Just the Facts, Ma'am

After a probably-too-extended absence from looking at news services (several months...yes, I do live in a cave!  Why do you ask?), I'm struck by the number of stories circulating about racist white cops gunning down innocent black children.  To read the news, it seems clear that every cop out there is a card-carrying KKK member who's engraved the names of your black babies on his bullets.  "Black America has again been reminded that it's children are not seen as worthy of being alive," declares the opening line of an opinion piece in the Washington Times.  There's the shooting of Michael Brown in Fergison, the shooting of an 18-year-old in St Louis, and now a 12-year-old boy in Ohio.  It seems that white cops everywhere are guilty of genocide against black youth, right?

What seems to be missing in all of these is any discussion of the facts beyond the race and age of the "innocent victims" and that of the police officers who fired on them.  It seems that those three pieces of information are really all that's needed, though.  I mean surely that's all there is to the story, right?  Black young person confronted with white cop equals racism, right?  There's nothing more to it, is there?  According to the court of public opinion, it would seem so.

Actually, there is, and I think it's high time we started to acknowledge it.  White police officers are not out there cruising around looking for hapless black children to riddle with bullets.  Each of these incidents have a complete set of facts that led to their outcomes, which are totally cast aside when we play the race card at the first opportunity.

Michael Brown was a thief with stolen goods clearly visible on his person when the officer confronted him.  He fought with the (physically smaller) officer at his car door, breaking the driver's side window, bending in the rearview mirror, bruising the officer, and leaving his own DNA all over the officer's clothes, gun, and inside door handle (meaning that he grabbed all of these things during the struggle).  A grand jury found that the physical evidence, including ballistic reports, verified the officer's report that he fired the fatal shot while Brown was charging headlong at him through a hail of bullets (evidence in brief, in full).  Do these facts back up our popular opinion that Brown was an innocent little boy popped in the head by a racist officer in a drive-by shooting while the kid stood still with his hands raised in surrender shouting, "Pwease don't shoot me, Mistor Powice Officer!"?  Um, no.  He was a thief who had recently attacked a police officer in his patrol car, grappling with him with great force, and he was approaching the officer very rapidly when he died.  If Brown had been white, green, or purple, the officer would have still have felt he had no choice but to shoot him.  It's not racism, it's cops using guns to fight off criminals who like to fight hand-to-hand—and our media turns the cop into a villain and the criminal into an innocent victim just because the criminal happened to be black and the cop happened to be white.  What if the cop Brown beat up and charged was black instead?  What if Brown was white?  Our opinions of the situation would be very different: we'd probably look a little closer at the facts.

The same is true for the other situations.  The 18-year-old, whom the news agencies have reported to have been armed only with a sandwich, apparently fired three rounds at an off-duty cop from said "sandwich" which miraculously turned into a 9mm Ruger by the time police recovered it.  The idea that it was a sandwich and not a weapon was sourced from a relative of the would-be cop-killer who was not anywhere near the scene (which somehow made it reliable testimony—same with the idea that Brown was surrendering at the time of his death, which comes from his friend and partner in crime who helped him rob a store earlier that night: reliable unbiased source, no?).  Also of note is the fact that the young criminal was out on bail after being involed in a high-speed car chase with police a few months previous, which ended in a crash after which he was caught trying to dispose of a loaded .38 caliber pistol.  Also, he was violating his bail, because a condition of it was that he was to remain in house arrest wearing an ankle monitor (he wasn't doing either when he tried to kill the off-duty cop).  However, again, the media only cared that the armed criminal violating his bail and shooting at people "innocent youth" was black and the policeman was white—cue the protests (which, for irony points, turned violent with protesters firing guns and damaging police cars, much as Ferguson riots burned black business-owners' shops—because of course this will teach those dirty white cops to casually gun down black kids!).

The 12-year-old in Ohio was armed with a BB-gun which was an extremely convincing replica of a semiautomatic pistol, from which the orange safety tip which distinguished it as a non-weapon had deliberately been removed.  He was pointing this convincing weapon—deliberately made to appear more convincing—at people in a public park when an alarmed bystander called police.  When the police showed up, the shots were fired when he went to draw the thing while standing ten feet away from officers who repeatedly told him not to.  The officers then attempted to save his life by performing first aid on the scene.  It's not a profile of racism, but a tragedy of irresponsibility and stupidity (probably on the part of a number of people: the caller voiced suspicions that the gun was not real, but this information evidently never made it to the officers—and who removed the safety tip that was specifically designed to prevent this kind of tragedy from occurring in the first place anyway?).  But again, the media doesn't care that he disobeyed the police, gave them legitimate reason to fear for their lives, or was publicly wielding an overly-realistic gun-prop—we only care that the kid was black and the officer who fired on him was white: instant racism!

Let me propose something radical.  Instead of automatically assuming racism whenever there's a confrontation between a white policeman and a black youth, let's look at the facts and see if things would have played out the same if both participants were of the same race.  The Brown case and the case of the 18-year old gunman the Ruger would have been news footnotes in the crime sections if both participants were of the same race.  If both participants in the shooting in Ohio were the same race, we'd probably be talking about safety and regulation of overly-realistic gun-toys or better information for cops or better fire-don't-fire training for them, rather than hurling accusations of bias.  I suggest that, when we ignore the facts and paint the whole situation as dictated by racial color, we prove ourselves to be racist instead.  Seriously, just because the cop is white, we can't see his perspective as valid or his actions as justified.  Just because he is white we'd rather portray him as a rabid, fanatical racist rather than a reasonable human being reacting to what he perceives to be a life-threatening situation.  Just because he is white we'd rather ignore his testimony, that of witnesses, that of our own justice system (painstakingly arrived at), and all the facts to take the word of criminals and their relatives who are biased against the officer or not even present at the scene.  That's racism plain and simple, and that's what we're doing.

If we want the racism in our society to stop, we need to stop practicing it ourselves.  We need to stop playing the race card at every turn and opportunity, step back, and take a look at the facts before we judge others and accuse them of cold-blooded, racially-charged murder.

Comparable to the Bible: Quoting Scripture

It's time for me to finish up my reading of 1 Nephi.  Three chapters remain, chapters 20-22.  Of these, the first two consist Nephi quoting Isaiah chapters 48 and 49 in their entirety.  The last chapter of 1 Nephi consists of him discussing these chapters with his brothers.

One might b tempted to think that quoting an extensive passage of scripture like this would guarantee a favorable comparison, that any source that quotes the Bible must be true, especially if it quotes it so extensively.  But Satan, the Father of Lies, quotes scripture himself, in Matthew 4:6, distorting it with lies in an attempt to convince Christ to throw Himself from the tower.  One of the best ways to hide a lie is in a deluge of other information.  In the world of hardball negotiations, this is known as a snowjob.  The sheer amount of material quoted immediately raises this suspicion in my mind.  In the New Testament we have many different people and authors quoting passages from the Old Testament, but none of the quotes are more than a few verses long.  The quote in 1 Nephi is 2 chapters or 48 verses long, many times the length of the longest quotation in the New Testament (which appears to be Acts 2:17-21, a sermon by Peter which quotes a mere 4 verses from Joel 2:28-32).  Why such a long quotation?  The chapters quoted cover multiple prophesies and topics.  What, out of all of that, is Nephi trying to convey to his readers?  Why reproduce in whole such a vast portion of scripture, when Nephi has already complained multiple times that space is limited in his magical gold book?  Already the genealogies of his family (which were extremely important to Jews, as evidenced by all the genealogies in the Bible) have been left out simply because they're recorded in another set of plates (supposedly).  Supposedly both of these chapters are simply being quoted from the brass plates Nephi murdered Laban for liberated from Laban.  Why quote them at all instead of simply referencing them?

