Category: cherry-picking (page 1 of 2)

D&C Lesson 13 (Joseph Smith’s work)

26 March 2017 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“This Generation Shall Have My Word through You”

Reading assignment

The scriptures listed in the following questions and in the scripture chain:
D&C 84:19–25 (Melchizedek Priesthood),
D&C 88:15–24 (Three kingdoms of glory; see also D&C 76:50–112),
D&C 93:29 (Premortal existence),
D&C 107:23, 33, 35 (Apostles and prophets),
D&C 124:37–42 (Temples),
D&C 128:16–18 (Baptism for the dead),
D&C 130:22 (The Godhead);
Bible Dictionary, “Joseph Smith Translation,” 717;
Our Heritage, pages 23–25, 41, 58.

Links: Teacher’s manual | Student manual

Overview

This lesson is about Joseph Smith, and his impact on Mormon doctrine. (Since he’s the founder, the answer is an unsurprising “huge”.) For Mormons this lesson is kind of a breather, a list of what Smith wrote, along with exhortations to be grateful for it, and invitations for class members to tell what it “means to them”.

For us, it’s a chance to take an all-encompassing look at the full horror, and see how wrong it all is. If somewhere I missed an opportunity to bash away at a volume of scripture, here’s where I make up for it.

Joseph Smith was part story-teller, part con artist, part religious mystic, and all sexual predator. Richard Dawkins’s description of him as “enterprisingly mendacious” is just right. He was a magpie, scanning the frontier culture of his day, picking up anything shiny that crossed his path, and working it into a narrative that he busily constructed for the whole of his life, in hopes that it would be the One Big Sell that would get him money, sex, and power.

We’ll be looking at his major works:

The Book of Mormon
Doctrine and Covenants
The Joseph Smith “Translation” of the Bible
Pearl of Great Price

Reading

The Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is arguably the most beloved book of scripture for Latter-day Saints, and predictably, it gets everything wrong.

It misidentifies Hebrews as ancestors of Native Americans — a hypothesis that was current in Joseph Smith’s day, but which has been disconfirmed by modern evidence. It mentions plants and animals that did not exist in the ancient Americas, and fails to mention many that did. The Lamanites should have left an extensive archaeological footprint, but would appear to have vanished without a trace.

Joseph Smith plagiarised the Bible in its entirely, even the bits that weren’t supposed to have been written at the time of the Book of Mormon. No one in the church seems to notice this.

Joseph Smith was supposed to have seen God the Father and Jesus Christ as two separate individuals — a theological bombshell for Christendom at the time — but then went ahead and wrote the Book of Mormon to reflect a trinitarian doctrine, as though the First Vision had never happened. It also addresses theological, social, and political concerns of the American frontier Protestantism of the 1800s, in a way that would have been entirely foreign to ancient Mesoamerica.

Even more brashly, Joseph Smith inserted himself into the Book of Mormon as a fulfilment of prophecy, in a move that would make any writer with a sense of shame blush. From the manual:

The Book of Mormon
Read 2 Nephi 3:11–15 with class members. Explain that this passage contains a prophecy about Joseph Smith. The writings mentioned in verse 12 are the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

2 Nephi 3:11 But a seer will I raise up out of the fruit of thy loins; and unto him will I give power to bring forth my word unto the seed of thy loins — and not to the bringing forth my word only, saith the Lord, but to the convincing them of my word, which shall have already gone forth among them.
3:12 Wherefore, the fruit of thy loins shall write; and the fruit of the loins of Judah shall write; and that which shall be written by the fruit of thy loins, and also that which shall be written by the fruit of the loins of Judah, shall grow together, unto the confounding of false doctrines and laying down of contentions, and establishing peace among the fruit of thy loins, and bringing them to the knowledge of their fathers in the latter days, and also to the knowledge of my covenants, saith the Lord.
3:13 And out of weakness he shall be made strong, in that day when my work shall commence among all my people, unto the restoring thee, O house of Israel, saith the Lord.
3:14 And thus prophesied Joseph, saying: Behold, that seer will the Lord bless; and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded; for this promise, which I have obtained of the Lord, of the fruit of my loins, shall be fulfilled. Behold, I am sure of the fulfilling of this promise;
3:15 And his name shall be called after me; and it shall be after the name of his father. And he shall be like unto me; for the thing, which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation.

Talk about audacity!

Ask: If you were a believer, what did you think about these verses? Did you allow yourself to reflect on how transparent a con this might have been?

Doctrine and Covenants

The manual explains:

The Book of Commandments. This is the first compilation of the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith. These revelations later became part of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Ahem: not in their original form. The chapters from the Book of Commandments were reworked (in some cases, extensively). And the best part:

Interestingly, most of the revelations collected in the Book of Commandments were first printed in the Church periodical The Evening and Morning Star. When Doctrine and Covenants was printed, the first fourteen issues of The Evening and Morning Star were reprinted so as to agree with the revised revelations.

Down the memory hole!

There’s a bit in this lesson about the tensions between the people of Missouri and the Mormon settlers. That’s not cool, and I don’t want to excuse that. But there’s a tendency to think that the opposition facing the church — then and now — is the result of blind, unreasoning (possibly Satanic) prejudice. There are a couple of reasons for that.

It’s a way of explaining opposition. If people are against the church, members must not give in to the idea that they might have a point. Make it seem unreasoning, and thereby invalid. That way, there’s nothing to explain or think about. No self-analysis is necessary.
Blind implacable aggression is frightening. Fear drives members farther into the in-group. It galvanises support.

In fact, there were reasons that the early Saints and the Missiourians didn’t get along. I’d encourage having a read of the relevant entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which surprised me by being pretty even-handed in its treatment, without whitewashing the actions of the Mormons.

Tension between the Latter-day Saints and their neighbors in frontier Jackson County mounted for several reasons. First, marked cultural differences set them apart. With New England roots, most Saints valued congregational Sabbath worship, education of their children, and refined personal decorum. In contrast, many Jackson County residents had come to the Missouri frontier from other states precisely to avoid such interference in their lives. Many held no schools for their children, and Sunday cockfights attracted more people than church services did. Often hard drinking intensified violent frontier ways. In the opinion of non-LDS county resident John C. McCoy in the Kansas City Journal (Apr. 24, 1881, p. 9), such extreme differences in customs made the two groups “completely unfitted to live together in peace and friendship.”

Second, Missourians considered the Latter-day Saints strange and religiously unorthodox. Many LDS Church members aggressively articulated belief in revelation, prophets, the Book of Mormon, spiritual gifts, the Millennium, and the importance of gathering. Some went further and claimed Jackson County land as a sacred inheritance by divine appointment. Even David Whitmer, presiding elder of one branch, thought these boasts excited bitter jealousy. Articles on prophecy and doctrine published in the Church newspaper at Independence, the evening and the morning star, added to hard feelings. In addition, local Protestant clergy felt threatened by LDS missionary activity.

Third, because the Saints lived on Church lands and traded entirely with the Church store or blacksmith shops, some original settlers viewed them as economically exclusive, even un-American. Others accused LDS immigrants of pauperism when, because of diminished Church resources, they failed to obtain land.

A fourth volatile issue was the original settlers’ fear that Latter-day Saints might provoke battles with either slaves or Indians. They accused the Saints of slave tampering. As transplanted Southerners who valued their right to hold slaves, the settlers erroneously feared that the Saints intended to convert blacks or incite them to revolt. They also correctly asserted that the Latter-day Saints desired to convert Indians and, perhaps, ally themselves with the Indians.

Finally, Missourians feared that continued LDS ingathering would lead to loss of political control. “It requires no gift of prophecy,” stated a citizens’ committee, “to tell that the day is not far distant when the civil government of the county will be in their hands; when the sheriff, the justices, and the county judges will be Mormons” (HC 1:397). These monumental differences between the Latter-day Saints and the Missourians eventually led to violence.

The short story: utopian religious groups don’t play well with others. The frontier people of Missouri might have had some valid concerns about people from a strange unknown religious tradition moving in en masse and agglomerating economic and political power — not to mention firepower. But that’s going to figure in later.

That fourth point — “slave tampering” — became an issue at this time. The Mormons published a pro-abolitionist article (<a href=”http://mit.irr.org/joseph-smith-and-abolition-of-slavery”>atypical for Mormons at the time</a>) called “Free People of Color”. Incensed, the Missourians destroyed W. W. Phelps’ printing press, and copies of the Book of Commandments were destroyed. The destruction of the printing press was a move that the Mormons would later reciprocate.

The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible

Ever written a book of fan fiction based on another work, and then found out that it conflicts with the canon? How annoying! But Joseph Smith has the answer — just retrofit the Bible so it works better with your theology. This attempt was the so-called Inspired Version, now called the Joseph Smith Translation.

It’s awful. He rewrites the poetry of the Creation account by sticking “And it came to pass” right up the top! (He doesn’t fix the problem of plants coming before the sun, though.) Instead of the KJV Lot offering his daughters to the men of Sodom,

KJV Genesis 19:8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

he has Lot make a rather unpersuasive detour:

JST Genesis 19:13 And Lot said, Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, plead with my brethren that I may not bring them out unto you; and ye shall not do unto them as seemeth good in your eyes;

Why would the JST need to be a thing? Because Latter-day Saints teach that the Bible has many textual errors. From the manual:

• Read the eighth article of faith with class members. What is the significance of the phrase “as far as it is translated correctly”?

The problem here is that Mormons don’t bother to find out how we would know what a correct translation looks like, or what’s even involved in translation. They don’t want to use a better translation. “Translated correctly” just means “agrees with Mormon doctrine”. It’s a lazy way of dismissing inconsistencies between LDS dogma and the Bible.

I might also add that the word “translation” doesn’t have the conventional meaning to a Mormon. It means something like, “providing inspiration or a jumping-off point for something spiritual that you want to write”.

Instead of making a literal translation, as scholars would use the term, he used the Urim and Thummim as a means of receiving revelation. Even though a copy of Abraham’s record possibly passed through the hands of many scribes and had become editorially corrupted to the point where it may have had little resemblance to the original, the Prophet—with the Urim and Thummim, or simply through revelation—could have obtained the translation—or, as Joseph Smith used the word, he could have received the meaning, or subject-matter content of the original text, as he did in his translation of the Bible. This explanation would mean that Joseph Smith received the text of our present book of Abraham the same way he received the translation of the parchment of John the Revelator—he did not even need the actual text in front of him.

More word games from apologists. Translation doesn’t translation, horses don’t mean horses, and steel doesn’t mean steel. And no one knows what the hell a curelom or a cumom is.

But now we’ve wandered into Book of Abraham territory, so maybe it’s best to go there now.

The Pearl of Great Price

The Book of Abraham is the best evidence that Joseph Smith was making stuff up. If there’s a bigger smoking gun, I don’t know what it would be.

Joseph Smith pretended to translate Egyptian papyri that he procured, and — what do you know! — it was written by Abraham’s own hand. At the time that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Abraham, decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics was not well understood. Joseph Smith could have written anything, and no one would have able to tell him he was wrong.

We can now, though. The papyri are ordinary funerary documents. The meanings given to the facsimiles are what you’d expect from someone who was making stuff up, and who was trying to fool people.

Click to follow the links.

More here.

Conclusion

If I wanted to snark, I could say that if God didn’t pick a fact-challenged con-man to lead his church, he sure went to a lot of effort to make it look like he had.

But then my kinder nature kicks in. Joseph Smith was a writer of terrible and historically inaccurate fiction. For most of us, this is uncontroversial. But he and his followers have created a community that thinks it’s fact, and they can’t see their way out of it. Their reasoning is upside-down; they’ve decided it’s true, and reason backward from there. As LDS apologist Kerry Muhlestein said:

“I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon, and anything else that we get from the restored gospel, is true,” he said. “Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try to fit into that paradigm.”

Ask: How are you avoiding poor reasoning and confirmation bias in what you think and read?

Are you finding sources that you disagree with? Do you try to understand their arguments, and can you identify the strengths in their arguments, as well as the weaknesses?

BoM Lesson 31 (Wars)

28 August 2016 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Firm in the Faith of Christ”

Alma 43–52

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain why apostates are so dangerous to the church, and to investigate whether a common criticism of the Book of Mormon has any validity

Reading

Man, if this reading isn’t a stinker. The Book of Alma has a reputation for being tough to get through, and this reading is part of the reason why. It concerns the Nephite/Lamanite wars, and would really only be of interest to someone from that area and time.

The LDS Gospel Doctrine manual seems to sense the tension in the room for this lesson, and tries to forestall it by asking:

• Why do you think Mormon included so much information about war in the Book of Mormon?

Because war stories are easy to write?

1. Mormon knew that the Book of Mormon would be read and studied in a time when war would be common throughout the world. These writings teach us how to remain Christlike during times of conflict.

Actually, war is less common now than at any time in earth’s history.

“War” is a fuzzy category, shading from global conflagrations to neighborhood turf battles, so the organizations that track the frequency and damage of war over time need a precise yardstick. A common definition picks out armed conflicts that cause at least 1,000 battle deaths in a year — soldiers and civilians killed by war violence, excluding the difficult-to-quantify indirect deaths resulting from hunger and disease. “Interstate wars” are those fought between national armies and have historically been the deadliest.

These prototypical wars have become increasingly rare, and the world hasn’t seen one since the three-week invasion of Iraq in 2003. The lopsided five-day clash between Russia and Georgia in 2008 misses the threshold, as do sporadic clashes between North and South Korea or Thailand and Cambodia.

And:

In fact, virtually all the war in the world is now confined to an arc stretching from Nigeria to Pakistan, which contains less than a sixth of the world’s population. We are hardly, as pessimists like to say, a “world at war.” Of course, the world continues to suffer from other forms of violence: terrorist bombings that kill dozens, drug gangs that kill thousands, and homicides that kill hundreds of thousands. But the latest inroads against a major category of violence — war — after five years in which it had lurched in the wrong direction, deserves our attention and gratitude.

