Just to play devil’s advocate here…

The Church recommends a personal “witness” to the truthfulness of these things, particularly the Book of Mormon. A personal witness is received through prayer (as opposed to logical reasoning). Why couldn’t someone receive a witness that the Book of Mormon is in fact, false? In other words, a sign?

In the novel, the characters place a small fish (called a Babel fish) into their ears. The fish allows the characters to understand anything said in any language.

Since it is mind-bogglingly unlikely that anything so useful could have evolved by chance, the Babel fish was used as a proof of the non-existence of God:

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. Q.E.D..”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Furthermore, if we really believe that there must be uncertainty and anomalies, why do we place so much emphasis on “knowing” that the church is true?

As I’ve stated before, I think a difficulty arises in our Church concerning the different powers of persuasion of faith vs. knowledge. The Book of Mormon may be a book of faith, but it is a book which presents histories with facts, and facts want observation and proof. And the Church wants us to believe the facts (as well as the religious theories) as true without proving them. It’s a conundrum.

If Joseph had simply written a book of doctrinal theories, and then asked us to rely on these words as having been inspired, it might be easier for us. Instead, we have this real artifact, translated from gold plates buried for hundreds of years, and written in a civilized language, concerning the real history of real people that really lived, and yet we cannot prove it, which is frustrating to many people (including myself, unfortunately).

I think that we are promised intellectual dissonance:

“Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.”

Mosiah 4:9

We never take that last line seriously: we’ve been told that we just can’t and won’t comprehened everything.

Eventually, faith is supplanted by knowledge. But this is something that is a consequence of personal revelation. So certain individuals may well know the Church is true. This is information they acquire through individual pondering or sacred experience, as opposed to easily replicable experiments. I am arguing that there should not be such readily replicable and foolproof experiments because they would give us a knowledge that would be damning to us.

I am further arguing that, although this may not be the case all the time and everywhere, I would not be surprised if anomalies are essential in that they are, in some sense, needed. That those who trip over anomalies may be facing, in some cases, a needed test. For some people, overcoming these anomalies is akin to the Abrahamic sacrifice.

In addition to testing some people, they force people to develop faith itself, as opposed to the knowledge we all enjoyed in the pre-existence. As I understand it, the purpose to the veil through which we passed at birth was to create conditions of uncertainty. I have trouble reconciling notions of the Premortal Veil of ignorance with the idea that the Gospel can be proven true to the exclusion of the need for faith. Doing that would seem akin to piercing the veil, which we are all to do at the appropriate time, but most of us not yet.

Eric,

That passage was actually one of the things that got me thinking about this issue, many years ago. Score one for the Hitchhiker.

I get tangled up in the reasoning that I understand to be implied by the scripture you quoted. Any help in sorting out the right answer(s) to the following questions it raises in my mind would be appreciated:

Accepting at face value that there are things which we cannot comprehend, what course of conduct does that suggest to you?

Should we then stop trying to understand?

If not, should we do things that we believe are wrong because, if we were able to understand more than we can, it might turn out that those things are right after all? Is there any way to discern between “wrong, but might be right with more information” and “just plain wrong no matter what”?

Should we decline to make decisions for ourselves other than the decision to do what another person recommends to us?

If so, aren’t both that other person as well as our own decision to rely on that person still subject to the “uncertainty principle” built into the scripture you quoted? Couldn’t our decision to defer our decisions to someone else be just as subject to flawed decision making because we do not comprehend all things?

With these questions, I have a hard time utilizing that scripture for more than fostering basic humility and open-mindedness (neither of which I view as a bad thing, FWIW).

gf

In the 1950s a series of dams constructed on the Grijalva River in Mexico flooded large parts of what many think was the land of Zarahemla.

The Church initially accepted the opinion of experts that the letter was genuine. Why didn’t God just tell the prophet it was a forgery, thus avoiding all the controversy?

It seems to me that God allowed the confusion to continue as a test of faith for the Saints.

And it seems some failed that test.