New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to all! It's a great time to remember that all we have is the present. So let's focus on a few things we should be doing to make the most of life.

1. Develop and show more empathy.
Nothing will make human existence better faster than trying to sincerely understand what others are going through. Empathy pacifies and unifies. We're all safer and happier with empathy.

2. Show more gratitude.
Gratitude requires a dose of humility. You have to slough off the notion that you earned and deserve everything you have and instead recognize the roll others have played and play in your life. Life gets better with gratitude.

3. Keep your nose out for bullshit.
A sucker is born every minute. Bullshitters are born every few seconds. We're all prone to make shit up and pass it off on others, but we can curb that tendency. Question others and question yourself. What you've been told is gospel truth very well may not be. What you tell yourself is true might very well be false. Keep an eye on the rhetoric people use to convince you one way or another. Take the time to engage with serious research. Some rational skepticism can go a long way in keeping the bullshit away.

4. Have some fun.
Life is short. Moments are fleeting. Have a laugh.

Greg Trimble's 11 Book of Mormon evidences

If you have Mormon friends on social media, chances are you've been presented with links to some pretty interesting Mormon logic. One post I've recently seen from a popular blog makes the case for The Book of Mormon in 11 poorly thought out proofs. The proofs are stated as questions and are the typical examples offered by general authorities of why The Book of Mormon is true which means they're the kinds of things you can say in church meetings to make yourself feel important and everyone else feel comfortable, but predictably they are not very convincing.

Here are the eleven questions that will prove the authenticity of The Book of Mormon and my brief responses.

1. Could an uneducated boy come up with 531 pages of ancient scripture on his own that was historically accurate and prophetic in nature?

Answer: Yes, absolutely. Please open your copy of the book to essentially any page that isn't copied almost verbatim from the King James Bible (that might be harder than it sounds). Now tell me how many verses you have to read before you find one that sounds like an uneducated young man (calling someone in his early 20s a "boy" is condescending and inaccurate) er-ing and um-ing a dictation from his head. Not many. Joseph Smith loaded his book so full of place keepers, redundancies, filler and slip ups that I'm amazed when I make it through a single verse without feeling the need to edit.

Keep in mind that this is how it reads even after the Church's editing of all the more egregious frontier farmer speech.

2. Would it be possible for that boy to understand and include ancient Hebrew literary writing styles such as idioms and Chiasmus, some of which weren’t even discovered until long after Joseph Smith was gone ?

Answer: Easily. He read the Bible a lot. He, like every other human being who reads, would absorb and reproduce the style of what he reads to some degree. As for chiasmus, it's an extremely common organizational tool that certainly appears in Jewish literature but is not in any way limited to it. I made a chiasmus on accident once, others are more carefully thought out. You can find chiasmus in children's literature as easily as you find it in adult literature from all over the world, European literature included. This just came to mind, maybe Jews wrote it:

(A) Hickory dickory dock! 
(B)/(C) The mouse went up the clock.
(C) The clock struck one,
(B) The mouse ran down.
(A) Hickory dickory dock!

And quit insisting Joseph was a "boy" when he wrote The Book of Mormon; he was a married man.

3. How would Joseph Smith have been able to know so much about the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula where Lehi and his family traveled? The book includes findings in that region that no one had discovered yet.

Answer: The "knowledge" about the Middle East found in the Book of Mormon could have been derived from having been shown a map. What do you think has been discovered there after the printing of The Book of Mormon that was included in the text? The "NHM" alter? Come on, give us what you've got. Everything apologists have thrown out there has been debunked.

4. How could Joseph Smith come up with roughly 200 new names in the Book of Mormon and then have them turn out to be Semitic in nature?

Answer: He read the Bible a lot. He reused many of those names, modifying them as he saw fit. It wouldn't be hard to throw in a few more made up names that look similar to what's found in the Bible.

