Why Mormonism may be true.. a take from a pragmatist

Who made this? It’s brilliant.

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Is it on YouTube?

@ThoughtfulSaint Are you going to finish it?

@ThoughtfulSaint Yes, but will just do an entire series.. word of wisdom, the Mormon family, Brigham young, book of Abraham.. etc Word of wisdom is up.

This video has some generalizations that aren't true for all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But the fruits of the Church just don't make sense if the foundation isn't really from God. When you study the history and understand the complexities of the Book of Mormon, the doctrine, and the knowledge of the ancient world that an uneducated farm boy could not have known, there are only two plausible explanations: Either Joseph Smith was a prophet or he was deceived by Satan. And it just does not make sense that a work influenced by Satan would lead to so much goodness, so much happiness, and so many people being drawn to God and living more happy and fulfilled lives. Joseph Smith was a prophet, and Jesus Christ's Church has been restored in the last days.

Simply put because Christ established one church and never left her. Mormonism rejects the Eucharist,embraces polyandry, false teachings such as blood atonement, curse of Cain, etc. Clearly false readings of Egyptian, Masonic rituals, etc, etc.

But Mormons have better social and psychological outcomes on average than your typical Catholic .. that’s an irrefutable fact based on data Why would the true church have inferior social outcomes ?

The Church is the hospital for broken souls not a machine that promotes economics.

@nicoraytruth You lie, because "by their fruits you shall know them" Don't justify your ugly sickly fruits.

Do you mean the invention of universities, hospitals, the scientific method, genetics, the Big Bang theory, the largest charitable organization on earth, protection of sacred scripture for 2000 years, millions of martyrs who died for faith, the conversion of pagans around the world to Jesus Christ?

@ThemanChidi @nicoraytruth I’m not trying to start anything here, but the “conversion of pagans around the world” is a gross whitewashing of just how that happened—and the very ugly reality of what that looked like to said “pagans.” It’s not the fruit you think it is.

@ThemanChidi @nicoraytruth Sorry the Church ended human sacrifice.

Grok compared some religions based on their fit with simulation theory and shared similar results:

That's interesting. Thank you for sharing.

What drives me nuts is rejection of historical claims done by RELIGIOUS PEOPLE bulk gold is real, writing on it is real, and way easier to believe in than Jesus of Nazareth being resurrected and becoming a God (again), which He did. Jesus could commission some plates.

what's the counter argument

The only way you can truly evaluate the truth of religious beliefs is: 1. Spiritual impressions 2. Fruits No religion will satisfy the evidentiary demands of modern secular academics which is why they are mostly atheists But that’s by design: they are using the wrong tools

By their fruits ye shall know them

Fascinating! I always love perspectives like this.

All will convert

Doesn't this confirm that Mormons really don't care about facts and logic, so long as they get benefits ?

I have a few quibbles with the language and descriptions. Most I can ignore. However, the description of my total, freely given volunteer service is not “forced.” Nor am I required to pay tithing. That said, an interesting premise. In the end, it doesn’t matter, as you cannot “prove” the church is true. As an indicator, possibly. An individual must decide for themselves in partnership with the spirit. It would be easier if it could be proved. But, alas, we are all free to choose.

As an Elder's Quorum President... take this video with a grain of salt... Although I believe we try to build community and connections... Sometimes all the effort we do in a ward is overlooked and ignored. Leading us to throw our hands up and wonder what "Bearing Each Other's Burdens" really means... answer... not much

where's the full video?

A very articulate way of saying "by their fruits ye shall know them". If you judge us by our fruits, you will begin to see we practice what we preach.

Kirt, I want to send this to my Faith and Science group, most of whom do not go on X, and who are very bigoted against Latter-day Saints. Is there a YouTube link accessible without an X account? I focus on scientific measures of the effectiveness of Faith on human wellbeing, and your video captures it well.

here you go

Thank you

Mormons are scared to look at the truth, so they hide behind subjectivity metrics like these. The Amish have good social cohesion and strong marriages but it doesn't make their beliefs true. Mormonism is a work based and the good morals it does have are biblical derivatives. If you have courage and want to seek the truth, read the post ->

What beliefs do the amish have that aren't true? Why can't they also hold onto truth and follow Christ? Christ can be found in many places. He is bigger and wider than you think. He is cosmic--just like truth.

Ok sure lets test that, "Christ can be found in many places".... How about Islam, Muslim claim to follow Jesus' teachings, they even go as far as to say they love him more than Christians. Would you then say you believe Islam is true, if not by what grounds would you reject it?

Islam lacks sacrificial divine love that is found in authentic Christianity. I studied the faith and the ummah for many years.

