My Book of “Evidence of Things Not Seen”
Edition Three
March 12, 2022
By Matthew Havertz
My name is Matthew Havertz. I live in Utah in the United States. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Growing up, every first Sunday of a new month, members of our local congregation had an opportunity to go up to the pulpit during church and share their “testimonies” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and more. There were no planned sermons or talks. No preacher got up to preach. Fast Sunday, as we call it, is a day of fasting and prayer. At church, those first Sundays of the month are a chance for anyone to get up to share what they believe they know is true.
As a teenager, I once invited a friend of mine to church with me on one of these Sundays. He was not a member of our Church and hadn’t had much experience being in any church. Members of the congregation, sitting in the pews, would walk up to the pulpit and say things like, “I know that God is real.” Or, “I know the Book of Mormon is true.”
Near the end of the meeting, my friend turned to me and quietly asked, “How can all these people claim they know these things are true?”
That’s a good question. How can I really know that God is real or that the Book of Mormon is God’s scripture? The answer to those questions is what this book is all about.
I don’t remember exactly when I started this endeavor, but I remember coming across material online that caused me to question my deeply held beliefs in 2019. It wasn’t the first time I had heard or read material antagonist to my faith. After all, I had served as a young missionary for my faith, sporting a white shirt and black name badge, knocking on strangers’ doors to share the Book of Mormon with them. Opposing arguments were nothing new to me. From the time I was a teenager, I came across ideas in opposition to my beliefs.
This time, in 2019, my wife and young daughters were in the other room. We faithfully took our girls to church every week. I even loyally volunteered a few hours of time every week to my local congregation outside of church. What I read online this time caused me to question my own spiritual experiences with God. I questioned if my spiritual experiences were the product of an evolved brain rather than encounters with God’s Spirit.
I remember clearly feeling like I had to make a choice whether I would continue to be a believer or not, whether I would continue to go to church or not.
I knew right away that I could not keep these feelings from my wife and family. My wife remembers that I asked her to come into our bedroom with her. I told her that I was unsure if I could trust my spiritual experiences. We talked about it.
Around that time, I also had the thought that I needed to pray. Even though I was unsure if I could trust in prayer any longer, I thought I needed to give God another fair chance. As I prayed, a story from the Book of Mormon (Alma 30, especially verse 16) came to my mind and a spiritual experience I had in highschool returned to my thoughts as well. At that point, I was unsure if I could even trust in my own fallible memory. But, I ended up turning to my high school journal and found this spiritual experience well documented, just as I had remembered it. This helped me regain my trust in my own memory.
I will be honest, I cannot claim absolute certainty that God exists, that the Bible is God’s word, or that the Book of Mormon is true, but I started this book to collect evidence (like that high school spiritual experience) for and against my deeply held beliefs.
A worldwide church leader in my faith, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, once said, “Recall, especially in times of crisis, when you felt the Spirit and your testimony was strong; remember the spiritual foundations you have built” (Ronald A. Rasband, Lest Thou Forget, 2016).
This book started as an attempt to methodically document such experiences and other evidence. Since the time I started this book, I have recorded my personal method for establishing truth and arguments for why it may be worth trusting spiritual experiences as evidence for truth claims. After a couple years, the book grew over 70 pages long. I now feel pieces of this book are worth sharing with the world.
Whether you are a believer or not, I hope you find my ideas relevant and useful. Whether your religion and beliefs differ from mine, I hope these ideas can provide good insights for your journey. I have modified this book to exclude much of my own evidence, especially spiritual experiences I feel are too sacred to share publicly. I do not expect those reading this book to accept my claims and my evidence. Instead, I share this book to provide my ideas on faith, epistemology, spiritual experiences, and evidence collection. My hope is that you, the reader, will use my ideas as a springboard to collect and document your own evidence and come to your own conclusions.
If you have thoughts on anything I share here, maybe especially if you disagree, I would love to know. Please email me at MatthewHavertz@gmail.com. I welcome thoughts from those who disagree. I have even openly discussed these ideas publicly in various forms, and am willing to continue to do so. I consider this a living book that will be modified and amended. For example, there is still much source material I need to dig up, reference, and link to. Please excuse my faults and errors. This is only an early version.
Please also realize that I do not act as an official representative of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I take full responsibility for the ideas I express here. They are my own.
Finally, note that I freely quote from my own sources without using quotation marks, my previously written blog posts and Facebook posts. Because I wrote the material originally, I do not consider this plagiarism.
Table of Contents
How to Develop Faith and the Scientific Method
Evidence for What? What Am I Claiming?
Chapter 2: External Evidence and the Experiences of Others
Notes on Counter Arguments and Alternative Explanations
Chapter 4: Evidence Against The Church’s Claims
Some Church Leaders Have Lied or Done Immoral Things
The Book of Mormon’s Similarity to Other Records
The Early Latter-day Saint Practice of Polygamy
Other Plates, Visions, and Religions During Joseph Smith’s Time
Chapter 5: Other Claims to Truth
Other Religions and Spiritual Experiences (The Outsider Test for Faith)
Chapter 6: My Conclusions Based on the Evidence
Suggestions for Future Methods
Chapter 7: If the Church Were Not True
The Overall Positive Benefits Coming from The Church
The Risks and Harms Coming from The Church
A Note on Free Will and Agency
Religion Causes Contention and War
I Haven’t Had Any Spiritual Experiences
“A Testimony is to be Found in the Bearing of It”
Asking Questions Versus Questioning
If God Exists, Why Pain and Suffering?
Purposes in Faith: Why Doesn’t God Make it Easy?
This book started as a list of evidence for and against the basic claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My private version of this book is not only a list of eye-wittness accounts or scholarly research findings, but it is a collection of personal spiritual experiences—my spiritual “evidence.” It’s a sacred place for me to record and document my spiritual experiences. The public version of this book does not contain all of my spiritual experiences for various reasons discussed in the preface. My hope is for you, the reader, to document and weigh your own evidence for and against what you believe in a similar way.
Before we dive into the evidence though, it seems necessary to provide a definition for faith, to clarify what exactly my truth claims are, and to describe my own epistemology (my own method for coming to the truth). That’s what I’ll try to do here in this first chapter.
Some define faith as believing something is true without any substantial evidence. For some, faith simply fills in the gaps where science is not yet sufficient. For some faith is utterly blind.
In direct opposition to those ideas, the ancient apostle Paul once said, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Paul also said, and other scriptures confirm, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established" (2 Corinthians 13:1).
The Book of Mormon recounts, “And it came to pass that they did go forth, and did minister unto the people, declaring throughout all the regions round about all the things which they had heard and seen, insomuch that the more part of the Lamanites were convinced of them, because of the greatness of the evidences which they had received” (Helaman 5:50).
Alma even encourages, “arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words” (Alma 32:27). I have done as Alma directed and “tried the experiment, and planted the seed” (Alma 32:33). Yet, my “faith is not … a perfect knowledge of things” (Alma 32:21).
In that famous sermon on seeds and trees, Alma’s words make it clear we must act in order to see a result: we plant and nourish the seed and then we see what it grows into. We don’t see the fruit until after we’ve planted and nourished the seed.
Those who seek for signs are often lazily asking to see and taste the fruit before they’ve planted the seed. Seeking signs is obviously different from collecting evidence. God’s Son warned, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it” (Matthew 16:4).
In a revelation to Joseph Smith, the Lord proclaimed, “Faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe” (Doctrine and Covenants 63:9).
To me, the difference between seeking for signs and evidence is that signs are flashy, quick, and always physical. The attitude of the sign seeker is, “If God exists, He must prove himself to me first before I’ve done any work to discover the answer myself.” The sign seeker is looking for something so big and grand there would be absolutely no need for belief at all—irrefutable proof. The attitude of the evidence collector is, “If God exists, I will put in the work to discover Him for myself. I will patiently experiment with God’s teachings. I will consistently collect evidence over time as I put in the work to learn for myself.” The evidence collector realizes faith is not blind or without substance. There is real evidence, but it doesn’t come in their terms or timeline.
God seems to have many wise purposes behind requiring faith to begin with some level of uncertainty. I do not claim to know what all those reasons are, but one reason that seems clear to me is that God wants us to put forth effort to develop a relationship with Him.
We know that faith is a principle of action and that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). The Book of Mormon teaches we are beings created “to act” and “not to be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:13-16). Stephen Covey talked about this in terms of being proactive rather than reactive (FranklinCovey). Faith and agency (free will) are intimately tied together.
Saying “faith without works is dead” is similar to saying “Faith is not by chance, but by choice … Faith is a choice” (Neil L. Anderse, Faith Is Not by Chance, but by Choice, 2015).
Therefore, my definition of faith would be the following:
Faith is the choices we make based on the evidence we have for a truth claim that we cannot yet prove with perfect certainty.
Faith grows into knowledge over time.
Knowledge is understanding of truth.
Truth is “things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24).
Evidence consists of facts, information, and data.
According to my definition and understanding of faith, I would argue that most endeavors begin with some level of faith.
For example, you must believe it’s reasonable and possible that you could learn to play the piano before sitting down at the piano to try. Your belief that you can learn to play may be based on the evidence of seeing others play before you. Yet, you do not know with certainty that you can become a pianist yourself. As you choose to put in the work to learn and practice, you collect more evidence that you can do what you imagined.
Here’s another example. Most people believe, based on some level of reasonability, that you can reach your destination before you embark on a journey. Oftentimes, faith is like hiking towards a waterfall. At first, all we can do is trust in those who have taken the journey before us. As we get closer to our destination, we see more and more evidence: moss on the trees, the sound of the brook, the smell of the waterfall. Finally, we arrive at our destination and no longer need faith.
Scientists must similarly believe they can collect enough data to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. The scientific method often begins with an observation (some initial meager evidence) that an idea they have may or may not be true. Then, they must make a choice and put in the work to perform an experiment or collect further data. The evidence begins to form a more complete picture of the truth.
Again, the Book of Mormon famously counsels, “arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words” (Alma 32:27).
I have heard several scholarly people say something like, "You cannot answer spiritual questions with the scientific method." For them, such questions as, "Does God exist?" cannot be answered by collecting data or evidence. I full-heartedly disagree. In fact, as I explained, I believe faith is part of the scientific method.
There are many models or diagrams representing the methods scientists use to discover facts. Here is one version I put together based on others I’ve seen:
If you think of this process in spiritual terms, I believe you will come to the same conclusion I have: The scientific method not only can be used to discover if God is there, it should be used for that purpose. The biggest difference seems to be the type of evidence we collect. I will discuss this later.
Now let me be clear about what I’m claiming and not claiming. I am not claiming every single word spoken by a Prophet or Apostle in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or over the modern-day pulpit of general conference is an absolute reflection of complete truth. Everything fits together and we have to learn to put information in its proper context.
Neil L. Andersen, a modern-day Apostle said, “There is an important principle that governs the doctrine of the Church. The doctrine is taught by all 15 members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. It is not hidden in an obscure paragraph of one talk. True principles are taught frequently and by many. Our doctrine is not difficult to find” (Neil L. Anderson, Trial of Your Faith, 2012).
Similarly, D. Todd Chrisotfferson said, “Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. It is commonly understood in the Church that a statement made by one leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, not meant to be official or binding for the whole Church” (D. Todd Christofferson, The Doctrine of Christ, 2012).
Ezra Taft Benson taught, "The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet” (Ezra Taft Benseon, Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, 1981).
Joseph Smith also taught, “A prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such.”
Even ancient Prophets seemed to make major mistakes. Abraham lied about his wife being his sister. Some prophets and prophet-kings took concubines the Lord did not command them to take. Jacob stole his brother’s birthright in a way that appears deceitful to me. David killed Bathsheba’s husband. The list goes on. Many prophets admitted their feelings of inadequacy (Moses 6:31; Genesis 28:17; Exodus 3:10; 2 Nephi 4:14-35; Joseph Smith—History 1:28). Yet, the Lord was merciful. He was still able to establish truth through His imperfect, mortal Prophets.
In fact, there are some words in the Book of Mormon and the Bible that, at first glance, seem to contradict each other. A single verse of scripture is not an accurate reflection of the complete truth by itself.
One of our articles of faith states, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God” (Articles of Faith 1:8).
Moroni’s title page to the Book of Mormon even admits mistakes. “And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.”
I have documented my relationship with the scriptures. Unless I foresee negative consequences or see any other red flags, I try to act on everything good I read within the scriptures. If something seems questionable, I look for more context, read modern church leaders interpretations, and pray for answers. I can confidently say reading scriptures and praying has only brought positive results in my life.
If we are so careful with how we find truth in the words of Prophets and Apostles (ancient and modern), how do we decide what is true? Well, for the purposes of this book, here is what I am claiming is true. Here’s a list of what I see as the basic, foundational, life-changing truths of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. These are also the doctrines that I see most help me improve and make my life happier.
Joseph Smith put it even simpler. He said, “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.”
These are the claims I’m providing evidence for in this book.
What are the claims you would try to provide evidence for?
Now, how do we actually establish what is true?
Some say our senses (whether it be five or more) primarily help us establish what is true.
However, if that’s true, think of how much you would actually know. Have you personally visited all the other countries in the world? Have you personally seen bacteria under a microscope? How do you really know the Earth is a sphere?
How much of what we claim to know is based on our memories of what we have sensed and experienced in the past, not based on what we are currently experiencing? Do we know if our memories are truly reliable?
It’s clear to me we have to use means outside of our momentary physical senses to establish what is true.
Some say using our ability to reason (intellect or logic) is the main way for us to establish truth beyond what we actually sense. Some say we must rely on others. In that vein, the scientific method with scientific consensus may be the best way to establish truth.
In contrast, some people claim truth is relative. To them, no universal reality (or truth) exists. If there is objective truth, there’s no real way to discover it for ourselves.
Some people believe we create or influence truth: our thinking literally changes reality. Some people believe we create truth together, social constructionism. For example, they would say money or language does not exist outside our shared acceptance of those ideas.
Even among those who believe in an objective reality, many claim there’s no good way to prove spiritual truths, and there’s no good reason to try: allow people to believe whatever they want.
The purpose of this section is to establish my means for establishing what is true—my epistemology.
Before I talk about my epistemology, I would like to point out that some philosophers argue that reality is all a dream. Some scientists even argue there are good chances we are all living in a computer simulation. Again, some even argue there is no reality outside of our own experience.
I believe in an objective reality, outside of my own existence. I believe we all share a reality that is bound by laws that are the same for everyone.
With that said, I cannot see a good way to prove that anything exists outside of my head. I cannot think of a good way to prove what I perceive as reality is not all a dream, a computer simulation, or something akin to the Truman Show. If existence is all in my head, then establishing that someone else experiences reality similarly to me (e.g., via shared information, scientific consensus, or other forms of research) would only be establishing that someone who does not truly exist outside my head experiences reality similar to me. It wouldn’t prove they really exist outside of myself.
