Old Man, thanks for this: “You are paving the way for the LDS Church to follow, like a Messiah, a Moses leading the children of Israel…” I wouldn’t go QUITE that far. A well-dressed Napoleon would do just fine, thanks.

No, Pacumeni #135, I’m not optimistic. We are led by a self-perpetuating cadre of Bensonites who see internal erosion as a wheat/tares phenomenon and instead concentrate their best efforts on forging alliances with debauched Catholics and dim Evangelicals in the cause of “religious liberty” as if this were somehow endangered. Meanwhile, the earth moves beneath their feet and they hardly seem to notice, an essay here an essay there, all hidden deep in the website and PRESTO problem solved. You do the math.

I testify that the Book of Mormon is historically true without setting it in a particular place. The set of unknown (not unknowable) things is only used to say that proofs against will be as chaff in the face of future discovery–and revelation. Alas, it will be too late to replace our faith today.

p, I agree that too many leaders got excited and opined about too many things which they hoped and even believed indicated empirical proofs of our cherished truth claims, but you still claim too much. You cannot know there is no “homosexual conspiracy”. Why? because just like I know I can fly, and that there is a god, I know there is a devil. Is it likely that there is a human cabal? No. You cannot know that the status of women is woeful, because you cannot use empirical sociological evidence to determine what is actually in the best interests of women in the long term. Perhaps it is rather woeful that we have not utterly eschewed all the worldly pressure to equate womanhood with worldly manhood and returned to a more Amish way. No I am not recommending it. My wife is a practicing pediatric nurse practitioner. There is no rightward tilt, only more silence and statements like “we just don’t know” on controversial issues of worldly “fact.” I do not fault earlier leaders for having engaged in it, though they too were guilty of pride. I think they are all learning to zip it and wait. And isn’t that a relief!?

Blessed be the whistle-blowers for they shall inherit the lash. So be it, but let the whistles sound.

Translation. “My priors/suppositions/axioms are the only ones allowable. Airplanes cannot fly unless all my presuppositions are granted and all alternative baseline views ruled out.”

P, I am a pilot. I don’t share your assumptions. And yet, my two ultralight aircraft both fly.

In our back and forth on Adam Miller’s historicity post, I argued that presuppositions make all the difference. You claim hegemony in these arguments by insisting that no one can reasonably hold a belief if they do not share your materialist presuppositions. But many cannot because they know from personal experience that those presuppositions are not valid or, at a minimum, at least not valid for their experience of reality. You may, of course, be able to give a materialist account of the other person’s experience, which suggests that those spiritual experiences–like Book of Mormon historicity as you define it–are unreal. But others are not obligated to accept your account of their experience. At some point, you and they will just have to agree that you live in different, incomensurable worlds. In my view, that is part of God’s plan. We get to decide what world we live in by choosing the axioms that guide our interpretation of experience. It is also tautologically true that axioms are known by intuition or are posited through an act of faith. They cannot be justified by some other datum. To live peaceably with each other, at some point we just have to acknowledge that our axiom-based differences in understanding cannot be harmonized.

Now the multiplicity of incomensurable worldviews that derive from alternative sets of axioms of reasoning is part of my belief system. God may know a unitary truth, but no human being does. It is, therefore, incumbent on all human beings, I believe, to exercise intellectual humility and grant that others may reasonably reach different conclusions than they do. Ultimately, as I argued in the Miller post, for these discussions to be productive, we must move to a discusson of our different presuppositions or axioms. Doing that can help us understand, in some measure, the alternative universe in which our interlocutors live. Dogmatic, hegemonic assertion that our priors are the only allowable priors/axioms does not get us anywhere.

That neatly describes our immediate debate/situation.

Where do we go from here? That’s a very large question, because the rank&file won’t react to cognitive dissonance quite as creatively/passively as a nomenklatura that depends on Mormon networks for position & income. I surely wouldn’t count on an extended “introduction to reality” interval, either. The net’s fast, but faster’s coming.

You engaged in the polygamy debate on another post. Have you honestly read any of the books or documents? Have you read the online essays which didn’t say what you claimed they said? Your devotion to history is highly selective, like Wikipedia and snippets from anti-Mormon websites.

“spirituality & the supernatural have no place in historicity debates.” Yes, it does. Especially if the historicity debate relates directly to ultimate beliefs and worldviews, then it gets bumped up to an epistemological issue. And I am still looking for the “aforementioned BYU archaeologists.” Maybe I missed that comment.

“Presenting BoM as literal history is unsupportable.” As an academic history, the case couldn’t be made on the material evidence. Big deal. It would be difficult making a case about very many groups of people from 7th century BCE. But you go much further than that. You commit the fallacy of equating a lack of evidence as a lack of existence. There are many smaller ethnic groups and peoples from entire geographic regions from that period that we know next to nothing about because of a lack of material evidence and the unavailability of written records.

“I understand this puts the institutional church in an awkward position.” Not really. Stop projecting your wishes on the situation. The serious debate has be ongoing since the late 19th century. It is sure to outlast me. Maybe even you.

“I don’t know any other way forward besides honesty.” Cute. You know the truth and you will set us free. You are paving the way for the LDS Church to follow, like a Messiah, a Moses leading the children of Israel… I would take that statement more seriously if you read and understood the sources you cited.