5. If you think Joseph Smith couldn’t have written this book, then where did it come from? If one says the devil put him up to it…then why would Satan want to publish another testament of Jesus Christ and a book that does nothing but promote righteousness. Jesus said that a house divided against itself would fall.

Answer: Only a moron would say the devil wrote or inspired the writing of The Book of Mormon. It's origins are clearly early 19th century publications and popular thought.

6. Who were the “other sheep” that would hear Jesus’s voice in John 10:16?

Answer: The "Gentiles", in other words, the non-Jews.

7. Why are there volumes of books written by non-LDS authors stating that Christ came and visited the America’s a couple thousand years ago just like it says in 3rd Nephi? (See Example “He Walked The America’s”) How would Joseph Smith have known this when at the time no one even considered it?

Answer: No one has a monopoly on stupidity, ethnocentrism and wishful thinking. The one book you linked us to is very revealing about yourself as a thinker.

8. If we have the stick of Judah (record of the Jews or the Bible), then where is the stick of Joseph that is referenced in Ezekiel 37:15-20? The Book of Mormon is the only explanation for this scripture. Lehi was a descendant of Joseph. Think Joseph Smith could have gotten that right by sheer chance?

Answer: This is a misinterpretation of the Bible.

9. How could there be so many witnesses of the Book of Mormon and the plates and not one of them deny their testimony even when some of them became bitter toward Joseph Smith? With so many people involved…a hoax of this magnitude could never go uncovered.
 
Answer: People do and say all sorts of things for friendship, family and their reputation. Historian Dan Vogel has some presented some important information for you to consider.

10. How could the Book of Mormon never contradict itself while being an extremely complex book? After all these years…someone would have found something…but no.

Answer: The Book of Mormon is relatively straight forward in its narrative. It basically just tells the same story over and over again. The repetition is numbing, not profound. Despite the simplicity of the repeated narrative, contradictions and errors have in fact been found (you just have to be brave enough to read something other than LDS apologetic literature). It also contradicts known archealogy, natural history, and the history of religious and political thought; it contradicts other Mormon scripture; it contradicts current LDS beliefs (e.g. temporary suffering in hell vs. eternal suffering and the nature of the Godhead).

Even though The Book of Mormon isn't horribly riddled with internal contradictions, why does that somehow make it true? Many authors manage to avoid totally screwing up their stories, does that mean their books are true? Absolutely not.

11. How do I feel while I read the Book of Mormon? Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t trust your feelings. We are spiritual beings, and if we can’t trust our feelings, then what do we have? Over and over again in the Old and New Testament we’re told that we can trust that “still small voice” to guide us in our decisions. (1 Kings 19:12) I can write evidence after evidence to back up the Book of Mormon but each of those evidences I found were only secondary to the whispering of the Spirit I felt that day before I began waxing up my surf board.

Answer: Epistemology is a tricky thing. You're insisting that emotions are all we have. That's an unfortunate move on your part because we have a lot more than that: we have other senses to work with and we have logic. But if you're going to insist on feelings let's look at your feelings. Let's say you wake up from a dream about your wife cheating on you and you feel hurt and angry. You can't look at her the same for weeks. Did she really cheat on you? Are your feelings reliable? And what about others' feelings? Why do you seem so willing to disregard anyone's feelings and impressions that don't align with your own? What makes you think yours are the only true ones when members of essentially every other religion will use the same evidence as proof of their religion being true?

P.S. I wrote this blog immediately after reading the questions. The answers were too easy. I then went back to the blog to read the comments and saw that several people had written their responses as well. Several were similar to my own but I definitely encourage others to read through them.

Boyd Packer criticized

I have to admit, Boyd was committed. He spent 45 years as an apostle of the LDS Church, and don't think that the majority of the other 45 weren't spent serving the Church. He fought hard for the absurd. He probably even believed it.