It does not make any sense from a standpoint of Nephi being the Hebrew author of this book, especially given how much he's already compressed and abridged in earlier parts supposedly out of a need to conserve space.  But if we accept Smith as the author, it makes perfect sense.  Smith's foremost aim would be to legitimize his manuscript as scripture, and the surest way to connect his work with the Bible would surely be to quote the latter as extensively as possible.  As we've seen, him trying to make this sort of connection has already driven him to extensively abuse archaic English throughout his manuscript.  After that, a two chapter quote is no big surprise.

However careful reading of these chapters in the Book of Mormon reveals that simply quoting scripture wasn't Smith's sole intent.  He wanted to change and reinterpret it.  We know this because there are a number of substantive changes between Isaiah 48-49 as they appear in 1 Nephi and as they appear in all other Bible translations.  Both additions and subtractions have been made in order to change the meaning or favor a certain interpretation.

One might try to defend these changes.  The first argument might be that it is our Bibles that have been changed and that 1 Nephi 20-21 represents a textually pure reading of Isaiah 48-49.  However, in 1 Nephi 13:25-26, the Book of Mormon claims that the textual purity of the Bible was intact during the time of the twelve Apostles and the genesis of the Gentile church in the late 1st Century AD.  We have copies of the book of Isaiah dating back to 150 BC that agree with ours today.  This means that the book of Isaiah could only have been corrupted some time before that date...and if it was, then the Book of Mormon's statement in 1 Nephi 13 is a lie.  The other argument might be that Nephi rephrased to illuminate some new meaing, but this contradicts the practice of the Bible.  In the Bible many passages are given new meaning, but always by placing them in new context, so as to bring out a double-meaning in the original.  The passage itself is always quoted exactly from either the Hebrew text or the Septuagint.  Since no other translations of the book of Isaiah existed during Nephi's time (in fact, that even one copy of the book should have found its way to Nephi is a strain on credulity), Nephi—if following the Biblical example—should have quoted the words with no additions or modifications at all.  The only explanation that remains is that Nephi, or Smith, altered the meaning deliberately.  There is a precedent for this: in Matthew 4:6 Satan quotes Psalm 91:11-12, but deliberately leaves out a portion, so as to make God's actual promise of angelic protection against everyday accidents a blanket promise of protection that can be applied to suicidal stunts.

Here follows a list of the changes.  Several Bible versions have been listed for comparison, which are the KJV (the most common in Smith's day, as today) and the ESV (a similarly literal translation, but using modern English).  Both translations are used so that readers may rest assured that the differences are not simply alternative translations of the original text.  Additions are in italics.  Subtractions struck through.  At the bottom I'll look at how each change effects the reading of the verse:

• "Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the LORD and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right."—Isaiah 48:1, ESV
• "Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the LORD, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness."—Isaiah 48:1, KJV
• "Hearken and hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness."—1 Nephi 20:1
• The additions here serve two purposes.  The first at the end clarifies the slight ambiguity of the verse's final phrase, but does not appear to alter the overall meaning.  The addition in the middle of the verse, however, forces the meaning of "baptism" onto "the waters of Judah."  There is no reference to baptism in any Old Testament text: it wasn't practiced until the New Testament.  Placing a reference here is a blatant attempt to alter the meaning of the text to address not Jews but people who have been baptized.

• "For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel; the LORD of hosts is his name."—Isaiah 48:2, ESV
• "For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; The LORD of hosts is his name."—Isaiah 48:2, KJV
• "Nevertheless, they call themselves of the holy city, but they do not stay themselves upon the God of Israel, who is the Lord of Hosts; yea, the Lord of Hosts is his name."—1 Nephi 20:2
• A meaningless repetition of "the Lord of Hosts" has been added, probably by mistake, like other Book of Mormon repetitions.  The other changes give the verse a more negative slant.  While the original lists only the claims of these individuals, Smith is already busy using the language of the verses to counter these claims.

• "The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass."—Isaiah 48:3, ESV
• "I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass."—Isaiah 48:3, KJV
• "Behold, I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them.  I did show them suddenly."—1 Nephi 20:3
• Another meaningless word has been appended to enhance the archaic feel of the language.  The big change comes toward the end.  By inserting the word "show" Smith has implied that God did not bring His prophesies to pass suddenly (as in the originals) but that the making of the prophesies themselves was sudden.  This changes the meanings of the next verses, which reference what God has done to refer to His making rather than fulfilling the prophesies.

• "I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, 'My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.'"—Isaiah 48:5, ESV
• "I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them."—Isaiah 48:5 KJV
• "And I have even from the beginning declared to thee; before it came to pass I showed them thee; and I showed them for fear lest thou shouldst say—Mine idol hat done them, and my graven image, and my molten image hath commanded them."—1 Nephi 20:5
• The change in this verse implies that God worked to counteract idolatrous boasting out of fear.  The Bible nowhere says that God, or even Christ, can or ever has been afraid (for "God is love" and "perfect love casts out fear," per 1 John 4:8 and 18).  To say that God not only fears but is motivated by fear is radically contrary to the Bible.

• "They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, 'Behold, I knew them.'"—Isaiah 48:7, ESV
• "They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them."—Isaiah 48:7, KJV
• "They are created now, and not from the beginning, even before the day when thou heardest them not they were declared unto the, lest thou shouldst say—Behold I knew them."—1 Nephi 20:7
• The passage quotes the KJV exactly up to the point of the addition, which at first seems simply to clarify the passage, but when looking at the other two passages its clear that it should have been left ambiguous: the passage is not meant to say that the Isrealites have already been told about these things (as shown by the ESV and NIV).  The addition, therefore changes the meaning to say they have been and didn't listen, so that their ignorance becomes their own fault rather than something planned by God for His glory.

• "For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off."—Isaiah 48:9, ESV
• "For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off."—Isaiah 48:9, KJV
• "Nevertheless, for my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain from thee, that I cut thee not off."—1 Nephi 20:9
• Another meaningless "nevertheless."  The big change though is saying that God will refrain Himself from the Israelites, rather than restraining His anger for them.  This depicts a god who cannot allow himself to love them and must cut off all contact.  This is the god of man-made religions, contrasting with the God of the Bible, who died for us while we were sinners, not even abandoning us when we were enemies to Him.

• "Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction."—Isaiah 48:10, ESV
• "Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."—Isaiah 48:10, KJV
• "For, behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."—1 Nephi 20:10
• A meaningless transitional word is inserted.  All reference to silver is removed, obscuring the metaphor of the verse and making it overall seem more positive than it was in the original text.

• "Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them has declared these things? The LORD loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans."—Isaiah 48:14, ESV
• "All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear; which among them hath declared these things? The LORD hath loved him: he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans."—Isaiah 48:14, KJV
• "All ye, assemble yourselves, and hear; who among them hath declared these things unto them?  The Lord hath loved him; yea, and he will fulfil {sic} his word which he hath declared by them; and he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be upon the Chaldeans."—1 Nephi 20:14
• There's nothing in the originals about God fulfilling the word of "them."  Also, fulfilled is spelled incorrectly.

• "I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way."—Isaiah 48:15, ESV
• "I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous."—Isaiah 48:15, KJV
• "Also, saith the Lord; I the Lord, yea, I have spoken; yea, I have called him to declare, I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous."—1 Nephi 20:15
• A repetitive and unnecessary attribution is added.  Then God's calling to His servant is said to be for him "to declare" something, when this meaning is not in the original text.

• "'Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.' And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit."—Isaiah 48:16, ESV
• "Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me."—Isaiah 48:16, KJV
• "Come ye near unto me; I have not spoken in secret; from the beginning, from the time that it was declared I have spoken; and the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me."—1 Nephi 20:16
• For a minor change in wording, this changes a lot.  While the original affirms that God has existed and "been there" from the time that "it came to be," the changes remove all references to both God's ongoing existence and instead make the whole verse about God declaring things.

