In addition to agreeing on the importance of taking an extremist approach to Iraq in our latest Bloggingheads, Matt and I are awfully hard on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And it occurred to me afterward that, unlettered rube that I am, I've never read a comprehensive defense/explanation, by a smart Mormon, of their church's (seemingly-fantastic) beliefs about the prehistory of the Americas. Such a thing must exist, and so I'm hoping that someone - maybe Russell Arben Fox, maybe the larger gang at Times and Seasons - can point me in the right direction.
« The Lead-Crime Connection | Main | The Case For Deterrence »
What Mormons Believe
13 Jul 2007 10:59 am
Comments (193)
I commented on your Mormon comments over at Bloggingheads.
I have to say that I'm a bit surprised. I really enjoy your commentary, even if I don't always agree with it.
If we start getting into all this personal religion stuff there will be no reason to stop before we get to what some people believe are the more "reasonable" orthodox Christian beliefs.
Nothing would please the Chris Hitchens' of the world more.
For example, why should there be a distinction between the Mormon belief in the Book of Mormon and the Catholic belief in Transubstantiation?
The latter occurs, after all, at each and every Mass. So which religion teaches the more recent miracles, and which in principle are more easily disproved?
As far as Mormon's not being Christian, why aren't they? Like I posted over at Bloggingheads, what makes a religion Christian is teaching that Jesus was the son of God and that he was crucified for the sins of the world and was resurrected and all that.
The definitions, both common and technical, don't place fine print at the end of the definition which would disqualify any religion which moves outside of orthodox bounds.
Mormons teach all the necessary stuff about Jesus to make them Christian. Whether or not they're orthodox is a different matter, and one that Mormons are not likely to care about.
"And it occurred to me afterward that, unlettered rube that I am, I've never read a comprehensive defense/explanation, by a smart Mormon, of their church's (seemingly-fantastic) beliefs about the prehistory of the Americas. Such a thing must exist..."
Oh really? I'm not so sure such a thing exists at all. I suspect no comprehensive defense / explanation has been written, either by a "smart Mormon", which is a contradiction in terms; or by a non-LDS person, because they can't keep a straight face while doing so.
I found your bloggingheads on Mormonism to be fascinating. Are you arguing that if the doctrines of a religious institution make historical claims that are plainly false that that is evidence of the religion's illegitimacy?
So how do you feel about that whole Noah's Ark thing, you know with the dinosaurs and the flood?
Well, I'm one of the Times and Seasons gang (not sure if I quality as a "smart Mormon" however) but Book of Mormon historicity isn't my area of expertise. Mormon apologetics is alive and well and there is plenty of information out there if you'd like it; here's a good place to start:
http://www.fairlds.org/apol/ai024.html
Several commenters have already brought up what is, to me, the larger issue: every faith tradition has elements that are not the kind of thing one could expect to be independently verified by science and/or reason. Mormonism's story strikes one as "seemingly fantastic" not because it is different in kind, but merely because it is unfamiliar.
I have two suggestions for where to go to get a good summary of LDS beliefs:
1. First, the LDS Church has set up a "Basic Beliefs" website here:
http://www.mormon.org/mormonorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b4f4055b23710110VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=eda16db0580a1110VgnVCM100000176f620a____
This website is intended assist folks, such as yourself, who are interested in learning about what we believe.
2. Another good primer on our beliefs would be the "Gospel Principles Manual." It goes into even greater detail than the above-linked website. This is the manual used to help new members of our church grasp the fundamental concepts of our faith. Here's the link:
http://www.lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b7723f4adab435807398f2f6e44916a0/?vgnextoid=d7561b08f338c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=ea697befabc20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____
Or, if you have any questions, you could me (I'm LDS) and I would answer any questions as best as I can.
Thanks,
Spencer
Hello,
I'll weigh in as well, as one of the infamous T&S gang. I apologize for the brief nature of this comment -- I'm meeting with a student in an hour, then off to teach summer school for the afternoon, so this will be short.
Your best source for discussion and explanation is going to be Terryl Givens, By The Hand of Mormon (Oxford UP, 2002). Professor Givens (who teaches religion and literature at University of Richmond) discusses the role of the Book of Mormon (including its claims about Mesoamerican history) in development of church beliefs.
You're right, of course, that the Book of Mormon seems to make relatively broad statements about the provenance of Native Americans. These sorts of statements were generally accepted (and sometimes even expanded upon) by early church leaders and members. Even today, many rank-and-file members ascribe to relatively straightforward application of scripture-as-history.
That said, many scholars and some church leaders and members have discussed more sophisticated scriptural-historical approaches. The most well-known and well-developed is an idea called the limited geography model, which situates Book of Mormon events in a relatively small area in Central America.
That divide brings us to interesting questions about how to define Mormonism. Do we look to scholarly ideas, or lay beliefs? Similar questions of course would apply to Christianity at large: E.g., if scholars are relatively sure that Paul didn't write Hebrews, but your average member in the pew is unaware of this idea -- do we consider that Christians have an uninformed belief system? That more sophisticated discussion is outside the interest or grasp of many members?
I've really got to run now. Apologies for the short and hasty comment. I'll try to weigh in again later today, if I survive class. Meanwhile, I'd recommend tracking down a copy of Givens' book, which is relatively widely available.
There are plenty of 'smart' Mormons. I can't claim to be near the level of a great many. But I do know that the vast majority of issues leveled 'against' our beliefs are founded themselves on misunderstandings of what we believe.
Since the assumptions at the base of the conclusions are faulty it's easy to see why the conclusions are what they are.
I have some videos on my utube site that discuss some of the more recent claims Vis-à-vis DNA and LDS Historical claims. I can't vouch for their production quality but I've yet to have anyone demonstrate where my methodology is wrong.
Terryl L Given's book "By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion" contains a good presentation of the Book as it's generally viewed today, it also points out some of the more recent defenses and criticisms.
Mormons are polytheists. They believe God was incarnate in Jesus Christ in this world, but there are many other worlds with many other divinities. These beliefs follow of necessity from their basic understanding of the nature of God, who is corporeal, created, finite, limited, anthropomorphic in the real sense. He is manifestly not the God of Jewish-Christian belief, who, though intimately involved in the life of the world, is wholly separate from the world--omnipotent, omniscient, utterly simple, one.
