Does a “Burning in Your Bosom” Outweigh Physical Evidence?

In an attempt to convince people that the lack of archaeological, DNA, or linguistic evidence supporting the Book of Mormon is nothing to be concerned about, LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard makes quite an interesting claim in the video shown below.

He says…

I don’t believe that’s how people will ever come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I remember an experience that I had as a mission president some years ago when I presided over the affairs of the church in Eastern Canada. I had met with about 30 different ministers of different religions, and then I let them ask me questions. The very first question I was asked was by a fine minister who said, “Mr. Ballard, if you just give us the gold plates and let us see that they exist, then we would know that the Book of Mormon is true.” I looked at him and said, “Father, you know better than that. You’re a man of the cloth. You know that God has never revealed religious truth to the heart and soul of a man (or a woman) except by the power of the Spirit. Now, you could have those [golden] plates, you could turn the pages, you could look at them, you could hold them, and you wouldn’t know any more after that experience whether or not the book is true than you would have before. My question to you is, have you ever read the Book of Mormon?” He said, “No, I haven’t.” That’s how people will come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. You will not get to know it by trying to prove it archaeologically, or by DNA, or by anything else, in my judgment. Just pick it up, read it, and pray about it, and you will come to know. Religious truth is always confirmed by what you feel. That’s the way Heavenly Father answers prayers.
M. Russell Ballard, LDS Apostle, Is there scientific proof authenticating the book of Mormon? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church Newsroom, 2007
https://archive.org/details/youtube-3AQTr9oB8lw

"I don't believe that's how people will ever come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I remember an experience that I had as a mission president some years ago when I presided over the affairs of the church in Eastern Canada. I had met with about 30 different ministers of different religions, and then I let them ask me questions. The very first question I was asked was by a fine minister who said, "Mr. Ballard, if you just give us the gold plates and let us see that they exist, then we would know that the Book of Mormon is true." I looked at him and said, "Father, you know better than that. You're a man of the cloth. You know that God has never revealed religious truth to the heart and soul of a man (or a woman) except by the power of the Spirit. Now, you could have those plates, you could turn the pages, you could look at them, you could hold them, and you wouldn't know any more after that experience whether or not the book is true than you would have before. My question to you is, have you ever read the Book of Mormon?" He said, "No, I haven't." That's how people will come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. You will not get to know it by trying to prove it archaeologically, or by DNA, or by anything else, in my judgment. Just pick it up, read it, and pray about it, and you will come to know. Religious truth is always confirmed by what you feel. That's the way Heavenly Father answers prayers." M. Russell Ballard, LDS Apostle addresses the question of whether there is scientific proof of The Book of Mormon, 2007 | wasmormon.org — “I don’t believe that’s how people will ever come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I remember an experience that I had as a mission president some years ago when I presided over the affairs of the church in Eastern Canada. I had met with about 30 different ministers of different religions, and then I let them ask me questions. The very first question I was asked was by a fine minister who said, “Mr. Ballard, if you just give us the gold plates and let us see that they exist, then we would know that the Book of Mormon is true.” I looked at him and said, “Father, you know better than that. You’re a man of the cloth. You know that God has never revealed religious truth to the heart and soul of a man (or a woman) except by the power of the Spirit. Now, you could have those plates, you could turn the pages, you could look at them, you could hold them, and you wouldn’t know any more after that experience whether or not the book is true than you would have before. My question to you is, have you ever read the Book of Mormon?” He said, “No, I haven’t.” That’s how people will come to know whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. You will not get to know it by trying to prove it archaeologically, or by DNA, or by anything else, in my judgment. Just pick it up, read it, and pray about it, and you will come to know. Religious truth is always confirmed by what you feel. That’s the way Heavenly Father answers prayers.” M. Russell Ballard, LDS Apostle addresses the question of whether there is scientific proof of The Book of Mormon, 2007

Elder Ballard states that no one will ever know that the Book of Mormon is the “Word of God” through scientific means. He is correct in saying that the scientific method can’t prove a hypothesis (any hypothesis) to be true, but he forgets, or purposely chooses to overlook, that the scienctific metiod most definitely CAN prove a hypothesis to be false. However, before looking at the evidence showing the claims of the Book of Mormon to be false, let’s first consider Elder Ballard’s suggestion for knowing those claims to be true. Elder Ballard says that the way to learn “religious truth” is through “what you feel”. Are feelings the arbiter of absolute truth though? Letting feelings tell us what is true is how we arrive at things like witch hunts, crusades and superstition.

Elder Ballard’s advice… “Ignore the evidence. Only trust your feelings”… has been the Mormon church’s response to basically all of the abundant evidence which shows Joseph Smith was a con man, not a prophet. Mormon church leaders apparently expect church members to believe that Mormons are the only ones who get a warm feeling in their hearts when they pray to their chosen god, asking for confirmation that their chosen religion is true. They completely ignore the fact that people in other religions get warm feelings in their hearts that are EVERY BIT as strong as what Mormons feel.

In order to better understand why a warm feeling in your heart isn’t worth anything as evidence for the truth of the Mormon church’s claims, watch the video above or read other articles about why medical researchers have to test new drugs against placebos before concluding that the new drugs actually work. People who take the placebo instead of the real drug frequently feel better simply because they BELIEVED that the placebo would cure them. The same effect is seen with acupuncture treatments, crystal therapies, and similar alternative medical practices. There is a huge amount of documented proof that when people believe something strongly (or WANT to believe), their brains can cause chemicals to be released which result in very real and measurable changes to their bodies. A “burning of the bosom” is one of the least of these effects, and is therefore a totally unreliable way to know truth.

If Elder Ballard is correct in saying that we cannot get to know religious truth by looking at archaeological, DNA, linguistic, and other such evidence, one must wonder then, why BYU has a center of ancient and archaeological studies. Why the church, in the past, has funded searches for the ancient Book of Mormon civilizations. The Mormon church has come to this “you cannot know by these means” position only because they never found any evidence.

In fact, once we look, we find the contrary… mounds of evidence against the Book of Mormon claims, showing the native Americans did not originate from a few families in Jerusalem, they are not influenced by Hebraic traditions, they do not have Israelite DNA and they did not have the crops, livestock, materials, metals, or technologies the book mentions repeatedly. Archaeologists have found a great many stone monuments and similar structures that contain intricate carvings, but in those carvings there is nothing written in Hebrew, Egyptian, or any other old-world language. If the people of the Book of Mormom reached the vast population levels described in that book, and spread far out across the land as described in that book, and had a written language as described by Joseph Smith, it is inconceivable that archaeological evidence supporting these claims would not have been found after all this time.

So…. does a warm feeling in a person’s heart when they pray really outweigh all of the evidence showing that the Book of Mormon is fake?