What else you got, LDS manual?

2. Mormon recorded Nephite history preceding the Savior’s appearance in great detail. We can read of the Nephites’ experiences and be prepared for similar events occurring in our day prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

Ah, yes — the Second Coming. Seems like they’ve been saying it’s on its way ever since I was a young tacker. The last and chosen generation before Christ’s triumphant return, and all that. When is that going to happen?

Oh, look: not for a while yet.

The end is not near, senior LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer said Saturday.

Today’s youths can look forward to “getting married, having a family, seeing your children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren,” Packer told more than 20,000 Mormons gathered in the giant LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City.

Isn’t that a hoot? The name of the church has “Latter-day” in it, and now one of its leaders says the Second Coming has been called off due to lack of interest. Or maybe it’s because they’ve just built a mall and they’ve got to recoup.

I see these war chapters as a missed opportunity. Remember, the Book of Mormon was God’s best shot at re-establishing his revelatory link with humanity. He could have told us anything! There we were, at the cusp of the humankind’s great leap into the Scientific Age, and God could have dropped in some nuggets that we were about to discover. What if the Book of Mormon had gotten the jump on Einstein and Bohr? That would have made believers out of a great many people.

Instead, we get pointless war stories.

Alma 49:24 There were about fifty who were wounded, who had been exposed to the arrows of the Lamanites through the pass, but they were shielded by their shields, and their breastplates, and their head-plates, insomuch that their wounds were upon their legs, many of which were very severe.

Was severe leg injuries really the best God could come up with?

Main ideas for this lesson

Why do we fight?

There’s a lot in this reading, but it’s so boring, I’m not going to go through it like a regular lesson. Instead, this lesson will touch on a pertinent question from the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual.

• Some of the strongest opponents of the Nephites had once been Nephites themselves, including the Amalekites (Alma 24:29–30; 43:6–7), the Zoramites (Alma 30:59; 31:8–11; 43:4), Amalickiah (Alma 46:1–7), Morianton (Alma 50:26, 35), and Amalickiah’s brother Ammoron (Alma 52:3). Why do those who have left the Church often fight so strongly against it? (See Mosiah 2:36–37; Alma 47:35–36.)

The Prophet Joseph Smith made the following statement to a man who wondered why those who had left the Church often fought so fiercely against it: “Before you joined this Church you stood on neutral ground. When the gospel was preached good and evil were set before you. You could choose either or neither. There were two opposite masters inviting you to serve them. When you joined this Church you enlisted to serve God. When you did that you left the neutral ground, and you never can get back on to it. Should you forsake the Master you enlisted to serve it will be by the instigation of the evil one, and you will follow his dictation and be his servant” (in “Recollections of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” Juvenile Instructor, 15 Aug. 1892, 492).

“And you shall be in my power! Muhahahahahaaaa!!!”

No, but seriously.

Let me try to explain why I fight the church so hard after being devoted to it for so many years.

I was raised in the church. For thirty-eight years, I went to weekly three-hour meetings, served a two-year mission, served in callings, and went to early-morning seminary classes. (How many years is that? You do the math.) Through it all, the church carefully wove a web that influenced the whole of my life. It taught that it was the Lord’s kingdom on the earth, and that if I was obedient, I could have an eternity with my family in heaven.

Sometimes things wouldn’t make sense. There would be contradictions. And when that happened, I didn’t worry, and I didn’t doubt. I would simply invent a workable explanation. Or I would place the item on my shelf, reasoning that I would find out after I died. Because, no matter what else, I knew the church was right. That was the one thing I knew.

In 2005, when I was struggling for answers, and everything appeared in shades of gray instead of black and white, I still believed. The idea that the church might be wrong was the last thing I wanted to think. I tried every other option, through every contradiction.

But when I allowed myself to serenely and honestly contemplate that last and final possibility — that the church was wrong — all the contractions folded up and disappeared, resolved at last. There were no contradictions. The complex and byzantine tower of faith that I had spent years constructing simply collapsed into a pile of dust at my feet.

The next few weeks at church were strange. In discussions about Noah’s Ark, the Millennium, the Creation — every time some doctrine was taught, I thought: All the people in this room are wrong about this.

The church was not what it taught me it was. It held itself up as the One True Church with living prophets, and it was just another human-made organisation.

And when you realise that — once you get past the shock — then comes the anger.

the-truth-will-set-you-free-but-first

Because once you really grasp that the church isn’t what it claimed, you realise that someone’s been doing a whole lot of lying.

But who? Parents? The missionaries? No, they probably believe it. They’re not to blame.

The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve? (We have this discussion a lot, we exMo’s.) Does the Q15 really believe it, or are they fooled as well?

One thing’s for sure: whoever wrote the Book of Mormon knows that they sat down and wrote it. And if the Q15 don’t know it’s wrong, they’re in a position to. Not knowing seems like criminal negligence.

What I’m saying is there’s a lot of anger, and it’s not clear whom to put it on.

And the wasted time and money! And the guilt they used on me. The way they shamed me about my body, my sexuality, and my desires. They claimed authority over the things that were closest to me. And the way they gave me a fake moral system to follow instead of something based in the real world. And the bad choices I made based on bad information. And on and on. You never really get through it. You just sort of keep rediscovering ways in which the worldview you cultivated was fake.

The closest thing I can imagine to it is discovering your spouse has been unfaithful. I’m not saying that’s a deal-breaker for everyone or anything. But imagine: you thought it was one way, and it was another. The reality you based your life on was a lie. And now you have to rediscover what reality is.

So that’s why I do what I do. I don’t have any delusions that I can bring the church down, but I do hope to contribute to the hollowing-out that I think is happening. And if someone finds themselves in my position, maybe they’ll see me and I can encourage them.

This stuff is kind of personal, and I can see we’re going over time. So I’ll end this bit here.

Let me ask the opposite question, just to finish off: why does the church fight its apostates so hard — to the point where they say that we’re enlisted with the evil one, and we’re his servants? Why are church members conditioned to shut down whenever one of us speaks?

Easy. Because we’re dangerous to the church. We know their mind games, because we’ve seen them all — and used them on ourselves. Who could be more dangerous to the Wizard of Oz than the ones who know all his tricks, and are happy to call them out for anyone listening?

Damn straight, JD.

I want to give a special shoutout to NewNameNoah, who has been happily exposing the secrets of the LDS Church to anyone who would like to see them. Through the magic of hidden video, he has recorded the temple ceremonies, and placed them onto YouTube. People who were about to join the church have watched them, and said “No, thanks.” You can strike a blow for transparency and openness of information by linking to them here.

Additional lesson ideas

Book of Mormon place names

There’s an argument against the Book of Mormon that I’ve never been fond of. It’s that Joseph Smith (and co.) simply grabbed a lot of local place names when they were trying to come up with place names in the Book of Mormon. This idea is stated most clearly in the CES Letter (which is fantastic, and which has helped a lot of people).

It shows up on page 9.

names

Here are the maps.

mormonmap

modernmap

The CES Letter continues:

p10

Like I say, I’ve never been fond of this argument. Here’s why:

1. How close is close, for place names? Sure, the list looks compelling by the ol’ eyeball method, but can we use such a metric? Isn’t that what Mormon apologists do when they look at an inscription that says NHM and claim a match for Nahom?

2. There are a lot of similarities. But that’s to be expected when you cherry-pick. How many modern names were left off? How many Book of Mormon names? It would be easy to assemble a list of matches from just about anywhere.

That’s the root of my argument: It would be easy to take any random place, and match up Book of Mormon place names to it. To show this, I’m going to pick a random spot on the map, compare the place names to a list of Book of Mormon place names, and match as many as I can. I predict that I’ll get a healthy list of matches, no matter where I plop down a pin, which would mean that the plagiarism charge is not really reasonable. If, however, I can’t get a list of matches, I’ll have to admit that maybe there’s something to this.

But back to my first question: how close is close? Well, let’s keep in mind that different places are going to have their own ways of making words. There may be different suffixes that might get in the way. So I’m going to play this loosey-goosey. I’m going to be super tolerant of differences in the vowels, and I’ll probably even allow some consonants to drop out. It seems to me that only the first two or three consonants are significant. If there’s a place name like Bunbury, I’ll be looking for anything with B*n*b, or even B*n. For Adelaide, I’ll be happy if I get any vowel up the front, plus D*L. After all, that’s about as rigorous as what I think the inventor of our chart did.

So here we go: Malaysia. Here’s the zone.

mal1

Let’s zoom in for some detail on place names.

mal2

I should be able to find something. Hmm…

mal3

I can’t find one crappy name that looks even remotely close. Bintangor and Bethabara ain’t exactly a match.

But that’s just one place. I bet I’ll have better luck with some of the former Soviet republics.

Here’s the long view, in case you want to try.

kaz1

and the zoom in.

kaz2

And the result:

kaz3

Seventy freaking place names, and I can’t find a good match. Although Kishlakidzon at least has a Kish– in it. I’ve been as generous as I can, but the matches are pathetic.

Let’s give it one more try, this time in South America. This is the one place where we could expect a few decent matches, right?

I’m putting the pin down here:

sud1

sud2

And the result:

sud3

We get Annai and Ani-Anti, which is less-than-inspiring, given the lack of complexity. I matched Cunani and Cumeni, which I think was pretty generous. Other than that, there’s nothing. Check the list and let me know if you disagree. If you can do a better job, go for it.

I tried. I really tried. I thought I could get lots of matches for Book of Mormon names, no matter where I looked. Instead, the list from the CES Letter is way better than mine. I have to admit that this angle on Book of Mormon place names is more viable than I thought.

Did Joseph Smith (and/or friends) pull local place names when writing the Book of Mormon? I’m listing this as:

plausible

BoM Lesson 26 (Anti-Nephi-Lehies)

24 July 2016 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Converted unto the Lord”

Alma 23–29

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show the scriptural sanction for some of the hostile attitudes that Mormons have toward ex-members.

Reading

Last time, we saw that Ammon (etc.) converted a lot of former Lamanites. Having gotten a taste of the Jesus, they don’t want to fight anymore. Which is contrary to a kind of creeping Christianism we’re seeing in the US Armed Forces.

Whether Bibles are kept at registration desks or inside rooms may not seem all that big a deal. But the human stakes are higher in another religious-military row that erupted last month, when an atheist airman at a base in Nevada was denied the opportunity to re-enlist because he declined to say the words “so help me God”. In an older air force regulation, it was laid down that those four words could be omitted on grounds of conscience; but this waiver was removed from a new rule issued last year—you either invoke the Deity or you cannot take up your responsibilities to the nation.

In Mr Weinstein’s view, that change in the rules is a symptom of a new form of religious intolerance that has gained ground in the armed forces to the dismay of mainline Christians, among others. He calls the new religious mentality “dominionism”—a pejorative term for forms of Christianity that want to build religious principles into earthly power structures. One sceptical definition of “dominionism” describes it as “a theocratic view that…heterosexual Christian men are called by God to exercise dominion over secular society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.”

Other signs of that mentality? An increasing number of cases where service personnel are bullied or denied promotion because they refuse to conform to the religious beliefs of their superiors.

And, rather worryingly, this:

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

I guess Jesus affects people differently.

Be that as it may, the group decided that they needed a name. And did they come up with a doozy.

Alma 23:16 And now it came to pass that the king and those who were converted were desirous that they might have a name, that thereby they might be distinguished from their brethren; therefore the king consulted with Aaron and many of their priests, concerning the name that they should take upon them, that they might be distinguished.
23:17 And it came to pass that they called their names Anti-Nephi-Lehies; and they were called by this name and were no more called Lamanites.

Remind me not to let them pick my band name, because it would probably suck. I was going for Sea of Dudes, but apparently it’s taken. 🙁

Why would they be anti Nephi or Lehi? Well, there have been many explanations. Cue the gymnasts!

If anti is a transliteration, it might come from the EGYPTIAN relative marker nty (Coptic ente) meaning “which is,” which can be nominalized as “that which is”. Since the gentilic of the term is used in the plural, if it were pluralized as EGYPTIAN it should be ntyw. This would mean something like “those who are Nephi-Lehi”.

If anti is a translation, the meaning could be “facing Nephi-Lehi,” from the HEBREW word that means approximately “anti,” (neged), i.e., “facing, opposite, etc.” (HWN).

Hugh Nibley suggested to one of his classes that anti might come from Arabic inda which, like Greek anti, means “opposite”. Since this root is not found in other Semitic languages, it may actually be a borrowing from Greek.

Aren’t they creative? It’s easy to make things up when there’s no way you can be proven wrong.

Name aside, the most distinctive thing about them is that they decide never to fight again. Their king says:

Alma 24:12 Now, my best beloved brethren, since God hath taken away our stains, and our swords have become bright, then let us stain our swords no more with the blood of our brethren.
24:13 Behold, I say unto you, Nay, let us retain our swords that they be not stained with the blood of our brethren; for perhaps, if we should stain our swords again they can no more be washed bright through the blood of the Son of our great God, which shall be shed for the atonement of our sins.
…
24:17 And now it came to pass that when the king had made an end of these sayings, and all the people were assembled together, they took their swords, and all the weapons which were used for the shedding of man’s blood, and they did bury them up deep in the earth.

