Mormon epistemology, part 4

This is my response to George when he asked me what I thought about James 1:5, and it's an explanation for why I don't think asking God for a subjective experience is the best way to determine whether somebody is a true prophet or not, or whether a book contains his revelation or not. Keep in mind that I'm not posting all of our emails. I'm editing some stuff out, and I'm doing a bit of formatting and italicizing. If I add anything, I'll put it in [brackets].

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I don't think that "knowledge" and "wisdom" are the same thing. Knowledge is, for the most part, accurate information. Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge effectively, or you might say it's the ability to make good decisions. You have to have some knowledge already before you can apply wisdom. So I don't think James is telling us that if we want to know if something is true, we should ask God about it.

If simply praying to God to ask him for a bit of information was the best way to determine whether something was true, the majority of the scriptures would be superfluous. And even in our everyday lives, teaching, learning, investigating, and all the things we do on a daily basis to determine whether things are true or false would be superfluous.

George:
Nor does it say "if any of you lack wisdom, read the Bible, and you'll find the answers there (although I believe that can be the case sometimes).

It does say that when Paul took the gospel message to the Bereans that "these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). Clearly, the author of Acts thought that examining the scriptures to determine whether somebody's message is true was a noble thing to do.

Mormons aren't unique in their epistemology. I see this sort of thing rampant among Evangelical Christians. The vast majority of them think they should pray to God to answer their questions, to determine God's will for their lives, and to make decisions. But the vast majority of them are Biblically illiterate, too. It has never made sense to me. Everybody wants to hear the voice of God, but few take an interest in what God has already revealed in the Scriptures. I think it's perfectly appropriate to pray for understanding when you're reading the Bible, but I think it's absurd to pray for God to reveal some truth to you that he has already revealed in the Scriptures when you won't even go to the effort of reading them. I don't imagine, for example, that you would pray to God to ask him whether you ought to steal or lie or something like that. You already know you shouldn't do those things.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, it talks about the coming of the "Man of Lawlessness," and how his coming will be "with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive a love of the truth so as to be saved" (v.9-10). You have to love the truth if you want to avoid being deceived. The passage goes on to say that "God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false..." If a person loves the truth, they will study the Bible as far as they are able to discover it. And in doing so, they are far less likely to fall for every wind of teaching floating around out there. I think Hosea 4:6 aptly applies to a lot of evangelicals today when it says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." [I'm indebted to Amy Hall from Stand to Reason for this point.]

We know different things in different ways. The Bible is specific about how we know whether a person is presenting a message from God or not. It doesn't say that we should pray about such things. It says, "Do not despise prophetic utterance, but examine everything carefully" (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21). When it comes to prophecy, we are to examine it, not simply ask God if it's true. But how do we examine some new message if we have nothing to compare it to?

We have to know the scriptures if we are to effectively examine it. People fall for counterfeits when they don't know the genuine. That applies, not just to religious things, but to all things in life. For example, you couldn't recognize a counterfeit hundred dollar bill if you did not know what a real hundred dollar bill was like. Likewise, Paul said that "if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!" (Galatians 1:9). So we have to know the true gospel before we can recognize that something is a false gospel or a distortion of the true gospel.

to be continued...

Part 5

Mormon epistemology, part 3

In one of the emails from the Mormon fellow I've been talking about, he said, "I've received my answer from the Lord. However, I don't want you to believe me. I want you to take it to the Lord and get an answer from Him." He didn't say how the Lord answered him. I just assumed he was referring to some sort of subjective experience since that's what most Mormons say. So I wrote back and said, "I don't think asking God for a subjective experience is the best way to determine whether somebody is a true prophet or not, or whether a book contains his revelation or not."

That's when he brought up James 1:5:

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

Before I go on, lemme explain why I keep saying, "Mormon fellow" instead of saying, "Jim" or "Bob" or whoever he is. I asked him ahead of time if he'd be okay with me posting some of our dialogue on my blog. He didn't come right out and say "no," but at the same time, he didn't seem to feel entirely comfortable with it. He said that as long as I wasn't degrading that he didn't mind. So, I'm protecting his identity. Let's just call him George. I like that name, and I'm tired of saying "Mormon fellow."

