(Part 2) Top products from r/lds

> why isn’t there more evidence that proves the veracity of the Book of Mormon?

If your goal is intellectual integrity, stick to peer-review: As I have written about before, if you want to take an intellectually respectable approach to any field of intellectual thought, including Mormonism, you are best off sticking to the peer-reviewed literature over internet forums.

And if you would like one suggestion on this specific topic, it would be to read By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens for four reasons:

1. Unlike basically everyone giving you advice on Reddit, the author is an accomplished tenure-track professor who holds a prestigious chair at his university in a relevant field: literary theory.
   
   
2. He published his work in a very respected peer-reviewed outlet: Oxford University Press. And the overwhelmingly positive peer-reviews showcased on the book come from many well known academics both in and out of the Mormon faith. Oxford does their homework before they publish something.
   
   
3. He has entire chapters examining both reasons to be skeptical of the book as well as reasons to believe there is evidence for the book. I am not going to begin to rehearse those arguments here as again, that would go against my advice that you need to look to the peer-reviewed literature. Though I will at least say this is perhaps the best place to start, and that in his final analysis of the evidence he leans toward belief.
   
   
4. He engages with the rest of the peer-reviewed literature. When you read his book you get exposed to what all the top minds have written on the subject, in the most honest light about what those authors were trying to say. His narrative is not so flimsy that he cannot up front about what the rest of the peer-reviewed community is saying and reference it extensively in the foot notes.
   
   I am proud believing Mormons can advocate this position: One of the things that make me proud of the believing intellectual LDS community is that there is so much great peer-reviewed stuff we can point to. Like my link above shows, there are literally dozens of authors and books that meet all the criteria above on a whole host of topics. And while the anti-forums typically appeal to un-reviewed "letters" that embarrassingly fail by every metric above, the believing Mormon is not forced into such a position.
   
   Sky is the limit to how much great peer-reviewed literature there is in harmony with LDS belief. My advice is to stick to it and be extremely skeptical of things that cannot pass any of the above criteria.

Hmm...

The Art of War -- how to successfully deal with conflict

New Ideas from Dead Economists -- so that members understand how the Augustinian view of the "City of Man" works in practice

Rough Stone Rolling -- excellent biography of Joseph Smith

World War Z, Dies the Fire, or Lucifer's Hammer -- to encourage creative thinking of low-probability events, and how as a family and as an individual people would respond to life-shattering events

God Invented the Integers by Hawking (at least the biographical sections) -- so that people understand how the mathematics used to describe science came from, and so they recognize the amazing and important concepts God has inspired, and that we use every day

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn -- just an amazing read of how the world shifts in ideas and paradigms.

Teachings of Wilford Woodruff -- amazing experiences by President Woodruff recorded here, both from his lectures and from his journals. Not sure if it's still in print, came across it in a very old personal library on my mission

Tons of comparative mythology -- to see all the various ideas that people used to preserve their understanding of the gospel and, especially, eternal events in the face of general apostasy and illiteracy (Loki as Lucifer, anyone? Pan Gu as Christ--giving his life so the earth may live, etc.)

Declaration of Human Rights -- While perhaps this has some principles antithetical or orthogonal to Church principles, it's amazing to see what people view as the crowning ideals of a state's responsibility.

Great Speeches -- amazing speeches by historical figures

Guns, Germs, and Steel -- a great review on the development of societies. While some theories of his are not in vogue anymore, it's a great intro to prehistory

Hugh Nibley's Before Adam -- Not everyone in the Church is of the Joseph Fielding Smith school of thought regarding evolution -- many other believe similar to David O. McKay, James E. Talmage, Gordon B. Hinckley, and many others.

Here's some thoughts:

1. One thing I've come to realize is that families are actually a really fragile thing. They're very much not something that in and of themselves are durable and able to last forever. There's so many that are broken by infidelity, divorce, and even little things like drifting apart from each other. So when God implements this temple sealing, it's to give divine strength to the family unit to transform it into an eternal unit.
   
   
2. The argument Joseph Smith makes is that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, usually anglicized as Jehovah and substituted as "the Lord," while God the Father is Elohim, usually just translated as "God." It's actually an argument that makes more sense in the actual Hebrew and not the King James Version. I have a copy of the Jerusalem Bible, which uses the name Yahweh instead of "Lord" and the difference is a lot more stark. You also might want to read The Father and the Son, which is the official explanation by the First Presidency and the Twelve as to the relationship between God the Father and the Son.
   
   
3. I'm reading a book about the doctrine of the apostasy and how it should be viewed in a historical manner, and yes, there's a lot of excellent questions as to how the apostasy exactly happened. Part of this is that first century records are really poor about these sorts of things. My personal view on this in a historical manner is that the priesthood authority was lost sometime during an age where the church was very disorganized, not only on an organizational level but also doctrinally.
   
   An interesting example would be Origen. Origen is a very important third century theologian from Alexandria who, during his life, was considered orthodox, but afterwards became known as a heretic and Justinian condemned his writings to the flames. During his life, he got into a massive controversy over his ordination to the priesthood. At that time, a person could not preach without the priesthood. Bishops and other church leaders really liked him and his thought and they started inviting him to preach and participate in debates. The bishop of Alexandria was not happy about this because Origen was not a priest. So when he was travelling in Palestine the bishop of Caesarea, who was not under the thumb of the bishop of Alexandria, decided to ordain him to the priesthood. Because Origen lived in Alexandria and thus, in Latter-day Saint thinking, "had his records there," the bishop of Alexandria was livid. He kicked Origen out of the priesthood, but the bishop of Caesarea didn't accept the bishop of Alexandria kicking Origen out of the priesthood. So, as you can see, there's a bit of a unresolvable spat there. That's a lot of the reason why the emperor or the eventually the pope was even looked to--there needed to be somebody to arbitrate these sorts of things.
   
   Does that mean that the Catholic Church is evil? No. They're a well-meaning organization and that Church should be lauded for the parts of Christianity they have preserved. But we can also believe too that the Catholic Church developed on a different path that was different from the will of God. As for why it could not have been restored sooner, I don't exactly know--it's difficult when we're talking about 1500 years of history to pin down every reason why God couldn't have sent an angel down with the restored gospel like he did to Joseph Smith. In all honesty, it's something beyond what history can answer, and we basically have to read God's mind at that point.
   
   Hopefully that helps to answer your questions a little, but if you have more, I'll see what I can do to answer them.

There's an excellent episode from the podcast "LDS Perspectives Podcast" that invites prominent LDS scholar and author, Robert Millet, to speak on this exact issue:

> I wouldn’t press young people or older people for that matter to insist we’re Christians just like they are, because I think that wouldn’t be true. It’s not true.

>How we define ourselves. A religious group ought to have the right of self-definition if anything, and [Mormons] haven’t generally been given that right.

It's popular in an evangelical-LDS dialog to have the principle of “let us define for you what you believe.” Mormons do the same thing. We have in our heads, “You believe this. You believe this.”

The LDS Church has a published essay on the issue of "Are Mormon's Christian?"

Finally, as a source and study of Mormon thought in the context of Christian Theology as it evolved over the centuries I would recommend, "Wrestling an Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity", by Terrly Givens.

I think that the The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition has paragraph marks like this.

This edition is not put out by the church, but it's still the same* text. It's been formatted into paragraphs, and has quotation marks.

* It uses the 1920 text. I believe that newer texts were unavailable because of copyright issues.