That’s convenient.

no physical proof

Alma 27:21 And it came to pass that the chief judge sent a proclamation throughout all the land, desiring the voice of the people concerning the admitting their brethren, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi.
27:22 And it came to pass that the voice of the people came, saying: behold, we will give up the land of Jershon, which is on the east by the sea, which joins the land Bountiful, which is on the south of the land Bountiful; and this land Jershon is the land which we will give unto our brethren for an inheritance.
27:23 And behold, we will set our armies between the land Jershon and the land Nephi, that we may protect our brethren in the land Jershon; and this we do for our brethren, on account of their fear to take up arms against their brethren lest they should commit sin; and this their great fear came because of their sore repentance which they had, on account of their many murders and their awful wickedness.
27:24 And now behold, this will we do unto our brethren, that they may inherit the land Jershon; and we will guard them from their enemies with our armies, on condition that they will give us a portion of their substance to assist us that we may maintain our armies.

This is actually interesting: there’s some scriptural justification for Mormons to either be pacifists, or protect pacifists.

Patrick Mason, the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University, knows that Mormons are not pacifists, but he thinks we should be. Writing at Rational Faiths, he contends that “resort to violence” is incompatible with “worship of the Prince of Peace.” Most interestingly, he claims that the Book of Mormon—full of warriors heroes like Mormon and Captain Moroni—is actually a pacifist text hiding underneath a thin veneer of failed militarism. Is it? Does the Book of Mormon teach that pacifism is always superior to defensive war?
…
Mason’s central argument is that the apparent approval of defensive war in the Book of Mormon contradicts Christ’s teachings. Mason stipulates that—if we are careful in our reading and analysis—we will see that the Book of Mormon text itself undermines its own superficial sanction of violence. After all, writes, Mason, “it’s difficult to conceive of a text more poignantly testifying to the utter futility and folly of violence” than the Book of Mormon.

Religion is a shape-shifter. It teaches whatever believers want it to teach; all they have to do is cherry-pick the scriptures they like, and construct an apologetic to fill in the gaps. But it’s sort of nice that some Latter-day Saints are taking this lesson from the Book of Mormon, when there are so many worse messages they could be getting.

A scene ensues. The attacking Lamanites descend on the ANLs, hack their way through a few of them, and then — WTF? — they recoil in confusion as their victims refuse to fight back.

Alma 24:20 And it came to pass that their brethren, the Lamanites, made preparations for war, and came up to the land of Nephi for the purpose of destroying the king, and to place another in his stead, and also of destroying the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi out of the land.
24:21 Now when the people saw that they were coming against them they went out to meet them, and prostrated themselves before them to the earth, and began to call on the name of the Lord; and thus they were in this attitude when the Lamanites began to fall upon them, and began to slay them with the sword.
24:22 And thus without meeting any resistance, they did slay a thousand and five of them; and we know that they are blessed, for they have gone to dwell with their God.

I know religion is supposed to be comforting, but no, you don’t know that.

And then the attackers have a change of heart. They join the ANLs, and make up the sudden deficit in their numbers.

Alma 24:23 Now when the Lamanites saw that their brethren would not flee from the sword, neither would they turn aside to the right hand or to the left, but that they would lie down and perish, and praised God even in the very act of perishing under the sword —
24:24 Now when the Lamanites saw this they did forbear from slaying them; and there were many whose hearts had swollen in them for those of their brethren who had fallen under the sword, for they repented of the things which they had done.
24:25 And it came to pass that they threw down their weapons of war, and they would not take them again, for they were stung for the murders which they had committed; and they came down even as their brethren, relying upon the mercies of those whose arms were lifted to slay them.
24:26 And it came to pass that the people of God were joined that day by more than the number who had been slain; and those who had been slain were righteous people, therefore we have no reason to doubt but what they were saved.
24:27 And there was not a wicked man slain among them; but there were more than a thousand brought to the knowledge of the truth; thus we see that the Lord worketh in many ways to the salvation of his people.

The writer is glad because more people have joined than were killed. I know this is fictional and everything, but damn — that’s a really statistical view of things.

Main ideas for this lesson

Never really converted

In this reading, the Book of Mormon shows a really terrible attitude toward ex-Mormons.

Here’s something I’ve been told at times: I left the church because I was “never really converted”.

Alma 23:6 And as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working miracles in them — yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away.

Ask: Why do members need to believe that ex-Mormons were never really converted?
Answer: This comes from fear. It can be threatening for a Mormon to encounter someone who has left and doubtless now thinks that church is a collection of lies, fables, and foolishness. I know that, as a younger member, I might have felt that way to meet a former member, and I would probably have been horrified to learn that one day I would become one. It would have meant a forfeiture of family, money, time, and what I thought would be my eternal future.

In short, I might have tried to find any way I could to prevent myself from thinking that I could become “like that”. And that can mean blaming the ex-member for a perceived lack of sincerity (which missionaries routinely do with investigators who “neg” them), or a perceived lack of integrity (you didn’t “endure to the end”). When really, I finally recognised that it just wasn’t true, and it was my sincerity and integrity that took me out of the church.

If you want a demonstration that Mormons really do believe these things about ex-members, look no further than the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual.

a. They “were converted unto the Lord” (Alma 23:6). Why is it essential that Jesus Christ be at the center of our conversion? For what other reasons might people be drawn to the Church? (Answers may include the personalities of missionaries, the influence of friends, or the appeal of social programs.) Why do these things alone fail to bring about true conversion?

I don’t know what “true conversion” means. I think they just mean “lifelong membership”, in which case any of those three things can get you there. I never hear a problem with those things when they get people into the font. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw anyone get baptised on my mission simply because they read the Book of Mormon and thought it was true. Baptism was always accompanied by elder infatuation or social relationships. I doubt that it can ever happen otherwise. And the church knows this; otherwise they wouldn’t stress friend referrals or co-teaching with the missionaries. It’s got to be about embedding the convert into a social relationship so that leaving will be more costly.

Apostates are worse than non-members

Here the other nasty thing that Mormons teach: ex-members are worse off than non-members. Here’s the scripture:

Alma 24:29 Now, among those who joined the people of the Lord, there were none who were Amalekites or Amulonites, or who were of the order of Nehor, but they were actual descendants of Laman and Lemuel.

Apparently conversion is genetic.

Alma 24:30 And thus we can plainly discern, that after a people have been once enlightened by the Spirit of God, and have had great knowledge of things pertaining to righteousness, and then have fallen away into sin and transgression, they become more hardened, and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things.

Those terrible apostates!

Ask: Why would the church teach that ex-members are spiritually worse-off than people who didn’t know about the church?

Let’s make one thing clear: it’s not really true that non-members don’t really know about the church. Members (and missionaries) have the idea that non-members don’t know about it, and if they find out about it, then they’ll join.

It’s not true. People know about the church. Even if it’s just as simple as “polygamy” — well, what one issue could be more indicative of the church? It happened, it was shocking, and now members are trying to bury it down the memory hole — while still practicing a form of it (posthumously). Yes, I’d say that’s the essence of Mormon doctrine!

There’s a Christopher Hitchens quote that I can’t find at the moment: People don’t reject Christianity because they don’t know about it; they reject it because they know about it.

Anyway, why wouldn’t they think that ex-members are worse? At lest non-members might become members someday, while it seems unlikely that ex-members will. Why would you, when you’ve seen the man behind the curtain?

And there’s another fiction that Mormons are eager to promote: that if you leave, it’s because you’ve forgotten.

25:6 For many of them, after having suffered much loss and so many afflictions, began to be stirred up in remembrance of the words which Aaron and his brethren had preached to them in their land; therefore they began to disbelieve the traditions of their fathers, and to believe in the Lord, and that he gave great power unto the Nephites; and thus there were many of them converted in the wilderness.

I still remember everything. I remember all the so-called spiritual experiences. I just have better explanations for them now.

BoM Lesson 20 (Alma the Younger)

5 June 2016 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“My Soul Is Pained No More”

Mosiah 25–28; Alma 36

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To encourage separation of church and state, and to point out how, for religious people, misplaced concern bleeds over into contempt.

Reading

The story of this reading is the story of conflict between believers and unbelievers. How can we live peacefully among people with whom we have religious disagreements?

This has been on my mind lately, because I’m about to go on a big family visit, and just about all the rest of my family is still in the church. What to do?

My answer: Go, and have a great time, because that’s what we always do! Lucky for me, my family members aren’t a bunch of jerks. And I don’t mention the church unless someone asks. (Which some do.) Basically, it’s going to be AvoidFest 2016. That’s how we work it out, and yeah, there’s some distance, but at least we have some fun getting together, eating food, meeting young grand-nieces and -nephews, and never mentioning the church at all ever.

Main points of this lesson

How the Book of Mormon recommends dealing with non-believers

How does the Book of Mormon handle this? Let’s drop in on the Nephites, who are all one big group now. Mosiah’s reading them the records of Zeniff.

Mosiah 25:7 And now, when Mosiah had made an end of reading the records, his people who tarried in the land were struck with wonder and amazement.
25:8 For they knew not what to think; for when they beheld those that had been delivered out of bondage they were filled with exceedingly great joy.
25:9 And again, when they thought of their brethren who had been slain by the Lamanites they were filled with sorrow, and even shed many tears of sorrow.
25:10 And again, when they thought of the immediate goodness of God, and his power in delivering Alma and his brethren out of the hands of the Lamanites and of bondage, they did raise their voices and give thanks to God.

You’ll have to give them a minute here, people! It’s all a bit much.

Mosiah 25:11 And again, when they thought upon the Lamanites, who were their brethren, of their sinful and polluted state, they were filled with pain and anguish for the welfare of their souls.

Okay, well, now we have a problem. If my family decided to wail and moan over my “sinful and polluted state”, I’d tell them to get the hell over themselves and mind their own damn business (sorry for swears), because I’m actually doing quite well. I think everyone would be a lot better off if they could just chill the darn heck out over other people’s sins.

In the modern church, this spills over into a fear of contamination. When it comes to the truth about the church’s history, the church uses a disease and contagion metaphor to instill fear of outside information in its members. From the awful Boyd K. Packer:

“That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith – particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith – places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities… Do not spread disease germs!” (Boyd K. Packer, 1981, BYU Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 259-271)

As the story continues, we find that there are some people among the Nephites who have the good sense not to believe the prevailing religious nonsense of their time.

Ask: How does the Book of Mormon depict non-believers?

Mosiah 26:1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers.
26:2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ.
26:3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened.
26:4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God.

Answers: Hard-hearted, carnal, sinful. They “can’t understand the gospel”.

Ask: Have you been described this way by believers?

Ask: What could be the church’s purpose in slandering non-believers in this way?

Answers:

To instill a fear of non-believers in the membership
To down-weight non-members as a source of information
To poison the well

Note that the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual grimly asserts:

Many Church members are led into sin by unbelievers.

Well, many church non-members are led into stupidity by church members!

It should be pointed out, as well, that “wanting to sin” might be a perfectly good reason for leaving the church.

As if all of this weren’t bad enough, the non-believers are hauled up before the priests and admonished for “sins” and “iniquities”.

Mosiah 26:5 And now in the reign of Mosiah they were not half so numerous as the people of God; but because of the dissensions among the brethren they became more numerous.
26:6 For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins; therefore it became expedient that those who committed sin, that were in the church, should be admonished by the church.
26:7 And it came to pass that they were brought before the priests, and delivered up unto the priests by the teachers; and the priests brought them before Alma, who was the high priest.
26:8 Now king Mosiah had given Alma the authority over the church.
26:9 And it came to pass that Alma did not know concerning them; but there were many witnesses against them; yea, the people stood and testified of their iniquity in abundance.

Imagine that you’re at home trying to get some iniquity done, and someone drags you from your place and throws you into a boring religious meeting to account for your actions! There, people accuse you of non-specific crimes of a religious nature.

You’d think this would ring some alarm bells for Alma, who saw Abinadi hauled up before a bunch of priests in similar fashion.

Anyway, Alma takes it to God, and God says, it’s chill: just kick them out of church, and I’ll burn them for eternity later.

Mosiah 26:25 And it shall come to pass that when the second trump shall sound then shall they that never knew me come forth and shall stand before me.
26:26 And then shall they know that I am the Lord their God, that I am their Redeemer; but they would not be redeemed.
26:27 And then I will confess unto them that I never knew them; and they shall depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Laws about religious persecution

King Mosiah lays down some laws preventing persecution.

Mosiah 27:1 And now it came to pass that the persecutions which were inflicted on the church by the unbelievers became so great that the church began to murmur, and complain to their leaders concerning the matter; and they did complain to Alma. And Alma laid the case before their king, Mosiah. And Mosiah consulted with his priests.

Again, note that the unbelievers are charged with some form of non-specific persecution. Probably just existing.

The LDS manual says this:

“Mosiah issues a proclamation forbidding believers and unbelievers from persecuting each other.”

Well, not from the text!

Mosiah 27:2 And it came to pass that king Mosiah sent a proclamation throughout the land round about that there should not any unbeliever persecute any of those who belonged to the church of God.
27:3 And there was a strict command throughout all the churches that there should be no persecutions among them, that there should be an equality among all men;

These verses state that

Unbelievers can’t persecute believers
Believers can’t persecute each other

Guess what’s missing.

Before we leave this section, let me say that I never noticed how puritanical and dictatorial this society is, and I find this astounding. This is not the kind of conduct that any society should aspire to. It’s more a product of Saudi Arabia or Iran. And yet, it’s presented to Mormons as normal.

Destroy the church

The rest of this reading concerns one Alma the Younger, son of Alma, and one of the unbelievers.

Mosiah 27:8 Now the sons of Mosiah were numbered among the unbelievers; and also one of the sons of Alma was numbered among them, he being called Alma, after his father; nevertheless, he became a very wicked and an idolatrous man. And he was a man of many words, and did speak much flattery to the people; therefore he led many of the people to do after the manner of his iniquities.

You know what — I want to hear some of this flattery. I’m trying to imagine how I could flatter people so hard that they’d perform some iniquities.