• "Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: 'I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.'"—Isaiah 48:17, ESV
• "Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go."—Isaiah 48:17, KJV
• "And thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I have sent him, I am the Lord thy God who teacheth thee to profit, who leadeth thee by the way thou shouldst go, hath done it."—1 Nephi 20:17
• Another pointless transitional word has been added.  Then the meaning of the second part of the verse has been completely altered.  Rather than being about God's identity, it is now about the servant from the previous verse, saying God sent him and performed "it" (presumably the sending of the servant).

• "'There is no peace,' says the LORD, 'for the wicked.'"—Isaiah 48:22, ESV
• "There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked."—Isaiah 48:22, KJV
• "And notwithstanding he hath done all this, and greater also, there is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."—1 Nephi 20:22
• This large addition to the beginning makes it seem as though the lack of peace for the wicked is despite everything God has done in an effort to give them peace: as though God were trying to give them peace and failing—which seems like a classic thing for the overly-simplified nice-god of some Christians to do.  In the original there remains a very real possibility that the wicked do not have peace because God will not give them any.

• "Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name."—Isaiah 49:1, ESV
• "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name."—Isaiah 49:1, KJV
• "And again: Hearken, O ye house of Israel, all ye that are broken off and are driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people; yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad, who are of my people, O house of Israel.  Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from far; the Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name."—1 Nephi 21:1
• A very long addition to the beginning of the verse completely alters the verse's intended audience, inserting the idea of Israelites forced into exile by corrupt rulers, an idea foreign to the passage.  It seems to be an attempt to make the passage apply directly to Nephi and his companions.

• "Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: 'Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.'"—Isaiah 49:7, ESV
• "Thus saith the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the LORD that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee."—Isaiah 49:7, KJV
• "Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nations abhorreth, to a servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship, because of the Lord that is faithful, and the Holy One of Israel, and he shall choose thee."—1 Nephi 21:7
• An article has been left out in the middle of the sentence, probably by accident (and I thought this was supposed to be the "most correct book" in the world!).  At the end of the sentence the second reference to God being the Holy One of Israel and him choosing the "deeply despised one" is removed.  This makes it seem as though the adoration of the rulers is all that is promised and/or that it won't arise as a result of God's choice.

• "Thus says the LORD: 'In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages,'"—Isaiah 49:8, ESV
• "Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;"—Isaiah 49:8, KJV
• "Thus saith the Lord: In an acceptable time have I heard the, O isles of the sea, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee; and I will give thee my servant for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;"—1 Nephi 21:8
• Two additions are used to change this verse from one addressing God's servant to one addressing the isles of the sea.

• "Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted."—Isaiah 49:13, ESV
• "Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted."—Isaiah 49:13, KJV
• "Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established; and break forth into singing, O mountains; for they shall be smitten no more; for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted."—1 Nephi 21:13
• Two large additions break the flow of the poetry of the verse and insert a new meaning, referencing the establishment of the people "in the east" and the end of their afflictions.  Who these are is not clear, but it's certainly possible that Smith is trying to reference Nephi and his ilk.

• "But Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.'"—Isaiah 49:14, ESV
• "But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me."—Isaiah 49:14, KJV
• "But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not."—1 Nephi 21:14
• Again, "behold" is interjected for no reason.  Then an emphatic ending is appended.  While it is positive, the original does not promise that God will do some action to prove Himself, but the altered version implies that He will and must.

• "Your builders make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you."—Isaiah 49:17, ESV
• "Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee."—Isaiah 49:17, KJV
• "Thy children shall make haste against thy destroyers; and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee."—1 Nephi 21:17
• By the addition of a single word, what was a verse about rebuilding Zion and its destroyers leaving it in a hurry has now become a military action, with the destroyers not being repelled by God but by the force of Israelite arms.

There are many other minor changes, but these are the most substantial, and they give an overall feel for what has been changed and why.  Numerous archaic words were inserted to impede the flow and thus make the KJV sound more like Smith's own laborious prose.  Various other additions and subtractions were made to cause ambiguous verses to come to a chosen meaning (which may not necessarily be correct).  More alarming are the many changes that were made in order to alter the meaning entirely, like the addition of the reference to baptism in 1 Nephi 20:1, when baptism is not even a concept appropriate to this time period.  Again, this is very different from the way the Bible quotes itself, and much more akin to how Satan quoted scripture, changing it in order to alter its meaning.

After this long quotation, the book of 1 Nephi concludes with Nephi giving his brothers his interpretation of the previous chapters, which seems somewhat uncertain and confused.  Nephi says that part of the passage has spiritual and some literal application.  He says it means that the house of Israel will be scattered, but will eventually be nourished and cared for by the Gentiles.  He goes on to say that a great Gentile nation (America) will arise in this land and scatter "our seed" (the Indians, supposedly Nephi and his brothers' descendants) on this continent.  But don't worry, because then God will do some "marvelous work among the Gentiles" (the Book of Mormon) which will also be good for the Indians/Jews (which are, supposedly, the same) and this is "likened unto their being nourished by the Gentiles and being carried in their arms and upon their shoulders" (1 Nephi 22:8).  It will also evidently reveal God to all the world, causing the evil church mentioned in 1 Nephi 13 to self-destruct "for they shall war among themselves" (1 Nephi 22:13).  Similar fates are predicted for any nation that wars against Israel, which will lead to a time when Satan has "no more power over the hearts of the children of men" (1 Nephi 22:15).  This lack of power will be "because of the righteousness of his [God's] people" (1 Nephi 22:26).  During this time, God will judge the wicked and the righteous will be spared.  After making this interpretative speech, Nephi closes and the book ends.  The sudden end of the book, it should be noted, is because the book is split into two parts...but it should be noted that it's not an entirely artificial end.  Nephi does get to address the reader one last time with a final thought about how both he, his father, and the words on the brass plates (supposedly the Bible) are all addressing the same truth and then end with an "amen."  Contrast books of the Bible which were split later, which have no such natural end points.  1 Nephi was written to end right there.

There are several things to point out in this interpretive chapter.  First of all, out of the 2 chapter quotation Nephi just used the "scarce" space in his book to reproduce, he uses only one verse in his interpretation.  Clearly quoting the entire passage was unnecessary...for him.  This is further evidence that the long quote was engineered by Smith in order to draw parallels to the Bible.

Second, Nephi's interpretation presents prophesies that are false and have not come true.  To start with, Indians and Jews are not related, as genetic testing and cultural heritage have both shown time and time again.  Even if they were, Gentiles getting the Book of Mormon in 1830 is not the same as Jewish children getting nursed and brought back to the Israelite homeland by foreign royalty (as in Isaiah 49:23, the one verse Nephi uses).  This is made brutally evident by the fact that shortly thereafter a series of fronteer wars and massacres would decimate the populations of the remaining American Indians and drive the survivors into reservations, where they remain in scandalously impoverished conditions even today.  Notably the Mormons themselves had a hand in these wars, fighting the Black Hawk Wars against native Ute tribes in Utah, driving them off and, at times, slaughtering men, women, and children of friendly bands indiscriminately.  So much for the great blessings of Mormonism to the Indians!

