LDS II: The Mormons

[Slowvehicle]

Of course religion requires a "double think:" a way of somehow not applying the knowledge and logic that are routinely used in other areas of one's life to the religious stories that so many people believe: invisible beings, miracles, etc. It is often the very illogical nature of these stories that is meant to set them apart and we are told that believing in them despite the illogic is a test of our faith. It is an intriguing window into the workings of the human brain that so many people do accept these impossible stories, even though different people accept wildly different impossible stories.

Unfortunately for the LDS Church, the beginnings of their religion date to historic times, and and least a portion of their claims can be compared to what is know from history, archeology, and verbal accounts. This makes a belief in these claims even harder. We may suspect (or worse) that it is unlikely that Moses spoke to a burning bush, but at least the Old Testament did not claim that the burning bush was a modern Monsanto version of cultivated corn or that Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt in 1855. Of course all the evidence that we do have is that the Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt, but the proposed date for the Exodus makes finding this evidence harder than finding the evidence that disputes many more of the more recent LDS claims.

I would also add that if we look at how quickly the Native Americans in the Plains added the horse to their culture after the Spanish arrived, it alone makes the idea that they once had domesticated horses, but stopped using them, even more amazing.

I particularly enjoy the claim that some Native American tribes have "oral traditions" "demonstrating" that they never lost the horse...yet have no word for horse in their own language.

It is like unto the claim that First Woman told the Diné to celebrate a young woman's kinaalda with a cake "an axe handle wide, and studded with raisins", when the Diné first encountered grapes (and hafted tools) in 1864, after their forced resettlement in Bosque Redondo...

 

[tsig]

It's worse than that.

If there were a stall, he could at least make the theoretical claim that a horse was once there. There is no stall. There is no barn. There's no evidence that anyone in the region KNEW how to even BUILD a horse barn. There are no horse trails, no pictures of horses and no evidence of a single piece of horse tack or horse shoes.

There aren't even LEGENDS about horses OR horse stalls.

There's literally more evidence of pre-Colombian ThunderBirds than there are of domesticates horses, because there are at least cultural references to Thunder Birds in the legends. What culture domesticates horses and yet lacks even a SINGLE mention of them in religion, culture or legend for THOUSANDS of years of history?

Do you know what the Upper Siwash Indians used as totem animals during the spring of 1308? If not how can you pronounce about horses.

 

[Pup]

I think we can see the result of that pressure in some of the practicing Mormons on this forum. We've had an ongoing exchange with a person who claims to be a member of a moral religion, yet freely lies about the positions of other people to try and support the debunked, threadbare lie of steel working and domesticated horses in the Americas before Europeans invaded.

Just look at the fictions and fabrications Mormons convince themselves of even today. Some of the pages that have been linked to in this thread are shocking in their disconnect from reality. You need to essentially perform something of an ongoing mental lobotomy to accept the whoppers the con man Joseph smith sold his followers.

That's why I can--sort of--understand why someone can adopt a position of NOMA, but I just can't see how one can expect accurate hard evidence from one's religion, without one's head exploding. Existing religions just don't offer it. That's well known these days and no surprise.

"Love your neighbor as yourself" is a squishy enough bit of truth that it doesn't need to be evidence-based. You can believe it's a good idea and defend that belief pretty well, without needing to produce a long chain of logical support.

But the weakness of every religion shows up when one ties such squishy truths together with hard truths like the formation of planets or the origin of American horses and expects religion to provide the same level of evidence for both. All known religions fail when they try, so the solution needs to either be NOMA, throw the whole religion out and develop one's own moral/ethical compass, or deal with massive cognitive dissonance.

The latter choice (cognitive dissonance) unfortunately makes one look foolish to most everyone else.

Obviously there are the scientific-minded who have no motivation to desperately search for horses and steel (or pick any topic from cosmology to anthropology that a religion pontificates about), and they consider anyone who's fixated on such an oddball viewpoint to be yet another crackpot.

But it also makes one look foolish to the non-scientific-minded who couldn't care less about ancient history but who want to cling to their religion. There are lots of people who really do see anthropology, archaelogy and such things as pointless nitpicking about topics that have no real-world influence in their daily lives, whether they're religious or not. But if they are religious, they certainly don't see those things as important enough to bring down their religion and don't understand why someone should get hung up on them.

 

[tsig]

I particularly enjoy the claim that some Native American tribes have "oral traditions" "demonstrating" that they never lost the horse...yet have no word for horse in their own language.

It is like unto the claim that First Woman told the Diné to celebrate a young woman's kinaalda with a cake "an axe handle wide, and studded with raisins", when the Diné first encountered grapes (and hafted tools) in 1864, after their forced resettlement in Bosque Redondo...

