Author Archives: Bruce Nielson

The Book of Mormon: Would You Regularly Study Inspired Fiction?

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The post below is a reprint from Mormon Matters. The discussion that followed was intriguing. Most of the posters that no longer believed in the historicity of the Book of Mormon openly admitted that when the Book of Mormon lost it’s historicity for them, it also lost it’s value as scripture worthy of study. There was at least one notable exception of someone that still studied it as scripture regularly, if perhaps a reduced level overall, though he admitted that he felt the same way about the Bible as well. Also intriguing was John Hamer’s concerns that the wording was biased because the word ‘fiction’ might be a loaded term. I had not intended it to be so, but I compromised by adding a ‘revised wording’ version at the bottom.

I’m intrigued by those on the bloggernacle that see The Book of Mormon as fiction but inspired by God. It’s common to hear someone that holds that belief say that it doesn’t really matter if The Book of Mormon is historical or not.

In the past, Clay asked me if I thought that someone who believes The Book of Mormon to be fiction lost their salvation. My answer was, no, I do not believe such a belief causes a person to lose salvation in and of itself. [12/22/2010: At this point in time, I had not admitted to people that I was just shy of a universalist.] DougG asked me if I believe people that believed the Book of Mormon was inspired but not historical should be rooted out of the Church. My answer to that question was, no they shouldn’t be.

Both of these questions made me think of some counter questions for those that believe The Book of Mormon is inspired of God but just a work of fiction:

  • Do you still study The Book of Mormon as a guide to your life on a regular basis?
  • Do you still prayerfully seek for truths in The Book of Mormon to apply into your life?
  • Did you do any of the above types of study when you thought The Book of Mormon was also historical?
  • Do you limit your study of The Book of Mormon to only finding 19th century patterns now or are you open to finding unique eternal truths there for our day?
  • Do you limit your study of The Book of Mormon to only what you need to do to fulfill a calling? (Like say preparing for lessons.)
  • Did coming to believe The Book of Mormon was only inspired fiction cause you to reduce your efforts to study it in any way?

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Atheists Who Know God

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I was listening to Mike Resnick’s excellent story called “Article of Faith.” It’s a story about a robot employee working for a minister in a church. The minister uses the robot to help improve his sermons and the robot comes to believe he has a soul and needs to worship God. But the minister can’t allow the robot to worship with his congregation for two reasons. First, no one believes robots have souls. Second, his congregation is prejudice against robots who keep stealing their jobs. We eventually learn that the second is the real reason.

The story is well done, if predictable. As the story on Escape Pod came to an end, the ‘host’ came on with some final thoughts. He says that he’s an atheist, but he’s certain that if there was a God that God would never be in favor of being in any way exclusive in their worship. (Hint hint) How could anyone believe that some old book written ages ago is completely accurate about what God is like? It’s like trying to stare at the Grand Canyon where you just can’t possibly take it all in with a photograph.

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What if Joseph Smith Published the Book of Mormon Last Year?

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Another reprint from Mormon Matters.

Many of you may have heard about a man named Joseph Smith that recently claimed to have found some plates of gold, shown to him by an angel no less, and then to have translated those plates “by the gift and power of God” into The Book of Mormon. This Book of Mormon purports to be a story about an ancient people living millennia ago.

We at the New York Ages decided to do a review of this book with such an interesting back story. But we were disappointed to find the interesting stuff stops at the back story. We’d have at least expected a book that purports to be about an ancient people to not borrow so liberally from the front pages of your local newspaper.

In what is clearly a work of fiction oh-so-typical of the 21st century, this Book of Mormon only thinly veils its modern political agenda. The story begins with a single religious family led by the Abraham-like “father Lehi.” Lehi’s descendants soon splits into two tribes with vastly different religious beliefs. The “false” religious tribe, known as Lamanites, has a darker “Arabic-color” of skin while the “true and Christian” religious tribe, the Nephites, are all described as fair-skinned westerners.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our western-like Nephite tribe is highly productive and soon builds large cities, is productive in capitalistic trade, and gains superior technology while their more technologically primitive Islamic Fundamentalist brethren have to rely on their larger numbers to compete. Hmm… have I heard this story somewhere before?

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Don’t Miss: Computability and Algorithmic Compression

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I forgot to tell my M* friends about my most recent post on Wheat and Tares continuing my exploration of using reason as a guide to reality. My latest post was called “Computability and Algorithmic Compression.” I find it fascinating just how important ‘computability’ is to comprehending reality. But even more fantastic is the fact that it just so happens that reality can be described via computable means. What’s up with that?

To explore this concept I explore a profound quote I came across from physicist John Barrow:

The goal of science is to make sense of the diversity of Nature. It is not based upon observation alone. It employs observation to gather information about the world and to test predictions about how the world will react to new circumstances, but in between these two procedures lies the heart of the scientific process. This is nothing more than the transformation of lists of observational data into abbreviated form by the recognition of patterns. The recognition of such a pattern allows the information content of the observed sequence of events to be replaced by a shorthand formula which possesses the same, or almost the same, information content. … On this view, we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions. … Without the development of algorithmic compressions of data all science would be replaced by mindless stamp collection – the indiscriminate accumulation of every available fact. (Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation, p. 14-15)

Check out the whole post if you haven’t already.