Mosiah 27:9 And he became a great hinderment to the prosperity of the church of God; stealing away the hearts of the people; causing much dissension among the people; giving a chance for the enemy of God to exercise his power over them.
27:10 And now it came to pass that while he was going about to destroy the church of God, for he did go about secretly with the sons of Mosiah seeking to destroy the church, and to lead astray the people of the Lord, contrary to the commandments of God, or even the king —

Destroy the church? Surely this is a straw man, isn’t it? Apostates don’t want to destroy the church — they’re happy to live and let live, right?

Actually, no. I would dearly love to destroy the church. I want it reduced to atoms. Not through violence or anything like that — I want to destroy it through education.

It may be hard for members to understand why I oppose the LDS Church — and really all forms of religion, superstition, pseudoscience, and unreason. So I’ll tell a story.

One night, I was out in front of a phoney talk-to-the-dead medium event, handing out “Psychic Bingo” cards. (Yes, this is another thing I do.)

And I saw two women, presumably a woman and her daughter. The older one looked at me with a wearily concerned expression, and asked me, “Why do you care?”

I guess she’s tired of skeptics.

I responded, “Because I think people need to have good information when they’re making choices.” That’s true for phoney mystics of any stripe. People deserve informed consent, and that’s not something they get from the LDS Church. Instead, information about the church (the temple, the history, the underwear) is carefully dished out to those who “ought” to have it. When caught doing this, the church dissembles carefully.

But if you really want to know, here’s my top ten list: Why I want to destroy the church.

Because it teaches a false feel-good method for finding out what’s true, which makes it really difficult to find out what really is true using evidence
Because it teaches things that can’t be proven true, or that have already been proven false
Because it teaches a narrow sex-based view of morality which makes people feel ashamed of their bodies and desires
Because it interferes with marriage equality, and it has the blood of LGBT kids on its hands
Because it makes its members look down on those who don’t believe its nonsense
Because it tears families apart, just like Jesus said he would do
Because it whitewashes its history, and turns an adulterous con-man into the second-best thing next to Jesus
Because it charges its members for the pleasure of being lied to, and builds a multi-billion dollar empire with it
Because it absorbs the lives of its members in an endless chain of arbitrary moral commands, ceaseless admin duties, and time-wasting make-work, so they don’t have the time to think
Because it makes people devalue the only life we know we have, in the hopes of a better one later

Those are just the first ten I could think of. It wouldn’t be hard to do a hundred more, depending on how fine-grained I wanted to get. But you get the idea.

Ask: If you want to destroy the church, what are your reasons? Your list is welcome in comments.

Ask: Why might members say that ex-Mormons “can leave the church, but they can’t leave it alone”?
Answer: It’s an attempt to silence ex-members, so that the only people giving information about the church is the church itself.

Ask: Does the church “leave people alone”?
Answer: No. It sends out tens of thousands of missionaries every year to convert people, it indoctrinates children, and it enmeshes itself in legislation — in country after country — to strip LGBT people of the legal right to their marriage relationships.

A lot of people — even ex-Mormons – say that you haven’t really progressed until you can “move past it” and “leave it alone”. Well, I hope I never do. I hope I never get so blasé about human suffering or deception that I could ever just leave the LDS Church alone.

I feel like I’m watching the church collapse in real time, but I won’t be happy until it’s shrunken into a hard conservative rump, and then divested of its membership and converted into The Corporation of Latter-day Real Estate. I won’t be happy until every chapel is a community centre, and every temple is either a library or a bookstore, one of those nice ones where you can sit down and read and have a coffee.

Here are some photos of churches that have been converted to bookstores and libraries. Aren’t they lovely?

Anyway, here’s what happened to Alma the Younger. Hint: It’s a plagiarism of Paul’s Road-to-Damascus story.

Mosiah 27:11 And as I said unto you, as they were going about rebelling against God, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto them; and he descended as it were in a cloud; and he spake as it were with a voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake upon which they stood;
27:12 And so great was their astonishment, that they fell to the earth, and understood not the words which he spake unto them.
…
27:19 And now the astonishment of Alma was so great that he became dumb, that he could not open his mouth; yea, and he became weak, even that he could not move his hands; therefore he was taken by those that were with him, and carried helpless, even until he was laid before his father.
27:20 And they rehearsed unto his father all that had happened unto them; and his father rejoiced, for he knew that it was the power of God.
…
27:23 And it came to pass after they had fasted and prayed for the space of two days and two nights, the limbs of Alma received their strength, and he stood up and began to speak unto them, bidding them to be of good comfort:
27:24 For, said he, I have repented of my sins, and have been redeemed of the Lord; behold I am born of the Spirit.

From then on, they begin preaching. And why?

Mosiah 28:2 That perhaps they might bring them to the knowledge of the Lord their God, and convince them of the iniquity of their fathers; and that perhaps they might cure them of their hatred towards the Nephites, that they might also be brought to rejoice in the Lord their God, that they might become friendly to one another, and that there should be no more contentions in all the land which the Lord their God had given them.
28:3 Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.

Again, it’s all very nice of people to be concerned for my welfare. But if you believe that God is going to torture me forever — as the Book of Mormon clearly says — then this is your problem, not mine. And if you’ve decided to worship a being that would do that… then frankly, I’m concerned for you.

Your conclusions make sense in view of your beliefs. But it’s your beliefs that are the problem.

Additional lesson ideas

Chiasmus

Oh boy, chiasmus! When apologists discovered this little angle in the 1970s, they thought they’d hit the freaking jackpot. A heretofore unknown form of Hebraic poetry, but one that appears in the Book of Mormon.

Chiasmus is a fairly simple way of structuring information. You give a bunch of items, and then give them again in reverse order. Isaiah (or “Isaiah”) does this.

And take a look at the elaborate chiasm in Alma 36.

There you have it: Joseph Smith didn’t know about Hebrew poetry, since he was but a simple and uneducated (?) farm boy who didn’t never get no larnin’. But there chiasmus is, in the Book of Mormon. So surely this must be evidence of its Hebraic origins!

Well, not exactly. In the case of Alma 36, you have to ignore an awful lot of text to get the chiasm to work out properly. Check out Earl Wunderli’s critique in Dialogue.

The existence of extended chiasmus in the Book of Mormon seems far from proved by Alma 36. While the inverted parallelism developed by Welch is impressive on first reading, on closer analysis it is Welch’s creativity that is most notable. By following flexible rules, he has fashioned a chiasm by selecting elements from repetitious language, creatively labeling elements, ignoring text, pairing unbalanced elements, and even including asymmetrical elements.

And that’s not taking into account all the real chiasmus that pops up in lots of non-scriptural places.

It appears in Dr Seuss’s classic Green Eggs and Ham (PDF).

It shows up in Ralphie’s letter to Santa, from A Christmas Story.

Would you believe that half-term US governor Sarah Palin has dipped into it on occasion?

Clearly evidence of God’s inspiration!

And more to the point, chiasmus was known and used by authors of Joseph Smith’s time. Here’s an equally elaborate example used in The Late War, a book of history retold in Biblical style, which bears a strong resemblance to the Book of Mormon.

The fact is, chiasmus appears naturally in all kinds of places. It’s not even hard to make a chiastic paragraph. It’s just writing things in one order, and then writing them again in reverse order. In fact, in this very paragraph, I made some chiasmus myself. It’s not rocket science. Chiasmus is a natural way of ordering information, and that’s a fact.

BoM Lesson 9 (Quoting Isaiah 2)

6 March 2016 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“My Soul Delighteth in the Words of Isaiah”

2 Nephi 11–25

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show the mistakes in the (supposedly) “most correct book”, the Book of Mormon.

Reading

Oh, frigging hell, more Isaiah. Clearly the writer blew his wad on the story of Nephi, and has decided to plagiarise his way out of the slump. That’s one way to pad a book out.

And notice the size of the reading for this lesson! Other lessons have focused on two or three chapters — not here. Even the lesson writers knew there wasn’t much here.

I’ve said it before: people who believe in Isaiah’s prophecies are… shall we say… lacking in rigour. Here’s a tip from the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual about understanding Isaiah.

Many of Isaiah’s writings seem difficult to understand because they refer to a wide range of past and future events described in symbolic language.

Let’s break that down. If I make a prediction about the weather tomorrow (rainy, sunny), or the stock market this year (it’ll go up, it’ll go down), it’s only a useful prediction if I manage to foretell what happens within the specified time frame.

On the other hand, Isaiah fans are happy to claim a hit if the things written by Isaiah (all three of him) happen either in the past or the future — and it’s okay if it happens symbolically instead of literally.

What couldn’t be counted as a fulfilment, using this sloppy criterion?

And that’s not even counting all the stuff that ‘Isaiah’ knew about because it had just happened. Sez the manual:

For example, in 2 Nephi 20:28–34, Isaiah named the cities the Assyrian army would pass through and how it would be stopped just as it reached Jerusalem. The events happened exactly as he prophesied.

Yes, because they were written after the fact.

Note that this is a bit of a giveaway: The writer of Isaiah is perfectly capable of writing clearly when it comes to things that the writer could have witnessed and then written down. But for events in the distant future (or past), it’s all a bit hazy and obscure.

Main ideas for this lesson

Christ is God

Remember, the Book of Mormon is Mormonism v1.

2 Nephi 11:6 And my soul delighteth in proving unto my people that save Christ should come all men must perish.
11:7 For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time.

Suddenly trinitarianism!

Well, sputters the Latter-day Saint, Christ is a god. That’s one way to get around it. But remember, this was God’s big chance to restore his wonderful perfect doctrine, and he muffs it. God is the author of confusion, and the BoM writer didn’t foresee the later Mormon doctrine.

Translation mistakes

Curt Huevel of infidels.org has written an article detailing Nephi’s Isaiah problems — and they go beyond the little problem with quoting a too-late Isaiah. It seems that, when the King James Bible makes a translation mistake, the Book of Mormon dutifully follows right along.

In several cases, the Book of Mormon follows King James Version translation errors. In the verse just cited, for example, Isaiah 9:1 should read ‘honor’ in the place of ‘grievously afflict’. The Book of Mormon makes the same mistake.

Here’s the passage.

2 Nephi 19:1 Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict by the way of the Red Sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.

KJV Isaiah 9:1 Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.

Now here’s a more appropriate translation.

NIV Isaiah 9:1 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The Book of Mormon also throws in some mistakes of its own.

In general, most of the changes occur in the italicized portions of the King James version (which the King James Translators employed to indicate that the translation is not original to the text). Smith either dropped or modified the italicized phrases. In some cases, the changes made to the text result in impossible readings. For example, II Nephi 19:1 adds the phrase ‘red sea’ to Isaiah 9:1, which makes no sense in the geographical context.

Let’s have a look at those passages.

2 Nephi 19:1 Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict by the way of the Red Sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.

Isaiah 9:1 Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.

Which sea was Isaiah talking about?

Ellicott’s commentary: The way of the sea . . .—The context shows that the “sea” is that which appears in Bible history under the names of the sea of Chinnereth (Numbers 34:11; Deuteronomy 3:17), the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias (John 6:1), Gennesaret (Mark 6:53). The high road thence to Damascus was known as Via Maris in the time of the Crusaders (Renan, quoted by Cheyne).

Cambridge Bible: the way of the sea] either “in the direction of the (Mediterranean) Sea,” or “the region along the West side of the Sea of Gennesareth.” In the time of the Crusades Via Maris was the name of the road leading from Acre to Damascus.

Not quite the same sea then.

Creative interpretation of prophecy

The LDS Church would like to show that it is the fulfilment of prophecy. From the manual:

• When the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, he said that chapter 11 of Isaiah (quoted in 2 Nephi 21) was about to be fulfilled (Joseph Smith—History 1:40). How is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ an ensign to all nations? (See D&C 64:41–43; 105:39; 115:4–6.)

Let’s have a look at the reading.

2 Nephi 21:6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
21:7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
21:8 And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den.
21:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
21:10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious.
21:11 And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
21:12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Hang on — let me get this straight. The first part of this bit shows (as I understand it) the conditions at the time of the Millennium — complete cessation of hostilities, lions cavorting with lambs, the whole thing.

And then — at that very same time — the Lord sets the Mormon Church up as an ensign to the nations.

Well, it looks like the first part of the prophecy hasn’t been fulfilled. I haven’t seen any cows and bears feeding together, have you? The church is trying to say that it’s fulfilled the second part of prophecy when the first part hasn’t happened, and yet they’re supposed to take place at the very same time.

Believers are always accusing me of ignoring context. “You’re taking that out of context!” they moan. Well, it’s not me. They’re the real cherry-pickers.

Then Nephi goes back to quoting Isaiah, with all the attendant…

Misogyny

2 Nephi 13:11 Wo unto the wicked, for they shall perish; for the reward of their hands shall be upon them!
13:12 And my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead thee cause thee to err and destroy the way of thy paths.

Horror

2 Nephi 19:19 Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire; no man shall spare his brother.
19:20 And he shall snatch on the right hand and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand and they shall not be satisfied; they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm —

God threatening people if they don’t believe in him

2 Nephi 23:6 Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
23:7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, every man’s heart shall melt;
23:8 And they shall be afraid; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
23:9 Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
23:10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
23:11 And I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay down the haughtiness of the terrible.
…
23:15 Every one that is proud shall be thrust through; yea, and every one that is joined to the wicked shall fall by the sword.
23:16 Their children, also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished.

Just plain loopiness

2 Nephi 16:1 In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
16:2 Above it stood the seraphim; each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
16:3 And one cried unto another, and said: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

Nephi decides to go one better and throw in some anti-Semitism.

2 Nephi 25:2 For I, Nephi, have not taught them many things concerning the manner of the Jews; for their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations.

People sometimes say that the church helps to build moral values. Well, in this one reading, we’ve seen some of the worst values religion has to offer. Let’s be clear: there are much better values out there.

