Part 2 - Faith and Science

The Book of Mormon is a religious document.  Belief in it, therefore, is a matter of faith.  This would be true if the Book of Mormon's claims were restricted to morals or the afterlife, which are not possible to examine scientifically.  However, by claiming to be a genuine ancient American document, the Book of Mormon has opened itself up to the possibility of scientific investigation.  If its contents can be corroborated with what has been discovered about ancient America, especially with discoveries made since its publication in 1830, its claims could be greatly strengthened.

There are a number of different approaches that can be taken when attempting to correlate contents the Book of Mormon with ancient America.  The Book of Mormon mentions plants, animals, modes of transportation, commerce, use of metals, and written and spoken languages.  The Book of Mormon is very specific about the time period in which the story takes place, allowing us to compare its contents for consistency with what is known about the development of ideas and culture.  All these things can be analyzed scientifically or historically.  Furthermore, I would expect the Book of Mormon to contain at least some things that would have been surprising or not very commonly believed at the time of Joseph Smith.

I like to think of investigating the Book of Mormon's claims this way.  The Book of Mormon makes predictions about things I might expect to find.  I can expect to find certain archeological artifacts, fossils, and characteristics of surviving descendents.  I don't expect to find everything, but I should find a good number of items that correlate if the Book of Mormon is a genuine ancient document.  I can also reverse this thinking by looking first at what American archeology has already produced and using this to predict what I can expect to find in the Book of Mormon.  Once again, I don't expect to find everything, but I should find some things.  A similar approach can be taken with the analysis of ideas and cultural elements.  All this is clearly within the domain of science.

The Mormon religion is a relatively young.  Many other religions have already found ways to deal with science contradicting their beliefs.  Eventually science wins out and beliefs are adjusted accordingly.  The realm of faith narrows until in includes only that which is beyond the reach of scientific investigation.  This happened in Christianity nearly 400 years ago with discoveries in astronomy.  More recently, many of the more liberal religions have accepted the evidence for evolution and allowed an allegorical interpretation of their creation stories.

Mormon leaders have yet to grapple seriously with Book of Mormon issues, even though many of its problems were presented by their own B. H. Roberts in his Studies of the Book of Mormon early in the 20th century.  While the top leaders of the Mormon Church are no doubt aware of the issues, they have chosen not to address them directly and continue to allow honest doubters to be demonized.

Mormon leaders' decision to remain firm on the question of Book of Mormon historicity may be a practical one.  The Community of Christ, the largest Mormon splinter group, abandoned the required belief in Book of Mormon historicity and as a result lost nearly 75 percent of their members.  I am sure this did not go unnoticed by the mainstream church.  Nevertheless, it would show more integrity to be dedicated to the truth rather than to practicality.  I think it would serve them better in the long run to adopt an attitude similar to the Dalai Lama's who described the relationship between Buddhism and science this way.  “If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.”