I have been following a certain mo blog that came on my radar reading RfM posts. It is by some BYU student with a lot of funny posts. The blog is called "Lancing a Windmill" and is quite aptly named.
Anyway. he posted a new article today titled "You can't prove that my church is false." I find it funny, and probably timed because of the Monson case. He seems like an interesting guy, but like I did as a mo missionary, I couldn't see how my own set of beliefs proved without a doubt that the church was false. I just couldn't see it for the life of me until the proverbial shelf collapsed,
Anyway, here is a link:
http://unklethan.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/you-cant-prove-that-my-church-is-false/My response, reproduced here (it is awaiting moderation, so who knows if it gets posted):
Having read some of your blog posts, you seem like an interesting and thoughtful person. I find this topic and interesting one, and so, even though I understand it is sensitive, I hope you will give me the same attention and time that I am affording you, in order to do due diligence to a topic of such gravitas.
First off, I want to say, I do not intend to attack you. I may dislike the church you belong to, but you need to remember that any attacks (perceived or actual) on the church are not personal attacks against you. Disagreeing with the LDS faith, claiming it is false, etc. These are not personal attacks, but it is often difficult for the faithful to not become emotionally enmeshed with their faith such that they cannot separate disagreement with the one from assault on the other.
Second, I cannot help but think that this is in response to the criminal fraud charges being brought against Thomas Monson in England. Many people have been using a strawman argument to diminish the potential of that case by positioning it into a freedom of religion issue. This is not the case. What is claimed is that the church taught a set of facts that are claimed to be verifiable (aka scientifically testable), that Thomas Monson knew to be false, that are critically to causing a person to pay money (tithings and offerings), and that there was some level of force/coercion there (some lack of choice in paying tithing). The claim isn’t that religions can’t believe what they want. The case is all about the UK fraud act, which is to prevent any organization from presenting known false statements as fact in order to achieve monetary gain.
Finally, I want to actually respond to this specific blog post, which is an interesting post in and of its own right.
I understand that you believe that your church cannot be proven, either true or false. I disagree, but I hope to make my position more clear, as you made yours. In fact, I also hope that you understand the significance of your stance with retaining the modern mormon faith. In fact, I would claim that the lack of verifiability (aka falsifiability) is the cornerstone of state-of-the-art mormon apologetics. It is used quite frequently in FAIR (www.fairlds.org), the most prominent mormon apologetic organization (in fact, the slew of essays currently going up on lds.org are being created in cooperation with many FAIR authors). Their information has become the de facto standard for the defense of mormonism. Most arguments against the archeological, geological, genetic, literary, or other sources (that assert that mormonism is false) is to (eventually, after other arguments have failed) fall back on the claim that it cannot be proven true or false, and that we must take it on faith. I will not get into that just yet, but I will accept it as a given for the moment.
You attempt to preempt the “haters” and the “flame wars”. That is an interesting choice of words. I am going to say something that will make you a bit uncomfortable, but please, bear with me, it is not meant to be inflammatory. In fact, I first want to define a “cult”, or rather “cult-like behavior”. Cult-like behavior is not necessarily bad, not only restricted to cults, and is common in many everyday organizations (corporate/government jobs are a common one). The behavior acts as a defense of the organization, and tends to protect it from outside influences. Often, this is extremely important (do you want a compromised military? Then we need to accept the “cult-like” behavioral mechanisms that are ingrained in boot camp as a necessary and beneficial part of the system). So when I say, that this sounds like a persecution complex (which is one, of many, cult-like behaviors), where people are out to get you (or the organization) more than they are. This is where the behaviors can potentially lead own the road of being detrimental to the participant but beneficial to the longevity of the organization. I won’t say either way, because I feel that it is a highly personal thing (a “cult” to one may not have an adverse impact at all to another). However, read up on persecution simply by going to google:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cult+persecution+complexShortly put, we aren’t out to get you just because we disagree.
You claim Catholicism is easily disproven (I actually agree), yet the only examples given are rather strawmanish or ecclesiastical in nature. In fact, this is an excellent place to make mention of this. The LDS church is unique. Most, if not all, christian faiths are very far distant from literal scripture. Many believe that the bible is correct in what it teaches, but that it is not (nor was it meant to be) a history. They believe that the stories and beliefs are allegorical, but not necessarily true. Other claims are completely and utterly untestable. For example, transubstantiation. This cannot be tested. Built in to the claim that the wine and wafer turn into the body and blood of christ, is the claim that everything that is accessible to the senses remains unchanged, and that “in a way surpassing understanding” they become the body and blood of Jesus. This boilerplate makes the claim untestable. If you pull “blessed” wine and wafer out of a believer’s stomach, you will find only wafer and wine, you will find no flesh and blood. This is, not a problem, because they are still “to the senses” the same thing, but they are something different in a way that “surpasses all understanding.” (this for of surpassing all understanding ought to be familiar, as it is a phrase used with relative frequency in the LDS faith).