Anyway, George said he'd be interested in knowing what I think about James 1:5. This is the rest of his email:

I don't see any disclaimers on that verse. Anything that says "you can ask anything BUT _____". Nor does it say "if any of you lack wisdom, read the Bible, and you'll find the answers there (although I believe that can be the case sometimes). God is our father, we are his children. I believe that this scripture is true. Most people in the world "lack wisdom" as to whether or not there is a true prophet of God on the earth today.

Lastly, I think it's interesting how many Christians feel that praying to God and asking him if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the Book of Mormon is true is a terrible thing to do.....don't they believe God answers prayer? If it's false he'll tell them "nope....it's not true". Shouldn't they confidently pray to God, and then if God reveals to them that it is true, shouldn't they be joyful that they've received light and truth from heavenly father?

Isn't this a truly biblical and Christian way to access truth? The LDS teachings do not contradict the Bible....we believe in both. They may conflict with certain interpretations of the Bible, but that does not mean that they conflict with the Bible.

Matthew 21:22 "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

In my next blog entry, I'll post my response. I may break it up into parts, though, because it's long.

Part 4

Mormon epistemology, part 2

Before I share the email I wrote about James 1:5, I want to share a few things I've heard from Mormons themselves about how they came to be Mormons.

They all rely on a subjective experience to substantiate their beliefs, but they don't all describe the subjective experience in the same way. Some describe it solely in terms of their subjective experience, and some say it is a combination of their subjective experience and the evidence for the Book of Mormon.

Most Mormons who have explained their subjective experience to me explain it in terms of some sort of feeling or emotion. A Mormon friend of mine has tried to explain it to me a few times. The last time, I had a chance to ask her questions about it. She would explain something, and I'd say, "So you basically base it on your feelings?" And then she would explain some more, and I'd ask the same question. She didn't dispute that it was based on her feelings. She just seemed to think I wasn't getting it and needed more explanation. But she did explicitly use the word "feelings" to describe her experience then and in previous conversations. She did tell me in one of our conversations (or email; I don't remember) that it's something I would have to experience for myself before I could understand it.

Just last Friday, a Mormon explained to me how she came to be a Mormon. She said she grew up in the LDS church, and around the age of 12, she began to have doubts. After struggling with the doubts and praying about it, she had a profound experience that caused her to believe. While trying to explain her experience she said that it was not a feeling. She just said that when she reads Paul, she can't help but love him, and she has the same experience when she reads the Book of Mormon.

Later in the conversation, she started giving me objective reasons to believe the Book of Mormon was true. She pointed out the Hebrew chiasmus poetry found in the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith could not have known about. And she pointed to Smith's lack of education in comparison to his prolific writing as evidence that the Spirit was teaching him. She didn't say whether these things had any bearing on her belief. She may have just been trying to give me reasons to believe. After all, the reasons we believe things are not always the reasons we give other people to believe. One might use an alibi to prove their innocence, but the alibi is not why the person believes in their own innocence.

The first Mormon missionaries I talked to over ten years ago wanted me to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, and they told me God would reveal the truth of it to me. I didn't read the whole Book of Mormon back then, but I did pray about it. I had a rather negative feeling about it at the time. Recently, I have read the whole Book of Mormon and no longer feel the need to pray about it. I'll say more about that in a future blog entry.

I talked to some Mormon missionaries about a year ago, and we talked for at least an hour just about epistemology. They based their beliefs entirely on their subjective experience. I asked them what they thought about FARMS, which is a Mormon apologetics organization that attempts to defend the Book of Mormon using objective evidence. One of them told me they thought FARMS was misguided, because their beliefs were not supposed to be based on objective evidence, but on the witness of the Holy Ghost. He even went so far as to say that no evidence or argument could overturn his belief. If I could show him from the Bible that Mormonism was false, that would just cause him to have doubts about the Bible. I am not kidding.

Lastly, as I've mentioned before, the Mormon fellow I had the email exchange with told me that his beliefs are based on a combination of his subjective experiences and the objective evidence. He said that one, by itself, could lead a person astray.

Part 3

Mormon epistemology, part 1

If you've ever talked to Mormon missionaries or if you've ever even breathed the air around Mormons, you've probably caught wind of something about their epistemology. Maybe you've heard about their "burning in the bosom," or how their feelings cause them to believe that the LDS church is the true church of Christ. Well, personally I've been hearing a lot of different things lately. I haven't got it all sorted out just yet, but I wanted to share with you the wide variety of things I've been hearing on the subject from Mormons and from their scriptures.

