LDS II: The Mormons

Billy Baxter said:
I've read the BOM seven or eight times and have never encountered a lie in it.



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This essay is a nice high level view of some of the scientific illiteracy and outright lies Smith told when he composed the Book of Mormon. It's not comprehensive, but it's a good introduction.

How do you lose a Steel Mill?

No animal-drawn wheeled vehicles were ever used in pre-Columbian America. No chariots. The reason is that there were no suitable draft animals to pull them. Despite Joseph Smith's claim that his ancient American Christians had cows and oxen, none existed in America before the Spaniards brought them. With only the exception of the bison and the reindeer - notably scarce in Mexico where the major Book of Mormon civilizations are alleged to have existed - no animals existed in America suitable for pulling chariots or wagons. The closest thing to an American draft animal is the llama, but during the entire domestication history of this Andean animal it was used to carry packs, not to pull vehicles.
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Billy Baxter said:
Are we finished discussing speckled horses and their ability to somehow disprove the BOM?

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My Dear Mr. Baxter:

One wonders why you, personally, would raise up such an outrageous person-of-straw argument.

Who, other than you, mentioned the color of the supposed horses that have not been demonstrated to have existed, much less been domesticated by any vast, continent-spanning civilization as asserted, without evidence, in the exciting stories of the BoM?

You have yet to even begin dealing with the character of the evidence that is lacking.

But that's not surprising, given that you have bragged about your dependence upon your beliefs; and boasted that when asked for evidence, you will continue to offer nothing more than those beliefs.

Do you understand how domesticated horses change the civilizations that domesticate them?

I remain, stably yours & ct.
 
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Billy Baxter said:
Are we finished discussing speckled horses and their ability to somehow disprove the BOM?



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Stop lying about the evidence being presented against the accuracy of the Book of Mormon. You do a poor job defending your religion when you start by lying. It makes you look like you HAVE no defense and need to move the goalposts to try and defend the book.

Don't pretend this is about the color or kind of horse. The simple fact is there is NO evidence to support domesticated horses of ANY kind were ever used in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish. The ruins that exist are clearly those of civilizations that did not use horses.
 
So essentially y'all expect me to discuss every BOM issue at once, eh?

Let's begin, then:

1 Nephi 1:1
"I, Nephi...."

"I" refers to the first person narrator. Now we know that autobiography wasn't used ever ever ever in ancient scripture; therefore the BOM cannot possibly be accurate.

Tomorrow I'll prove that no one named Nephi ever existed.

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halleyscomet said:
Stop lying about the evidence being presented against the accuracy of the Book of Mormon. You do a poor job defending your religion when you start by lying. It makes you look like you HAVE no defense and need to move the goalposts to try and defend the book.

Don't pretend this is about the color or kind of horse. The simple fact is there is NO evidence to support domesticated horses of ANY kind were ever used in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish. The ruins that exist are clearly those of civilizations that did not use horses.
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maybe i should have included a smilie for the humor-impaired. :p

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better watch out for SV to accuse me of a faux pas....
 
Billy Baxter said:
So essentially y'all expect me to discuss every BOM issue at once, eh?

Let's begin, then:

1 Nephi 1:1
"I, Nephi...."

"I" refers to the first person narrator. Now we know that autobiography wasn't used ever ever ever in ancient scripture; therefore the BOM cannot possibly be accurate.

Tomorrow I'll prove that no one named Nephi ever existed.

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I certainly hope nobody as useless and stupid as the Nephi described in that book ever existed. We're talking about a guy who makes the "Dumb and Dumber" leads look like Mensa members. I sometimes think Smith deliberately depicted Nephi and his family as complete, useless idiots to justify his racism against Native Americans.

I've been kicking around the idea of a short story where an Eagle Scout ends up thrown back in time to accompany Nephi and his idiot brigade.
 
halleyscomet said:
I certainly hope nobody as useless and stupid as the Nephi described in that book ever existed. We're talking about a guy who makes the "Dumb and Dumber" leads look like Mensa members. I sometimes think Smith deliberately depicted Nephi and his family as complete, useless idiots to justify his racism against Native Americans.

I've been kicking around the idea of a short story where an Eagle Scout ends up thrown back in time to accompany Nephi and his idiot brigade.
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None of the people in the BOM were perfect. Your point?

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Billy Baxter said:
None of the people in the BOM were perfect. Your point?

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My point is that Nephi's abject stupidity is extreme. He's singularly inept at everything he does.

If the BoM is a work of fiction then Smith appears to have been trying to set up an excuse for treating Native Americans as idiots, by depicting them as being descended from morons.

If the BoM is a legitimate divine document Nephi's incompetence is even more disturbing. We have a situation where a deity picked a handful of people, none of them too intelligent or competent, and picks the single most inept member of the group as his "prophet." This is a guy whose own WIFE participated in lashing him to a mast for a few days so she could dance with his family. Despite repeated rescues by supernatural bodyguards, his own brothers repentantly turn against him, creating an enmity so severe that their descendants eventually hunted Nephi's descendants into extinction.