Unfortunately for Boyd and his family, what he will be remembered for is all the bullshit he said. No, I'm not talking about all the times he bore his testimony of Jesus as the Savior or Satan as the Enemy, but we should careful not to give too much credit to that drivel either. What I'm talking about are his tirades against masturbation, homosexuality, feminism, objective history and intellectual pursuits.

The man wanted to suppress sexuality, women, historical facts and knowledge of the real world. What kind of deranged man claims to stand for truth and then discourages anyone from making  hard, honest inquiries into the motivations behind human behavior, ways to advance social justice, gaining a clearer understanding of our past, and trying to better understand how the world works in general?

He was a very loud Mormon voice on the wrong side of just about everything, and neither memory or history is kind to voices like that.

I believe the world is a slightly better place without Boyd K. Packer. I know that's not an especially kind thing to say. I know his family will miss him dearly. But while the vast majority of the world's population won't even realize he's gone, a whole lot of us - believers and non - will be crossing our fingers that the apostle who takes his place will not be so arrogant and dogmatic as Boyd was.

Mormon vs. secular - where we're going

WHERE AM I GOING? WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I DIE?

We all ask ourselves these question from time to time, don't we? They're two of life's greatest mysteries... unless you're a Mormon. If you're a Mormon you're pretty sure that you're not going anywhere. Check it out. When you die you'll roam the Spirit World (probably just another dimension of our physical earth) as a missionary seeking to teach of Christ and convert the spirits restricted to Spirit Prison (yet another earth dimension?) to the One True Church. Then you'll be resurrected into a perfect body! Then you'll be judged by Joseph Smith or whoever he's delegated judgment to. But you'll be found spotless because you've truly repented and been saved through Christ's Atonement! And you'll be welcomed with open arms by Heavenly Father, the Great Elohim himself, into the Celestial Kingdom, which just happens to be... EARTH! But not like it is now. Earth will be exalted and perfected as well, which means it will be a gigantic seer stone, or Urim & Thummin. It will be beautiful and we'll all be immeasurably happy forever.

Now if you're not good enough you'll still have a perfect resurrected body (so that's good news) but you won't get to live on a crystal ball with the rest of us and if you're really, really bad (like, apostate bad!) you'll have to float around sadly in absolute nothingness with Satan and his defeated angels. That would totally suck, so for the love of God don't apostatize please.

Secularists really have nothing on this happy explanation. They think our bodies just decompose and enter that whole stupid scientific circle of life bullshit, and make no claims about an eternal spirit (because they're too afraid to make BIG CLAIMS without any backing evidence at all!). How is anyone supposed to be sold on something so... natural? It's like they think we're supposed to observe the world and somehow conclude that we human beings are just a part of it instead the purpose for it!

Mormons clearly have the better explanation. Never mind that it produces an endless string of unanswerable questions that quickly lead to ludicrous and infantile notions of what life after death must be like. Thinking too much about it might lead to doubt and we don't need any more of that!

Mormon vs. secular - human origins

When it comes to the big questions, Latter-day Saints think they're particularly blessed with satisfactory answers, especially because (and we all agree on this) science doesn't have the answers to big the questions. So let's compare and answers a bit. Once again the questions are:

1. Who am I and where do I come from?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going?

To the first question Mormons answer that you are a child of Heavenly Father - he begot your spirit the same way your parents here on earth begot you (sexual intercourse) - and as a child of a god, you have the potential to become a god. Actually, Mormons dig back even farther than that. They believe that before we were spiritually begotten of the Father we existed as intelligences. Intelligences are understood to be eternal and (obviously) capable of being organized into spirits and spirits into people and people into gods. In fact, God the Father, according to Mormon understanding, was once a mortal man, who was previously a mere spirit child (one of billions or trillions?) of another God, who had begotten him at some point through a very mysterious manipulation of intelligences (sex). What this all means is that we are all "gods in embryo", as we say in the Church. THAT'S WHO YOU ARE!

