contradict with (i) other attitudes and beliefs or (ii) behaviors, so we try to change an attitude/belief or an attitude so that they are in harmony (or consonance).
Interestingly, it turns out that when an attitude/belief is in conflict with a behavior, people are more likely to change the attitude/belief than behavior. So if, for example, I believe smoking is bad for me, and yet I smoke, I am more likely to downplay my belief in the harmful effects of smoking than I am to quit. Or if I believe that sex before marriage is a sin, and I can’t keep it in my pants, I am more likely to give up my attitude regarding the sinfulness of premarital sex than I am to stop foolin’ around.
A further example from Apostle Boyd K. Packer, who said that a testimony is found in the bearing of it… You don’t have a testimony? Well, bear your testimony anyway until you have one. Yeah…you better believe that as a professionally trained educator, Boyd K. was familiar with Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
Now apply this to Moroni’s Promise. You have the attitude that you desire the Book of Mormon to be true, you have the behavior of praying to know if the book is true, but you also have the belief that you don’t know if the book is true. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is likely to change.
Consequently (and ever so frustratingly), even if the Book of Mormon is entirely a work of fiction, if one desires the book to be true, and prays to know if it is true, Cognitive Dissonance Theory suggests that that person’s belief will change in the affirmative.
4. The challenge relies on subjective emotions
The evidence for the Book of Mormon is, by all accounts, a feeling—an internal, qualitative, subjective feeling. An emotion. In order to accept the legitimacy of Moroni’s Promise, we have to accept the existence of what I call Internal Truth Detectors (ITD’s). We have to assume that humans have an internal faculty for detecting supernatural or spiritual truth.
a. Emotions don’t carry semantic content
Feelings don’t convey the right sort of information that would be required to judge truth. They might tell you “I love the book,” “I was frightened by the book,” or “the book is a painful bore” but will not tell you anything about its correspondence to external reality.
If I say “I love my son,” that feeling tells me about my feelings about my son, but tells me nothing about my son himself. Feelings tell you about your subjective perception of something, but not objective information about the thing itself.
b. There is no reason to believe in ITDs as a source for facts
Well maybe your faith has told you that you have a spiritual truth detector, but then, you would not accept that proposition unless you have already accepted the set of propositions that contains it. In other words, one would not believe in an internal truth detector, unless one is already disposed to believe religious propositions.
c. The feelings are left undefined, therefore anything counts as an answer.
The feelings that one might experience upon accepting Moroni’s Challenge are subjective, qualitative, internal, and ineffable
(ineffable—imagine that I have never tasted pineapple. Could you taste it and describe it to me in such a way that I would know what pineapple tastes like. No? Because of its internal subjective nature, it cannot be conveyed using words. It is ineffable.)
Because of the above characteristics, it is impossible to define just what the feeling in question ought to be. So in practice, when someone prays about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, whatever sensation they experience (whether it is peace, excitement, sadness (at not learning it earlier), warmth, a tingle, virtually anything), it can be interpreted (especially with the guidance of a helpful missionary) as the witness of the Holy Ghost.
d. There is no test to distinguish ordinary emotions from ITD’s
As believers and non-believers alike have noted, the feelings associated with the ostensible witness of the Holy Ghost are indistinguishable from feelings experienced while looking at a majestic waterfall, holding your child, watching a Disney movie, hearing a moving choir, etc. Discouragingly, the Lord has seen fit to judge you and me according to whether we believe and act upon the right set of propositions, even though He has offered no reliable guideline for adjudicating between real divinely inspired feelings and ordinary natural feelings.
e. There is no way to compare one's ITDs with those of others.
Our brothers and sisters in different faiths also believe that they have reliable internal truth detectors. They believe with a certainty equal to that of the LDS that their cherished set of propositions is in fact the correct one.
For the true believer, the only reasonable inference is that only the ITD’s of the LDS are accurate, everybody else’s must be faulty, or they must be mistaking ordinary emotions for the witness of the spirit.
The problem with this inference is that when one considers that the experiences in question are subjective, qualitative, internal, and ineffable, it is literally impossible to do a comparison between the experiences of any two individuals to see if one feels more valid, feels more truthish. If it impossible to do a comparison between such feelings, it is impossible to say that my feelings are better truth detectors than are your feelings.
5. We are only supposed to try it on Book of Mormon
Let’s say, hypothetically, that I have never tried drinking a soda pop, and I decide to try it to find out which is my favorite. The first one you hand me is a root beer and I love it. If I were to exclaim “This is the one! I don’t need to try any others, this is my favorite!” how would you react? Would I be silly for thinking I like it better than all the ones I have never tasted?
I try Moroni’s Promise, and I get an emotion that I interpret as the witness of the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is true. That fact alone is no indication that I won’t get exactly the same feeling if I were to pray about the Quran, or the writings of Mary Baker Eddy or Ellen White, or the Vedas, or Dianetics, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the Bhagavad Gita, etc.
The only reason to try it on the Book of Mormon and then stop the search, is that you are already predisposed to believe the Book of Mormon. In which case, Moroni’s Promise hardly constitutes a legitimate test. It amounts to “I’m going to pray about it, and whatever I feel means that it’s true. Then I’ll never try it on another text."
6. Why would it even occur to Moroni to suggest praying to find out if it’s true?
This seems fishy to me. Moroni, like his father Mormon, is, among other things, a historian. As a historian, he would presume that the record he is providing would itself be the evidence of the history of his people. If he has dedicated a large portion of his life to preserving the evidence of the Book of Mormon people, why would he include an odd instruction to pray, essentially for evidence of what he has just provided evidence for?
