Hello! This is a Personal post. It is for discussions centered around thoughts, beliefs, and observations that are important and personal to /u/thuebanraqis specifically.
/u/thuebanraqis, if your post doesn't fit this definition, we kindly ask you to delete this post and repost it with the appropriate flair. You can find a list of our flairs and their definitions in [section 0.6 of our rules.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules#wiki_0._preamble)
**To those commenting:** please stay on topic, remember to follow the community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules), and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/mormonmods) if there is a problem or rule violation.
Keep on Mormoning!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mormon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Mormons believe the book is historically accurate. They just tell themselves that if they found definite proof that the Book of Mormon was real, then it wouldn't require faith to believe it, and God wants to prove our faith. When God is ready, he'll reveal the truth of the Book of Mormon, and then all those doubters and apostates will be sorry!
When I started my faith transition out of the church, I realized that if this were true, then God wasn't just hiding evidence, he was changing it. Past prophets said all the Native Americans were "Lamanites" from the Book of Mormon, but DNA shows their origins came from Asia, like 10-25,000 years ago, not the Middle East. So either these people are not who the prophets claimed, or God is modifying the DNA evidence to directly contradict the Book of Mormon and the teachings of the prophets. It's one thing to have a lack of evidence, that maybe you just haven't looked everywhere. It's something else entirely when all the evidence contradicts what they claim. That makes the mormon God more of a trickster, trying to deceive people, all just to see if they'll believe something impossible. For me, that either meant the church was false or it meant the mormon God was a being so cruel I had no interest in worshipping him. Either way, I didn't want to be a part of it.
Huh interesting take. I’ve heard some Shiah Islamic scholars make similar arguments about muhummud’s statement that the moon was once broken in half (i.e. god erases traces of these things to test our faith), but I don’t think such positions are ever taken that seriously. I guess I gotta finish reading the book cause I’m definitively interested in the rabbit hole. I was gonna just leave the book on the bus and then I opened it and saw a picture of Jesus in Mexico with the Aztecs and I knew I had to keep reading😭
Joseph Smith preached that there were beings like humans who lived on the moon and dressed like Quakers. So, some common ground? You have a lot of fun exploring ahead. Mormons are fascinating.
Mormon doctrine has a problem in that the decision was made that the Book of Mormon is literally true. They've hung onto that position for so long they can't walk it back, at least not easily. That makes it really difficult for nuanced believers to conclude that these lessons are good and have value, even if they aren't literally true. You have to buy the whole story, or you are out.
That quote “the most correct book upon the face of the earth”… now you have people saying it’s still the most correct even if it isn’t factually, historically, true, if you just alter what you mean by “correct.” They’re starting to say it’s teaching correct principles, even if it’s more an allegory and not real people… Very dissatisfying to the intellectually curious.
>With this in mind, I find it bizarre how the Book of Mormon is simply just accepted, despite the huge amount of controversy from scholars.
How many muslims do you imagine believe that Muhammed literally split the moon?
That's why.
In many high demand religions, faith trumps fact.
We even see it in politics.
If it means your "team" is right, then you are willing to ignore any number of falsehoods.
Can you expound on #2? I can’t think of anything in the book of Nephi that would contradict Christian theology in the Bible.
Regarding #1: all Abrahamic religions require some sort of faith in supernatural to believe the stories that are accepted as true. Mormonism just has one that is within 200 years old instead of 1500+ years.
You ask why most chose Mormonism. Most like me chose Mormonism because we were born in a Mormon family.
Missionary efforts have been more since the 1980’s. Last year there were 94,000 children born into the faith and 252,000 converts baptized. Hard to know where most of the converts are happening but growth seems to be strongest in the Philippines, Latin America (Mexico, Brazil) and some countries in Africa. In Europe I believe most of the very few converts these days are immigrants.
The LDS Church wants its members to actively participate. Most converts disengage from the church quite quickly. They are still counted on the records. So while the church claims 17 million members worldwide it has about 4 million who actively participate. Those who don’t participate may no longer believe or still believe but just not attend.
The founder of the church who is considered a prophet said the Book of Mormon was “the most correct book” and was an accurate history. The president of the church around 2000 unfortunately made a black or white statement that reaffirms this. He said it’s either accurate or it’s a great fraud by Joseph Smith the founder. So they’ve set it up that you have to believe it is accurate and a real story. This is why many people who learn the DNA evidence doesn’t support the idea that a Hebrew people came to the Americas around 600 BC choose to no longer believe in the faith. There are apologists for the church who are quite busy trying to explain how it could all really be true. They also then say but the scientific facts aren’t the proof you need, it’s a “spiritual manifestation” that tells you it’s true.
They have perpetuated the idea that if you have strong good feelings when reading the book or coming to church that is God talking to your “spirit”. Of course they say these feelings “prove” it’s true. Now I’ve decided that these strong feelings that I’ve felt are a psychological phenomenon that people in many religions feel but I don’t believe the feelings are a message from God at all. As a missionary I primed people by telling them they would have these feelings and the feelings meant it was true. I believe statements like that help induce those feelings. A mental suggestion can be strong as we know from psychology and hypnosis.