But saying you're a god is little more than a statement of fact with no sustaining evidence. It's equally logical to say we're all potential vampires waiting for our big bite. I have no evidence for vampires other than the numerous testimonies offered by others and I consequently have no material understanding of what vampires are either. A more sustainable claim made by scripture is that we are dust waiting to happen. This is a material fact. We make dust constantly by shedding skin cells and when we die our bodies will dry and crumble and be spread in part as dust. The knowledge that you are a future pile of dust is much more meaningful than imagining you might one day be a god because you actually have references for what death and dust are. We have little to no reference for understanding what a god is or where one comes from, only a few arcane verses from a very questionable book of scripture.

It's also important to note that most of what the LDS Church focuses on is not so much who you are as what you are. You are a child of God. Whatever that means exactly is essentially left up to you to decide. Science on the other hand is much more concrete. We are members of the only remaining hominid species on the planet, we're very closely related to great apes, but we likely share a common ancestor with all life on earth. Science connects us all with billions of years of genealogy, not a trite affirmation that God's your Daddy. It gives us something concrete to hold onto (DNA). But it still doesn't tell us who we are.

When it comes to discussing the question of who we might be, the Church prefers to state (without much by way of explanation) that we are all unique consciousnesses (a spirit) that will exist forever and ever. The secular world, instead of blowing off the question with a simple dogmatic sentence, has considered various possibilities for millennia and ask for more time to careful explore this complicated subject.

Which answers do we prefer? Which ones feel more genuine? Which ones most deserve serious contemplation? Religious conjectures? Or ideas based on material fact?

"My face? I was born like this. Or maybe Satan did it..."

God and our moral sense

If God exists and has the power to intervene in nature, and on occasion apparently uses that power, they [critics of religion] ask, why does God fail to intervene in so many other cases of horrific injustice, cruelty, and suffering? Why, for example, did God allow Agatha to be tortured, abused, and mutilated before miraculously healing her through a vision of St Peter? Why would god allow some to be killed by volcanic eruptions and plagues, while bestowing special protection on the inhabitants of Catania? Why, in any case, does God need to use the powers of an object such as St Agatha's veil to achieve this protection, rather than acting directly to prevent the eruption or the disease in the first place? More generally, why is one person miraculously cured while another of equal faith and virtue suffers and dies? We might say that God moves in a mysterious way - which certainly seems to have been the case if we are to believe the many religious tales of wonders and miracles through the ages - but is that a good enough response? If God created us and our moral sense, then why do God's own ways of acting in the world seem to us not to meet our own standards of what is just and good?

Thomas Dixon Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 56.

Poor theologians!

Pity the poor theologians! They are faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma when it comes to making sense of divine action in the world. If they affirm that God does act through miraculous interventions in nature, then they must explain why God acts on these occasions but not on numerous others; why miracles are so poorly attested; and how they are supposed to be compatible with our scientific understanding of the universe. On the other hand, if they deny that God acts through special miraculous interventions, then they are left with a faith which seems to be little more than Deism - the belief that God created the universe but is no longer active within it. If God is real, should we not expect to be able to discern at least some special divine acts? The theologian seems to have to choose between a capricious, wonder-working, tinkering God and an absent, uninterested, undetectable one. Neither sounds like a suitable object for love and worship.

Thomas Dixon Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 41.

Aliens - other worlds

Did you know that you have long lost spiritual brothers and sisters living out on other planets? Well Joseph Smith did!
 
I remember being taught as a little kid that Earth is just one of the many populated planets that Jehovah (Jesus) had made under the direction of Elohim (Heavenly Father). Do Mormons believe in aliens? You had better fuckin' believe it! But not the weird Star Trek kind, just normal, Homo sapiens kind.

In fact you don't have to go too far to find some of these brothers and sisters. Joseph Smith found tall Quakers on the Moon

and Brigham Young found that the Sun is inhabited.

Science has shown that they were totally right, right? No? Well it will! For now all you need to know is that Jesus died for all aliens, not just for us.

