Book of Mormon foolishness--Jaredite ships

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In my mind, the elephant in the LDS living room is Joseph Smith. Everything Mormon relies 100% on believing what he said. I note that God has always used numerous prophets, over numerous centuries, to reveal what is to come. God also leaves behind physical evidence of what He has done (names, dates, places, physical structures, etc.). Even the smallest of human civilizations leaves evidence.

So, why would enormous civilizations engaged in an epic battle to the end leave, well, nothing behind? All we have is Joseph Smith’s grave.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Just to add a note of fairness, do you literally believe in the story of Noah’s Ark? Or that the sun actually stood still for Joshua? I don’t, but I still think the Bible is full of truth. Parker finds a lot of truth in the Book of Mormon. I’m not sure it has to be literally true either.
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The BoM is based on a deception, making it unreliable and a foundation of sand. Are you saying the Bible is also a deception and is just as unreliable?
 
po18guy said:
In my mind, the elephant in the LDS living room is Joseph Smith. Everything Mormon relies 100% on believing what he said. I note that God has always used numerous prophets, over numerous centuries, to reveal what is to come. God also leaves behind physical evidence of what He has done (names, dates, places, physical structures, etc.). Even the smallest of human civilizations leaves evidence.

So, why would enormous civilizations engaged in an epic battle to the end leave, well, nothing behind? All we have is Joseph Smith’s grave.
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But if evidence of Book of Mormon civilizations remained, nobody would need to have faith anymore. Or so the Mormons say. So God lets the evidence remain hidden so that people have to make a choice to choose Mormonism or not. Of course there is no reason to believe that people would flock to Mormonism just because they find some iron mills in ancient American relics. Such would be evidence for the Book of Mormon, but not proof. And they can’t even come up with something as simple as that.
 
ParkerD said:
Rebecca,
Thanks for another good laugh. Funny stuff!
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Yep, this from the web site was hilarious:
Mormon interest in the Michigan Relics had never entirely died away, despite James Talmage’s unequivocal dismissal of them. In This Land: Zarahemla and the Nephite Nation, written by Edwin G. Goble and Wayne N. May (editor and publisher of the Ancient American), the relics are crucial evidence in the authors’ search for the geographical location of episodes in the Book of Mormon. Since the 2002 publication of This Land, Goble has publicly stated that he now accepts the conclusion of recent articles in BYU Studies that the relics are fraudulent.
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That comes from this page at the site:

sos.state.mi.us/history/michrelics/revived.html

Note the cover of the Ancient American – I thought that was something I saw in a web site you mentioned. Interestingly, I’ve heard that Rodney Meldrum is using the Michigan Relics as proof in his presentations. Of course he doesn’t believe in the Nephites in Central America theory and sells (literally) an Eastern North America approach based on Algonquin Haplogroup X mtDNA:

bookofmormonevidence.org/page.php?page=rod

More people grasping at straws.
 
Catholic20064 said:
But if evidence of Book of Mormon civilizations remained, nobody would need to have faith anymore. Or so the Mormons say. So God lets the evidence remain hidden so that people have to make a choice to choose Mormonism or not. Of course there is no reason to believe that people would flock to Mormonism just because they find some iron mills in ancient American relics. Such would be evidence for the Book of Mormon, but not proof. And they can’t even come up with something as simple as that.
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Their claims are actually evidence that they worship a different god. We know that the One God is unchanging and unchangeable. If we are to believe what the LDS puts forth, we must then also believe that God has indeed changed and suddenly began acting in a substantially different manner than He had throughout all of human history. God, Who requires faith always leaves physical evidence of His works behind. But, this is the action of a Creator God, not a created god.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Just to add a note of fairness, do you literally believe in the story of Noah’s Ark? Or that the sun actually stood still for Joshua? I don’t, but I still think the Bible is full of truth. Parker finds a lot of truth in the Book of Mormon. I’m not sure it has to be literally true either.
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Christine,
I suppose that I might as well point out that I believe in the deluge, in the sense that the world Noah was familiar with was destroyed by water and his family survived that deluge by building the Ark. I am confident of that belief, but I don’t have a “spiritual witness” about it as I do about many Biblical teachings and as I do about the Book of Mormon teachings.

What I never find when I read anyone’s debunking efforts about the Book of Mormon is an explanation of the evident “authenticity” that I find in the writings: the idiomatic expressions, the diction, the flashbacks, the sincerity, the changes in writing styles from one author to another. Another “authenticity” I have found is that by using the Book of Mormon as a teaching source and a learning source for some 35 years or so, including expanded use of it more recently in my life, I have “tested” and “authenticated” the teachings (meaning those taught by the prophets who were teaching righteous ways of living–bearing in mind that not every person in the Book of Mormon was righteous nor does the fact, for example, that Nephi was asked by the Spirit to kill Laban, who had robbed his family, mean that anyone else will ever be asked to do anything like that, it having been a very unique circumstance.)