The most common thing that comes up is Moroni 10:4. Moroni was supposedly the last living Nephite after the Lamanites exterminated the rest of them (except for the three disciples Jesus promised would never die). The book of Moroni contains some of Moroni's last words before burying the golden plates that Joseph Smith found and that supposedly the Book of Mormon was translated from. Chapter 10 of Moroni is the last chapter of the Book of Mormon. Moroni was writing about the Book of Mormon itself, and he said:

And when ye shall receive these things [i.e. the BOM], 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.

If you look carefully, all this passage says is that if you ask God whether the BOM is true, he will let you know. It doesn't say anything about feelings or burnings in the bosom. It doesn't say anything about how God will let you know it's true, only that he will. Maybe he does it through feelings, burnings in the bosom, audible voices, exposing you to convincing evidence, or directly zapping your brain with belief.

So where does the idea come from that God reveals truths to people by way of feelings or burnings in their bosoms? I spent some time this morning looking for references in the index of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants and came up with a few references. I'm going to bring some of them up, but keep in mind that I don't know for sure that Mormons use all of these to justify their views. I'm only bringing up the ones I think they might use.

1 Nephi 17:45
Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words.

In this passage, Nephi is speaking to his unbelieving brothers. I'm not sure what it means to feel words. I get the impression that since they heard the words but did not feel them, it probably just means to believe them or take them to heart.

2 Nephi 4:12
And it came to pass after my father, Lehi, had spoken unto all his household, according to the feelings of his heart and the Spirit of the Lord which was in him, he waxed old. And it came to pass that he died, and was buried.

This passage uses two phrases--"feelings of his heart" and "Spirit of the Lord"--to describe the sources from which Lehi spoke. It could be that these are two ways of saying the same thing. It is the Spirit of the Lord who speaks to Lehi through the feelings of his heart. That's one way to look at it. Another possibility is that they are distinct, and the author is saying that some of the things Lehi spoke, he spoke because of the feelings he had for his household, and some of the things Lehi spoke, he spoke because the Spirit of the Lord commanded him to.

3 Nephi 11:3
And it came to pass that while they were thus conversing one with another, they heard a voice as if it came out of heaven; and they cast their eyes round about, for they understood not the voice which they heard; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn.

This is the first reference I found to anything like a burning in the bosom. In this case, though, it isn't the burning in their hearts that communicated information from God. They already heard the voice. They just didn't understand it. And the heartburn didn't cause them to understand it either. It was simply the result of hearing it. I suppose you could say that since voices from God cause your heart to burn, then you can tell from your heartburn that a voice is from God. The argument would look like this:

If God speaks, then your heart will burn.
My heart burns.
Therefore, God is speaking.

But this argument commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. A person's heart can burn for a variety of reasons--something you ate, how you feel about what is being said (e.g. fear, excitement, enthusiasm, etc.), or the conviction you feel because of what is being said. The burning in the bosom, by itself, doesn't give you any information.

D&C 9:8-9
But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.

This is a prophecy given through Joseph Smith to Oliver Cowdry concerning Cowdry's ability to translate or write for Joseph Smith. The burning in the bosom is how Cowdry was supposed to be able to tell whether a message or translation was coming from God or not, but notice it also says he should first study it out in his mind. I don't know whether you can universalize this passage so that it applies, not just to Cowdry, but to everybody. And I don't know whether you can universalize it so that it applies, not just to translating, but to any kind of message from God.

If I were a Mormon, I'd be reluctant to universalize it because of how Smith tells Cowdry how he can know something is not from God. It says he will forget the thing that is wrong. If that were universalized, Mormons would not be able to remember what other Christians teach or believe, or what they've read in Christian literature about Christian doctrine.

The Mormon fellow I mentioned in my previous blog entries told me that he thinks it applies to us as well. He also told me that "We should use our hearts and our minds to learn truth. One with out the other can (as history shows us) often leads men astray."

There are also a few Biblical passages Mormons use to justify their epistemology.

Acts 2:37
Now when they heard this [Peter's speech], they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brethren, what shall we do?"

