The scriptures of the Abrahamic religions were completely unaware of the history of the New World until believers had already settled there in large numbers, and this gap in supposedly divinely revealed knowledge was evidently so bothersome that numerous religious movements sprang up just to explain it. The most successful of these, the Latter Day Saints (popularly called the Mormons), incorporated Native Americans into the Biblical family tree with a new set of scriptures. But in doing so, the new religion also crystallised into doctrine certain aspects of the cultural landscape of 19th century America which are already antiquated, such as the belief in the inferiority of people with non-white skin. Besides the prejudices of 19th century America, the foundational stories and texts of the Mormon religion also reflect its popular interests, such as Egyptology and astronomy. These two would converge in Kolob, a celestial body (a star or planet) described as being near the throne of God in the Book of Abraham, which was allegedly translated from a set of Egyptian papyri by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Mormonism therefore makes claims not only about Native American history, genealogy, and archeology, but also Egyptology, linguistics, astronomy, and many other fields of scientific knowledge which have advanced considerably in the almost two hundred years since the founding of the religion. In each and every case, Mormon beliefs have since been contradicted by the evidence. An apologist for the religion may very well be able to explain away the problems raised in each of the fields in a way that satisfies those already committed to belief, but what he or she cannot explain is why God would choose to reveal a religion such that the more broadly scientifically educated a person is, the more problems he or she immediately notices with it (even if these problems can actually be resolved, as Mormons believe).

An ocean voyage taking a group of Old World pilgrims to the New World is certainly within the power of imagination of 19th century Americans. The double helix structure of DNA, however, is not. An omniscient God could have easily foreseen the future problems caused to the Mormon religion by changing attitudes towards racism, or the discovery of DNA (which allowed the genetic distance between Native Americans and Middle Easterners to be quantified). If the scriptures of Mormonism had unambiguously repudiated racism, or demonstrated some awareness of genetics, it would have gone a long way in distinguishing them from the products of early 19th century American imagination. (Incidentally, Joseph Smith, Jr., and Gregor Mendel are contemporaries, and Mendel conducted his now famous experiments less than two decades after Smith’s death, during the middle part of the century.) The amount of time and effort Mormons put into creating theories to demonstrate how Mormonism might be true, and trying to convince the rest of the world that it is, would be much better spent guiding people away from racism, or studying genetics in an effort to combat diseases.

The matters addressed by the Mormon scriptures are very specific to the concerns of the milieu in which they were written, and they contain no information that is not beyond the imagination of a 19th century American. A rational and honest person, even if he or she is a religious believer, must concede that the evidence is such that it is plausible that Mormonism is simply a human product of its time and place. But these very same observations can be justly made about the scriptures of every other allegedly revealed religion that has ever existed, and the strength of the evidence supporting the thesis that religions are a human creation is accordingly amplified.

It is no coincidence that religions referring to distant suns began to appear at around the same time that knowledge that the Sun is a star became widespread, even though scientists had already been taking this idea seriously for hundreds of years. It is science, and not religion, which has revealed genuinely new information to us, such as the structure of DNA, or the quantum mechanical nature of the Universe, although religious believers continue to play catch-up by incorporating these ideas into new religious movements today.

(Update 2010-11-04: Continued in part 13 is here.)

– davinci

Related posts:

1. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 13
2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 2
3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 18

This textbook was a gift from Dr. John Percy, professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto. I did some research on Be stars with Dr. Percy while I was in high school, and I had expressed to him my interest in studying astronomy and astrophysics in university.

Because it is an introductory textbook, it’s very glossy and elementary. I regret not having become more familiar with the materials in it, because it would have given me more things to discuss with my former colleagues who work at the Perimeter Institute, while I was there.

This textbook is apparently still in use. The latest edition appears to be the 11th edition. I have the 4th edition, so I’m seven editions out of date.

– davinci 11805

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