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Because no one can come up with any substantive evidence of the existence of the Nephites in North America, then the belief that the Book of Mormon is the word of God is an example of 'faith in faith'. "If I believe it, then it is true". This is the central principle of Existential philosophy. Modernist philosophers have rejected the Bible and the God of the Bible, but they need an alternative to avoid total pessimism and hopelessness, so they have taken a "leap of faith" to believe that God is in everything and everyone, that Jesus is the "Christ of faith" instead of the Jesus of history. In essence, modernist theologians have changed the meaning of the words "God", "Christ", "faith" to believe something quite different to the Bible definition of the words.Daniel was not dictating a book that was over 500 pages either. There were a lot of people who did not believe Jesus because He did things differently. I recognize the Book of Mormon as the word of God which it is.
So, to have faith in the Book of Mormon, one must adopt the same existential philosophy. The only other alternative is to view the Book as creative fiction, which is unacceptable to Mormon believers. Even though they are presented with the total lack of anthropological and archaeological evidence supporting the events depicted, they still believe it is the Word of God because they are taking the "leap of faith" that it is true. It seems that this type of faith leap totally ignores any evidence that could show that the personal lives of church leaders are inconsistent with what they are preaching. They will quickly dismiss this evidence as "lies" because their faith leap is the "truth" that they are determined to keep.
This is very similar to the belief of the Jewish Pharisees who saw the miracles of Jesus happening right in front of them, yet they strictly kept their strong and absolute belief that the Messiah had to come in a certain way, and because Jesus came in a different way, they would not believe in Him. They ignored the absolute evidence in front of them in favour of their "faith leap" interpretation of Scripture that ignored the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah that showed clearly that Jesus was their Messiah. They believed absolutely that their Messiah was going to come as a powerful king who was going to eject the Romans and establish Jewish sovereignty. Not even the evidence presented before them would stop them believing their own interpretation.
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