This passage doesn't really say they were pierced to the heart and therefore believed what Peter had just told them. My impression is that it's the other way around. They were pierced to the heart (i.e. convicted) as a result of believing what Peter was saying. So the belief came before the piercing.

Luke 24:32
And they said to one another, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road, while he was explaining the Scriptures to us?"

This comes from the passage in Luke where Jesus was walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he explained the Scriptures to them. Again, the passage doesn't tell us whether they believed because their hearts burned or whether their hearts burned because they believed. I get the impression that their hearts burned because they believed. After all, it says that Jesus "explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures" (v.27). It's the explanation that clarified things for them, not the heartburn. The heartburn was a result of having it explained. They had just explained to Jesus (who they didn't recognize at the time) how they had high hopes that Jesus would be the one who would redeem Israel, and how they had been disappointed. By explaining the Scriptures to them, Jesus was restoring their hopes. Of course their hearts would burn!

There are many sciptures Mormons use to justify their heart/feeling epistemology. They aren't unique, either. Many evangelicals use the same scriptures to make the same points. Rather than go into detail about all of them, I just want to recommend Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen and J. Robin Maxson. Or, if you don't want to read all of that, get Greg Koukl's MP3's or CD's on Decision-Making and the Will of God.

There's one last scripture I want to mention because the Mormon fellow I've been talking about brought it up.

James 1:5
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

I wrote kind of a lengthy response, so I'm going to save my comments for a future blog entry.

Part 2

An argument against Mormonism from their concept of eternal marriage

In my last entry on Mormonism, I listed three questions that have to be answered in the affirmative if Mormonism is to be true:

1. Was Joseph Smith a prophet of God?
2. Was the Book of Mormon really written by ancient prophets (...and is it true)?
3. Was Christ's church lost from the earth and then restored through Joseph Smith?

The person who sent me these three questions said if they are all true, then several other things are also true:

- The LDS church is the one and only true church on the earth. While others might do good and teach some truth, only one is authorized by God and lead by Jesus Christ.
- There is a prophet of the Lord that speaks to us just as Moses, Abraham, and Isaac of Old.
- God has a plan for us and it has been revealed to us
- We can better understand the Bible through modern prophets and additional scripture, all of which help us to better understand the Lord and his plan for us.
- Marriages, when performed in the Temple, can be, not just only for this life, but for all eternity.
- We have additional understanding of life after death.
- Members of the church can hold the priesthood of God and can act in his name to bless, heal, baptize, etc.
- You can receive the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost to help and aid you in your life.

Today, I want to share a thought that I think it not only applicable here, but is applicable in many other areas of thinking. In any deductive argument, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. It isn't possible for the conclusion to be false if both of the premises are true and if the conclusion follows logically from the premises. So, if it turns out that the conclusion is false, then that necessarily entails that at least one of the premises that led to the conclusion is also false.

Not so with inductive arguments. If a conclusion becomes more probable when the premises are true, and if the conclusion turns out to be false, that only makes the premises less probable, but not impossible.

It could be that some Mormons would disagree with the fellow who sent me this email, but the fellow who sent me this email seemed to think all of the things that followed from a "yes" answer to the three questions above followed deductively. He said, "If those three things are in fact true, then the rest that is built upon it is also true."

If that is, in fact, the case, then the entire Mormon religion can be shown to be false just by showing that one of those points is false. It just takes one! One could argue like so:

-If 1, 2, and 3 are true, then x is true.
-X is not true.
-Therefore, 1, 2 and 3 are not true.

The one that jumps out most to me is the one about eternal marriage.

Marriages, when performed in the Temple, can be, not just only for this life, but for all eternity.

Jesus addressed this issue explicitly in Matthew 22:23-33. Jesus taught that there would be a resurrection of the dead, but the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection. So they confronted Jesus about it.

In this confrontation, the Sadducees made what is called a reductio ad absurdum argument. That's where you take a person's point of view to its logical conclusion. If the logical conclusion of a person's point of view is absurd, then the premises that led to it are also absurd. The Sadducees assumed, for the sake of argument, that resurrection was true. Then they constructed a scenario under that assumption and asked Jesus about it. In the scenario, a woman married several brothers, one after the other as each died, and the Sadducees asked Jesus, "In the resurrection therefore whose wife of the seven shall she be? For they all had her."

