At least two waves of people became believers as a result of Samuel’s sermon in Zarahemla. The first group “believed on his word” (Helaman 16:1). The second group believed when they saw that his antagonists couldn’t hit him with their stones and arrows. (See Helaman 16:2-3.)
Most of his audience, however, didn’t believe even after seeing this miracle. In order to persist in their unbelief, they had to devise some rationale to explain away the miracle they had just seen. Here’s what they came up with: “He hath a devil; and because of the power of the devil which is in him we cannot hit him with our stones and our arrows” (Helaman 16:6).
That reasoning eliminated the immediate evidence, but these non-believers had a bigger problem. Samuel had prophesied some pretty dramatic events which were set to occur in about five years. In order to preemptively explain those away, these unbelievers came up with a theory that prophets like Samuel and Nephi would “by the cunning and the mysterious arts of the evil one, work some great mystery which we cannot understand” (Helaman 16:21).
When you’re really determined not to believe something, you will find some rationale, however flimsy, to support your intransigence. Laman and Lemuel engaged in this same type of fanciful thinking, accusing Nephi of working “many things by his cunning arts, that he may deceive our eyes” (1 Nephi 16:38). The trouble with all of these logical gymnastics is that they substitute an obvious explanation for an incomplete and unlikely one. Samuel and Nephi were able to deceive our eyes by working some magic which we can’t explain? How is that more credible than simply accepting that you have experienced a miracle?
Occam’s razor is a decision-making strategy attributed to William of Ockam, a 14th-century philosopher and theologian. It states that, when faced with multiple explanations for a phenomenon, you should give preference to the simplest one. Obviously, the simplest explanation isn’t always the right one, but you can save yourself a lot of wasted time and energy by starting with the simplest one and only moving on to more complicated explanations if the simplest one turns out to be wrong.
Today, I will take the things I experience at face value. Even if they challenge my assumptions, I will avoid explaining away the things I see, hear, and feel for myself.
Great points!
The unbelieving Nephites made a big point of claiming that it was “not reasonable” to believe in Christ, even though they had begun to disbelieve what they had seen. I recently made a work trip to Athens where I had a chance to talk with one of the top AI experts in the world. The conversation showed me that, even in secular terms, it is completely reasonable to believe in Christ, in fact more so than any alternative hypothesis:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/mafNjJwnhdruQBBd/