I am not sure the pub is the best analogy, don't you think? A pub is a place where people take substances to escape from the real world. There are better places to meet Bob and have a chat.

I guess #4 shouldn't have been in that list, but a followup paragraph.

"A pub is a place where people take substances to escape from the real world"

I think that's a perfect analogy for religion : )

@Corwin. Good point. I prefer to meet him in the flower garden in the park or at the top of a mountain (there's a campsite in Kakadu that I know he likes) but he goes to the pub as well and it's more convenient for Pete's house (which is just down the road)

@ Parallelopiped. Sounds like I am going to have to take a lot of buses to get there. So what does Bob do in the pub? Is he recruiting or kicking people out?

@Dexter Morgan:

I agree that the Bible, as it is now after too many imperfect translations and alterations by imperfect and sometimes conniving men, is an unreliable source for all religious truth.

What would you say if someone gave you another book, similar to the Bible? A collection of writings of prophets who were commanded to write God's words and compile them into a book. And this book, as a companion to the Bible, would help clarify doctrines that are unclear. Amos 3:7 "Out of the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." What if someone gave you this book and claimed that God wanted you to read it to find out if it was true?

If someone gave me that book I would read it carefully, check its provenance and, if it's the book I think it is, come to the conclusion that it is the most unremittant hogwash.

Oh, and this book came from a different people than the Bible.

@Corwin I think Bob's just hanging out with his buds.

@Parallelpiped

Unfortunately, that seems to be the world's concensus.

@Beetle Bailey, I've been inoculated against Mormonism as I've been exposed to it. I've built up a resistance. (I have close relatives who are Mormon). I don't buy it. The Book of Mormon takes church-based religious faith to the extreme by providing a faith with no evidence what so ever. At least, for example, we know that Pilate existed... and that the places in the Bible existed (I guess they all did... other than ones in the allegories - like the Garden of Eden)... but all Christian faith requires a leap of faith on what to believe. I give it to you LDS folk - you take it to the extreme of believing a whole another book that has to believed *completely* on faith. If Christianity is all about faith, then, in a sense, you've trumped everyone. Just as a quick throw-away comment... I'd like to point out that the Book of Mormon, outside of its very questionable pedigree, actually managed to put provably fictitious information in as well. What, you say? Here it is in one sentence: the existence in the Book of Mormon in its descriptions of the New World including Old World animals and plants that were not present in the New World prior to their introduction by European settlers about 2000 years (600 BC to 1500 AD) later. Perhaps this purposeful error by Moroni allowed in the account by God to test our faith. Perhaps Joseph Smith, being a man ignorant of such zoological/biological information, slipped and gave us unintentionally a clue to his deception/invention. Don't get me wrong, most of the Mormons I've met are very nice people... but the faith is not something I can even get close to swallowing.

@Beetle Bailey, here is a list of Old World animals/plants/technologies claimed by the Book of Mormon to be in the New World: ass (donkey), cow, horses, ox, domesticated sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheat, barley, silk, steel, swords, scimitars, chariots.

@ dexter

You are exactly right about the faith thing. It is difficult to swallow. It is a fantastic story. It does require a lot of faith to believe these things with no proof. The interesting thing about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is that it is ALL or NOTHING. There is no middle ground. You can't believe Joseph Smith's account while disbelieving the Book of Mormon, or vice-versa. Joseph Smith is either one of the biggest frauds the world has ever seen, or all of it is true.

But I'm not saying everyone ought to just accept Joseph Smith's story. I believe that there is no proof for a reason. It requires no action, no behavior change, no faith to accept a "proven fact." A teacher doesn't give you the answers to a test, he gives you a means to develop the knowledge so that you can answer the questions by yourself. It is up to the individual to come to a knowledge of the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon through the means mentioned in the book: Read, ponder, and pray.

I don't believe in the Book of Mormon because the accounts therein are confirmed by an archeologist's dirt or an academic opinion; I believe the Book of Mormon because the Holy Ghost has confirmed it to me. 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."

As to proving the Book of Mormon wrong with the animals mentioned compared to the conquistadors' accounts, that is a rather insignificant excuse to disbelieve. Anyone can find an excuse to discount this work.

