LDS

[Slowvehicle]

Ray:

Have you read the rest of the thread?

The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence, none, of the existence of horses, or a horse culture; of the husbandry of domesticated cattle; of the cultivation of domesticated wheat, or barley; or of the existence of steelmaking technology in the pre-Colombian Americas.

Dodges such as "well, he must have meant they were riding deer" (or pulling the "chariots" with tapir), the Hohokam "barley" claims; the 700,000-year old Pzrewalski's fossil; or the Spencer Lake horse hoax; do nothing to change that fact.

If you have evidence: actual, practical, empirical evidence attested to by credentialed neutral scholars, to the contrary I (for one) would love to see it. Please do not just throw up unsubstantiated FAIR tracts.

 

[Ray Agostini]

Well, it was clearly written by someone imaginative, with poor writing skills and no understanding of the history of the Americas. Sounds like JS to me, but if you have another candidate, I'd love to hear it.

I have no other candidate, including Spalding.

 

[Ray Agostini]

Am I understanding correctly?

1. You are not a member of the Mormon Church.
2. You believe the Book of Mormon to be the genuine Word of God?

How do you reconcile these to facts (if they are facts).

Do you believe in a God or Gods?

Have you read about David Whitmer? He believed that Joseph Smith was a "fallen" (not a "false") prophet, but firmly bore witness to the divinity of The Book of Mormon to the end of his life. If you haven't read it, the David Whitmer Interviews is a must read.

Yes, I do believe in God, though I class myself as an agnostic theist. I tend to be "universalist" in many of my views and beliefs.

 

[Ray Agostini]

Ray:

Have you read the rest of the thread?

The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence, none, of the existence of horses, or a horse culture; of the husbandry of domesticated cattle; of the cultivation of domesticated wheat, or barley; or of the existence of steelmaking technology in the pre-Colombian Americas.

Dodges such as "well, he must have meant they were riding deer" (or pulling the "chariots" with tapir), the Hohokam "barley" claims; the 700,000-year old Pzrewalski's fossil; or the Spencer Lake horse hoax; do nothing to change that fact.

If you have evidence: actual, practical, empirical evidence attested to by credentialed neutral scholars, to the contrary I (for one) would love to see it. Please do not just throw up unsubstantiated FAIR tracts.

I believe that FAIR and FAIRwiki have done substantial apologetic work. Not all of it I agree with, but I don't share the contempt that most exmos have for them, often expressed in derisive sloganeering.

The conventional archaeological view of the horse isn't shared by every single archaeologist. I'll have to come back to this in more detail later, as the morning is getting on here in Oz and I have a lot to do, and the questions are coming at the rate of a Dennis Lillee cricket ball.

 

[deaman]

Mr. Agostini -

Do you believe your beliefs makes you a "Chosen One of God"?

 

[Ray Agostini]

Mr. Agostini -

Do you believe your beliefs makes you a "Chosen One of God"?

No.

 

[halleyscomet]

What's "intellectually bankrupt" is the link to the Skeptic's website, because it's very superficial and misleading.

Is that sufficient commentary?

I would like to apologize. Earlier in the thread there was another Mormon who was posting links to assorted Mormon sites as a response, and the links chosen were often related only tangentially to the question at hand, if at all. As a result, some of us are a bit gun shy about links posted without further commentary in this thread.

The links you've posted have been relevant and specifically addressed the criticism you quoted. While not a reply Skeptics would consider "proof" one way or another, it does tell us how actual practicing Mormons view the issues, which is what I was asking for when I posed the questions.

 

[sackett]

...the David Whitmer Interviews is a must read..../QUOTE]

Hello, Ray! Always glad to talk to a jack Mormon! Saints and recovering Saints are fairly thick on the ground where I used to come from.

But in this context a must read would, I think, be Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Can I assume that you've read it? It continues in print after many decades.

As well it should, because it manages to raise ol' Prophet Smith's trashy, sordid, laughable, discreditable story to near-tragic levels -- tragedy as the Greek dramatists understood it, i.e., a tale of hubris and the destruction that it brings. It's a far finer literary monument than Conman Smitty could ever possibly deserve.

 

[Ray Agostini]

I would like to apologize. Earlier in the thread there was another Mormon who was posting links to assorted Mormon sites as a response, and the links chosen were often related only tangentially to the question at hand, if at all. As a result, some of us are a bit gun shy about links posted without further commentary in this thread.

The links you've posted have been relevant and specifically addressed the criticism you quoted. While not a reply Skeptics would consider "proof" one way or another, it does tell us how actual practicing Mormons view the issues, which is what I was asking for when I posed the questions.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I know Janadele very well in real life, and though I no longer share some of her "orthodox views", I can attest that she's done a marvelous job as a mother. I know all of her sons, in particular a couple of them very well, and they are very fine and moral young men and leaders in the community. She can't be faulted there, at all. Oh, she once called me to repentance too. Maybe one day I'll take up the call, who knows.