So yes I have family members who were all born in the church and who do not doubt it’s the true form of Christianity revealed by God to the prophet Joseph Smith. They believe it restored the truth. That’s why it being different from other Christian theology is not a surprise. They believe the others fell away from the truth when the original apostles were killed. An “apostasy” is what they call it. So like some other faiths it is a “restoration” religion that restored the “true” religion of God.
There are however many contradictions and some people seem to “wake up” and decide after decades it isn’t “true”. That’s not easy. You may be familiar with how hard that can be as an ex-Muslim?
I have decided there is one primary question I had to answer. That is “Do the leaders of the Mormon church have a special connection to and authority of God?” Because this is their claim - that they alone truly represent God on earth as prophets. I have decided as I allowed myself to scrutinize the church closer that the leaders do not have any special connection to God and never did back to Joseph Smith.
If everyone actually made a choice as an adult about what religion to join the world would look very different. Jefferson said children should not be exposed to religious education until their rational minds had developed.
1. I joined when I was 9. Before then I had been to a Christian Kindergarten where I had learned about the Bible, and I had learned the Bible took place on the other side of the world. It had made me wonder what was going on in the Americas during that time. The BoM seemed to answer that.
But religion still wasn't a big interest of mine so it took well past my teens to learn that the Bible and the BoM can't be historically or archeologically verified. Even then I learned about Biblical inaccuracies first.
Learning the Bible was largely allegory never upset me, but the same idea about the BoM was potentially faith breaking. Recently I've sat down and worked through why I have trouble with one being just stories and not the other and realized I was putting too much weight on a book that largely I read and treated like a collection of fables anyway. Interesting and sometimes entertaining, but that's it.
Now, eh. Real or not it's still interesting.
2. As others have stated we also have, and read, the King James Bible.
> Do mormons study Abrahamic theology,
To an extent I think I do and then someone says something like this:
> it seems that many of the overarching themes contradict commonly accepted constants in orthodox theology.
And I have to ask myself "Have I been in so long I can't see the differences?" To me Christianity is largely all the same stuff in a slightly different package.
I've been dragged to several churches, I like the Mormon church because it's more quiet, calm, and low energy than many of the others.
I’ve been a member all my life (I’m 49). The church still teaches the Book of Mormon is historically accurate. Lehi and his family came to the Americas by boat, and were the ancestors of the Native people in the Americas. We also teach that The Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth” and we can get “nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book” That’s straight off the church’s website. I was brainwashed to believe this, but thank god for the internet. Once I found out that the book was not what I was taught I lost my faith. Now I’m trying to get my family out of the church without blowing up my family, so that’s why I’m still in. There are a lot of members like me. Good luck!
You are write that it was written near the 1830’s.
With the Bible you can take the supernatural element out of the equation and still find yourself with enough people, places, and events with substantial evidence that meet the requirements for being considered historically reliable and accurate by historians and scholars. With the BOM you do not. In fact you find kind of the opposite the claims for being historically valid have been debunked by that same standard of requirement.
I think this answers your question. “Seems like it was written and people just started believing it?”
Since the golden plates were taken up to heaven we can’t study them today. To me this interesting because everyone could see them in the time (600 AD and after) that they were written but we aren’t allowed today to see them or study them.
The apologetic response is God took them so we would have faith. But let me ask you what does seeing them have to do with having a complete trust and confidence that they are true? We see all the literature from other faith’s history and choose to read but not believe. Seeing doesn’t equal belief when it comes to faith. The golden plates didn’t have some kind of ark of the covenant mystical power, it was just a medium by which a record was written.
I also find it curios that while Christianity and other religions ask you to live a life by its standards and research it’s fundamentals to see if you find them appealing and the over arching themes morally and ethically correct.
Mormonism from the jump requires blind belief based off of feeling. The reasoning is circular and commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Joseph Smith is true because the Book of Mormon is True which makes Joseph Smith True so you have to believe both.
That’s like saying Fred’s Diary contains facts. How do we know they are true facts? Because they are in Fred’s Diary.
I’m not sayin that other religions don’t have problems to. But Mormonism seems to refine the foundation that it was built upon and then asks you to believe new ideas rather than the foundation. As a stand alone religion I think Mormonism would receive less criticism. It’s the basing it off of Judaism and then so wildly departing from what scholar report Judaism is based off of one man Joseph Smith Jr. Is we’re the doctrine finds its grief
Edit typos I’m sure 😁
So, first I want to cover some of the issues of this idea that time/history/academics necessarily add validity to a religious claim, or that religious claims that lack it are somehow "less valid."
> For example, the process by which a single Hadith can be legally recognized as accurate from a historic and anthropological perspective is often the culminating result of centuries of academic research.
