This article of mine — inspired by the heartbreaking recent events in the former Maui town of Lahaina — appeared yesterday in Meridian Magazine: “Losing an Earthly Paradise.”
For us, flying out of Provo (and back into Provo) is about as good as it gets, flying-wise. Just a few minutes on surface streets (no freeway travel required, no traffic jams risked). The airport is small but clean and new. The lines range from manageable to non-existent. Security is quick and efficient. So is luggage retrieval. There are no interminably long walks to and from the gate. It’s enough to make flying pleasant again. Or, at least, not something to dread. Although there are only limited flights and destinations available through Provo, I would heartily recommend it to anybody living in Utah Valley who can make it work.
So far, by contrast, I very much dislike the new Salt Lake Airport — which, in deep self-pity, I’ve termed WAI-US, for “Worst Airport in the United States.” After a long and tiring series of flights from, say, Tel Aviv or Sydney, it’s disheartening to have to hike in from a far-distant arrival gate to a still-empty baggage carousel, accompanied along the route by an instrumental rendition of “Pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked” over the airport’s sound system. (Maybe I was only imagining that last part?)
A while back, I saw a discussion (or, perhaps more accurately, an instance of what often passes there for a “discussion”) over at an overtly anti-Mormon (and very largely, though not entirely, atheistic) message board. It focused on the golden plates that were purportedly connected with the Book of Mormon. I found it amusing for a number of reasons, but one of the principal reasons for my amusement is that these are people who (I’ve observed them for years) proudly insist on their uniquely powerful commitment to evidence and rationality. (I won’t bother to note, below, where supporting evidence for the discussants’ claims is absent because non-existent. It’s every single time.) Here are some of the highlights of the conversation, such as it was:
- We have only Joseph Smith’s word for the existence of those plates. (See “Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.”)
- If God were really involved, he would have made the plates available to absolutely everybody. (See “dubious assumption.”)
- Agreeing [!] with the first assertion, above, another rejects the testimony of the Three Witnesses.
- Martin Harris was delusional.
- Martin Harris had experienced many delusions and cannot be trusted. (See “Martin Harris: Skeptic or Gullible Dupe?”)
- David Whitmer was delusional.
- David Whitmer was too proud to admit that he had been fooled.
- Oliver Cowdery was in on the conspiracy and was a conscious fraud.
- All of the Three Witnesses had strong, self-interested reasons for making their false claims.
- Martin Harris didn’t claim to have seen the plates with his literal, physical eyes.
- Scholars can’t examine the plates because there never were any plates.
- The fact that there were two groups of Witnesses (the Three and the Eight) indicates that there were no plates at all. (I know. I don’t understand the reasoning either.)
- The overwhelming majority of Earth’s inhabitants have failed to accept the Book of Mormon, and this corroborates the nonexistence of the plates.
- The Book of Mormon was written in imitation “Bible English.” (On that purported “Bible English,” see the work of Stan Carmack and Royal Skousen.)
What continually surprises me about such assertions is the sheer baseless confidence with which they’re laid down, not only as if there were conclusive evidence to prove them true — which, to put it mildly, there is not — but as if, and I’m again being modest here, there weren’t considerable evidence calling them into serious question.
Take, for example, the recurring claim to which I responded (yet again!) yesterday, that the plates of the Book of Mormon didn’t exist because Joseph Smith couldn’t have run while carrying them because they were too heavy. I noticed it on the Peterson Obsession Board three or four days ago, and now I’m told that it’s trending on TikTok.
To some significant degree, it was to make it more difficult (even, if you will, to make it more publicly embarrassing) for people to utter such dubious assertions as if they were self-evidently true, as if they required neither supporting evidence nor logical analysis, that we undertook the “Witnesses” film project.
I’m a realist, though. I know that anti-Mormon claims offer some of the best examples on this side of the veil for the possibility of eternal life: My much-lamented late friend Bill Hamblin and I long dreamed of doing a movie called Bill and Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Anti-Mormon Zombie Hell, because, even when you shoot them in the head, squarely between the eyes, such claims often just keep coming at you as if nothing had happened.
One of the denizens of the Obsession Board has just challenged defenders of the faith to just try running with such an object as the plates. But we have. It’s been done. And we have video of it, which appears during the first few minutes of the Witnesses theatrical film. That film is is now available not only on DVD and Blu-ray but via streaming at Living Scriptures, Deseret Video+, Apple, Google, and Amazon. There is literally no excuse for critics of the Restoration to continue peddling their discredited claim, which is not only demonstrably false but which has been demonstrated false.
Much of this effort was inspired by the remarkable work of the late Richard Lloyd Anderson, the pioneering, preeminent scholar of the Book of Mormon Witnesses to whose memory the Witnesses dramatic film was dedicated. The project has also produced short video “reels” on directly related subjects as well as a two-part docudrama, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and the “Witnesses of the Book of Mormon” website.
Brother Anderson, who earned a law degree from Harvard before receiving a doctorate in ancient history from the University of California at Berkeley, remains one of the finest and most consequential scholars ever produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And his classic book Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981) remains one of the best and most important books ever published on the history of the Restoration. In this book, Professor Anderson subjects the Book of Mormon witnesses to meticulous examination. And they emerge from the process as sane, lucid, honest, reliable men — a fact of perfectly enormous importance because of the way their testimony directly corroborates central claims of Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brother Anderson wrote many other indispensable articles on the Witnesses — and on other significant topics — both before and after Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses was published. These are available online (though perhaps no longer available at the redirected, post-2012 Maxwell Institute website), including but not limited to “Attempts to Redefine the Experience of the Eight Witnesses,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14/1 (2005): 18–31; “Personal Writings of the Book of Mormon Witnesses,” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1997), 39–60; and “The Credibility of the Book of the Mormon Translators,” in Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds and Charles D. Tate (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1982), 213–37. But Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses remains, I think, the best place to start on this vital subject.
Posted from Scottsdale, Arizona
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