If the Utah mention means the Mormons in particular, their standard answer is that the Bible is only correct “as far as it is translated correctly” (that phrasing appears in their extended canon), which is a motte they can always retreat to if one presses them too hard on Biblical correctness generally. However, that doesn’t apply to the rest of their canon, so pressure may be more fruitful there. (If it’s not the Mormons, the rest of my comment probably isn’t relevant either.)
There is of course the “which bible?” question. Irrefutable proof of the veracity of the old testament, if someone had it, wouldn’t answer the question of which modern religion incorporating it is “most correct”.
The Book of Mormon would at least narrow it down to the LDS movement, although there have been a few small schisms in their relatively short history.
if he does an experiment, replicate that experiment for yourself and share the results. If you get different results, examine why. IMO, attempting in good faith to replicate whatever experiments have convinced him that the world works differently from how he previously thought would be the best steelman for someone framing religion as rationalism.
Disagree with this one. The experiment the Mormon missionaries will insist on is Moroni’s Promise: read the Book of Mormon and then pray to God for a spiritual confirmation. The main problem with this experiment should be obvious to any good scientist: no controls. To be fair, one should try the experiment on many other books (holy or otherwise) to see if there are any other hits. Also, a null result is invariably interpreted as failing to do the experiment correctly, because it’s guaranteed by God, see, it’s right there in the book. The inability to accept a negative outcome is also rather unscientific. And finally, a “spiritual confirmation” will be interpreted for you as coming from (their particular version of) God, rather than some other explanation for a human emotional response, which we all know, can be achieved in numerous other ways that don’t particularly rely on God as an explanation. Make the experiment fair before you agree to play with a stacked deck!
If the Utah mention means the Mormons in particular, their standard answer is that the Bible is only correct “as far as it is translated correctly” (that phrasing appears in their extended canon), which is a motte they can always retreat to if one presses them too hard on Biblical correctness generally. However, that doesn’t apply to the rest of their canon, so pressure may be more fruitful there. (If it’s not the Mormons, the rest of my comment probably isn’t relevant either.)
The Book of Mormon would at least narrow it down to the LDS movement, although there have been a few small schisms in their relatively short history.
Disagree with this one. The experiment the Mormon missionaries will insist on is Moroni’s Promise: read the Book of Mormon and then pray to God for a spiritual confirmation. The main problem with this experiment should be obvious to any good scientist: no controls. To be fair, one should try the experiment on many other books (holy or otherwise) to see if there are any other hits. Also, a null result is invariably interpreted as failing to do the experiment correctly, because it’s guaranteed by God, see, it’s right there in the book. The inability to accept a negative outcome is also rather unscientific. And finally, a “spiritual confirmation” will be interpreted for you as coming from (their particular version of) God, rather than some other explanation for a human emotional response, which we all know, can be achieved in numerous other ways that don’t particularly rely on God as an explanation. Make the experiment fair before you agree to play with a stacked deck!