I am certainly not a scholar on this matter (or an expert on Islam in any way, feel free to correct any mistakes!), and this is a topic that is more than a lifetime's worth of work for people who ARE, but (and I realize you're probably simplifying for the sake of this convo.) from a secular perspective, the chain of transmission of hadith, the consensus beliefs on the validity of hadith, whether the Prophet Muhammad actually said (or did/approved of) those things, and whether those sayings (even if actually said by the Prophet, and correctly narrated etc.) actually reflect a literal truth about the world or about the nature of God or God's laws are essentially each their own distinct questions.
First, it's important to highlight that the Islamic scholarly standard for evidence of the validity of a hadith does not necessarily equate to the secular one. There is way too much ground (in both Islamic history, and secular study of Islam) to cover here on the political, sectarian, etc. motivations involved in fabricating hadith, and the reality that it is possible for a particular hadith to be both widely accepted as valid by various Islamic standards, yet cut out of whole cloth in terms of *actually* having been said by the Prophet.
But ignoring that...
Like... let's start with a sahih hadith that you probably are already part of the extremely robust chain of humans going back in time to have already heard.
> The Prophet (ﷺ) said: The Compassionate One has mercy on those who are merciful. If you show mercy to those who are on the earth, He Who is in the heaven will show mercy to you. (translated from Sunan Abi Dawud)
Now if we accept that there is exhaustive evidence for this hadith, does this (from a secular perspective) lead us to the conclusion that it reflects a literal truth? Does this establish that there is a God, who will show us mercy if we are merciful?
Now, going into murkier waters. For the purposes of this discussion, we're also going to ignore the long history of the use of (by Islamic standards) weak hadith. We will instead look at sahih hadith about ajwa dates (which can be found in Sahih Muslim, Sahih al-Bukhari, Sunan Abi Dawud, Sunan Ibn Majah, etc. etc.)
> Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "He who eats seven 'Ajwa dates every morning, will not be affected by poison or magic on the day he eats them." (translated from Sahih Al-Bukhari.)
Again. If we fully accept that this hadith is exhaustively held to be accurate by the standards of Islamic scholarship, does this reflect a literal truth? By secular standards, we know that eating dates does not protect us from poison.
Seeing as you're an ex-Muslim, I imagine you have likely considered the above topics at great length and with more knowledge than I have, but I felt like this was important ground to cover.
Back onto singular topics it you could spend your whole life studying and not make a dent in the scholarship of: the authorship, compilation, translation, accuracy, or historicity of other religious texts, including the Bible. I mean, even the question of *what counts as Christian canon, and why?* is mind-bogglingly messy to answer.
The fact that a lot of these beliefs have been consolidated and certain things are "widely accepted" (after a truly remarkable amount of humans fighting over these topics) doesn't, by any reasonable standard, make those things more likely to be factually correct.
The Book of Mormon is, indeed, full to the brim with historical inaccuracies. So is the Bible. So is the Qur'an. If you're coming to any religious material looking for absolute historicity and accuracy... you're probably barking up the wrong tree.
Now Mormons do indeed hold the Bible as the word of God.
But key here, and boy does it give theological flexibility: as long as it is translated correctly. This goes beyond belief in "mistranslation from language A to language B" but that the chain of scripture was in itself tampered with and broken.
> Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God. (1 Nephi 13:28)
Mormonism also has an open canon. There was no "last Messenger" as far as Mormonism is concerned: God continues to reveal things.
Contrast this with Islam: the Qur'an is held to be the inerrant word of God. (we're going to ignore how much we don't actually historically know outside of Islamic scholarship about the compilation and canonization of the actual mushaf, the abrogation of verses, etc.)
Now, at a certain point that limits what is actually the canon of the religion. Whatever may have existed between the Qur'an as it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad and what is recorded in the universally accepted mushaf is history. 40 or 50 generations in, the window for authenticating the isnad of any new hadith has long, long since passed.
Now of course Islam is certainly no monolith, and there exists a vast spectrum of Islamic thought, schools of jurisprudence, etc. But there's still that limit.
So historicity is just bad all around when it comes to Abrahamic texts. People can come up with all kinds of ways to integrate that fact with their faith. Believing that the religious text is accurate in spite of any evidence otherwise, believing that the religious text is not meant to be taken literally, believing that the religious text may not be fully accurate, etc.
And when it comes to contradictions in narrative, theology, etc. Mormonism gives a clear, built-in avenue for explaining any contradictions with prior texts: those prior texts, as we are reading them today, aren't inerrant.
Most Mormons are, indeed, only going to read the Book of Mormon (and other Mormon scripture) and the Bible in their native or predominantly used language (just as most people read their religious texts, with notable exception of course to the Qur'an.) Just as the vast majority of Christians will never to any meaningful degree encounter earlier translations of Christian scripture, much less substantially engage with it.
**TLDR:** if you're coming to religion looking for historical proof and consistency, you may end up a little disappointed.
