The Book of Nowhere: A very sad example of Mormon apologetics

The Book of Mormon is regarded by the wider world as fiction. Some give it credit for having interesting things to say, but most do not consider it to be an authentic ancient document, instead calling it a modern pseudepigraph fabricated by Joseph Smith. Faithful Latter-day Saints have objected to this, and have done their best to defend the position that the Book of Mormon is what it says it is. As part of their defense, many Mormons have tried to locate where the events in the book took place in the Americas. Some, like the FIRM Foundation, advocate the Heartland Model, which places the major events in the book within North America, while others, like John Sorenson, prefer to place it in Mesoamerica. One apologist, Dennis Horne (a man of some renown among Mormon apologists), has recently argued that such folk have their approach all wrong. I quote from his blog post:

Book of Mormon geography location theorizing has become enough of an issue among scholars and laymen alike, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a formal Gospel Topic essay stating a neutral position. The pertinent sentences read: “the Church’s only position is that the events the Book of Mormon describes took place in the ancient Americas.” And, “The Church does not take a position on the specific geographic locations of Book of Mormon events in the ancient Americas.” When I first read the entire statement, and the quoted sentences in particular, I thought it very wise, to the point of inspired.

As you might already know, I am among the crowd that dismisses the Book of Mormon as fiction, so the ongoing discussion about how best to locate the Book of Mormon normally does not interest me much, but this one caught my eye because it managed to be so wrong. There’s plenty to disagree with in his post, but here’s the part I object to most of all:

A wonderful thing about not designating a narrowly definable geographic location is to avoid giving the devil’s mortal emissaries a spot to target as well. The Prophet Joseph Smith said Moroni told him that there “was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent” (JS—H 1:34; italics added).[2] Instead of being able to concentrate all their disparate resources and ire on one piece of real estate, they have to examine and attempt to refute everywhere in all the Americas; a much less effective pursuit. Whatever and wherever they argue against, they could always be focusing on the wrong spot, and therefore be irrelevant.[3]

That [3] there points to a footnote citing this article by Dallin H. Oaks, in which Oaks claims that “the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame”. Oaks and Horne seem very satisfied with this position, Horne especially giving credit to the Mormon church for finding an inspired way to thwart the devil’s emissaries, by which I assume he means people like me. Unfortunately for them, this position is wrong in two important ways.

The first way this goes wrong is that it leaves wide open the possibility that the events in the Book of Mormon did not happen in any physical location at all. If anything described within actually happened, it had to happen somewhere, and there are very many events described in the book, so I think it quite reasonable to think that there should be at least one event should have produced an effect that would be detectable to today’s archaeologists and connectable to the book’s text. The Iliad, for comparison, can be connected to real-world locations even though many of the events it describes are impossible. And yet Horne, Oaks, and the Mormon church in general are willing to admit that the Book of Mormon has no such connection! How is it that this book, which is supposed to be not just a true history but a guide to the most vital truths of human existence, cannot match the historicity of a story about characters like Zeus and Poseidon? To me, the obvious conclusion is that the Book of Mormon is not connected to ancient American history at all because it’s all fictional; if Oaks and Horne and friends can’t meet the burden of proving that even one of its events happened, then I am justified in assuming that it’s all false, and contrary to what Oaks says, I am not under any burden to positively prove that it never happened at every conceivable location.

The second way that Horne’s position goes wrong is that, contrary to his claims (and contrary to the church’s own words), there is one definable geographic location that has been designated for several Book of Mormon events. That location is the Hill Cumorah, and it presents a testable target for historicity theories. The church openly declares that this hill, where Joseph Smith supposedly found the gold plates, is indeed the hill described in the Book of Mormon’s pages, where Mormon and Moroni hid several precious ancient records, and where the Nephites were finally destroyed by the Lamanites, and also where the Jaredites had their final suicidal battle. These clear statements are backed up by years’ worth of statements by church leaders affirming that all of these events happened at that same central hill. There is one pin firmly in the Book of Mormon’s map, and it is up for anyone to test. Now, if the hill were up to the test, I would not be bringing this up as a problem with Horne’s position (though I might tease him for skipping over evidence in favor of a friendly position), but this is a big problem because the hill is not up to the test. In fact, the hill is empty. There is no evidence of the massive battles that supposedly occurred there, or of the records that were supposedly hid there, or even of the stone box in which Joseph claimed to have found the plates.

