I can't believe you all are not LDS(Mormon)!

[Julian_1066]

I can’t believe why we all don’t form the First United and Holy Church of BeaverCleaver, wear suits and ties at the lunch table, and have our wives wear those silly little white gloves when they go out visiting their neighbors! LOL!

 

[Jerusha]

It is all part of the mentality of living in a made-up religion.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

There is only one lds church and it is centered in Salt Lake CIty. All other charletan ‘mormon’ churches have not been very successful. Mormons would claim that heavenly father favors the lds church and because of this, it has been very successful in bringing the true message of christ to people and to nations.

Oh by the way, have you heard of the Reformed Catholic Church in Venesuela? They have married priests and seem to be very pro-Chavez. The members were once members of the catholic church centered in Rome.

Doesn’t the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) own the temple lot that Joseph Smith prophesized a temple would be built upon? (Which by the way, seems to be a false prophesy).

I’m sure all the “other” Mormon Churches would claim they are the only one as well as call the others charletans or as Church of Christ (Temple Lot) refers to them, apostate Churches.

I’ve heard of women who were ordained as priests then ex-communicated. They reject the ex-communication. Does this mean they are still Catholic? NO. So your reformed Church is as weak an argument as say, a restored Church. Christ’s Church cannot fail and has lasted over 2000 years. To not believe it, is to not believe in the power and promises of Christ.

May the peace of the Lord be with you,
Prodigal Son1

 

[zerinus]

That’s nice and all, but not what we were talking about.

I never claimed that you cared about any evidence. It’s pretty obvious that you don’t, but I just figured I’d spell out what the general opinion of people who actually study such things for a living is, in case you actually have some sort of evidence to present that might substantiate your book’s claim. As it is, the “evidence” that has been presented by others has been shown to be inconsistent with what we do know about the languages, peoples, and places of the time under consideration, so it has been rejected.

Your kind of “evidence” against Reformed Egyptian is no evidence at all. I presume this is what you are referring to in your previous post:

What we should really be looking at is the historical record of the times and places that the BoM describes as having made use of the Reformed Egyptian script. When we do that, we find that there is absolutely zero evidence of any such script.

What “historical records” of the time? There are no such “records ” for you to look at. The writing that the Book of Mormon call Reformed Egyptian was home-grown among the Nephite people after they had immigrated to America. There are no “records” available for you to look at.

The “Caractors” document is absolutely ridiculous, and not evidence of anything other than your prophet’s rather lackluster doodles and. The Egyptian script was known during Joseph Smith’s time, and certainly later, and yet the examples brough forth of “Reformed Egyptian” by Harris and others have never been authenticated by anyone outside the LDS church. If it were really genetically related to Egyptian, even if it had been modified in some ways, linguists and Egyptologists would recognize that fact. They haven’t because…well, it’s not a fact.

We have no authentic record of Joseph Smith’s transcription of the characters of the plates; and we have no way of knowing what the characters actually looked like. The so called “Caractors document” was a piece of paper that was produced by David Whitmer in 1887, more than 40 years after Joseph Smith’s death; and there is no way of authenticating it. It is highly unlikely that it is genuine; any more that the “Hofmann forgery” document is genuine. We simply have no way of knowing, or scientifically proving, whether such a thing as Reformed Egyptian, as described in the Book of Mormon, existed, or did not exist. Your definitive assertion that such a thing did not exist is as unscientific as my definitive assertion that it did exist.

Reformed Egyptian does not exist. Period.

Wrong, it does! It is your word against mine! There is no “evidence” either way.

If some evidence comes up at some later date, by all means I would encourage the LDS or anyone to present it to experts in the concerned fields. No one would be more excited and eager to accept it upon its authentication than linguists, myself definitely included.

The evidence is faith! You either believe it or you don’t. Tell me something, do you believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ took place? If so, on the basis of what scientific evidence?

zerinus

 

[RebeccaJ]

You may as well try and match up the Bible to the Americas and just keep on claiming that the evidence for that match could exist. If only you think hard enough, and long enough, it will materialize…eventually…have faith.

 

[dzheremi]

Your kind of “evidence” against Reformed Egyptian is no evidence at all. I presume this is what you are referring to in your previous post:

So that fact that we have records of the languages spoken in the Americas dating back to pre-history AND NO FORM OF HEBREW IS FOUND AMONG THEM is not evidence? Written Mayan ideographic script, for instance, dates back to about 250 BC.

What “historical records” of the time? There are no such “records ” for you to look at. The writing that the Book of Mormon call Reformed Egyptian was home-grown among the Nephite people after they had immigrated to America. There are no “records” available for you to look at.