A moment's familiarity with basic Mormon theology will prove this. I can't understand why Mormon's aren't more candid about this.
Mormons may be wonderful people. There may be many sharp Mormons. They may be model people in virtually every way. I have no desire to think or show otherwise. But simply intellectual honesty requires one to acknowledge that Mormons think non-Christianly about the nature of God. And this is to say nothing of the nature of Scripture, the Church, salvation history, etc., etc. etc.
I'm disturbed by the fact that you and MY both seem to think that the alternative to cities is the suburbs, and vice versa. But the rural areas that dominated this country for 150 years are really unlike both. The rural communities that predated the suburbs were both dominated by individual ownership, as the suburbs are, and also often tightly laid out, as current urban areas are. You don't have to forgo a house and a yard and a driveway for a walkable, tightly-knit community. It just takes planning and resisting the urge to sprawl a development over many miles, cut off from services and retail.
As another of the gang at Times & Seasons, I would second Kaimi's recommendation of Givens's book if you wish to understand contemporary discussions within and without Mormonism about the Book of Mormon. I would point out that Givens' book is what is generally referred to as "a reception study," namely a study of how people have read and understood the book. It is not a defense of the historicity of the Book of Mormon per se. It will give you a good idea, however, of the structure of the discussion among Mormon scholars and intellectuals, which is considerably more nuanced than what one would probably find among rank and file Mormons or in press accounts of Mormonism.
I take it, however, that your objections to Mormonism and self-confessed ignorance about it goes not only to the issue of the Book of Mormon but also to questions of Mormon theology. Here, I am sorry to tell you, the discussion will be very difficult in that there is no creedal tradition within Mormonism, no specially trained theologians, and few works of systematic theology.
Rather, what we have are a bundle of sacred texts which in some sense are pre-theological. They make all sorts of claims about the divine, but do not contain a systematic theology. Then you have 150+ years of statements by Church leaders, almost all of which are in the form of sermons that generally take the form of homilies rather than formal doctrinal exposition. Finally, there are a scattering of official declarations issued by the highest councils of the Church. The most theologically important of these is probably "The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve," which was issued in 1916 and sought to regularize LDS ideas on the nature of God in the face of contradictory teachings by 19th century church leaders.
There is, however, nothing in Mormonism comparable to the Summa Theologica, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or Calvin's Institutes. This may be because of the inherent intellectual limitations that we Mormons suffer under. I tend to ascribe it to the relative youth of the religion and a number of beliefs -- most notably the idea of continuing revelation and personal revelation -- that make systematic theology inherently problematic. All of this is a way of saying that when you are Father Neuhaus talk confidently about "the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself" you are walking into a somewhat complicated issue.
I compliment you on acknowledging after such decided opining your failure to actually read anything by Mormons on these issues. The admission speaks well of you, particularly as punditry is not a field much given to such things.
Thanks for the compliment, Ross. The long comment I made in response to your inquiry has been trapped by your spammer, I rewrote it as a blog post, here. I hope you find it helpful.
And Julie, Kaimi, Nate--thanks for chiming in.
"you OR Father Neuhaus"
apologies...
This is incredible!
You mean that you have written all this incredibly anti-Mormon stuff without even checking into the facts about them? And you had innocent readers who may have believed what you wrote?
Wow. That is quite an admission.
If you're really interested in learning what they believe as opposed to what others say they believe, try http://www.fairlds.org.
I concur with the recommendation to read Givens, "By the Hand of Mormon." Unfortunately, the stereotypes that MOrmons are either naive, brainwashed hacks or unprincipled apologetic hacks (notice, we're hacks either way) continues to persist.
It's obviously quite impossible to provide a summary of our beliefs in a single post--after all, I know of one floor of our library devoted to Mormon Studies. An accessible place to begin might be with the "articles of faith," the New Testament, definitely the BOM (after reading this, folks actually begin to understand that we believe Christ to be the Savior of the World--shocker!), and perhaps a work by one of the apostles, "Our Search for Happiness." There are myriad more, but those function well for starters.
Re: For example, why should there be a distinction between the Mormon belief in the Book of Mormon and the Catholic belief in Transubstantiation?
This is apples to oranges. Transubstantiation is a very specific metaphysical belief, while the Book of Mormon is a rather large tome which makes all sorts of historical and theological claims. Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means.
First of all, the obvious point has already been made: ALL religions make implausible claims. Transubstantiation is an example of one that Catholics make. Others include the resurrection, miracles (and remember, Catholics believe that miracles are still occurring and people are being cured through prayer), the biblical flood and Noah's Ark, the Genesis creation stories, feeding all those people with a small amount of bread and fishes, and turning water into wine.
The only reasons that Mormons' claims seem more ridiculous to some is because (1) they are not accepted by a majority and often repeated and thus seem "weird", and (2) because they are of more recent provenance so it is easier to establish the messy early history of the LDS church. (I should add, though, that it is entirely clear that the early Christian churches had a messy history too and we owe a lot of modern doctrine to what Roman officials and power-hungry church officials did 300 years after Jesus' time to consolidate authority.)
The other thing I would note is that by any sensible definition, Mormons are Christians, believing in a divine Christ who died on the cross and was resurrected. But I detect that many orthodox Christians can't stand that a church with such different beliefs has impinged on their "trademark" by calling itself a Church of Christ. The desire to refuse to call them Christians is a result of fear and envy at a growing, heretical Christian denomination.
Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means.
bingo. i'm an atheist and this is exactly what i would have said. to be clear: the beliefs of "major world religions" in their non-fundamentalist incarnations presuppose ludicrous assumptions far upstream of what mormonism does. it seems that mormonism's historical claims are falsifiable on the face of it. some points can be understood with some nuance, but there is simply a whole constellation of ideas which suggest that the person generating the mormon narrative was drawing upon the primitive sources of early 19th century antiquarian tradition than anything else. there is something to be said for the fact that mormonism is unfamiliar and so its beliefs seem more bizarre to most people, but then the proper point of comparison is between mormons and fundamentalist biblical literalist christians. not between mormons and all religionists, since most sophisticated believers tend to admit to allegorical or metaphorical readings when they conflict with consensus scholarship (this goes far back in christian history as well).