In asking this question, they hoped to expose the absurdity of resurrection. Either this woman would be married to all of the men, which is absurd, or she would be married to only one of them. But there is no way to determine which of them she would be married to, so there's no way for Jesus to answer the question.

Jesus responded by rejecting the hidden assumption in their question, which is that she would be married to any of them. He said, "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." In other words, the woman would not be married to any of the seven brothers at the resurrection. She would be like the angels--single.

After Jesus removed the objection the Sadducees had to resurrection, he went on to show them, from the Torah, that resurrection is true.

I suppose a Mormon could say, "Well, yes, it's true that in the resurrection, people will not get married, but those who have already gotten married will remain so." If that's what Jesus was saying, then he didn't rebut the Sudducees' argument after all. In fact, he said something that was completely irrelevent to the question they asked. It seems perfectly clear to me that Jesus intended to convey to the Sadducees that nobody will be married at the resurrection. Marriage is for this mortal life only.

Now we can make the following argument:

-If Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets, and Christ's church was lost from the earth and restored through Joseph Smith, then marriages, when performed in the Temple, can be, not just only for this life, but for all eternity.
-Marriage is not for all eternity.
-Therefore, Joseph Smith is not a prophet of God, the Book of Mormon was not written by ancient prophets, and Christ's church was not lost from earth and restored through Joseph Smith.

So Mormonism is not true.

Somebody on Yahoo Answers asked a similar question as the Sadducees asked Jesus, only instead of a woman marrying several men, they asked about whether a man could be sealed for eternity with another woman in case his wife died. The Mormons answered that yes, he could. At the resurrection, he would be married to every woman he had married in the Temple and had his marriage sealed for eternity. So there will be polygamy in heaven.

That made me wonder whether it worked the other way around, so I posted a question on Yahoo Answers. Could a woman have her marriage sealed to more than one man in case her first husband died? The concensus from the Mormons was that she could not. So, in heaven, a man can have several wives, but a woman cannot have several husbands.

I suppose a Mormon might answer my argument by saying that Jesus was only dealing with a woman who had several husbands. It was an obvious absurdity to suggest that a woman could have more than one husband at the resurrection, but if the Sadducees had asked him about a man who had had several wives, Jesus could've easily answered by saying they would all be his wives at the resurrection, and that would not have been absurd. But that argument would fail because the woman could have been married to at least one of the men at the resurrection, but Jesus answered by saying she wouldn't be married to any of them.

A Mormon might also answer my argument by saying that the Sadducees were talking about ordinary marriage, not about Temple marriages that are sealed for eternity. I think that is a very weak argument for several reasons.

First, because the concept of eternal marriage is completely foreign to the Bible.

Second, marriages were never performed in temples, neither in Judaism nor in Christianity.

Third, if the Mormon concept of eternal marriages being sealed in Temples was a view that Jesus held, the conversation with the Sadducees would've looked much different, I think. It would've looked something like this:

Sadducees: If a woman married and her husband died without having children, and she married his brother who also died without having children, etc., whose wife would she be at the resurrection?

Jesus: She wouldn't be married to any of them unless her marriage was sealed for eternity in the Temple.

Sadducees: Okay, so suppose her marriages were sealed for eternity to all of them.

Jesus: That can't happen. She can only be sealed to one of them. At the resurrection, she would be married to whichever one she had been sealed to, if any.

What an opportunity for Jesus to instruct the Sadducees on the Mormon concept of eternal marriage! A Mormon might say that Jesus' silence on the matter was due to the fact that eternal marriage was normative in Judaism, and the Sadducees already knew about it. But if that was the case, then you'd expect the Sadducees to make a better argument and include the concept of eternal marriage in there.

A Mormon might say that the knowledge of eternal marriage is implicit in the argument of the Sadducees, since they were assuming she had to be married to somebody at the resurrection. But that's the very assumption the Sadducees rejected! They could not have believed in eternal marriage for the simple reason that they did not believe in eternal life! They did not believe in a resurrection. They seemed to think that eternal marriage followed from the doctrine of resurrection, and they were mistaken about that, as Jesus showed them. Mormons are mistaken about it, too.

It seems to me that the one argument a Mormon could make is that the Bible has been tampered with. We don't really have an accurate version of this passage. We'll save that for another blog entry.