That may be a sobering thought. At the same time, that thought is beautiful and freeing as well. If I am living in a dream or a computer simulation, then in my own dream there are rules and laws that govern the dream. Does it really matter if this is all a dream or not? If there are observable rules and laws within the experience, I want to do my best to live my best within those laws and rules. I want to find happiness regardless of whether this is all in my head. Ironically, in my own experience, I cannot find happiness without others. But, if those others are only in my mind, I guess that would be OK with me.
There’s a movie called Free Guy where an artificially intelligent video game character named Buddy sums it up like this, “So what if I’m not real? Even if I’m not real, this moment is. What’s more real than a person trying to help someone they love?”
So, whether this is all a dream or there is objective reality, I move forward the same way. Truth (whether in my mind or not) is still found, for me, the same way. I collect the best evidence I have to make the best decisions I can. And, I believe that we all share an objective reality. I believe the truth is the same for all of us. I also believe eternal truths are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Earlier, I established faith is choices we make based on evidence for a claim. I also said that faith (or evidence) grows into knowledge over time after making faith-filled choices. That, however, begs the questions: what kind of evidence is acceptable and how much evidence is required before faith can be considered knowledge?
It’s interesting to me that people can always cast doubt anywhere. Some suggest the moon landing or the Holocaust didn’t really happen. During the COVID-19 pandemic, various voices convinced some not to be vaccinated. Some legitimate psychology and memory research may cause us to doubt our own memories. And, some may be tempted to distrust their own experiences when they learn about others who experience hallucinations or mental illness. Yet, most of us still find a way to accept truth in the midst of doubt.
Here are the principles that guide my acceptance of evidence for the truth:
I choose to accept two types of evidence, my own experiences and others’ experiences.
Some data sources are more trustworthy than others. Some data sources may not be trustworthy at all. Here are principles that increase the credibility of the experiences.
Here are some cautions with evidence and experiences.
What is your criteria for accepting evidence for the truth?
*Note: Predictability may not always mean I can predict the future perfectly. Reliability (repeatability and reproducibility) doesn’t mean yIou will see the same results every time. In truly causal relationships (e.g., irrefutable laws), I should see the same results if I repeat the experience over and over again. In contrast, if I went out searching for a new species of animal in a forest, I wouldn’t always expect to see that species in the same place at the same time day after day: animals move around. In that case, repeatability and reproducibility may mean multiple different people witnessing the species at different times in different places. Taking a picture or video or securing a carcass would increase my confidence level as well.
When I’m talking with others that clearly accept what I accept as true, I don’t always need to establish how I came to that truth (e.g., Japan exists, 1 + 1 = 2, the stars are above the Earth). However, when discussing what I accept as true with disbelievers or when discussing what I accept as true with someone who may not yet know what I know, I always want to attempt to use attributing statements (“I saw …,” “I experienced …,” “According to the research …,” “She said that …). In general, it’s important to strive to use attributing statements whenever reasonable.
My knowledge of things as they are only extends as far as my evidence, and until I have all the evidence or data available, there will always be some level of uncertainty; I will always be collecting evidence.
Karl Popper argued for falsification. I believe falsification can be a powerful way to further solidify our understanding of the truth. Some would explain falsification as trying to disprove a theory. You may not be able to prove some things with 100 percent confidence, but you may be able to disprove something. One of the most common examples is that it would be nearly impossible to prove that all swans are white (you’d need to see every swan in existence), but if you find one black swan, it totally disproves the theory that all swans are white. You then must refine and adjust your theory.
Personally, I agree that falsification is one great way to get closer to the truth. In the Book of Mormon, Moroni famously asked, “I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true” (Moroni 10:4). However, If I were trying to prove that ibuprofen decreases inflammation, according to this falsification concept, I would just need to provide a single instance of ibuprofen not decreasing inflammation to disprove my theory. I think finding truth is often messier than we realize, and I believe we can begin to discover truth without necessarily perfectly distilling it down to its purest form at first. Falsification can help us to distill and refine, but we have to act on the evidence we do have. We have to continue seeking for more. We should not abandon the entire theory at the first sight of doubt if we have enough good evidence to keep going.
Here’s one more example. Let’s say you had some evidence to suggest a large North American ape species existed, but not enough evidence to be very certain about it. If you were seeking to falsify your theory, you might try to take a fur sample to the lab. However, if that fur sample came back as dog fur, you would not necessarily disprove the entire theory. You’d have to disprove all the other evidence (foot prints, video footage, pictures, and more). You’d continue to seek to falsify each piece of evidence. In the end, you’d need to weigh the evidence and make the best determination you could. Is there more evidence for BigFoot’s existence than there is disconfirmed evidence or vice versa?
Some people use falsification as a justification to be closed minded. One puzzle piece that does not seem to fit becomes an excuse to abandon the whole puzzle. In my estimation, it seems Karl Popper was an advocate for uncertainty. Certain, absolute doubt is then just as bad as certainty for a claim. I do not believe he intended his ideas on falsification to prematurely end all investigation. In other words, some people unintentionally use falsification as a tool to throw the baby out with the bath water.
In that sense, falsification is a powerful tool to come closer to the truth, but not necessarily a barrier to exploring the evidence you have collected.
Risk analysis is really important for accepting something as true, especially when certainty is not possible. I feel I am largely a pragmatist. If a claim to truth does not have a huge effect or impact on my life or on the lives of those around me, I don’t stress too much about proving or disproving it. For example, whether Bigfoot exists or not doesn’t affect my daily life, and it’s not a hobby I’m interested in pursuing at this time of my life. Thus, I don’t worry about trying to collect evidence or provide skepticism to those who believe. When a friend posts on social media that they visited Hawaii, I don’t try to verify that information because it doesn’t do me much good to try to prove they are telling the truth or not.
However, there are some claims to truth that do have a big impact on my life, and those are the ones I care more about collecting more evidence for. For example, buying a house is a big decision that requires a lot of research and time. I am cautious about who I give my social security number or credit card numbers to. Who I chose to marry is a decision that requires some good information and revelation from heaven. What I choose as a career requires some good evidence. The belief system I choose to embrace and live is not a decision to make light-heartedly.
Here are some stories to illustrated all of this:
Story One:
I made a documentary about the Bear Lake Monster. Bear Lake is a body of water on the border of Utah and Idaho. I ended up collecting eye-witness stories about the Bear Lake Monster. There are some who are truly convinced that a large aquatic animal exists in Bear Lake, despite what anyone else thinks.
Because of this, I have some small reason to believe a monster could exist based on the evidence I’ve collected. In other words, I have the beginnings of faith. However, based on my limited personal investigation and experiences, I can’t say I’m very confident that the Bear Lake Monster exists. Although I have some level of faith, my confidence level of my knowledge of a large aquatic species in Bear Lake is low. The geologist and biologist I interviewed also seemed highly skeptical. Although it seems possible for a large aquatic species to one day be discovered, I only really have a handful of eyewitness accounts. I only have enough evidence to explore further. Furthermore, to be honest, I don’t know if this affects my life enough to spend a considerable amount of time collecting more evidence.
Story Two:
A neighbor and fellow church member once came over on church business. Our conversation ended up turning to a drink he recently started making and partaking of called “Golden Milk,” a drink made primarily from milk and turmeric. He told me this drink seemed to cure a long-term toe pain he experienced.
I did further research on the drink and discovered nutrition research that concluded curcumin (a chemical in turmeric) had anti-inflammatory effects. However, other research casts doubt on those studies and suggests no serious medical research has proven curcumin in an anti-inflammatory.
Based on my research, I concluded the drink would pose no serious risks to my health, so I experimented with the drink and tried it myself. Although I have not yet seen the same anti-inflammatory effects as ibuprofen, I am hopeful the drink will help the arthritis in my feet.
I have faith that the golden milk will help my feet. My confidence level of my knowledge that the drink will help my feet is currently at a medium level. My faith in this matter, the choices I make based on the evidence of a truth claim, does affect my life, so I choose to continue to act in faith and collect more evidence, including various kinds of evidence. I hope my faith will result in further knowledge over time. I have decided I will give myself a year to try this drink, and if I don’t see fruits, I don’t think I will continue on this path.
Story Three
My Dad went to Japan as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Growing up, I occasionally heard him pray or speak in Japanese. I saw pictures my Dad took of his experiences in Japan. I have also seen maps of Japan. I have seen movies claiming to be made by production crews in Japan. I have met people claiming to be from Japan. I have seen videos featuring locations in Japan. It is accepted as common knowledge by the vast majority of people around the world that Japan exists. I could book a flight to Japan if I wanted to go. However, I have never personally seen or visited Japan.
My confidence level of my knowledge that Japan exists is not 100 percent, but it is pretty high.
It’s difficult for some to admit there may be truth in an idea that’s culturally uncomfortable (e.g., the Bear Lake Monster). It’s easier for some to embrace the popular opinion; they may be afraid of ridicule if they admit there may be legitimacy in an idea or theory that is not widely culturally acceptable. Similarly, it’s difficult for some to embrace any level of uncertainty in areas where there is high cultural acceptance. It’s embarrassing to admit that I don’t know with absolute certainty that Japan exists, but it’s true. However, truth seeking takes that level of intellectual humility. Good scientists are quick to use attributing phrases and quick to admit they don’t know as much as others think they know.
Now that we’ve established what faith is, what evidence is acceptable, and more. This chapter is where I begin to list the evidence. In chapter two, I specifically list others’ evidence for the basic truth claims of the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. The next chapter is for personal experiences. These experiences appear in no particular order.
Again, my goal is for you, the reader, to list out your own evidence to come to your own conclusions. I provide many examples, but I have not included everything. Part of the reason for this is because of the sacred nature of some experiences. Part of the reason for this is because I don’t have permission to share some of my neighbors’ and friends’ experiences publicly. Part of the reason is because I’m constantly adding to this list and it would quickly be outdated.
In my table, I have created a new row for each new piece of evidence. I also have a column for a reference and/or link to the source material, a column for what truth claim is brought into question, a column for rating how weighty the evidence is to me, and a column for possible counter arguments.
External Evidence and Others’ Experiences | ||||
Evidence | Record | Implications | Weight Rating (1-3) | Counter Arguments |
The three witnesses to the gold plates saw and experienced something (whether through spiritual eyes or not) so powerful that they never denied their testimony of it. They also sacrificed their lives, livelihoods, and Martin Harris mortgaged his farm. | - Their written and signed account | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims to be | 1 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Hallucinations - They imagined seeing the plates with their “spiritual eyes” |
The other eight witnesses to the Book of Mormon saw and handled the gold plates and never denied their testimonies. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims to be | 1 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Hallucinations - They imagined seeing the plates with their “spiritual eyes” | |
Joseph Smith healed many people of terrible sickness in Nauvoo. There are also other accounts of his healing power. I’ll also quickly mention that even if this was merely the placebo effect (which seems unlikely with the miraculous manner of healing), it shows how believing Joseph Smith and those he healed were. | - Joseph Smith had power from God to heal others and was a prophet | 0.5 | - Lying - Placebo effect - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
Joseph Smith gave doctrinally profound, insightful, and inspiring speeches. Similarly, he wrote powerful letters. He laid out the plans for cities and temples. He was an incredible organizer of people. | - Church history records | - Joseph Smith was inspired of God - At the very least, Joseph Smith had a logical and organized nature. He does not seem delusional or crazy | 1 | - He really had tremendous help from other people and was not really the man in charge - He was one of the very rare humans who was highly organized, charismatic, logical, and delusional |
While conducting a session of the Frankfurt, Germany Temple dedication, Thomas S. Monson felt impressed to announce that Peter Mourik would be speaking. However, Mourik was not anywhere near the temple. Meanwhile, Mourik had the impression to drive to the temple. Mourik did speak that day. | - Temples are houses of God - Priesthood leaders hold keys and authority - God provides inspiration from the Holy Ghost | 0.5 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Our brains can somehow connect with others - Coincidentally | |
When he was a surgeon and while performing a heart operation on a stake patriarch, Russell M. Nelson received revelation of a pictorial diagram on how to finish the operation. | - God fulfills His promises and helps preserve those filling priesthood responsibilities - Revelation is real | 0.5 | - Lying - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Our brains can provide us with mental images | |
Bruce Pitt, my mission president, gave us a book of tender mercies and miracles collected from all the missionaries in my mission. The book contains many incredible, almost unexplainable spiritual experiences. | - Booklet from President Pitt | - God wants His missionary work to move forward and assists with it | 0.5 | - There are so many experiences, I’d have to take each individually |
Sidney Rigdon shared in visionary experiences with Joseph Smith, including seeing Jesus Christ and the Celestial Kingdom. | - Other witnesses, including Wilford Woodruff and Phebe Crosby Peck | - The Latter-day Saint view of the afterlife is real - Jesus Christ lives | 1 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Hallucinations - They imagined the experience with their “spiritual eyes” |
Oliver Cowdery saw angels with Joseph Smith as well as Jesus Christ. He was there for the restoration of the priesthood keys. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery stood by their testimony throughout their lives. | - Doctrine and Covenants 13 and 110 - Joseph Smith’s and Oliver Cowdery’s records | - Priesthood authority and keys are real | 1 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Hallucinations - They imagined the experience with their “spiritual eyes” - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) |
Mary Whitmer seems to have been shown the gold plates by the angel Moroni. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims - Angels visit people today | 1 | - Record reliability - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Hallucinations - Lying | |
Martin Harris claimed to receive scholarly and academic certification that the characters on the gold plates were authentic. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 0.5 | - Lying - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
I have heard or read hundreds of testimonies and spiritual experiences of other Latter-day Saints confirming the basic truths of the Gospel. Literally, millions have shared their testimonies of the Gospel. | - Fast and testimony meetings - Church magazines, websites, and records | - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is what it claims | 1 | - Lying - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Cultural learning |