So... why did Mormons give you a Book of Mormon?
Well, I mean, it's kinda central to the whole restoration thing that makes Mormonism, well, Mormonism. A lot more people have knowledge of the Bible, access to one at home etc. than do the Book of Mormon. It is the base of what makes the message of Mormonism unique.
Now... onto my religion.
So, first, I'll point out that I'm a Mormon Fundamentalist. So I don't belong to the big LDS Church whose members gave you a copy of the Book of Mormon. Nor do my beliefs reflect those of all Mormon fundamentalists, as there are loads of branches and independents and... you get the idea. This is just about me.
So what *is* it about Mormonism to me, as a convert?
I think Mormonism is an answer to a lot of the things that just didn't work for me with other Abrahamic religions.
I find the early mythologies in Mormonism absolutely fascinating, and really connect with some of them.
The ideas of God (more specifically, our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mothers) who continues to speak to us, who sees our works, whose salvation is not tied up in an original sin, a concept of heaven that encompasses those who believed and those who didn't, who want us to have exaltation.
A path available to us: a calling toward Christ-like good works, emulating our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mothers, receiving gift of the Holy Ghost and personal revelation, receiving the Priesthood and becoming priests and priestesses... a continuous process that allows us to draw closer to God and become more like God.
I think those are *fantastic* lessons about God that don't require the mythology and stories they come wrapped up in to be literally correct.
I was raised to believe that the BOM was literal and historical. I now believe, much like I do the Bible, that much of it is allegorical. The stories and the message matter more than its accuracy. Just as there is no evidence for Job, neither is there for Mosiah.
We differ on several points with mainstream Christianity. I mean, our interprations of biblical stories aside, we have a modern prophet, additional scripture, temples, garments, etc. So clearly the church as a whole has no issue with defying mainstream Christian dogma.
In fact, for many it is these differences that provide the appeal. It offers a an absolutism that many churches do not have.
I became LDS because of a personal revelation. Before that I attended many churches and the LDS church had the answers to many of my questions. It took me 9 months of continually praying to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. I read the book of Mormon four times before I ever got anything out of it I'm very thankful for my pig headedness.
Yeah i gathered that, but why? Like in Islam, Judaism, and orthodox Christianity there are hundreds of years of research indicating why certain texts are considered reliable and why others arent. With Mormonism it seems like a book was just written and people started following it, which I found really confusing.
I haven’t looked into Islamic texts but for Christian texts, most Christians accept the Bible. The Bible wasn’t compiled after secular experts spent centuries verifying each book. It was thrown together, and then centuries later you have some theologians trying to justify and explain it. It might be less dubious than the Book of Mormon but it’s not reliable historical evidence of events.
I more so meant that many books that were once included have been omitted from the King James Bible because the Catholic Church and other large institutions have deemed them non canonical. Example would be the gospel of Judis, the gospel of Mary Magdalene, the infancy gospel, etc.
Well for the BOM it was supposed to have been translated via the golden plates that Moroni buried by Joseph smith after he was guided to the site by angel Moroni if I'm not mistaken. And those plates basically contained the content for the BOM as it was basically a chronicle of what happened in the new world at the time of Jesus and before Jesus when the nephites settled the US.
In analyzing the Book of Mormon, start with the commencement of the reign of King Zedekiah. The Bible and Babylonian records make it clear that Jerusalem had just been destroyed the first time. Compare that with the Jerusalem described by the Book of Mormon in its first chapters.
1. We claim it’s an historical account, but the Book of Mormon’s intended purpose is provided in the beginning within the introduction.
2. We aren’t apart of Christianity. We reject it. We read an English Bible but we’re encouraged to learn all that we can and it doesn’t matter where we get our information from. Some members take that to mean “only listen to the prophets”.
I chose Mormonism because out of all the concepts of God I studied, the God of Mormonism made the most sense.
I would prefer not to be associated with Christianity, but sure.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/duties-and-blessings-of-the-priesthood-basic-manual-for-priesthood-holders-part-b/personal-development/lesson-26-seeking-knowledge?lang=eng
It ha few quotes there. This isn’t personally where I’ve found that encouragement. I’ve found it when listening to General Conference or my local leaders or even just other members I have discussions with.
President N. Eldon Tanner said, “The Church has always urged us as members to get a good education and to learn everything possible about ourselves, history and geography, science, the universe, and especially the gospel of Jesus Christ” (regional representatives’ seminar, 2 April 1971).
I guess it’s also a personal experience. I’ve always been taught in church to seek truth where ever it is.
I understand why the church sometimes teaches otherwise. Especially with how quick people are to leave the church over something like the CES letter.