Alien gods

Joseph Smith, Jr. revealed a great many amazing things about God. For example, he taught that

1. God is a physical being
2. named Elohim

3. who lives on or near a planet or star called Kolob;
4. he has billions and billions of offspring (the spirits of all mankind)

5. that he implanted on an empty planet (Earth),

6. where they would have to face the wrath of natural disasters, disease, hunger, doubt and mutual violence

7. all in an effort to determine which of these billions of offspring would worship him enough to become the next generation of ultra-intelligent gods.

A later prophet named Lorenzo Snow put it this way: "As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be."

Lorenzo, confident enough to sport the godbeard early on in the program.

In other worlds, for Mormons, God is a super-powerful, mega-smart alien who colonized a planet with his larvae and turned the world into a kind of jungle boot camp as a sort of test. He's currently out there in the Universe somewhere watching us and waiting, waiting to see which of us will qualify to join the ranks of the GODS! It's called the Plan of Happiness, guys!

"HA!" "HA HA HA!" "HA HA!

I can't wait to meet God's god, our Grangod, and all the rest, all the way back to the Very First Colonizer, Alpha. Or did he have a heavenly father as well?

It's all fun stuff to think about!

Tom Monson criticized

The first teachings that come to mind when I reflect on the messages of the current LDS prophet, Thomas Monson, have to do with being present in others' times of need and carefully attending to the duties of service. I don't find much fault in any of that. I think it would be wonderful if we all tried to pay more attention to others and offer whatever assistance we are capable of.

But Tommy's also said plenty of bullshit. Here's an example that fits nicely within the general scope of this blog:

Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.

Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: “I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God’s word. I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it.”

May you ever frame your life with faith.

Did you catch all of that? The appeal to tribalism? The denigration of agnosticism? The plea to stop thinking critically about natural history, scripture and Church history? The encouraged distrust in science? This is God's message to us today? This is what he wants to tell the world? Not a fucking chance.

Take the time to doubt brother Tommy, dear brothers and sisters, if only for a day or two.

Russ Nelson criticized

Honestly Russell Nelson irks the shit out of me. I know that will come as no surprise, but let me just say (again) that I lost all faith in the man when he took the time to make a really shitty jab at the Big Bang in General Conference a couple of years ago.

The saddest part of watching Russell on that fateful day was hearing the thousands of people in the congregation snickering along with the joke. God save us!

Russ, get a fucking education.

Henry Eyring criticized

I like Henry. He seems like a pretty nice guy, and not because he's the most teary-eyed of the GAs. I only have one criticism specific to him - I wish he'd shut the hell up about his father the Mormon badass chemist.

Note to Henry B:

Henry, listen, you're dad was quite a guy, but here's your problem: you conflate your father's authority in science with his lack of authority with regards to spiritual realities. In other words, just because you're dad was a good scientist and a devout believer doesn't give his belief the same weight of his scientific research. No more of this "Hey, my dad was smart and still believed, so it must be true" bullshit. Listen, you've got a BS in physics and you're a fucking apostle of the big JC. Put it all together for us. Show us how it works in more than a mere 100 pages that essentially say "Embrace the mystery!"

Thank you.
Be well.
Abe

Illusions of unanimity

 
Apparently the Ancient Romans used to say "Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit", which more or less means silence looks like consent, so you should speak up when you have the chance. 

When you're sitting in church listening to someone spout anti-science trash, racist spew, sexist bullshit, or any other nonsense that no one deserves to be subjected to, think about how your silence might be perceived as agreement. When you have a roomful of people who let shit slide it feels very much like a room full of coprophiliacs united heart and soul. Be aware that feeling like everyone but you is into it might contribute some pressure for you to conform. Don't stand for it.

Differences are okay. I think. At least I want them to be. Speak your mind. Let's see what happens.

