Why is empirical evidence so wonderful when it confirms our

[MikeWaters]

Rebelx said:

Why is empirical evidence so wonderful when it confirms our beliefs, but contradictory empirical evidence is shrugged off as being used by the "unfaithful".....i.e., you should have more faith.

The whole idea of believing without knowing to me is okay, but why is it that the members of the church champion evidential matter that may lead outsiders to believe that the church is true, but then disregard other evidence that contradicts things.

In Guatemala, we'd constantly have church groups come down and visit the B of M sites.....well, thats what they thought they were visiting. However, from what I noticed while serving in the mountainous regions of Guatemala is that these people HAVE to be Asian.....they just have so much similarity with the Asian cultures from their ancient languages (that have an Asian sound to them), to their writings, architecture, and the people themselves look Asian...




I guess my point is, that I dont' doubt the B of M, I just don't need to try and fit a square peg in a round hole so that there's enough empirical evidence to prove the book is true. I personally think its a disservice to lead those people to believe that they are descendents of Lehi, when we can't be sure that all of them truly are his descendents. I mean, the B of M wasn't 100% clear that there didn't exist other throughout mesoamerican, south or north america, etc..... The area of land that Lehi and his family lived in could've been a few hundred square miles and thats what they new to be the "promised land".

I just hate interpretation being taught as fact......I mean, the DNA of a certain tribe in South America appeared to be unique worldwide until they compared it to the indigenous people of Australia....and now scientists believe that this one tribe of people that appears to have been here in the Americas for 1,000s of years, are the ancient ancestors of the Aboriginees of Australia. Its obvious that there were others here, science isn't anti-God, in fact its God's creation.....why dismiss it so much?

Oh btw, thanks for the invite to this site Archaea.

well one reason is that it is much easier to prove the existence of something than to prove its nonexistence.

Can anyone think of anything so definitive that it would disprove Christianity, Islam, Mormonism?

There is a real yearning for tangible evidence of faiths in many religions.

Remember the burial box of John, brother of Jesus (I think)? It created a lot of excitement. Of course it also turned out to be a forgery.

[Archaea]

enough to push the faithful along, but not enough to sway skeptics.

It's just part of the plan, that we link the symnaptic gaps of reasoning with faith.

[SoCalCoug]

I just hate interpretation being taught as fact

I hear you on that. It's funny how a people who are supposed to be seekers of truth are so often not interested in finding truth they don't understand or which does not fit with their personal paradigm. For example: "Evolution is false! Darwin was evil!" (I recently was banned from Cougarboard for a day for posting on a thread that brought up evolution :roll: ) However, many of the principles (as I, admittedly with only a basic knowledge of Darwin's theory of evolution) are valid principles and accurately reflect the natural world. But a lot of LDS people discount evolution entirely and some are part of the group filled with right-wing fundamental Christians who would like the teaching of the theory of evolution banned entirely from schools.

I agree when you say that it's a disservice to lead people to believe that they are descendants of Lehi when we can't really be sure that is so. I'm about 2/3 of the way through An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon by John L. Sorenson, and it seems to me that his theory that Lehi and his family came to a land already populated is pretty sound. In fact, I would suspect that it would be virtually impossible to find any native Mesoamericans today whose DNA could be traced directly to Lehi.

But this is the story we've grown up with, that the American Indians are the direct descendants of Lehi, and many of us are not comfortable with questioning that view.

Doesn't it make sense that if you truly have a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, that you would welcome any evidence or facts relating to it, even if they seem to contradict what you believe to be true about it, because you know that they cannot, in the end, disprove it? Instead, many LDS seem to carefully guard against contradictory facts or discoveries, as they may shake the foundations of their testimony.

[MikeWaters]

I have a friend that curiously was not exposed to anti-Mormon literature until he was about 31 or so (he is a RM). The unlikely source of this was Under the Banner of Heaven.

He was inactive basically already, but this book sent him more on an anti- course instead of just being indifferent and skeptical. Very sad.

So Socalcoug, some people are that weak.

[SoCalCoug]

some people are that weak

But does that really justify perpetuating traditions that are simply not true? I guess it's just the idea of intellectual dishonesty that is a little frustrating at times.

By the way, I'm not familiar with "Under the Banner of Heaven."

[realtall]

I read it as well. The book had research problems(Including several things that sounded suspiciouly like rumors that the author heard) but it also just wasn't written very well. It jumped all over the place and was sometimes hard to follow.

[SoCalCoug]

It jumped all over the place and was sometimes hard to follow.

I get it. It's written in grapevinian.