Third, saying that our own righteousness can prevent Satan from having power of us seems, to me, to be an idea more from man-made religion rather than the Bible.  In the Bible we have power against Satan because "greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

Finally, when it comes to God judging the wicked and sparing the righteous, Nephi has this to say, "Wherefore the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophet, they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire." (1 Nephi 22:17).  Searching for an exact quote along those lines will not turn up any result, so at first you might thing this was another unknown (or made-up) prophet, like Zenos from 1 Nephi 19.  But the phrase "saved...as by fire" is an undeniably familiar one to anyone who has read the King James Version of the Bible extensively...as well it should be.  The phrase actually occurs in the writings of a prominent Bible author: "If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire."  The problem is that this author is Paul, who is writing these words in the mid to late 1st century AD, over 600 years after Nephi supposedly cross-referenced him.  Once again Smith's eagerness to draw connections with and steal words and imagery from the Bible has led him to make an impossibly anachronistic connection between his writings and Paul's.  This time, though, it is far worse.  The ripoff of the olive tree metaphor could be excused with the improbable idea that two writers inspired by God just happened to use the same detailed metaphor at very different times.  But here, Nephi comes right out and says he's quoting someone, and the only one who's written anything remotely like that is Paul.  Once again the Book of Mormon proves to be an incredibly transparent fake, a consistent disappointment when compared to the Bible.

Comparable to the Bible: Engraven Plates and Made-up Prophets

1 Nephi 19 begins with Nephi being commanded by god to make "plates of ore" (gold, presumably) and engrave the records of his father Lehi and various other religious matters, after which (at a later time apparently) he made the plates we're reading and other plates for secular records.

The first notable thing about this passage is the use of the word "engraven" as in "I did engraven the record of my father," etc.  The word engraven appears, as spelled at least five times in two verses.  This obsolete past-participle of the verb engrave word appears once in the entire KJV translation of the Bible (2 Cor 3:7).  Notably Young's Literal Translation of the Bible (published 1862, a mere 32 years after the publication of the Book of Mormon) does not contain a single instance of the word.  That means that engraven had fallen into disuse in the two centuries between the KJV and Smith's supposed translation of the Book of Mormon.  So, why did he use (and use, and overuse) a word so obsolete at the time of it's publication as to almost be considered a spelling error?  It would be like a translator today attempting to make ancient documents in a foreign accessible to us by translating them deliberately into Middle rather than Modern English.  If Smith is genuinely only the translator of these supposed ancient Hebrew holy texts (written, as we've been told, in an undiscovered language) then the presence of this and other obsolete words and phrases makes no sense.  If he was instead an author trying to give his work a veneer of Biblical authenticity, then it's a bold faced (and foolish) attempt to copy the acquired archaic style of the popular KJV in hopes of co-opting the Bible's legitimacy as well.

Moving beyond that, the very fact that there's (another) account of how the this book and others by Nephi were written is decidedly strange.  I can think of only a handful of places where there's any reference to writing parts of the Bible in the Bible (in both cases what's being written is a letter).  By contrast the Book of Mormon seemingly cannot shut up about how, when, and why it was written.  Why is that?  Most authors are too busy fulfilling the purpose of their writing to describe why, where, or in what way they're writing (this actually is an efficient use of space and effort—which again brings to mind the fact that Nephi is wasting space he's supposedly short on).  It makes no sense...unless telling readers about how, when, and why he wrote this book is a big part of his purpose in writing.  That doesn't make any sense for Nephi, but it does make a lot of sense for Smith, who would want to detail the book's origins as proof of its legitimacy (while a truly legitimate work would need no such proof).

But 1 Nephi 19 is something different.  Nephi goes on for quite a while about how he and his descendants are going to write on these plates...and then he gets totally sidetracked and winds up discussing Messianic prophesy.  It doesn't appear to be an intentional segue.  It reads as if Nephi was going along, giving a head nod to the fact that not everyone might agree with his choices of what was and wasn't sacred enough to include in his text, making passing mention that some people didn't even think God was sacred...and then that last idea snagged his attention and he went off talking about how Christ was coming in 600 years (again, not true by the math) and was going to judge them all for this.  He never returns to the original topic.  It's not easy to understand how someone writing on gold plates would do this, because, presumably, you'd at least have a draft before you went and ruined something as valuable as gold by losing your train of thought mid-page, and also, presumably, Nephi's writings have been edited and compiled by other writers.  It is, however, very easy to see why Smith might have done this.  By all accounts, Smith dictated the Book of Mormon one phrase or sentence at a time, having each repeated back to him for accuracy before moving on: not a big deal if he's just translating, but as a writer this means he had the handicap of only really being able to look back one sentence at most into what he'd already written before moving on.  This would make losing his train of thought, repeating himself, and overall having poor narrative flow very easy to do.  That the Book of Mormon is marked by all of these things is evidence that Smith was, in fact, the author.

As for the prophesies themselves they are odd to start with, and then they get weirder.  First of all, there's a description of how Christ will scourged and abused in other ways and "suffer it...because of his loving kindness and long-suffering towards the children of men."  There is no mention of the idea that Christ suffered to atone for our sins, an idea that is everywhere in the Bible, even in the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53:5—"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.").  I would not be surprised if this idea was totally absent from Mormon scriptures.  After all, it is absent from the Mormon Church.  When Mormons talk about "the Atonement," in my experience, they are almost always referring to Christ's suffering in prayer at Gethsemane.  When you think about it from a human perspective, this makes sense.  If Christ only suffered for our sins in the garden, then our sins are not really all that bad (sweating drops of blood vs getting scourged beyond human recognition, having thorns beaten into your scalp, and then getting executed in the most disgusting, humiliating, and painful way known to man), and no human or human religion wants to admit that our sins are that bad.  Also, if we talk about Christ's death applying to us, then the Bible verses about how He took away our sins and gave us His righteousness (2 Cor 5:21; Isaiah 53:11) have to be taken seriously as well.  Any church that does that cannot convince their followers that they must earn their place in Heaven through good deeds and obedience: a principle that is as much a cornerstone of Mormonism as it is of every other man-made religion.

But this oddity is nothing compared to what happens next.  In verse 10, Nephi begins referencing a number of people who've made Messianic prophesies before him.  Why is this odd?  Because all of these prophets are made up.  First, he cites the word of "the angel"—probably the angel he saw in 1 Nephi 11 (there was another reference to this angel earlier in this chapter).  If we assume that the Book of Mormon is legitimate, then it's not terribly odd.  But next he references three more prophets, Zenock, Neum, and Zenos.  I'll give you a minute to look those up, but don't take too long.  In fact I could probably save you some time by telling you not to even bother.  Outside of the Book of Mormon, there is no evidence that any of those three men ever existed.

To be fair, there are a great many prophets mentioned in the Bible who have no prophesies recorded within it, or are only mentioned ever giving one prophesy (the prophet Agabus and the four prophetess daughters of Phillip the Evangelist being examples from Acts 21:8-11), with no books to their name.  However, when it comes to these prophets, the Bible gives us all their important prophesies straight out in the books where they're mentioned.  It does not vaguely allude to their prophesies as though quoting from some source that wasn't included in scripture.  That's what Nephi appears to be doing here.  Why?

It's certainly possible, even probable, that there were prophets who wrote down prophesies that never made it into scripture and were eventually lost to history.  However that a collection of important Messianic prophesies should be lost would seem to violate God's promises to preserve His word.  Still, we can give the Book of Mormon the benefit of the doubt by proposing that perhaps it preserves all of the important prophesies of these three men that are necessary for us today.

But a darker explanation also exists.  If Smith were the author instead of Nephi, then it's very easy to see how he could have come upon a situation where he wanted one of his characters to reference something specific by an earlier writer, but been unable to find any writer they'd have access to that would have actually said such a thing.  In that situation, the tempting alternative would be to simply make a prophet up for them to reference.  Zenock Neum, and Zenos may simply be products of Smith's imagination.  To determine which is the more likely explanation, we have to go back to the text and look at what these three prophets supposedly said.

First there's Zenock, who says that the Messiah would "[deliver himself] as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up."  This isn't so objectionable, but it does raise the question of why Christ didn't reference Zenock as well in John 3:14, when prophesying His own crucifixion.  If Zenock really existed as a prophet, why did Christ make a more obscure reference to the Messiah being lifted up like the image of the serpent made by Moses instead of referencing this prophet?  Still, it's hardly damning evidence.

