The arguments of the pseudo-intellectuals are dizzying at best. After receiving the ‘great signs given’ (v. 13), they refuse to believe because of their wickedness and stubbornness. Cloaked in their version of intellectualism, they try to explain away those signs which could mean only one thing—that Samuel was a true prophet and that the Son of God really was to come to earth. But does their argument make any sense? Was Samuel just a good guesser? The answer is “no way, not in a million years!” This is clearly a situation in which the faithless have strong but false convictions which they are not willing to modify. Rather than soften their hearts and understand the truth, they fabricate shallow concepts which soothe their seething consciences.
A similar pattern is seen in modern atheistic science. The atheist considers the possibility that the right combination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms sloshed around long enough in some cosmic cesspool to produce a living single-celled organism. But what are the odds? Even if a scientist were to gather the correct proportions of each element and place them in one test tube, could they be stirred long enough to produce even the simplest form of life? The answer is the same, “no way, not in a million years!” And so we see that it is not the science that makes the atheist, but the atheist that makes the science. The Nephites were the same way. It was not that their intellectualism had fashioned their belief system, but that their belief system had fashioned the arguments of the intellectuals.