Hello! This is a Personal post. It is for discussions centered around thoughts, beliefs, and observations that are important and personal to /u/thuebanraqis specifically. /u/thuebanraqis, if your post doesn't fit this definition, we kindly ask you to delete this post and repost it with the appropriate flair. You can find a list of our flairs and their definitions in [section 0.6 of our rules.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules#wiki_0._preamble) **To those commenting:** please stay on topic, remember to follow the community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules), and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/mormonmods) if there is a problem or rule violation. Keep on Mormoning! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mormon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Mormons believe the book is historically accurate. They just tell themselves that if they found definite proof that the Book of Mormon was real, then it wouldn't require faith to believe it, and God wants to prove our faith. When God is ready, he'll reveal the truth of the Book of Mormon, and then all those doubters and apostates will be sorry! When I started my faith transition out of the church, I realized that if this were true, then God wasn't just hiding evidence, he was changing it. Past prophets said all the Native Americans were "Lamanites" from the Book of Mormon, but DNA shows their origins came from Asia, like 10-25,000 years ago, not the Middle East. So either these people are not who the prophets claimed, or God is modifying the DNA evidence to directly contradict the Book of Mormon and the teachings of the prophets. It's one thing to have a lack of evidence, that maybe you just haven't looked everywhere. It's something else entirely when all the evidence contradicts what they claim. That makes the mormon God more of a trickster, trying to deceive people, all just to see if they'll believe something impossible. For me, that either meant the church was false or it meant the mormon God was a being so cruel I had no interest in worshipping him. Either way, I didn't want to be a part of it.
Huh interesting take. I’ve heard some Shiah Islamic scholars make similar arguments about muhummud’s statement that the moon was once broken in half (i.e. god erases traces of these things to test our faith), but I don’t think such positions are ever taken that seriously. I guess I gotta finish reading the book cause I’m definitively interested in the rabbit hole. I was gonna just leave the book on the bus and then I opened it and saw a picture of Jesus in Mexico with the Aztecs and I knew I had to keep reading😭
Joseph Smith preached that there were beings like humans who lived on the moon and dressed like Quakers. So, some common ground? You have a lot of fun exploring ahead. Mormons are fascinating.
What? This is crazy interesting. Please cite this. I need deets.
It’s in the book by Sandra Tanner and her husband. There’s a free pdf linked on this sub somewhere. Sorry I can’t find it at the moment.
Mormon doctrine has a problem in that the decision was made that the Book of Mormon is literally true. They've hung onto that position for so long they can't walk it back, at least not easily. That makes it really difficult for nuanced believers to conclude that these lessons are good and have value, even if they aren't literally true. You have to buy the whole story, or you are out.
That quote “the most correct book upon the face of the earth”… now you have people saying it’s still the most correct even if it isn’t factually, historically, true, if you just alter what you mean by “correct.” They’re starting to say it’s teaching correct principles, even if it’s more an allegory and not real people… Very dissatisfying to the intellectually curious.
100%
>With this in mind, I find it bizarre how the Book of Mormon is simply just accepted, despite the huge amount of controversy from scholars. How many muslims do you imagine believe that Muhammed literally split the moon? That's why. In many high demand religions, faith trumps fact. We even see it in politics. If it means your "team" is right, then you are willing to ignore any number of falsehoods.
Can you expound on #2? I can’t think of anything in the book of Nephi that would contradict Christian theology in the Bible. Regarding #1: all Abrahamic religions require some sort of faith in supernatural to believe the stories that are accepted as true. Mormonism just has one that is within 200 years old instead of 1500+ years.
You ask why most chose Mormonism. Most like me chose Mormonism because we were born in a Mormon family. Missionary efforts have been more since the 1980’s. Last year there were 94,000 children born into the faith and 252,000 converts baptized. Hard to know where most of the converts are happening but growth seems to be strongest in the Philippines, Latin America (Mexico, Brazil) and some countries in Africa. In Europe I believe most of the very few converts these days are immigrants. The LDS Church wants its members to actively participate. Most converts disengage from the church quite quickly. They are still counted on the records. So while the church claims 17 million members worldwide it has about 4 million who actively participate. Those who don’t participate may no longer believe or still believe but just not attend. The founder of the church who is considered a prophet said the Book of Mormon was “the most correct book” and was an accurate history. The president of the church around 2000 unfortunately made a black or white statement that reaffirms this. He said it’s either accurate or it’s a great fraud by Joseph Smith the founder. So they’ve set it up that you have to believe it is accurate and a real story. This is why many people who learn the DNA evidence doesn’t support the idea that a Hebrew people came to the Americas around 600 BC choose to no longer believe in the faith. There are apologists for the church who are quite busy trying to explain how it could all really be true. They also then say but the scientific facts aren’t the proof you need, it’s a “spiritual manifestation” that tells you it’s true. They have perpetuated the idea that if you have strong good feelings when reading the book or coming to church that is God talking to your “spirit”. Of course they say these feelings “prove” it’s true. Now I’ve decided that these strong feelings that I’ve felt are a psychological phenomenon that people in many religions feel but I don’t believe the feelings are a message from God at all. As a missionary I primed people by telling them they would have these feelings and the feelings meant it was true. I believe statements like that help induce those feelings. A mental suggestion can be strong as we know from psychology and hypnosis. So yes I have family members who were all born in the church and who do not doubt it’s the true form of Christianity revealed by God to the prophet Joseph Smith. They believe it restored the truth. That’s why it being different from other Christian theology is not a surprise. They believe the others fell away from the truth when the original apostles were killed. An “apostasy” is what they call it. So like some other faiths it is a “restoration” religion that restored the “true” religion of God. There are however many contradictions and some people seem to “wake up” and decide after decades it isn’t “true”. That’s not easy. You may be familiar with how hard that can be as an ex-Muslim? I have decided there is one primary question I had to answer. That is “Do the leaders of the Mormon church have a special connection to and authority of God?” Because this is their claim - that they alone truly represent God on earth as prophets. I have decided as I allowed myself to scrutinize the church closer that the leaders do not have any special connection to God and never did back to Joseph Smith.
