Ex-Mormon Missionaries

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AmandaPS:
But I just have one more question for rod: Do you believe Joseph Smith’s claim that the Garden of Eden was originally in Missouri?
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I don’t know. It is possible, but I don’t really know. At one time, all the continents were together as one big continent. It is possible that the land which is now Missouri was orignally positioned in the correct place to have contained the Garden of Eden. But at this time, I could only speculate. One of the Catholics on this forum has already claimed that the Garden of Eden was destroyed in the flood. Unless there is real evidence found to prove that the Garden of Eden existed on some other continent, the land of Missouri is as good as any land where the Garden of Eden could have existed.
 
rod of iron:
Why would someone look on the Catholic Answers web site to learn about the LDS church? Should a person look on the LDS web site to learn about the Catholic church? Neither approach makes any sense to me. If you want to know what the Mormons believe, you should go to their web site, and after reading their site, compare what they believe with what the Bible teaches. Not all of the beliefs of the LDS church are different than what the Catholic church teaches.
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And Exporter says:
When looking at the LDS sites you will only see what they want you to see! They do not even tell “new” Mormons the inner “truths” until they have been proven to be a Mormon for a few years…maybe by age 28 to 30.
I am R. Catholic 100%, but I have read the Book of Mormon, given to me by a Mormon. I have seen the websites and have talked to a few old Mormons. I don’t know it all, but here are a few things Mormons don’t make public.:tsktsk:

1.They say each of us was the result of a male God and a Female God copulating - making “soul children”.
2. God is made of flesh and bone.
3. There are 3 distinct and Separate Persons in the Trinity…not 3 in 1! They say Jesus is not God!
4. They believe that they have the opportunity to become a God and have your own “world”.
5. The death penalty must be carried out so blood is spilled so that the old “blood sacrifice” done for atonement and salvation. Thus Utah has death by the firing squad.
6. They say the living can do a ritual in the Mormon Temple so that people long dead, and not Mormon, can be made Mormon, even tho they are dead.
 
rod of iron:
Not so. I don’t require knowledge. Since Catholics claim that they have this knowledge, I ask them for proof, so that I may possibly have this knowledge, too. I am wise enough not to claim knowledge of something that I have not witnessed firsthand. I believe certain things in history, but I do not know them for sure. If someone has written something down in the past, I have reason to believe that this something is true, but I do not absolutely know it.

My point is that if you are bold enough to claim that you know something, you ought to be able to prove it. Otherwise, you should claim that you only believe it to be true.
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ROD, You have written that if you haven’t seen an event then you don’t know it…but you can believe it by FAITH and through FAITH. Is that correct?

Mormons have written and more than one Mormon told me the following. Rod, feel free to comment on these Mormon beliefs!
  1. God is made of flesh and bone. He is not a “spirit”. God has a female God that He copulates with to make the souls we have in our bodies on earth.
    QS: How is it that we have a universe made of energy and atoms (matter) if God is like us- flesh and bone? Flesh and bone can not make atoms! Is there a female God? If so, then there is more than one God…right?
  2. The Golden Tablets that Joseph Smith said he found on the side of a hill in the state of New York were never seen by any other man…in fact since Joseph Smith Couldn’t read or write he had to have several other men write what he dictated from the golden tablets. But when he dictated ( as if he were actually reading) he hid in a small anteroom with a curtin over the door. He said there was a “special” pair of glasses that came with the tablets that allowed him to read…even tho he couldn’t read. A professor of Egyptology on Phillidelphia offered to pay Smith to bring a sample of the Tablets so he could see them and see if it was written in Egyptian heirogliphics. Smith refused. Only J. Smith saw the so-called tablets…why was that? Did Smith tell people that he and his father had been digging for gold in several states before he miraculously found the Golden Tablets? Why was it that an illiterate farm boy never thought to prove that the tablets existed? Why is it that in the Book of Mormon we find a strong flavor of what the Early Christians called heritic religion…such as Jesus was not Devine, and the Trinity is not 3 in 1 , but three separate and distinct persons…a denial of the Trinity? Come on Rod, enlighten me!
 
