LDS II: The Mormons

Billy Baxter said:
The problem with the skeptics' approach to the BOM's authenticity is, it focuses on the nitpicky details,
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You mean facts?

I wouldn't trust a book on World War II if it claimed the Nazis rode unicorns into battle, regardless if it reflected a phenomenal understanding of battle strategy.
 
Billy Baxter said:
JayUtah said:
I guess God made those disappear too.

The problem with the notion that God, via natural disasters or whatever superstitious means, caused all the Book of Mormon cites and civilizations to vanish without a trace is that the LDS church set the precedent of claiming there was evidence of the Book of Mormon in the archaeological record, and for many years thereafter supported work by amateur and church-paid professional archaeologists to attempt to develop that evidence.
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straw man

bb
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Bless your Heart Billy Baxter, but what in JayUtah's comment makes it a "straw man" in your eyes?
 
Billy Baxter said:
you misunderstand me. God didn't say he was "hiding the truth." He said he destroyed all those cities to "hide" the iniquities and abominations of those wicked people from his sight, so he wouldn't have to see them anymore. There was no dishonesty on his part, although there was more than a little sarcasm and irony.

bb
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That's a meaningless and pathetic excuse. Even with the level of destruction, you're claiming, there would be other evidence of the technology, animals, and plants claimed in the Book of Mormon.

For example, mining and smelting iron ore to make steel produces a significant environmental impact that extends well beyond the cultural centers of the civilization. Steel tools and weapons would have been highly prized by neighboring civilizations, so trade and theft would have resulted in at least some of these artifacts reaching areas outside of the alleged destruction zones.

Making excuses for the lack of horse bones and claiming that "answers" the criticism of the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon is about as ridiculous as claiming the Holocaust never happened because you have issues with the Zyklon B residue in the gas chambers. A myopic focus on one or two feeble excuses does nothing to address the vast mountains of evidence that the Holocaust did in fact happen and that the Book of Mormon did not.
 
halleyscomet said:
Bless your Heart Billy Baxter, but what in JayUtah's comment makes it a "straw man" in your eyes?
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he said that i said God caused all the BOM cities and civilizations to vanish without a trace. I didn't say "all" of them vanished "without a trace." And i don't speak for the LDS church. My opinions and speculations are my own.

bb
 
To answer the question about my relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("Mormon" or LDS): I am inactive--I don't attend church and I am a recluse of sorts. I do not speak for the church. I do believe LDS doctrine although I have some unorthodox beliefs such as TOBS, discussed elsewhere on this forum.

bb
 
Billy Baxter said:
he said that i said God caused all the BOM cities and civilizations to vanish without a trace. I didn't say "all" of them vanished "without a trace." And i don't speak for the LDS church. My opinions and speculations are my own.

bb
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But that IS what you and the LDS church are claiming, even if it is rarely stated that explicitly. If ANY of the "historical" claims in the Book of Mormon were true, there would be vast swaths fo evidence left behind, even IF the main cultural centers were destroyed by God's wrath.

Not only is there NO evidence to support ANY of the claims of the BoM, but the entire archaeological record of the Americas contradicts its claims.
 
halleyscomet said:
But that IS what you and the LDS church are claiming, even if it is rarely stated that explicitly. If ANY of the "historical" claims in the Book of Mormon were true, there would be vast swaths fo evidence left behind, even IF the main cultural centers were destroyed by God's wrath.

Not only is there NO evidence to support ANY of the claims of the BoM, but the entire archaeological record of the Americas contradicts its claims.
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The major trace they left is the BOM itself. IANA archaeologist , nor do I care much about minutia like salad forks, silk pajamas or the absence of the right colors of horses in the BOM.

bb
 
I'm gonna pick up the latest David Irving book about World War II. Who cares about "minutiae" like whether the Holocaust happened, as long as the history is good.
 
Billy Baxter said:
you misunderstand me. God didn't say he was "hiding the truth." He said he destroyed all those cities to "hide" the iniquities and abominations of those wicked people from his sight, so he wouldn't have to see them anymore. There was no dishonesty on his part, although there was more than a little sarcasm and irony.

bb
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How do you hide something from the sight of an all-knowing god? How does an all-powerful, all-knowing god hide something from himself?