But I detect that many orthodox Christians can't stand that a church with such different beliefs has impinged on their "trademark" by calling itself a Church of Christ. The desire to refuse to call them Christians is a result of fear and envy at a growing, heretical Christian denomination.
broadly speaking mormons are christians of course. but, broadly speaking they are not monotheists. there are hindus who may even believe in the supernatural narrative of jesus, and may even believe that jesus is the personal manifestation of the divine to whom they direct their devotions to.
The main apologetics journal for defending Mormonism's historical claims is here:
http://farms.byu.edu/publications/jbmsmain.php
btw, re: the limited geography reading. peoples can disappear, but whole cultural toolkits do not. see the fact that chicken was introduced into the new world from polynesia:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070609/fob4.asp
i've read the BoM, and the fact that an old world cultural toolkit is described struck me. the spread of old world diseases, domesticated animals and crops is nearly inevitable, even if the cultures and peoples are absorbed or exterminated (one could construct a mathematical model based around the probability of cultural expansion for each trait being an independent trial). of course, i suppose mormon apologists could argue that horses really mean llamas, old world crops are really just mistranslations of new world crops, etc. one could scoff at metaphorical readings of the hebrew bible in such a fashion, but, it must be admitted that it does sketch out a real world with independent points of verification from the extant archeology and history.
Razib,
Well, yes and no.
Yes, cultural toolkits generally stick around. Chickens spread from Southeast Asia to China to Polynesia. Nobody gets un-chickened along the way.
At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge.
I agree that the general trend is and has been forward movement of technology and culture. But that trend isn't without exceptions.
Razib,
Well, yes and no.
Yes, cultural toolkits generally stick around. Chickens spread from Southeast Asia to China to Polynesia. Nobody gets un-chickened along the way.
At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge.
I agree that the general trend is and has been forward movement of technology and culture. But that trend isn't without exceptions.
"an old world cultural toolkit is described"
This is true, and indeed it is this observation that has galvanized and organized the new Book of Mormon apologetics. It is argued that the Book of Mormon transmits a whole panoply of ancient Near Eastern cultural and textual traits, demonstrating an historical specificity beyond what would have been available to Joseph Smith via the Bible or other sources.
"mormon apologists could argue that horses really mean llamas, old world crops are really just mistranslations of new world crops, etc."
This is indeed one of the approaches adopted when confronted with historical puzzles like these. By the text's own account, it is a redaction of hundreds' of years of historical records by a much later editor, the titular Mormon, which was then rendered in English by Joseph Smith---affording textual opportunity for cross-cultural loanshifts and other linguistic slippage.
"Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means.
"bingo. i'm an atheist and this is exactly what i would have said. to be clear: the beliefs of 'major world religions' in their non-fundamentalist incarnations presuppose ludicrous assumptions far upstream of what mormonism does."
No, razib. This may be true of a belief like transsubstantiation, but how about the resurrection itself? If someone claimed that, say, Jerry Falwell came back to life, there would be DNA testing, and all sorts of scientific methods available to verify that claim. But 2000 years ago, those methods didn't exist, and now, all the evidence is gone. (Indeed, there is very little direct evidence that Jesus even existed, though I presume he must have in some form due to all the narratives of his life.)
The Biblical flood is another example. It's pretty clear from DNA evidence and the fossil record that it didn't happen as described. Now, we can't be quite as sure as we can be about events that happened less than 200 years ago, but still, the fact of the matter is that the Judeo-Christian tradition that a majority of Americans profess to believe makes a bunch of historical claims that are total whoppers just like the Mormons do.
One more example is the creation stories in Genesis. It simply didn't happen that way. Again, can we be quite as sure as we can be about events 200 years ago? No.
I might add, though, that the same scientific techniques that lead us to know that the stories of Native American tribes in the Book of Mormon are questionable are the ones that show us that the biblical flood and Genesis creation narratives are false, i.e., examination of the fossil record.
Concerning the Old World toolkit:
(1) A lot depends on the size of the group. Lots of diseases wouldn't be present in two extended families. And diseases mutate fast enough that I'm not actually sure that we know a lot about the disease environment of the Middle East c. 600 B.C. and how some minor exposure to a random portion of that environment would be detectable in the Americas in AD 2007 considering that the two disease environments have been massively joined for centuries. Has much archaeological work been done on gut fauna?
(2) The spread of crops would depend on how adapted they were to their local environment. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't spread.
(3) Domesticated animals seem like they'd be useful anywhere. But given a small enough group of starting animals, accidents at the beginning can make a big difference about what happens. But the Book of Mormon doesn't actually claim that its Middle Eastern migrants brought domesticated animals with them. It says 'provisions and seeds': http://scriptures.lds.org/en/1_ne/18
(4) We actually have an example of Old World settlement that doesn't seem to have introduced much of a toolkit in the Vinland settlements. Cultures have a lot of momentum that can overwhelm isolated migrants.
At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge.
this is an interesting point. the most extreme case is in tasmania. but your island example is illustrative: loss of culture tends to occur due to physical isolation. in continental societies with multiple foci of 'civilization' there tends to be average loss when a culture zone goes through a 'dark age,' but redundancy and relatively easy communication prevents extinction of the toolkit. the ancient eastern mediterranean between the 12th and 8th centuries BCE is a good example of this, greece and anatolia regressed into total barbarism, but the crescent from egypt to anatolia managed to perpetuate enough cultural traditions for the re-expansion of civilization later (the spread of literacy to europe and india was from the same source, the western levant).