Over 100 modern-day Prophets and Apostles have shared their testimony of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and His Gospel. They have sacrificed and given themselves to that calling until their deaths. | - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is what it claims | 1 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Cultural learning | |
There were heavenly manifestations and an outpouring of spiritual gifts at the Kirtland Temple dedication. Also, the song “The Spirit of God” was prophetic and forecasted what would happen at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, and other temples thereafter. | - Temples what church leader claim they are | 0.5 | - They were lying; there was a collusion or conspiracy - Cultural learning - Hallucinations - Record reliability - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
Joseph Smith prophesied of the American Civil War almost thirty years prior, including prophesying of the place it would first begin (South Carolina). | - Joseph Smith was a prophet of God | 0.5 | - Coincidentally | |
Chiasmus are found in the Book of Mormon.There is other well-documented literary evidence for the Book of Mormon. | - Book of Mormon Central among others | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - Chiasmus are found in other texts of the time and are not as rare as you think - Coincidentally - Confirmation bias - Not recognized by most scholars outside of the Church |
There are great wordprint studies on the Book of Mormon. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - Methods are outdated or not recognized by scholars - The Book of Mormon really was written by multiple authors | |
There is some archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 0 | - Not recognized by most scholars outside of the Church | |
Joseph F. Smith saw a vision of the spirit world. His vision also coincides perfectly with 1 Peter 3:18-20; Alma 40; and more. | - Joseph F. Smith (and his successors) were prophets, seers, and revelators | 0.75 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
Lorenzo Snow saw Jesus Christ in the Salt Lake City Temple. | - Lorenzo Snow (and his successors) were prophets, seers, and revelators | 0.75 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Record reliability | |
The Family: A Proclamation to the World came out nearly fifteen years before gay marriage was legalized in the United States. | - Hinckley and modern Prophets and Apostles are what they claim to be | 0.5 | - Coincidentally - It wasn’t difficult to see gay marriage and other attacks on traditional family were coming | |
Russell M. Nelson emphasized the Sabbath day and rolled out the new Come, Follow Me curriculum several years before the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, note changes with ordinance witnesses and marriages happening civilly. | - 2015 general conference talk on the Sabbath | - Nelson is a prophet of God | 0.5 | - Coincidentally - Confirmation bias |
In 1884, Bishop Henry Ballard in Logan mysteriously received a newspaper from England in an impossible time period with his own family history. He completed the temple work. | - Temples are what they claim to be | 0.75 | - Lying - Record reliability | |
Wilford Woodruff had a vision of the Founding Fathers and completed their temple work. | - Temples are what church leaders claim they are | 0.75 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Record reliability | |
Elder Melvin J. Ballard saw Jesus Christ in dream or vision. | - Our Search for Happiness by M. Russell Ballard | Prophets and apostles are what they claim to be | 0.75 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Record reliability |
Henry B. Eyring described seeing Jesus Christ in vision: “But into my mind came another picture, as real as what we saw that day. It was of Mary, who was left by the Apostles at the tomb. That is what the Spirit let me see and even hear in my mind, as clearly as if I had been there.” Other Apostles have said things that make it very clear to me that they’ve seen Jesus Christ, at least in dreams or visions. | Prophets and apostles are what they claim to be | 1 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Record reliability | |
Book of Mormon anachronism and criticisms that actually turned into evidence later on: “and it came to pass” and metal plates. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - Coincidentally - Confirmation bias | |
Other evidence from Book of Mormon Central, FAIR, BYU scholars, and others. | - FAIR | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - Not recognized by most scholars outside of the Church |
The Provo Tabernacle burned and a painting of Jesus Christ remained miraculously preserved. Combine this with the lessons learned from the Provo Tabernacle becoming a temple (lessons about the refiner’s fire, the Second Coming, and the Resurrection made possible through Christ, and more). | - Temples are what church leaders claim they are | 0.5 | - Coincidentally - Confirmation bias | |
Ephraim Hanks was one of several who had the miraculous gift of healing through the priesthood. | - Priesthood keys and authority is on Earth | 0.5 | - Lying - Placebo effect - Record reliability | |
A.C. Nelson experienced a visitation from his deceased father. | - The Spirit World exists and missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues there | 0.5 | - Lying - Hallucinations - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Record reliability | |
There is no other record like the Book of Mormon anywhere in the world. Even the Koran does not compare. “Why was Joseph the only one in the 1,800 years following Christ’s ministry to produce such a breadth of unique and clarifying doctrines?” (Tad R. Callister). | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - There are other similar books produced in a short period of time in a similar way - Joseph Smith had a lot of help producing the Book of Mormon, and it wasn’t produced in the short period of time claimed | |
Research shows that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are more educated than people of other religions. Also, the more educated you are in the Church, the more active and believing you tend to be (or maybe vice versa or both). | - Those who are highly educated, who learn to look for and discern truth, recognized even more the truthfulness in the Gospel (e.g., this document). | 0 | - The Church places a higher emphasis on education than any other Church | |
According to research, Latter-day Saint teenagers are more educated about their own and other religions. They are also more capable of coping with challenges. | - The Book of Mormon and teachings of church leaders contain true principles that allow us to cope with challenges | 0 | - There is just something about the culture and the teachings; it has not bearing or reflection on truth | |
“One night last May, I was awakened by those two little girls from the other side of the veil. Though I did not see or hear them with my physical senses, I felt their presence ... Their message was brief and clear: ‘Brother Nelson, we are not sealed to anyone! Can you help us?’ ... I tried again to contact their father … I literally knelt in front of Jimmy ... The Spirit of the Lord was palpable throughout that meeting.” | - The sealing power in the temple is real - Temples are God’s house - There is life after death | 0.75 | - Lying - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
“I looked up at a high white ceiling that made the room so light it seemed almost as if it were open to the sky. And in that moment, the thought came into my mind in these clear words: ‘I have been in this lighted place before.’ But then immediately there came into my mind, not in my own voice, these words: ‘No, you have never been here before. You are remembering a moment before you were born. You were in a sacred place like this.’” | - Pre-earth life exists - Temples are God’s house | 0.75 | - Lying - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) | |
Dallin H. Oaks once said, “As a boy and as a man I have seen healings as miraculous as any recorded in the scriptures, and so have many of you.” Christoffel Golden once said, “I unreservedly testify of and attest to the reality of God and the miracles in the everyday life of countless people from both the low and high stations of life. True, many sacred experiences are rarely spoken of, in part because of their divine origin and the resulting possibility of ridicule by some who do not know better.” | - Preparing for the Second Coming of Christ By Elder Christoffel Golden | - Priesthood holders have power from God to heal | 1 | - Lying - Placebo effect - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) |
The Spirit leads people to come and be a part of the Church and to stay in the Church when things are hard or there appears to be no explanation: the first first converts in Africa who came across the Book of Mormon, Alex Boyė and his dream to move to Salt Lake City, the convert who came across the Book of Mormon without a cover or title page, and more. | 1 | |||
In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we do ordinances, including baptisms, for the dead. Not only, is there no other religion I can think of who redeems the dead, and not only does this showcase a fair a just position on salvation, and not only does this correspond with several scriptures in the Bible, but it doesn’t make sense for a charlatan to be concerned about the salvation of people who are dead. The dead bring no immediate benefit to a charlatan. Also, why be so deeply concerned about the records kept about it. | - D&C 128 | - Joseph Smith was a prophet | 1 | - Joseph Smith was able to tap into the psychological concerns of others - Joseph Smith believed he really as a prophet and was concerned about his dead relatives |
Doctrine and Coventants 132: Historians tell us this revelation was finally written down at Hyrum’s request to help Emma understand polygamy. Just the idea that Hyrum thought Emma would be persuaded by a private revelation (this was not for the whole Church) is a little evidence to me that Joseph, Hyrum, and others sincerely believed in Joseph’s revelation. Hyrum seems to be very close to Joseph. I once heard historian Kate Holbrook say in a podcast that there is no evidence anywhere that Joseph didn’t sincerely believe in the revelations, including in private letters and journal entries. | 1 | - At some points Emma rejected the revelations and did not immediately accept D&C 132; she at least didn’t necessarily seem to believe in the private revelations | ||
According to her daughter (Helen Mar Kimball), Vilate Kimball had an incredible spiritual experience on her own that plural marriage was commanded by God. | - FAIR | 0.5 | - It was written years later by her daughter, not by her; record and memory fallibility | |
Add your own evidence. | ||||
Add your own evidence. | ||||
This chapter is a place for me to document my own personal experiences with God.
For me, my own spiritual experiences are more powerful than the evidence collected in chapter two. I think many of us are more likely to believe what we have seen or experienced for ourselves. I have even recorded many of these evidences, these spiritual experiences, in my journal. I have saved these spiritual experiences in sacred places so I could refer back to them.
Spencer W. Kimbal said, “When you look in the dictionary for the most important word, do you know what it is? It could be ‘remember.’”
Ronald A. Rasband said, “Recall, especially in times of crisis, when you felt the Spirit and your testimony was strong; remember the spiritual foundations you have built. I promise that if you will do this, avoiding things that do not build and strengthen your testimony or that mock your beliefs, those precious times when your testimony prospered will return again to your memory through humble prayer and fasting. I assure you that you will once again feel the safety and warmth of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Ronald A. Rasband, Lest Thou Forget, 2016).
(See the note I have in the appendix about this quote and “avoiding things that … mock your beliefs”).
Some may wonder if their own spiritual experiences are trustworthy. Before I list out my spiritual experiences and ask you to do the same, I want to establish the legitimacy of this source of data.
Aristotle may have been the first one to document the “five senses” of vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The problem is there are many more senses. Besides a sense of balance, pain, proprioception, and more, here are some interesting senses or sensory abilities you may not be aware of. Recent research suggests dogs can smell human fear. Dogs apparently can also smell cancer. Some beetles have developed the ability to sense forest fires from miles and miles away. Bees and other insects can see ultraviolet light. Scientists have done studies using animal movement to predict earthquakes. Somehow, it seems animals can sense and predict earthquakes before they happen. Some snakes have the ability to “see” in infrared. Humans have developed technology to replicate this innate, biological ability in snakes. Bats and other animals have the ability to echolocate. Some blind humans have developed the ability to echolocate as well by making clicking noises. To a limited degree, humans have the power to “see” into the future; meteorologists can more or less accurately predict tomorrow’s weather using available data and known weather patterns. Doctors, especially cardiologists and pulmonologists, have taken their sense of hearing to the next level. With the help of a stethoscope, many doctors developed a keen sense to recognize heart and breathing patterns to quickly diagnose disease. Humans have developed technology—microscopes, telescopes, and more—to assist in seeing many things invisible to the natural eye. Many animals, especially including humans, have developed a keen sense of interpreting emotions by reading facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and more. All of us have this ability to some degree or another; some are more adept than others.
Some people like to imagine they are totally rational beings. They make choices based on the most logical reasoning. They base their decisions on factual data alone. But, have you ever stopped to think about how many choices you base on your emotions and what you "feel" like you should do?
Who do you decide to love? How do you know you love them? Who are your friends? How do you know you like them? What music did you decide to listen to recently? What media do you regularly consume? How did you decide what to wear this morning? How do you know when you're hurt or in pain? Can you prove your pain to anyone else? How do you know a massage is really helping your pain? What do you feel is right and wrong?
When making decisions such as these, I highly doubt most of us use reasoning, logic, or facts alone to make the decision. In fact, I think if you took an inventory of your choices, you may be surprised about how many decisions are not logical, are not based on data or any kind of physical evidence.
Some people claim we can only know what we have some kind of tangible, physical evidence for. Some say we should rely solely (or at least mostly) on physical evidence or proven data to make decisions. Some claim the scientific method based on empirical evidence is the best and only way to come to correct decisions.
However, if you only relied on your physical senses, large data sets, or scientific consensus to learn what's true and make a decision, you would be sorely unequipped to make many decisions in life—even very important, life-altering decisions.
I am not suggesting the scientific method is not a legitimate way to discover truth or a powerful source of data, theories, and laws to base our decisions on. I am also not suggesting our feelings should be the only (or the main) source for all our decisions. However, I hope this line of thinking makes it clear that most all of us, if not all of us, rely on other important sources of legitimate information to make decisions. How we feel has a huge impact on us and it should!
Boyd K. Packer reportedly said on several occasions, “If all you know is what you see with your natural eyes and hear with your natural ears, then you will not know very much.”
If this is true (and I could go on and on with why I believe it is), we need to legitimize what we feel is right as a data source capable of appropriately shaping our decisions. We also need to open ourselves up to the possibility that we may be able to know what is true based on both physical evidence and internal evidence.
I know I love my wife and that knowledge is not based solely on the physical evidence or the scientific method. (See this fun video called “A Statistically Significant Love Song”). I know it's wrong to cheat. This is not based on the most logical thing to do, but because I feel it's right. Wherever you believe that feeling comes from is irrelevant to the point I am trying to make. I can know something, something real, something powerful, based on more than what I can actually see or hear and those experiences are a legitimate data source to factor into my decisions.
L.H. Hardwick said, “A man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion.”
In context of that explanation, here are some of my own experiences, my own personal evidence of the claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Again, my goal is for you, the reader, to list out your own experiences to come to your own conclusions. I am even more sparse here with my own experiences than I was in the last chapter because of the sacred nature of some of them.
As before, in this table, I have created a new row for each new piece of evidence. I also have a column for a reference and/or link to the source material, a column for what truth claim is brought into question, a column for rating how weighty the evidence is to me, and a column for possible counter arguments.