I am not trying to be condescending when I bring up these hypothetical things a Mormon might say. I want to make a disclaimer about that since there may be Mormons reading this who might be offended that I'm insulting their intelligence. I have never heard a Mormon actually raise these objections that I'm bringing up, and I don't know whether they actually would or not. So why am I bringing them up? I'm doing it because I'm simply trying to anticipate any possible rejoinders that I can think of. I'm trying to cover all my bases. If there are other rejoinders that I didn't think of, then I'd like to hear them.

Some general comments on Mormonism

I've been learning as much as I can lately about Mormonism, and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on it in a few blog entries. Mormons are extremely sensative about being misrepresented. Since I don't know a whole lot about the LDS church, I'm sure I have some misunderstandings, but I'm going to try to be accurate and fair. One of the things I've learned lately is that LDS theology is not nearly as well-defined as I thought it was. There is far more diversity of belief within the LDS church than I used to think. Some of their peculiar beliefs that I used to think were official doctrine turn out to be just some people's opinions. Or at least that's what I've been told.

For me, there are really two major questions to concern myself with about Mormonism, or any other worldview. First, what is it? Second, is it true? The question of epistemology always comes up when delving into the second question, and I plan on spending a lot of time on it.

According to a conversation I had recently with some Mormons, it isn't necessary to fully answer the first question before answering the second. In an email I got from a Mormon fellow I met on Yahoo Answers, there are three things I ought to focus on to determine whether Mormonism is true:

1. Was Joseph Smith a prophet of God?
2. Was the Book of Mormon really written by ancient prophets (...and is it true)?
3. Was Christ's church lost from the earth and then restored through Joseph Smith?

If these things are true, then all the peculiarities of the LDS church are also true, and he listed several of them. If a person answered "yes" to all of the above questions, I suppose they could conclude that Mormonism is true and they could convert without knowing all of the things that follow from those three points. I'm sure they'd have to know some of them; just not all.

It seems to me that these three questions are interrelated. If it turns out that the Book of Mormon was not really written by ancient prophets, then Joseph Smith is not a prophet of God. And if Joseph Smith is not a prophet of God, then Christ's church was not restored through Joseph Smith. So it seems like if you could answer "no" to any one of these questions, you'd have to answer "no" to the rest of them. But does it work the other way around if you answered "yes" to any one of them?

I don't think so. If Joseph Smith is a prophet, or if Joseph Smith restored Christ's church, then I think the others would follow. But if it turns out that the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets, I don't think that necessarily entails a "yes" answer to the other questions.

Lemme explain. If the Book of Mormon really is an accurate translation of ancient American writings, then I think it's safe to say that Joseph Smith translated those writings through some kind of supernatural power. But does that necessarily make him a true prophet of God? No, it doesn't. In Deteronomy 13:1-5, it says that if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams gives a sign or a wonder, and if it turns out to be true or comes to pass, that doesn't necessarily mean he's a prophet of God. That prophet may go on to encourage people to go after other gods, in which case he is to be rejected.

Chunk

I saw this loud kid at the gas station who looked and sounded exactly like "Chunk" from The Goonies. I said to him, "Have you ever seen that movie, The Goonies?" He nodded knowingly and said, "Chunk." He was there with a bunch of friends who were buying junk food. He wanted some gum but didn't have any money so I told him I'd buy him some gum if he'd let me take his picture. He did the shuffle for me and everything! It's kind of blurry because I used my cell phone.

Stand to Reason Alaska Cruise

A couple of years ago, Stand to Reason had an Alaskan cruise with people like J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. I really wanted to go because I was already a big fan of Greg Koukl, J.P. Moreland, and Bill Craig, and also because I had always wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise. But, alas, poverty would not permit it.

Things were different this time. I have a better job, and I managed to save enough money to go on an Alaskan cruise. And I also figured that since I was in my 30's and hadn't really done much, and might possibly die in another 30 years, I ought to get some adventure into my life. So all of that helped me decide to go on this cruise.

I took bunches of pictures and even a few video clips using my flip video camera. I got some video clips of some big chunks of ice falling off of a glacier into the water, and that was pretty cool!

Well, this cruise was a lot of fun, because for the first time in my life, I was around a lot of like-minded people. I mean other Christian's who were interested in apologetics and who I could have really good deep conversations with about it. I didn't even have any social anxiety attacks! It was awesome!