as for europe, there was regression in metrics like literacy or coinage. roughly, "high culture" which could be sustained by economic surplus and coordination & specialization. but, europe did not regress back to a pre-agriculture or pre-iron age toolkit, it did not lose horses. in other words, different aspects of culture are variantly "sticky." food stuffs and other biologicals are those elements that are least likely to be lost because they are relevant to the typical peasant. to give you an example, 250 years ago the sweet potato made it into the highlands of new guinea from the new world via east china (with europeans as the obvious mediators). it transformed highland agriculture and resulted in a population boom. when europeans stumbled upon the highlands of new guinea they found a stone age pre-literate world divided between small clans. that goes to show you the relative viscosity of some aspects of a cultural toolkit without the necessary preconditions. but, as i note sweet potato had transformed their society. similarly, dingos showed up in australia around 7,000 years ago. this was a society that was extremely "primitive," but this biological made the transition and changed the continent (the extinction of the tasmanian wolf).
in short, if you posit that the hebrews landed on the continent of the americas you are met with a serious plausibility problem. languages, literacy, religions, etc., can all disappear quickly. but biologicals generally do not because their appeal to neighbors is broad. additionally, the eurasian disease cauldron is very powerful and specific. you don't even need intermarriage for these to spread. we should see signatures of selection for some of the eurasian diseases in the genomes of american peoples because they can sweep far ahead of population movements (flu, smallpox, etc., tended to spread ahead of european contact).
JonF,
All we would have to do to verify or falsify the doctrine of transubstantiation is to collect some of the bread and wine, after it was blessed by a priest for Mass. Then we could test it to see if it had the constitution of bread and wine or flesh and blood.
I'm not holding my breath for the possibility of the church allowing that to happen, but in principle, the doctrine of transubstantiation is not falsifiable only by metaphysical means. It is falsifiable by empirical means.
The Mass is very central to Catholic practice. Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity are what you could call "sacramental" religions which place the Eucharist very high, practically central, to their religious practice.
To Catholics, at least orthodox (small "o") believers, the Eucharist not only symbolizes the body and blood of Jesus but is literally transfigured into the body and blood of Jesus. The fact that we will never be able to test whether or not this is true should not earn the Catholics any extra points. It's something that is supposed to happen in each Mass, which is happening all the time.
As far as the BoM's theological claims, I doubt that those are falsifiable any more than your run of the mill beliefs about God are.
And for LDS claims that are falsifiable, fine, I really don't find it all that interesting to be honest. I'm not LDS, I just think the LDS church is critiqued in a way that your larger, more historical religions aren't. We should at least be consistent.
But I think most people would balk if they had to consistently apply the same scrutiny to every belief that the apply to Mormon beliefs.
For the reasons outlined above, I think the doctrine of Transubstantiation is a good example of what I mean.
A lot depends on the size of the group. Lots of diseases wouldn't be present in two extended families. And diseases mutate fast enough that I'm not actually sure that we know a lot about the disease environment of the Middle East c. 600 B.C. and how some minor exposure to a random portion of that environment would be detectable in the Americas in AD 2007 considering that the two disease environments have been massively joined for centuries. Has much archaeological work been done on gut fauna?
google "MHC" and "adaptive immune system." many of the diseases that new world people suffer from old world people barely notice. the genetic signatures of all new world peoples tend to be very precise here and suggest almost no exposure to old world diseases before european contact (we can detect evidence of selection for particular genes via intermarriage across generations today).
(2) The spread of crops would depend on how adapted they were to their local environment. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't spread.
the columbian exchange from new to old and old to new suggests that crops spread very fast when the climate is suitable. depends on the size of the kit and the climate of the landing region.
We actually have an example of Old World settlement that doesn't seem to have introduced much of a toolkit in the Vinland settlements. Cultures have a lot of momentum that can overwhelm isolated migrants.
this is a good comparison, because you have a big contrast: the vinland settlement lasted for a few generations. from what i recall the nephites lasted for hundreds of years (nearly 1,000?).
if you multiply out the probability the likelihood of extinction of all cultural traits over such a long period of time when they are maintained is pretty low. if you want to believe in it of course you can accept the likelihood of such a low probability event, but as you can see you won't convince those who don't share your religious priors.
One more example is the creation stories in Genesis. It simply didn't happen that way. Again, can we be quite as sure as we can be about events 200 years ago? No.
actually, i think we can be pretty sure. e.g., what's the difference between 99.99% sure and 99.9999% sure?
I might add, though, that the same scientific techniques that lead us to know that the stories of Native American tribes in the Book of Mormon are questionable are the ones that show us that the biblical flood and Genesis creation narratives are false, i.e., examination of the fossil record.
i stated in my previous comment that the proper point of comparison is between mormons and fundamentalist christians (though the less literalist mormons here are changing my opinions regarding that issue). ross is not a literalist, and christians as early as st. augustine have opined that it is possible or likely that genesis is an allegory appropriate for a primitive people. please read what i post before responding.
Jay J.,
I'm not Catholic, but in their defense I think the actual Catholic position is that the bread literally becomes Christ's body in substance, but it still has the incidental physical properties of unleavened bread. This argument doesn't convey much to my non-Aristotelian-trained mind but it does means that modern Catholics would expect your scientific scrutiny to just reveal bread, unlike the medieval conception that the Host would bleed if pricked.
But 2000 years ago, those methods didn't exist, and now, all the evidence is gone. (Indeed, there is very little direct evidence that Jesus even existed, though I presume he must have in some form due to all the narratives of his life.)
i weight the lack of evidence differently than evidence which contradicts. inductively we know that resurrection does not occur. deductively assuming materialist priors we know it does not occur. a straightforward reading of the BoM seems to me a plain case of falsification without any necessary prior cognitive scaffolding. now, i can cede that some mormons can reinterpret the BoM to be very difficult to falsify. e.g., simply assume that the BoM describes events on one of the smaller antilles. this would get around some of the theoretical objections regarding cultural and biological diffusion i made above (though a thousand years of isolation for a relatively advanced society as described in the BoM is implausible to me, but so be it). to falsify it you would have to go and excavate all the islands, and even then one could argue one had missed something.
As far as the BoM's theological claims, I doubt that those are falsifiable any more than your run of the mill beliefs about God are.
if it is true that mormons believe god inhabits a planet in this universe and possesses and corporeal form then theoretically it is more falsifiable. the god of the philosophers which "higher religions" usually promote is a tricky beast that over the generations has been reverse engineered to withstand scrutiny. his face is hidden from the world.