My Own Experiences | ||||
Evidence | Record | Implications | Weight Rating (1-3) | Counter Arguments |
When I was 14 years old, I prayed about the Book of Mormon and had a spiritual experience. | - 2006 journal entries | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) |
While reading 3 Nephi 17 as a senior in high school, I felt Jesus Christ’s love. | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims - Jesus Christ is the embodiment of love | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) | |
As a missionary, while taking the sacrament, I felt strongly I needed to start waking up earlier. The timing aligned well with the teaching from a later zone conference. | - 2012 journal entries | - The sacrament ordinance of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is what church leaders claim and can bring powerful results | 1 | - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Cultural learning - Coincidentally |
When I was a missionary, during the sacrament one Sunday, I felt I needed to go to the young men’s class that day. While walking down the church hall, the young men’s president asked me if I would teach the lesson because he needed to be in the Primary class with his daughter. Nothing quite like this has happened before or since. | - 2012 journal entries | - The sacrament ordinance s is what church leaders claim and can bring powerful results - Spiritual experiences come from the Holy Ghost and can prepare us for the future | 1 | - Our brains can somehow connect with others - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Coincidentally |
Early on in my marriage, during the sacrament, I very easily came up with a poem or song lyrics about the sacrament. Poems and song lyrics very rarely come to my mind so easily. | - 2015 journal entries - 2019 hymn submission | - The sacrament ordinance s is what church leaders claim and can bring powerful results | 0.5 | - I came up with poem on my own - Our brains have a way to inspire artistry |
I once felt inspired to prepare the elders quorum lesson for the coming Sunday. That Sunday, our elders quorum president explained he had forgotten to assign someone to teach the lesson and no one was prepared to teach. I had never prepared an elders quorum lesson without being asked before; as of 2020, it has never happened since. | - 2016 journal entries - Recounted to Melissa | - Small warm feelings come from the Holy Ghost and can prepare us for the future | 1 | - Our brains can somehow connect with others - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Coincidentally |
I was out knocking on doors as a missionary. A man with a beer can in his hand came out of his house and shoed us away pretty forcefully. After we were halfway down his driveway, he called us back. He then said something like, “I just wanted to let you guys know that I felt it. I don’t want anything to do with you, but I felt it.” | - 2012 journal entries | - Missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ are called of God and the Holy Ghost testifies of their calling | 0 | - The man was at least somewhat intoxicated; he wasn’t feeling the Holy Ghost - Coincidentally - Confirmation bias |
A woman I met as a missionary told us she had a dream she was wearing a coat of many colors and a voice told her she was Israel. I then read her verses from 2 Nephi 3 and told her what I felt her dream meant. | - 2012 journal entries | - Dreams and spiritual experiences come from the Holy Ghost and can prepare us for the future - The Book of Mormon is what it claims to be and missionaries are called of God to teach from it | 1 | - Coincidentally combined with her previous knowledge of the Bible - Confirmation bias |
When I was in high school, I prayed to share the Gospel. Afterwards, I read Alma 6:6 without knowing what the scripture said before I opened up to read. I fasted and took several copies of the Book of Mormon with me on a trip to Kentucky. A teenage young woman I met on the bus in Kentucky later added me as a friend and I was able to share the Gospel with her. I shared many of the other copies of the Book of Mormon as well. | - 2010 journal entries (March, April, and October) | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims to be and God wants it shared with others - God answers prayers | 1 | - Coincidentally - The law of attraction or something akin to it is real |
In 2019, I was set apart as the second counselor in my elders quorum presidency. When the stake presidency set me apart, I felt strongly that the stake presidency was called of God and held priesthood keys. I later became the elders quorum president, held keys, and set others apart. | - 2020 journal entry | - Priesthood holders in the Church hold priesthood keys and the Holy Spirit testifies of that | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) |
I have had many experiences where dreams I had helped to provide insights, comfort, or prepared me for the future. | - Dreams and spiritual experiences come from the Holy Ghost and can prepare us for the future | 0.5 | - Our mind can comfort us and bring things we’ve read to our mind | |
In February of 2020, I went to the Logan Temple to pray about accepting a job at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I felt I should be willing to sacrifice for Jesus Christ. Shortly afterwards, I got an offer from a small, local distribution company to work on a documentary series, which I declined; I felt prepared to decline it. | - 2020 email | - Temples are places to receive revelation from God - The Church is the Lord’s Church or at the very least a worthwhile place to work and cause to sacrifice for | 0.5 | - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) |
I felt intense warmth and peace when I received my patriarchal blessing. | - 2007 journal entry | - Patriarchal blessings come from God - Priesthood authority is on the Earth | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Cultural learning |
Several unique experiences that seem to show pretty clearly that my patriarchal blessing is a specific fit for me. | - Many journal entries | - Patriarchal blessings come from God - Priesthood authority is on the Earth | 1 | - Confirmation bias - Self-fulfilling prophesy |
Russell M. Nelson promised that general conference would be unforgettable, and it was for multiple reasons for me (Elder Rendlun’s talk, a family member’s experience, rearranging the order I studied the talks in). | - 2020 journal entries | - Prophets and Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are prophetic and inspired of God - God speaks to us through warm and peaceful feelings | 0 | - Our brains can somehow know the future - Confirmation bias |
When I was in high school, I remember driving somewhere with my dad. A song called “Strength Beyond My Own” was playing. I wasn’t paying attention to the words and didn’t know why, but I felt a lot of warmth and peace. Later, I heard the song again, I realized it was about the temple and understood my spiritual experience to be the Holy Spirit testifying of the temples of God. | - 2021, this document | - Temples are what church teachings claim | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Cultural learning - Confirmation bias |
I have had multiple experiences of warmth and peace in church meetings, while participating in ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, participating in priesthood duties, receiving priesthood blessings, and in the temple. | - The Church is what church leaders and scriptures claim it is | 1 | - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Cultural learning - Confirmation bias | |
Those who seem close to God, including members of the Lord’s Church, seem to carry a spiritual light and countenance about them, a bright aura. They seem to be filled with more purpose, meaning, and motivation. | - Personal observation | - God exists - Religion is good - The Church teaches good principles and truths | 0 | - Cultural learning - Confirmation bias |
I have never sincerely prayed with real intent for opportunities to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ without receiving them. | - Several journal entries and personal observation | - God answers prayers - God wants the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon to be shared | 0 | - There are less Latter-day Saints than others in the world - Confirmation bias - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) |
When I pray and read from the Book of Mormon, my day seems to go better and smoother. I seem to be blessed with spiritual protection, more light, and more clarity. I feel like I am a better person. | - Personal observation - 2020 journal entries - Reports from others | - The Book of Mormon is what it claims - Pray provides spiritual power | 0 | - Any moral reminder does this - Confirmation bias - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Cultural learning |
On an almost daily basis I have feelings of guilt, feelings to stay away from something, feelings to do something, feelings to listen to general conference, text someone, help Melissa, and more. I think this is especially poignant when I’m by myself. It’s not shame or social reward because no one else is watching. Sometimes I may not know why that feeling is there, but I just know it’s right. | - Personal observation | - God is there and provides an influence in our lives (conscience, the Holy Spirit, etc.) | 0.5 | - Evolutionary adaptation - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) - Cultural learning |
In 2018, Russell M. Nelson issued a challenge to study all the scriptures about Jesus Christ. He then issued promises. I took him up on his challenge, but didn’t realize until years later how one part of the promise had been so profoundly fuliffed in my life: “your love for Him, and for God’s laws, will grow beyond what you currently imagine.” | - My challenge spreadsheet - My divine law spreadsheet | - God’s prophet is inspired and called of God - Studying Jesus Christ really does bring power beyond what I could have imagined | 1 | - Confirmation bias - Memory fallibility (exaggeration, flashbulb memory, etc.) - Cultural learning - Coincidentally |
On March 21, 2021, before going to Church, I prayed that Heavenly Father would increase my faith, that the speakers would be blessed to address my concerns, or something like that. I had a spiritual experience that I recorded on the Havertz Ponders Facebook page. | - The sacrament ordinance s is what church leaders claim and can bring powerful results | 1 | - Confirmation bias - Coincidentally | |
I have had multiple spiritual experiences confirming to me that I’m on the right career path. | - Journal entries | - God exists and personal revelation is real | 1 | - In the mind (purely emotional or “a frenzied mind” (Alma 30:16)) |
Add your own evidence. | ||||
Add your own evidence. | ||||
Please note that in each of these tables, I have included counter arguments or other explanations about what is going on with the evidence. I would like to address many of these counterarguments briefly now.
Confirmation bias is basically where you mainly look for evidence that supports your own claim and ignore or disregard evidence antagonistic to your point of view. Here are my conclusions after thinking, reading, praying, and talking to others.
I have to honestly admit that I have confirmation bias, especially in regards to the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I actively look for evidence that supports my beliefs that the Book of Mormon is true and that the Church is what it claims. Although I also present evidence against the truth claims of the Church in this document, I am still biased.
However, it would be insincere and inaccurate for someone who is antagonistic against the Church to claim they are free from any kind of bias, including confirmation bias. They are obviously looking for evidence to support their claim that the Book of Mormon does not have the origins that Joseph Smith claimed it did and that Joseph Smith was a fraud.
Everyone has biases of all kinds to some degree or another. I think it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to erase all confirmation bias. However, I think we can take steps to lessen our confirmation bias by trying to openly listen to people of opposing views. I personally have always claimed and would like to believe that I am open to listening to others, maybe especially those who disagree with me.
It seems to me that there are only two ways to permanently remove our confirmation bias.
So, I'm just going to admit that I have confirmation bias, and I will continue seeking for more evidence.
Some also would claim that spiritual experiences are a result of confirmation bias. If I pray and receive impressions to do things on a daily basis, eventually at least a few of my impressions are bound to result in some very coincidental, almost unexplainable results. To address that thought, I would say to imagine yourself on an expedition to discover the gorilla before the species was verified by scientists. The gorilla was previously thought to be mythical, a mere legend. If you were on such an expedition, you would not expect to have an incredible gorilla encounter every time you walked into the jungle. You may also, now and then, find evidence that isn’t really what you think it is (maybe it was human hair, not gorilla hair). However, that doesn’t make the good evidence you do have illegitimate. Maybe you haven’t proven for an absolute fact that gorillas exist yet, but you still have some good evidence pointing you in that direction. Don’t give up the search.
To say that cultural influences (e.g., the home and neighborhood we grew up in) has no influence on our perception of truth would be ridiculous. According to my understanding, it would also be denying the scientific evidence.
However, it’s important to recognize that the basic tenets of most of the world’s religions are the same. Gratitude is almost universally taught by the world’s various religious leaders. The golden rule, to treat others as we want to be treated, is almost universally accepted. When talking about God’s greatest commandments, Jesus Christ put it this way, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind ... And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matthew 22:37;39). If similar principles can be found throughout the world in all cultures and religions, there must be something to those principles.
It’s also important to note that the basic teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon have now been accepted in nearly every culture and country throughout the world without force or coercion. If it were purely cultural, that probably would not have happened.
Some worry that spiritual experiences are a cultural phenomena. For example, if one person reports seeing the Moth Man, a lake monster, or a UFO, others will convince themselves they saw something similar, even when it really may have been a blurry shadow. Our imaginations can go wild when we hear a wild story. There are people who may even consider some UFO encounters a matter of mass hysteria.
All I can say is I know what I have experienced. I know I wasn’t imagining my spiritual experiences. In many cases, I’ve seen significant results from acting on spiritual promptings as well. I have also had multiple spiritual experiences confirming to me the reality of what I call the Holy Spirit.
Although coincidence could be a legitimate alternative explanation, some of the experiences on my list above are extremely hard for me to explain by coincidence alone. For example, when I started walking to the young men’s classroom as a missionary, I had never done that before or since. Similarly, when I prepared a lesson for elders quorum without being asked to, I had never done that before or since.
With that said, It seems clear that humans are built for pattern-recognizing. Scientists are trained to see patterns in the data. We're so interested in patterns, in fact, we've even developed artificial intelligence that is better in some ways than we are at recognizing patterns in the data.
Some argue there is good and bad to this innate pattern recognition: we see images of animals in clouds, see faces in inanimate objects, and see patterns where there really are none. We can also mistake mere correlation for causation. We may even mistake mere coincidence as meaningful when it’s not.
Let's take a step back and imagine for a moment that we weren't so good at recognizing patterns in the first place. We would never have come to many of the scientific and technological breakthroughs we did. I'll take the downfall of our pattern recognition for all the benefits that come with it!
Would we ever be able to develop the ability to read or write without our ability to quickly recognize patterns?
Some people never develop the average person's ability to recognize faces. This is called face blindness and it comes with negative consequences. I'll take the consequences of recognizing faces in inanimate objects every once in a while along with my ability to quickly recognize the faces of my friends and family any day!
My ability to recognize patterns is practical and useful on a daily basis. In fact, it's so important to my ability to function that it would just be plain silly for me to question it most of the time. When I see my wife walk in the door, I don't need to get out a picture of her and analyze it in comparison to her face to know it's her.
Sometimes our ability to recognize patterns can even save us when in life-threatening danger: you recognize a loud noise along with a shadowy figure immediately after the announcement of an active shooter. Even if you were wrong, I'd rather be safe and trust what my instincts are telling me.
As for recognizing correlation so readily, making that connection is often the first step to find out what the causation is. It may not be what it seems at first glance, but without my ability to see the connections in the first place, I'd never be any closer to discovering what the truth really is.
So, here's the bottom line. We should see our ability to recognize patterns (see meaning in our experiences) not only as a problem, but as an incredible tool as well! We need to be cautious about our own claims to truth, causation, or patterns, especially when we have more time to continue searching for more data. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly or make final determinations immediately. Don't be overly confident in any conclusions we make. Embrace enough humility to be open to being wrong. Overall though, let’s trust in our ability to make the best determination we can based on the evidence we have. Know that we will make some mistakes, but mistakes are how we learn. And, don't give up on our quest for the truth!
There is really good evidence to show our memories are fallible. Innocent people have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death because of misremembered wittness testimony. Research on flashbulb memories demonstrates we get details about very significant events wrong, even the events we say could never be forgotten.
To flip the coin over to the other side, it’s interesting to note that research on flashbulb memories also seems to suggest that we don’t forget the most important details of an event: what actually occurred. Someone who witnessed a murder may forget exactly what the murderer looked like or what they were wearing, but they don’t forget the murder.
I have documented many of my own spiritual experiences shortly after they took place. This record serves to safeguard my imperfect memory. I can refer back to it. If you have not kept a record of your own foundational personal experiences, there is no better time to start than now.
Also note, a memory of one single experience has never been enough for the Lord to establish His truth in our hearts. Some time after an intense spiritual experience which included seeing an angel with his friends, Alma later declared, "Behold, I testify unto you that I do know that these things whereof I have spoken are true. And how do ye suppose that I know of their surety? Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things about myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true; for the Lord God hath made them manifest unto me by His Holy Spirit; and this is the spirit of revelation which is in me" (Alma 5:45-46). One spiritual experience, even with an angel, was not enough on its own to convince Alma of the truth. He continued to seek for more evidence.
Korior claimed that faith in and a testimony of Jesus Christ was "the effect of a frenzied mind" (Alma 30:16). There are those in our day who similarly want us to believe our testimonies and spiritual experiences are the results of our own minds, not results from the Holy Ghost.
The first thing to realize is that there are some people who do confuse mental illness or purely emotional experiences with spiritual experiences. Howard W. Hunter said, "I get concerned when it appears that strong emotion or free-flowing tears are equated with the presence of the Spirit. Certainly the Spirit of the Lord can bring strong emotional feelings, including tears, but that outward manifestation ought not be confused with the presence of the Spirit itself" (Howard W. Hunter, Eternal Investments, 1989). In my experience, I see a clear distinction between strong emotion and feeling the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes we see someone else crying or exhibiting strong emotion and take those experiences as our main evidence of spiritual truths. We cannot rely on others’ reports of spiritual experiences forever, however trustworthy, sincere, or emotional they seem. They can be one source of data, but should not be the only source of data.
Some people claim that spiritual experiences are not reliable because people of other religions claim spiritual experiences verifying their faith. I have heard examples of people in other religions claiming that they "know" their religion is correct in some way.
First of all, why can't people of other religions have spiritual experiences? Why would this bother us? We learn, as members of Jesus Christ’s Restored Church, that the Holy Ghost can testify of all truth, no matter where it comes from. People of other religions can have spiritual experiences with the Holy Ghost and the Light of Christ. If other reports of spiritual experiences still bother us (e.g., it seems to be connected with false doctrine or harmful information), we need to remember what I discussed previously: we cannot confuse strong emotion with the Holy Ghost. We cannot always assume we know that others are feeling the Spirit. Again, exhibiting strong emotion or seeming sincerity, does not necessarily mean someone is feeling the Holy Ghost.