I really must be going for now, but I'll be back later today.

Edit: She didn't ask me to come here, either, nor to defend her. I just happened to see her posts here.

 

[jsfisher]

I would like to apologize. Earlier in the thread there was another Mormon who was posting links to assorted Mormon sites as a response, and the links chosen were often related only tangentially to the question at hand, if at all. As a result, some of us are a bit gun shy about links posted without further commentary in this thread.

I'm not gun shy. I am, however, unwilling to argue Ray Agostini's case for him. "Here, read this" is not a discussion. Ray can use all the links he likes to support his case, but it is up to him to state what his case is in the first place.

The links you've posted have been relevant and specifically addressed the criticism you quoted. While not a reply Skeptics would consider "proof" one way or another, it does tell us how actual practicing Mormons view the issues, which is what I was asking for when I posed the questions.

Were they relevant? Consider for example one of Ray's link regarding Israelites using Egyptian. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't read anything that said the artifacts in question were traceable to the Israelites. Without that explicit connection, the links were completely irrelevant and did not address the criticism quoted at all.

Also, there are serious doubts as to the neutrality of the sites linked.

 

[jsfisher]

Thanks, I appreciate that. I know Janadele very well in real life, and though I no longer share some of her "orthodox views", I can attest that she's done a marvelous job as a mother. I know all of her sons, in particular a couple of them very well, and they are very fine and moral young men and leaders in the community. She can't be faulted there, at all. Oh, she once called me to repentance too. Maybe one day I'll take up the call, who knows.

I really must be going for now, but I'll be back later today.

Edit: She didn't ask me to come here, either, nor to defend her. I just happened to see her posts here.

Did she raise them to be as brain-washed as she has presented herself in this thread? Are they mindless syophants with respect to the LDS Church?

 

[tsig]

...the David Whitmer Interviews is a must read..../QUOTE]

Hello, Ray! Always glad to talk to a jack Mormon! Saints and recovering Saints are fairly thick on the ground where I used to come from.

But in this context a must read would, I think, be Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Can I assume that you've read it? It continues in print after many decades.

As well it should, because it manages to raise ol' Prophet Smith's trashy, sordid, laughable, discreditable story to near-tragic levels -- tragedy as the Greek dramatists understood it, i.e., a tale of hubris and the destruction that it brings. It's a far finer literary monument than Conman Smitty could ever possibly deserve.

I was just going to recommend that book.

 

[Ray Agostini]

One thing at a time, so I'll start with this:

Ray:

Have you read the rest of the thread?

The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence, none, of the existence of horses, or a horse culture; of the husbandry of domesticated cattle; of the cultivation of domesticated wheat, or barley; or of the existence of steelmaking technology in the pre-Colombian Americas.

Dodges such as "well, he must have meant they were riding deer" (or pulling the "chariots" with tapir), the Hohokam "barley" claims; the 700,000-year old Pzrewalski's fossil; or the Spencer Lake horse hoax; do nothing to change that fact.

If you have evidence: actual, practical, empirical evidence attested to by credentialed neutral scholars, to the contrary I (for one) would love to see it. Please do not just throw up unsubstantiated FAIR tracts.

Mention of horses in the Book of Mormon occur at:

Alma 18:9-10; 20:6; 18:12;
Ether 9:19
2 Nephi 15:28; 12:7
3 Nephi 21:14,22; 6:1; 4:4
Enos 1:21

2 Nephi 15:28 and 12:7, 3 Nephi 12:7 and 21:14 are references to Isaiah and Biblical prophecy (no connection to Book of Mormon people).

There is no mention of horses among any Book of Mormon people after 3 Nephi 21:22, or about 20AD.

3 Nephi 4:4 also hints that horses may have been used for food:

4 Therefore, there was no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food, save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites; and the Nephites being in one body, and having so great a number, and having reserved for themselves provisions, and horses and cattle, and flocks of every kind, that they might subsist for the space of seven years, in the which time they did hope to destroy the robbers from off the face of the land; and thus the eighteenth year did pass away.

If Joseph Smith had concocted all this, it's a wonder he didn't include in his "Frontier fiction" novel a "Cowboys and Indians" scenario, but horses were never used in battle in the Book of Mormon. All of the warfare was conducted by soldiers on foot. There's also reason to believe that horses and chariots were used by the nobility (Alma 18:9, 20:6), suggesting that they were possibility a rare and expensive commodity. They may have become extinct in Mesoamerica at the turn of the 1st millennium, but that's only my theory why there's no mention of them post c.20AD.

Yuri Kuchinsky has given links worth reading. Read them, then decide if there's any merit.

