I used to read the Book of Mormon and wonder why it felt so hollow and meaningless. The stories of war and battles, of missionary work, Christian doctrine, sermons, prophecies, cycles of wickedness and righteousness and stories of destruction and miracles bored me. There was no substance behind the stories, no relevance to me or my life. My frustration became greater when I was a seminary student in high school and then as a missionary because all the adults I knew talked about how special and profound the Book of Mormon was and how much wisdom it contained. The more I searched, pondered, and prayed, the farther away I felt from a real understanding and appreciation. I thought about the fecundity of the Nephites and about how no other ancient civilization raised up millions of people in such short amounts of time. And even with these millions of people slain in battle, there is no evidence of their cities or destruction of their cities, no evidence of wars or weapons in the locations where Joseph Smith taught they were.
I agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, however, absence of evidence where their should be evidence, is evidence of absence.
I was an adult when I realized that the characters and events in the Book of Mormon were just stories based on fictional people who never existed except in someone’s imagination. When the shackles and chains and confusion that had bound my mind of critical thinking fell to the ground with a noisy clank I felt free to stand and face the world around me without any delusions.
I feel bad for people who say the Book of Mormon is their favorite book because they probably haven’t read many books. Brilliant minds have crafted more compelling stories that speak to the human condition and lift the reader to new heights of joy, pleasure, knowledge and understanding. The Good Earth never left me. Neither did The Alchemist. The vicious murder scene in Crime and Punishment terrified me and at the conclusion of Anna Karenina I felt a deep loss. I grieved for her. The Fountainhead set my soul on fire and inspired me to follow my passion. The Harry Potter series kept me up many nights flipping pages with intense passion and wonder. Like the Book of Mormon, these books are fictional and they tell stories and teach lessons but these books don’t claim to be anything more than what they are.
I wasted so much time devoting myself to finding the “truth” of the Book of Mormon instead of just accepting it as a mediocre work of fiction. I could have spent time learning about real people who made actual contributions to the world and human life. Like Aristotle, the man who invented logic and taught that knowledge could be derived from studying the world around us. Or men like Galileo and Newton who contributed to science in a way that forged new spheres of knowledge. Or Pasteur, the microbiologist who laid the foundation for understanding germs, knowledge of which has saved countless lives.These people are the real heroes and the ones who made a real difference in the lives of real people. Nephi, Alma, Ammon or Moroni never did, because they never existed.The Book of Mormon demands that the reader treat it as literal history and the church demands that we study the lives, words, and actions of the people who fill the pages as if they were real. What a tragic waste of time to devote oneself to fiction as if it actually occurred. There is so much beauty, so much that is open to our understanding, so much that has been discovered by men and women who looked around at the natural world and asked questions- and then found real answers.
The moment an idea, philosophy, religion, or consensus movement begins to demand a dogmatic following without any freedom of thought, it separates itself from any true meaning. You talk about being made to believe in a fictional tale as the way of life. The tale, in it self, was meant to make people act in a civilized way. There is nothing wrong in that. But when you discovered it was demanding that you think and act in a specific way, you rejected it.
The Book of Mormon is not the only fictional tale which was meant to direct human actions (you know what I mean). These tales, these parables, were meant to keep the human instinct of barbarism and animalism from taking over open thought and civilized behavior. And, for the most part, they worked.
You mentioned some of the true heroes in history. Aristotle, Galileo, Pasteur, Newton…don’t you think they had some kind of “fictional” guidance in their lives? The only difference these great thinkers had from the normal population was that they could live within their given “guidance” and still have the freedom to think and excel! Nothing could have stopped them! I love it!
Seth, you have an obvious sense of what’s right, and what’s wrong. Believe me, atheism did not give you that ability. Apparently you were brought up by loving parents who, maybe believing in a “fictional” directive, shared the right thoughts with you. You are the product of some given directives from a consciousness that you now share with others.
What happens, unfortunately, as you pointed out, is these oh-so-helpful parables and stories sometimes become translated into real-life stories and all of a sudden there is the so-called fundamentalist pressure. That’s when any fictional idealism, philosophy, or religion implodes. When this fundamentalism takes over a philosophy and demands and dictates ones life, it self-destructs.
Fiction, yes, meant to keep humans from becoming barbarians. Fiction, taken for fact, can cause unbelievable harm and pain. It takes heroes to live within the fiction and think without its restrictions.
Thank you, Seth, for making me think.
Your friend, Robert, hand-in-hand
The Torah has more archaeological backing than the fictional book of Mormon. All you have to do is google for evidence and you’ll find it. For example, less than one second of searching yielded this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1557124/Tiny-tablet-provides-proof-for-Old-Testament.html.
Ohh wow! I love this post, i can feel related to it, it is very honest and deep. It reminded me of the time when i decided not to keep studying with the Jehovah’s witnesses. Something just didn´t add up. It is so wrong that you can´t be who you really are and always have been, because, ¨the bible¨says it´s sinful.