Next, there's Neum, who is said to have prophesied that the Messiah would be "crucified."  This is more problematic.  In the Old Testament there are various references to the Messiah's death which can be (and are, in the New Testament) interpreted as depictions of crucifixion, but none of them actually use the word.  Why?  Well, that turns out to be very important.  Looking up the history of crucifixion, it seems the first people to employ it were the Persians.  But Nephi here is writing over 70 years before the dawn of the Persian Empire, and his source (Neum) presumably wrote much earlier.  The word and concept of crucifixion had not yet been invented.  How then could anyone say that the Messiah would be crucified?  Even if God miraculously gave them that word (a Greek word, by the way) and an understanding of its meaning, they couldn't use it to communicate the message to others because they wouldn't know what a crucifixion was to start with—they would have had to use some other word or more elaborate description.  Neum's prophesy is anachronistically impossible!

Finally, there's Zenos, who has the most important prophesies.  According to 1 Nephi 19, Zenos says a great many things, verse after verse of his prophesies are quoted or paraphrased.  These range in importance on the one hand from saying things like the Messiah will be buried in a sepulchre to saying that his death will be accompanied by three days of darkness, earthquakes, and other calamities.  It's this last that gets me.  The Bible does record calamities surrounding and following the death of Christ...but not at anywhere near the scale Zenos predicts.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all list a period of worldwide darkness lasting "from the sixth hour...unto the ninth hour."  This is not a three day darkness, but a three hour darkness.  Additionally the earthquakes described following Christ's death were not nearly severe enough to destroy entire nations, as Zenos seems to be saying they will be.  Some Mormon apologists have attempted to rescue the passage by claiming that Zenos is foretelling a local and separate catastrophe that would overtake the Americas alone.  A this point, there's nothing in Zenos' prophesy to either confirm or deny this theory, since the scope of the darkness is not mentioned.  However, again, the question must be asked why such an important prophet was never quoted in the Bible, if he was real.  Unfortunately, as with the other two, the best explanation (and the best explanation for the three days of darkness) appears to be that he wasn't.

Comparable to the Bible: Failing the Test of Testability

To supplement my previous article, I wanted to do a look into the feasibility of Nephi's ocean voyage.  Unfortunately, such a test is impossible.  First of all, as pointed out in a previous post, while Nephi's ship is said to have been specially designed and constructed under divine direction, we have no idea what any of that direction is.  We don't even have the most basic of dimensions for it and, while we assume it was driven by sails, we don't know this for a fact.  For all we know, Nephi built a wooden jet-powered hovercraft and flew to the Americas, the text gives us that little detail.

The second problem revolves around the complete lack of knowledge we have on the journey or the route itself.  While it's generally assumed that the party would have headed west, across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, they could just as easily have passed east, around the Horn of Africa and across the Atlantic.  The only details we have about the journey are that it took "many days," that it was interrupted briefly by a four-day storm, and that it eventually ended somewhere in the Americas.  That's literally all the text gives us.  We're not told which direction they were sailing in, whether they encountered or steered around islands, nothing.  The lack of detail is simply astonishing.

Compare to the Bible's famous voyage, that of Noah in the Ark.  We have a fairly detailed description of the Ark, which was specially designed by God (Genesis 6:14-16).  It was about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall.  It had three decks, enclosed internal holds, a side entrance, and an enclosure over its upper deck extending at least 12 inches up.  It was made of wood and coated inside and out with pitch for waterproofing.  It had no means of propulsion and relied solely on the currents.  We further know exactly how many people were aboard the Ark (8—we have no idea how many were on Nephi's ship), for how long (370 days), and where they got off (Mount Ararat in modern day Turkey).  Skeptics may take these details and try to prove the journey couldn't happen and the faithful may do the same and prove that it could have (as both sides have, and I personally find the arguments for the Ark more convincing than their opposites, which usually hinge upon requiring Noah to bring representatives of every living species aboard, ignoring the fact that many of these species can interbreed and would have been considered the same kind of animal for Noah's purposes).  In other words, Noah's Ark gives us enough information that it is testable.  We can see whether the information measures up, whether the story is true or not.  We can verify it, and in doing so, prove that the Bible is a true book from God.

Contrast that with Nephi's ship and its journey, of which we know almost exactly nothing.  While Mormon apologists and skeptics have tried to put the ship and its sea journey to the test, its impossible to do so because so little detail is given.  It is simply too vague a claim to be testable.  This would be downright uncharacteristic, coming from the God of the Bible who urges us to test every claim (1 Thessalonians 5:21), the same God who's given us, in the Bible, detailed designs for a ship, a tabernacle, three temples (one of which hasn't been built yet), a city (also not built yet, nor buildable in our world), and a multitude of altars and sacred furniture.  For Him to suddenly become evasive about the design of something said to be as specifically and specially designed as Nephi's ship would be very out-of-character indeed.  Further, it would run counter to the purpose of glorifying God—in 1 Nephi 18:4 the design and finished product of Nephi's ship is said to impress his brothers and cause them to humble themselves before god...but since the design isn't described in the slightest detail in the book, readers are prevented from sharing that experience.  For all we know, Nephi's brothers were in worshipful awe of a rowboat.

However, there is one purpose that would be served by leaving out all of these important details and thus rendering the text totally unverifiable: not God's, but that of the false prophet Joseph Smith.  If Smith wrote The Book of Mormon and if he was a false prophet, then he would have wanted to do everything in his power to cover his tracks.  This means in his writing that he'd have to stick to two kinds of claims: claims that he could manufacture false validity for himself (which would be, by necessity, very few) and claims that he believed could never be put to the test.  As seen earlier with his choice of "Reformed Egyptian" as a language rather than Hebrew or some other real language, Smith errs on the side of non-verifiability.  He deliberately leaves out any details in his story that the reader might be able to verify or prove wrong, including only a few references to supernatural guidance, which can be invoked in case someone should later come along and point out that the ancient Israelites didn't have the ability to build seaworthy ships that could handle such a voyage or that normal routes to the Americas from the Arabian Peninsula wouldn't work.  In such a case, Smith and his followers can always pull the "trump card" that god had Nephi do something extraordinarily special that didn't make it into the text.  However, in the end, its an argument from silence, one that essentially relies on us blindly trusting Smith and The Book of Mormon and taking them at their word...which is, of course, what they want us to do anyway.

Fortunately, God's not like that.

Comparable to the Bible: The Sin of Rudeness

It's been a while since I picked up the Book of Mormon or wrote anything in this series.  Today, though, I was contacted out of the blue by some Mormon missionaries who somehow got my phone number, so I decided to open it up and remind myself of what I was dealing with, starting in 1 Nephi 18.  Here Nephi's remarkably descritionless ship is completed and launched.  Nephi and company board, with provisions, and set sail for the "promised land"—by which we mean the Americas.  They follow the winds and the magic compass mentioned earlier for "many days" and everything seems to be going well, but then the company falls into a terrible sin.  Nephi says he "began to fear exceedingly lest the Lord should be angry with us, and smite us because of our iniquity, that we should be swallowed up in the depths of the sea" (1 Nephi 18:10).

What is this horrible sin?  Jonah faced a similar dilemma and fate after ignoring God's command to go to Nineveh and trying to flee in the opposite direction (Jonah 1:1-16).  What terrible thing had happened on Nephi's ship to cause him to fear a similar fate?  1 Nephi 18:9 helpfully tells us:

And after we had been driven before the wind for the space of many days, behold, my brethren and the sons of Ishmael and also their wives began to make themselves merry, insomuch that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness, yea, even that they did forget by what power they had been brought thither; yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness.

