The Book of Abraham

Up to this point, I haven't gone into a whole lot of detail about what specifically caused me to come to the conclusion that the LDS church is false. I'm going to do a bit more of that now.

Like I said, there were lots of things that went into my conclusion. However, the straw that broke my testimony-camel's back was the Book of Abraham.

The Book of Abraham is part of the canonized scripture (also known as the "Standard Works") of the LDS church. It was purportedly translated by Joseph Smith in 1835. It was supposed to have come from Egyptian papyrus that had found its way into the hands of Joseph Smith. The papyrus had been discovered, along with some mummies, by Antonio Lebolo around the year 1820. Lebolo had them sold, and they were bought in New York by Michael Chandler in 1833. Chandler then made a travelling exhibition of the mummies and papyrus, occasionally selling parts of the exhibit.

In July of 1835, Chandler brought the mummies to Kirtland, Ohio, where the Latter-Day Saints were settled. Although the Rosetta Stone had been discovered in 1799, only a few people in Europe and certainly no one in America would have known about it, much less been able to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs. Chandler had brought them to Kirtland because he had heard of Joseph Smith's supposed abilities as a translator of ancient languages.

When the mummies had been brought to Kirtland, the LDS people were very interested in purchasing the papyri. Chandler, however, refused to sell the papyri alone; he insisted on selling the entire exhibit. The LDS members raised the necessary $2400 and purchased the exhibit. For this reason, the Book of Abraham and several related books are called the "Pearl of Great Price", in reference to a verse from the New Testament about a man who went and sold all he had in order to buy a single pearl.

After this, the story goes that Joseph Smith translated the papyrus, and the translation was published as the "Book of Abraham", along with several facsimiles of pictures from the papyri.

There are lots of issues with this version of the story. The question is further complicated by the fact that some of the papyri owned by Joseph Smith was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1966, the surviving papyri were found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and translated. The translation of the surviving papyri had nothing to do with Abraham.

However, this problem was not the major one for me. After all, some of the papyri were destroyed in the Chicago fire, and it's perfectly plausible that the papyrus that the Book of Abraham supposedly came from was destroyed. The main problem for me lies with the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. These facsimiles are published in the Book of Abraham, along with commentary on what they are supposed to mean. Two of these facsimiles contain actual hieroglyphics. The third is problematic because it is actually included in the surviving fragments of Joseph Smith papyri, but part of the picture is missing.

Facsimile #1

The facsimile as published in the LDS Standard Works

A photograph of the surviving papyrus fragment

With this one, the argument goes that the fragments missing from the original papyrus were erroneously redrawn. In the LDS Standard Works, the picture is said to be of Abraham on an altar, being sacrificed by an evil priest. The bird in the picture is representative of the Spirit of the Lord, with the figures under the altar being heathen gods.

However, the contention is that the image is in fact a picture of Osiris being resurrected. The figure to the left is the god Anubis, effecting the resurrection of Osiris; the bird is his spirit, the figures under the altar are canopic jars, and the very bottom figure is a sacred crocodile symbolic of the god Sedet. Below is a professional reconstruction of the image:

As you can see, the indication seems to be that the existing papyrus fragment was already damaged when Joseph Smith acquired it, and that he drew in the missing parts as he saw fit. However, with this particular facsimile, it's perfectly possible that the image on the papyrus really was as pictured in the LDS Standard Works. It seems unlikely to me, but it's a perfectly rational objection.

Facsimile #2

This type of image, frequently found in Egyptian papyri, is called a hypocephalus. Hypocephali were typically buried with Egyptian mummies, and they represent Egyptian ideas about death and life after death-- further reinforcing the conclusion that the papyri that the Book of Abraham supposedly came from are simply funerary documents. As you can see, the hypocephalus (pictured above) has actual, translatable heiroglyphics on it. In the Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith's "translation" of said heiroglyphics is included in the text. However, when these heiroglyphics were translated by Egyptologists, they were found to have nothing to do with Abraham, Kolob, or anything else related to the Hebrew religion or to Mormon doctrine.

Facsimile #3

The last facsimile in the LDS Standard Works is supposed to picture Abraham sitting on the throne of Pharaoh, with other people (Pharaoh; "Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt"; Shulem, a waiter; and Olimlah, a slave) standing about. In the Pearl of Great Price, the interpretation of the figures explicitly states that the names of the several of the figures are written in the hieroglyphics above them. However, when these hieroglyphics were translated, they were also found not to say the things Joseph Smith said they did.