In short, in his attempt to praise and defend the Mormon church, Dennis Horne (not to mention Dallin Oaks) revealed that he does not understand the church’s own historical position, and that he does not understand the rules of evidence. He has highlighted the weakness of the church’s position and called it strength. For a scholar who claims to be after truth, that might be the saddest state that I can imagine being in.

Before They Come For Us

Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, “First they came for…” has been on my mind recently. I think that it has an important warning for us about what happens when we let people do bad things.

 

Consider how it starts: “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.” And he wasn’t! So why should he worry about what happened to the Communists? The Communists were different, after all, and what happened to them did not affect Martin Niemöller. What was there to worry about?

 

Of course, the Nazis kept coming for more people, like the trade unionists, and the Catholics, and the incurables, and the Jews, and so on, and Martin (like so many others) still did not speak up. Why should they? They had nothing to fear from the Nazis, who were only going after the undesirables, after all. No need to worry.

 

And then, one day, they came for Martin Niemöller.

 

It turns out that those “undesirables” are not so different from the rest of us, and we now know that if someone is willing to be cruel to them, they will happily be cruel to us as well at the first opportunity. Perhaps Dr. King put it best: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

 

We’ve seen this here in the USA. Consider “asset forfeiture” laws: they tells us that these laws will help fight drug dealers and organized crime, and then they use these laws to steal cash from innocent people. Or how about the surveillance apparatus that was supposed to spy on foreigners and terrorists, but which was spying on all of us the whole time? We should have known this would happen. As one rabbi put it long ago: “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

 

And now, today, I read about children being taken away from their parents as a matter of policy. I read this, and I am afraid. I know that these people will not stop at taking children from immigrants. They will happily take children away from anyone who falls within their power. Don’t think that your status as a citizen will protect you for long. They’ll find some excuse to get you.

 

Unless, of course, we stop them right now.

 

We can put an end to this. While our common enemy is still going after easy targets, we can stop them. Before they hurt anyone else, before they even come close to hurting us, we can stop them. But we have to speak up. So please, speak up. Though you are not a Communist, speak up for the Communists. Though you are not a Jew, speak up for the Jews. Though you are not an immigrant, speak up for the immigrants. Though you are not a criminal, speak up for the criminals, yes, you read me right, speak up for them, because criminals are humans, and if we do not speak up for them, then we do not speak up for humanity, and then who will speak up for us?

 

This is our chance. Before it is too late, speak up, now, for the good of us all, before they come after any more of us.

The Truce

According to the few records we have, way back in 1254 in the court of Mongke Khan at Karakorum, there was a debate (source, see also Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World). Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists gathered to argue their case before the Great Khan to plead their case and (hopefully) convert a few people to the one true faith. There was apparently quite a lot of lively debate, with the Christians doing pretty well (at least according to their own account), but one important thing was missing. No one was actually switching faiths:

They all listened without making any contradiction, but no one said: “I believe; I want to become a Christian.”

Faced with this impasse, the Christians and Muslims started singing and quoting scripture at each other, with the Buddhists just being silently Buddhist at everyone else, and when that didn’t win any converts either, they gave up on debating altogether and…

…And everyone got drunk instead, and then went their separate ways. (No really, check the original account.)

Notice what didn’t happen: they didn’t try to slit each other’s throats. Even though there was plenty of religious throat-slitting happening everywhere else in the world, they didn’t do that at Karakorum. They all put up with each other instead, and found a way to get along even though they couldn’t agree on matters that they all agreed were very important. They made a truce. Perhaps an unwritten one, but one that they all agreed to just the same.

I believe that this sort of unwritten truce is vital to pluralistic societies, such as the one I live in, and so I wish to discuss our own unwritten truce today. In particular, I wish to discuss the forces threatening its existence, and what might happen if we break the truce.

The specific terms of the truce are unclear and subject to constant change, but I think that the eart of the truce is constant and clear. Put bluntly: “I’ll put up with your bullshit if you’ll put up with mine.” A tit for tat, easily understood by almost everyone. You don’t want to lose the chance to say whatever you like, so you let the other guys say whatever they like. Fair’s fair, after all.