Muslims say Christianity gets it wrong and that ‘sacrificial divine love’ actually contradicts what God revealed to Muhammad. They claim their revelation is from God, that the Bible is corrupted, and that God revealed a very different Jesus through the Quran. From inside their system, they can just as easily say your ‘sacrificial divine love’ idea is a human projection, subjective, and not a valid test of truth. On what ground do you prove they are wrong?

Jesus

No not Jesus, you must mean Isa who spoke of Muhammad to come and proclaimed to Allah to be God. If you only hold to subjective criteria you can not claim to know the truth. You say you are a Christian Existentialist but I wonder if you have actually read Kierkegaard.

You brought up Kierkegaard, so you should know that the most profound truths aren't settled by objective proofs on a whiteboard. They are lived. When I say "Jesus," I’m not pointing to a text to win a debate. I’m pointing to an encounter. The unconditional, sacrificial love of Christ is completely ineffable. It shatters neat rational categories. You don't prove it from the outside looking in. You experience it. You feel that undeniable presence in the quiet of a sanctuary, or at a communion table where broken people find grace they didn't earn. That lived, overwhelming experience of the cross is its own proof.

@grok where’s this full video? YouTube?

Not bad evidence of the goodness one faith can contribute to the world. All faiths help people do more good and should be honored/respected rather than a point of conflict.

@Eball4BYU By their fruits you shall know them

Makes sense: throw out all the history and lies and you have a good thing. No Smith, no BofM, no gods in waiting and you have left a form of Christianity. Down side is that you throw all that out and there is no longer any kind of a foundation. It all splinters after that.

Why are activity rates within the church so low? If the church provides so many lasting benefits, surely the activity rates would be much for its members, right?

Three explanations: 1. Church leadership embraces an epistemological approach rooted in factual truth propositions with little flex. So if an average member stumbles on information that challenges the taught narrative, many end up having a faith and existential crisis. If Church leadership taught that pragmatism was acceptable approach to truth (e.g., it's okay if the you don't believe the BoM is 100% historical if you follow the truth), probably would mitigate the issue. 2. Practicing faith demands skin in the game. You can be a good catholic and just show up to mass once a week for less than an hour. Mormonism is a way of life. 3. Questionable if Mormonism works for members of the LGBT community, ardent feminists, and anti-western socialists.

My issue with the first point is that the church’s truth claims rely primarily on subjective spiritual experience and testimony rather than empirical or historical evidence. Therefore, the method used to determine truth appears to be experiential or based on emotional reasoning.

@nicoraytruth It's actually brilliant. My summary of the gospel: listen to the spirit, implement (repent), repeat. The spirit teaches truth, makes you faster at learning languages, heals relationships, etc. The BOM is training wheels for the bike, which is personal revelation.

@nicoraytruth Relying on feelings (and not evidence and logic) is brilliant? I disagree. Moroni’s promise is all based on feelings, nothing about evidence.

@GoodandBasic @nicoraytruth It’s brilliant as a man made organization, in the sense that the house always wins. If it makes you feel good, that’s the spirit. If it doesn’t, then something is amiss in your life and you need to repent (dedicate more of your life to the church).

@GoodandBasic @nicoraytruth Exactly. Moroni’s promise has nothing to do with pragmatism and logic; rather, it’s ALL based on feelings of the individual.

Based

That’s a cute, rosy picture they painted there. However, in the real world, my Mormon extended family is littered with just as many failed marriages, alcoholics and *gasp* gay people as you’ll find anywhere else. Only about 20% of my cousins (and there are many of them, as you can imagine) have stayed in the church.

id like this more if it didnt seem like some AI generated vid

Man Amish will have a lot of converts after the apocalypse

The fruits are good You have to convert to truly partake. Otherwise you’ll never understand it, nor will you receive the blessings of living the life that gives the results you desire

The Golden Plates have the details of how to set up the machinery...and prophets fill in the rest.

By fruits and all that.