Now you're claiming that God is attempting to hide the truth from himself, but not from us, while he simultaneously tells everybody about it in the BoM.

And this somehow demonstrates the BOM's truth.

Are we using the same definition of "truth?"

This signature is intended to irritate people.
 
Beady said:
How do you hide something from the sight of an all-knowing god? How does an all-powerful, all-knowing god hide something from himself?

Now you're claiming that God is attempting to hide the truth from himself, but not from us, while he simultaneously tells everybody about it in the BoM.

And this somehow demonstrates the BOM's truth.

Are we using the same definition of "truth?"

This signature is intended to irritate people.
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major straw man

God was waxing non-literal. Of course he can't actually "hide" anything from himself.

bb
 
Billy Baxter said:
The major trace they left is the BOM itself.
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In other words, you have NO evidence that the Book of Mormon is accurate other than the word of the Book of Mormon itself. You have conceded that only the faithful have any reason to consider it anything but a rank fraud. You have, by your own admission, the EXACT same standard of evidence as the acolytes of Kissing Hank's Ass.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kissing_Hank's_Ass
Kissing Hank's Ass is an analogy highlighting the absurdities of blind faith in general and some of the basic tenets of Christianity in specific. The story was written by James Huger and is viewable at his website as a transcript and as a downloadable pamphlet. The story has become quite popular in atheist circles, and of course there are the obligatory adaptations posted to YouTube and similar video services.
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Billy Baxter said:
IANA archaeologist , nor do I care much about minutia(sic) like salad forks, silk pajamas or the absence of the right colors of horses in the BOM.
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That line is such a disingenuous description of the vast swaths of evidence AGAINST the BoM that it constitutes a lie. You are, through your minimizing of the evidence against you, lying about the very nature of that evidence.

Does it not disturb you that you need to flat out LIE about the nature of the evidence AGAINST the Book of Mormon to even ATTEMPT to defend it?
 
Wow! A Book of Mormon literalist! Except when a non-literal interpretation is neccessary. Oh well, it's the religious way.

A good and relevant read is Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History." As an LDS groupie, excuse me, follower, BB will of course be well familiar with that book.
 
This article is a decent introduction to the massive archeological issues with the Book of Mormon. While hardly exhaustive, it dopes hit most the major bullet points.

http://mit.irr.org/scientific-search-nephite-remains

I'm particularly fond of this section, which comes right before a damning list of BoM anachronisms.

An LDS Archaeologist's Conclusion

As was noted earlier, the Bible and the Book of Mormon are alike in presenting themselves as records of ancient history. However, whereas the authenticity of the Bible is widely accepted even by secular scholars (see article titled "Does Archaeology Support the Bible?"), no non-LDS archaeologist accepts the Book of Mormon as authentic history, and now even many LDS scholars no longer support its historicity.13 Why do archaeologist take such a dim view of the Book of Mormon?

One of the best answers to this question was offered by former Brigham Young University anthropology professor, Dr. Raymond T. Matheny at an August 25, 1984 Sunstone conference in Salt Lake City.14 After working in the area of Mesoamerican archaeology for twenty-two years, Prof. Matheny reported his conclusion that the scientific evidence simply does not support the existence of the peoples and events chronicled in the Book of Mormon, be it in Central America or anywhere else in the western hemisphere.

Dr. Matheny described the Book of Mormon as filled with anachronisms — things that are out of place historically and culturally. It introduces Old World cultural achievements into the pre-Columbian Americas, though the archaeological evidence shows no such levels of culture were attained during this period. Defenders of the historicity of the Book of Mormon are left with only scattered bits of evidence which they interpret apart from accepted scientific standards
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The conclusion in the condensed article may be particularly relevant to Billy:

This article began by acknowledging that archaeology cannot directly prove or disprove the spiritual claims of the Book of Mormon or the Bible. However, it can evaluate the historical claims which both books make, and that evaluation shows that while the Bible's claim to be authentic history is supported by objective evidence click for article on the Bible and archaeology, the same cannot be said for the Book of Mormon.
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Billy Baxter said:
straw man
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You seem not to know what that phrase means.