 

Crucible of Doubt

A kind and well-intentioned couple, Terry and Fiona Givens, both scholars and both active, believing members of the LDS Church, has written a book for me. It comes several years too late, but I'm still a little bit interested. Mormonism is so completely shattered, in my opinion, that when I hear a claim that I can once again fit all the pieces together again my morbid curiosity is piqued. Additionally I've heard enough positive things about the Givens that I felt it only polite to listen to their 3 hour and 15 minute sales pitch.

Unfortunately I couldn't buy the Givens' arguments and won't be buying the book, which was the result of a recent fireside tour, which was the result of reasonable success from a previous book they had written.

After having listened to the entire Mormon Stories interview my main questions are:

1. If prophets are just like the rest of us then why should we look to them for answers concerning God's will? (I love how they insist on ignoring John Dehlin's question about whether or not it's okay to criticize our upper management.)

2. How do we have any trust in the Gospel text as being valid Jesus material? If we're going to undermine the spoken and written words of imperfect prophets what are we to do with the teachings of Mr. Perfect? Do we take them with a grain of salt because they were written by a bunch of assholes and corrupted over time? Do we only accept the teachings and events described by at least two of the Gospel writers (you know, that whole "by the mouth of two or three witnesses" thing)?

3. In all Fiona's admonishing against hero worship she fails to mention even once our worship of a heroic character named Jesus. How is she so sure that we haven't overblown the case for Jesus the same way we have for our various prophets, especially in light of the fact that our basis for turning Jesus into a mighty hero worthy of our worship are the less than reliable words of prophets, who are pretty much just like us?

4. Why should anyone take the Givens' approach seriously when it directly contradicts our Mormon canon?

5. Terryl Givens bases his entire argument on some kind of bizarre dichotomy between "the heart" and "the intellect". How is anyone supposed to take that seriously? We are not divided up between this mysterious heart and a non-mysterious, logical brain. "The heart" works for Terry the same way the sky worked for early belief in God. It's the only place to hide (as long as you continue to ignore science).

So the book comes out soon. Maybe it has answers to all of these questions, but admittedly I have my doubts.

Whittling our wicks

Even though Jesus supposedly fulfilled the Law of Moses and the uncircumcised have been initiated into God's covenant people since the days of Paul, Mormons in the United States still think it's a very good idea to have their newborn sons' prepuce paired down a tich.

I'm really can't imagine why God thought circumcision was a good practice in the first place. Or why it would be necessary. Didn't God create our bodies just the way he wanted them? So why'd he come back at us with a design adjustment?

 (Circumcision comes at the end...)

For some strange reason, God thought circumcision might be an effective sign of fidelity to him even though the only people who would see this physical sign were the circumcised men and their wives. It would have made more sense to trim down earlobes or something more visible and less functional. Oh well, God's not exactly known for his logic - mystery is more his game.

Let me ask you this: WHY WOULD YOU WORSHIP A BEING WHO SAYS "IF YOU LOVE ME  CUT YOUR PENIS!"? That's pretty messed up. If this reminds you of any of your intimate relationship I recommend you get out of them before you incur any further abuse.

Moving now to modern Mormonism, why exactly it is that members are so okay with this painful and presumptuous practice puzzles me. My guess is that it has more to do with being a part of American culture than than it does God's culture. (Then again, maybe God's insecure enough that he requires all his boys' penises to look like his.)

Mormons (and Americans in general), please stop cutting your sons. If they want the snip they can decide for themselves later. InthenameofOiledJoshua,Amen!

Sun miracles

God's awesomest miracles happen in the sky. According to scripture the Sun, err... Shinehah miraculously did not set because Joshua prayed that it wouldn't. That's pretty amazing. We all know that the setting sun is really just the Sun fading from our view as the earth spins away from facing it, so saying the Sun stood still actually means the earth stopped spinning, and we know that if the earth were to suddenly stop spinning (coming to a halt in less than 24 hours is extremely sudden for a massive object like the earth to stop spinning at it usual speed of 1038 mi/hr along the equator if you're American or 2670 km/hr if you're not) anything that isn't bedrock would keep spinning around. think about what would happens inside a snowglobe when you stop shaking it - the internal atmosphere keeps shaking and splashing around for a while. We're talking about massive tsunamis and land upheavals that would trash the world worse than the Flood. And yet the holy word of God cannot be wrong! (For anyone tempted to play the "symbolic language" card, please explain how a symbolic reading is supposed to fit the context of this miracle.)