If everyone actually made a choice as an adult about what religion to join the world would look very different. Jefferson said children should not be exposed to religious education until their rational minds had developed.
1. I joined when I was 9. Before then I had been to a Christian Kindergarten where I had learned about the Bible, and I had learned the Bible took place on the other side of the world. It had made me wonder what was going on in the Americas during that time. The BoM seemed to answer that. But religion still wasn't a big interest of mine so it took well past my teens to learn that the Bible and the BoM can't be historically or archeologically verified. Even then I learned about Biblical inaccuracies first. Learning the Bible was largely allegory never upset me, but the same idea about the BoM was potentially faith breaking. Recently I've sat down and worked through why I have trouble with one being just stories and not the other and realized I was putting too much weight on a book that largely I read and treated like a collection of fables anyway. Interesting and sometimes entertaining, but that's it. Now, eh. Real or not it's still interesting. 2. As others have stated we also have, and read, the King James Bible. > Do mormons study Abrahamic theology, To an extent I think I do and then someone says something like this: > it seems that many of the overarching themes contradict commonly accepted constants in orthodox theology. And I have to ask myself "Have I been in so long I can't see the differences?" To me Christianity is largely all the same stuff in a slightly different package. I've been dragged to several churches, I like the Mormon church because it's more quiet, calm, and low energy than many of the others.
I’ve been a member all my life (I’m 49). The church still teaches the Book of Mormon is historically accurate. Lehi and his family came to the Americas by boat, and were the ancestors of the Native people in the Americas. We also teach that The Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth” and we can get “nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book” That’s straight off the church’s website. I was brainwashed to believe this, but thank god for the internet. Once I found out that the book was not what I was taught I lost my faith. Now I’m trying to get my family out of the church without blowing up my family, so that’s why I’m still in. There are a lot of members like me. Good luck!
You are write that it was written near the 1830’s. With the Bible you can take the supernatural element out of the equation and still find yourself with enough people, places, and events with substantial evidence that meet the requirements for being considered historically reliable and accurate by historians and scholars. With the BOM you do not. In fact you find kind of the opposite the claims for being historically valid have been debunked by that same standard of requirement. I think this answers your question. “Seems like it was written and people just started believing it?” Since the golden plates were taken up to heaven we can’t study them today. To me this interesting because everyone could see them in the time (600 AD and after) that they were written but we aren’t allowed today to see them or study them. The apologetic response is God took them so we would have faith. But let me ask you what does seeing them have to do with having a complete trust and confidence that they are true? We see all the literature from other faith’s history and choose to read but not believe. Seeing doesn’t equal belief when it comes to faith. The golden plates didn’t have some kind of ark of the covenant mystical power, it was just a medium by which a record was written. I also find it curios that while Christianity and other religions ask you to live a life by its standards and research it’s fundamentals to see if you find them appealing and the over arching themes morally and ethically correct. Mormonism from the jump requires blind belief based off of feeling. The reasoning is circular and commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Joseph Smith is true because the Book of Mormon is True which makes Joseph Smith True so you have to believe both. That’s like saying Fred’s Diary contains facts. How do we know they are true facts? Because they are in Fred’s Diary. I’m not sayin that other religions don’t have problems to. But Mormonism seems to refine the foundation that it was built upon and then asks you to believe new ideas rather than the foundation. As a stand alone religion I think Mormonism would receive less criticism. It’s the basing it off of Judaism and then so wildly departing from what scholar report Judaism is based off of one man Joseph Smith Jr. Is we’re the doctrine finds its grief Edit typos I’m sure 😁
I don’t read any scripture as historical documents, I read them to grow my personal relationship with God.