Some Mormons aren't literalists, either, Razib. They think that the Book of Mormon is something like a divine fiction, belief in its historicity being necessary to the unenlightened minds of the 19th Century in order to persuade them that the Indians were their brothers and that Christ was concerned not just with the Old World but with the New. So what?
Ross literally believes in the Resurrection, which is a fantastic belief that is far more contrary to science and everyday experience than the thought that a small group of Jews lived somewhere in the Americas for awhile as proto-Christians. Mormons share this belief, but yet you and Ross don't seem to think that disqualifies us from being taken seriously. Do you believe in the Resurrection, Razib? Do you think its reasonable to believe that it literally occurred? That a Mediterranean Jew turned water into wine, walked on water, somehow multiplied bread and fishes, cured all sorts of diseases by touch, brought a couple of dead people back to life, literally talked to Elijah and Moses, went for 40 days without bread and water in the desert, was killed and came back to life later and then flew through the air into the sky? Mormons believe all this, which I guess makes us unreasonable in your book. But Ross D. believes all this too.
Quoting Jay J: "If we start getting into all this personal religion stuff there will be no reason to stop before we get to what some people believe are the more 'reasonable' orthodox Christian beliefs. Nothing would please the Chris Hitchens' of the world more."
Good thinking, if I was still saddled with task of defending Christian mythology I'd opt for collusion as well. And I greatly appreciate your admission that this is all "personal religious stuff"; I'm sure from now on you won't be making any mythology-inspired *public* policy arguments, which is of course probably the best thing for you and your beliefs. The heat in the kitchen and such.
You can't simultaneously condemn people for holding beliefs that contradict empirical evidence and get peeved at them for "reverse-engineering" their beliefs to comply with the empirical evidence. One or the other, but not both.
Do you think its reasonable to believe that it literally occurred? That a Mediterranean Jew turned water into wine, walked on water, somehow multiplied bread and fishes, cured all sorts of diseases by touch, brought a couple of dead people back to life, literally talked to Elijah and Moses, went for 40 days without bread and water in the desert, was killed and came back to life later and then flew through the air into the sky?
the key is on "reason." reason presupposes axioms. the axioms which ross holds to be true makes this reasonable to him. i disagree with those axioms, and those disagreements are in my mind not just based on theoretical disputes but those derived from the facts of the world which we know them at the current time. that being said, the problems with a more literal interpretation of mormonism is that the disagreements are not just of reason, but of fact. for example, ross believes that a jewish man did some really bizarre things 2,000 years ago which i think are nonsensical. now, if ross told me that a jewish man was resurrected right outside my door 2 minutes ago, and so on, i would judge that even more nonsensical. i have immediate sense impression that this is just not so, not only is it an unreasonable assertion: it is empirically false on the face. now, the more literal assertions of mormons regarding their beliefs are not in the second category, nor do i believe they are int he first category. rather, they are quantitative in between. i don't know for a fact that j. smith forged the BoM because i saw it with my own eyes, but j. smith is a historical figure who lived during a time where we have a lot more documentary evidence. similarly, there are things about history and science that we know that make a particular interpretation of the BoM (a more 'literal' one) highly unlikely because of the material consequences are not born out by the world in which we live and can sense.
Adam,
I understand that Catholics wouldn't expect the host to bleed if pricked.
They do however, believe that they are literally eating the body and blood of Jesus, in spite of the fact that the incidental characteristics remain like bread and wine.
But how reasonable is it to believe that you are eating the body and blood of Jesus when it's just fricking bread and wine!!
I'm actually sorry to point this out, as I have nothing against Catholics, but here we have one talking about how Catholics have beliefs that are based on things from a long time ago, and that Mormonism is at a disadvantage since it's claims are more falsifiable.
Well, as just about everyone seems to agree, any test done on the bread and wine will reveal it to be...bread and wine. I really don't care what people believe about what they're eating, but when they say they're consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus, I say they live in a glass house when it come to religion, and therefore shouldn't throw stones.
This, from the Catholic encyclopedia:
"...eating and drinking are to be understood of the actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#3
I understand that they don't expect to taste flesh and blood when they go to Mass, but they still see it as literally consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus. And we can easily demonstrate to them that they aren't.
Therefore, what reason do they have to believe that they are eating the body and blood of Jesus when we can easily show them that the constituency of the bread and wine precludes that explanation?
Pure Faith.
You can't simultaneously condemn people for holding beliefs that contradict empirical evidence and get peeved at them for "reverse-engineering" their beliefs to comply with the empirical evidence. One or the other, but not both.
yes you can. read some philosophy of science. if the paradigm does not fit, you must quit.
Razib,
I don't see any real distinction in your 4:26. If anything, from your atheistic standpoint I'd think you'd say that there was a larger chance that there actually was some Middle-Eastern pre-Columbian contact than that Jesus was resurrected or performed miracles. And I don't think chanting 'philosophy of science' allows contradiction.
this is a good comparison, because you have a big contrast: the vinland settlement lasted for a few generations. from what i recall the nephites lasted for hundreds of years (nearly 1,000?).
The contrast is the other way. The vinland settlements had more people and repeated Old World contact, yet they didn't introduce much of a tool kit. The Nephite settlement was a one time, two-family thing. They survived but, I would imagine, in a highly assimilated form.
if you multiply out the probability the likelihood of extinction of all cultural traits over such a long period of time when they are maintained is pretty low. if you want to believe in it of course you can accept the likelihood of such a low probability event, but as you can see you won't convince those who don't share your religious priors.
This is an excellent point. What we're trying to argue here is that the historical record does not make our belief an unreasonably low probability, given our religious priors.
I don't think there's a real distinction in Razib's 4:26 either. If you believe that the resurrection and all those other events in Jesus' life happened as historical facts, then the only things that save you from ridicule are (1) that they happened so long ago that they are more difficult to disprove than the beliefs of the Mormons, and (2) they are more widely accepted.
Again, I would also note that what we DO know about early Christianity makes it look quite similar to Mormonism. What made it into the Bible and orthodox Christian belief was the result of a successful attempt to impose authority over Christian doctrine in the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, many believes and doctrines and gospels that had wide adherence during the first centuries of Christianity were stamped out as heretical.
