{"id":112955,"date":"2025-09-23T00:27:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T06:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=112955"},"modified":"2025-09-23T00:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T06:27:15","slug":"is-there-seeming-evidence-against-the-restoration-sure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/09\/is-there-seeming-evidence-against-the-restoration-sure.html","title":{"rendered":"Is there seeming evidence against the Restoration? Sure!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The St. Louis Missouri Temple (LDS.org) \u00a0Alas, I don\u2019t believe that I\u2019ll be passing by this temple on either Tuesday or Saturday. \u00a0I once attended an endowment session in it, though, with my late brother.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My Monday was exceptionally long and very busy, and I had no time whatever, none at all, to do any writing today. \u00a0Not even on my blog. \u00a0But I\u2019ve made it a practice to post a daily entry on this blog, and I\u2019m going to be traveling almost all of Tuesday. \u00a0Which means that I\u2019m likely to fall even further behind. \u00a0So I\u2019ve elected to re-post something that I wrote several years ago. \u00a0I think that it\u2019s still worthy of a read, and I still stand behind it. \u00a0I\u2019ve modified it only very slightly here from its original iteration, and nothing of substance has been changed:<\/p>\n

\u201cCan There Be Any Valid Criticisms of the Church?\u201d<\/p>\n

I saw this title (or something like it) on a Latter-day Saint-related message board. \u00a0I haven\u2019t yet read through the thread there, and I may not. \u00a0But I once posted something on this subject and have been attacked ever since for what I said, by people who plainly didn\u2019t understand<\/em> what I said. \u00a0So I thought, What the heck? I\u2019ll try it again.<\/p>\n

Yes, there can be valid criticisms of the Church. \u00a0Both of the Church as an assemblage of people and of the Church as an institution.<\/p>\n

To choose a few trivial examples:<\/p>\n

We, as Saints, could and should be doing better at home teaching, attending the temple more often, being more active missionaries, working better at family history research, being more charitable in our behavior, being more service-oriented. \u00a0(If nobody else in the Church is defective in those areas,<\/em> I<\/em> certainly am. \u00a0Which means that, even if I\u2019m the only one, the Church membership isn\u2019t living up to its full potential.) \u00a0More of our youth should be serving as missionaries. \u00a0Our musical and artistic tastes might be better. \u00a0Our movie-going and novel-reading preferences might be more consistent with our values, more elevated. \u00a0We should ourselves generate better literature and movies and art.<\/p>\n

As far as the Church itself goes, the Lord himself has been critical of it from time to time, as have its leaders. \u00a0But here are some fairly insignificant criticisms that I myself have offered: \u00a0Our art and architecture have sometimes been pretty uninspiring. \u00a0Our Sunday school and other manuals have often been quite uninteresting. \u00a0Our meetings are sometimes boring. \u00a0(And so forth.)<\/p>\n

(I expect that some readers\u00a0will want me to share some more serious<\/em> areas of disagreement with Church leaders and some weightier<\/em> criticisms. \u00a0I\u2019m afraid that I\u2019ll have to disappoint them. \u00a0I\u2019m not going to be lured into public attacks on my church. \u00a0And anyway, [a] that\u2019s not the point of this post and [b] I don\u2019t really have<\/em> any truly<\/em>\u00a0serious criticisms or areas of disagreement. \u00a0I am, to use the silly language favored by one faction of critics, a \u201cchapel Mormon.\u201d \u00a0Mainstream and orthodox. \u00a0Not for the sake<\/em> of being mainstream and orthodox but simply because that\u2019s what I actually believe.)<\/p>\n

Here, though, is the more serious question that some really want to ask:<\/p>\n

Can there be any valid evidence against the Church?<\/p>\n

To which my answer is No, there cannot.<\/p>\n

This is the point at which some of my critics began to froth years ago, and over which some continue to wax occasionally indignant still today. \u00a0So permit me to explain:<\/p>\n

My answer presumes the Church to be true. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because I believe it to be. \u00a0Hence, I make that assumption and I freely admit to doing so. \u00a0(The question is about my personal opinion on the matter, right?)<\/p>\n

Since the Church is ex hypothesi<\/em> true, there can be no genuine evidence that it is false. \u00a0But there can be and is seeming<\/em> evidence against its claims, evidence that reasonable people might well regard<\/em> as genuine and damning. \u00a0In the end, though, on the assumption that the claims of the Church are true, what seems to be genuine, damning evidence against it must ultimately prove not<\/em> to be such.<\/p>\n

There is evidence that parallel rails on a train track converge in the distance. \u00a0However, they don\u2019t actually converge at a distance; they remain parallel. \u00a0The visual evidence that they converge proves to be illusory.<\/p>\n

There is evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. \u00a0For millennia, close watchers of the sky thought that it did, and they had reasons for thinking so. \u00a0However, we can now explain those reasons, that evidence, in other ways.<\/p>\n

There might be evidence strongly suggesting that Frank killed Bob. \u00a0But if, in fact, it was Jim<\/em> who killed Bob, and not <\/em>Frank, the evidence suggesting that Frank was the murderer must eventually be reinterpreted as demonstrating no such thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in that sense that I say that there can, in the end, be no valid evidence against the claims of the Restored Church. \u00a0Ultimately, you see, there can never be proof that something that is true is actually false.<\/p>\n

Now, before closing, I need to make a few\u00a0points:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not advocating a closed mind. \u00a0I\u2019m not saying that I refuse to consider evidence contrary to my religious beliefs. \u00a0I\u2019m not saying that there are no substantial arguments against the Restoration that deserve consideration. \u00a0I\u2019m not saying that every objection has been answered to the satisfaction of every rational and honest mind. \u00a0I\u2019m not even saying that every objection has been answered to my own<\/em> full and complete satisfaction. \u00a0Anomalies and challenges remain. \u00a0I am<\/em> saying that my conviction that the claims of the Restored Gospel are true entails the corollary conviction that arguments against<\/em> its truth are, in the end, wrong.<\/p>\n

I hope that helps. \u00a0Though I really doubt that it will help some folks in certain circles of my critics.<\/p>\n

Good critics can be a blessing. \u00a0As a grinding wheel sharpens a knife, they can (and often do) sharpen arguments and help to clarify propositions.<\/p>\n

Incompetent critics, by contrast \u2014 e.g., those who regularly, grossly misread what their opponents say and who fail to grasp arguments and issues \u2014 are pretty much useless and a waste of time. \u00a0Unfortunately, though, they\u2019re both prolific and extremely vocal, across the web. \u00a0It takes real discipline to ignore them. \u00a0Discipline that I\u2019ve too often lacked. \u00a0As the saying goes, I\u2019m a work in progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 My Monday was exceptionally long and very busy, and I had no time whatever, none at all, to do any writing today. \u00a0Not even on my blog. \u00a0But I\u2019ve made it a practice to post a daily entry on this blog, and I\u2019m going to be traveling almost all of Tuesday. \u00a0Which means that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":30291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2556,9856,1435,5168,2905,788],"class_list":["post-112955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-mormon","tag-argument","tag-criticism","tag-evidence","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\nIs there seeming evidence against the Restoration? 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