And remember also: this was the very best God could do. What words to humanity were so important that they needed to be written by Isaiah, and then written again by Nephi? Knowledge about science? A little advice about health? Rules about treating everyone equally? Any one of those would have benefitted humanity greatly. But no, all we get are some relatively minor details about battles between ancient warring tribes, along with a side helping of marginalisation. It’s pathetic for the church to be promoting this.

If you’d like to see more about the Isaiah chapters, here’s the relevant lesson.

BoM Lesson 5 (Building a Boat)

31 January 2016 / Daniel Midgley / 2 Comments

“Hearken to the Truth, and Give Heed unto It”

1 Nephi 16–22

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To encourage readers to notice the implausibility of the Book of Mormon account, and to listen to truth and avoid becoming “past reason”.

Reading

One of the amazing yet frustrating things about being an ex-Mormon is that you look back at the stuff you used to believe and think, “How the hell did I believe this stuff?”

For me, that’s especially true of this lesson.

In this lesson, Lehi and his family are starting an eight-year sojourn in the wilderness of the Arabian Peninsula. Strangely, it’s the most well-provisioned wilderness anyone’s ever seen. There’s so much food and resources, you could build a ship out of them. Everything in this reading is simply bursting with implausibility, to the extent that I must have been stupid or blind to have granted it the least bit of credence.

But in retrospect, all the implausibility vanished away with one wave of the magic wand: God can do anything. In which case, God’s an idiot for doing things this way, making humans go through the motions for these impossible actions, when he could have thought of a more direct and less tedious way for people to do it, or just done it himself.

So here’s what’s in this reading.

Lehi and family travel to pick up Ishmael’s family. No concern for the wishes of the daughters is evinced. Or indeed, their names. Mormonism never misses an opportunity to tell women they don’t matter.

1 Nephi 16:7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, took one of the daughters of Ishmael to wife; and also, my brethren took of the daughters of Ishmael to wife; and also Zoram took the eldest daughter of Ishmael to wife.

They find a Liahona, which is kind of like an iPad, but rounder and more steampunk.

1 Nephi 16:10 And it came to pass that as my father arose in the morning, and went forth to the tent door, to his great astonishment he beheld upon the ground a round ball of curious workmanship; and it was of fine brass. And within the ball were two spindles; and the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness.

1 Nephi 16:28 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the pointers which were in the ball, that they did work according to the faith and diligence and heed which we did give unto them.

This is why I love my iPad — I don’t have to believe in it for it to work.

The company takes seeds and provisions,

1 Nephi 16:11 And it came to pass that we did gather together whatsoever things we should carry into the wilderness, and all the remainder of our provisions which the Lord had given unto us; and we did take seed of every kind that we might carry into the wilderness.

and they travel for eight years.

1 Nephi 17:4 And we did sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness.

I suppose the reason for all the wandering is that God is trying to figure out what to do with these people. Writer’s block.

Finally, God gets an idea: He commands Nephi to build a boat

1 Nephi 17:8 And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.

His brothers murmur, but the Lord shocks them

1 Nephi 17:53 And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: Stretch forth thine hand again unto thy brethren, and they shall not wither before thee, but I will shock them, saith the Lord, and this will I do, that they may know that I am the Lord their God.
17:54 And it came to pass that I stretched forth my hand unto my brethren, and they did not wither before me; but the Lord did shake them, even according to the word which he had spoken.

They sail to the Promised land, but en route Nephi’s brothers become rude, and tie him up, probably because he’s so uptight and hates fun.

1 Nephi 18:9 And after we had been driven forth before the wind for the space of many days, behold, my brethren and the sons of Ishmael and also their wives began to make themselves merry, insomuch that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness, yea, even that they did forget by what power they had been brought thither; yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness.
…
18:11 And it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords, and they did treat me with much harshness; nevertheless, the Lord did suffer it that he might show forth his power, unto the fulfilling of his word which he had spoken concerning the wicked.

One theme that keeps coming up throughout the Book of Mormon is that apostates are filled with some kind of murderous desire.

Ask: Now that you’re an ex-Mormon, which of the following do you want to do?

a) Tie people up
b) Kill them
c) Hunt wild beasts
d) Become filthy and idolatrous
e) Debate people on the internet

If you said e), then you’re kind of normal. Be prepared to be accused of a) through d), though.

Upon their arrival in the Promised Land (USA! USA!), they put their seeds into the earth, and they grow

1 Nephi 18:24 And it came to pass that we did begin to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that they did grow exceedingly; wherefore, we were blessed in abundance.

No trace of Middle Eastern plants have been found from this time.

They find animals that didn’t exist, and none that do

1 Nephi 18:25 And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.

These animals were not in the Americas at this time.

Now in church, they use to make a big deal out of ancient horses and mastodons caught in the La Brea tar pits. Sorry, guys, but that was the wrong time — about 10,000 years too early.

These are anachronisms — things in the wrong time.

Richard Packham gives a wonderful example of why anachronisms ought to put paid to the Book of Mormon’s claims of authenticity.

One of the most important tests for uncovering an allegedly ancient text that is really a product of later times is the presence of anachronisms, that is, things that are inappropriate to the time in which the work supposedly was written. It is a very straightforward and relatively common-sense test.

For example: Suppose I show you a small book that says on its cover: “Journal of Gen’l George Washington.” You look through the book and at first reading it does, indeed, appear to be the journal of a period in the life of George Washington. What a treasure! It sounds authentic. Its language is typical of the late 18th century, when Washington lived. It contains material hitherto unknown to historians, and yet not contradictory to what is known. I explain to you that it is a faithful typewritten copy of a handwritten book that was found among my grandfather’s belongings.

As you read it, however, you come across this sentence: “This aft’noon rec’d an urgent wire, took the rr train to Philadelphia, arr’d toward evening, met by M. Adams at the sta.”

What is your reaction? Are you suspicious? You know that the railroad did not exist in Washington’s day, nor did the term “rr train” or “sta[tion]” as a place where one would meet a “rr train.” Nor was a message called a “wire”, since that term came into use only with the invention of the telegraph in the next century. These are anachronisms, and immediately mark the text as not from the times of Washington.

What explanation could I give you that would persuade you to accept this text as genuine? I could probably try to defend the authenticity of my text. I could suggest that “rr train” was probably a special shorthand Washington was using for “stagecoach” (even though there is no evidence of such a use in any genuine Washington writings, or in any other writings from the time). A similar argument might be made for “wire” for a message. But to any scholar, and to any ordinary person using common sense and a rudimentary knowledge of history, this text is a clumsy fraud.

Would you change your mind if I listed all the things that are authentic in the text, or that sound believable or possible? No, I would hope not.

Would you change your mind if I argued that, after all, it was only two little anachronisms? No, I would hope not. Even only one anachronism – unless it can be conclusively shown to be a later insertion by someone else (a corruption of the original text) – is enough to condemn a text as not authentic.

Would you change your mind if I confided to you that the journal had been given to my grandfather by an angel of God, and that the angel had told him that it was authentic? I suppose to some people that would make a difference, but only the very, very gullible.

The examples given above are of anachronistic objects. A linguistic anachronism is the use of a word which actually did not come into use until much later than the alleged date of the document. For example, if we found in the purported journal of Washington the expression “fifth column” (meaning undercover sabotage agents), we would know that the journal is not authentic, since that expression was coined and first used during the Spanish Civil War in the twentieth century.

If this biography of George Washington says, “We’ve got our iPods charged, and we’re ready to rock and roll,” then thats it. It’s fake. We’re done. It doesn’t matter if it gets a few other things right.

Apologists try to explain their way around anachronisms by using their favourite trick: redefining words. A cow might have been a bison. An ox might have been a mastodon. Anything might have been anything other than what the word means.

It would have been simple for Nephi to say, “We found a bunch of weird freaking animals that we’d never seen before.” But no.

Let’s focus on horses for a second. There’s no evidence of any horses native to the Americas during the time of Lehi’s fictional family. They died out 11,000 years ago, and were reintroduced by the Spanish. (Same for goats.)

Rather hilariously, Robert Bennett of FARMS suggested that the word horse actually referred to the tapir.

It is also possible that some Book of Mormon peoples coming from the Old World may have decided to call some New World animal species a “horse” or an “ass.” This practice, known as “loanshift” or “loan-extension,” is well known to historians and anthropologists who study cross-cultural contact. For example, when the Greeks first visited the Nile in Egypt, they encountered a large animal they had never seen before and gave it the name hippopotamus, meaning “horse of the river.” When the Roman armies first encountered the elephant, they called it Lucca bos, a “Lucanian cow.” In the New World the Spanish called Mesoamerican jaguars leones, “lions,” or tigres, “tigers.”

Similarly, members of Lehi’s family may have applied loanwords to certain animal species that they encountered for the first time in the New World, such as the Mesoamerican tapir. While some species of tapir are rather small, the Mesoamerican variety (tapiris bairdii) can grow to be nearly six and a half feet in length and can weigh more than six hundred pounds. Many zoologists and anthropologists have compared the tapir’s features to those of a horse or a donkey.

Yes, it’s one of these.

Lamanites rode these noble steeds across the dusty plains.

As a result, the tapir has become the unofficial mascot of the ex-Mormon movement.

Nephi copies a lot of Isaiah.

1 Nephi 19:23 And I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses; but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning.

He even copies Deutero-Isaiah, who hadn’t written anything by the time Lehi was supposed to have left. Whoops — another anachronism.

It doesn’t end with Isaiah. Nephi copies a lot of things that hadn’t been written yet. Check this page from the Skeptic’s Annotated Book of Mormon, and see how the author quoted everyone from Malachi to Revelation.

Main ideas for this lesson

Impossible things

I want to focus on two impossible things that Nephi and family did:

building an enormous ship
making a long sea journey

Building a ship

To build anything that could be called a “ship” would be impossible to build for people living in anything that could be called a “wilderness”. Ship building is something that took entire communities working together to bring about, with a complex array of goods, materials, and labor.

I’ve got to ask you to take the time and listen to this episode of John Larsen’s Mormon Expression podcast: How to Build a Transoceanic Vessel. Not only is it hilarious, it’s devastating.

The short version: Nephi would have had to extract iron ore from somewhere with his bare hands, and then smelted tools. He would have had to bring together entire forests of high-grade wood, loomed cloth to make sails, and gotten together an array of provisions of Noachian proportions. Just assembling the raw materials would have required Herculean effort from the tiny group (who would have been busy tending children and… you know… rebelling), to say nothing of the time it would have taken to build the actual ship. It’s not just a bit off – it’s all screamingly wrong. As Randy says: “It’s Gilligan’s Island Level ridiculousness.”

Joseph Smith, or the author of the Book of Mormon, knew dick-all about ship building, which is probably why he covers the entire project in three verses, in as little detail as possible.

1 Nephi 18:1 And it came to pass that they did worship the Lord, and did go forth with me; and we did work timbers of curious workmanship. And the Lord did show me from time to time after what manner I should work the timbers of the ship.
18:2 Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men.
18:3 And I, Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things.
18:4 And it came to pass that after I had finished the ship, according to the word of the Lord, my brethren beheld that it was good, and that the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine; wherefore, they did humble themselves again before the Lord.

Lehi’s path

Have you ever thought about the family’s putative path on a map? I hadn’t.

Their starting point would have been somewhere on the Arabian peninsula, according to LDS sources.

And they would have had to get to somewhere on the American continent.

Now here’s a graphic from the wonderful series “Brutally Honest Mormon Coloring Pages (Part 5)” by gileriodekel.

Ask: Does this look like a plausible path for someone around 600 BCE? Take all the time you need.

They would have had to either sail around the Horn of Africa (in the near-Antarctic cold), or navigate through Indonesia. Either way, that’s a long freaking path.

I spent nearly forty years in the church, and as much as I read the Book of Mormon and told others about it, I’d never thought about the path. Maybe it was my poor geography or my thoughtlessness, but when I saw that map this week, I stared at it for five minutes before tossing the laptop aside and wondering again: How did I ever belive this rubbish‽

Maybe it’s that the bullshit goes so deep and spreads so wide that it’s impossible to consider all the BS, item by item. Yet there it is.

Additional lesson ideas

600 BCE?

We’ve already seen a problem with the chronology and Hezekiah.

1 Nephi 19:8 And behold he cometh, according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem.

The church pegs Lehi’s departure at 600 BCE because of this verse, but if there’s one year Jesus couldn’t have been born, it’s the year 1, according to the Bible chronology. Short version: Jesus would have been about 2 years old when Herod put the hit out on him, and Herod is known to have did in the year corresponding to 4 BCE. That makes the Book of Mormon chronology about 6 years out.

This book’s a mess.

Nahom

Now here’s an apologetic item. The Book of Mormon mentions a place called Nahom.

1 Nephi 16:34 And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom.

And what do you know: in the Arabian Peninsula, alters have been found with an inscription that corresponds to NHM. Clearly a win for Book of Mormon archaeology!

Well, maybe not. It’s NHM, not Nahom — vowels not typically written in Semitic languages. So NHM could be Noham, Nihum, Nahem, or any other combination. It could have been Nahum, which is the name of an Old Testament book, and which Joseph Smith could have copied.

And remember also that, with only 30-odd consonants in use for most languages, it’s not implausible for any combination to pop up somewhere. If someone had found BTF or BNT or BNF on an inscription somewhere, they’d be claiming a match for Bountiful. SHML could be a hit for Ishmael, even though it might have been used to mean something else. And the same could happen for any one of the place names and character names in this part of the story. NHM is firmly within the realm of linguistic coincidence.

Check out these pages for more criticism of the tenuous Nahom connection.

