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Eliza10
Guest
This question is coming to mind now, having read Fawn Brodie’s excellent book. She wrote it with a truly unbiased mind, relying extremely heavily on valid historical document, and tried to piece together how it came about.
The Mormon poster Pahoran took issue here with partly Brodie because she already disbelieved that Smith received the book by miracle before she wrote on him. But as Long Journey says in his online book, p.8, “The strongest motivation for researching is not a blank slate, but questions [stemming] from a sense that …something is awry.” I certainly agree with that.
I think I’m correct in assuming that Pahoran favors writers and reviewers who start from the premise that Smith’s book was supernaturally imparted. Like the writer of an article he linked here [the one I said was boring].
But I would like to begin to look at the origins of the book of Mormon with assuming it was NOT supernaturally written.* Only that seems unbiased*. Until I began to read Long Journey’s book*** I could not express clearly why this seemed the right approach.
But Long Journey gives the logical reason. (Thanks LG!). Its called the “Occam’s razor”. LG explains:
“The first premise of Occam’s razor [OR] is “no supernatural interventions”. This premise … implies that since Gods purposes are so complex as to be beyond understanding, peole can only call an event a miracle when they ahve ruled out all other possible causes for the event. …The original use of OR was to combat religious faud, , such as promotion of fraudulent relics and iracles. The Catholic Chruch still uses it in its evaluation of miracles.”
So it is not logical for me to first assume it must be purely a supernatural miracle, as I understand you are obligated to assume if you are a Mormon. I am not Mormon, so I am not bound to that. I can look at it in a logical way, and logic says I must use Occam’s razor.
So the purpose of this thread to research in order to understand how the Book of Mormon got written, and my motivation is motivated by that strong sense that “something is awry!”
*** Long Journey links his book on his posts. Its 500 pages long!!! I have barely started it, and I don’t know when I am going to finish it because my reading time is also caught up in another book right now, and I only have so much reading time. However, I am finding it pretty readable.
The Mormon poster Pahoran took issue here with partly Brodie because she already disbelieved that Smith received the book by miracle before she wrote on him. But as Long Journey says in his online book, p.8, “The strongest motivation for researching is not a blank slate, but questions [stemming] from a sense that …something is awry.” I certainly agree with that.
I think I’m correct in assuming that Pahoran favors writers and reviewers who start from the premise that Smith’s book was supernaturally imparted. Like the writer of an article he linked here [the one I said was boring].
But I would like to begin to look at the origins of the book of Mormon with assuming it was NOT supernaturally written.* Only that seems unbiased*. Until I began to read Long Journey’s book*** I could not express clearly why this seemed the right approach.
But Long Journey gives the logical reason. (Thanks LG!). Its called the “Occam’s razor”. LG explains:
“The first premise of Occam’s razor [OR] is “no supernatural interventions”. This premise … implies that since Gods purposes are so complex as to be beyond understanding, peole can only call an event a miracle when they ahve ruled out all other possible causes for the event. …The original use of OR was to combat religious faud, , such as promotion of fraudulent relics and iracles. The Catholic Chruch still uses it in its evaluation of miracles.”
So it is not logical for me to first assume it must be purely a supernatural miracle, as I understand you are obligated to assume if you are a Mormon. I am not Mormon, so I am not bound to that. I can look at it in a logical way, and logic says I must use Occam’s razor.
So the purpose of this thread to research in order to understand how the Book of Mormon got written, and my motivation is motivated by that strong sense that “something is awry!”
*** Long Journey links his book on his posts. Its 500 pages long!!! I have barely started it, and I don’t know when I am going to finish it because my reading time is also caught up in another book right now, and I only have so much reading time. However, I am finding it pretty readable.
It was a rule to be used in eliminating religious fraud. Once all reasonable natural causes have been examined, if the phenomenon has not been totally explained, then the supernatural is the only remaining explanation.