The mere existence of Native American tribes gives the lie to the BoM. In the BoM you have whites living on the continent much as they did in Joe's day yet there are the Indians so where did all the whites go?

 

[halleyscomet]

The mere existence of Native American tribes gives the lie to the BoM. In the BoM you have whites living on the continent much as they did in Joe's day yet there are the Indians so where did all the whites go?

Oh, the BoM explains that.

The Jews who turned against God were cursed with dark skin and, after many generations of warfare, killed off all the white, God-fearing Jews, leaving only the ones who were cursed with dark skin for turning against God.

 

[Giordano]

Oh, the BoM explains that.

The Jews who turned against God were cursed with dark skin and, after many generations of warfare, killed off all the white, God-fearing Jews, leaving only the ones who were cursed with dark skin for turning against God.

Must have changed their DNA sequence too, to mix in a lot of asian-derived sequences.

 

[halleyscomet]

Must have changed their DNA sequence too, to mix in a lot of asian-derived sequences.

There are some very tortured apologetic arguments to "explain" that. I think the best summary is the Irreligiosophy podcast episode 25: LDS DNA

For episode 25 we tackle Mormon claims of Native American ancestry. Now that we’ve unraveled the secrets of DNA, can we put these Mormon claims to the test? What does DNA have to say about the history of the Americas, its first inhabitants, and where they came from? Could it be that Mormons are correct when they claim Native Americans descended from a group of Hebrews who left Jerusalem around 600 BC?

Short answer: no. For the longer answer, listen up ...

 

[Pup]

I particularly enjoy the claim that some Native American tribes have "oral traditions" "demonstrating" that they never lost the horse...yet have no word for horse in their own language.

It is like unto the claim that First Woman told the Diné to celebrate a young woman's kinaalda with a cake "an axe handle wide, and studded with raisins", when the Diné first encountered grapes (and hafted tools) in 1864, after their forced resettlement in Bosque Redondo...

Here's an example on another forum, with no Mormon in sight, but the same religious-logic-based need to believe:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8857900#post8857900 (scroll down to start with post #129, where Kuwisdeli says, "Some tribes always had some horses.")

The main participants are, on the one side, Kuwisdeli and Milkweed, who have native American ancestry and follow Native American religions or at least claim a belief in the accuracy of their religious oral traditions. On the other side are Medievalist, Richard Garfinkle, and ahem, some poster named Pup.

Milkweed begins by claiming scientists believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted, as shown by a scientific journal article. That claim gets lowered even by Kuwisdeli to a little less crazy one: Kuwisdeli claims some Native American tribes have always have horses. That gets challenged by the opposition, on the usual archeological/anthropological grounds similar to what's been posted here.

People argue a bit, but eventually, the religious side shows that it's about their beliefs being right and unchallengeable, rather than about using "evidence" in normal scientific ways.

Kuwisdeli's post on the following page, #157, shows that conventional logic has left the building and something else is being applied, in order to make the argument unlosable: "I accept both historical and scientific evidence. I accept all kinds of evidence. My own experience most of all... I've seen horses that were really spirits. They could have easily existed in America for millennia and left no trace."

There's no arguing with that. If anyone can claim to have seen spirit horses (or invisible dragons in their garage) and expect to offer such a claim as evidence of actual ancient horse culture, anyone can claim anything and everything.

I really couldn't care less how long ago horse-culture existed in the Americas. Seriously. It has zero effect on my modern real life and means nothing to me.

I do care when people are feeding me a line of nonsense with a veneer of logic and expecting me to believe it as if it follows a normal chain of evidence. That kind of con-game attitude does affect my modern real life and is something I want to watch out for and keep sharp at spotting.

 

[tsig]

Here's an example on another forum, with no Mormon in sight, but the same religious-logic-based need to believe:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8857900#post8857900 (scroll down to start with post #129, where Kuwisdeli says, "Some tribes always had some horses.")

The main participants are, on the one side, Kuwisdeli and Milkweed, who have native American ancestry and follow Native American religions or at least claim a belief in the accuracy of their religious oral traditions. On the other side are Medievalist, Richard Garfinkle, and ahem, some poster named Pup.

Milkweed begins by claiming scientists believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted, as shown by a scientific journal article. That claim gets lowered even by Kuwisdeli to a little less crazy one: Kuwisdeli claims some Native American tribes have always have horses. That gets challenged by the opposition, on the usual archeological/anthropological grounds similar to what's been posted here.