Now, the LDS church is unique here, I will say it again. There are two camps within mormonism, both well-backed by scripture and prophetic utterances. One Sunday you may be in sunday school hearing that “As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.” (http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/controllers/potcController.jsp?leader=5&topic=quotes) Then, during the week, you may hear the current prophet say “I don’t know that we teach that.” (quote, from a pro-lds source:
http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/publications/does_president_hinckley_understand_lds_doctrine). It is entirely confusing. You hear from half of the devoted that evolution is bogus and creationism is the way man came to be, from the other half you have those who believe in a form of “guided evolution” up until a literal adam and eve. You have a variety of conflicting opinions on how literal the scriptures are, all based in the things the prophets have said. In fact, when someone says “Mormons believe x”, even though you don’t, you both are probably right, one prophet probably spoke for it and one spoke against it.
“Every evidence against will have an evidence for. Every evidence for will be countered with an evidence against.”
This is an interesting statement. While it is true (almost tautologically so), it isn’t necessarily helpful. Yes, there may be a counter (in fact, FAIR uses this statement a lot as a “thought-stopping” technique to prevent further discourse/doubt), but that doesn’t mean the counter was any good. If your statement were true, then a court of law would get no where. There would be a hung jury every single trial, ever. If all evidence was equally good, and there was always a counter to every evidence, then lawyers would get no where, and judges would have no way (aside from personal biases) to make a judgement.
Moving on, you say “another religion that could be completely true or completely false”. This is another thought-stopping false dichotomy that Gordon Hinkley popularized. It simply isn’t true. Mormonism could be all false, partly false, partly true, all true, or the veracity could be completely irrelevant. These are all possibilities. There are things that could be helpful, or not. In fact, you could be of the opinion, Like Boyd Packer, that “Some things that are true are not very useful” (quote:
https://byustudies.byu.edu/showtitle.aspx?title=5472).
Your example of the testimony of the 12 different witnesses is a welcome one, as it illustrates the point I was making earlier. Not all evidence is created equal. There is a lot of dispute on the authenticity of those witnesses’ accounts. If the witnesses’ accounts were not signed by themselves, but were drafted by someone else to fabricate a testimony of authenticity (or, in the case of some, the seeing and handling was with “spiritual eyes only”) then the evidence is not a good quality piece of evidence for the book of mormon. Read here for more details:
http://mormonthink.com/witnessesweb.htm (warning, some consider mormonthink.com to be anti-mormon. It has authors that are both faithful lds and ex-lds, it tries to give an unbiased view of both sides of the story. Take it as you will, the contents of that page are not important to my point).
I will gloss over the point of “some for and some against” as I feel I have sufficiently covered that, and do not need to go into further details on the quality of evidence being a key concern here.
“And historical documentation is seldom a source to be trusted.” This is a slightly disturbing sentiment. It is slightly insidious (I am not blaming you for this, as the source is most definitely current mormon apologetics “big wigs”). It is a belief that has a kernel of truth (historical documentation is difficult to verify, etc.), however, it neglects all of the important factors at play. Age is a huge factor that cannot be under emphasized. Proving factoids about the lack of evidence for a historical Jesus (a favorite topic for some atheists) is difficult because of the amount of time that has passed, the lack of original sources, and the preponderance of evidence that the majority at least _believed_ in a historical Jesus, at the very most 100 years after his life. So it is a difficult topic to get anywhere in. The other side of this coin is that mormonism is very young. The oldest documents are no older than 200 years old. You reference the fallacious nature of history books, but there is other evidence at hand that is infinitely more relevant. These are pieces of evidence that aren’t altered by modern perception (such as court records of Joseph Smith being convicted for fraud in 1826 (see discussion of which, here: *** Link redacted due to RfM rules *** [full disclosure, this is a link to the exmormon board, and as such is definitely anti-mormon. Don't read it at all if that makes you uncomfortable, however, the original question only contains two links to other sources, and there is a bit of pontification on the matter if you are the curious type]). This is only one example of which, there are many others in the Joseph Smith papers project being done by the church. Another great example of this is the original papyrus that was translated into the book of Abraham. There is no serious LDS scholar that claims (anymore) that it is not the original scroll used by Joseph Smith. It can, now, be translated from the original Egyptian into English, and many more copies of the same document have been found. Showing that the papyrus was actually a funeral document called the Book of Breathings, nothing about Abraham. This historical nail in the coffin of a literal translation of the Book of Abraham is undisputed by Mormon scholars. Instead they shift focus onto a “figurative translation” and that the papyrus was a translation aid similar to the seer stone in the hat that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon, this is a much different claim, and there is no way to disprove it with physical evidence. In fact, your claim about the fossil does not prove the point you think it does. The evidence that you are disputing as far as history is concerned are the diaries of multiple people saying the same thing. Prophets with books that used to be core doctrine and avowed “testimony building” material that is now completely disavowed. Many official church sources contain the very historical material that you are saying is untrustworthy, and yet these historical documents are accepted as accurate by the majority of LDS historians and scientists, prophets, etc. If you want an interesting read, read up on B. H. Roberts, the church historian responsible for the “History of the Church” books, as well as a most fascinating document called “Studies of the Book of Mormon”, read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._H._RobertsYou can find a lot of this on the Church’s own website (google “lds.org essays” for links to a couple of them). If they aren’t discussed there, yet, then you can find the current best answer provided for LDS faithful at the fairmormon.org website.