If we cannot know or feel what they are feeling or experiencing, how can we judge their experience to be legitimate or not? Spiritual experiences and experiences with the Holy Ghost seem largely intended as God’s evidences to us personally and individually.
I feel I can confidently say that my own spiritual experiences and my own revelation from the Holy Ghost is not the result of a "frenzied mind" because I have had multiple spiritual experiences and witnesses from the Holy Ghost that have come at various times, many of which have been documented soon after the experience. I also recognize a distinct difference from experiencing the Holy Ghost and other strong emotions. Finally, as I have already noted, I have seen significant results from following these spiritual feelings and promptings.
Please also reason with me for a moment. Is everyone who has had a spiritual experience crazy or delusional? There may be some people who justify evil behavior using spiritual experiences as an excuse. But, there are millions of people throughout the world who claim to have encounters with God. The vast majority of them are not murderers or in mental hospitals.
Similarly, there are rare people who suffer from conditions where they cannot sense pain, and there are several conditions where people experience pain for no clear reason; however, that does not mean the vast majority of people don’t have normal pain receptors that respond to real sources of pain. I would argue the same can be said of people's spiritual sensitivities.
Some people say that spiritual experiences can be explained by evolution. According to them, our brains evolved to “feel” what’s right and wrong for the survival of the species: it feels wrong to hurt or kill someone because if everyone did that, the species wouldn’t survive. Other spiritual experiences (e.g., going to church, praying, or reading holy text) are meant to help us feel connected to a group. You survive better if you are connected with a group who will watch your back, rather than going it alone. Many who subscribe to this idea also believe that the feelings associated with spiritual experiences largely originate in the brain.
Please note that the Theory of Evolution is a strong (maybe one of the strongest) scientific theories. Put simply, the theory is that all life on Earth evolved over millions of years through natural selection, probably from some original single-celled organisms. Evolution is supported by a lot of evidence. Very few people doubt that evolution occurs within species. For example, think about finch characteristics recognized by Charles Darwin. Or, although it’s not an example of natural selection, think of how dog breeding can be used to influence dog characteristics. There are also many religious people who wholly accept the Theory of Evolution. To believing theists who subscribe to the theory, evolution is simply the process God used to create life. To them, it probably does not bother them to think our brains may have evolved to experience encounters with God.
With that being said, there are many believers who cannot reconcile the Theory of Evolution with their deeply held beliefs or religious texts. In that context, it’s often useful to point out that theories, at their heart, are a way to explain multiple lines of evidence, but theories themselves cannot be proven with absolute certainty. It is impossible for scientists to observe microorganisms evolving to humans as it is supposed to have happened; again, it cannot be proven. To them, God designed us to experience spiritual experiences from the very beginning. Spiritual experiences then are less connected with an evolved brain and more with a created spirit, body, mind, and heart.
For me, whether or not humans evolved from other species, it’s still very difficult for me to be convinced that spiritual experiences originate in an evolved brain. To me, our brains seem to simply be a control center for our bodies. I don't even understand what evidence suggests it's necessary to believe consciousness—or even thoughts—actually originate in the brain.
From a spiritual perspective, don't disembodied spirits think? Do we not think and reason after this life is over? Didn't we reason and make choices as spirits before we were born in this life? For example, according to Latter-day Saint doctrine, we all made the choice to come to Earth and receive a body before we were born.
Many ancient cultures believed thinking took place in the heart (e.g., the Ancient Egyptians). That seems ridiculous to most of us today. I wonder though if we will someday come to realize the concept of thoughts taking place in our brains is just as ridiculous.
Don’t misunderstand me. The mind and heart are very important spiritual metaphors. The heart is often a poetic metaphor for our unseen desires, intentions, and emotions. The mind is often a powerful metaphor for our intellect, reasoning, and thoughts. Yet, to me, that’s all they are—metaphors.
Evidence using brain scans show us powerful patterns of neural activity in the brain during thoughts and emotions. However, there is also evidence to suggest our hearts change with our thoughts and emotions too.
From a scientific perspective, the brain and heart are both life-sustaining organs. If you remove your brain, you would die. If you remove your heart, you would likewise die. If you damage pieces of your arteries that carry blood and oxygen to your arm, some bodily functions would be inhibited (you may even die). Similarly, if you damage portions of your brain or nervous system connected to your arm, some functions are inhibited. If you scanned someone’s heart and measured their heart rate and blood flow during stressful circumstances, you would note a difference in comparison to times of relaxation. When you scan a living brain during stressful circumstances, some neural connections in the brain would be more active in comparison to a state of relaxation. In the brain, there is a concept called readiness potential: we can measure the initial electrical signal in the brain that tells our body to move, but scientists are still unsure exactly how this signal is generated (i.e., where exactly it comes from). In the heart, the sinoatrial node produces the electrical signal causing our heart to beat; however, although the sinoatrial node is connected to the brain (like everything in our body), the signal telling our heart to beat is unconscious: it’s not directly controlled by our thoughts or feelings.
With all this being said, It’s obvious to me there is plenty of evidence to suggest our brains are the main control centers for our entire bodies: the nervous system consists of electrical signals running all throughout the body that are connected to the brain. However, one of the points I am making is it’s still largely mysterious what is causing these electrical signals in the first place. What exactly is causing the readiness potential in our brains? What exactly is causing the electrical signal to tell our hearts to beat?
I am simply trying to make an argument that those who claim our brains have evolved to originate spiritual experiences do not seem to posit enough evidence to suggest consciousness, thought, or even electrical signals are caused in the brain, let alone spiritual experiences. Our brains react to external stimuli. Who’s to say that spiritual feelings aren’t the result of external stimuli coming from God and/or the Holy Spirit? Who has proven consciousness is not more connected to our brains than our spirits? What part does our consciousness and/or our spirits play in spiritual experiences rather than solely our brains? Great research using brain scans as a data collection source show significant patterns of brain activity during spiritual and religious experiences. However, there is still so much we do not know about the causes and sources of those spiritual experiences, let alone whether evolution is to blame.
There are also many spiritual experiences I have had that are connected to other people in very real ways. These experiences convince me it’s impossible for spiritual experiences to be isolated in my brain. Either my brain is somehow connected to the universe and/or other people’s brains or God exists in a way that at least partially aligns with my beliefs. For example, why would I have a spiritual experience that I need to go to the young men after sacrament meeting as a missionary (see my experience in the table above)? Why would I feel I needed to teach an elders quorum lesson (see my experience in the table above)? What about Thomas S. Monson and his feeling to invite someone to speak in the temple that wasn’t present (see the experience in the table in chapter two)? Why would Lorenzo Snow’s brain trick him into seeing Jesus Christ? The list goes on and on. These spiritual feelings are clearly connected to people and things outside of our heads. And, for me, these same spiritual feelings teach me about the nature of God, Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon.
Finally, if our brains evolved a moral compass to best help our species survive, there is one hypothetical scenario I’m still confused about. Let’s say you had an identical twin that was about to be killed. You and your twin have the same genetic information. You are both just as likely to advance the species or progress the interests of the group. You then had an opportunity to save your twin, but you would be killed to do so. What is the moral thing to do? I believe the Light of Christ or God’s Spirit helps us to make that determination. I believe God would help us to make the right choice in that scenario. I believe there is a right answer. However, if there is a right choice, how would our brains have evolved to help us with that? I can imagine arguments evolutionary scientists would make, but it’s a long shot for me to accept it as a result of evolution.
All I can say is that I know I am not lying regarding my own spiritual experiences.
You may not know if I am lying or not, but you can know if your experiences are real or not. If you don’t feel you have significant spiritual experiences, why not start your own experiments of faith and start collecting your own data.
I have made an attempt to document the best evidence I see against the Church’s claims below. I do not believe I can totally eliminate my biases, but I can attempt to mitigate them by trying to give alternative explanations as fair a chance as possible.
The first time I published this book on Facebook for my friends, I learned that this section of the book was difficult for some believers to read. A family member of mine said they felt a sense of “darkness” while reading this section. They are not alone in feeling intense emotions while reading things antagonistic to their beliefs. Lawrence E. Corbridge once said, “As part of an assignment I had as a General Authority a few years ago, I needed to read through a great deal of material antagonistic to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the events of the Restoration. There may not be anything out there of that nature I haven’t read. Since that assignment changed, I have not returned to wallow in that mire again. Reading that material always left me with a feeling of gloom, and one day that sense of darkness inspired me to write a partial response to all such antagonistic claims.” You can read more in his 2019 talk Stand Forever.
Whether you call that “darkness” a loss of the Spirit, cognitive dissonance, emotional dissonance, or anything else, those feelings are very real. So, to those who are unfamiliar with some of the claims I am about to lay out, I’d like to offer three tidbits to keep in mind.
First, please remember the basic, foundational truth claims I have established in this book. I am not trying to defend every statement made by a church leader throughout history. There are some things I did not include because it doesn’t seem to affect the Church’s main claims. I’ll discuss this more below.
Second, I have a row for counter arguments, just like I do in my previous two chapters. However, in this section, I link out to other websites for these counter arguments. For anyone who is deeply bothered by any of this evidence, please feel free to click on the links, read more, and do more of your own research.
Third, if you are interested in doing your own research on these topics, please consider my personal approach to reading material like this. You can read this in the appendix.
Evidence Against the Claims of The Church of Jesus Christ | ||||
Evidence | Record | Implications | Weight Rating (1-3) | Counter Arguments |
The 1769 King James Version of the Bible errors remain in the Book of Mormon in some places. The Joseph Smith Translation also doesn’t match up with other scriptures. | - FAIR | - The Book of Mormon is a hoax | 2.25 | - FAIR |
DNA analysis seems to show Native Americans did not come from the Middle East. | - FAIR | - The Book of Mormon is a hoax | 3 | |
There are anachronisms in the Book of Mormon (horses, elephants, steel, etc.) | - FAIR | - The Book of Mormon is a hoax | 3 | - FAIR |
The view of the Godhead in the Book of Mormon does not appear to match with Joseph Smith’s later teachings. | - Personal observation and others’ reports | - The Book of Mormon is a hoax - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 1.25 | - It depends on the lens used and the interpretation you take |
It seems to many that church leaders within the last several decades lied, hid information, oversimplified, or de-emphasized certain information (the translation process, Joseph Smith’s pratice of polygamy, etc.) | - Others’ reports and personal observation | - Church leaders are liars and do not hold priesthood keys | 1 | - There are parts of the Old Testament that are de-emphasized or oversimplified in nearly all Christian faiths: it’s natural for humans to share the good highlights. - Leaders are motivated to share their faith in Christ and have limited time in a sermon or lesson to share obscure information, especially when they are not fully educated. - My own experiences in the Church |
There are multiple accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision that seem to contradict each other. | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 1.25 | ||
Some of Joseph Smith’s interpretation and translation of the remaining fragments of the Book of Abraham do not match with modern Egyptologists interpretation or translations; it seems to match the Book of Breathing better. | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 3 | ||
Church leaders (including prophets) have taught some strange things. Positions and policies have changed over time in the Church (Blacks and the priesthood, LGBTQ+ children, temple changes, “blood atonement,” etc.) | - Others’ reports | - Church leaders do not hold priesthood keys | 1.25 | - The basic claims of the Church remain the same - Church leaders are not infallible |
Joseph Smith’s contemporaries said Smith attempted to translate and offer explanations for the Kinderhook Plates which were later uncovered as fraudulent. | - FAIR | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 2.5 | |
Joseph Smith received a revelation to have the copyright of the Book of Mormon sold in Canada, but it did not happen. There may be other revelations that don’t appear to come to fruition. | - FAIR | - Joseph Smith was not a prophet | 1.5 | |
Joseph Smith made corrections to revelations after they were originally recorded and some revelations were received before the first official record was made. | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 1 | - FAIR | |
Some claim striking connections between temple ceremonies and Freemasonry ceremonies. Joseph Smith and other church leaders were Freemasons and the timeline suggests they borrowed Freemason ceremonies for the temples. | - FAIR | - Temple ceremonies are not really from God | 2 | - FAIR |
There is an abundance of evidence for the Theory of Evolution. There is evidence for the Big Bang Theory. There is some evidence for abiogenesis. | - If the Theory of Evolution, the Big Bang Theory, or abiogenesis is correct, it contradicts the Bible and the Book of Mormon regarding the creation of the Earth | 1 | - FAIR | |
Some evidence shows Joseph Smith used dishonesty and his power and authority to convince others to practice polygamy. | - FAIR | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet | 2 | - Saints |
Expert witnesses (scholars, professors, scientists, researchers) largely denounce claims made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. | - Joseph Smith was a liar and is not a prophet - The Book of Mormon is a hoax | 2.5 | - Experts, scientists, and scholars have been wrong before, but the teachings of Jesus Christ have remained for over 2000 years | |
Church leaders bought and allegedly hid documents from Mark Hoffman, and they seemingly could not discern he was a con man and serial killer. | - Church leaders do not hold priesthood keys and are not inspired | 1.5 | - FAIR | |
There are multiple religions with differing claims. That is evidence for the evolution of religion rather than the source being God. We can even see how religions may have evolved over time. | 1.25 | - The Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Bible are evidence the Gospel existed since the beginning of time. | ||
Add your own evidence. | ||||
Add your own evidence. | ||||
Dale G. Renlund once used a metaphor to describe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a working boat with dents, peeling paint, and an old rudder that is steered by an old fisherman. If the boat is our best option for not being drowned at sea, why complain about the cosmetic or ornamental problems. He then said, “What we consider dents and peeling paint on the well-used boat may turn out to be divinely sanctioned and divinely directed from an eternal perspective. The Lord has either had a hand in the dents and the peeling paint or He uses them for His own purposes. I know of myself that the Lord, Jesus Christ, directs His work on the earth today. His servants today know Him well” (Dale G. Renlund, “Doubt Not, but Be Believing,” 2019).
Like the dents or peeling paint, here are some points that frequently seem to bother some people, but I don’t see them as evidence against the major claims being discussed here.
It is absolutely justifiable to be deeply bothered by the immoral acts of some church leaders, especially leaders you felt like you could trust. It’s even more disheartening to feel like the immoral acts of some are brushed over or swept under the rug. However, I wouldn’t judge the credibility of any other institution on the lying or immoral acts of a few of its members. I don’t judge the claims of the Roman Catholic Church on the sexual abuse crimes committed by some of its priests. I don’t judge the credibility of a university on the academic dishonesty of a couple of former professors.
Furthermore, If you have enough evidence to believe God exists, you must face the reality that God allows people, even people in trust, to do immoral things. The question is not about whether God exists, the question is why God allows people to make bad choices and allows bad things to happen to innocent people. Leaving the Church does not change the fact that God allowed bad things to happen in the past.