"C'mon, God! Please? We're not done killing people yet."

Then there was that time in 3 Nephi when the Sun set but it was still as bright as noon day. The star of Bethlehem hadn't even shown up yet to help illuminate the earth and some how no darkness fell at all that night. Amazing! What on earth or in heaven could equal the brightness of another star that's only 8 light minutes away from the earth? Don't worry about the science, just believe.

Plains Indians go to Mesoamerica to venerate the cross with the Nephites.

Shinehah, Olea, and Kokaubeam

We learn in The Book of Abraham God's name for the Sun, the moon, and the stars: Shinehah, Olea, Kokaubeam. Jah-oh-eh turns out to be God's word for the earth. Good to know, right? One might think that knowing these divinely appointed names would result in their adoption into the common Mormon lexicon. I mean, once it was revealed that God's name is Elohim and that Jesus is Jehovah, the LDS Church really latched onto that and takes care to reenforce this knowledge, and yet when you go to church and listen to your lessons or to the temple and watch the Creation film you won't hear the Sun, the moon, the stars, or the earth referred to by their true names even once! Why is that? 

It's also a little strange that God hasn't been very consistent or insistent with these names when speaking to his prophets. The scriptures are full of references to the heavens and their various features and yet they contain God's preferred names only once, in Abraham 3! The closest you get to seeing these names in other scripture is in the Old Testament where the ancient Hebrew שֶׁמֶשׁ (she-mesh) at least starts with the same consonant as Shi-ne-hah and is followed by a similar vowel,  יָרֵחַ (ya-rey-ahh) sounds quite a bit like O-le-a, and the Hebrew for star כּוֹכָב (ko-khav) is almost identical to the pluralized Ko-bau-beam (-im is a Hebrew plural noun ending). I guess Hebrew really is closest to Adamic after all! God must have been revealing bits and pieces of his native tongue to Joseph, like the whole "Pay-lay-ale!" thing. 

But I still have a nagging doubt about these divine names found in Abraham 3. Didn't Joseph start learning Hebrew just after he purchased The Book of Abraham? Oh, really? Less than a year later? And when was the translation finally finished? Not before 1838? Hm... When was the translation finally published? 1842! So Joseph had about six years to dapple in Hebrew before going public with this thing. Do you think it might be possible that he was trying to show off his newly acquired Hebrew translating skills?

Not a smart move for an abecedarian. He's left too obvious a trail.

Of course, if Joseph's freestyling Hebrew isn't goofball enough, you can still relish in the other blunderful names found in the papyri translations (Elkenah, Enish-go-on-dosh, Kolob, Korash, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Oliblish, Olimlah, Raukeeyang, Shaumau, Shulem). Hebrew rip offs, pseudo-Egyptian, and a touch of fantasy make having faith in The Book of Abraham very problematic.

Kolob

I know the LDS Church doesn't like to emphasis this bit of doctrine and generally members don't feel much of a need to bear personal testimony of it, but that's no excuse for not acknowledging one of the most absurd aspects of Mormonism: Kolob, the star or planet nearest God's throne.

 God is no longer hiding among the clouds, but somewhere out beyond the nebulae of space! And yet Abraham and Methuselah saw this place thanks to the Urim and Thummim. So spare me all this modern science mumbo jumbo.

Oh yes, we also know that the Sun gets its light from Kolob, not from nuclear fusion. Thank God for modern revelation.

Sure, we haven't found God yet, but we can at least say we know what we're looking for.