Friday, July 16, 2010

Garden variety religion


So the Book of Mormon can't be true because we believe Adam was a real person? —Tom

Lots of people don't believe humans evolved from apes.

I fail to see the logic in saying that just because we believe the story of the Garden of Eden was a historical event, this automatically means Mormonism is false.

I wish you would say more about how you see the Garden of Eden story fitting in with what we know about the world today. It's a fable, Tom, written before people had discovered germs, or atoms, or of course DNA. And just to clarify, we haven't "evolved from" apes. We evolved from earlier versions of hominids, who would be classified as primates just like us.

Anyway, I take you to mean that belief in Adam and Eve must be rational because lots of people believe it. Lots of people also believe in UFOs. That's not evidence of anything except the credulity of the average person.

And finally, the Garden of Eden story could be absolutely true and it would still be ridiculously obvious that the Book of Mormon is contrived. Do you know anything about ancient Native Americans that you didn't learn in Sunday school? What did they eat? What animals did they have? What technology? What about their language and writing? Just pick one subject, ANY SUBJECT!, and see if what you learn looks remotely like the history you read in the Book of Mormon. I'm sure it doesn't seem like it now, and you probably think I'm just being a jerk, but the day you finally realize that Joseph Smith made the whole thing up will be the best day of your life. You're welcome. :)

@Adam: Don't keep us in suspense. What's the evidence you see that makes you think the BoM is literal history? So the more you learn about ancient Americans' agriculture, technology, language, etc., the more it looks like 3 Nephi 3:22? Have you contacted National Geographic to let them know?

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