You appear to be rather young in the church and you may have not been told about all the activity from the 1960s through roughly the late 1980s in which the LDS church argued strenuously that the materials being found in Central and South America were associated with the Book of Mormon and helped prove that the events the book describes actually took place. It's only in recent times, since those sites and artifacts could be precisely sourced and dated to an irrelevant provenance, that the church started thinking about the notion that God must have taken up all those ruined cities into heaven and that we shouldn't expect to find physical evidence.

So the fallacy that we're talking about is the "changing horses" fallacy, otherwise known as Ad Hoc Revision. And its the Mormons who are committing it.

Try again.
 
sackett said:
Wow! A Book of Mormon literalist! Except when a non-literal interpretation is neccessary. Oh well, it's the religious way.

A good and relevant read is Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History." As an LDS groupie, excuse me, follower, BB will of course be well familiar with that book.
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Interesting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man_Knows_My_History
Perspective on Smith[edit]
During her research, Brodie discovered primary sources that had previously been overlooked or neglected.[6] She presented the young Joseph Smith as a good-natured, lazy, extroverted, and unsuccessful treasure seeker, who, in an attempt to improve his family's fortunes, first developed the notion of golden plates and then the concept of a religious novel, the Book of Mormon. This book, she claims, was based in part on an earlier work, View of the Hebrews, by a contemporary clergyman Ethan Smith. Brodie asserts that at first Smith was a deliberate impostor, who at some point, in nearly untraceable steps, became convinced that he was indeed a prophet—though without ever escaping "the memory of the conscious artifice" that created the Book of Mormon. Jan Shipps, a preeminent non-LDS scholar of Mormonism, who rejects this theory, nevertheless has called No Man Knows My History a "beautifully written biography...the work of a mature scholar [that] represented the first genuine effort to come to grips with the contradictory evidence about Smith's early life."
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I'm intrigued, and the Kindle Edition of No Man Knows My History is, as of this writing, a mere $2.40.
 
halleyscomet said:
In other words, you have NO evidence that the Book of Mormon is accurate other than the word of the Book of Mormon itself.
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false

You have conceded that only the faithful have any reason to consider it anything but a rank fraud. You have, by your own admission, the EXACT same standard of evidence as the acolytes of Kissing Hank's Ass.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kissing_Hank's_Ass


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I have conceded no such thing. You are LYING about me.

That line is such a disingenuous description of the vast swaths of evidence AGAINST the BoM that it constitutes a lie. You are, through your minimizing of the evidence against you, lying about the very nature of that evidence.

Does it not disturb you that you need to flat out LIE about the nature of the evidence AGAINST the Book of Mormon to even ATTEMPT to defend it?
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My comment was not meant to be taken literally. It is mockery of the myriad hosts of BOM opponents' attempts at DISHONEST LIES of their own.

bb
 
There is a new biography of him, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, which -- although written from a Mormon perspective -- is more scholarly justified than previous works, and attempts to address some of the materials Brodie noted were commonly omitted from official church works.
 
Billy Baxter said:
false
I have conceded no such thing. You are LYING about me.
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You pointed to the Book of Mormon as the "evidence" that its contents were true. You've been asked to provide evidence and the ONLY evidence you've provided has been your own religious beliefs. If you HAVE evidence, produce it. If you don't, you quite literally might as well be asking us to Kiss Hank's Ass. I know you don't like that. I know that annoys you, but it's the cold hard truth of the level of "proof" you've provided so far.

Billy Baxter said:
My comment was not meant to be taken literally. It is mockery of the myriad hosts of BOM opponents' attempts at DISHONEST LIES of their own.
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You keep accusing BoM critics of lying. Let's start narrowing that down. Please, give me some examples of lies from this article:

http://mit.irr.org/scientific-search-nephite-remains

If you're telling the TRUTH about your critics lying, then you must be able to give examples of those lies, right? Let's dispense with the vague hand-waving and get down to some actual nuts and bolts.
 
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