Knowing what we know about the process that resulted in the creation of the modern Catholic New Testament, why would anyone believe that it accurately records the word of God? And why is the faith of one who does any less subject to criticism than the faith of a Mormon who believes in LDS scripture?
Jay J:
Most Catholics do not believe that what they are eating is the literal flesh of Jesus Christ. And most of those who do believe this are misusing the word "literal."
You would find very few Catholics, for example, who would believe that there is any physical, observable scientific difference between a consecrated and non-consecrated host.
If anything, from your atheistic standpoint I'd think you'd say that there was a larger chance that there actually was some Middle-Eastern pre-Columbian contact than that Jesus was resurrected or performed miracles.
yes.
1) via both induction and deduction from the world around us i don't accept jesus' resurrection. we have no real evidence he was resurrected (i don't count josh mcdowell style apologetics as 'evidence that demands a verdict'). there is a possibility that he did not exist. all we can do is make inferences based on our general model of the world.
2) regarding a more literal interpretation of the BoM i also have to rely on induction and deduction. but, these models are subject to a much greater input of direct empirical evidence. i can (i believe) falsify or render implausible "facts" asserted in the BoM in a more direct fashion than with the resurrection of jesus christ. the BoM models can generate testable inferences. e.g., we know that if there was contact it had to be attenuated, the low heterozygosity of amerindian MHC loci (genetic diversity of the adaptive immune system) is simply implausible if there was exposure to the eurasian pathogen complex (as are the historically attested mass die offs do to strains of the flu as well to corroborate this).
so what i'm saying is that the BoM offers a suite of inferences amenable to scientific scrutiny. the way mainstream christianity has repositioned its truth claims makes it difficult for science to "test" them (see transubstantiation).
And I don't think chanting 'philosophy of science' allows contradiction.
if you are a working scientist you know very well that science is filled with contradictions and confusions. it isn't a system of logic, though it depends on mathematics. though the term 'paradigm shift' is overused it is what i am alluding to when i say that the reverse engineering which is characteristic of higher religion isn't something i find plausible. i don't think that religion is attractive and ubiquitous because of its valid truth claims. people won't stop believing in god because it doesn't exhibit instrumental utility (it offers no explanatory value after centuries of reverse engineering). i think there are strong psychological reasons why people will continue to believe in religion. one of the main ones is that human cognition is modularized in a way that contradiction is totally normal and conventional (not just in religion). this means that as a matter of modal psychology the philosophical objections to jesus' resurrection which do rely on formal logical chains of propositions and generalized induction will never be highly persuasive to most people (most humans are pretty stupid anyhow, but intelligent ones like ross still often have very powerful psychological biases which you won't be able to overcome through argumentation). so the question for me is not whether people will be religion, they usually will be, but rather which religion. a literal reading of the BoM offers a set of facts which are easily testable without recourse toward logical thought, just an assertion and a contradiction or verification. so psychologically religions are selected away from ones that are so easily falsifiable. i suspect over time mormonism which shift away totally from a literalist take on BoM so as to be more appealing to their own elites.
which leads me to the assumptions about mormons. it would be nice to have a survey which fleshes out their views regarding their 'doctrines' so that we can characterize the distribution of belief. i grew up around mormons and my own impression is that most of the adherents are more literalist than the people who are showing up on this thread, but that's just my impression.
vune,
First, I would never have even gotten on this topic were it not for Ross's diavlog over at Bloggingheads.
Second, the real issue here is what the church teaches, not what most Catholics believe. When the Catholic church uses the word "literal" when they assert that Jesus' "Real Presence" is somehow injected into the bread and wine after the Priest blesses it, they are making a claim.
The fact that Catholics may say, "Well, it's more than symbolism, but you won't be able to find it emperically," doesn't make the idea more believable.
We could do a test of the bread and wine to show that, unlike church teaching, more than just the appearance of bread and wine is present, but the constituency of bread and wine are present.
My 4:26 post addresses most of this...
The vinland settlements had more people and repeated Old World contact, yet they didn't introduce much of a tool kit. The Nephite settlement was a one time, two-family thing. They survived but, I would imagine, in a highly assimilated form.
there are plenty of theoretical models out there (see joe heinrich at emory) in regards to cultural diffusion, islands, etc. we can pop in parameters and test them. the vinland settlement was larger, but my understanding is that regular contact was less than 100 years. in any case, the probability of the spread of particular alleles (genetic variants) and diseases can be modeled given particular selective constraints and population numbers. we can generate a distribution of likelihoods in such a manner. i'm a bit piqued and might actually attempt this at some point inf the future for the BoM (though i'll have to familiarize myself with the literature more, i've only read the BoM itself, not what others think of it).
my own impression is that most of the adherents are more literalist than the people who are showing up on this thread
Probably true.
to be precise, with a specific number of individuals and assumptions about demographic history (rate of outmarriage, etc.) we can be very mathematically precise about what might happen in regards to genes and diseases.
Although 'literalist' isn't probably the right word. Much of the evidence for the limited geography model is from the text of the Book of Mormon.
Razib,
You're right, that agricultural diffusion is relatively likely in many contexts.
On the other hand, the limited availablility of agricultural diffusion out of Central America has been suggested by a lot of people, most of whom aren't Mormons. It's one of the central themes of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, after all (and also referenced in The Third Chimpanzee).
Diamond points out that all sorts of pieces of the cultural and agricultural toolkit didn't make it across the isthmus. Llamas. Peppers. The wheel, for crying out loud. America is not Eurasia, and North-South diffusion is significantly more difficult than East-West (which is pretty much the central theme of Guns, Germs, and Steel).
So, if the Nephites (or some other particular civilization) existed in Central America, would there nececssarily have been much agricultural diffusion in either direction? You don't have to ask a Mormon apologist to get a negative answer.
Jay J:
Sorry if I'm taking it off subject, I'm new to the thread & haven't read the whole discussion. My intention was simply to give an explanation as to why Catholics with their silly beliefs can be so critical of the silly beliefs of others.