Possibly of interest to some as a book by a Latter-day Saint defending the LDS teachings:

ldsmag.com/books/040817truth.html

I suspect it is less a real apologetic as an ‘innoculation’ for LDS and prospective LDS converts: a lot of LDS stuff doesn’t really serve to properly answer the criticisms leveled at Mormonism but uses what I feel are intellectual sleight-of-hand tricks to deflect the brunt of those criticisms and make the Mormon or the prospective Mormon feel ‘there must be an answer somewhere to this . . . .’ On the other hand–with all due respect to the apologists who work hard at EWTN and such–most ‘pop’ apologetics, such as must necessarily be done on the radio are just about the same: quick answers which ‘innoculate’ from criticism but don’t carry the discussion forward. Basically, Catholic Answers is rehashing the Father Smith Meets Jones discussions of a hundred years ago in slightly more contemporaneous language. Not that Hank Hannegraf is so much far-and-away better. It may be that the medium doesn’t permit much serious confrontation of the issues though I think Ravi Zecharias and RC Sproul do a pretty darned good job of it. But this diverges from the point of the post, and the point of the thread.
 
rod of iron:
I have heard different people say that there are thousands of mistakes in the Book of Mormon. Yet, when they are asked to show what these mistakes are, they quote only a few that they believe are mistakes. But even if a person can cite 5 or 10 mistakes, these alleged 5 or 10 mistakes are clearly not equivalent to these thousands of mistakes that are claimed to exist. If you claim there are a thousand mistakes, you should show all one thousand mistakes. If you can only find 5 or 10 alleged mistakes, you should then claim that there are 5 or 10 mistakes in the Book of Mormon. It is very dishonest to claim that there are thousands of mistakes if you cannot show thousands of mistakes in the Book of Mormon. Claiming that there are thousands of mistakes in the Book of Mormon is an example of a hyperbole. At least try to be accurate please.

What I am saying is that if you claim there are thousands of mistakes in the Book of Mormon, I expect you to show me at least a thousand mistakes. Otherwise, I must reject your claim.

Rod of Iron,

Now come on! It would be almost impossible to list the thousands of doctrinal errors and mistakes that have been changed and deleted from Joe Smith’s Mormon books on this web-site. But I will provide a list of many of them for you here.
Code: 
  Changes and corrections in Joe Smith's books:
l. Check out in the Old Testament Deuteronomy 18:15,18, in the New Testament, Acts 3:22-26 and in the Book of Mormon, 3Nephi 20:23-26. In Acts 3:22, St. Peter is paraphrasing what Moses said in Deuteronomy 18. But in the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi, Smith gets it wrong. Joe Smith has Jesus quoting St. Peter’s words from Acts, but saying that Moses said these words instead of St. Peter. Smith quotes St. Peter word-for-word, but says that Moses spoke these words. So Joe Smith makes Jesus out to be a liar or makes Jesus appear to be someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In reality Smith basically made mistakes when copying from one book to the next.
  1. The Book of Mormon was, according to Smith, translated from “reformed” Egyptian, which of course there is no such thing. Smith was careless and included words of other languages such as:
  2. Greek words like Alpha and Omega (3Nephi 9:18)
4, Timothy (3Nephi 19:4)
  1. Jonas
  2. The French word “adeau”.
  3. The Book of Mormon says it was written in the language of the Egyptians (1Nephi 1:3). This would not be possible since the Nephites alledgedly came from Jerusalem.
  4. Mosiah 2l:28 - “King Benjamin had a gift from God”
    changed to, “King Mosiah had a gift from God”
  5. Book of Mormon - …and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the Lord.", changed to …“and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, or out of the waters of baptism, who swear by the words…”. The words “out of the waters of baptism” were added.
  6. 1830 Book of Mormon title page read, “Written by Joseph Smith, Jr., author and proprietor” (He admitted he wrote it!). Changed to translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.
ll. In the testimony of the eight witnesses page in the Book of Mormon it read, Joseph Smith, Jr., the author and proprietor of this work". This was changed to, “Joseph Smith, Jr. the translator of this work.”
  1. 1 Nephi 11:21, the 1830 Book of Mormon read, “…Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the eternal Father”. This was changed to, “Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the son of the eternal Father”
  2. 1Nephi 11:32, “And I looked and beheld the Lamb of God, that he was taken by the people: yea, the everlasting God…” was changed to read, “And I looked and beheld the lamb of God, that he was taken by the people: yea the son of the everlasting God.”
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(continued)

1 Nephi 13:40 “that the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father and Savior”, was changed to "that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father and Savior.