This is the spirit of freedom of religion. Your competing religions can’t both be right, but since you can’t come to an agreement on which one is right, you agree to disagree, and you let the other guy keep on living his foul heathen creed while you go about your pious duties. This is the spirit of freedom of speech. You know that the other guy’s opinions are wrong, but you can see that he is thoroughly convinced that your opinions are wrong and both of you know you’re not changing each other’s minds, so you let him spew his nonsense while you declare the truth. You’d like to shut the other guy up, but everyone can see that the only way to do that would be total war, and you’re not sure if you’d win that war at all, let alone score a victory that’s actually worth the cost. Besides, you’re not too keen on destroying your enemies, even when they’re really wrong. I mean, they’re still people, aren’t they?

Scott Alexander calls this truce “a timeless Platonic contract that doesn’t literally exist”, and he has a lot to say in favor of it, and against the people who would break it. That post of his was a large inspiration for the post of mine, especially since the people in favor of breaking the contract seem to be growing bolder and more numerous. Let’s have a look at some of the folks currently protesting the terms of the truce.

Not so long ago, a government official came to a university to speak, by the invitation of some of its students, but some other students weren’t so happy. They did their very best to shut him down:

After dozens of protesters filed into an event featuring House Representative Briscoe Cain, they wouldn’t allow Rep. Cain to speak, claiming he has ties to the Alt-Right and is anti-LGBT.

Rep. Cain was invited to the Thurgood Marshall School of Law by the Federalist Society to talk to the students about the recent legislative special session. Instead, the event was shut down before it even started.

“No hate anywhere, you don’t get a platform here!” protesters yelled inside the room.

The words echoed through the classroom.

“When a racist comes to town, shut him down,” they continued.

That was the mission of the student protesters: shutting down Rep. Cain, who was invited on campus by student Daniel Caldwell.

“It appears that many of you have comments, questions or concerns that you’d like to take up with him,” Caldwell said to the students while at the podium.

No comments, questions or concerns were ever voiced, however. Rep. Cain tried to speak, but his words were lost below the chants.

“No hate anywhere. You don’t get a platform here!” the chant continued.

The general sentiment was clear: we won’t put up with any more of your bullshit. Alright, fair enough. But tell me this: what happens when your opponent decides they won’t put up with your bullshit? Did you think that far ahead?

Some folks, of course, have thought that far ahead, but I don’t think they’ve thought well enough. Take, for instance, George Ciccariello-Maher, who is currently having some free-speech-related difficulties. In the face of a rather shocking injustice (a jury being unable to convict a police officer of murder for shooting a man in the back), Ciccariello-Maher advocates violent revolution (unless “the spirit of John Brown” means something else I haven’t thought of yet). But is this a fight that George and his friends can win? The source of the original injustice comes from people who are unwilling to convict a police officer. There are quite a lot of these people, and if George’s anti-police crowd tried starting a violent revolution, these folks just might fight back, and of course they’d have the police on their side. Do you like those odds, George? Because I don’t.

Of course, there’s at least one good reason to start a war even when you might not win: when the peace is no longer tolerable. If the terms of the truce are bad enough, then you have a good reason to gamble on breaking it. So is our current state of affairs bad enough to justify breaking the truce and making a bloody play for a better peace?

I really don’t think so. See, it wasn’t so long that we had some really nasty violence between factions here in the US of A. Consider:

– The Elaine massacre: A huge mob of white people kill over 100 black people, maybe over 200. Only 5 white people are killed in response, and none are arrested, unlike the 122 black people arrested afterward.

– The Tulsa riot: A white mob, with police assistance, destroys a wealthy black neighborhood, using planes to drop bombs on the houses and people. At least 300 innocent people were killed. No one was ever prosecuted for any of this.

– The Colfax massacre: White voters attack black voters to prevent them from gaining power. 100 black people killed, 3 white people killed in response, attackers arrested but never convicted.

There are more, of course. Many more. Notice which way the violence keeps leaning? But notice, also, that these sorts of things seem rather rare nowadays? To me, this suggests that our current peace is precious, because it used to be a lot worse, and if it was that bad once, it could be that way again. Or, if other parts of the world are any indication, much, much worse.