Previously, I have said that church leaders are not perfect or infallible. I have included some examples of mistakes made by Prophets and Apostles above. However, in my view, the mistakes of every church leader does not belong in the table above unless someone can prove the integrity of a wide percentage of church leaders was compromised because of the Church’s doctrine or claims to truth.
Examples I have not included have been the rare instances of General Authorities who have been released from their calling because of immoral acts, the Meadow Mountain Massacre (which was terrible, but largely incited by imperfect local church leaders), and sexual abuse cases of bishops.
Some people are bothered by how extensively the Book of Mormon quotes from the Bible. Others are bothered by the Book of Mormon’s language or similarity to other records.
The Koran repeats stories from the Bible and uses similar language in some cases. The Bible repeats itself, references itself, or quotes itself extensively. The Book of Mormon extensively quotes from the Bible and references itself as well. I don’t see a problem with the Book of Mormon’s long quotations or allusions to the Bible. I definitely don’t see it as evidence against the truth claims of the book.
If you stop and think about the Book of Mormon’s extensive quoting (Isaiah, Malachi, Jesus Christ repeats His Sermon on the Mount, and more.), you may realize that very little of the book is actually original content. Mormon unashamedly slaps Nephi's journal in the book with no editing. The entire record is an abridged version of other records. It extensively quotes prophets not found in the Bible like Zenos and Zenock. An abridged version of the Jaredites' record is thrown in there too. The entire book is really a sort of anthology.
In some cases, the similarity of the Book of Mormon to other records has more to do with the language and wording of the King James Version of the Bible than it does anything else.
I should first point out that Latter-day Saints in the mid to late 1800s practiced polygamy: certain men married multiple women. This practice is no longer practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.
Although I have included Joseph Smith’s process for initiating plogamy and the policy changes regarding polygamy as possible evidence against the truth claims of the Church, I have not included the practice of plural marriage itself. Although the practice is strange to us today, polygamy itself does not necessarily seem to constitute any evidence for or against the truth claims of the Church.
It is totally justified to feel bothered by polygamy. Early records seem to show those who were originally asked to practice it were bothered by it. Most of us, if not all of us, looking back on it are bothered by it some way or another. However, if the weight of your evidence suggests the truth claims made by the Church are true, your question probably should be less about whether the early practice of plural marriage discounts the truth claims of the Church. Your question should be a question for God about why polygamy was necessary.
So much has been said on this topic that I worry I have nothing to add. A great starting point may be what Kate Hollbrook said about polygamy in a 2018 Worldwide Devotional.
James Strang had his own metal plates. Some of the followers of Joseph Smith, including some of the original witnesses to Joseph’s plates, apparently testified of Strang’s plates. However, there’s very little doubt that he actually had physical plates. He seemed to be willing to show them to anyone. So, the fact that some of the followers of Joseph Smith witnessed Strang’s plates actually strengthens my belief that those witnesses saw real, tangible gold plates from Joseph Smith. Some suggest that Strang’s plates were simply fabricated from a metal tea kettle. Whether Strang’s plates are what he claimed or not, it does not necessarily provide evidence for or against the basic truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. See the next chapter where I discuss other religion’s claims to truth.
In a similar vein, other people had theophanies (experiences seeing God) during the time of Joseph Smith. Actually, there are many people claiming theophanies before and after Joseph Smith. Yet, someone else claiming to have a spiritual experience where they saw God does not necessarily affect Joseph Smith’s visionary claim. If those experiences are true, they may even strengthen Joseph Smith’s claim. If proven false, it doesn’t necessarily affect Joseph Smith’s claim at all, unless someone can prove that the two are intimately tied together somehow.
What else would you add to this list?
It is true that there are seemingly endless ideas, theories, and even evidence about God. For example, the miracles and spiritual experiences of Joan of Arc are outside of my religious tradition. But, Joan of Arc’s story does not seem to provide any direct contradiction to my own spiritual experiences or my own claims to truth. However, there are spiritual experiences that do seem to contract pieces of what I believe. Muhammad and the Koran has one explanation of God that does not fully line up with my view of God. Yet, the Koran is one line of potential evidence to consider. Yet, for me, even in light of contradictory lines of evidence, I feel I don’t need to spend all my time tracking down evidence for and against every different spiritual claim to be confident in my own evidence.
In the true crime podcasts or FBI shows I’ve consumed, the FBI will often set up a hotline for people to call in with tips. It’s interesting to note that most of the people who call in end up with tips and clues that don’t go anywhere: they heard something through the grapevine, they saw something they thought was connected to the crime, they are delusional, they were lying, etc. The police and FBI have to often sort through which evidence is actually valuable. They often don’t have time to collect further investigations on every single tip that comes in. They have to quickly use the evidence they already have determined is legitimate to decide whether the tip is legitimate or not. They compare the tips to what they already know. They have to disregard some things in order to spend their time pursuing the most valuable lines of evidence.
It’s totally OK to look into the evidence of other claims. I think that’s a commendable, worthwhile pursuit. In fact, I have a Koran and read from it myself. However, other claims don’t necessarily lessen or diminish the evidence I’ve collected for my own claims and beliefs.
To expand on Alma’s analogy of the seed and the tree, if I stop nourishing one seed (totally abandoning it) in order to nourish a totally different seed, I would never stick with one seed long enough to see what it grows into. At the same time, it seems totally reasonable to nourish two seeds at the same time as long as there is time to do so. In other words, it’s totally fine to nourish some other seeds (look into the evidence of other claims), but I shouldn’t abandon a growing plant in the process. I need to stick with it long enough to see the fruits.
I was thinking about all the things I don’t know, all the books I have not yet read about Joseph Smith (including the Joseph Smith papers), all the academic work and discussions on chiasmus, etc. However, this realization came to me: there will always be things I don’t yet know; why should I let that keep me from holding onto what I do know based on the evidence I do have?
It bothers some people that people of all different religions and all backgrounds have spiritual experiences. I have offered some thoughts above, but I will offer a few more here.
First of all, why should that bother us? If God exists, wouldn’t he give people of all religions and backgrounds spiritual experiences. I believe one of the Spirit’s roles is to testify of truth, wherever it is found. The Book of Mormon recounts how the Spirit moved upon those who were not members of Jesus Christ’s Church (1 Nephi 13:12; 3 Nephi 9:20).
It’s clear to me God provides miracles and spiritual experiences to those who seek Him and seek for the truth. I believe the closer we come to the truth about God’s nature, the more often we receive spiritual experiences and the more evidence we gain.
Here is a statement in an article summarizing extensive research about religious commitment around the world, “In particular, rates of prayer and attendance at worship services generally are seen as reliable indicators of observance within Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – but they may not be as applicable for Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern religions. In fact, religious identity itself is often conceived of differently in East Asia, where observance is more a matter of culture and tradition as opposed to membership in a particular group” (Pew Research Center).
It seems to me that the closer we get to the true understanding of God, the more likely we are to view religion as verifiably true. The closer we get to God’s nature, the more likely we are to see our relationship with God as a part of our identity as opposed to a matter of culture or tradition. That’s simply my interpretation. I’d have to look into it more, and I believe more research may need to be done.
My dad also argues that all people, including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have legitimate spiritual experiences from God, but interpret them through their own cultural lenses, experiences, and language. Because a spiritual experience may be legitimate doesn’t always mean our interpretation or explanations are 100% accurate. Joseph Smith even once pleaded, “O, Lord God, deliver us in thy due time from the little narrow prison, almost as it were total darkness, of paper pen and ink and a crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect language.”
Finally, as I described above, some people may be experiencing emotional experiences and confusing that for spiritual experiences. I personally see a distinction between emotion and feeling the Holy Ghost. Unless I experience what someone else has experienced, I will not know exactly what their experience was. In addition to this, there are surely some people who lie about spiritual experiences. I only have my experiences and the evidence I have collected to guide me.
Privately, I have weighted each line of evidence and added up the point values for the evidence in chapters two, three, and four. I have compared them. Again, I have not included all my evidence in the public version of this book. My weighting and rating is largely something I’ve kept private for the reasons discussed previously.
One of the points of this book is for you to consider, weigh, and compare the evidence you have collected. You may come up with a better way to compare the evidence. You may consider evidence I’ve collected as unreliable. You may consider other evidence I have not included as reliable. I expect that everyone will come to differing conclusions based on the evidence they have collected. I will though tell you about my results and conclusions.
In an attempt to give the evidence against the Church a more-than-fair weight to mitigate my own biases, I have weighed some of the most convincing evidence against the claims of the Church two to three times greater than the greatest evidence in favor of the Church. I have also set aside/discounted a few of the weaker claims for the Church in my book altogether.
Comparing only chapter two and chapter four, at this calculation, the score is 36 points in favor of the Church’s claims and 28.9 points in favor of the claims against the Church. So, without any of my own spiritual experiences factored in, I am personally still confident the Church’s truth claims are legitimate.
There may be some reading this who do not yet have many of their own personal spiritual experiences. Hold on to the evidence you do have. There’s no problem simply believing and trusting in the spiritual experiences of others until you have experimented enough to gain your own. Hold on to my confidence temporarily if you must. But, don’t stay there. Seek, knock, plant, pray, nourish, work until you’ve learned for yourself.
If we use the same method to compare chapter three and chapter four (again, with the evidence against the Church two to three times the weight while also discounting some of my seemingly less significant spiritual experiences), we end up with a similar dynamic. The spiritual experiences out weigh the evidence against the Church.
Therefore, combining my spiritual experiences (chapter three) with the external evidence (chapter two) puts me at least twice as confident that the Book of Mormon is true, that God is there, and that Jesus Christ’s Church is restored on the Earth. If I weighed the evidence for those claims the same way I weighed the evidence against the Church’s claims, my confidence level may more than double that. In that case, I would probably be at least a 75 to 80 percent confidence level that the Book of Mormon was what it claims, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was what it claims.
What are your conclusions? How confident are you in the conclusions you have drawn?
At this point, for me to even consider reweighting the evidence, one of two things would need to happen:
If I ever end up with the need to reweight the tables, I may consider a more objective way to weigh the evidence.
If you are making your own book of evidence, here are some suggestions I would personally consider if I were to do this again.
I may consider grouping the evidence into categories better: which lines of evidence support which specific claims. For example, a spiritual experience where I feel God’s love while hiking in the mountains, may provide one piece of evidence to suggest God exists (one of my foundational truth claims). However, that experience does not necessarily directly relate to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. If I were to do this again, I also may even consider making a different document for each specific truth claim. In this book, I did narrow down the religious truth claims quite a bit: instead of looking at every claim made by a Prophet or Apostle, I focussed on foundational, simple, life-changing truths. However, even within my own list, there are a lot of claims to sift through.
There may even be a few foundation truths that are most significant to focus on intently. For example, Joseph Smith said, “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
Ezra Taft Benson expanded on what it means for the Book of Mormon to be a keystone in 1986 in his sermon The Book of Mormon—Keystone of Our Religion.
If the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith claimed, it would suggest Joseph Smith was called of God to do the work he said he was asked to do. It would follow Joseph Smith did receive authority from God.
To me, it would also clearly follow that those priesthood keys from God traveled west with Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s successor. In a revelation to Joseph Smith, the Lord said, “The twelve traveling councilors are called to be the Twelve Apostles ... And every decision made … must be by the unanimous voice of the same; that is, every member in each quorum must be agreed to its decisions, in order to make their decisions of the same power or validity one with the other— A majority may form a quorum when circumstances render it impossible to be otherwise” (Doctrine and Covenants 107:23-28). In the case of Brigham Young moving to Utah, a majority was clearly necessary, and the majority moved west.
If the Book of Mormon is true, God exists. If the Book of Mormon is true, Jesus Christ is who He claimed He was. If the Book of Mormon is true, the Bible is God’s word as well. The Book of Mormon quotes from and references stories from the Bible. One Book of Mormon author put it this way, "Hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and He hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good" (2 Nephi 33:10).
Weighing the evidence for and against the Book of Mormon alone may be a faster, more efficient, and less muddied way to knock over multiple dominos at once.
At the same time, if you take this approach, you may want to clearly lay out the connection between each truth and look into the counter explanations for those connections.
Because of all this evidence I have collected here—especially, the powerful, memorable, and frequent personal experiences—to disbelieve or doubt these things, for me, would be almost like doubting I know that the moon landing of 1969 happened or that Germ Theory is real. I have not personally seen Jesus Christ, I have not seen angels, I have not seen the Celestial Kingdom, but I haven’t personally visited the moon in person either. I also have not personally seen bacteria under a microscope or done the research regarding Germ Theory. Yet, I know enough to wash my hands. All I have is the evidence around me and from the evidence I have, I can confidently say “I know” that the Moon Landing happened, or that Japan exists, or that Germ Theory is real. I can only imagine what negative effects I would see if I stopped washing my hands because I was faltering with my imperfect or incomplete knowledge of Germ Theory. Spiritually, I will keep my hands clean, and I’m not shy about claiming that “I know” these spiritual truths.
Again, I have come to the conclusion that the basic claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon are true. But, once while discussing the truth claims of the Church with a man who had decided to leave the church, I had a realization. He lives in a different state, so our conversation was largely via text messages. At one point in our conversation, he asked me, “What would you do if you knew the Church wasn’t true? How would your life be different?” That question led me on a path that brought me to the conclusions in this chapter. Here, I want to explore the idea that the Church is not what it claims.
In large part, I am a pragmatist. If something is not true, but it’s still very useful, it may not be worth throwing away. So, if being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided abundant value in my life with minimal risks, but it was not true, I would not abandon it. I would continue to embrace it.
Not everyone will see all of these things the way I do, but below is a list of some good that the Church does. I believe most people will readily be able to see the good in these things. This also doesn't even scratch the surface.
What overall value do you see that your religion provides to the world?
I see value in actively participating in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Research also shows the value in religion (e.g., Hidden Brain, Research on Religion, Useful Delusions). Here is some of the value I see personally. I’ve broken this section into three categories: my own experience, research findings, and useful delusions (they would be delusions if God did not exist).
I strive to come back to this section to link to the research I have read. For now, I have few references. I aim to change that, but I won’t let perfection be the enemy to a good start.
Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler wrote a book called Useful Delusions. They make a compelling argument that religion (among many other things) provides useful psychological value, whether or not those things are grounded in reality. Here are some of my “useful delusions” (again, they would be delusional if the Church were not what it claims).
What personal and family value do you find in your beliefs?