The verse lists several things that Nephi's brothers and in-laws did that troubled him:

• making merry
• dancing
• singing
• rude speech/actions
• forgetting what power got them this far in the first place

Of these five items, only the last can be taken seriously as a sin.  Forgetting God's power and provision does have a track record of being a very effective way of angering Him (Hosea 2:6-13).  However, that's not what Nephi fixates on, nor is it really revisited anywhere else in the chapter.  His main concern, the only one that is repeated twice, is how these merry-makers have lost their manners and delved into the "iniquity" of "exceeding rudeness."

The Bible says a lot about sin, and the Bible lists a great many sins, some of which our society today is not keen on acknowledging.  However one "sin" the Bible never addresses is this: the sin of rudeness.  The word "rude" is very hard to find in the Bible, in fact.  In the KJV (the version of Joseph Smith Jr's day) the word appears only once, in 2 Corinthians 11:6, where Paul defends his apostleship against accusations from the Corinthian church.  Here he acknowledges that he is "rude in speech" (that is, his speech is common and unsophisticated) but dismisses it as unimportant because he knows what he's talking about.  In modern translations this reference to rudeness is replaced with the translation "unskilled in speaking."  In such translations only one reference to rudeness remains, 1 Corinthians 13:5, which says that love is "not rude" (or, in the KJV "doth not behave itself unseemly").  Aside from this brief reference and the Bible's positive affirmations that we are to be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32), the Bible does not seem to consider rudeness a serious infraction, or even a sin.  Jesus, who is explicitly without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), broke social conventions almost habitually and did a number of things even we today would consider extremely rude (driving merchants out of the Temple with a whip and flipping over their tables, refusing service to a Gentile woman, calling His opponents the spawn of Satan, etc).  He did so without sin.

So why was the rudeness of Nephi's brothers and the sons and daughters-in-law of Ishmael such a big deal?  No firm connection is built between their rudeness and forgetting god.  They are not said to have blasphemed.  The biggest connection is between their celebratory antics, "making merry," "singing," and "dancing."  While it's popular in religious communities that are more about following rules than following God to believe that god is opposed to the egregious sin of having fun.  Of such societies its sometimes joked that couples will never have sex standing up because someone might see it and think they were committing the unpardonable sin of dancing.  The Mormon religion is famous for its many rules, including prohibition on caffeinated beverages (which is nowhere in the Bible, in case you were wondering), and falls solidly into this category.  God however, does not.  He gives us dancing, singing, and merriment, and enjoys us enjoying Him and the things He's given us (Jeremiah 31:13).

But despite Nephi's fears, it's not this sin of merriment and rudeness that almost dooms the travelers.  Instead it's when Nephi's brothers respond to his preaching of restraint by tying him to the mast for four days.  This caused the Liahona, the faith-driven god-given compass to stop working.  As I mentioned in the post when the Liahona was first introduced, I've been suspicious of the compass from the beginning.  Sure, God can use anything he wants to direct people (he used a cloud for the Israelite exodus), and he could make a compass if He wanted to, but the whole concept of a compass as the group's source of direction and guidance seemed suspiciously modern.  I've been waiting for some sign that the Liahona is a modern idea, originating from a culture spoiled by hundreds of years of reliance on compasses, to the point where navigating without them is virtually unthinkable to the average man.  Sadly, my suspicions were confirmed.  The compass stops working in verse 12 and in the very next verse—at the very beginning of the verse—the crew of the ship completely loses all sense of direction and blunders into a storm.  This is a hallmark of a plot hatched in an age dependent on magnetic compasses, for such a thing would have been implausible as late as the 17th century, at which time sailors were still navigating by the stars, as all travelers did in the time before the compass.  If Nephi and his companions were really ancient Israelites who'd navigated by the sun and stars their whole lives, they would have never become lost by the failure of their compass.  They simply would have fallen back on more familiar means of finding their way.  That they did become lost immediately is a telling sign that The Book of Mormon has a modern author (Joseph Smith, who was born into a 19th century already hopelessly dependent on the magnetic compass).

After four days in the storm, Nephi's brothers fear for their lives because of the storm and release him.  At this point I do have to give credit to Smith for one accurate detail: when released in verse 15, after four days of being lashed to the mast, Nephi's wrists and ankles are said to have swollen and been very sore.  While I couldn't find any concrete evidence of this, it does strike me as realistic and I seem to recall people trying to set records for longest time standing upright (which is essentially what anyone tied to a mast for four days would have been forced to do) facing similar problems.

But if this was a stroke of genius on Smith's part, he immediately spoils it.  The narrative has just reached the point of greatest tension, where the wicked brothers have repented in fear of the storm and freed Nephi, who may or may not be able to do anything to save them all, when it suddenly jumps backwards.  Why?  Because the narrator forgot to tell us what Nephi's parents, wife, and children were all doing during these four days and felt the need to explain to us why they couldn't have just freed him sooner.  It's a fair question, to be sure, but the solution presents more problems to the narrative than it resolves.  First of all, it completely wrecks the flow of the narrative.  More damaging, it introduces a major problem: it states that the reason that Nephi's parents (who were also the parents of Laman and Lemuel) didn't intervene was because they were on their sickbeds, very near death.  It goes on for two verses about how frail and how close to death Lehi and his wife are...and then forgets about them.  There is absolutely no mention of them either dying or recovering.  Skipping ahead, I can see that they do live on, since Lehi's death is mentioned as taking place in the Americas after a long speech in 2 Nephi 4, but the narrative in chapter 18 does not make that clear.  Before, I might have glossed over the question of why Nephi's parents (who are probably old and badly outnumbered) did not try to free Nephi themselves, but now I'm transfixed by a question of whether or not these very important characters will even survive the trip—a question which the writer leaves totally unanswered.  After telling us how sick they are and adding in a note about why their younger children (Jacob and Joseph, added to the family earlier in this chapter) and Nephi's own wife and children didn't intervene, the narrative skips back to the point where Nephi is freed and calms the storm with a prayer.

Many days and one verse later, the party lands on the shores of the "promised land" (which is so called twice in the same sentence).  They pitch their tents, plant crops brought as seeds from Jerusalem, and discovered a wealth of animal and mineral wealth in the forests surrounding their landing site.  This is where the final problem of the chapter presents itself.  While the last verse says that Nephi and his family found "beasts in the forest of every kind" it specifically names four species: cattle ("the cow and the ox"), horses, donkeys ("the ass"), and goats ("the goat and the wild goat").  Now I have heard from other sources that The Book of Mormon had problems regarding anachronistic animals in pre-Columbian America, but I hadn't expected anything so severe.  As it turns out every one of the species listed here is an anachronism: cattle, horses, donkeys, and goats were all introduced to the Americas centuries later, following European contact.  One species might be a fluke of translation or a mistake of modern archaeology, but all four?  That's a dead giveaway that, unlike the Bible, The Book of Mormon is fiction, not history.

How We Should Treat "One Another": a brief Bible survey

At church this past week.  We were given a "homework assignment" to find some of the "one another" verses: verses that direct us as Christians in how we are to behave toward each other.

There are a lot of ready-made lists you can find out there, and making one of your own isn't that hard, as long as you have a concordance or a program or website (like Bible Gateway or Blue Letter Bible) that can stand in for one).  The challenge for me is in understanding the list, going beyond a simple collection of chapter and verse citations to actual directions I can apply to my life.

So below I've sorted the results of several lists, grouped them by theme to try to get a feel for the overall message the Bible is telling us.  This is not an exhaustive list, merely a short one composed of other people's lists that I could find in a quick Google search.

Verses about Service:

• John 13:14: "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet."
• 1 Corinthians 11:33: "So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—"
• Galatians 5:13: "For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another."
• Galatians 6:2: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
• 1 Peter 4:9: "Show hospitality to one another without grumbling."