You might counter that the Book provides a history of the people, but the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to bring people to Christ. That might very well be a stated purpose of the book, but Moroni’s Promise doesn’t ask the reader to pray about whether Jesus is real, or if Jesus is the savior. It only asks the reader to pray about whether the book is true.
7. So many qualifiers
A clever tactic used by the author of Moroni’s promise is to load it with quatifiers. When praying to find out if the Book of Mormon is true, the seeker has to:
(i) ...remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men...
(an odd criterion—keep in mind that God is merciful? Why not keep in mind that God can answer prayers? That would make more sense)
(ii) ...from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things,...
(For serious? In order to get an answer, you need to keep in mind the entirety of human civilization. That’s a bit of a tall order)
(iii) ...and ponder it in your hearts.
(If you don’t get the right answer you might not have pondered enough, or pondered the right aspects of all of human history)
(iv)I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ...
(The ball is in your court. Do it correctly. Don’t pray to Jesus, only to the Father, in His name. If you do it wrong, it might not work).
(v) ...and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart,...
(Left undefined, you have to really really really want to know. If you didn’t get an answer, it doesn’t mean the book is not true, maybe you just were not sincere enough)
(vi) ...with real intent...
(Again, undefined. If you don’t get answer, it does not mean the book is not true, just maybe your intent was a bit wonky)
(vii) ...having faith in Christ...
(Right. In order to know whether I should believe this one supernatural claim, I already have to have a prior supernatural claim preparing the way for it.)
Because of this long list of criteria, there is always room for doubt about any negative answer. If one does not get the affirmative, it is always possible that the seeker failed on one or more of the ambiguous criteria listed in the promise. So, the affirmative will always mean it is true, but the negative does not mean it is not true.
This allows the believer in the Book of Mormon to cherry pick the potential supporting evidence.
Hypothetical thought experiment:
Let’s say some intrepid researchers were able to survey every seeker who accepted Moroni’s Challenge and prayed about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Let’s further say that the results were 1 in 10. 10% of our hypothetical seekers believe they receive an affirmative answer to their prayer and accept the truth claims of the Book of Mormon. This leaves 90% feeling nothing, or feeling that the book is not what it claims.
If this hypothetical study were carried out, and the results handed to believers in the Book of Mormon, how would they interpret it? It wouldn’t matter. One of the reasons is that the list of qualifiers in the promise give a handy way of dismissing any counter evidence. So the believer is in the enviable position of being able to accept any confirming evidence as proof that the book is true, while dismissing the counter evidence as irrelevant.
8. Are they not true?
Just between you and me, this seems to be a nod and a wink from the actual author of the Book or Moroni.
“I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true…” (If you try to argue that this is Popperian Falsifiability, I might have to track you down and punch you in the duodenum)
If you ask if these things are NOT true, and you get a “yes” answer, then the answer is “yes, they are not true.” If, on the other hand you get a “no” answer, then your answer is “no, they are not true.”
Nudge nudge, wink wink.
9. In what sense is it true?
a. The book is wrong on flora and fauna, silk, steel, etc.
b. It’s ambiguous enough that its central claims can’t even be pinned down—where did it happen? Was the land empty? Are modern day Indians of the House of Israel?
c. The theological claims are basically biblical, or unrelated to Mormonism?
d. There are changes in the book. And some are significant. It initially taught a concept of God that was much closer to Trinitarian, before being changed to reflect the tripartite Godhead of later Mormonism. That is not a grammatical change, it is a change in bedrock doctrine.
So what? Mistranslations? Misinterpretations? In the most correct book in the world? If horses and elephants and silk and geography are so easily misunderstood, what’s to say the theology of the book is not equally misunderstood?
e. The book says some very straightforward things. It is extremely unambiguous that the Jaredites and Lehites were guided to a land with nobody else there. There are multiple passages that are clear on this matter. However, after evidence started to accumulate that this claim was untenable, apologists discovered that a “closer reading” “implied” that there were already inhabitants there. If very clear and straightforward claims of the Book of Mormon can be revised upon a “closer” reading, what’s to say that the theological claims are not equally ambiguous.
The “truth” of the Book of Mormon is a moving target, is vacuous, and amounts to nothing more than the warm fuzzies unrelated to anything in external reality.
10. Most people don’t even read it prior to praying about it.
This one comes from my own missionary experiences. The norm, at least in my mission, was to have the shortest space of time possible between first contact and baptism. The standard discussions we used tried to get us to commit the investigators ("‘gators") to baptism on the second lesson. However, “if guided by the spirit” we were to try to commit them to baptism on the first discussion.
(Aside: on my first night knocking on doors, we met a family, and I committed them to baptism on the first discussion. I thought “Man, this mission thing is gonna be a breeze…")
Because we were trying make the conversion process happen in such a short time frame, it was standard practice to get our ‘gators to pray about the Book of Mormon after reading only a few chapters. Usually 3rd Nephi 11 (when Jesus visits the Nephites), or if we were feeling ambitious, 3rd Nephi 11-26 (the entire visit of Jesus to the Nephites), and of course Moroni 10: 3-5 (not the whole chapter, I see why now…).
So even if our ‘gators accepted Moroni’s challenge and received an affirmative response, they still had no clue what they were claiming to believe to be true. They said, in effect, “I don’t know what the content is, but I believe it to be true."
11. Innoculates against evidence.
The “proof” of the Book of Mormon is entirely independent of geography, geology, linguistics, population genetics, DNA, or even (as pointed out in point 10) the content of the Book of Mormon. It is instead dependent upon the supposition that you have better Internal Truth Detectors than everybody who disagrees with you.
As a result, counter-evidence has no effect on one's testimony of the book. Every time there is counter-evidence, the believer can simply fall back upon his or her “spiritual witness” and confidently dismiss any and all criticisms of the Book of Mormon.