These three facsimiles alone seem to me to be adequate to show that Joseph Smith was not what he said he was. Unfortunately, the Book of Abraham is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mormonism.

Metaphors for the Process

Losing one's testimony is a long process.

I can point to that night in November as the defining moment, the epiphany, the moment my mind fully accepted that the church wasn't true. And, in one sense, that moment was it, because after it happened nothing was the same. Before it happened, I was clinging to remnants of sanity/insanity in the face of massive cognitive dissonance. The human brain can only handle so much cog dis for so long before it has to re-frame its paradigm.

It wasn't really that simple, though.

In the weeks leading up to my heretical epiphany, I vacillated between two states of mind. The first was stubbornness. I knew the church was true, and any information to the contrary was just misguided, or propaganda, or the wiles of Satan. I had a testimony and by golly, I wasn't letting it go! This was my state of mind most of the time.

But there were moments . . . you might call them weak moments, or you might call them strong moments. It all depends on your point of view. I remember one moment in particular. I had just gotten out of a class and was walking back to my apartment. I remember meditatively watching my feet as I walked, my hands in my coat pocket. I thought, "what if the church isn't true?" I thought about the implications of that. The world looked so different through that pair of glasses. I couldn't even comprehend what it might be like to not believe, but I remember feeling fear and, simultaneously, fascination. I had never allowed myself to entertain that possibility before, even hypothetically.

As the weeks went on and my thoughts about the church evolved, I got closer and closer to my "moment of truth." Sometimes I just wasn't sure. At times I felt very depressed. One thought that constantly played in my head was, "I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me." That is what doubting felt like for me. Or, to use another image-- in a Loony Toons cartoon, a character runs off a cliff and screeches to a halt in midair. They look down and feel for the ground-- they only fall once they come to the realization that they are no longer on solid ground. I was trying to metaphorically keep from falling when there was nothing but air in all directions.

One of my favorite novels is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Near the end of the novel, the character Javert is forced to come to terms with the idea that the thing that he has placed his entire trust, his entire identity on-- namely, the law-- is fallible. The realization is too much for him, and he throws himself into the Seine. The lyrics from his soliloquy in the musical adaptation capture this emotion:

"And must I now begin to doubt,

Who never doubted all these years?

My heart is stone and still it trembles

The world I have known is lost in shadow.

Is he from heaven or from hell?

And does he know

That granting me my life today

This man has killed me even so.

I am reaching, but I fall

And the stars are black and cold

As I stare into the void

Of a world that cannot hold

I'll escape now from the world

From the world of Jean Valjean.

There is nowhere I can turn

There is no way to go on...."

All through the process, both before and after my epiphany, these thoughts and similar ones bounced around in my head as I walked to classes and waited for sleep at night.

Besides the online support community I had found, music became my main solace. I listened to a lot of Norah Jones's music. One of my favorite songs was "Nightingale":

"Nightingale

Sing us a song

Of a love that once belonged

Nightingale

Tell me your tale

Was your journey far too long?

Does it seem like I'm looking for an answer

To a question I can't ask?

I don't know which way the feather falls

Or if i should blow it to the left

Nightingale

Sing us a song

Of a love that once belonged

Nightingale

Tell me your tale

Was your journey far too long?

All the voices that are spinnin' around me

Trying to tell me what to say

Can I fly right behind you

And you can take me away

You can take me away

Losing my testimony was-- and is-- a long process. For those first few months, I was grieving. It was like losing a loved one. Only, I could not ask my friends and family for support as I grieved. They would not, could not, understand. It was not that they did not love me. I don't know if this is a Mormon thing, or a human thing, but people have a hard time with people who don't believe the way they do. It's frightening for a Mormon when somebody stops believing. It's safer to compartmentalize them as lazy or sinners. When a loved one loses faith, Mormons are faced with the choice of compartmentalizing that loved one or accepting them. Nobody wants to make that choice about somebody they love, so most people will try to convince the heretic to recant. They want the other person to get back into the safe box, where the believer can understand them and relate to them. This was the reason I could not turn to friends and family for support. I didn't want to argue. I didn't want to compromise my personal integrity by recanting. So I remained silent.

Grief is hard; grieving alone is even harder.

Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy

As the days and weeks went on, I learned to be OK with my conclusion. That may seem strange to somebody who has never questioned the church; it certainly would have been strange to me when I believed. Yet, a rational person does not reach a conclusion because they want it to be the right one. A rational person weighs the evidence and chooses the conclusion that seems most sensible to them-- regardless of their own desires about the truth or falsity of said conclusion. A sane person does not force themselves to believe something that seems to them patently false. Truth does not change; only our perception of it does.

The LDS church is not very generous to people who leave it. Someone who has left the LDS church is usually labelled an "apostate"-- the worst thing in the world to be, if you are a Mormon. The LDS church publishes Sunday School lessons and the General Authorities give talks about "Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy" and "Avoiding Personal Apostasy." Since the leaders of the LDS church naturally believe that it's true, they have to come up with reasons that people would leave (besides finding the church to be false). One of the most common is "offense." The concept of being offended is often illustrated by stories from the early LDS church. One is the sad tale of Symonds Ryder. When Symonds was issued a mission call, whoever wrote it up spelled his name "Rider" instead of "Ryder." Symonds decided that if a church that was supposed to be true couldn't even spell his name right, why should he believe that it was right about other things? He apostatized.

Another is the Tragedy of the Milk and Cream. Two sisters of the church had agreed to an arrangement involving milk and cream for cheese. One sister cheated the other, keeping more cream for herself than had been agreed. The slighted sister confronted the cheating sister, who denied any foul play. The case was taken up through the home teachers, the bishop, the stake president, all the way up to the president of the church (why they thought a disagreement over cream was something the president would care about is beyond me), the cheating sister denying her cheating the whole way. When the ruling was consistently against her, the cheating sister and her husband left the church, and her husband supposedly got Governor Boggs to issue the infamous Extermination Order. (As an aside, it seems to me that the moral of this story is that church and the judicial system ought to be separated.)

Thus we see the bitter fruits of apostatizing because one has been offended. And, as we all know, a rational person is easily offended by the misspelling of a name or a correct pseudo-judicial ruling. We must take especial care to avoid such things.

Another cause commonly ascribed to apostasy is presumption-- the apostate has criticized church leaders. This version of apostasy irks me because I'm a free-thinking sort of person. I believe that anybody and everybody who holds authority (read: power) over somebody else can and should be open to questioning and criticism. Trusting authority implicitly leads to slavery.

As you should be able to see, I don't fall into either category-- unless you interpret the definition of criticizing authority very loosely (a good part of the body of evidence I found against the church was the fact that Joseph Smith was a charlatan. Polygyny, polyandry, fabrication, Book of Abraham, theocracy, destruction of freedom of the press-- deception and misdeed upon deception and misdeed).

Since apostates are painted in such an unfavorable light by the LDS church, and since I was a student at an LDS-run school, I was in a delicate situation. I couldn't exactly "come out" to those around me-- apostasy is an excommunicable offense, and excommunication while at an LDS school leads to expulsion. The LDS church is very interested in using the Brigham Young Universities to turn out individuals who are good representatives of the church-- educated, articulate, and with strong testimonies. Conformity is the rule at BYU.

As a result of this situation, I was forced to pretend to be something I was not. It was easy, in the sense that I knew how to act. I didn't have to change my behavior at all. It was difficult in the sense that I don't like keeping my thoughts and feelings secret. I prefer to be up-front-- "This is who I am, this is what I believe. If you disagree with me, then I'd love to have an intellectual debate with you, or we can agree to disagree. But you have to accept that this is who I am." Faking interest in saccharine Relief Society activities became a chore-- I would study late at the library just to avoid being roped into going to activities. My saccharine interactions with the bishopric and other church leaders developed a slightly ironic edge. I found that a sarcastic tone would creep into my comments in church classes, and before long I was expressing mild disagreement with teachers and FHE siblings. In short, I became frustrated at the cage that I was imposing on myself. True, the cage was somewhat imposed by the LDS church and its conformist school, but I chose to go along because I wanted to stay at that school. It was my choice, though I resented it.

As time went on, I found that this cage forced me to explore my personality in new ways. I felt defiant. I no longer believed that the primary purpose of my existence was childbearing; I defiantly threw myself into my studies and other intellectual pursuits. I decided to develop a persona that, while still within the boundaries of BYU-acceptable behavior, pushed the edges of the cookie cutter.