Horses in the Book of Mormon (FAIR):

Excerpts:

5. The Spanish conquest.

When the Maya saw the European goat they called it a “short-horned deer”18 and when the Miami Indians, who were familiar with cows, first encountered the unfamiliar buffalo they simply called them “wild cows.” Likewise the explorer DeSoto called the buffalo “vaca” which is Spanish for “cow.” The Delaware Indians named the cow “deer,” and a group of Miami Indians labeled the unfamiliar sheep “looks-like-a-cow.”

The reintroduced Spanish horse was unfamiliar to the Native Americans and so it became associated with either the deer or the tapir. When Cortes and his horses arrived,, the Aztecs simply called the unfamiliar horses “deer.” 20 One Aztec messenger reported to Montezuma: “Their deer carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of a house.

At least a few non-Mormon scholars believe that real horses (of a stature smaller than modern horses) may have survived New World extinction. The late British anthropologist, M.F. Ashley Montague, a non-LDS scholar who taught at Harvard, suggested that the horse never became extinct in America. According to Montague, the size of post-Columbian horses provides evidence that the European horses bred with early American horses. (My emphasis)

Unfortunately, however, such theories are typically seen as fringe among mainstream scholars. Due to the dearth of archaeological support, most scholars continue to believe that horses became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene period. Is it possible that real horses lived in the Americas during Book of Mormon times? And if so, why does there seem to be no archaeological support?

First, it is important to recognize that the Book of Mormon never states or implies that horses roamed the New World in large numbers–in fact, horses are mentioned very infrequently. If small pockets of horses lived in pre-Columbian America, it is possible that they would leave little if any trace in the archaeological record. We know, for example, that the Norsemen probably introduced horses, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs into the Eastern North America in the eleventh century A.D., yet these animals didn’t spread throughout the continent and they left no archeological remains.51 According to one non-LDS authority on ancient American, the Olmecs had domesticated dogs and turkeys but the damp acidic Mesoamerican soil would have destroyed any remains and any archaeological evidence of such animal domestication. (My emphasis)

Why haven’t pre-Columbian horse remains received greater attention from other scientists? As an article for the Academy of Natural Science explains, such discoveries are typically “either dismissed or ignored by the European scientific community.”57 The problem may be one of pre-conceived paradigms. Dr. Sorenson recently related the story of a non-LDS archaeologist colleague who was digging at an archaeological dig in Tula and discovered a horse tooth. He took it to his supervisor–the chief archaeologist–who said, “Oh, that’s a modern horse, throw it away” (which he did)–it was never dated. (My emphasis)

 

[Ray Agostini]

Hello, Ray! Always glad to talk to a jack Mormon! Saints and recovering Saints are fairly thick on the ground where I used to come from.

But in this context a must read would, I think, be Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Can I assume that you've read it? It continues in print after many decades.

Brodie's book was one of the first I read when exploring "anti-Mormonism", c.1979. It's not now considered among the best biographies of Joseph Smith, as many other biographies have now superseded it. It's actually now a sort of "relic" in the Joseph Smith biography genre.

As well it should, because it manages to raise ol' Prophet Smith's trashy, sordid, laughable, discreditable story to near-tragic levels -- tragedy as the Greek dramatists understood it, i.e., a tale of hubris and the destruction that it brings. It's a far finer literary monument than Conman Smitty could ever possibly deserve.

You need some updating.

 

[Ray Agostini]

I'm not gun shy. I am, however, unwilling to argue Ray Agostini's case for him. "Here, read this" is not a discussion. Ray can use all the links he likes to support his case, but it is up to him to state what his case is in the first place.

You criticise my usage of links, then go on to comment on one of them:

Were they relevant? Consider for example one of Ray's link regarding Israelites using Egyptian. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't read anything that said the artifacts in question were traceable to the Israelites. Without that explicit connection, the links were completely irrelevant and did not address the criticism quoted at all.

Care to specifically point out which link?

Also, there are serious doubts as to the neutrality of the sites linked.

And your case for this suggestion is....?

 

[Ray Agostini]

Did she raise them to be as brain-washed as she has presented herself in this thread? Are they mindless syophants with respect to the LDS Church?

What's a "syophant"?

 

[jsfisher]

What's a "syophant"?

It's a simple typographic error. Does that cause you angst?

 

[deaman]

Do you believe God is unknown or, inherently unknowable?

 

[Ray Agostini]

It's a simple typographic error. Does that cause you angst?

Your stereotyping is what causes me angst. Sarcasm ought to be greeted with sarcasm.

 

[jsfisher]

You criticise my usage of links, then go on to comment on one of them:

Yes, and those two actions are not inconsistent.

Care to specifically point out which link?

Have you not read your own links? Do any of them actually connect the ancient Israelites to Egyptian hieroglyphic text? If not, all of your links on the subject were shams, and it doesn't matter which one I had in mind.