People argue a bit, but eventually, the religious side shows that it's about their beliefs being right and unchallengeable, rather than about using "evidence" in normal scientific ways.

Kuwisdeli's post on the following page, #157, shows that conventional logic has left the building and something else is being applied, in order to make the argument unlosable: "I accept both historical and scientific evidence. I accept all kinds of evidence. My own experience most of all... I've seen horses that were really spirits. They could have easily existed in America for millennia and left no trace."

There's no arguing with that. If anyone can claim to have seen spirit horses (or invisible dragons in their garage) and expect to offer such a claim as evidence of actual ancient horse culture, anyone can claim anything and everything.

I really couldn't care less how long ago horse-culture existed in the Americas. Seriously. It has zero effect on my modern real life and means nothing to me.

I do care when people are feeding me a line of nonsense with a veneer of logic and expecting me to believe it as if it follows a normal chain of evidence. That kind of con-game attitude does affect my modern real life and is something I want to watch out for and keep sharp at spotting.

Religion needs a lot of "faith" links in the chain of evidence.

 

[Minoosh]

Did anyone have steel 2,000 years ago?

 

[JaysonR]

Yes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel#Ancient_steel

But not South America. Smelting has never been found evident in that region at that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America

 

[Craig4]

If you want to get a good idea of what the landscape archeology around an Iron Age smelting site looked like, look for a "Time Team" episode on YouTube. In the search block just put "Time Team" and "Iron Age" and you should get a few episodes. I'm not entirely in love with how they do they excavations but the video should show you the scope of the endeavor that smelting iron was.

 

[skyrider44]

. . . It is ridiculously disingenuous after all this time to pretend that the LDS church has not tried to promote its beliefs in the form of civil legislation.

Of course the LDS Church has tried to promote its beliefs in the form of civil legislation.

Even if you are right that the LDS church should be able to do all it has done to promote legislation and social policy, and even if you are right that the legislation and social policy are true, righteous and great, these are then appropriate points of discussion.

I agree completely.

You cannot turn off a discussion simply by stating to a person that the LDS church has never succeeded in impacting him personally.

I made no attempt to "turn off" the discussion. I simply asked how _____
had been personally impacted by the policies of the LDS Church. He or you or someone else cited the state's liquor laws, apparently thinking in the past.
He/you/whoever seems unaware that some states have liquor laws virtually as stringent as Utah's were. Case in point: Massachusetts, where "happy hours" are illegal (no Mormons of whom I'm aware are on that state's liquor control board). And buying booze in Kansas is so complicated that customers need a laptop to navigate their purchases (well, almost). I should note that the information for MA and KS may have changed since 2012, when the cited conditions were in effect.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Of course the LDS Church has tried to promote its beliefs in the form of civil legislation.
I agree completely.
I made no attempt to "turn off" the discussion. I simply asked how _____
had been personally impacted by the policies of the LDS Church. He or you or someone else cited the state's liquor laws, apparently thinking in the past.
He/you/whoever seems unaware that some states have liquor laws virtually as stringent as Utah's were. Case in point: Massachusetts, where "happy hours" are illegal (no Mormons of whom I'm aware are on that state's liquor control board). And buying booze in Kansas is so complicated that customers need a laptop to navigate their purchases (well, almost). I should note that the information for MA and KS may have changed since 2012, when the cited conditions were in effect.

Now that you have delivered yourself of that disingenuous eos quoque, when, in your opinion, are the exciting "american chapters" if the BoM to be supposed to have taken place? Where,in your opinion, were the events described to be supposed to have taken place? For that matter, when, in your opinion, is þͤ Fludde to be supposed to have taken place?

 

[Giordano]

Of course the LDS Church has tried to promote its beliefs in the form of civil legislation.



I agree completely.



I made no attempt to "turn off" the discussion. I simply asked how _____
had been personally impacted by the policies of the LDS Church. He or you or someone else cited the state's liquor laws, apparently thinking in the past.
He/you/whoever seems unaware that some states have liquor laws virtually as stringent as Utah's were. Case in point: Massachusetts, where "happy hours" are illegal (no Mormons of whom I'm aware are on that state's liquor control board). And buying booze in Kansas is so complicated that customers need a laptop to navigate their purchases (well, almost). I should note that the information for MA and KS may have changed since 2012, when the cited conditions were in effect.

I must assume I was he or you (you had a little trouble assigning the quote?). You asked a question fully knowing the answer that yes, the LDS church does impact non believers? GREAT.

