This from post#1930, this thread:
It's possible that you're not current on the status of scholarship re. the Book of Mormon (some of the assertions you make are fossilized). FAIR notes that there is growing evidence from New World archaeology that supports the BoM. Dr. John Clark has assembled a list of 60 items named in the BoM, including steel swords, barley, cement, thrones, and literacy. "In 1842, only eight (13.3%) of those 60 items were confirmed by archaeological evidence. Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, archaeology did not support the claims made by the Book of Mormon. . . . [however] we find in 2005 that 45 of those 60 items (75%) have been confirmed"
(FAIR, "Archaeological Evidence and the Book of Mormon," Michael R. Ash).
Presumably, you and others will auto-reject the foregoing, but archaeology is a dynamic science and time is not on your side.
Are you prepared to "appreciate" what I state above? Of course not.
My respnse, from post #1933, this thread:
Perhaps I should have expected that I would need to say, "demonstrable, empirical evidence". It is possible that you are not current on the dubious validity of inherently biased "research". You reject sources as "anti-mormon" if they disagree in any particular with the mormon party line--have you any evidence from archaeologists, or paleontologists, or anthropologists, or geneticists, or mammologists, who do not work for, or report to, a wholly-owned LDS house organ?
FAIR is hardly an unbiased source.
Would you be so kind as to provide citations to peer-reviewed sources that support the claim that steel was forged in the pre-colombian Americas?
Would you be so kind as to provide citations to peer-reviewed sources that support the claim that mesoamericans demonstrate semitic descent in their DNA?
Would you be so kind as to provide citations to peer-reviewed sources that support the claim that horses were raised and ridden, or that domestic cattle were husbanded, or that domestic pigs were kept, in the pre-Colombian Americas?
Would you be so kind as to provide citations to peer-reviewed sources that support the claim that domestic barley was cultivated in the pre-Colombian Americas?
If such has been found, and published, and subjected to scrutiny, do be so kind as to link to it.
Or, consider answering, instead of evading, my questions.
You have yet to provide citations, short of, "go look it up on the FAIR site yourself".
As an example of what engenders my frustration with non-neutral sources, I offer you "Horses in the Book of Mormon" , by Robert R. Bennett of BYU,
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=129
Dr. (I am not trying to be flip--I did not find his information, and would rather credit him a degree he has not than deny him a degree he has) Bennett's argument consists of several points.
First, he claims that there may have been so few horses extant, from 600 BCE the early first century CE, that they may not have been widely known or widely used, so absence of evidence for their existence is not surprising.
Second, he claims that "small herds of animals in a limited region sometimes leave no archaeological remains"; then goes on to argue that the lack of fossil and bone evidence for the horses ridden by the Huns indicates that horses could have been common in the pre-Colombian Americas without leaving any traces.
These arguments fail in at least two particulars: First, fossil and bone evidence is not the only "archaeological" evidence of the hunnish horse. Tack is commonly found in hun burial sites, and the hun horse appears in contemporary art and contemporary historical mention. Nowhere in the pre-Colombian Americas has any evidence of horse culture (tack, husbandry, contemporaneous art, contemporaneous records) been discovered. Second, bones from hun horses do exist; at least one hun burial site includes the skulls and other bones of at least five horses--and a horde of tack.
Dr. Bennett's third claim is that the horse may have been misidentified through the process of "loanshift" or "loan-extension" in the same way the Romans invading Egypt called the
hippopotamus a "water-horse". Dr. Bennett's claim that "...one could hardly fault Old World visitors to the New World for choosing to classify the Mesoamerican tapir as a horse or an ass, if that is what happened." seems a bit disingenuous. The problem is that there is no evidence of tapirs ever being ridden, or used as draft animals; or, for that matter, being domesticated. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that such a misidentification would not happen in a divinely-inspired book.
Now, please notice that this is not "rejection out-of-hand". Dr. Bennett's "explanations" are special pleadings, leavened with incorrect or incomplete information. At this point, the state of archaeological knowledge provides no credible evidence to support the claim that the horse was husbanded, ridden, used as a draft animal, mentioned in autochtonous song or story, represented in contemporaneous art, or even known, in the pre-Colombian Americas.
You are most welcome.
