The LDS church teaches and the members believe that guidance from “The Spirit” will tell them what is true and what is false. They generally believe that this is the way to know that “the Church is true.” If this concept is in fact correct then it should be possible to prove it with a simple test.

Here it is a way to perform such a test. First you must recruit a TBM who believes that they are guided by The Spirit. With that person present, sit down at a table. Take out a blank sheet of paper and have the TBM sign his/her name at the top of the sheet. Then have the TBM sit down in a chair that is located on the opposite side of the room.

Next you flip a coin 20 times and record the results of each flip (heads or tails, H or T) sequentially on the sheet of paper. At this point the TBM should not be able to view the paper. The next step is to ask the TBM (with assistance from “The Spirit”) to write down on a second sheet of paper a string of twenty letters, (H or T), that represent the results of the coin flipping that you just performed.

If the TBM needs some private, quiet time to perform this step, that is perfectly OK. The TBM may wish to pray for help in determining the coin-flip results so that "The Spirit" can guide the person as he/she writes down the string of coin-flip results. If they want some serious time then leave the room for a half hour to allow the TBM to pray in private. Make sure to take the signed results sheet with you!

When the TBM completes the writing of the second sheet of paper with his/her coin-flip results (as aided/inspired by “The Spirit”) then the two of you should compare that information with the actual coin-flip results that you recorded on the signed sheet at the time you flipped the coin.

Random guessing can be expected to produce ten correct answers for the twenty coin flips. If guidance from “The Spirit” actually works in the way that TBMs believe it works, then the TBM should be able to get all twenty of the coin-flips correct.

The odds of correctly guessing the results of the twenty coin flips are 95 in 100 million. So if the person gets all twenty coin flips correct it is reasonable to believe that “The Spirit” must have assisted him/her. If they don’t get the results correct then the most reasonable explanation is that “The Spirit” concept just plain does not work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2012 09:43AM by saviorself.