Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
LDS
- Thread starter Janadele
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Knock on enough doors, you're going to find someone that will accept your spiel, someone that was in a vulnerable or suggestive mood, or just having experienced something that left them looking for answers. It's all in the timing and persistence, I'd imagine. And the lack of internet probably helped.
I had a friend who had a similar approach. After a certain hour in a bar or club, he'd just directly ask women to perform a particular ... favor ... for him. Once in a while, one said yes.
Makes me wonder about the pageants.
Not exactly a burning bosom, but when my wife got baptized Lutheran before our wedding, she totally experienced something. She described it as light flashes and an out of body feeling of peace.
Cat Tale
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Edited by kmortis:
Removed portion germane to split thread
Personally, I accept the Scriptures, Doctrine and teachings as received by the Prophets of God and which have been canonised as official LDS Scripture, and have no personal need for further elaboration or research. The Lord has given us more than enough for us to study, understand and abide by... there is little time for more in all the days of our mortal life.
As the Lord says in Section 88:77-79 of the Doctrine and Covenants, we're to study out and understand "things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass..." According to Elder John A. Widtsoe, these things include, but are not limited to:
Widtsoe said:
I do believe that there are many great and important things that both have and will be revealed (Art. of Faith 9) and that the scriptures are just a little bit of milk. I don't believe the Bible has the exact answer as to how Adam and Eve were created. I think the main point that it was making was that the earth was created, and so were all the creatures and mankind. It is now up to us to discover the complexities of the creation, which I believe is done by studying the creation itself through the study of oceanography, astronomy, geology, archeaology, history, cultures, etc.
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Janadele
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Janadele
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"Joseph Smith had in his possession three or four long scrolls, plus a hypocephalus (Facsimile 2). Of these original materials, only a handful of fragments were recovered at the Metropolitan Museum. The majority of the papyri remains lost, and has likely been destroyed. Critics who claim that we have all, or a majority, of the papyri possessed by Joseph Smith are simply mistaken.
The Egyptian characters on the recovered documents are a portion of the "Book of Breathings," an Egyptian religious text buried with mummies that instructed the dead on how to successfully reach the afterlife. This particular Book of Breathings was written for a deceased man named Hor, so it it usually called the Hor Book of Breathings.
Other than the vignette represented in Facsimile 1, the material on the papyri received by the Church, at least from a standard Egyptological point of view, does not include the actual text of the Book of Abraham."
New Era, January 1968.
The Egyptian characters on the recovered documents are a portion of the "Book of Breathings," an Egyptian religious text buried with mummies that instructed the dead on how to successfully reach the afterlife. This particular Book of Breathings was written for a deceased man named Hor, so it it usually called the Hor Book of Breathings.
Other than the vignette represented in Facsimile 1, the material on the papyri received by the Church, at least from a standard Egyptological point of view, does not include the actual text of the Book of Abraham."
New Era, January 1968.
Craig4
Penultimate Amazing
Yep, read it. You just linked to other responses that just aren't good enough. So is your position that you're just going to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes so you don't see that you've based your life on a lie? Is that really all you have? Is your connection to your most precious beliefs really just "I refuse to to see the evidence that Smith was a liar and pervert"? Do you have anything that would substantiate he got any of his silly little books right? I have to tell you, all you've done here is confirm to the lurkers that Mormonism is based on the lies of a sexual deviant. Nothing you've done has defended your poorly placed faith in you liar or "prophet" as you call the creature who originally deceived those poor deluded souls.
Can you look at your performance in this thread and honestly say that anyone casual observer would see what you've done as putting Mormonism in a positive light?
Epic Fail.
RandFan
Mormon Atheist
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You are now arguing by assertion. That is a fallacy. What exactly do you think you will accomplish in a thread where any non-Mormon can clearly see that you are not addressing questions in a substantive manner? We have provided copious amounts of data, facts and neutral authorities. There just is no comparison Janadele, you don't have the goods. You have ad hoc explanations. There is nothing there.
Janadele
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The Pearl of Great Price is official Scripture and therefore official Doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp?lang=eng
The Book of Abraham is a part of the Pearl of Great Price. "A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus."
(See History of the Church, 2:235–36, 348–51.)
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp?lang=eng
The Book of Abraham is a part of the Pearl of Great Price. "A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus."
(See History of the Church, 2:235–36, 348–51.)
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Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Janadele said:
Then perhaps you should stop posting them.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
Smith was talking bollocks about horses, elephants, cows, goats and swine in America at the time of his narrative. Yep, sure got that wrong but some people still believe it.
