The demonstrable falsity of Mormonism

I've been having a reasonably civil discussion in a comment thread with a lady who is apparently a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). The recent Mitt Romney stories have threatened to bring what Mormons really believe to the forefront. But American society has so compartmentalized religious belief that it will no longer analyze it rationally. True to form, most Americans either don't care what a person's religious beliefs are (which can in a sense be a good thing) or else say that a thorough inspection of a person's religion is bigotry.

What to do then with a religion which seemingly has no basis at all in historical fact? Does it matter at all that Mormonism purports to reveal (or restore) a lost revelation about God and history for which there is no evidence? The history of North America put forward by Mormons is such a fabrication that it is actually painful to relate it. It is not worthy in this regard to be compared to the historical evidence, say, for Christianity, and for the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Witness this excerpt from the Baptist Press:

Hill Cumorah is located in New York, southeast of Rochester. Joseph Smith claimed that when Moroni appeared to him, he was told that Moroni's father, Mormon, buried the gold plates upon which the Book of Mormon was based on the hill Cumorah just before the great final battle there (Mormon 6:6). In the Pearl of Great Price, Smith writes that the day after his second vision, he went to a large hill outside of the village where his family lived (the hill Cumorah) and found the gold plates (endnote 26). This identifies the hill where Smith dug up the plates as the same hill where Mormon buried them and where the great battle took place. In Mormon 6:10-15, it is claimed that hundreds of thousands of people were killed on or near the hill Cumorah during that final battle. It says that "their flesh, and bones, and blood lay upon the face of the earth, being left by the hands of those who slew them to molder upon the land, and to crumble and to return to their mother earth" (Mormon 6:15). In other words, their bodies were left there, unburied.

To help you understand the magnitude of casualties at hill Cumorah, let us consider another major battle. During the Battle of Gettysburg of the American Civil War, 55,000 soldiers were wounded, including 6,000 of them killed on the battlefield and 4,000 more whose wounds were mortal. Eyewitnesses said that there was so much blood from the dead and injured that there were parts of the battlefield that seemed like streams of blood. So many men and horses died that all could not be buried at once and many corpses were left on the battlefield until a few days later when others were hired to do the task.

If 6,000 men died on the battlefield at Gettysburg, what would a battlefield look like with hundreds of thousands dead? Since they were left unburied at hill Cumorah, wouldn't there be some artifacts made of metal and stone? Bullets by the thousands are found at Gettysburg. Nothing, however, has been found at hill Cumorah.

University of Rochester paleontologist and stratigrapher Carl Brett has worked in the Palmyra, N.Y, area where hill Cumorah is located and is familiar with the hill and its geologic conditions. He says that if hundreds of thousands were slaughtered at the hill and not buried, there would still be skeletal remains on the surface today, even after 1,600 years. Scavengers and weather conditions would account for why much is gone, but there would still be quite enough left to look at. Metallic artifacts from weapons and armor would also be easily found (endnote 27). But nothing has ever been found at hill Cumorah.

This is just one of many things that could be cited. Is it wrong to discuss this type of information, or to discuss Mormon teachings about the spirit brotherhood of Jesus and Satan?

Not only is Mormonism not a Christian religion, it also is untrue as a matter of historical fact. We know there was a Pontius Pilate; we know that James the Lord's brother was killed in a certain manner; etc. But there was no battle at the hill Cumorah.

The Fulton Street Revival: 150 Years

This month marks the 150th Anniversary of the Fulton Street Revival, a work of prayer that reshaped American society in the 19th century and beyond.

To commemorate the event and to pray for an awakening in the New York City region, New York Concerts of Prayer is promoting a conference from September 21- 23 featuring tours and numerous prayer events with well-known Christian leaders such as Jack Hayford and Henry Blackaby.

If you can't attend, please take some time to pray for New York that weekend. No other city has such an impact on our nation and certainly the one-fourth of our State who lives in Fairfield County is heavily affected by what happens in the Big Apple.

For more information, visit New York Concerts of Prayer here.

Update to Christian search engine site

Our friends at Kingdom Engine have revamped their Christian search engine site with a more pleasant appearance and some useful custom search engines available on a variety of topics such as:

• The Bible
• Apologetics
• Creeds and Confessions
• Spurgeon
• Worship Music
  

You can also add these searches to your own site or blog, if you have one.

As they note, the Web has grown so much that searching for "King David" on Google gives you 84,700,000 results. Custom search engines limit searches to just a few hand-selected sites that deal with the topic you're interested in. They're great for research.

Happy searching!

I know what Thomas Hooker would do!

Thomas Hooker and Company give thanks upon reaching the Connecticut River. As far as we can tell, there was no discussion of the virtues of homosexual marriage that day.

For those who don't remember their philosophy and logic classes, Princeton's WordNet dictionary defines sophistry as "a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone."

There's no better example of this sort of thing than Hartford Courant writer Susan Campbell, who wonders what Connecticut Puritan Thomas Hooker would think about homosexual marriage.

Hmmm, that's really a tough one! Could be fodder for a graduate thesis.

Ms. Campbell has advice for the pro-family citizens of Connecticut:

Going to the Christian scriptures on this, as opponents seem so wont to do, doesn't work. If you're quoting Jesus on homosexuality, you're making it up. Jesus was silent on the topic.

Attention, Hartford Courant: the New Testament is not a collection of the "Sayings of Jesus."

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books, none of which was authored by Jesus. The New Testament books, mostly authored by Jesus' apostles, condemn homosexuality in strong terms and, by the way, we learn in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6 that some Christians used to be homosexuals before coming to faith in Christ. It seems that Jesus Christ has the power to free people from homosexual desires, or so the New Testament writers seem to have thought!

Jesus Himself, being Jewish, was raised in an environment where the Law of Moses (the Torah) forbid homosexuality on pain of death.

There was therefore no reason for Jesus to give sweeping discourses on the desirability of homosexual "marriage." All Jews and Christians who have the least shred of interest in following the sacred texts of their religions of course accept as a given that God is opposed to the practice of homosexuality.

As for Thomas Hooker, people should read what he had to say instead of suggesting that he might have lacked guidance on the matter. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which Susan Campbell calls "a progressive piece of writing" and which Hooker helped to author, suggests that society should be ordered according to Christian teaching and morality.

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth; and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such Laws, Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as followeth:

How very interesting! It seems that early Connecticut residents believed their government was formed in order to maintain the liberty and purity of the Gospel.

But, one may ask, on what basis did these Colonial Progressives make decisions and laws? It seems that in Hooker's world the Governor and Magistrates had

"the power to administer justice according to the Laws here established, and for want thereof, according to the Rule of the Word of God..."

In other words, if there was no law applicable to a given situation, the Word of God would tell them what to do. (Attention Courant - that would be the Bible!)

And so, finally, we know what Thomas Hooker would think about two men getting married. He would think the same thing about it that everyone in the Judeo-Christian tradition has always thought about it: it's wrong.

Please stop saying that we can't tell what Christianity teaches about this, or worse, that it teaches that "gay marriage" is OK.