Nope subjective metric can't change the fact that Joseph Smith lied about the book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham fails on its own terms, and popular theories like the missing scroll or the “catalyst” theory are flawed. The core evidence is simple and concrete: the text, the papyri, Joseph’s own papers, and modern Egyptology all point to Joseph “translating” an ordinary Egyptian funerary document and calling it Abraham’s own handwriting. 1/ The Book of Abraham explicitly identifies its source. In Abraham 1:12–14, the narrator directs the reader to “the representation at the commencement of this record,” describing the altar, gods, and scene depicted in what we now call Facsimile 1. That means the book itself anchors its story to the very fragment we possess, the Breathing Permit of Hor, and places the beginning of Abraham’s record right where Facsimile 1 appears. You cannot move the real Abraham text off to some distant, missing section when the scripture itself points to that scene as the start of the record. 2/ The Kirtland Egyptian Papers show exactly how Joseph and his scribes treated that specific fragment. On those pages, Egyptian characters are copied in the same order they appear on the papyrus immediately adjacent to Facsimile 1, and beside each character Joseph’s scribes wrote a sentence or paragraph that appears in the Book of Abraham. The layout is precisely what you would expect from a genuine translation workbook: character in the margin, corresponding English text to the right. Because the copied characters and their sequence match the surviving Hor funerary papyri we now possess, this demonstrates that we do, in fact, have the very papyrus from which Joseph claimed to translate. Attempts to dismiss these documents as idle speculation by scribes fail at this point, because the one‑for‑one, in‑order alignment between characters on the extant papyri and the English Book of Abraham text shows that these pages are Joseph’s translation in action, anchored to the funerary text we still have, not to some hypothetical missing scroll. 3/ Joseph’s own involvement with the Kirtland Egyptian Papers further exposes that he understood this as a literal translation project, not a vague spiritual “catalyst.” His handwriting appears in these materials, and his known scribes, working under his direction, are the ones copying characters from the papyri and attaching specific English meanings to them, all while Joseph publicly describes the work as translating Abraham’s writings. He presents the papyri to the Saints as “the writings of Abraham” written “by his own hand upon papyrus,” oversees the creation of an “Egyptian alphabet and grammar,” and publishes the resulting text as a translation from ancient records. This pattern of direct supervision, claimed authorship, and concrete, line‑by‑line matching of characters to English sentences makes sense only if Joseph believed, and taught, that he was literally deciphering the papyrus, not merely receiving a revelation loosely inspired by it. 4/ Joseph and early church publications clearly understood this as literal translation. Contemporary statements, including the historical heading to the Book of Abraham and articles Joseph oversaw, described the papyri as “the writings of Abraham” written “by his own hand upon papyrus.” Joseph supervised the creation of an “Egyptian alphabet and grammar,” attempted to assign specific meanings to particular characters, and presented his work to the Saints as a translation of ancient documents, not as a free revelation loosely “inspired” by them. A later “catalyst” theory requires you to say that God allowed or even guided Joseph into misidentifying the author, misdescribing the relationship of text to image, and building a false translation system around irrelevant characters. 5/ The facsimiles themselves refute Joseph’s claims. Facsimile 1 is a standard lion-couch funerary scene; Facsimile 2 is a hypocephalus placed under the head of the deceased; Facsimile 3 is a judgment or presentation scene from the Book of the Dead. In each case, modern Egyptologists can read the hieroglyphs and identify the deities and figures. Joseph’s explanations, however, assign entirely different identities and meanings: Egyptian gods become Abraham, Pharaoh, and various officials; funerary and cosmological motifs become Kolob and priesthood doctrines. If God were using these images as a “catalyst,” he did so by endorsing interpretations that are linguistically and historically false. 6/ Even the Church now acknowledges that the papyri we have do not say what Joseph said they say. Official materials concede that the characters on the fragments do not mention Abraham or the events in the Book of Abraham and that both LDS and non-LDS Egyptologists agree the characters do not match Joseph’s translation. That admission, combined with the Book of Abraham’s own reference to the “commencement” at Facsimile 1, the Kirtland papers’ one-for-one linkage of characters and English text, and the demonstrably wrong facsimile explanations, leaves no room for a faithful literal translation. To preserve belief, one must redefine “translation” into something so elastic that it can cover explicit factual errors, misidentified figures, and scriptural verses that misdescribe their own sources. At that point, the claim that the Book of Abraham is an authentic ancient record is not just unpersuasive; it is contradicted by the Church’s own history and the documents Joseph left behind. If all of this evidence points in one direction, then the inescapable conclusion is that Joseph Smith did not merely “misunderstand” the papyri; he represented an ordinary Egyptian funerary text as the very words of Abraham written by his own hand, lied, constructed a bogus translation system around it, and published detailed “interpretations” of facsimiles that modern scholarship shows to be false. That is not a harmless mistake but exactly the kind of behavior Jeremiah condemns when he speaks of prophets who “prophesy lies in my name,” claiming “I have dreamed, I have dreamed” when the Lord has not sent them and they cause the people to trust in a lie (Jeremiah 23:16, 25–32). By biblical standards, a man who knowingly or confidently attributes his own inventions to God, and whose concrete, checkable claims about languages and texts prove false, fits the pattern of a false prophet whose words we are commanded to reject.

This is really well done. Some of the information is dated though. The youth don’t collect fast offerings anymore. Missionaries use smart phone, but with limited use.

Interesting.