Mostly, I'm just posting cuz I'm bored, so feel free to disregard this. But since I already wasted the time, I might as well post what I typed in between my post & your response:
(1) that they happened so long ago that they are more difficult to disprove than the beliefs of the Mormons, and (2) they are more widely accepted.
This is pretty much what Mormons have going against them. Mormon beliefs are "weird" because of 2, and mistakes/lies of the founders of the Mormon church are harder to justify as metaphors because of 1.
For example, it is a fact that Joseph Smith's interpretation of the facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price are incorrect. This means one of three things:
A. Joesph Smith was lying
B. Joseph Smith was delusional
C. Every Egyptologist who has examined said facsimiles is incorrect.
Most Mormons never look into this stuff, as it is completely irrelevant to how they live their lives. Those who look into it are usually content to accept answer #3.
Logical gaps like this may exist in other religions, but they're a lot harder to find, and to argue to the fullest, usually require fluency is a dead language.
I'm not saying it's right... Just the way it is.
Mormons are definitely not monotheistic. It's worth noting, however, that most non-Christians do not view Christians as being monotheists, either.
I'm just going to address the Mormon belief that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and the common non-Mormon belief that he was an "obvious fraud."
We can talk livestock, archeology, and genetics as evidence of Joseph's "fraud." Another comment Ross made was how the Book of Mormon contains "mistranslations" of the King James Bible and asserts them as the original biblical verse.
Do these discrepancies invalidate Joseph Smith's alleged divine calling? I think it depends on what you expect of a prophet.
Traditional Christians should keep in mind that they have not had to deal with the messiness of continuing revelation since the death of the original apostles, and perhaps earlier.
How is God's will transmitted to His children? And what happens to the message when God chooses to use mere mortals to convey that message?
Traditional Christianity tends to believe in the absolute integrity of the written word. No questions asked, what is in the Bible is what God meant, in the exact wording He wanted, without addition or distortion.
I would note that Mormons tend to believe this as well.
Myself, I'm doubtful that this is really what scripture is. My reasons appeal to the fundamental nature of the men who wrote the scripture.
Now, Moses, I'm sure, was a stand-up guy. But is anyone here ready to claim he was perfect?
Is it possible that Moses, upon hearing God's word in... say... the burning bush just maybe got it a bit wrong on the way to the press? Perhaps he altered wording a little? Maybe he just forgot a few things? Maybe a few of his own biases crept into the document as he wrote it? Or maybe he wasn't a great writer to begin with and just didn't use the written language to express himself as well as he might have?
In the end, Moses was just a man. And isn't it a bit silly to expect perfect scripture from him, no matter whether it came from God or not?
And let's look at other common methods of receiving God's word. Dreams, visions (or hallucinations if you prefer), direct conversation with heavenly messengers.
Aside from the Ten Commandments, which were written by God personally on the rocks, what guarantee do we really have of a flawless embodiment of scripture in the Bible.
And we haven't even gotten to issues of how Moses original writings would have to be transcribed, and re-transcribed down through the ages. Much of it might well have even been transmitted orally for hundreds of years before anyone wrote it down.
And that's assuming that those writing and preserving the records had pure motives. What if a particular scribe simply didn't like a particular doctrine and left it out? What if another scribe thought that Moses really worded that particular passage poorly and decided to "improve" it? What if a political ruler or political elite wanted the record to support their own agenda?
It seems almost incredible that, given the time span of the Bible, that the word of God survived intact at all.
Yet we believe that, to some degree, it did.
Here's the problem where traditional Christians have a hard time connecting with Mormonism. You haven't had to deal with real-time live updates from God for thousands of years. You frankly, have no idea what it's like, or how messy of a process it can be. Your revelations happened ages past, and there's been plenty of time to tidy up the house. Aberrant or odd things Paul, Peter, Moses, Elijah, etc may have once said have been long since been either edited out, or surrounded with such extensive philosophical, theological, historical, and linguistic defenses that they are now well nigh unassailable. You have, I'll be blunt, whitewashed your prophets. Not totally of course. But human nature being what it is, how could you not have?
As a believing Mormon, I'm telling you. If you were to time-warp back to when the revelations were being handed down, you'd get a very messy process. A process where the general shabbiness of the messenger often turned the people off to the message. A process where flawed men, often regarded as dangerous fanatics or lunatics, preached from the fire of their souls. A process where prophets and seers tried to convey the message God had entrusted them with, and inevitably failed to convey it perfectly.
In short, you'd have Joseph Smith.
I don't say this to prove Joseph's divine mission. I merely want to point out that Mormons haven't had even a fraction as much time as Lutherans or Catholics have had to tidy up their theological houses.
If you want a living religion, you have to expect it to be messy. Because revelation and prophesy, like life, is messy.
Roger,
I think the proper term is "henotheistic," not "polytheistic."
Read "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling" by Richard Bushman who is both an emeritus professor of history at Columbia and a practicing Mormon. You can also read works by Hugh Nibley, who was a world renowned bible scholar. Also, www.fairlds.com is a good site to visit.
You can go to http://www.famousmormons.net/ to see who some famous Mormons in our culture are in many different fields.
Also, you ought to read the Book of Mormon before you make comments about the Mormons. It's actually a pretty interesting book that covers several thousand years and discusses the rise and fall of two civilizations. There is actually a lot of geographical and archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon and its history in Central America - Not that geography could ever "prove" that one religion is correct or not (for example even people who were there with Christ didn't believe Him), but it seems to be an issue for some people.
I think the proper term is "henotheistic," not "polytheistic."
1) i think that there is still debate in the air in muslim & jewish circles whether christians are monotheists. i know that some ashkenazi rabbis have accepted that christians are monotheists, but i don't think this was authoritative.