After that, I started to appreciate people for who they really are, even my self. It is so uplifting to see life as it is intended: Diverse, natural and honest. Nothing is fake after you expand your vision and get away from the ¨mind-shrinker¨ beliefs, or as you have said FICTION taken as a fact.
I wish for you good luck, and keep it up, you have a very nice blog here!
Germán Salazar.
Thank you for your comment German. I appreciate your feedback.
If people really read the Bible and really understood where it came from and how it came to be, I wonder if they would really think of it as “the good book.” It’s unfortunate that people only know the good stuff and ignore the very ugly stuff in the Bible (and there is a lot.)
Life is so much more beautiful without delusions. No one needs an ancient document to be a good person or live a decent life.
So why so many people say the same thing as The Book of Mormon is true in the sense that it is not fiction?
So are you saying popular opinion is the standard to measure truth?
Dear friend Seth, I watched a video where you say things and stopped many times the video to look deep into your eyes and I know that the brilliance that has made me believe in them as you are a good person and God knows it.
Thank you. I am a good person and I don’t need a god to tell me that. Which god are you referring to? Zeus? Allah? Ra? Athena? Apollo? Yahweh?
I do not mean that the opnion of many people is the fact that only by so many people believe the same thing.
I’m telling you is a great person and I’m no God. I’m just like you, just feel it in your eyes when looking at video and wanted to share with you.
Sorry! I understand you, you are a very interesting person in essence
Thank you for your comments and the discussion. I’m sure you’re very nice as well. We have more in common than not.
Yes we have something in common, but they do not have the same courage you have in relation to sexuality if I may comment. Thank you dear friend I’m your fan now
please come to Brazil someday
I’d love to visit Brazil!!! It’s on my “must visit” list!
If I understood something about you is that you have been created and is the son of a member of the Mormon church?! then I was reflecting on his life until the moment you came home after the mission in Russia then what was it for you this time? what you learned in that time? Are you married now? lives with someone? I’m sorry these questions will I be able to understand me through you think you came into my life to answer some questions for me …
And when I watched your video and looked into his eyes I realized that there is an essence in you that I did for the video several times to see, you can not explain it real?
I don’t know if you’ve seen this….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZgT1SRcrKE
It explains Christianity… Christ himself even as a fiction. It’s part of a larger series of conspiracies revealed but I’m convinced you would find it interesting. I’m not convinced there was never a Jesus. But finding out that no historians living in his time made any record of him was startling.
Its hard when your beliefs are based on spoon fed dogma you never dare to question. I was leaving if mitt won, really!
the book of mormon is a great piece of fiction just like the mormon church…a great feary tail.just like the d and c and pearl of great price it cost me a great price…16 false prophets
When I first left, it was that there was no evidence for it, but after reading Guns,
Germs and Steel, I realized that not only was the Book of Mormon unlikely to be true, it was absolutely impossible that it ever happened as a historical work.
Jared Diamond points out that in the Old World, society evolved with domesticated animals. We had sheep, cows, horses, goats, pigs, etc. that we used to produce meat, milk and work. People lived and worked in close quarters with these animals, so they caught diseases from them like small pox. We eventually developed some level of immunity to these diseases. Even though they still plagued Europe, Asia and Africa, they did not wipe out the population.
Lehi & Company came from Jerusalem circa 400 BC. They brought animals with them from the Old World, as we know from Ammon tending the flocks of sheep and the chariots pulled by horses of the Lamanite King.
When Columbus arrived, there were no sheep, no horses, no goats. The only large domesticated animal in the New World was the llama. Everything else: pigs, cows, sheep, horses, cats, dogs, etc. were all brought over later. The Vikings brought some cats, but there were no large domesticated animals here before Columbus.
The Indians were far more numerous, but the arrival of the Spanish and their animals brought diseases, notably small pox. They were wiped out, some historians think that up to 80% of all Indians were killed. Entire tribes, like the Arawaks, almost completely vanished.
If the Indians were descended from the Lamanites, as Joseph Smith stated, then they would have been exposed to small pox. Instead, they reacted as if small pox had never existed in the Americas, and were wiped out. By the time white settlers moved West, these areas had been almost been completely depopulated, making it easier for Europeans to settle the United States. In contrast in Africa, it was the Europeans who suffered from malaria and thus the natives were not displaced.
GGS goes into many other areas which contradict the internal logic of the
Book of Mormon, such as the ease of E-W migration but the difficulties of N-S migration due to climatic changes that affect crop viability. Lamanites could have never had chariots because the wheel was never fully implemented in the New World. Native Americans never developed the ability to smelt mettle, let alone turn iron to steel, making the swords and breastplates of the BofM utterly impossible to realize.
My point is that I don’t have a problem with the Book of Mormon because there is no such thing as Reformed Egyptian or because we cannot find Alma’s bones or any trace of Zarahemla . My problem is that it is impossible for it to have ever happened, and a young, ignorant writer like JS would not realize the problems with the internal logic of his story. This is entirely consistent with the Book of Mormon being the collaborative work of fiction by JS and Olive Cowdery, but completely antithetical to a work of history of pre-Columbian America.