Mormonism / Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints / LDS

While Mormonism is not strictly classified as “Christian Fundamentalist” its belief system does contain many of the aspects of standard fundamentalism. Mormon theology is based on beliefs that can not be empirically confirmed and contradict scientific explanations (mostly archaeology)*.  These aspects are found mostly in what Mormonism’s adherents believe to be their sacred scripture: The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants.

The book of Mormon is the foundation of what differentiates Mormons from other Christian denominations. The book claims to be a translation from gold plates of a record about an ancient civilization in North America that was visited by Jesus Christ. The Book of Morman is proported to be a translation of ancient golden tablets that was given from God to Joseph Smith through the Angel Moroni in the mid 19th century.  The tablets were subsequently supposedly taken back into heaven thus conveniently removing any attempt at empirical verification.  Lack of evidence notwithstanding, it must be noted that Mormon believers are taught to not rely on empirical evidence for their beliefs in any case.  They are enjoined to rely completely on subjective feelings “in their heart” in their acceptance of truth of The Book of Morman as stated in Moroni 10: 3-5 (from Book of Mormon).  If they ask with a “sincere heart” and having “faith,” God will reveal the truth of the book to them.  Of course, if they still don’t believe after that, they must not have a sincere heart or enough faith.

Mormons often repeat the mantra that “I know this is a book of Holy Scripture and I know it is true and I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.”  No empirical evidence is necessary.  This desire to convince themselves of the truth of their scriptures through subjective emotions alone and through repeated affirmations (utterances) gives Mormons the appearance of a cult.  Fundamentalists, as a result, not surprisingly, view Mormons - not as a another Christian denomination - but as nothing more than a cult. This view is exacerbated by the Mormon belief that the Bible - a book the Fundamentalist holds as inerrant - has been corrupted, and is only correct insofar as it is “interpreted correctly” (by Mormons of course).

The term “cult” has lost much of its real meaning as a result of being used as a derogatory insult to be thrown (usually by Fundamentalist Christians) at religious beliefs seen as heretical or non-Christian.  I would not use the term cult to describer Mormon belief mainly because many Fundamentalist Christian sects employ the very same methods (subjective emotions, mantra’s, etc.) in the practice of their religion.

Bibliography

Books:

Williams, Stephen. "Archaeology and Religion: where angels fear to tread". IN Fantastic Archaeology: the Wild Side of Archaeology: North American Prehistory. Univ. of  Penn. Press. 1991. p. 159-168.

This section of William's book on fantastic archaeology gives a good overview of how Joseph Smith's claims fit into the real science of North American pre-colombian archaeology.  Shows how LDS church authorities have re-focused the Book of Mormon on Central America despite Smith's original claims that a great civilization existed in the Ohio valley (and that the indian burial mounds in the Ohio valley were actually the ruins of ancent Nephite forts).

Web Links
 
Official Site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
www.lds.org

FARMS Online: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormons Studies
farms.byu.edu
An official LDS site.  The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) at Brigham Young University is a nonprofit research and publishing organization. It encourages and supports scholarly research on the Book of Mormon, the Bible, other ancient scriptures, and related subjects.

Recovery from Mormonism:
www.exmormon.org
(From the site) A Site for those who are questioning their Faith in the Organization and For Those who Need Support as they transition their lives to a Normal Life.  We are not affiliated with any religion and we do not advocate any religion

Section on Mormonism from The Secular Web (Infidels.Org)
www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/mormonism/
A web site for critical thinking featuring articles on all religions.

Dr. Shades' Mormonism Page
www.connect-a.net/users/drshades/mormon.htm
This website's three purposes are:  1. To provide information that I have not seen elsewhere, 2. To give the visitor a basic overview
of some aspects of this religion so that further study may be more profitable, and 3. To publish personal observations after
having spent two decades as an active, contributing member of this religion (I'm technically still a member, but I'm no longer
active and contributing).

Christian Apologetic and Research Ministry (CARM): Mormonism
www.carm.org/mormon.htm
A fundamentalist site with a section on Mormonism detailing Mormon beliefs and practices.

Mormon Research Ministry
https://www.mrm.org/
Another fundamentalist site that claims " challenging the claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1979."



Scientific View of Mormon Beliefs

The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention any of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce even a shred of pre-columbian archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant parts of the Americas, the pre-columbian history of the Americas shows the opposite: widely disparate racial types (almost entirely east Asian - definitely not Semitic), and many unrelated native languages, none of which are even remotely related to Hebrew or Egyptian.

The people of the Book of Mormon were supposedly devout Jews observing the Law of Moses, but in the Book of Mormon there is almost no trace of their observance of Mosaic law or even an accurate knowledge of it.



"I have seen no archaeological evidence before or since that [1973] date which would convince me that it [the Book of Mormon] is anything but a fanciful creation by an unusually gifted individual living in upstate New York in the early nineteenth century."

--1993 Michael D. Coe, professor of anthropology at Yale University


Prepared by
THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
STATEMENT REGARDING THE BOOK OF MORMON

1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.

2. The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern, central, and northeastern Asia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World--probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age--in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.

3. Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen, who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around 1000 A.D. and then settled in Greenland. There is no evidence to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.

4. None of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre- Columbian times. This is one of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific premise that contacts with Old World civilizations, if they occurred, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, or camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, bat all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time the early big game hunters traveled across the Americas.)

5. Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492 (except for occasional use of unsmelted meteroic iron). Native copper was worked in various locations in pre- Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but not iron.

6. There is a possibility that the spread of cultural traits across the Pacific to Mesoamerica and the northwestern coast of South America began several hundred years before the Christian era. However, any such inter-hemispheric contacts appear to have been the results of accidental voyages originating in eastern and southern Asia. It is by no means certain that even such contacts occurred with the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, or other peoples of Western Asia and the Near East.

7. No reputable Egyptologist or other specialist on Old World archeology, and no expert on New World prehistory, has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archeological remains in Mexico and archeological remains in Egypt.

8. Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.

9. There are copies of the Book of Mormon in the library of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution


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