A side question: If Nephi and co. gave the place that name, how would anyone know it, and carry the name on? On the other hand, if the place already had that name, then when did Nephi and co. meet up with them? They never mention seeing anyone else. We’ll see this problem again — if there were other people around, Nephi sure is thoughtless in not mentioning them.

Let’s put this into perspective: If the Book of Mormon were true, there should be loads of evidence for it on multiple continents. Instead, what do we get? A group of three consonants, that could be a coincidence. This is literally the best they have.

And again, if something turns out right, it doesn’t help the case for the Book of Mormon. We’d still have to explain away all of the linguistic, historical, and archaeological anachronisms that turned out wrong.

Past reason

Finally, here’s a bit from the LDS lesson manual about being “past feeling”.

• Nephi told Laman and Lemuel that they “were past feeling, that [they] could not feel [the Lord’s] words” (1 Nephi 17:45). What does it mean to feel the words of the Lord? (See the quotation below.) What causes people to become “past feeling”? How can we prepare ourselves to feel the words of the Lord?

I would argue that a more serious condition would be that of being past reason, where a person is no longer able to be convinced by evidence and logic, since they’ve forsworn its use.

Robert Kirby of the Salt Lake Tribune has written a wonderful article called “Kirby: Could you handle the truth about your religion?” He asks:

What if you could learn whether the religion you follow is true simply by pushing a button?

No more need for faith. Now you could actually know instead of just believing that you do. Would you push the button? Even if knowing the truth might make you really unhappy?

Are you kidding? I’d be scrambling to push that button. If I’m wrong, I want to know it.

But other people aren’t so keen. Kirby continues:

The way I see it, your answer to the button question depends on where you are in the truth-seeking process.

First is that you want to know the truth badly enough to push the button regardless of which answer comes up. Truth is more important to you than personal comfort.

Second, you’re the kind of person not willing to place what you believe in jeopardy. Ignorance is so blissful that you stay as far away as possible from the truth button lest your emotional security be undone accidentally.

Finally — and most stupidly — are the people who wouldn’t push the button because they already “know” their religion is true.

…

There’s no relating to the last group of people, who believe their personal faith is the final word, so there’s no need to investigate further.

Kirby’s piece actually makes me wonder if he’s on the way to the Land of ex-Mormonia. I’ve often asked that question to religious people, “If your religion is wrong, would you want to know?” And if their answer is no, then there’s not really a point, is there? They’d rather keep being wrong their whole lives. They’re past reason, past curiosity, past thinking.

We need to let ourselves go along with reason, logic, and evidence. It doesn’t work otherwise.

NT Lesson 36 (Romans)

11 October 2015 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Beloved of God, Called to Be Saints”

Romans

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain why Christianity is incoherent and damaging to one’s ability to act.
To encourage readers to concerns themselves with what is real, rather than appearances.

Reading

I’ve acquired a new hobby: debating street evangelists!

And no, not like this:

I’ve decided that every time I see one, I’m going to engage (if I have the time, of course). I’ve talked to all sorts of Christians, but mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses — they’ve set up a display in the city district. The exact denomination doesn’t matter; I haven’t found that much difference between them.

The discussions tend to take a predictable rhythm:

I ask why Jesus was necessary, and why God couldn’t just forgive everybody
They explain that Adam didn’t obey God, so God decided to kill him and everybody
You can’t do anything to remedy this situation yourself
Killing Jesus was the solution that God decided to use to fix the situation
We need to obey God so he doesn’t kill us in the run-up to his son’s return

It should be easy at this point to conclude that God is a raging psychopath who should be locked up, but for some reason they’re just not capable of making that jump. Maybe I’m just not explaining it well enough. I don’t know.

So when I saw this lesson, I got kind of excited because it contains some of these elements that religious folks are trying to explain to me. Here it is — Paul lays the groundwork for this emerging religion.

Main ideas for this lesson

Unbelievers are evil

Like all conspiracy theorists, Paul really hates people who don’t believe his way. And so does God — he’s going to unleash the wrath annnnnnytime soon.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; that they are without excuse:
1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
1:23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

I don’t know what Paul’s talking about. I do think I’m pretty smart, but I’ve never changed the glory of God into a bird. Maybe Paul thought that was becoming a problem at some point.

Romans 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

He’s going off on lesbians? That’s a first. Even in the Old Testament, they killed gay guys, but they never said a word about lesbians. It’s like there’s been some tacit agreement throughout the ages — dudes with dudes: ick; but girls on girls: kinda hot. There’s never been anyone in the Bible homophobic enough to have a go at lesbians, but now there is, and it’s Paul.

Behold the face of evil.

Romans 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

What the fuck is “the natural use of the woman”?

Romans 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
1:30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Oh, Paul. It’s just impossible for him to stop slandering unbelievers.

Ask: When you stopped believing, did you become any of the following:

filled with all unrighteousness?
an inventor of evil things?
full of murder?
gay?

Or did you stay pretty much as you were, but just believed fewer stupid things and started drinking coffee?

What a slanderous litany to tack onto non-believers. For shame, Paul. If he’d stopped and looked around, he’d find that unbelievers live normal ethical lives. This has been found experimentally.

Religion Doesn’t Make People More Moral, Study Finds

Wisneski and his fellow researchers found that religious and nonreligious people commit similar numbers of moral acts. The same was found to be true for people on both ends of the political spectrum. And regardless of their political or religious leanings, participants were all found to be more likely to report committing, or being the target of, a moral act rather than an immoral act. They were also much more likely to report having heard about immoral acts rather than moral acts.

However, there were some differences in how people in different groups responded emotionally to so-called “moral phenomena,” Wisneski said. For example, religious people reported experiencing more intense self-conscious emotions — such as guilt, embarrassment, and disgust — after committing an immoral act than did nonreligious people. Religious people also reported experiencing a greater sense of pride and gratefulness after committing moral deeds than their nonreligious counterparts.

Everyone is bad.

Having established that non-believers are the worst, Paul now walks it back a bit, and explains how it’s not just the unbelievers. Actually, everyone is evil.

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
3:17 And the way of peace have they not known:
3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
…
3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

Ask: Why does Paul need to teach that nobody is righteous? Why does he have to make unbelief sound so comically terrible?
Answer: In sales, you have to sell the disease before you can sell the cure. Essentially, Paul is selling the disease.

Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

You know, I actually get this passage. I sometimes feel frustrated with the mismatch between what I want to do and what I do. Shoot, anyone gets this who’s ever had a lot of work to do, and ended up watching YouTube videos instead.

Let’s be honest: we all have imperfections and flaws, things we’d rather have done differently and values we fail to follow through on. That’s part of the human condition. But Paul is playing on this to drum up sales, and even worse than that, offering Jesus as an easy fix. How dishonest. What an evasion of our responsibility for self-improvement. Harping on someone’s brokenness doesn’t help to build a self-reliant person. What’s needed is action, not just belief.

It’s because of Adam

So how did we get to be in this sinful situation?

In a word, Adam.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
5:15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
5:16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
5:17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
5:19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

One guy did something, another guy undid something — so what? Where are we in all of this? We’re just pawns in some cosmic game. If you believe in Christianity, you must believe that we have a “sinful” tendency we can’t prevent, caused by a guy whose actions we’re not responsible for, and the remedy is some other guy whose help we didn’t ask for.

And it’s a creepy remedy too.

Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Christianity really is a death cult, isn’t it?

Faith, not works

One of the most confusing and contradictory things about Christianity that I ever tried to get my head around was the role of faith and the role of works. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t smart enough or studying carefully enough. Now I realise that it wasn’t me; it’s Christianity. It’s incoherent. I’ve run across so many people who think it’s crystal-clear (in the direction of their doctrine, of course), but it’s just a mess. Thank goodness I don’t have to think about that stuff anymore.

Here’s a scripture that people used to throw at me as an LDS missionary. It quickly became my least favourite scripture.

Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

And then I would have to construct a complicated Mormon apologetic (big shoutout to the book of James) to explain why we actually need to do all the stupid time-wasting things Mormons do. It’s really hard to criticise a religion from the standpoint of another religion!

Of course, now that I’m coming from the standpoint of no religion, it’s easy. I just say: Paul, what rubbish you talk.

Paul really changed the game, you know. By changing the currency from “what you do” to “what you believe”, he constructed this situation:

God punishes even good people for unbelief.
No one can be saved by anything they do.
We’re all helpless.
Only this external being can rescue us.

This is a setup.

Mr Deity, as always, has spotted the problems with punishing people for misbelief.

And not only does Paul make “what you say” a criterion for belief, he also includes “what you say”. Anything but “what you do”.

I saw the effects of this a few times on the misson. One good Born-Again™ Christian man told me that he was forbidden to help (for example) someone move house.

“You don’t mean that you’re not allowed,” I said. “You just mean that it won’t save you.”

“No,” he corrected me. “We’re not supposed to do it. Unless the pastor gives the okay. Because that would be works.”

I was incredulous, but looking back I have to admit that he was taking Paul’s ideology to its natural conclusion.

And when what you think and say trumps what you do, you have the beginnings of a religion that’s very concerned with appearances — especially when it’s a small conversion-focused religion concerned about its image.

These verses hint at Paul’s concern with the semblances of things.

Romans 14:14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
14:15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
…
14:20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
14:21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

In other words, if there’s some food that’s considered to be unclean, Paul says it’s no big deal, go ahead and eat it — UNLESS someone else sees you eating it, gets the wrong idea, and refuses to join the church or something.

The phrase my father (and, I gather, everyone else’s father) used to say was: Avoid even the appearance of evil. You should have heard the ear-bashing I got when I brought home some candy cigarettes. (And he was right; those things are evil.) But my LDS friend’s dad — a bishop — was even more concerned about appearances. He’d chastise my friend if he had the end of a white pen near his mouth while he was writing!

And it’s this concern with appearances that lends Mormonism its puritanical flair. How much better it would be if they could see things as they are, and not be so concerned with appearances.

I think this may tie into Christians’ ability to deny science and reason, as well. If how things seem is important — well, you can control how things seem to you. Things can seem any which way with faith. That’s easy. It’s not as easy to control facts.

Not ashamed

I hope I’ve made the case that Christianity is nonsensical and wrong — even if I’m not able to make that case to the street evangelists I talk to. It’s a form of belief that is silly and damaging. It is so foolish that people ought to feel foolish for believing it. And yet there they stand, day after day, in the pedestrian malls of my city and many others, trying to promote what every normal person knows is a fairy story. What an embarrassing thing to do! How do they not feel completely stupid?

Paul has the answer in Romans.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

He’s teaching people to say “I am not ashamed”, as a way of countering the embarrassment they doubtless feel. It is nice to know that this was an issue even in the primitive church, and it gives us some idea about how the early Christians were regarded among their more sophisticated peers.

But here’s the rub: If you teach that we are helpless before a god who created us, and you want to worship this monster, and you want to do it by believing things that are manifestly untrue, then you should be ashamed. End of story. You need to do better.

Additional lesson ideas

Christianity’s weird relationship with Jews

Paul dropped a few other things into Romans. Looking back on our lessons, we can see a real tension between John — who’s always bashing on about the “fear of the Jews” — and Paul, who talks smack about their unbelief, but also talks about how they’ll absorb Christianity one day.

Romans 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
11:27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
11:28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.

Maybe Paul’s view was influenced by his double nature as a Christian Jew. But verses like this have laid the groundwork for a very strange alliance between Christian evangelicals (who are longing for Jews to return to Israel so the end can come) and conservative Jews (who are willing to look past the Christians’ conversion efforts if it means they have hawkish allies on Israel).

Check out this edition of “All In” with Chris Hayes to get a view of how this relationship is working out.

Or for a long read, try “On the Road to Armageddon“.

Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.

Christianity’s weird relationship with secular government

Should Christians obey the law, or not? We’ve seen some high-profile cases lately where Christians have claimed that their belief trumps the law — and they can cite Peter in their defence.

Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

But now here’s Paul, claiming that secular authority should always be obeyed.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

So what is it? Is Peter wrong, or Paul?

I think this is another case where the Bible is doctrinally incoherent. This allows Christians to play both sides of the fence, and pick and choose the rules they want to obey.

Overcome evil with good

Let’s finish with some good advice.

Romans 12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

A bit passive-aggressive there, Paul. “Let’s be nice to them; that’ll really piss ’em off!” But I’m not going to tell Paul off for it. Around here, we care about what you do.

NT Lesson 24 (The Holy Ghost)

27 June 2015 / Daniel Midgley / 1 Comment

“This Is Life Eternal”

John 16–17

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To help readers avoid emotional reasoning.

Reading

In the reading for this lesson, Jesus talks about the Holy Ghost. Since speaking against the Holy Ghost is inexplicably the worst, most unpardonable sin you can commit, I’ll be doing lots of it in this lesson.

Main ideas for this lesson

Holy the Ghost

Some people say that religion fills a need, and I suppose that’s true in a rather sad way: it tries to give people things that life doesn’t. One Christian evangelist revealed one of his angles to me: when he meets people without a strong father figure in their life, he pushes the angle of “God is your father”. Voilá; insta-dad.

Ask: Is that comforting, or just manipulative and awful?

In the same way, people who don’t have a lot of friends might be drawn to the idea of having a “constant companion”, which is how Mormons often describe the Holy Ghost.

Here’s a swag of times where the phrase constant companion has turned up in General Conference. The phrase has been coming up more and more lately. (Try your own searches here.)

And in John, Jesus calls the Holy Ghost “the comforter”. But he mentions another function:

John 14:26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

The Holy Ghost will teach you all things? Like as in: all things?

John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Note that there are no caveats as to the kind of truth one can learn from the Holy Ghost. It’s not just spiritual things you can learn by the Spirit; it’s all truth and all things.

We can submit this claim to some skeptical analysis.

