long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Plato's Cave and Cumorah

Plato's Allegory of the Cave compares "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature." He suggests that most people see only a shadow of reality, but they come to believe the shadow is reality.

In the allegory, one person escapes. It takes his eyes a while to adjust, but now he sees the real world for the first time. He returns to tell his companions in the cave, but they think he is insane and reject him because they prefer their shadows to the reality he has seen.

You can read more about it here, with lots of links.

Here is a common depiction:


 You probably already see the comparison to the Cumorah question.



In this case, the man in the purple box represents the prophets and apostles (Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Fielding Smith, Marion G. Romney, etc.). The people in the blue box are those seeking to know what the prophets have said.

The group in the red box are the LDS scholars and educators who interpret the scriptures by the light of their own theories (Mesomania). They expect the group in the green box to see only what they tell them and not ask questions. The  red box people don't believe what the man in the purple box is telling them and they don't want the green box people to even know about it.

As we've seen throughout this blog, the LDS scholars and educators have successfully developed, promoted and perpetuated Mesomania for decades. They continue to do so. Fortunately, more and more people are escaping to discover what the prophets and apostles have said all along. People are reading Letter VII and the other references that the scholars have suppressed for decades.

It works out like this:



My advice: If you're still in the green box or the red box, move to the blue box.

Once we're all in the blue box, we'll all be united as we're supposed to be. We can forget the shadows and move forward with confidence and renewed faith in the prophets and apostles as we help to sweep the Earth with the Book of Mormon.

It is really that simple.


3 comments:

  1. By all means, read the Nephi Code. You'll see it's just another green box, except with different people in the red box. For that matter, read the Baja, Panama, Eritrea and other combinations of green and red boxes.

    Sooner or later, though, I hope all the green boxers will move to the blue box.

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  2. "Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death. "

    Death aside (and nigh unto unthinkably extreme for our culture), people who are staunch in their opinions tend to think those who think on a more revealed plane (above the current social imaginary) are indeed nuts. To many LDS scholars, this geography stuff seems crazy. Allegory of the Cave strikes again.

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  3. The real issue for students and investigators of Mormonism and the Book of Mormon has little or nothing to do with Mesomaniacs.

    The real issue isn't that people who want to believe and need to believe can fashion from the common evidence an apologetic that protects their belief.

    The real issue is more fundamental –– that an informed, educated, reasonable and rational consideration of that common evidence, and from whatever one's starting bias, wholly justifies negative conclusions about the Book of Mormon... that it's neither an ancient work nor the inspired word of a god.

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