Surely though, if it is all or nothing and it isn't all on account of the zoological errors then it must be nothing. If you assert there is no middle ground whilst accepting Dexter's botanical research then surely your own argument leads inexorably to the fact that Joseph Smith is one of the biggest frauds the world has ever seen? (Actually I think he's a small time nutcase whose story got away from him.)

Oh yes and "Anyone can find an excuse to discount this work. " Isn't that because it's flawed from top to bottom. Anyone can find an excuse to discount "Flower fairies in your garden" but this is hardly a reason to hold to its claims as a tenet of faith.

Actually, to be fair, the author of FFIYG does state at the beginning that "It's fun to pretend about fairies but they aren't real". That's one reason to discount the story. I think the preface to the book of Mormon acts as a similar spur.

Discounting The Book of Mormon by zoological means is like straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. It is a small excuse. The book never claims to be a means to study the animals of the day. That is not the book's purpose. One should not use an imperfect zoological account to disprove a non-zoologically based text.

Again, the means for believing The Book of Mormon are written in the book:

Moroni 10:3-5
3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

You see, the thing is, I'm not swallowing the camel.
Looking at your text
v3. This seems to translate to"Look, if and when you read this you should remember that God has been merciful to men since creation and think about that."
v4 "When you read the book you should ask God if they are true or not and, if you ask honestly and in faith, he will let you know."
v5 "And through God's power you will know what is true and what isn't."
So, if we read the book (tick) then we should remember God's mercy (tick), think about it (tick), pray to him for guidance (tick) and he will let us know if they are true or not.
Not terribly convincing to a non-believer, I suspect, but I've done all that and have found that the book of Mormon is not the Word of God.

Fair enough. You've been given the opportunity and made a choice. I can't ask for more. I respectfully wish you the best. If you have any questions or other comments, let me know. :)

@Beetle Bailey, I find archeologist's dirt and academic opinion (makes it sound like it was arrived to out of thin air) much more convincing than what someone dictated with their face buried in a hat. There is, for example, considerable evidence of the existence of each of the aforementioned Old World items in drawings on pottery, carvings in rock, frescos, and written accounts - in the Old World... but there is zero evidence of any of these things in the New World. Zero. Considering the large quantity of items that survive this is rather significant. Don't you think it's odd that inventions as central to Bronze Age or Iron Age societies as swords and wheels and domestication of animals would not have made it onto any of their artwork or historical accounts?

Some fun reading...

New study shows that people's intuition of God's views matched rather well with their own views - regardless of what those views were... i.e. we treat God as our own personal sockpuppet. (they even use the same parts of the brain to consider both) It may be worth considering that, if there is a god, that God's views ...are unknowable.:

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/creating_god_in_ones_own_image.php

New study shows that brain processes facts and beliefs the same way... is it any wonder that some think that believing hard enough will make it so... 'cause, in a sense (our perception), it does.:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216551?from=rss

These two studies pretty much encapsulate what I think about faith (and show that I have some tangible reason to feel the way I have for most of my life). I realize that in situations where we have no information that faith/guessing is all we may have to fall back upon... but I realize: 1) that it is happening in my brain... I'm not getting messages from God, 2) it may feel like truth but believing really hard does not make it so.

The debate of "proof" one way or another will always remain open. It has never been God's way to prove something this important. His way of reveling truth is through the Spirit. Throughout the Bible and Book of Mormon, God tells us to "ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." Over and over again, He tells us that we must ask. Something this important must be told through the Spirit. It can and will be given to us, by God, after adequate and honest effort.

I wish I could communicate to those reading this via a different medium. Typing just makes it all sound . . . . thin.

The question, dexter, is if people have the same reaction to science--that is, do people impute to "science" the opinions that they want to believe, even to the point of ignoring scientific evidence that contradicts what they want to believe?

I would be very interested to see the same study run, but instead of comparing peoples' opinions to what they think God's opinions are, to compare their opinions to what they believe science has proven. I have a pretty good idea of what the result would be . . . but maybe that's just because I think that science will prove what I want it to prove.

@Dexter: I agree. It is hard enough to understand humans' and animals' motives, how can anybody can claim he/she knows God's? Isn't it a little bit arrogant?

@ dexter

" Once the story has been shown to be incorrect and not written by God, what gives us reason to believe any part of it without outside verification? We might be tempted to keep the "Let there be light" part about how God created the universe... but what reason are we basing that on? We have already realized that the document is unreliable..."