You embark on the path of philosophical skepticism, but I am not sure that is an intellectual journey you want to follow through to the end. Claiming that all factual knowledge, scientific pursuit, an other broadly accepted epistemological methods are faulty to the point that they are trustworthy is a bad corner to paint yourself in. If you can’t prove religion or science or anything true, how do you know anything? If you must doubt _everything_, then what makes anything a good option? You have not quite yet followed that nihilistic thought process through to its natural conclusion.
Now we come to your response to this, and to the main point behind your post. Faith. You are absolutely right that this is the crux of the issue. What is faith? What is your faith based in? How do you obtain faith? “You can prove whatever you like, but …” This is a dangerous statement. Especially since you claim to practice “good principles of science”. I will get to that, but first, let me ask a few questions. These are important because they show your dedication to truth, rather than to tradition. Think about them and answer them honestly:
1) If the church weren’t true, would you want to know it?
2) If the church weren’t true, how would you know it?
Note, I am not asking if it is true or not, nor am I asserting that such be (or not be) the case. It is an interesting set of questions to ask about any deeply ingrained belief, religious or not. Answering no to number 1 is basically the very definition of brainwashed, you choose to stick with something regardless of its veracity based on intangibles. The answer to number 2 is _key critical_. I cannot emphasize that enough, and as a man of science, I would hope that you will understand why quite readily.
“Good principles of science” include the principle of falsifiability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability). This is important. One of the first determinations to make in new scientific inquiry is to establish falsifiability. If a theory cannot be falisified, it is not scientific, it is not right or wrong, it is simply meaningless. It does not impart information. If there are no conditions whereby a theory can be disproven (even if it is only hypothetically), then it is not event a coherent object for rational discourse. You have done well in demonstrating the lack of falsifiability in all of religion, and thus have exposed it to be an inherently non-scientific area. A completely valid opinion would be that science and religion are orthogonal concepts, and that the epistemology of the one does not correlate with the epistemology of the other. However, this is not the current popular LDS stance, where science and faith is supposed to be intertwined. It, however, is impossible to do so if religious theories fail even the simple test of falsifiability.
In fact, I would assert that God as an entity falls under the “falsifiability” clause. One may believe in him (or her, or they), and in whichever religion one chooses to, as long as there is an understanding of the lack of rational/scientific epistemology that went into this position and belief.
So, back to the point of your post. In my mind, the very claim that (some) religion cannot be disproven does the exact opposite of what that claim was intended to do.
It is okay to teach things like this, sometimes we don’t realize that we are making the very statement that undermines our position. As a Mormon missionary, in my younger days, I recognized the circular reasoning required to make logical sense of LDS theology, and I believed that to be perfectly reasonable and okay. In fact, I even taught investigators that they needed to employ circular reasoning in order to develop faith. I did not realize that I was scaring away the investigators that were already questioning, because they knew then (as I do now) that circular reasoning is a logical fallacy and not a way to develop knowledge. Basing the proof of thing 1 on thing 2, where thing 1 is also supposed to be the prove of thing 2, is a completely bogus proof.
I also want to reiterate. I am not saying anything bad against you or those you love. Your personal identity may (or may not) be tied in so deeply with mormonism that you can’t see this, but I hold no ill will towards you or against the church. I am merely a guy in the pursuit of truth and rational discourse. I have done a lot of reading on this topic, and I find it an intellectually stimulating one, especially since it is the culture I was raised in.
Now, before you respond. I want you to answer the same questions you are asking other commentors: “Did you read the full thing?” and “What was the main point of it?” ;-)
All the best,
Colby