Object lesson for class
Here’s a test you can use for comparing the efficacy of the Spirit as a revealer of truth: Have two class members work out the digits of π to some level of precision. One class member gets to use science and technology — math books, web sites, and an ordinary computer — and the other has to use the Spirit. How accurate was each method? I predict the second class member will be right no more than random chance. And it’s no use trying to fudge it and say that the digits of π “aren’t important to your salvation”. Jesus makes no such qualifications in the scripture.

(If this test is not suitable for your class, feel free to substitute any other sort of fact that can be easily verified, and for which answers can be unambiguously right or wrong. Another suggestion is blood type. How accurately can a very spiritual person tell the blood type of various individuals, using revelation? Be sure to have several testing kits on hand.)

There really are no “other ways of knowing”. Science is the only way of knowing. Observing carefully, making predictions, testing them, observing some more — this is the only way we have of knowing something, and even then it’s darn hard. Everything we think is at least a little bit wrong. How could anyone think that communicating with a spirit can do better than science? If it’s hard to get it right with all that careful work, what chance does anyone have mumbling to a ghost?

If you think you know “another way of knowing”, please tell me, because science is hard.

Not only is the Holy Ghost not great at the “revealing truth” part of his job, he’s also terrible at offering companionship. Ask someone their definition of a true friend, and you’re likely to hear that it’s someone who sticks with you through thick and thin, through good times and bad.

Well, the Holy Ghost isn’t that kind of companion. Apparently the Holy Ghost takes off the second you have a lapse in behaviour, or even temperament.

This is not really a dependable companion. Which is why I say: Piss off, little ghost. I have human friends that are more dependable, and a whole lot better at teaching me things.

How to feel the Holy Ghost

Here’s what the LDS manual says about how to feel the Holy Ghost:

To help class members feel and recognize the influence of the Holy Ghost, speak with a few of them in advance, inviting each of them to choose one of the following presentations to do as part of the lesson:

a. Read a favorite scripture passage.
b. Bear testimony.
c. Sing a hymn or Primary song about the Savior.
d. Express love for Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.
e. Share a spiritual experience (as appropriate).

In class, invite class members to describe how they felt during the presentations. Read the statement by President Boyd K. Packer on pages 99–100, and help class members recognize feelings that come from the Holy Ghost. Talk about how you feel when you receive guidance from the Holy Ghost.

What a show: the Gospel Doctrine teacher is supposed to get people to do soppy vulnerable things in front of everyone, and then hope that a collective soppy vulnerable mood ensues. What’s amazing is that it works so often.

After all the things I’ve done in church and all the experiences I’ve had, people still invite me to church hoping that I’ll have some kind of creepy, weepy “spiritual experience”. If I did feel something, that wouldn’t prove the veracity of the church. It would prove that I was capable of emotional reasoning. It would also show that my body can produce oxytocin and other chemicals, which is nice, but hardly evidence for supernatural claims.

Again, from the LDS manual.

President Boyd K. Packer taught: “The Holy Ghost speaks with a voice that you feel more than you hear. It is described as a ‘still small voice.’ And while we speak of ‘listening’ to the whisperings of the Spirit, most often one describes a spiritual prompting by saying, ‘I had a feeling . . .’ . . . Revelation comes as words we feel more than hear” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1994, 77; or Ensign, Nov. 1994, 60).

Emotional reasoning is a bad way of reasoning, but in the LDS Church, ideas verified only by emotion are considered to be the highest form of evidence that there is.

Show the class this video featuring LDS apostle Jeffrey Holland.

“Noting that the sun was going down, we decided that we’d better get back. But we came back to a particular fork in the road, really the only one that at that point was absolutely unrecognizable. I asked my son to pray about which road to take, and he felt strongly that we should go to the right, and I did as well. And we went to the right, and it was a dead end. We went four or five or six hundred yards and it was an absolute dead end, clearly the wrong road.

“Turned around, came back out, took the other road. And clearly the road to the left was the correct road.

“Somewhere along the way, Matt said, ‘Dad, why did we feel, after praying about it, that the right road was the proper one to take, the correct one to take, and it wasn’t?’”

Ask: When the Holy Ghost failed to lead him and his son in the right direction, despite them being sure that they had a confirmation, what should Holland have done if he’d had any intellectual honesty?
Answer: He should have admitted that this method failed in this instance.

Holland continues:

And I said, ‘I think that the Lord, His wish for us there and His answer to our prayer was to get us on the right road as quickly as possible with some reassurance, with some understanding that we were on the right road and we didn’t have to worry about it. And in this case, the easiest way to do that was to let us go 400 yards or 500 yards on the wrong road and very quickly know without a doubt that it was the wrong road and, therefore, with equal certainty, with equal conviction that the other one was the right road.’

Ask: What did Holland do instead to rationalise this failure?
Answer: Claim that the failure was a success! The Lord led them the wrong way to a dead end, so they could be more certain that the right way was indeed right.

This story with its explanation is, quite frankly, astounding. Before Holland gave this talk, if you had a spiritual revelation, you could be pretty sure that what you were told to do was the right thing. Now, post-Holland, you have no idea. Now, a spiritual prompting could be taking you the wrong way, and you won’t know it until you hit a dead end. Is a spiritual prompting to, say, join the Mormon Church leading you to a dead end, and the Lord is helping you be more certain of the right way when you eventually leave?

If you get a hit, your faith is confirmed. if you get a miss, your faith is confirmed more. This is the definition of blind faith. Someone on r/exmormon (can’t find at the moment) said it well: An eye that responds the same to light and darkness is a blind eye. A faith that responds the same way to both confirmation and disconfirmation is blind faith. It is a terrible method. It is just asking to be fooled. We need to make life decisions using good methods and good information.

In the world but not of the world

It’s very common to hear this little aphorism in church, and it’s based more or less on this scripture.

John 17:14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

From the LDS manual:

How can we, like Jesus and his Apostles, live in the world and be “not of the world”? (John 17:14; see also verses 15–16).
Elder M. Russell Ballard said:

“In the Church, we often state the couplet, ‘Be in the world but not of the world.’ As we observe television shows that make profanity, violence, and infidelity commonplace and even glamorous, we often wish we could lock out the world in some way and isolate our families from it all. . . .”

With so much violence in the world, isn’t it kind of sweet and touching that he’s concerned about fictional representations of violence? Anyway.

Ask: What function could this idea serve?

This idea works to create a “scary external world” narrative that will ensure that members get their information, their values, and their positive feels only from church. Not only does this foster a “bunker mentality” that keeps members worried about “the world” and therefore likely to remain in the church orbit, it makes it very difficult for Latter-day Saints to appreciate or even recognise the morality of people in the broader community. And this is important for keeping the brand afloat. If people in “the world” are not uniformly lost and wounded, but have morals similar to — and in some cases, superior to — the rather narrow tribalistic morality taught in the LDS Church, this challenges the idea that Mormon morality is superior and divine.

Additional lesson ideas

I’m Jesus: AMFA

Again, Jesus says that whatever you ask for he’ll give you.

John 16:23 And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

It has occurred to me that perhaps this referred to the disciples only. In that case, it seems kind of strange that they didn’t ask Jesus for some very sensible things, like not being crucified upside-down or not being shot through with arrows. But then the disciples were not the sharpest people ever.

NT Lesson 14 (The Good Samaritan)

19 April 2015 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Who Is My Neighbour?”

Matthew 18; Luke 10

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that indoctrination, ostracism, and magical cursings are not good ways to treat people.

Reading

The purpose for this lesson, according to the LDS lesson manual, is:

To help class members humble themselves, forgive others, and show charity for one another.

That’s all very well, but it’s only a part of the story. Believers like to cherry-pick the good bits of the Bible, and that gives people the impression that it’s all nice and good, with love, puppy dogs, and rainbows for everyone. And while there’s lots of good stuff in these two chapters about forgiveness and service, there are also some really bad examples of how to treat people. So this lesson’s here for some balance.

Main ideas for this lesson

Little children

Jesus teaches that you have to be like a child to get into heaven.

Matthew 18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
18:2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Ask: Why would it be beneficial to a religious leader that his followers be like children?

Children are great. They have a playfulness, an openness to experience, and in lots of ways a lack of bias that’s quite enviable. They haven’t yet taken on political or social baggage that makes it hard for us adults to change our minds sometimes. There’s a lot to recommend about having a childlike outlook.

Children are also not great at critical thinking. With their scarcity of real-world experience, they believe everything you tell them, which works to the advantage of religious leaders. This is why religions focus on the indoctrination of children, before they’re able to challenge dogma.

Ask: Is there a positive function for the uncritical acceptance that children are prone to?
Answer: Richard Dawkins thinks so. In this video, he points out that children usually benefit when they uncritically accept information from parents and carers.

He likens it to the navigation system of a moth. When the only light source is the moon, moths are able to navigate smoothly. But artificial light sidetracks their systems and makes them fly in crazy loops around streetlights.

By the same token, there’s a positive function to children believing what adults say. But when those adults are affected by religion, the bad is accepted along with the good, and the religion spreads. It’s a case of something bad hijacking something good.

Partial transcript if you can’t watch video:

These moths are not committing suicide. They’re doing a piece of behaviour which would be sensible for all the millions of years that were there when the only lights you ever saw at night were celestial objects at optical infinity. Now I think that that’s what religion is like. I think that religion is a byproduct of probably several psychological predispositions which in themselves have Darwinian survival value, but which have consequences parallel to the consequence of the moth flying to the candle flames — have consequences which probably don’t have survival value. But just as the moth doesn’t know that the candle flame is not at infinity but is close by, so those of us who have these psychological predispositions which would have been a good thing in our ancestral past — may still be a good thing — the consequence of leading to religious behavior which may not be a good thing doesn’t occur to us. I mean, the kind of thing I’m thinking about is a tendency to obey authority in a child. It’s probably a good thing for child to obey its parents — to believe its parents, indeed — when its parents tell it things about the world, because the child is too young to know a lot of important things about the world, and would die if it ignored its parents’ beliefs; its parents advice. So good advice like “Don’t jump in the fire” has survival value. But the child brain, just like the moth brain, has no way of distinguishing the good advice like “Don’t jump in the fire” from the stupid advice like “Sacrifice a mongoose’s kidneys at the time of the full moon, or the crops will fail.” So I suspect that religion may be a complicated set of byproducts of psychological predispositions, each one of which itself has an advantage, but the religious byproduct is either neutral or — well, we don’t even need to say whether it has an advantage, it doesn’t matter; the Darwinian explanation is sufficient if we postulate that the original psychological predispositions had Darwinian survival value.

Again, religion poisons everything.

While I’m talking about moths, has everyone seen Norm MacDonald’s moth joke?

Another take on this topic: Think of your role models. Who are the people you look up to?

As for me, I look up to smart people. My heroes are the people who are doing science. These are people who have worked to understand the world, and to build their intellectual character so as to have humility and avoid bias and self-deception. Those are the people I want to be like.

Ask: What intellectual climate is a group trying to encourage if its role models are the most cognitively immature and intellectually docile people in all of humankind?
What benefit would that be to such a group’s leaders?

Early Christians must have noticed that, just as in the church today, the people they were attracting weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. And so they wrote a rationale into the Bible.

Luke 10:21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

Yeah, they knew.

Hell, with fire, again

Jesus repeats his advice to cut off your hands and feet, and put out your eyes.

Matthew 18:8 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
18:9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

This is the third time Jesus has mentioned hell, with actual fire. We’re going to cover Hell in more detail in lesson 17.

For now, though, let’s talk about an extra angle on this scripture from the Joseph Smith Translation.

Ostracism

From the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual:

Discuss Matthew 18:8–9 and Mark 9:43–48 (see also Matthew 5:29–30).

JST Matthew 18:9 And a man’s hand is his friend, and his foot, also; and a man’s eye, are they of his own household.

What do these verses mean? (See Matthew 18:9, footnote 9a, which indicates that the Joseph Smith Translation identifies these offending elements as people who lead us astray. It is better to end our association with people than to allow them to lead us into sin. See also Joseph Smith Translation, Mark 9:40–48.)

Mormons, by and large, do not ostracise family members, and that’s a good thing. At least, they don’t do it officially. (I note, however, that I never see my old Mormon friends anymore. Maybe we never had much in common, besides church.)

This scripture, however, encourages people to disconnect from their unbelieving friends. Christianity, like a lot of ideologies, makes it difficult for believers to interact with non-believers. Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about this, which centres on a video from the Atheist Experience, in which Jeff and Matt discuss the divisive tendency of Christianity.

Partial transcript:

People who actually understand what love is; people who actually understand what morality is; people who actually understand reality; it is almost unbearable to watch the people that you love be so absolutely duped into a divisive, hateful religion that they think is not divisive; they think it’s inclusive, and they think it’s positive.
…
The division is entirely one-sided. I didn’t end relationships when I became an atheist. Christians ended those relationships, and it was because their particular religion cannot tolerate.

Divorce

Jesus again condemns divorce — advice which many Christians happily dismiss, and good for them.

From the manual, again:

Explain that Matthew 19:1–12 describes a situation in which the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking him about the lawfulness of divorce (see also Mark 10:1–12).

Explain that in ancient Israel, a man could put away, or divorce, his wife for insignificant reasons. Jesus taught that in a perfect world, such as the celestial kingdom, divorce does not exist. Because the earth is not yet perfect, divorce is allowed but should not happen except for the most serious reasons. Matthew 19:9 indicates that a man who put away his wife for a frivolous reason was still married to her in the eyes of God, and he thus committed adultery if he married another woman. (See James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 3rd ed. [1916], 473–75, 484; see also Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, 4 vols. [1979–81], 2:138–39.)

I just want to add that when someone disapproves of something, it’s very common for them to claim that people do it for frivolous reasons.