Smith also made 100’s of grammatical errors showing his back-woods upbringing:

The word “was” used instead of “were”:

“the priests was not to depend”
“there was no wild beasts”
“there was many”

The word “were” used instead of “was”:

“but it all were vain”
"and I were forbidden that I should preach

the word “is” used instead of “are”:

“the tender mercies of the Lord is over all”
“the words which is expedient”
“things which is not seen”

The word “a” used where it was not necessary:

“As I was A journeying”
“Moroni was A coming against them”

And many, many more!!

These are just a small sampling of the mistakes and doctrinal changes in Joe Smith’s Mormon books. There are eons more. All these mistakes from a man who said, “THESE PLATES HAVE BEEN REVEALED BY THE POWER OF GOD AND THEY HAVE BEEN TRANSLATED BY THE POWERE OF GOD. THE TRANSLATION OF THEM WHICH YOU HAVE SEEN IS CORRECT.” And that the Book of Mormon is the “MOST CORRECT OF ANY BOOK ON EARTH”. Guess Joe Smith forgot that there were gazzilions of books on earth at that time that were printed much more correctly than his books!

What a con-man! Smith was your typical 1800’s snake-oil salesman!!!
 
I don’t really think that posting grammical errors is proving anything. That doesn’t really say any mistake about the religion… I would counter your previous post but this whole thing is pointless ;D

You can be stupid academicly but have a really good sense of street smarts.
 
The point she is probably making is refuting Joseph’s Smith’s claim that God assisted him in the translation.
It is quite a bold statement he made concerning the translation itself.
God certainly would not allow any error - doctrinal/grammatical - whatever.
 
Joseph didn’t write the Book of Mormon down, he repeated it to his recorder. So in other words it was his own speach. You have any idea how hard it is to translate perfectly?
 
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LoneWolf:
Joseph didn’t write the Book of Mormon down, he repeated it to his recorder. So in other words it was his own speach. You have any idea how hard it is to translate perfectly?
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I’m searching right now for some writings I’ve seen before, stating that the wording used in the translation was also revealed to him, so that the finished product wasn’t his own translation, but that he was telling his secretary the words exactly as they were told to him.
 
Where the BOM plagarizes the KJV it makes the exact same translation errors.
 
Have you ever heard of languages changing from traditional to simplified? Were you back there when the language was present? Were you there to know how to translate it. How can we say that we know grammar the best when God created us… how do we know we have the right grammar? 100 years from now we’ll think that we talked like hicks or we sounded more intelligant…
 
It’s really not that hard.
This actually was not all that long ago.
You compare it with other works written during the same period - of which the supply is ample.

He made an audacious claim about the translation. He worked himself into a box over this. It is clear God did not “translate” this for Joseph Smith - as Joseph Smith himself claimed He did!!

Furthermore - why would God show up to Joe 1800 years after Christ and introduce a belief system that contradicts the faith Christ handed on to His apostles and church??
 
It was written: Are there any documents at all signed by Joseph Smith and the women he allegedly married as proof that this marriage happened? A signed document can be very convincing. Do such documents exist for any of his alleged wives?

**This is specious. MARRIAGE LICENSE WERE NOT required for a marriage to take place in most of the States before 1920. The only record of a marriage back before 1850 would be in a Bible or a Church record. Birth Certificates were uncommon before about 1920. There were birth records in the Church.😃 **
 
From Volume I of the Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Chapter X, under the heading of The Manner of Translating the Book of Mormon:
David Whitmer is more specific on this subject. After describing the means the Prophet employed to exclude the light from the Seer Stone, he says: "In the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God and not by any power of man.
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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the Book of Mormon was a nineteenth century invention written by a guy named Joe Smith. He even called himself the author on the title page of the 1830 edition!!! Mormons are full of sophistry! How else can they keep the scam alive?
 
Sophie - you seem to be quite well-versed in this.
What are your sources?

I was hoping that by the next time they visit me - I’d like to be better prepared.
 
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