Summary: Christ is to be our example in service, because He came to serve us.  We are to show our love through serving.  We are to use our freedom to serve and help one another.  We are to do it without complaining.

Verses about Love:

• John 13:34-35: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
• John 15:12: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
• John 15:17: "These things I command you, so that you will love one another."
• Romans 12:10a: "Love one another with brotherly affection."
• Romans 13:8: "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law."
• 1 Thessalonians 3:12: "and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another, and for all, as we do for you."
• 1 Thessalonians 4:9: "Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another"
• 2 Thessalonians 1:3: "We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing."
• 1 Peter 1:22: "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart."
• 1 John 3:11: "For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another."
• 1 John 3:23: "And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us."
• 1 John 4:7-8: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God, and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."
• 1 John 4:11-12: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
• 2 John 1:5: "And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one that we have had from the beginning—that we love one another."

Summary: Love is paramount.  It is the only one of these that is actually called a command.  Love is the first command, Christ's command, a new and an old command.  Love fulfills the law.  Christ is to be our example in love.  We are to love because He loved us, as He loved us.  God the Father is also our example in love because He is love.  Our love is to be a sign that we know Him and that we are true disciples of Christ.  Failure to love casts doubt on whether or not we truly know God.

Verses about Encouragement:

• Romans 1:12: "that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine."
• Ephesians 5:18-19: "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart."
• 1 Thessalonians 4:18: "Therefore encourage one another with these words." (speaking about the resurrection and rapture)
• 1 Thessalonians 5:11: "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."
• Hebrews 3:13: "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."
• Hebrews 10:24: "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works."

Summary: We are to encourage each other with our faith, with reminders of the coming rapture and resurrection, and with songs.  The goal is to encourage each other to love and do good works, and to keep our hearts from being hardened by sin.

Verses about Unity:

• Mark 9:50 "Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
• Romans 12:4-5: "For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another."
• Romans 12:16: "Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.  Never be wise in your own sight."
• Romans 14:19: "So let us then pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding."
• Romans 15:5-7: "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God."
• 1 Corinthians 7:5: "Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." (in context this is talking about sexual unity between married believers)
• 1 Corinthians 12:22-27: "On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require.  But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."
• Ephesians 4:1-3: "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
• 1 John 1:7: "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."

Summary: Unity is our identity.  We are one in Christ.  We are one body with many parts.  We are not who we are by ourselves.  We are only "us" together.  We are therefore to be together regularly, welcoming each other, having fellowship with each other, sharing our highs and lows, sympathizing with each other, and being at peace with each other.

Verses about Honor:

• Romans 12:10b: "Outdo one another in showing honor."
• Philippians 2:3: "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves."

Summary: We are to have only one rivalry, only one competition, and that is in who can honor the other more.  This requires humility on our own part.

Verses about Instructing:

• Romans 15:14: "I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another."
• Colossians 3:16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

Summary: We are to be filled with goodness, knowledge, and Christ so that we may instruct one another in all wisdom.

Verses about Greeting:

• Romans 16:16: "Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the churches of Christ greet you."
• 1 Corinthians 16:20: "All the brothers send you greetings.  Greet one another with a holy kiss."
• 2 Corinthians 13:12: "Greet one another with a holy kiss."
• 1 Peter 5:14: "Greet one another with the kiss of love.  Peace to all of you who are in Christ."

Summary: We are to greet one another, and it is to be with a kiss.

Verses about Forgiving:

• Ephesians 4:32: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."
• Colossians 3:13: "Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgive you, so you also must forgive."

Summary: We must forgive each other.  Christ is to be our example in forgiveness.

Verses about Submission:

• Ephesians 5:21: "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ."
• 1 Peter 5:5: "Likewise you who are younger, be subject to the elders.  Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God 'opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"

Summary: All of us are to be submitted to each other out of humility and respect for God.

Verses about Honesty:

• Ephesians 4:25: "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for are members one of another."
• Colossians 3:9: "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices"

Summary: We are to no longer practice falsehood, but to be honest with each other.

Verses about Praying:

• James 5:16: "Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

Summary: We are to honestly confess our sins to each other, and pray for each other's spiritual healing from these sins.  These prayers are effective.

Verses about not Judging:

• Romans 14:13: "Let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but decide rather never to put a stumbling block or a hindrance in the way of a brother."
• James 4:11: "Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.  The one who speaks against a brother or judges a brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law.  But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge."

Summary: We are to not judge, speak evil of, or hinder one another.  To do such things reflects negatively on our view of the law, under which Christ holds us forgiven and blameless.

Verses about What Else NOT to do:

• Galatians 5:26: "Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another."
• 1 Thessalonians 5:15: "See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to good to one another and to everyone."
• James 5:9: "Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you be not judged.  The Judge is standing at the door."

Summary: We are not to provoke, envy, grumble against, or do evil to one another.  Instead, we are to seek to do good to one another.

 I have to admit that all of this is rather humbling and convicting for me.  I spend a lot of time alone.  I could spend a week or more without speaking to a single person.  I have a very solitary nature.  But God has called me outside my comfort zone to be a part of a larger community.  That's not something I'm good at, but it's something I need.  I need to serve and encourage, and I need encouragement myself.  I need prayer.  I need love.  I need the kind of community that would exist if we actually did this, and none of it is happening without me stepping up to bat and doing it myself to others.

One thing that did get me thinking was the verses about greeting each other with a kiss.  It's easy to dismiss this as an outdated social custom, like wearing togas, and headdresses, and hats.  But the Bible says this one repeatedly, through different authors.  That alone makes me wonder.  Then I think about the reasons why we don't kiss other Christians.  We're generally alright with kissing close family members, but other Christians we greet with a respectful handshake or a casual "Hey."  But I think the Bible is deliberately calling us to use the same greeting for fellow Christians that we would normally only use for close family.  After all, that is what we're supposed to be as the Church, a family.  And there is something to be said about the profound and elusive power of touch on our psyches.  A kiss may make us uncomfortably close to some people, but maybe those "untouchables" are just the people we need to touch, to remind us that they are a part of us, and to remind them that they are honored and family in Christ.  There's also the whole idea that Christianity isn't supposed to leave us content in our comfort zones in the first place.  It's definitely something I'll need to look into further.

Response to "Bill Nye Fights Back"--or "Winning Scientific Debates by Poisoning the Well"

Popular Science's latest issue features an article titled "Bill Nye Fights Back" about how Bill Nye (the Science Guy) has recently thrown his hat into the ring on the Creation-Evolution debate and plans to use his reach and understanding of science to topple the rise of Young-Earth Creationism in America.  I saw it on my desk this afternoon and set aside some time to read it tonight, expecting to engage seriously with some of Bill's scientific arguments, or maybe just a sample or snippet of one argument, whatever the writer chose to include.  After all, this is Bill Nye the Science Guy, the one who used all those cool hands-on experiments in videos to teach us Newton's Third Law in grade school.  I expected something great.

I was disappointed.  To be fair, it is not a reflection on Nye, since he did not write the article, but it does raise some sobering questions about the direction of popular thought on science in America today—though I doubt very much it raises the questions the author intended it to raise.  The issue is that the article does not present any scientific arguments at all.  It is entirely rhetorical.  The whole piece is a sketch aimed at presenting Nye as an all-around American good-guy with a passion for science, humanity, the environment, progress, and critical thought and contrasting him with Ken Ham (his debate partner) who is smeared as a snake-oil salesman rooted in an environmentally-toxic and patriarchal past based solely on blind faith in a book Nye could pull apart as a fraud in five minutes.