Jerusha cited Tolkein as a comparison. I picked up a Tolkein book as a teen, and read perhaps less than a page, and decided I didn’t like it. The writing doesn’t sound “authentic” to me. The Spalding writing sounds anything but authentic–it is obviously contrived. Joseph Conrad is a good writer, but “Heart of Darkness” is obviously a work of fiction in that there is no authenticity although in a good work of fiction, that is what the writer attempts to do by creating the “aura” of authenticity through various means. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was an author who did that well…

Shakespeare creates different “personas” in his characters who talk differently than each other, and he is brilliantly consistent as he develops those “personas” including their knowledge of life at court plus accurate use of different languages–and in fact, that is one of the reasons that a large number of people including Supreme Court Justice Stevens conclude that Shakespeare was a disguise name for the real author, whom they believe (and I concur) was the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. (There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about that, April 18, 2009.

Thanks, all, and thank you, Christina, for your evenness and kindness. Have a great weekend, all!
 
ParkerD said:
Christine,
I suppose that I might as well point out that I believe in the deluge, in the sense that the world Noah was familiar with was destroyed by water and his family survived that deluge by building the Ark. I am confident of that belief, but I don’t have a “spiritual witness” about it as I do about many Biblical teachings and as I do about the Book of Mormon teachings.

What I never find when I read anyone’s debunking efforts about the Book of Mormon is an explanation of the evident “authenticity” that I find in the writings: the idiomatic expressions, the diction, the flashbacks, the sincerity, the changes in writing styles from one author to another. Another “authenticity” I have found is that by using the Book of Mormon as a teaching source and a learning source for some 35 years or so, including expanded use of it more recently in my life, I have “tested” and “authenticated” the teachings (meaning those taught by the prophets who were teaching righteous ways of living–bearing in mind that not every person in the Book of Mormon was righteous nor does the fact, for example, that Nephi was asked by the Spirit to kill Laban, who had robbed his family, mean that anyone else will ever be asked to do anything like that, it having been a very unique circumstance.)

Jerusha cited Tolkein as a comparison. I picked up a Tolkein book as a teen, and read perhaps less than a page, and decided I didn’t like it. The writing doesn’t sound “authentic” to me. The Spalding writing sounds anything but authentic–it is obviously contrived. Joseph Conrad is a good writer, but “Heart of Darkness” is obviously a work of fiction in that there is no authenticity although in a good work of fiction, that is what the writer attempts to do by creating the “aura” of authenticity through various means. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was an author who did that well…

Shakespeare creates different “personas” in his characters who talk differently than each other, and he is brilliantly consistent as he develops those “personas” including their knowledge of life at court plus accurate use of different languages–and in fact, that is one of the reasons that a large number of people including Supreme Court Justice Stevens conclude that Shakespeare was a disguise name for the real author, whom they believe (and I concur) was the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. (There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about that, April 18, 2009.

Thanks, all, and thank you, Christina, for your evenness and kindness. Have a great weekend, all!
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You too Parker. To me it doesn’t matter if you believe in the Book of Mormon or not. I think you are a very good fine Christian man, it shows in so many ways.
 
RebeccaJ said:
The BoM is based on a deception, making it unreliable and a foundation of sand. Are you saying the Bible is also a deception and is just as unreliable?
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The Bible has multiple attestation. Parts of it are historical, & are confirmed - the Prism of Sennacherib gives an account of Sennacherib’s expedition against Judah & corroborates the Judahite account. There is no American Sennacherib, not any American Prism of Sennacherib, to corroborate the BoM’s account of the wars it mentions.​

The Judahite account of events is strongly theological - but so is the Assyrian account. In both cases, it is historical events that are being interpreted theologically: the theology is not being applied to outright fictions, but to real events. Where are the real events in the BoM ? That is the difference, or one of them, between the OT books & the BoM.
 
Catholic20064 said:
But if evidence of Book of Mormon civilizations remained, nobody would need to have faith anymore. Or so the Mormons say.
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So why is there evidence of - let us say - Joseph Smith ? And what is the good of having the signatures of the witnesses that appear in the front of every copy of the BoM ? They can’t have it both ways.​

So God lets the evidence remain hidden so that people have to make a choice to choose Mormonism or not. Of course there is no reason to believe that people would flock to Mormonism just because they find some iron mills in ancient American relics. Such would be evidence for the Book of Mormon, but not proof. And they can’t even come up with something as simple as that.
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The Mormon argument is too imprecise to work - it makes assertions of the voyage of (say) the journey of Brigham Young to Venus impossible to refute. And a million other such assertions too. It’s an illogical defence. First they think chiasmus is somehow significant, then they commit logical howlers like that, or they imagine that the Book of Abraham tells of his narrow escape from being sacrificed in Egypt - that’s rhetoric, logic & Egyptology done for: what else are they hopeless at 😦 ? This depth of ignorance is possible only if one reads a holy book & nothing else 😦 It’s depressing 😦​

 
ParkerD said:
… that is what the writer attempts to do by creating the “aura” of authenticity through various means. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was an author who did that well…
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by the way, a lot of anti-Mormons cite Mark Twain’s passages from “Roughing It” as a good ridicule of the Book of Mormon. However, Mark Twain admired Brigham Young!