Here is an extended quote from the book Useful Delusions that I love:
“Think about the last time you read a great novel, a story that brought you to tears. When you finished the last chapter and closed the book, did you ask yourself if it was absurd that you shed tears over characters that were not real, over events that never really took place? Have you ever emerged from watching a great movie feeling cheated that your very real emotions were elicited by fictional events? Of course not. When I finish a great book or emerge from a theater after watching an amazing movie, the real world often feels less real than the world of the book or movie. If you asked me if the characters in the novel or the events in the movie were fictional, I would have no hesitation in telling you they were made up. At the same time, I simultaneously know that the emotions I experienced were powerful and moving—and real …
“Why can’t the same be true for religious texts? You may not believe that Jesus was actually crucified and rose from the dead, or that Mohammed directly heard the word of God or that the Hindu god Hanuman lifted up a mountain. But why should that mean those stories cannot inspire you, or move you to be a better human being? The fundamentalists who argue incessantly with each other about the truth-claims of religion tell us that the only way to derive value from those stories is to believe them entirely, or that there can be no value in those stories since they cannot be proven true. But if the stories have resonance and power, does it really matter if they are true? Why put the emphasis on the truth or falsity of the stories, rather than on what the stories do for us?
“The late University of Cambridge philosopher of science Pater Lipton used to call himself a ‘religious atheist.’ One of his central contentions was a theme that has emerged repeatedly in the course of this book—stories, metaphors and symbols are central to the workings of the brain, and they are essential to our well-being. Lipton told me that he was both a card-carrying rationalist and a religious believer. He said he squared the circle by seeing religious texts akin to great novels or poems. ‘Here I am in a synagogue on a Saturday morning and I say the prayers and say all these things to God and engage with God and yet I don’t believe God exists,’ he said. ‘As I am saying that prayer, I recognize it as being a statement to God. I understand it literally and it has meaning because of the human sentiments it expresses. I am standing saying this prayer that my ancestors said, with feeling and intention, those things are moving to me. What I am saying is, maybe that is enough’” (Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain).
Earlier in this book, I talked about risk analysis. The next few sections comprise my personal risk analysis regarding accepting these truth claims.
I see fewer risks or harms associated with my activity in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than I do benefits. Here are some of the harms I could potentially see with the Church.
Tithing is listed here as a benefit as well as a risk. However, I personally view it as a benefit because of the research behind monetary giving as well as guidance I have heard from some well-respected financial advisors about giving ten percent of your income to a charity of your choice.
I believe I would consider abortion and euthanasia with great moral reluctance regardless of whether I believed in docrtines of the Church.
In recent years, Church leaders have done a lot for the LGBTQ+ community, including support for fair housing laws and donating money to the LoveLoud Foundation. Church leaders have taught others to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ to be loving and non judgemental. I believe I can be kind, loving, and respectful to those who are different from me.
Melissa, my wife, has told me multiple times that she does not feel degraded as a woman. I also know many women who serve or work part or full time at the Church, even while being mothers.
I also love serving in the Church: ministering, service projects, teaching, leadership opportunities. I have willingly sacrificed my time and feel it’s a privilege. I don’t necessarily feel I need that time for other things. I also love the peace that comes from going to the temple.
As for the scriptures that teach humans dominion over the rest of God’s creations (which may contribute to human superiority, animal suffering, and environmental problems), I would argue that the correct way to view those scriptures is through a lens of righteous stewardship. We are responsible to take care of the world around us, not to harm it. There are plenty of examples of church teachings I could give that support this interpretation.
What do you see as the risks associated with participating in your religion or accepting beliefs you cannot prove with absolute certainty?
In comparison to the number of religiously and spiritually minded people throughout history, there are a relatively few who have used religion and/or spiritual experiences as a justification to do evil things. There are people who have claimed spiritual experiences were the reason for committing frankly horrid acts. Some people worry that if they rely on their spiritual experiences, they will inadvertently be lulled into doing something wrong or associating with people who are immoral.
I have already mentioned that people using spirituality as an excuse for bad behavior is the exception, not the rule. As a comparison, a small percentage of people are sociopaths: they have a very limited capacity to feel empathy or to discern between right and wrong. However, knowing that a small percentage of people have a broken moral compass, does not stop me from relying on my own moral compass—my sense of empathy, my conscience, and ability to reason.
With that being said, we could all fall prey to trusting in feelings or spiritual experiences that are not what they may seem to be on the surface. Even the scriptures warn us that “Satan deceiveth” (Doctrine and Covenants 28:11) and can even transform “into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
I have personally developed my own system for risk analysis with following spiritual feelings. I have done this to safeguard myself from falling prey to doing something immoral.
Let’s start in the Book of Mormon. Moroni said, “Do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil … Wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil” (Moroni 7:14-17).
Some may argue that’s an easy way out: of course a book about Christ is going to tell you that anything persuading you to believe in Christ comes from God. On its surface it almost seems like circular logic. However, when you dive into the logic deeper, I think it’s actually the only thing that makes sense. Moroni is asking us to trust our own ability to discern and reason what is right and wrong. Anything good is good. Anything bad is bad.
Stay with me here. Let’s imagine you abandon trusting in your spiritual feelings because you’re worried about being led astray. At that point, how in the world do you decide what’s right and wrong? How else do you know hurting someone is wrong and helping someone is right? You could just trust in what you’ve been taught growing up, right? But, isn’t what you’ve been taught based, at least partially, in religion? Isn’t it partially based on what your parents, leaders, and teachers feel is right and wrong? Sure, you could adopt other ethical philosophies that require more in depth mental reasoning for each decision you make. However, I believe most of us have the ability to discern, reason, and sense what is right and what is wrong. And, that’s exactly what Moroni is asking us to do. Whether you believe the Book of Mormon is true or not, it seems to me to be one of the most reasonable ways to discern between what’s moral and immoral. The Book of Mormon is onto something here, regardless of whether it’s true
With that groundwork laid, I have decided that any spiritual feelings that seem to contradict with what I know is right, is something I will personally question heavily before deciding to trust. I can feel what’s right and wrong. I have been taught the difference between right and wrong. I can reason between what’s right and wrong. I can ask myself what the risks are for acting upon a spiritual prompting: Will this harm myself or anyone else? Or, will it be helpful to myself and others?
If I can foresee any negative or harmful consequences from acting on a spiritual experience, I will take steps to be absolutely sure the experience or feeling is what I believe it is before acting on it. I define harmful consequences as meaning anything that physically harms anyone in any way or contributes to psychological and mental harm above and beyond the normal effects of normal social interactions.
Some may still argue that none of us can realize the full effect of how our behavior is influencing ourselves and others. To that, I would say, this is a human problem not a religious problem. Every person has to decide what is right or wrong, what will bring positive or negative results, regardless of whether they are religious or spiritual or not.
The Book of Mormon actually opens up with a perfect example. Some criticize the book for including such a drastic example of following God’s will right in the opening chapters, but I actually believe the story of Nephi killing Laban illustrates the point I am making perfectly.
Nephi says, “I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban” (1 Nephi 4:10).
I will first point out the word “constrained” is not a casual word. Nephi obviously had very clear communication from the Spirit. But, Nephi still questions it. “I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and wished that I might not slay him” (1 Nephi 4:10).
The Spirit then clearly communicated to Nephi two more times that he must kill Laban because “it is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief” (1 Nephi 4:13). Nephi also takes considerable time to reason through the decision.
Another example is Joseph Smith’s hesitancy to introduce plural marriage. By his own record, he was compelled by God to do something he claims he didn’t ask for or want to do.
Although we have less information, another possible example would be Abraham being commanded to kill his son Issac. He must have received clear, undeniable direction before embarking on that path.
Examples like these are obviously the exception. Most of us will not be asked to do something that clearly puts ourselves or others in harm's way. I know none of my spiritual experiences or promptings have been like those. Either way, the example clearly seems to be that we probably shouldn’t immediately follow promptings that could pose serious risks or harms to ourselves or others. Serious action requires serious evidence.
When Ronald A. Rasband says, “We must act on the first prompting” (Ronald A. Rasband, Let the Holy Spirit Guide, 2017), he clearly is talking about promptings where little risk is involved.
Richard G. Scott talked about receiving revelation for more difficult situations. He said, “When I am faced with a very difficult matter, this is how I try to understand what to do. I fast. I pray to find and understand scriptures that will be helpful. That process is cyclical. I start reading a passage of scripture; I ponder what the verse means and pray for inspiration. I then ponder and pray to know if I have captured all the Lord wants me to do” (Richard G. Scott, How to Obtain Revelation and Inspiration for Your Personal Life, 2012).
There are still some who will argue (and I presume their voices will become louder) that the Church’s teachings are restrictive, overbearing, and even harmful to individuals’ mental health and society at large. These voices may argue that masterbation and pornography may be helpful to someone’s mental wellbeing. They may argue that Church teachings and doctrine contribute to sexism and inequality of women and men in society. These voices may argue that the Church’s teachings on gender identity contributes to discrimintation and psychological issues among the LGBTQ+ community. They may argue that Church teachings on procreation and abortion contribute to societal problems, overpopulation, and even global warming. Some may even point to something simple like the Word of Wisdom, and point to the health benefits associated with coffee. The list goes on. Many active, faithful, and believing members would obviously disagree and provide good counter arguments. We could also point to social science and psychology research in both directions on these topics. From what I have seen, I personally believe the evidence generally points in favor of the teachings of the Church. Either way though, here are some major principles relating to agency and free will I would point out:
There are some that argue that religion in general causes other great harms to society. According to some, religion has, throughout history, caused tribalism, contention, and even war. Religion, in some ways, may have contributed and even motivated human slavery. Religion may have contributed to some groups seeing themselves as superior to other groups, promoting harm to indeginous people who were unfairly disadvantaged. Religion may have encouraged colonization. Religion has motivated Muslim suicide bombers. Religion has motivated modern-day Latter-day Saint extremists. The list goes on and on.
It should be noted that religion was not the only factor in all these outcomes, and there are complicated economic, cultural, political, and psychological factors at play as well. I once heard a man argue (and he was not religious or spiritual himself) that the harder secular people try to “run away” from religion, the more they end up developing their own “religions.” He pointed to political, national, and even science community examples. Still, religion was and is a major factor in harm, and this needs to be addressed.
First, note religion has also worked to counteract the harm. For example, although religion may have been a factor contributing to the justification of human slavery, religion was also a major factor in aboloshing it and promoting equality: Martin Luther King Jr. was obviously inextricably tied to his faith and religion. Without religion, where would we be? It seems unreasonable to point to the negative effects of religion without also pointing to all the positive effects.
Second, if religion were abolished, would that really solve these problems? I don’t think conflict and contention is a religious problem. Conflict and contention is a human problem. Without religion, we would still have nations, countries, politics, contradictory ideas, families, companies, schools, and more. Professors, police officers, and managers would still operate in a position of power and influence over those they are given stewardship over. Conflicts would still arise. Would abolishing religion improve things or make things worse? Capitalism and communism have both led to some extremely bad things. So, should we throw out capitalism or Karl Marx’s ideas altogether?
I quoted Ronald A. Rasband several times when he said, “Recall, especially in times of crisis, when you felt the Spirit and your testimony was strong; remember the spiritual foundations you have built. I promise that if you will do this, avoiding things that do not build and strengthen your testimony or that mock your beliefs, those precious times when your testimony prospered will return again to your memory through humble prayer and fasting. I assure you that you will once again feel the safety and warmth of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Ronald A. Rasband, Lest Thou Forget, 2016).
Part of the reason I quote this Apostle so often is because this statement was part of the catalyst to creating this book. It’s important to me.
Please note that Rasband did not say there is source material banned or off limits to members of Christ’s Church. There is no information being forbidden to examine. No church leader that I’m aware of has ever encouraged Churchwide censorship. In fact, in my experience, we are taught to seek for further knowledge and education. There is a difference between avoiding material that mocks sacred things and striving to get a balanced perspective.
I think we must examine, to the best of our ability, the intention of the authors we are reading. Are they trying to make a mock of our beliefs? Is their intent to pull us away from our faith?
I don't think any of us should be afraid to read, listen to, or further examine new information, but I do believe we should carefully examine and reexamine the intent of the voices we listen to, their credibility, and fact check what they are saying. We need to think critically about important information we read.
Here is my philosophy:
I am not closed off to reading or learning anything. I purposely try to listen to other opinions and ideas, even when they contradict or contrast with my own. However, like I believe we all should, I wisely pay attention to and try to prioritize what information I choose to consume.
C.S. Lewis famously said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
John even tells us that Jesus Christ is “the light of men” (John 1:3).
How can I deny the reality of the power and effects of my daily prayer, scripture study, and acting on the promptings I receive? To do so would be like denying the Sun. I not only see what it does for me, but I see everything else by it. I believe the source of that power is Jesus Christ. Regardless, I cannot deny the power and perspective my faith brings me. Despite any level of uncertainty I still have, I am 100 percent confident in the powerful effects of my participation in the Church.
There are some people who are tempted to believe that everyone who leaves the Church or who expresses doubts is looking for an excuse to sin. Maybe there really are some people who are actively looking for evidence against the Church’s claims to justify immoral behavior, but that surely is not the case for everyone. I know this based on conversations I have had with people.
Please realize that not everyone who leaves the Church is trying to look for excuses for the Church not to be true. Please do not group everyone into one category like that! There are many people close to me who have left the Church. I respect their decision. Whether defending atheism or a belief in the Book of Mormon, standing up for what you feel is right shows a great deal of courage. Whether a convert to the Church or a seventh-generation member of the Church deciding to leave, it takes courage to stand up to your family, friends, and neighbors.
After I shared the first version of this book publicly on Facebook, a friend of mine started messaging me. This person admitted something like, “I don’t know if I’ve ever really felt the Spirit.” This person had been faithful in the church for most of their life and even volunteered a significant portion of time to serve as a full-time missionary. I shared some of my thoughts with this friend of mine.
Boyd K. Packer once asked a man to describe the taste of salt. “Assuming that I have never tasted salt, explain to me just what it tastes like,” he said. The man couldn’t do it very well. Packer went on to say, ““I know there is a God. You ridiculed that testimony and said that if I did know, I would be able to tell you exactly how I know. My friend, spiritually speaking, I have tasted salt. I am no more able to tell you in words how this knowledge has come to me than you are able to tell me what salt tastes like. But I say to you again, there is a God! He does live!” (Boyd K. Packer, The Candle of the Lord, 1988).
As I mentioned before, I have observed a distinction between feeling the Holy Spirit and feeling emotions. I will attempt to describe what the Spirit feels like, but like describing salt, words do not do enough.
In my experience, the Spirit feels like a warmth inside my chest. It feels almost like there's a little heat source inside my chest, near my heart. It feels like a warm blanket or a warm hug, but on the inside. As one young man in my old Sunday school class once put it, it feels like drinking hot chocolate when coming in on a cold day. When the Spirit is strong, it feels like a balloon expanding inside me. It feels like the Sun on my shoulders on a warm day, but on the inside. It feels warm and fuzzy.