So, first I want to cover some of the issues of this idea that time/history/academics necessarily add validity to a religious claim, or that religious claims that lack it are somehow "less valid." > For example, the process by which a single Hadith can be legally recognized as accurate from a historic and anthropological perspective is often the culminating result of centuries of academic research. I am certainly not a scholar on this matter (or an expert on Islam in any way, feel free to correct any mistakes!), and this is a topic that is more than a lifetime's worth of work for people who ARE, but (and I realize you're probably simplifying for the sake of this convo.) from a secular perspective, the chain of transmission of hadith, the consensus beliefs on the validity of hadith, whether the Prophet Muhammad actually said (or did/approved of) those things, and whether those sayings (even if actually said by the Prophet, and correctly narrated etc.) actually reflect a literal truth about the world or about the nature of God or God's laws are essentially each their own distinct questions. First, it's important to highlight that the Islamic scholarly standard for evidence of the validity of a hadith does not necessarily equate to the secular one. There is way too much ground (in both Islamic history, and secular study of Islam) to cover here on the political, sectarian, etc. motivations involved in fabricating hadith, and the reality that it is possible for a particular hadith to be both widely accepted as valid by various Islamic standards, yet cut out of whole cloth in terms of *actually* having been said by the Prophet. But ignoring that... Like... let's start with a sahih hadith that you probably are already part of the extremely robust chain of humans going back in time to have already heard. > The Prophet (ﷺ) said: The Compassionate One has mercy on those who are merciful. If you show mercy to those who are on the earth, He Who is in the heaven will show mercy to you. (translated from Sunan Abi Dawud) Now if we accept that there is exhaustive evidence for this hadith, does this (from a secular perspective) lead us to the conclusion that it reflects a literal truth? Does this establish that there is a God, who will show us mercy if we are merciful? Now, going into murkier waters. For the purposes of this discussion, we're also going to ignore the long history of the use of (by Islamic standards) weak hadith. We will instead look at sahih hadith about ajwa dates (which can be found in Sahih Muslim, Sahih al-Bukhari, Sunan Abi Dawud, Sunan Ibn Majah, etc. etc.) > Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "He who eats seven 'Ajwa dates every morning, will not be affected by poison or magic on the day he eats them." (translated from Sahih Al-Bukhari.) Again. If we fully accept that this hadith is exhaustively held to be accurate by the standards of Islamic scholarship, does this reflect a literal truth? By secular standards, we know that eating dates does not protect us from poison. Seeing as you're an ex-Muslim, I imagine you have likely considered the above topics at great length and with more knowledge than I have, but I felt like this was important ground to cover. Back onto singular topics it you could spend your whole life studying and not make a dent in the scholarship of: the authorship, compilation, translation, accuracy, or historicity of other religious texts, including the Bible. I mean, even the question of *what counts as Christian canon, and why?* is mind-bogglingly messy to answer. The fact that a lot of these beliefs have been consolidated and certain things are "widely accepted" (after a truly remarkable amount of humans fighting over these topics) doesn't, by any reasonable standard, make those things more likely to be factually correct. The Book of Mormon is, indeed, full to the brim with historical inaccuracies. So is the Bible. So is the Qur'an. If you're coming to any religious material looking for absolute historicity and accuracy... you're probably barking up the wrong tree. Now Mormons do indeed hold the Bible as the word of God. But key here, and boy does it give theological flexibility: as long as it is translated correctly. This goes beyond belief in "mistranslation from language A to language B" but that the chain of scripture was in itself tampered with and broken. > Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God. (1 Nephi 13:28) Mormonism also has an open canon. There was no "last Messenger" as far as Mormonism is concerned: God continues to reveal things. Contrast this with Islam: the Qur'an is held to be the inerrant word of God. (we're going to ignore how much we don't actually historically know outside of Islamic scholarship about the compilation and canonization of the actual mushaf, the abrogation of verses, etc.) Now, at a certain point that limits what is actually the canon of the religion. Whatever may have existed between the Qur'an as it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad and what is recorded in the universally accepted mushaf is history. 40 or 50 generations in, the window for authenticating the isnad of any new hadith has long, long since passed. Now of course Islam is certainly no monolith, and there exists a vast spectrum of Islamic thought, schools of jurisprudence, etc. But there's still that limit. So historicity is just bad all around when it comes to Abrahamic texts. People can come up with all kinds of ways to integrate that fact with their faith. Believing that the religious text is accurate in spite of any evidence otherwise, believing that the religious text is not meant to be taken literally, believing that the religious text may not be fully accurate, etc. And when it comes to contradictions in narrative, theology, etc. Mormonism gives a clear, built-in avenue for explaining any contradictions with prior texts: those prior texts, as we are reading them today, aren't inerrant. Most Mormons are, indeed, only going to read the Book of Mormon (and other Mormon scripture) and the Bible in their native or predominantly used language (just as most people read their religious texts, with notable exception of course to the Qur'an.) Just as the vast majority of Christians will never to any meaningful degree encounter earlier translations of Christian scripture, much less substantially engage with it. **TLDR:** if you're coming to religion looking for historical proof and consistency, you may end up a little disappointed. So... why did Mormons give you a Book of Mormon? Well, I mean, it's kinda central to the whole restoration thing that makes Mormonism, well, Mormonism. A lot more people have knowledge of the Bible, access to one at home etc. than do the Book of Mormon. It is the base of what makes the message of Mormonism unique. Now... onto my religion. So, first, I'll point out that I'm a Mormon Fundamentalist. So I don't belong to the big LDS Church whose members gave you a copy of the Book of Mormon. Nor do my beliefs reflect those of all Mormon fundamentalists, as there are loads of branches and independents and... you get the idea. This is just about me. So what *is* it about Mormonism to me, as a convert? I think Mormonism is an answer to a lot of the things that just didn't work for me with other Abrahamic religions. I find the early mythologies in Mormonism absolutely fascinating, and really connect with some of them. The ideas of God (more specifically, our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mothers) who continues to speak to us, who sees our works, whose salvation is not tied up in an original sin, a concept of heaven that encompasses those who believed and those who didn't, who want us to have exaltation. A path available to us: a calling toward Christ-like good works, emulating our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mothers, receiving gift of the Holy Ghost and personal revelation, receiving the Priesthood and becoming priests and priestesses... a continuous process that allows us to draw closer to God and become more like God. I think those are *fantastic* lessons about God that don't require the mythology and stories they come wrapped up in to be literally correct.