2) if the trinity is tritheism, then christians are polytheists. but they are not henotheists insofar as they worship the only gods they believe exists. henotheists believe in a multiplicity but worship a subset of those gods.
let me illustrate my distinction between aspects of mormon history vs. christian supernaturalism.
imagine two people. one believes in the christian god. another believes that sai baba is god. as a matter of logic i reject the validity of both beliefs with equal certitude, but, i can empirically investigate sai baba's godhood in a direct and immediate manner. i can reject sai baba's godhood scientifically (assuming particular inferences one can make from a 'god').
there are people who do believe that a god-man with magical powers existed 2,000 years ago. there are people who do believe that a god-man with magical powers exists today, in india. logically both these are equally fallacious in my eye, but, i do make a distinction in the psychology of individuals who have these beliefs. both are delusions in my eye, but not of equal magnitude or concern. similarly, a geocentrist catholic (they exist) and a liberal catholic accept absolutely false beliefs about transubstantiation and the bodily resurrection. but, i tend to judge the two groups a bit differently because geocentrism is a rejection of immediate reality on a totally different order of magnitude.
now, to be concrete. i know that mitt romney believes in evolution. i do not know his beliefs about mormon history. i may very well be that he has a subtle take. i know many mormons do not (knowing them personally and discussing their beliefs).
Personally, I think Mormonism is pretty firmly henotheistic, and traditional Christianity is arguably so.
King James v. Book of Mormon: the problem in microcosm
Critics charge that the BoM contains errors from the 17th century KJV. To critics, this shows that the BoM is a plagerism of the KJV, rather than an authentic 400 AD production.
However, the Book also corrects a errors made by the KJV. It also contains Hebrew poetry and geographic references to the Middle East that were unknown in Smith's day. To Mormons, this shows that the BoM is an authentic product of 400 A.D.
The issue illustrates the essential problem in microcosm. Ultimately, no intellectual arguement will prove that the BoM is fraudulent or 'true'--there will always be intelligent people on both sides who think their point of view is clearly correct. The only way to address the truth of the Book of Mormon is to pray about it and ask God if it is true. And even this will yield nothing more than faith, or not.
The latest volley in the KJV/BoM debate:
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=138
The text of the Book of Mormon, attractively presented.
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/contents
----
I'm a contract attorney practicing at a large international law firm. I'm not a genius, but I'm not the gullible hick people imagine would be a Mormon. I sincerely believe the Book of Mormon is true, because it makes such a difference in my life, in the life of many others, and because of the kind, gentle Mormon community (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that depends on it for inspiration.
I've read several thousand pages of skeptical literature, and hundreds of pages of pro-Mormon literature. But at the end of the day, when I read the BoM my doubts are soothed and I am warmed by God's Spirit.
That's why I believe.
God Bless.
tim, i can't argue with your sort of fideism. i don't agree with it, but it is fundamentally orthogonal to any approach i might make except the one at the root.
vune,
I'm not LDS, and I'm not here to defend Mormonsim, but the list of things Catholics believe which I would find, err, implausible, would probably be just as impressive.
Those who hold views which test the credulity of the human mind beyond its bounds, but then go around critiquing other faiths, to me are engaging in a distasteful exercise.
This is why I didn't say anything about what Matthew Yglesias said in the diavlog, since he seems like he's, at most, a lapsed member of Reform Judaism.
I agree with you on your account of how things are, and I wold prefer to critique neither Mormonism or Catholicism unless and until they push policies I don't agree with based on the premises of their faith.
I honestly believe that if aliens came down and had no knowledge of our history of what the majority of people believed, they would find Mormonism to be about as strange as Catholicism.
they would find Mormonism to be about as strange as Catholicism.
i think they would find mormonism less strange than catholicism, because it is grounded in a much more common sense theology (mormons on occasion make this point). in other words, catholicism would be more absurd. mormonism less. but because of their lack of absurdity and sense, it would also be easier to prove demonstrably false. how's that for a back handed compliment? ;-)
Thomas Nelson (way back a zillion comments ago)--I suspect you are thinking of Bruce R. McConkie's _Mormon Doctrine_. With a title like that, you would think it was an officially sanctioned work, but it most emphatically was not.
There was a great deal of disagreement among church authorities about many "doctrines" presented in it, and McConkie was instructed not to have it reprinted in a second edition (he did anyway, after the church president who had instructed him not to had died).
The history of the book (which, I'm told, is finally going out of print this year) is actually an interesting case study in why it's so hard to figure out what Mormons believe. Part of what people so disliked about McConkie's book was its move towards something like a systematic theology. That systematizing impulse goes strongly against the grain of earlier Mormonism. Mormonism was founded, in part, because of Joseph Smith's distaste for the competing creeds of the Methodists, Presbyterians, and assorted Calvinist-flavored revivalists who frequented Palmyra in search of converts. He was a minimalist in terms of required beliefs, and that tradition persists within Mormonism. There are 13 Articles of Faith derived from a letter Joseph Smith wrote to a newspaper editor who wanted to print the beliefs of Mormons, but they do not form a creed in any sense that would be recognizable--they are not recited (except occasionally by young children learning them in Sunday School), nor is anyone ever asked to formally assent to them either before or after being baptized into the church. I suspect that a fair number of Mormons could not list the major points of all of them. Plenty of scholars of Mormonism have noted that this doctrinal "flexibility" (to use the most complimentary term) is part of what has allowed Mormonism to grow so rapidly.
Tests of "Mormon-ness" have generally relied on personal loyalty to the group, and to its leaders, and, more importantly, to compliance with distinctive practices. Polygamy was the obvious defining practice of several generations of Mormons. After it was discontinued, other practices became normative and took on greater importance in terms of boundary-maintenance. Probably the most notable of these practices is compliance with what's called "The Word of Wisdom"--which includes instruction to abstain from tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. In the late 20th century, a strong emphasis on families and traditional gender roles became important identifying practices, although these are more contested within Mormonism. In any case, you can't hang out with Mormons who fancy themselves intellectuals for very long before they start butchering Greek-derived endings talking about whether Mormonism requires any orthodoxy at all, or merely orthopraxis.
Despite the ridiculous length of this comment, I believe that is the shortest possible answer to the question of why no intelligent Mormon has produced a single volume that represents either an official or a comprehensive view of Mormon theology. There's no such thing.
There was a big, fat book summarizing the "theology" of LDS published a generation ago. It is still in wide circulation. Written by a Mormon, but criticized by the church--for, I believe, stating their positions a bit too candidly.
Somebody help me remember the title and author?
Posted by Thomas Nelson | July 13, 2007 11:26 AM