Visiting Brigham Young in 1861 with his brother Orion, Mark Twain wrote: “He [Brigham Young] was very simply dressed and was just taking off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians, and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our secretary and certain government officials who came with us. But he never paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts to ‘draw him out’ on federal politics and his high handed attitude toward Congress. . . . But he merely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I have seen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddling with her tail. By and by, I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the end, hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant savage. But he was calm. . . . When the audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his hand on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my brother: ‘Ah—your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?’” (Mark Twain, Roughing It [Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 1872], 112-13.)
 
What is obvious to Christians is that the LDS worship a different god. Their god is different in origin, different in nature, and different in his methods. Knowing and believing this makes it much easier to deal with them. They are not Christians in the accepted sense of the word, because their christ, as with their god, is different from ours.
 
po18guy said:
What is obvious to Christians is that the LDS worship a different god. Their god is different in origin, different in nature, and different in his methods. Knowing and believing this makes it much easier to deal with them. They are not Christians in the accepted sense of the word, because their christ, as with their god, is different from ours.
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Which of their gods are we talking about 😦 ?​

 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

Which of their gods are we talking about 😦 ?​

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Gottle of Geer,
I assume you want a response. The following description of the members of the Godhead describe how we view the Godhead in the LDS church:

"The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all distinct persons:

"254 The divine persons are really distinct from one another. "God is one but not solitary."86 “Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son.“87”

So, the Catechism is saying that the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are distinct persons."
 
ParkerD said:
Gottle of Geer,
I assume you want a response. The following description of the members of the Godhead describe how we view the Godhead in the LDS church:

"The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all distinct persons:

"254 The divine persons are really distinct from one another. "God is one but not solitary."86 “Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son.“87”

So, the Catechism (Hey! Where’d they get that term???) is saying that the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are distinct persons."
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Now, tell the whole truth. Is this not a god who ascended from a human? One who was elevated by another god, who also used to be human? A god who is not one with either “Jesus Christ” or the “Holy spirit”? In other words, a different god from the Christian God?

Small print: It is not a sin in the LDS organization to use lies and deception in the furtherance of the faith.
 
po18guy said:
Now, tell the whole truth. Is this not a god who ascended from a human? One who was elevated by another god, who also used to be human? A god who is not one with either “Jesus Christ” or the “Holy spirit”? In other words, a different god from the Christian God?

Small print: It is not a sin in the LDS organization to use lies and deception in the furtherance of the faith.
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From Wikipedia:

The Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants both describe God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three different beings as one ———oneness to be in purpose, desire, and all divine attributes while maintaining their physical and personal distinctness. They are not, however, considered to be one in substance. A number of sections of the Book of Mormon, for example, show Jesus appearing with a body of spirit before his birth, and with a tangible body after his resurrection.

Prior to Jesus’s birth, The Book of Mormon depicts Jesus as a spirit “without flesh and blood”, although with a spirit “body” that looked similar to that as Jesus would appear during his physical life. (Ether 3). Moreover, Jesus described himself as follows: “Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters.” (Ether 3:14). In another passage of The Book of Mormon, the prophet Abinadi stated,

“I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—the Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—and they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.” (Mosiah 15:1-4).

After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into heaven, The Book of Mormon states that he visited a small group of people in the Americas, who saw that he had a tangible body. During his visit, he was announced by the voice of God the Father, and those present felt the Holy Spirit, but only the Son was seen. Jesus is quoted,

“Father, thou hast given them the Holy Ghost because they believe in me; and thou seest that they believe in me because thou hearest them, and they pray unto me; and they pray unto me because I am with them. And now Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one.” (3 Nephi 19:22-23).

The Book of Mormon states that Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are “one” (See 3 Nephi 11:36). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints interprets this “oneness” as a metaphorical oneness in spirit, purpose, and glory, rather than a physical or bodily unity. On the other hand, some Latter Day Saint sects, such as the Community of Christ, consider the Book of Mormon to be consistent with trinitarianism.

In 1838, Smith published a narrative of his First Vision, in which he described seeing both God the Father and a separate Jesus Christ in a vision.

In public sermons later in life, Smith began to describe what he thought was the true nature of the Godhead in much greater detail. In 1843, Smith provided his final public description in which he described God the Father as having a physical body, and the Holy Spirit, also, is a distinct personage: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” (D&C 130:22).

Jesus is identified as The Son; he is also identified with God the Father.
 
ParkerD said:
So, the Catechism is saying that the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are distinct persons."
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And so they are: three distinct persons who are one being. Or rather, one being whose nature it is to exist as a family of three persons.
 
PaulDupre said:
And so they are: three distinct persons who are one being. Or rather, one being whose nature it is to exist as a family of three persons.
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But, you are giving the Christian definition of the trinity. I have found that certain LDS members must be pinned down before they will admit to the entire Mormon definition of their god.
 
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