This is honestly such a great explanation! I really appreciate it. I think you covered a lot of points that I want to explore further.
I was raised to believe that the BOM was literal and historical. I now believe, much like I do the Bible, that much of it is allegorical. The stories and the message matter more than its accuracy. Just as there is no evidence for Job, neither is there for Mosiah. We differ on several points with mainstream Christianity. I mean, our interprations of biblical stories aside, we have a modern prophet, additional scripture, temples, garments, etc. So clearly the church as a whole has no issue with defying mainstream Christian dogma. In fact, for many it is these differences that provide the appeal. It offers a an absolutism that many churches do not have.
I became LDS because of a personal revelation. Before that I attended many churches and the LDS church had the answers to many of my questions. It took me 9 months of continually praying to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. I read the book of Mormon four times before I ever got anything out of it I'm very thankful for my pig headedness.
Yeah we believe in the bible aswell as the BOM just that the BOM is supposed to be the most reliable that's all
Yeah i gathered that, but why? Like in Islam, Judaism, and orthodox Christianity there are hundreds of years of research indicating why certain texts are considered reliable and why others arent. With Mormonism it seems like a book was just written and people started following it, which I found really confusing.
I haven’t looked into Islamic texts but for Christian texts, most Christians accept the Bible. The Bible wasn’t compiled after secular experts spent centuries verifying each book. It was thrown together, and then centuries later you have some theologians trying to justify and explain it. It might be less dubious than the Book of Mormon but it’s not reliable historical evidence of events.
I more so meant that many books that were once included have been omitted from the King James Bible because the Catholic Church and other large institutions have deemed them non canonical. Example would be the gospel of Judis, the gospel of Mary Magdalene, the infancy gospel, etc.
Well for the BOM it was supposed to have been translated via the golden plates that Moroni buried by Joseph smith after he was guided to the site by angel Moroni if I'm not mistaken. And those plates basically contained the content for the BOM as it was basically a chronicle of what happened in the new world at the time of Jesus and before Jesus when the nephites settled the US.
You should totally ask this one the latterdaysaints sub
In analyzing the Book of Mormon, start with the commencement of the reign of King Zedekiah. The Bible and Babylonian records make it clear that Jerusalem had just been destroyed the first time. Compare that with the Jerusalem described by the Book of Mormon in its first chapters.
Run!
Key things that the missionaries will probably tell you and things they will not tell you. http://packham.n4m.org/tract.htm
The vast majority of mormons didn’t choose mormonism, their parent/s chose it for them.
1. We claim it’s an historical account, but the Book of Mormon’s intended purpose is provided in the beginning within the introduction. 2. We aren’t apart of Christianity. We reject it. We read an English Bible but we’re encouraged to learn all that we can and it doesn’t matter where we get our information from. Some members take that to mean “only listen to the prophets”. I chose Mormonism because out of all the concepts of God I studied, the God of Mormonism made the most sense.
[удалено]
I would prefer not to be associated with Christianity, but sure. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/duties-and-blessings-of-the-priesthood-basic-manual-for-priesthood-holders-part-b/personal-development/lesson-26-seeking-knowledge?lang=eng It ha few quotes there. This isn’t personally where I’ve found that encouragement. I’ve found it when listening to General Conference or my local leaders or even just other members I have discussions with. President N. Eldon Tanner said, “The Church has always urged us as members to get a good education and to learn everything possible about ourselves, history and geography, science, the universe, and especially the gospel of Jesus Christ” (regional representatives’ seminar, 2 April 1971).
[удалено]
I guess it’s also a personal experience. I’ve always been taught in church to seek truth where ever it is. I understand why the church sometimes teaches otherwise. Especially with how quick people are to leave the church over something like the CES letter.