That is as long as it was meant to be a scientific document that was supposed to be absolutely factual to begin with. If I write a story that illustrates a point (Man's relationship with God), and it does. Then I haven't erred and my story isn't prrof of that errancy. If it's a narrative and not a scientific document then your argument comes up short. We've been arguing all along that religion and science are separate disciplines. This seems to be just another incident of trying to apply the rules for one to an examination of the other.

The comic strip idea was abit of a joke really. It was merely to show that all of the detaills of present scientific theory were not necessary in a creation story originally for Bronze Age nomads, but still posseses truth in terms of the relationship between God and Man.

@Beetle Bailey, I am on the same page as you in regards to having an open heart... I can only go that far - I cannot divorce my heart from my brain... I am too much of a skeptic. That said, I think it is less important what we believe about such things as creation or biblical events or science, then it is to act in a compassionate way and to be the best we can be. ...if I were a Christian I would be the one who believes that only works are important.

@PeripheralVisionary, (nice name, btw)... good point. The human tendency to ignore things that disagree with us as being "noise" or irrelevant is definitely real and one needs to strive to be vigilant about such things as much as one can be. It can be quite an honest mistake, too... people see patterns - people connect dots... those optical illusions with the second figure in the negative space are a great example... we bend our mind to see the second figure... but somehow the first figure is easier. And you point about science is completely on target. People sometimes do design experiments to prove their view (rather than to try to see if they can disprove it... i.e. test it). I tend to think that because science depends on repeated trials by numerous individuals (many who would be happy to make a name for themselves by upending conventional wisdom) that these things tend to get worked out over time and we end up with pretty well supported views of the world. The thing we probably want to most watch out for, as lay people (outside of our discipline, whatever it is) is the sloppy popularization or sloppy reporting by other laymen who are looking for a headline or a conformation of a dearly held belief... which is good reason to doubt my assertions... and check them out for yourself. A well designed experiement should account for biases... it should have control groups, etc. Such design features tend to suss out fact from fiction. Faith just asks you to believe. It gets away with this based on the concept that spiritual things are in this other realm that we cannot see, measure or return from. Science should never ask you to believe something that can't be tested. When a scientist does come out with something like that - such as Cold Fusion in the mid-1990s, it wasn't long before it was debunked. Sometimes it takes a long time before concepts are tested... Aristotle believed that heavy objects fell faster than lighter objects (seems reasonable enough when untested... or when tested without taking into account air resistance)... it was near 2000 years before Galileo tested it and found it to not be the case. Conventional dogma does not make something true. Tests must be rigorous and scientists must be prepared to question even long held beliefs if that is what the data tells them.

@Crazy Anglican, I have no real issue with the thought that the stories in the bible are just illustrations for the sake of selling us on what our relationship to God should be or how we should live our lives... not at all. But where is the bright line between that and simple generic Theism? Christianity asks us to believe certain things as historical fact... yet the only source for these things is a document that is flawed... and yet the Church asks us (in varying degrees, depending on the church) to believe that the Bible is the word of God. If it is the Word of God (and not written by man) then it cannot have error (so therefore it is not the Word of God). If it is written by man to be an persuasive speech to get us to behave and find faith then at what point to we turn off our BS meter? If we just made up the crap about the six days (which is right at the beginning... where usually you put forward your best foot), and we clearly made up the crap at the end, and even in the Gospels there are internal contradictions... then when do you decide where the bathwater ends and the baby begins. If it is simply telling us to be good to each other and to listen to your heart and sometimes to the hard thing because it's the right thing... then I'm a Christian. Once it starts telling stories then I get skeptical... I filter them through my rhetoric filter (the one that I have on when a politician tells us about Ms. Cutwater of Eldon, Indiana). So - what makes the gospel story more real than Job or Noah or Moses or Adam or Let there be Light? Aren't they all suspect as being constructed to sell us on something?

@ dexter. I'm glad to hear someone say works are important. "By their works ye shall know them." Following God's laws to the best of our understanding is, of course, much more important than professing to know God's laws better than others. "Faith without works is dead, being alone." But faith also leads us to further search and understand God's laws. Neither faith nor works can be neglected. But I agree with you, if I HAD to choose between the two, I would choose works too.

my mistake, "By their fruits ye shall know them." pretty much the same thing.