I thought I'd share some pictures with you. This first one was taken in Skagway. I was just walking along this creek where there were people fishing for salmon, and I saw a little trail that seemed to lead up into the mountain. I decided to walk up there and see where it went. I ended up hiking up there for about 5 hours, because the trail was really long and pretty steep in some places. After about 2 hours, I found this lake called "icy lake," but it wasn't frozen.



I continued to walk because a sign said there were some water falls. I was mostly alone up there in the woods, and sometimes the trail seemed to disappear. I got to thinking, "You know, a bear could come running out of the woods at any moment and eat me." I had my flip video camera with me, though, just in case. I figured if I was going to die, at least maybe somebody could be entertained once they found the video recorder. They could see the bear coming. I didn't see any bears, though. I didn't see a moose either. Shoot, I hardly saw any wildlife at all up there. Near the bottom, I saw a squirrel and a couple of birds, but that was it.

Every night, we got to eat in the Rotterdam dining room, and we had assigned seating. They stuck all of us STR people together, and these are the people I ate with.



From left to right, that's Josh, his dad Eugene, me, Steve, and Leroy (pronounced 'leROY," not 'LEroy.') They were really nice people, and we had some good conversations.

I had read a lot of stuff by J.P. Moreland and Greg Koukl, so I was really excited about having the opportunity to talk to them. I don't know if you remember or not, but I posted a blog a while back about a question I had been wanting to ask J.P. Moreland for years concerning beliefs, rationality, and volition. It was hard to talk to J.P. or anybody else because everybody else wanted to talk to them, but I did manage to catch J.P. and finally ask him my question. We had a nice chat about it, and then a couple of days later, I had another nice chat with him one on one.

J.P. was a bit of a recluse I think. He was very kind and generous with his time, but when the opportunity presented itself, he was gone. One time we were all up on the crows nest, and J.P. was surrounded. Then somebody said, "Orca!" and everybody looked out the window to see the orcas. I did, too. When I turned back around, J.P. was gone.

He did let me get a picture with him, though.



I got to eat lunch with Greg Koukl and six other people. Greg spent almost the entire time talking. We just had to poke him now and again. I felt a little bad about it because we were all finished eating, and he had barely begun because he had spent the whole time answering questions. Very nice fellow! I met him on the crows nest later that day, and he had all kinds of nice things to say to me, and it just about gave me a big head. So I said, "How would you like to have your picture taken with me?" He was all for it, and I asked Melinda Penner to join in.



I have never read anything by Josh McDowell because he's so popular that he's almost a cliche, and from what I've read, non-believers aren't that impressed with him. I admit that on an intellectual level, I wasn't that impressed with him either when I heard him talk. He made what I thought were some misleading statements that (in my opinion) inappropriately made the evidence for Christianity look better than it actually is.

But Josh won me over on a personal level. He's one of the most likable and friendly people I've ever met. He was jovial, funny, layed back, cheerful, warm, deep, personable, and just an all around good guy--the kind of guy you'd want to be friends with. Now I've become interested in reading his stuff just because I like him on a personal level, and I'm more curious about what goes through his head. He told me his two best sellers were the exact opposite in writing. Evidence That Demands a Verdict (I'm linking to the revised edition) took him the longest to write, and More Than a Carpenter was written in the shortest amount of time. He said he basically wrote MTaC in one sitting. It took him 48 hours to write it, and he didn't sleep that whole time.

I think I may have exasperated Josh with questions. I just figured this was my once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to these guys, so at the risk of pestering them and wearing out my welcome, I talked to them as much as I could and asked questions every opportunity I got. Josh was nice about the whole thing, though, and he let me get a picture with him.



Unfortunately, it was back lit with the flash on, so I had to play with the picture a little just so you could see our faces. This was the best I could do.

Sean McDowell, Josh's son, was there, too, and he was one of the speakers. I didn't get a picture with him, though. I did buy his book, Understanding Intelligent Design, though, and he signed it for me. He asked, "Who should I make it out to?" I said, "To my good friend, Sam!" So that's how he signed it.

I noticed a curious thing about Greg, J.P., and Sean (we're on a first name basis, you see). I noticed that when they spoke, they all had the same kind of body language. They all made the exact same kind of hand gestures and such. It was interesting. Josh had a style all his own, though. He didn't even use an outline. It was all just in his head.