Divorce: They get married, and figure that if it doesn’t work out, they’ll just get divorced and try someone else!
Abortion: Why, it’s just a form of birth control for some people!
Leaving the church: They were offended and wanted to sin. Something something milk strippings.

This way of thinking sees people trivialising the life choices of other people when those choices don’t accord with theirs. I don’t know anyone who takes any of these decisions lightly — in most cases, it’s one of the most difficult and well-thought-through choices in that person’s life — but for someone with this view, it makes it difficult for them to understand why anyone would make that choice. Or should I say “sin that sin”. So much for empathy.

Dusting off feet

Jesus tells missionaries to dust off their feel if people don’t believe them, as a kind of curse.

Luke 10:10 But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say,
10:11 Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.
10:12 But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.

This has led to some pretty wild stories about modern foot-dusting. Here’s one about Samuel Smith, brother of Joseph Smith.

“Samuel was sick at heart, for this was the 5th time he had been turned out of doors that day. He left the house and traveled a short distance and washed his feet in a small brook, as a testimony against [the tavern owner who had rejected him]. He then proceeded five miles further on his journey, and seeing an apple tree a short distance from the road, he concluded to pass the night under it; and here he lay all night upon the cold, damp ground. In the morning, he arose from his comfortless bed, and observing a small cottage at no great distance, he drew near, hoping to get a little refreshment…. He…proceeded to Bloomington, which was 8 miles further.
“Here he stopped at the house of John P. Greene, who was a Methodist preacher and was at that time about starting on a preaching mission. He, like the others, did not wish to make a purchase of what he considered at that time to be a nonsensical fable; however, he said that he would take a subscription paper, and if he found anyone on his route who was disposed to purchase, he would take his name, and in two weeks Samuel might call again and he would let him know what the prospect was of selling. After making this arrangement, Samuel left one of his books with him, and returned home. At the time appointed, Samuel started again for the Reverend John P. Greene’s, in order to learn the success which this gentleman had met with in finding sale for the Book of Mormon. This time, Mr. Smith and myself accompanied him, and it was our intention to have passed near the tavern where Samuel was so abusively treated a fortnight previous, but just before we came to the house, a sign of smallpox intercepted us. We turned aside, and meeting a citizen of the place, we inquired of him, to what extent this disease prevailed. He answered that the tavern keeper and two of his family had died with it not long since, but he did not know that anyone else had caught the disease, and that it was brought into the neighborhood by a traveler who stopped at the tavern overnight” (Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, pp.225-226)

Yep — he dusted off his feet, and gave someone smallpox. Because that’s how smallpox works. Kind of a dick move, isn’t it?

This scripture stands as a bit of a contrast to the previous chapter, where Jesus refuses to curse some Samaritans.

Luke 9:51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,
9:52 And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.
9:53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
9:54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?9:55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.9:56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Consistency wasn’t Jesus’s big thing.

On my mission, foot-dusting-off was the subject of some discussion. Some missionaries were like, “Well, the scripture tells us to do it,” and other elders were like, “OMG, don’t do it, you’ll kill someone and destroy entire cities.” Never did it occur to me that I was worshipping and serving an abusive asshole.

The silly things we used to think.

Satan falling from heaven

A throw-away quote from Jesus gives us one of the world’s great pick-up lines.

Luke 10:17 And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.
10:18 And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

The good Samaritan

We’re getting to the end of this lesson, and we’ve seen so much bad behaviour so far. Let’s hear a good story.

Luke 10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
10:26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
10:27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
10:28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
10:29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
10:30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
10:31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
10:32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
10:34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
10:35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
10:36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
10:37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

It’s great to do good where you see it — and it’s sometimes hard to recognise such a situation in the moment. In a famous study, psychologists found that our willingness to help was more a function of the situation, and not our personality.

We are all too quick to apply dispositional labels on people for their actions or lack of actions, while ignoring the situational factors that are so influential in behavior. We need to stop and think before being too hard on ourselves or on others for actions and behaviors.

Even so, one does get the impression that Jesus didn’t find Samaritans entirely positive.

If I could give some secular homework for this lesson, maybe it would be to look for opportunities to help. Some causes present themselves to us online, while others appear in real life. Maybe taking time to notice them would help us to step up and make a difference. Let’s all take a cue from the slogan of the Sunday Assembly, and “help often”.

See what you can do by next week.

NT Lesson 8 (Sermon on the Mount 1)

22 February 2015 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

The Sermon on the Mount: “A More Excellent Way”

Matthew 5

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that some of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are terrible, and that it allows believers to selectively jettison inconvenient doctrine from the Old Testament

Reading

This time, we’re starting on the Sermon on the Mount

Matthew 5:1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

which was actually taught on a plain.

Luke 6:17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain

Seriously, were any of these Bible writers actually there? Oh, wait; no, they weren’t. This was probably written 30 or 40 years after Jesus would have died. As mentioned in this Thinking Atheist podcast, it was written originally in Greek — not Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken — which points to a later writing date.

Main ideas for this lesson

Some of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are terrible

People just love the Sermon on the Mount because many of its teachings are nice. They’re all about the lerv. A closer reading shows that many of these teachings are nonsense, and a real supernatural being could do a lot better.

The Sermon on the Mount has been thoroughly fisked a number of times, and here are some of my faves.

You should definitely check them out. But here are a few of my ideas.

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Well, those are just lovely. One problem: while being meek works out great for those in power, it doesn’t do much to help to help you out of a bad situation. Does a belief that God will sort everything out comfort you, or just put you back to sleep? Frank Zappa suggests that helping each other out would be a better way to turn things around.

Frank Zappa- The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing… by WarGodIII
Lyrics

Light

Here’s another one:

Matthew 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

In my upbringing, this meant: Everyone knows you’re a Mormon, and they’re watching you. Don’t let your behaviour reflect badly on the Church.

This has a number of effects: It controls your behaviour, serving as a kind of panopticon where you’re always being observed. It also gives you the idea that how you feel about what you’re doing is less important than how others feel about what you’re doing. And that means that you can’t really trust your own moral instincts, because it’s always someone else evaluating your behaviour. You have to imagine what morality looks like to some external observer, guess what they expect, and then do that. It’s like giving someone an moral-sense-ectomy, so that you can replace it with whatever you want.

It’s one tiny scripture, but the church does this in lots of ways, and the effect is cumulative.

Let your light shine?

When you do good things, you’re supposed to let them be seen.

Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Oh, wait; no, you’re not. Very next chapter:

Matthew 6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

It’s very difficult to know how publicly righteous you’re supposed to be.

Is the Old Testament still valid?

How many times have you had a discussion with a believer about the barbarity of the Bible, and they say, “But that’s the Old Testament!”?

Well, in this section, Jesus sets out the relationship between his teachings and those of the Old Testament.

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

This sounds to me like the kind of thing that would have been written way later, once the early Christians were trying to allay criticism that they were getting away from their Jewish base.

Anyway: So what’s the deal? Is the OT still in force? The OT certainly says so; in numerous places it says it was intended to last as a perpetual statute forever.

Lev. 23: 14 …it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
Num. 19:21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them…

And Jesus says as much: Things things won’t be done away “till heaven and earth pass”.

But Christians argue that the OT has been superseded. In the words of the Jehovah’s Witness guy that came to my house yesterday, Jehovah gave us the Ten Commandments in the OT, and the Two Commandments (love God, love your neighbour) in the New. Sort of a version update. This seems to be what they mean by Jesus ‘fulfilling’ the law. (Which is confusing, because “heaven and earth” haven’t passed away yet, and here it is fulfilled already. Oh, well.)

If that’s the case, and the OT has been deprecated, then why do Christians still cherry-pick laws from it that they like?

As mentioned in this lesson, some Christians like to cite the homophobic scriptures in Leviticus, but ignore the shellfish prohibition in the very same book.

A fact lampooned in “Prop 8: The Musical”. Remember that?

“Prop 8 – The Musical” starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more… from Funny Or Die

While there are mountains of explanations from Christians trying to sort this out, the fact remains: The relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament is confusing, and this confusion allows Christians to play it both ways. They can pull anything they want from the Old Testament that suits their purpose because Bible, but they can selectively disavow chapters and chapters full of stuff they find unpalatable. This should, however, cast some doubt on just how much they “believe” the Bible.

And what’s often forgotten in this discussion is that (for Mormons and Trinitarians) Jesus is Jehovah. Why wouldn’t he be okay with what he commanded earlier? It makes no sense in terms of a coherent narrative from an unchanging god, but it makes loads of sense in terms of human cultural evolution, which Christianity is a prime example of.

Thinking is not doing

Jesus gives a teaching from the School of Emotional Repression:

Matthew 5:21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Being angry is nowhere near as serious as killing someone. This teaching is ridiculous.

Note also that atheists are called ‘fools’ in the OT. Man, Jesus sure could use some help from a modern Christian to get himself sorted out!

Adultery in your heart

Matthew 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Seriously, Jesus? Impulse control is a fine thing, but this crosses the line into thoughtcrime. In my youth, I wasted a lot of effort trying to stop naughty thoughts from crossing my mind, and feeling bad when I couldn’t. As an adult, I enjoy my sense of eroticism at baseline levels. We are sexual beings, and while we put it on background for much of our day-to-day lives, trying to deny this aspect of our personality is damaging, and makes us act like sexually repressed weirdos. What a terrible lack of perspective to equate sexual desire with unconstrained rutting.

There’s more. If thinking about sex is equated with doing it — if there’s no line between the two, then it eradicates the line between normal stuff people do (like hugging, smooching, etc) and things that are truly messed up (like sexual assault). Have a read of this treatment of the toxic purity culture of American Christianity (as it pertains to the notorious Duggar family), and how it makes inappropriate sexual behaviour not only possible, but likely.

The huge problem with this teaching is that it does not distinguish between having thoughts and desires, and acting on them in an inappropriate way. To the young person, just developing (one hopes) critical thinking skills, this can and does lead to problems in making decisions. After all, if one has already fallen into sexual sin in the realm of thought, why not at least get some satisfaction for the trouble. All the guilt and shame is already there, so why not try to at least get a little gratification.

Needless to say, this worldview is not very good at addressing the issue of consent. Since all sexual sin is the same…, then the difference between lusting and sexually assaulting someone is blurred.

More extreme beliefs follow.

Matthew 5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

It’s off with the hands and eyes for a lot of you.

(Funny that it mentions the right hand specifically, by the way.)

Just one more thing from this bit: this is the first time we’ve seen where Jesus mentions ‘hell’. He’ll have more to say about this — including actual fire! — but let’s make a note of this and move on.

Divorce

And now we’re to one of Jesus’ teachings that Christians happily ignore: his teachings on divorce.

Matthew 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

And thank goodness they ignore it! Yes, divorce can be unfortunate and disruptive, but it can also give you your life back.

People tell me that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. I always respond: Fifty percent of marriages should end in divorce. All my life in church, people treated divorce like the worst thing in the world. That and apostasy. Then I found that they were wrong about both those things. And everything else.

A bit of context, though: Divorce is good, except where it leads to poverty for women, which, in a patriarchal society where men have all the power and money, is very likely. So let’s take that into account. But this is an argument against patriarchy, not divorce.

The other good thing about Christians ignoring Jesus’ teachings on divorce is that Christians can learn to ignore the bullshit in their Bible. And that’s a good thing, if only they were aware that’s what they’re doing.

On the other hand, I sometimes wish modern Christians weren’t so selective.

Additional lesson ideas

Luke’s additions

Boy, did Luke have a different take on this sermon!

Luke 6:20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.
6:21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
6:22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
6:23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.
6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.

Message: if you’re a wealthy, well-fed laughing person, you’re hosed in the afterlife.

Love your enemies

Well, we’ve been tough on the Sermon on the Mount/Plain today. But there are some good bits, and here’s one.

Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

I think this might be a good idea, unless you’re someone who’s learned to be fatally compromised in relationships. In some cases, it would be better to cut your enemies out of your life, instead of being commanded to love them. (And what’s with being commanded to love? Geez.)

Even then, there are some weird inconsistencies in this part of Jesus’ message.

And this is the same Jesus who sends people to hell. But more on that later.

Let’s just say that loving your enemies is good if you can manage it. It’s an advanced move.

Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

This reminded me of a poem by Charles Bowen:

“The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella”

See you next time.

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: cherry-picking (page 1 of 2)

“This Generation Shall Have My Word through You”

Reading assignment

Overview

Reading

The Book of Mormon

Doctrine and Covenants

The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible

The Pearl of Great Price

Conclusion

“Firm in the Faith of Christ”

Alma 43–52

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Why do we fight?

Additional lesson ideas

Book of Mormon place names

“Converted unto the Lord”

Alma 23–29

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Never really converted

Apostates are worse than non-members

“My Soul Is Pained No More”

Mosiah 25–28; Alma 36

Purpose

Reading

Main points of this lesson

How the Book of Mormon recommends dealing with non-believers

Laws about religious persecution

Destroy the church

Additional lesson ideas

Chiasmus

“My Soul Delighteth in the Words of Isaiah”

2 Nephi 11–25

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Christ is God

Translation mistakes

Creative interpretation of prophecy

“Hearken to the Truth, and Give Heed unto It”

1 Nephi 16–22

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Impossible things

Building a ship

Lehi’s path

Additional lesson ideas

600 BCE?

Nahom

Past reason

“Beloved of God, Called to Be Saints”

Romans

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Unbelievers are evil

Everyone is bad.

It’s because of Adam

Faith, not works

Not ashamed

Additional lesson ideas

Christianity’s weird relationship with Jews

Christianity’s weird relationship with secular government

Overcome evil with good

“This Is Life Eternal”

John 16–17

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Holy the Ghost

How to feel the Holy Ghost

In the world but not of the world

Additional lesson ideas

I’m Jesus: AMFA