If the BoM is a divine document, then it chronicles a deity deliberately setting up entire generations of people to engage in a genocidal war as a result of a deliberately and carefully crafted hatred of God and his servants, born of rejecting the more intelligent and capable members of the family to pick the single biggest idiot of the bunch as his prophet. That idiot doesn't even do a very good job.

God picked the village idiot as his prophet in order to make the village hate him. I suggest you re-read the BoM with that in mind.
 
halleyscomet said:
My point is that Nephi's abject stupidity is extreme. He's singularly inept at everything he does.

If the BoM is a work of fiction then Smith appears to have been trying to set up an excuse for treating Native Americans as idiots, by depicting them as being descended from morons.

If the BoM is a legitimate divine document Nephi's incompetence is even more disturbing. We have a situation where a deity picked a handful of people, none of them too intelligent or competent, and picks the single most inept member of the group as his "prophet." This is a guy whose own WIFE participated in lashing him to a mast for a few days so she could dance with his family. Despite repeated rescues by supernatural bodyguards, his own brothers repentantly turn against him, creating an enmity so severe that their descendants eventually hunted Nephi's descendants into extinction.

If the BoM is a divine document, then it chronicles a deity deliberately setting up entire generations of people to engage in a genocidal war as a result of a deliberately and carefully crafted hatred of God and his servants, born of rejecting the more intelligent and capable members of the family to pick the single biggest idiot of the bunch as his prophet. That idiot doesn't even do a very good job.

God picked the village idiot as his prophet in order to make the village hate him. I suggest you re-read the BoM with that in mind.
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I try to read one BOM chapter a day. I'm on 2 Nephi today.

Do you read any scriptures each day? Getting a testimony takes time and effort + faith + prayer. All verbs.

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Billy Baxter said:
So essentially y'all expect me to discuss every BOM issue at once, eh?

Let's begin, then:

1 Nephi 1:1
"I, Nephi...."

"I" refers to the first person narrator. Now we know that autobiography wasn't used ever ever ever in ancient scripture; therefore the BOM cannot possibly be accurate.

Tomorrow I'll prove that no one named Nephi ever existed.

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My Dear Mr. Baxter:

One wonders why it is that you, of all people (with your frequent, incorrect dismissals of others' arguments with no more discussion that your bvald assertion ('strawman") would make so transparent a person-of-straw argument as this. If I might make a suggestion, stop trying to reverse the onus, and address one actual issue. WHen it has been resolved, select another.

It is not the fault of your interlocutors that there are so very many patent falsehoods and errors in the BoM with which to deal.

I remain, helpfully yours &ct.
 
Billy Baxter said:
.......time and effort + faith + prayer. All verbs.........
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Well, one out of four is better than your usual hit-rate. The highlighted are not verbs. Prayer isn't actually a verb either, but I'll let you have that one as it is derived from a verb.
 
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Billy Baxter said:
I try to read one BOM chapter a day. I'm on 2 Nephi today.

Do you read any scriptures each day? Getting a testimony takes time and effort + faith + prayer. All verbs.

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My Dear Mr. Baxter:

You have yet to explain the cases of those who do, in fact, faithfully pray and read "scriptures", and seek; and yet for whom there has never been a revelation...

I remain, determinedly yours &ct.

ETA: I wonder if you might be so kind as t answer another question. In your opinion, where in :the Americas" are the exciting events of the BoM to be supposed to have taken place?
 
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Slowvehicle said:
My Dear Mr. Baxter:

You have yet to explain the cases of those who do, in fact, faithfully pray and read "scriptures", and seek; and yet for whom there has never been a revelation...

I remain, determinedly yours &ct.
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Keep trying and never give up. One day the light will come. :)

ETA: I wonder if you might be so kind as t answer another question. In your opinion, where in :the Americas" are the exciting events of the BoM to be supposed to have taken place?
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Most LDS apologists nowadays believe it was a limited area in mesoamerica IIRC, while some believe it was all of the Americas. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I believe that it was the former but am not sure.

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Billy Baxter said:
I try to read one BOM chapter a day. I'm on 2 Nephi today.

Do you read any scriptures each day? Getting a testimony takes time and effort + faith + prayer. All verbs.

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None of that has anything to do with my observations about the Machiavellian way "god" set up Nephi's descendants to be slaughtered. If you've read 1 Nephi you must have some inkling about the incompetence I'm discussing.

The overt sadism and cruelty of the "deity" depicted on the BoM is clearly not lost upon the current LDS leadership. They appear to have seen it and decided to emulate it.

WATCH: Mormon leader explains why children must go hungry so the church can have money

Feed the Church Not Your Kids
 
Billy Baxter said:
Most LDS apologists nowadays believe it was a limited area in mesoamerica IIRC, while some believe it was all of the Americas. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I believe that it was the former but am not sure.

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My Dear Mr. Baxter:

A small, hidden, limited bit of out-of-the-way mesoamerica does not conform to the text. Surely you are aware of this...

I remain, geographically yours &ct.
 
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