It's distinct from purely emotional experiences because it can be couple with other emotions. I can feel that warmth while feeling joy. I can feel that warmth while feeling guilt, like I need to improve (and that's not always a pleasant emotion). I can feel that warmth while feeling a sense of urgency or action. It's different from feeling strong emotions while watching a great movie or listening to powerful music, but I have felt the Spirit testify of truth to me while I've listened to music or watched a movie, but it's different than just purely emotional.
Most of the time, the Spirit is still and small. It's not grand and big. It can be very subtle. There have been times when I know I've been prompted to do something that came from God and I didn't feel that warmth really strongly, only very subtly. But, I knew the prompting came from God because of later experiences that confirmed that to me. Sometimes, it's so subtle that I don't even know for sure if it's the Spirit. Sometimes the Spirit speaks through my own thoughts, but when I do know the Spirit is there, I know it for sure.
Maybe the easiest way to recognize the Spirit is when we lose the Spirit. In church discussions, we often talk about the Spirit leaving us when we are disobedient or immoral. I wonder though if it’s less that the Spirit leaves us as much as it is that we leave the Spirit. In my estimation, that happens when our internal "radio" that tunes itself to the Spirit's station isn't quite dialed up correctly. I personally believe the signal’s always there, but we can do things to align ourselves with the signal (the Spirit) to feel it stronger.
Recently, I began to see a clear pattern in the scriptures regarding virtue and knowledge. Virtue seems to increase our knowledge and power. Peter said, add to your “virtue knowledge” (2 Peter 1:5). The Lord also said, “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:45-46).
In other words, it seems to me that virtue is about making ourselves clean in order to fill ourselves with spiritual knowledge. The cleaner we are, the more we can feel the Spirit. Just think about it for a moment. You cannot fill a cup full of water if the cup is already full of mud and dirt. We have to empty our cups and make ourselves clean in order to make room to receive spiritual revelation.
I think that's part of the reason the Savior warned, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it” (Matthew 16:4). He also said, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). To me, the reason He was teaching this is because the more "adulterous" or "dirty" we are, especially in our hearts and minds, the more we don't have room for the Spirit. Those who are particularly carnally minded are often looking for carnal type evidence: flashy signs, rather than internal feelings. They often don't have room in their cup for Spiritual things in the first place.
With all that being said, there are some who feel they do keep their minds and hearts relatively clean, but still feel they have not recognized the Spirit. Some people even do bad things and are sometimes hit over the head with intense spiritual experiences. I know God cares about all of us the same. I don't think I'm special in any way because I have had spiritual experiences. The reasons some may have spiritual experiences while others don’t seem to recognize any may be part of the same reason why certain couples are blessed with children right away while others aren’t. Some couples unsuccessfully try really hard to have children. They may even want it more than most people and sometimes are more-prepared parents. Some people are blessed with children without even really trying (or sometimes even wanting kids). I don't think it's because anyone is better or more worthy. But, it does seem those who try hard for kids and eventually are blessed with them often appreciate their children more because of it. I don’t know all the reasons God blesses some with some blessings and for others it takes more time. I just personally believe God has a plan for all of us to have our own individual journeys.
A former bishop in one of my previous wards told me that individuals from his congregation would meet with him in his office and claim they didn’t have any faith. They might say things like, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any faith.”
Yet, some of these same individuals came to their bishop for help, guidance, and counsel. They were coming to church, they may have even been praying and reading scriptures privately and with their families.
“What do you mean you don’t have any faith?” He would often respond. “You’re here aren’t you?”
What they often meant was that they weren’t sure if they still believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What they meant was that they didn’t have the same feelings they once did.
This bishop explained to me that faith doesn’t always mean “feeling” joyful about every aspect of the Gospel. Faith is not a lack of questions. Faith is a matter of making faith-filled choices. Making the choice to pray and read scriptures even when you don’t feel like it is faith. It might even take greater faith to go to church, read scriptures, and pray when you don’t “feel it.”
Remember my definition of faith that I posited above: “Faith is the choices we make based on the evidence we have for a truth claim that we cannot yet prove with perfect certainty.”
It’s actually when you know something with absolute certainty that you have no faith: that is certain knowledge. Faith is not knowing for sure, but choosing to act on what you believe is true based on some level (however small) of reasonable evidence.
In fact, it's perfectly fine to say you just believe. It's even OK to just desire to believe. Alma said, "Even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you ..." (Alma 32:27).
Some wonder how they could possibly share the Gospel with others if they simply believe, if they are unsure if the Gospel is really true. Well, I have realized, in my life, that it’s not my job to convince someone that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true. They must collect their own evidence, including spiritual experiences from the Holy Spirit. It’s simply my job to share my real experiences. I can be honest and forthright and share what I know. I don’t need to hide behind my doubts. I can share what I do love about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and my own experiences.
Jeffery R. Holland said, “In this Church, what we know will always trump what we do not know” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “Lord, I Believe,” 2013). If I had to rewrite that quote, I might add “what we do not yet know.”
Boyd K. Packer once said, “A testimony is to be found in the bearing of it.”
Similar ideas have been expressed by other church leaders, and I’ll be honest, when I first heard that quote, I thought it was strange.
However, let me take the creative liberty to reword President Packer’s quote, “The learning of a concept is to be found in the teaching of it.”
Isn’t that true? Have you and I not seen that in our lives? When I teach something, I often learn it better myself. Obviously, I cannot pretend to teach something that I have not learned myself. Any reasonable person would not suggest that you get up in front of a class and lie your way through a lesson in order to learn the material. That’s ridiculous.
So, isn’t it just as clear that President Packer is not suggesting dishonesty is somehow commendable!
Again, Jeffery R. Holland famously said, “In this Church, what we know will always trump what we do not know” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “Lord, I Believe,” 2013). We are not to pretend we know things we do not!
I think President Packer is suggesting that when we actually get up to testify of what we do know and believe—in a sincere, heartfelt, and honest way—we often come to realize we know more than we give ourselves credit for. Just like teaching a concept to learn it better, sometimes things click in ways they never have before when we ourselves get a chance to explain them. And, when it comes to testimony, most often it takes an act of faith to ignite the flame of the Spirit.
Imagine walking into a calculus class. Your teacher begins to show you how to calculate derivatives. Suddenly, a student stands up and says, “Prove it! I don’t believe you. And, are you even qualified to teach this class?”
Now, imagine an alternative scenario. You walk into the same calculus class, the teacher begins to teach how to calculate derivatives, and you’re just not getting it. You’re lost. You’re paying attention, but it feels like a foreign language. You are struggling to grasp the material, and you just don’t understand. After class, you build up the courage and humility to walk up to the teacher and say, “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand this. Can I get extra help? Can you help me understand?”
To me, that’s the difference between questioning and asking questions. That’s the difference between a spirit of doubting and a spirit of learning. I also want to make it clear that I believe both, within their right context, have their proper place in our lives.
Questioning and doubting is often useful at the beginning of a journey. It’s actually useful to seek for the credibility in the source of the information you are looking at. To a certain degree, it can be very useful to be a skeptic and to think critically.
However, taken to an extreme, questioning poses more problems than benefits. If you’ve established the credibility of the school you are taking classes from and even the teacher for a specific class, it can inhibit your ability to learn if you are constantly questioning and requestioning your teacher's credibility.
Asking questions has a totally different spirit about it. We often ask questions after we’ve established someone’s credibility. A child posing questions to a parent comes from a place of trust: they believe their parent has the answers, they’ve established credibility already.
Some mistakenly believe it’s wrong to ask any questions or to explore a topic further. I don’t think that’s right. I believe asking questions is one of the main ways we learn. It’s often been pointed out that if Joseph Smith asked no questions, the Gospel of Jesus Christ would never have been restored. Asking questions in a spirit of trust, faith, courage, and humility is how we learn.
However, taken to an extreme, asking questions can also inhibit our growth. If we spend too much time delving into the mysteries of God, we can start to lose focus on the life lessons God is trying to teach us. If asking questions distracts us from work, school, family, learning essential skills, or developing Christlike attributes, we may be missing the mark.
Lawrence E. Corbridge said, “There are some who are afraid the Church may not be true and who spend their time and attention slogging through the swamp of the secondary questions. They mistakenly try to learn the truth by process of elimination, by attempting to eliminate every doubt. That is always a bad idea. It will never work. That approach only works in the game of Clue.
“Life, however, is not nearly as simple. There are unlimited claims and opinions leveled against the truth. Each time you track down an answer to any one antagonistic claim and look up, there is another one staring you in the face. I am not saying you should put your head in the sand, but I am saying you can spend a lifetime desperately tracking down the answer to every claim leveled against the Church and never come to a knowledge of the most important truths.
“Answers to the primary questions do not come by answering the secondary questions. There are answers to the secondary questions, but you cannot prove a positive by disproving every negative. You cannot prove the Church is true by disproving every claim made against it. That will never work. It is a flawed strategy. Ultimately there has to be affirmative proof, and with the things of God, affirmative proof finally and surely comes by revelation through the spirit and power of the Holy Ghost” (Lawrence E. Corbridge, Stand Forever, 2019).
This is true of various religions as well. I could endless try to prove or disprove every religion or every belief within a religion. It’s not a bad thing to strive to learn about other religions. I want to learn about other religions! However, I need to constantly be asking myself if I’m spending my valuable time pursuing the most important questions. Am I wasting my time trying to disprove every tip or clue that comes my way? Or, am I spending my time pursuing the most valuable lines of evidence I have?
There is an age-old question which often arises with the question about God’s existence. “If God really exists, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?”
I am not the only one who has suggested answers to this question. In fact, I don’t think I have the best answers. Still, this question comes up so often that I thought I would compile some of my favorite answers and resources here.
First of all, this question is so compelling that it’s been a major factor in causing many great thinkers to embrace atheism. However, I will first point out that this question is not evidence against the existence of God.
Imagine you discovered you were actually a character in a video game. Think of the premise of the movie Free Guy. If you managed to discover your life was all a game or a simulation, the fact there is violence, pain, or suffering would not change the discovery you made.
Your question might immediately be, “Why did the game designer include violence, suffering, or pain? Why does the designer allow evil?” You probably would not think, “There’s pain and suffering. Does a designer really exist?”
Our evidence for God’s existence is not dependent on why pain or suffering exists. If you have sufficient evidence for God’s existence, it’s really a matter for you to take up with your Designer. Evil, pain, and suffering is not good evidence that God does not exist.
With that being said, most monotheistic religions claim God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. The question then is less about whether God exists. The question becomes about whether God truly is all powerful and all good. Why would a good God allow pain and suffering if He can do something about it? If He’s not doing anything about it, is God sadistic?
C.S. Lewis explored answers to these questions in his book The Problem of Pain. That’s a good resource worth considering if this is a question you are concerned about.
The Book of Mormon has answers to these questions as well in 2 Nephi 2:
“There is an opposition in all things … no joy [without] misery … no good [without] sin” (2 Nephi 2:11;23). If you were happy all the time, would you even realize you were happy?
This chapter also explains, “The Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other” (2 Nephi 2:16). Thus, God gave us our choices. That means, He allows us to choose wickedly. Wickedness and disobedience brings pain and suffering for many people.
So much has been said about free will and agency, that it’s difficult for me to feel I can add anything to the discussion. An entry on agency in a book called True to the Faith may be a good starting point. However, I will say that I believe much of this idea is summed up in the words of a hymn:
“Know this, that every soul is free
“To choose his life and what he’ll be;
“For this eternal truth is giv’n:
“That God will force no man to heav’n” (Anon., ca. 1805, Boston).
Some may argue that much of life’s suffering is not caused by human choices though. A baby born in a third-world country suffers and dies shortly afterwards because of hunger and starvation. That baby obviously did not choose her fate. Earthquakes, fires, and floods are not necessarily caused by human choices either. Jesus Christ said God "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). Joy and suffering is experienced by the obedient and disobedient.
We do not see as God sees, but I know, in my life, pain and suffering often produces growth and learning. To borrow on some popular metaphors, muscle is only built after facing resistance and breaking down first. Diamonds are not formed without intense heat and pressure. Likewise, gold cannot be refined without intense fire.
I have good reason to believe there will always be enough evidence to cause the claims of the Church to be reasonable, but never enough evidence in mortality to prove with absolute certainty the truth claims of Jesus Christ's Gospel, at least not in the same way we come to scientific consensus.
Personally, I believe that is incredibly beautiful and insightful. If the Book of Mormon is God's holy word then the best way for us to come to that knowledge is to do as the book describes: pray to discover the truth (Moroni 10:3-4). In other words, we must begin to develop a personal relationship with God. We learn to trust God more than we trust worldly wisdom. We must learn to rely more on our personal, individual experiences with God more than we do on our relationships with other people. God doesn't simply want us to know something is true the way we know the Earth is round. He actually expects us to develop a relationship of trust with Him, and a one-on-one relationship with Him is the best (maybe only) way to spiritual truth.
If God made it too easy for us to know His eternal truths, it would not require us to use our free will to follow Him. In the last section, we already discussed how important agency is in God’s plan. In other words, if it were incredibly easy to discover spiritual truths, this life wouldn’t be a chance for our agency to be tested. Moroni famously said, "ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith" (Ether 12:6).
Yet I will point out that we often reference that quote from Moroni in relation to some obstacle, challenge, or crisis we must overcome. And, indeed, the Lord does give us opportunities that are trying. "I will try the faith of my people," the Lord says in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 26:11).
However, I have recently wondered if that verse is not just about the Lord trying our faith, but us trying our faith in Him.
The word "trial" comes from an old Anglo-French word "trier," a verb meaning "to try."
Alma taught us to try or experiment with our faith by planting and nourishing God's word in our heart. He promised that it would begin to grow and swell within us (Alma 32). In other words, we would begin to receive a witness after we tried our faith.
Let's not just imagine God trying us, let's try Him. Let's try our faith in Him and we will begin to see a witness "after the trial of [our] faith" (Ether 12:6).
Again, let me reiterate my conclusions and my testimony of the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know (in part because of the efforts of this book) that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true. I know, largely from my own spiritual experiences/evidence, that the Book of Mormon is God’s holy word, meant for our day, meant to corroborate the Bible. I love the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on my behalf. Nearly every day, I express my gratitude to God that He willingly suffered for my sins. I feel from the Holy Spirit that He is the Savior of the world. I don’t know if it’s possible to express the gratitude in my heart. I love Him! And, whether or not He is who He claimed, His life, teachings, and influence have affected every aspect of my life. I attribute most of the happiness in my life to living His teachings. I learn His teachings through His ancient and modern Prophets and Apostles and know that they are men called God. I feel a yearning in my soul to be loyal to Jesus Christ and His cause, to strive to give what I have to Him.