And just to make this all about me for a second, what about disputes that aren’t along racial lines? I started this post with a story about religion, and the various parties in that story are still fighting with each other in some parts of the world. They could easily come to blows here, too. And what about those of us who aren’t Christian or Muslim or Buddhist? My own religious preference, atheism, is pretty unpopular here in all sorts of places, including the USA. But right now, the truce still holds. Millions of Americans think I’m a monster, but I am still free to declare that there is no god and go about my business in peace. That freedom could go away. I really don’t want that to happen.

And there are plenty of other freedoms I enjoy that could go away, because there are people who openly want to take them away. Freedom to disrespect the government and its symbols, including the flag and the anthem. Freedom to disobey cops. Freedom to disbelieve and offend just about anyone. Sure, there are laws protecting those freedoms here in the USA, but those laws are only of force because the laws protect the great unspoken truce. If the truce goes away, people won’t care about the laws.

And so I am very frustrated when I see minorities threatening to break the truce. I know you guys have the short end of the stick now, but do you realize how much shorter it could get? You do not have the upper hand here. You may have legitimate grievances, but there’s a critical mass of people out there who think that they have legitimate grievances and you don’t, and you may enjoy making fun of them now, but if they pull out their guns and come for you, it will be of little comfort to you in your final moments to know that they are still completely unaware of how privileged they are.

Part of smart politics is realizing that you and the other side will never see eye-to-eye, but you can get along anyways if you compromise. I know it hurts, but it is better than the alternative. Put up with their bullshit, and if they don’t put up with yours, you can call them out for cheating. As long as a truce is in effect, this has force. But if you demonstrate that you don’t care about the truce, then no one else cares either, and it’s time to play hardball.

In fact, let’s dwell for a moment on the fact that cheating by one party gives other parties an excuse to cheat as well. Lots of people don’t like playing by the rules, so they’re constantly looking for an opportunity. Consider the Nazis and the Reichstag fire. Some credible people believe that the Nazis staged the fire to give themselves an excuse to seize power and suspend liberties. If that is true, then what we have is this: a powerful group wanted so badly to get away with cheating that they framed another group for being the first to cheat, and it worked. They got to set the new rules, and they retained the moral high ground because everyone thought the other guy started it. With that in mind, does it really make sense to be so eager to set aside politeness and get into fights, when doing so encourages your enemies to really fight back? When you were so eager to punch Nazis, did you realize that you were seen as throwing the first punch, and now everyone is okay with people punching right back at you?

The fragile peace still holds in the USA, but it can be destroyed, and a lot of us stand to lose big if it goes. With that in mind, I beg you to keep the peace. You may not feel like getting drunk with your ideological enemies, but you can still preserve the truce.

P.S. I have spent most of this post taking the perspective of the prospective loser in the event of a broken truce. But what about prospective winners? What if you’re in the majority, and your side might win in a bloody culture war? Should you go for it?

Well, I’ve got some bad news for you, champ. It turns out that when you win by killing your way to the top, it’s hard to stop killing, and you and your mates end up killing each other.

The French revolution, after having successfully overthrown the monarchy, soon turned on itself. Robespierre and his allies slaughtered their fellow revolutionaries for not being revolutionary enough, until they grew so unpopular that they, too, were sent to the guillotine. The Russian and Chinese revolutions were similarly cannibalistic; the Russians had a full-scale civil war, killing milllions, and in China, Mao launched his “Cultural Revolution”, which was less bloody than civil war but only because most people weren’t in a position to fight back. Even the Nazis got in on the act; not long after the Night of Broken Glass, they had the Night of Long Knives. Apparently, when you break the truce with the other side, you break it within your own ranks as well, and everyone starts cheating each other to death.

So just be careful before you go discarding the rules of civility and murdering your way to the top, for you may find that one day, when you least expect it, the ghost of civil society will have its revenge upon you, and you will have to pay for breaking the truce.

©olumba: Patron Saint of Free Culture

I’d like to return, for a moment, to one of my previous posts, Escape the Iron Prison. In that post, I touched briefly on the story of Columba (also known as Columcille, or Colm Cille, meaning “church dove”), 6th-century Christian missionary and book transcriber. But the breadth and length of that post made it hard to focus on any one aspect in particular, and I don’t think I gave Columba the attention he deserves. So today, we’re going to learn a little more about Columba, because he was a cool guy.

And also the owner of a truly massive forehead.