Recently I have started reading the Book of Mormon. The reason was because I was curious about Mormon beliefs. Well I found it a fascinating document and frankly I found it of real interest. It certainly is packed full of interesting stories. As a work of literature it definitely has it's pluses. As "real "history it is flatly a bust.
One of my interests is the pre-Columbian civilizations of the New World and The Book of Mormon contradicts so much of what we know has to be risible. There is no reason to take the book has a serious history of any part of the New World before Columbus. It has things like steel swords before Christ in the Americas!?!?
Still the book is a mine of fascinating stories which could easily be mined for other creative purposes. Reading it I was reminided of, of all things, the original Battle Star Galactica series, which I have learned was inspired by Various pieces of Mormon thought and stories.
One of my interests is the pre-Columbian civilizations of the New World and The Book of Mormon contradicts so much of what we know has to be risible. There is no reason to take the book has a serious history of any part of the New World before Columbus. It has things like steel swords before Christ in the Americas!?!?
Still the book is a mine of fascinating stories which could easily be mined for other creative purposes. Reading it I was reminided of, of all things, the original Battle Star Galactica series, which I have learned was inspired by Various pieces of Mormon thought and stories.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
Not what people who can read ancient Egyptian and understand the culture enough to recognize a funeral document and what the symbolism means thought. They thought Smith butchered Egyptian culture.
Egyptologist Dr. James H. Breasted of the University of Chicago noted:
"... these three facsimiles of Egyptian documents in the ‘Pearl of Great Price’ depict the most common objects in the Mortuary religion of Egypt. Joseph Smith’s interpretations of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham, therefore, very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization."[26]
Dr. W.M. Flinders Petrie of London University wrote:
"It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations"[27]
Dr. A.H. Sayce, Oxford professor of Egyptology,
“It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud.... Smith has turned the goddess [Isis in Facsimile No. 3] into a king and Osiris into Abraham.”[28]
"... these three facsimiles of Egyptian documents in the ‘Pearl of Great Price’ depict the most common objects in the Mortuary religion of Egypt. Joseph Smith’s interpretations of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham, therefore, very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization."[26]
Dr. W.M. Flinders Petrie of London University wrote:
"It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations"[27]
Dr. A.H. Sayce, Oxford professor of Egyptology,
“It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud.... Smith has turned the goddess [Isis in Facsimile No. 3] into a king and Osiris into Abraham.”[28]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham#Controversy_and_Criticism
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tsig
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One bottle of antiacid tablets could have scotched the whole Mormon church.
Empress
Piggish
Goody for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Doesn't stop your official doctrine from being a pants-load of the first water.
RandFan
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We know that Archeologists and experts in Egyptian language have called the Book of Abraham a fraud. We can contrast and compare what Smith wrote with the facts and it's clear that Smith was making it up.
tsig
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So the BoA was on the Lost Papayri?
Abraham wrote with his own hand on papyrus then this papyrus was preserved and finally in the hands of a traveling sideshow barker who sold it to Smith.
Smith must have been a magnet for lost documents.
ETA: Smith then copies the hieroglyphics we do have into the BoA for reasons only prophets understand.
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Empress
Piggish
By all accounts JS was a highly imaginative person, and could regale his family with stories so replete with detail that listeners could have sworn he was reciting things he'd actually seen. Of course, he was also a execrably dreadful writer, which is why you get "and it came to pass" approx fifty billion times in that short book.
I suspect he was also very personally charismatic, so it's not surprising that so many people followed him in his life, and that he was able to talk so many women into his bed despite the mores of the time. He even had people flocking back to his church after he lost all their money in a bank he started, which speaks to his high charisma.
What I find so extraordinary is how such an obvious fraud still has so many adherents today when there is no charismatic head to lead them and a founding book that is, at best, laughable.
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RandFan
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There have been other findings of the Book of Breathing. Unfortunately for Mormons, Smiths version is the only to contain blasphemy, heresy and a claim that an Egyptian murdered Abraham. Yeah, THAT'S what you would want in an Egyptian religious text. Oh, and one other bit of interesting convenience. The part about Abraham is missing. Never mind that in every instance that Smith "translated" something and we have something like the facsimiles to compare it with Smith was wrong.
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tsig
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The fact that Smith labeled the drawing and put the labels in the BoA proves that he used the papyri we have to 'translate' the BoA rather than any lost papyri.
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