That Peculiar Logic of Darkness

Darkness has a logic all of its own that is shaped to the contours of the boundary between the seen and the unseen. Here, at the liminal extreme of our knowledge, reasons breaks down as if in a moral singularity. Maybe there is some truth after all in my mother's adage that the Holy Ghost goes to bed after midnight. It seems that as one goes away from the Light, the Logic of Darkness takes over bit by bit. It begins with rationalization. As the Poet said:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

~Alexander Pope, from "Essay on Man"

This is because logic is a tool and not an end of knowledge. It constructs our thoughts as a blue print guides a mason. It is however, no more the edifice than that lined paper is. With logic we can see the ends of thoughts and their relationships with one another, but we cannot know through logic.

Knowledge is a priori and can only be organized. Truth exists in and through itself independent in the universe, though each of us can only grasp a small portion of it. Ultimately, logic is limited in its ability to convince, because the assumptions that our beliefs, independent of any intellectual framework, are deeply held and difficult to change. Argument is so often doomed to failure because people cannot agree on the very epistemology that would permit them to discuss an issue within a shared logical framework. A theist and a secularist fundamentally disagree on what constitutes truth and the source for deriving truth and so can not easily discuss any topic unless one or the other yields to the epistemology of the other. In our society, it is often the theist that must yield to the secularist.

Hence, the logic of Darkness is not really different from the Logic of Light. Rather, the same framework houses very different buildings. The same logic can lead to very different conclusions when different ideas are plugged in. Consider a simple arithmetic formula. 2x=y. The value of y is dependent on the value of x. If x were 2 than y would equal 4, but if x were 450, the y would be 900. So it is with logic. Two conclusions can both be equally valid logically, but completely contradictory. Consider the simple syllogism: All tall men play basketball well; Jon is tall; therefore, Jon plays basketball well. This is logically valid, but utterly false since I play basketball abysmally. The error lies not in the logic, which is correct, but in the assumption that all tall men play basketball well.

Such errors can compound themselves. Joseph Smith once remarked that if a person starts right, it is easy to continue right, but if that first step is wrong, it is all the more difficult to get on the correct path. He was speaking of arguments. It is the fundamentals that matter most. Our conclusions are only as good as the assumptions that go into them.

We read in the Book of Mormon, in chapter 4 of Alma, that the Prophet Alma gave up the Chief judgeship to become a missionary among his people because he was afraid they were going astray. This well educated, erudite man of business and government, however, did not try to argue the people to his side.

And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them. (Alma 4:19)

Alma saw that only bearing testimony could turn people around. The only people with whom you can discuss things logically are those with whom you share enough common assumptions to make your logic accessible to your interlocutor. Only the meek and humble will listen to someone whose basic assumptions about the truth are at odds with their own. Thus Paul tells us that faith comes by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:14-17) preached by those who are sent. The Doctrine and Covenants tells us, "of tenets thou shalt not talk, but thou shalt declare repentance and faith on the Savior, and remission of sins by baptism, and by fire, yea, even the Holy Ghost. (D&C 19:31). This is not that we should hide our beliefs, but rather it is an acknowledgment that debating doctrine and tenets is a futile spinning of one's wheels.

So, as always, let me end by saying that we should listen more than we speak, and ask more than we answer.

The Historical Book of Mormon

Six years of studying the profession of History must have some benefit. In an end-of-the-year party held by my undergraduate history department for departing seniors, the Head of the Department, Dr. Norman Jones, remarked that the study of history is primarily learning how to interpret and weigh evidence. It is not, strictly speaking, scientific, though it can and should be supported where possible with science; but nor is it a freewheeling art form where anything goes. History is the challenge to ponder the evidence of the past and weigh its reliability, biases, and utility for telling the story of a people. So, it would seem, I have learned something in all these years about reading texts.

Though we like to call the Book of Mormon scripture, and I believe it is that, it is also a historical text as the Bible is. With that assumption, what does the Book of Mormon tell us. I have often found myself reading the text of the Book of Mormon like I would a primary source for historical research. This has actually increased my faith in the Book of Mormon; for a work of fiction would not carry those subtle, stray artifacts that make a document ring true.

Being the skeptical sort by nature, I have often struggled to understand and accept some aspects of our past and our story as Mormons. However, I believe so strongly in the Book of Mormon that I am drawn to accept even when I don't understand. I feel like Peter after Jesus gave his masterful discourse on the Bread of Heaven (see John 6). When Jesus expounded doctrines and made claims that many of His disciples found difficult to believe, they turned away from Him, but Peter, though he could not understand replied:

Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.
(John 6:68-69)

So it is with me. I don't understand the former ban on Africans from the Priesthood, nor do I really comprehend polygamy or all the ordinances of the Temple, but the Book of Mormon and the Prophets of this Church have the words of eternal life and that keeps me here. So, in between my travel adventures, I hope to start posting some essays and explorations of the Book of Mormon as a historical text and what I have learned from reading it this way.