So I gave two examples, one of which I acknowledged was historic and relatively trivial, the other of which is major and more recent. But you don't deny either, just that other religions have sought to influence liquor legislation. Well to save you some trouble, I will even note in advance that other religions have also been anti-gay, although you are strangely silent on the LDS Church's role in Prop 8 in CA.. That is not what you asked at all. You asked if the church of LDS has impacted me personally and against my wishes. Even although I am not a believer in its religion. And clearly it has, as you now acknowledge. So did you know this all along, or did you just discover this?

 

[skyrider44]

I will be interested to see if the "evidence" he [Skyrider] claims he plans to present, "later", is just a re-iteration of the "Montagu quote" (that is not a statement of Montagu's opinion, but a statement about something Montagu said about someone else's opinion, and an unidentified someone else. at that), or a re-iteration of Kuchinsky's "work".

You have said repeatedly and unequivocally that there is no evidence for the content of the Book of Mormon.

Perhaps you were among those who made light of Lehi's statement in 1 Nephi 2:6, 8-9 in which Lehi describes pitching his tent in "a valley by the side of a river of water" (6) . . . and "he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea" (8) . . . and he praised the river because it was "continually running . . . ." (9)

Critics said that no rivers flowed into the Red Sea, let alone rivers that flowed continually. Thus Joseph Smith made yet another blunder. Not so. George D. Potter, in an article titled "A New Candidate in Arabia for the Valley of Lemuel" (Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999, pp. 54-63) describes how, in looking for a well in Arabia, he came across a narrow canyon that ended in a cove on the coast of the Red Sea. "The canyon has a small stream that flows continually, throughout the entire year." Potter photographed the stream and made a 35-minute video titled Discovering the Valley of Lemuel (see NephiProject.com). Jeff Lindsay (quoted above) notes that "following Nephi's directions almost inevitably would lead one to encounter . . . the spring that is the source of the 'River Laman' at the beginning of the Valley of Lemuel, and that this is just where the Book of Mormon says it is. It is there—and no one in the Americas knew of it in Joseph
Smith's day. Few experts know of it in this day." www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml

Could Potter's stream qualify as a river? Potter notes that there are several Hebrew words which qualify as the river.

The author of the foregoing will be denounced within nanoseconds of this posting, as will the content of his account proper. That is of little consequence inasmuch as the naysayers have made it clear that they cannot accept even a smidgen of information—even the most minute particle of data—that runs counter to their set-in-concrete beliefs about the Book of Mormon. That, as I have noted previously, is something less than scientific and demonstrates a bias that is palpable. Responsible scientific minds, including those owned by high school science teachers, place no constraints on the search for truth. Who would have thought, for example, that a certain bacterium causes some stomach ulcers—and not stress as was commonly believed for decades (until a South African doctor discovered otherwise)?

 

[SezMe]

As for why discuss LDS doctrine in the first plate,....

Given we're talking about Joe Smith's invention, that has to be the best typo EVAH!!!!

 

[bruto]

Of course the LDS Church has tried to promote its beliefs in the form of civil legislation.



I agree completely.



I made no attempt to "turn off" the discussion. I simply asked how _____
had been personally impacted by the policies of the LDS Church. He or you or someone else cited the state's liquor laws, apparently thinking in the past.
He/you/whoever seems unaware that some states have liquor laws virtually as stringent as Utah's were. Case in point: Massachusetts, where "happy hours" are illegal (no Mormons of whom I'm aware are on that state's liquor control board). And buying booze in Kansas is so complicated that customers need a laptop to navigate their purchases (well, almost). I should note that the information for MA and KS may have changed since 2012, when the cited conditions were in effect.

Untrue. In Post #1623 you suggested that Olowkow should not even be discussing religion because he considers yours to be superstition. If that is not a call to end the discussion, what is?

In Post # 1672, you asked how Halleyscomet had personally been affected by the practices of the LDS church, but it was not in response to a suggestion that he had been so affected, but to a suggestion that the LDS church had engaged in attempts to control the behavior of non Mormons. You were off the mark then and you're off it now.

 

[Giordano]

You have said repeatedly and unequivocally that there is no evidence for the content of the Book of Mormon.

I believe that you are misquoting and severely misunderstanding the critics here again. Did anyone here suggest that there is no truth in the Book of Mormon? If the book mentions the Sun do your critics claim that there is no Sun? So even if there is a "river," that doesn't prove any of the other claims of the Book of Mormon.

No, I don't know about the existence or not of the 'river" you mention. But that is not the point at all. In fact, I can't recall anyone here bringing this matter up before. So what then is your evidence in favor of the issues that have been brought up: pre-Columbian domesticated horses, widespread metal coinages and steel in the New World?

 

[Craig4]

So, which words in Hebrew did JS use to describe the river as depicted in the website?