There are a couple things that really bug me here, laying aside for a minute whether or not either caricature is even a remote resemblance of the truth.  First of all, for a magazine with "science" in the title and an article supposedly about a man fighting for scientific and critical thinking, the article is an absolute vacuum of both.  Evaluating any two competing sets of ideas (or theories, if you will) based solely on caricatures of their proponents is about as far from science and reason as you can get—but it is exactly what the article asks us to do.  It is not even logical.  It's a prime example of one of the fundamental logical fallacies: argumentum ad hominem: trying to disprove the truth of an argument or idea not by countering it but by assassinating the character of the person who made the argument in the first place.  By putting all these rhetorical insinuations (2.5+ pages worth of them) before even the first allusion to a scientific argument, the author is guilty of "poisoning the well", presenting adverse information about an arguer in advance of their argument so as to cast everything they say in a negative light.  This is terrible logic, utter illogic, and if that is the standard of popular scientific thought in America today, then we are in very big trouble.

The second thing that bothers me is the hubris of the position it presents.  There is no debate presented between Creation-science and Naturalistic (macro-evolutionary) science.  The debate is cast frimly as a battle of enlightened science vs blind gibbering-idiot-level faith.  There is no acknowledgment that even psuedo-reasonable arguments for the other view might exist.  There is such self-assured pride in the naturalistic cosmology that the author feels no need to justify any of its claims, or explain to us why anyone who does not immediately embrace them is a Neanderthal trying to shove us back into a new Dark Age.  The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  The dinosaur fossils go back to 65 million years old.  All the matter that makes us up comes from stars.  All species evolved from a common ancestor over the course of millions and millions of years of gradual changes.  Anyone who needs to ask, How do you know? is given no answer.  Obviously such a person is a Neanderthal trying to shove us back into a new Dark Age and is a danger to humanity as a whole!

The problem with this attitude is that it goes beyond being simply illogical and unscientific.  It does not simply fail to pass the test of critical thought or rightly apply critical thought.  It actively suppresses critical thought (do not criticize these scientific ideas: they are simply right).  It actively discourages logic (do not apply logic to this: just listen to the bandwagon of scientists who believe this is true and know that it is—and certainly do not look up the bandwagon fallacy on Wikipedia!).  In the end, it is not just bad science, it is anti-science.  If science is the pursuit of knowledge, of asking questions and answering them with evidence, this line of thought tells us to stop questioning, stop pursuing, stop looking at the evidence, and simply go along with whatever we are told.  We are not to continue the quest for knowledge, but instead to stop at explanations as in-depth and satisfying as children's stories.

This is how science stagnates, turns in on itself, and ultimately dies.  While modern rhetoric has tried to paint faith vs reason as the backdrop of Galileo Galilei's trial and the public condemnation of heliocentric astronomy, this is a historical fallacy.  As we see from Galileo's sudden turn from astronomy to physics (specifically, the physics of falling bodies, which was said to prove that the Earth was stationary), the real backdrop was a debate between an established science (Aristotlean physics) vs an emerging one (astronomy).  It is less a story about how religion stifled science than a story about how dogmatic insistence that one scientific school of thought be accepted without criticism held back the pursuit of truth and knowledge throughout the 17th century.

We are in danger of the same thing happening today, in the 21st.  The naturalistic cosmology will broke no competition, no criticism, no questioning of its inherent truthfulness, and anyone who dares examine it's claims is automatically branded a heretic and excommunicated from the ivy halls.  This is what is holding us back.  This is what poses a threat to us as a civilization founded on scientific progress and the pursuit of truth.  The solution that will save us is not children's TV stars spouting empty rhetoric, and it is certainly not making caricatures of our favorite "heroes and villains" in this debate, as the article does.  The solution instead is a commitment to examine the truth, logic, and evidence of all things and follow it wherever it may lead us...even if it leads away from the politically correct bandwagon.

Comparable to the Bible: the Ark vs Nephi's Ship

It has been a while since I wrote or read anything about the Book of Mormon.  It is good, however, to remember what we have in the Bible and to appreciate it in contrast (and comparison) to those books (like the Book of Mormon) which pretend to be its equal.

So resuming where I left off, after the incident with the bow, Nephi and company travel eight years eastward until they eventually reach a sea they call "Irreantum" on the shore of a land they call "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" (the name and the reason behind it being repeated twice in the space of two verses).  Where this is in the real world is a little difficult to parse out since the only point of known geography mentioned in the book has been Jerusalem.  However, since the overall direction of the journey has been southeastward of Jerusalem, we can say it's probably the Indian Ocean and the southern shore of the Arabian Peninsula.  This is, in fact, the only possible destination given their direction of travel.

Upon their arrival at the seashore, Nephi goes up into the mountains and God commands him to build a ship with which to cross the ocean.  This will be a special ship, not made in the fashion of any normal human shipbuilding but according to special divine instructions (1 Nephi 18:1-3).  Nephi then asks where he will get the ore to make the metal tools necessary for ship building.  Much is made of the manner in which Nephi constructs these tools, down to describing how Nephi constructed a bellows and started the fire to melt the ore to make the tools, etc.

The curious thing is that Nephi's question and the descriptions of his work that follow miss the point.  Tools are the easy part of any such ship-building endeavor.  Primitive shipbuilding did not require much in the way of specialized metal tools.  Even a small ax could be used to accomplish much of the work, cutting, splitting, and planing wood, as well as driving in nails with the back side (axes are, really, terrifically useful tools common to every culture and era, which is one reason why Gary Paulson was able to convincingly write two books revolving around a plane crash victim surviving alone in the wilderness with only a small hatchet).  Knives could be used for chisels or for sealing the cracks between boards with cordage.  In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any primitive tool shipbuilding would require which would not have been with Nephi's party already.  Without an ax, they would have been unable to cut wood either for the making of Nephi's bow in chapter 16 or for the making of the forge fire in chapter 17.  Without a knives, they would be unable to skin and dress the game they survived upon in the wilderness for eight years...so either they had pretty much all the tools they needed already or they couldn't have made it this far in the narrative to start with.

Of course, we might assume that more specialized tools might have been required, but again, making them should not be too difficult.  What would unquestionably be difficult and what explicitly required direct input from God was designing and building a ship.  Curiously, this part is glossed over.  There is absolutely no description of the design of the ship Nephi built, nor of its materials or manner of construction, even though all are said to have been directly commanded by God.  In the Bible, God commands Noah to build a ship with a specific design, but there in Genesis the design of the ship is described in detail, as are its construction materials.  There the hard part which required God's direct intervention is described to us while irrelevant details (where Noah got the tools) are left out.  In the Book of Mormon the opposite is true.

It is difficult to believe that the same God who painstakingly described the special design of Noah's ark would be sidetracked from doing the same with the special design of Nephi's ship.  However, an alternate explanation exists.  The designs for the Ark contained in Genesis are complete enough to allow scientists and engineers to create scale models of the Ark to test its seaworthiness and estimate its cargo capacity, both of which verify the Biblical accounts.  If God truly designed Nephi's ship as well, inclusion of its design would similarly result in proof of the Book of Mormon.  But no design is included.  This may be because, in fact, God did not give a design to Nephi, Joseph Smith did.  Smith grew up in a landlocked region as a farmer and knew nothing of nautical engineering.  However, he did know that people would have trouble accepting the idea that ancient Jews from Jerusalem managed to build a vessel seaworthy enough to cross the oceans to the Americas over 2,000 years before Columbus.  Someone was bound to object that the Israelites of the 6th Century did not know how to construct such ships, so Smith claimed the design was special from God and even used different techniques.  However, if he included the design and techniques to verify his claim there was always a chance someone would test them and find him a fraud.  As he did with the Lost Pages, Smith took the easy way out and omitted any reference to an actual design, anything that could be tested and verified.  Smith calls us to trust blindly.  God calls us to test Him and see that He is true.