Unlike lucky folks like us who get to live in the future, Columba had to live in the past, and living in the past had a tendency to really suck. Instead of having far too many books, people in Columba’s day had far too few. The printing press wasn’t due to arrive in Europe for another 800 years or so, and that meant that if you wanted to copy a book, you had to write it all out by hand. This is not the sort of environment that produces an active file-sharing scene. But true fans will be true fans, and true fans copy and share, and Columba was a true fan of the Word of God.

According to Life of Columcille, Columba went to hang out with Finnian, his old teacher, and borrowed a book from him (specifically, a psalter). Columba thought that the psalter was just swell, and decided to make a new copy. Lacking the power to simply Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V, Columba wrote the new copy himself, and what a glorious writing it was:

On a time Columcille went to stay with Finnen of Druim Finn, and he asked of him the loan of a book, and it was given him. After the hours and the mass, he was wont to tarry behind the others in the church, there transcribing the book, unknown to Finnen. And when evening came there would be candles for him the while he copied, to wit, the five fingers of his right hand blazing like five passing bright lights, so that they lit up and enlumined the whole temple.
– From Life of Columcille, p.177

My hands do not get nearly that magical when I’m copying books. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.

Anyways, Finnian eventually decided that he wanted his book back, so he sent a young man to pick it up. The youth peeked in on Columba doing his copying, and was apparently quite amazed by it, but Columba didn’t like being peeked on, so he sent a crane to pluck out the youth’s eye. Remember, kids: respect people’s privacy… or else! Not surprisingly, this turn of events pissed Finnian off, so after healing the youth’s eye, he insisted that Columba give up the copy he had made. Columba refused and appealed to the local king to settle the matter. Diarmait heard them out and rendered the following famous judgment:

“To every cow her calf, and to every book its copy.”

Columba refused the king’s judgment, which prompted the king to send in an army, so Columba rallied his kinsmen and fought back. According to the legend, Columba even got God to intervene on his behalf, such that none of Columba’s kinsmen died in the battle, thus giving him and his folk a rather solid victory. Diarmait and Finnian went home empty-handed, and Columba kept his copy (the Catach of St. Columba is believed to be the book in question).

What a story! First, a man of God tries to make the word of God more abundant, but his teacher and mentor refuses to let him do so! He appeals to the king for justice, but the king sides with the mentor, so he appeals to God for help, and he triumphs! What a statement – that God is on the side of the copiers! And it’s worth reading Columba’s defense of his actions:

“I hold that Finnian’s book has not decreased in value because of the transcript I have made from it, and that it is not right to extinguish the divine things it contained, or to prevent me or anybody else from copying it, or reading it, or from circulating it throughout the provinces. I further maintain that if I benefited by its transcription, which I desired to be for the general good, provided no injury accrues to Finnian or his book thereby, it was quite permissible for me to copy it.”

The spirit of Kopimism is strong with this one. We need to tell this guy’s story more often.

And that’s why I’m proposing that we make Columba the patron saint of free culture and file-sharing. I’m not a Catholic, so I don’t know how the official system works for making someone a patron saint, but I think that we don’t need to wait for the Vatican to act on this one. Kopimism already has a gospel (provided here by Christian Engström); it’s time it had a patron saint as well. I nominate Columba.

Huh. Maybe his forehead wasn’t so big after all.

Escape the Iron Prison

There is a pattern to our thoughts that we do not see, a set of rules that we follow without knowing. It governs what we can or cannot understand, which means that it affects everything we do. The pattern is useful to us in the measure that it approximates reality; a pattern of thought is like a map, and a map is good if it helps us navigate the territory. But if the pattern does not approximate reality, then it does not serve us. It might, however, serve other people; if someone can edit your map without you knowing, then they can hide things from you and lead you astray at their will and pleasure. As a consequence, some people are actively trying to confuse us for their own benefit. This is one of the reasons why it’s hard to understand so many things, and why it’s important to see things as they really are.

You’ve probably already noticed that my favorite topic on this blog is “intellectual property” and its subdivisions, such as patent, copyright, database rights, and so on. I choose to focus on this topic because I believe that it is very important, since the legal rules of IP govern the development and use of technology (which we all use, and we’re using more and more of it) and communication (which we all do, and we’re doing more and more of it). I also focus on IP because I believe that the ways of thinking that define and uphold IP are very, very wrong.