My first observation is not some grand truth, except about human nature, but it is a testament to the veracity of the Book of Mormon and a defense against charges that it cannot be historical because the history it presents is too simple.

The Book of Mormon has three main authors and a few minor authors (excluding the lengthy quotations from such persons as Isaiah, Alma, Captain Moroni, and so on): Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni son of Mormon. Jacob could be added to the list as well. In fact, my first evidence comes from Jacob.

In a class I took in college on the History of the Celts, we looked at the identity of these persons and groups and realized that tribal nomenclature is a tricky business. We use the name Celts, from the Greek Keltoi, to describe the peoples of Europe who inhabited vast swaths of land from the Danube to the coast of Ireland until the invasion of the Romans and later the Germanic tribes pushed their culture to near extinction leaving on pockets of Celtic language and traditions in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The Romans called these same people Gauls. What they called themselves is actually somewhat of a mystery; assuming they had a sense of "Pan-Celtic" consciousness rather than just tribal identities. The same holds for the Germans, who to this day don't call themselves Germans, a name the Romans adopted from a tribe that lived along the Rhine River. Germans call themselves Deutschen, which is related to the words Teutonic, Dutch, and so forth and roughly translates as "people." Greeks, of course, are not Greeks, but Hellenes in their own language and Greece is not Greece, it is Hellas.

How does this touch the Book of Mormon? Many critics of the Book of Mormon have said that since we have no records aside from the Book of Mormon, mentioning peopled called the Nephites and the Lamanites, then the book must be a modern fabrication. However, this critique is built on the false assumption that the names Lamanites and Nephites were in widespread use. The Nephites were soundly destroyed and most of their records destroyed, according to Mormon and Moroni (see Mormon 6:6). It is highly unlikely that the Lamanites called themselves Lamanites as a people. In fact, Jacob drops this highly interesting hint in his book:

Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites. But I, Jacob, shall not hereafter distinguish them by these names, but I shall call them Lamanites that seek to destroy the people of Nephi, and those who are friendly to Nephi I shall call Nephites or the people of Nephi, according to the reigns of the kings.

Jacob 1:13-14

Mormon echoes this statement hundred of years later in 4 Nephi 1:36-37:

And it came to pass that in this year there arose a people who were called the Nephites, and they were true believers in Christ; and among them there were those who were called by the Lamanites—Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites; Therefore the true believers in Christ, and the true worshipers of Christ, (among whom were the three disciples of Jesus who should tarry) were called Nephites, and Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites.

The key passage, highlighted above, shows that Jacob knew there were more complexities than Nephites and Lamanites, but frankly did not care to distinguish at that level of complexity because his purpose was a spiritual one and he did not care to get bogged down with politics.

These sorts of incidental references provide a strong sense of authenticity to the Book of Mormon account. The authors refer almost parenthetically to the world around them with which they are intimately familiar and hence feel no need to elaborate on such obvious givens. Furthermore, we know from these accounts that the Nephite/Lamanite duality is, in some sense, an artificial simplification of a far more complex world full of various tribes. Keep in mind, furthermore, that none of these names should be assumed to have been used by the groups to which they refer, just as one would not find an ancient Greek source referring to "Greeks." An Greek author would talk about Hellenes and a person reading Roman sources alone would not be able to find records of "Greeks" in the land that the Romans called Greece.

This parallel is not, of course, precise, because both Greeks and Romans were highly literate and thus the records speak repeatedly of each other, whereas the Nephites were literate, but most of the Lamanites were not. No records, aside from the Book of Mormon, exist to document the history of Central and South America prior to the Maya and the Aztecs, both of whom came hundreds of years after the demise of the Nephites. The Incas, interestingly, were not literate and left no records; neither did the Olmec, Toltec, Moqui, and many other groups whose names, it should be rememberd, are mostly exonyms, i.e. names applied by outsides. What these groups called themselves, as with the Lamanites, is unknown. The same is true for ancient ruins in Central and South America. For the most part, their names are unknown and the names applied by archaeologists are modern.

There are two things to be gleaned here. First, the writers of the Book of Mormon recognized they were using exonyms and we should not, therefore, be surprised that no other record uses them since these names were not used by anyone else. Secondly, the fact that the Book of Mormon mentions this detail and does so in a very cursory manner, contributes to the veracity of the Book of Mormon as a historical record.