Posted by:
randyj
(
)
Date: February 28, 2014 09:36AM
"The only thing he isn't rational about is the church. He refuses to listen to evidence on anti-sites."
One of the things the church does very well is to prejudice peoples' minds about "anti-Mormon" material. What your son needs to do is to clear his mind of such prejudices, and study the material and come to rational conclusions just like you would with any other subject.
If you read the documentation I gave you yesterday on your other thread about polygamy, you would have seen that all of the sources I provided were from church-published, or first-hand, historical sources. Your son needs to forget about whether stuff comes from "anti sites" and concentrate on whether or not the original sources are credible.
"He has studied anti-sites and has told me that he knows lots of horrid things have happened in the history of the church but he still believes the church is true."
Even if one rationalized away "horrid things" like that, the larger questions remains: Does the church live up to its OWN CLAIMS?
For instance, the D&C states that "God will never allow the prophet to lead the church astray." So, did Joseph Smith lead the church astray when he practiced polygamy? Did Smith lead the church astray when he taught "blood atonement," and ordered the murder of his enemies? Did Brigham Young lead the church astray when he engineered the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which more than 120 innocent Americans were murdered? Did every Mormon prophet from Smith to Kimball lead the church astray when they taught that Negroes were cursed, inferior, and weren't worthy to hold the priesthood?
Also, consider these essays that the church is putting out: they state that the church taught false things in the past, their leaders made mistakes, etc. The church itself is admitting that their past have "led the church astray." So why place any confidence in them?
"He still thinks that there is archeological evidence of the BOM. He just wants to use faith to know the BOM is true."
There is NO archaeological evidence for the BOM, none whatsoever. All of the alleged items of evidence that the church's apologists have cited over the years have been debunked. These recent DNA studies which show NO evidence of Hebrew/Semitic migration into Pre-Columbian America confirm the lack of archaelogical evidence.
A few years ago, the Mormon apologist Teryl Givens said of a stone carving found in Yemen which contained the Hebrew letters NHM: "These altars may thus be said to constitute the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon." Read more at
http://mormonthink.com/book-of-mormon-problems.htm#nhmObviously, if Givens believed that the "NHM" carving was the FIRST item of evidence for the BOM (which it really isn't). then he is admitting that there is no other evidence, either.
As for your son wanting to use faith to know the BOM is true: How can you have faith in something that is an obvious fraud? Consider these statements from LDS scholars:
John Sorenson: "There are those who say, 'I believe that doctrine is all that is important in the Book of Mormon. We do not need to worry about its history.' We are faced, however, with the fact that most of the Book of Mormon IS history.....The history is a convincer of the authenticity of the book as much as the doctrine is."
Robert L. Millett: "The historicity of the Book of Mormon is crucial. We cannot exercise faith in that which is untrue, nor can 'doctrinal fiction' have normative value in our lives."
Roslyn, if there is no evidence that anything in the BOM even occurred, then there is nothing there to have faith IN.