Well there are plenty of historical records of the main forms of written Egyptian (Heiroglyphs, Demotic, Coptic, etc), so we could look at those and compare them to “Reformed Egyptian”, if you had even a shred of evidence that it ever existed. I guess it sure is convenient that according to you no such evidence exists (I’m assuming outside of the famous Golden Plates? Which of course nobody can see…)

We simply have no way of knowing, or scientifically proving, whether such a thing as Reformed Egyptian, as described in the Book of Mormon, existed, or did not exist. Your definitive assertion that such a thing did not exist is as unscientific as my definitive assertion that it did exist

We do have scientific methods to determine possible genetic relationships between languages, so if there were anything like Hebrew spoken by acient Americans, we COULD know it, provided that we had even a shred of evidence to look at. In the absence of that, we can look at the languages spoken in the areas under consideration that we DO know about in order to determine what is more likely to be found and what is less likely. Given that there has never been any evidence of any Semitic language indigenous to the Americas, and there is no colloborating evidence for the existence of the people written about in the BoM or their supposed migration pattern, we can say with as much certainty as we have about languages we CAN attest to that “Reformed Egyptian” is hogwash.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying unlikely things don’t happen: Malagasy is spoken thousands of miles away from its nearest linguistic relatives, and there are a few isolated pockets of Khoisan languages spoken in eastern Africa, far away from southern Africa, where all other Khoisan languages are found. These facts, however, are explained by historical migrations, which are yet another form of evidence that does not exist for the people described in the BoM.

Wrong, it does! It is your word against mine! There is no “evidence” either way.

Yes, except for everything I listed above that exists at least in some form for languages that aren’t made up, but not at all for “Reformed Egyptian”. You can’t fool me into discarding the principles by which the field of Linguistics operates just because we’re dealing with a language that your holy book was supposedly written in. As a point of comparison, the languages of people spoken of in the Bible HAVE been found and documented (Hittite, Canaanite languages, etc), lest you think I’m just picking on Mormons. As I said earlier, I’d be the first to gleefully welcome Reformed Egyptian into the study of acient languages, if only there was anything to actually base the existence of it on. Linguistics and language is not a matter of faith. I may pray to get through my research, but I don’t appeal to my religious faith to make arguments one way or another about the data I work with (or lack thereof). That’s not science…not even a social science like linguistics!

The evidence is faith! You either believe it or you don’t. Tell me something, do you believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ took place? If so, on the basis of what scientific evidence?

Sorry, faith is not evidence! Faith is actually the belief in something in the absence of evidence. I have FAITH that Jesus Christ resurrected, because I trust and believe in the accounts of those who witnessed His presence among them after the crucifixion (who vastly outnumber the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s “miraculous” translation of the golden plates). Since I have that faith in those accounts and in every word spoken by our Holy Saviour regarding this and everything else in the Bible, any lack of scientific evidence does not bother me in the slightest.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

In 1828 Martin Harris, a farmer from Palmyra, New York received from Joseph Smith a copy of some of the “reformed Egyptian” characters from the gold plates in order to obtain scholarly opinion about their authenticity. Harris then presented the material to at least three scholars in the eastern United States, the most important being Charles Anthon, a noted classicist at Columbia College.

Anthon’s account of meeting with Harris
Anthon believed “reformed Egyptian” to be a hoax:

The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be “reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics” is perfectly false. Some years ago, a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer, called upon me… Upon examining the paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax …On hearing this odd story, I changed my opinion about the paper, and, instead of viewing it any longer as a hoax upon the learned, I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues. He requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course I declined giving, and he then took his leave carrying the paper with him. This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived… the paper contained any thing else but “Egyptian Hieroglyphics.”

Harris’ account of his meeting with Anthon
According to an account which Joseph Smith attributed to Harris, Anthon “stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. [Harris] then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters.” According to the same account, Anthon provided Harris with a certificate as to the veracity of the characters but tore it up after learning the characters were copied from a book said to have been delivered by an angel. Regardless of whether or not Anthon ever wrote such a certificate, it is highly unlikely that Anthon would have been able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs in the late 1820s when Harris showed him the writing specimen because during this period Egyptology was in its infancy. In any case, after his visit with Anthon, Harris was willing to mortgage his farm to publish the Book of Mormon, although it is also possible that his eagerness was based (as he boasted to his wife and sister-in-law) on his belief that the Book of Mormon would be a financial windfall.

Even though the authenticity of the the “Caractors” document can be disputed. It’s not as easy to dispute a scholar’s findings on the original documents presented to him in 1828.

It has the appearance of being a scam to finance the BoM.

Ironic to me how zerinus stands on no proof so staunchly now but persists a great apostasy took place 2000 years ago, even though he can produce no proof except Joseph Smith’s interpretation of a few scriptures or his own personal blog.

May the peace of the Lord be with you,
Prodigal Son1

 

[zerinus]

So that fact that we have records of the languages spoken in the Americas dating back to pre-history AND NO FORM OF HEBREW IS FOUND AMONG THEM is not evidence? Written Mayan ideographic script, for instance, dates back to about 250 BC.

It may be evidence for something; but it is not evidence or proof that Reformed Egyptian never existed.

Well there are plenty of historical records of the main forms of written Egyptian (Heiroglyphs, Demotic, Coptic, etc), so we could look at those and compare them to “Reformed Egyptian”, if you had even a shred of evidence that it ever existed. I guess it sure is convenient that according to you no such evidence exists (I’m assuming outside of the famous Golden Plates? Which of course nobody can see…)

We never claim that we can produce evidence that Reformed Egyptian existed—and you “guess” wrong! It is not “inconvenient” for us that we make no such claim either.

We do have scientific methods to determine possible genetic relationships between languages, so if there were anything like Hebrew spoken by acient Americans, we COULD know it, provided that we had even a shred of evidence to look at. In the absence of that, we can look at the languages spoken in the areas under consideration that we DO know about in order to determine what is more likely to be found and what is less likely. Given that there has never been any evidence of any Semitic language indigenous to the Americas, and there is no colloborating evidence for the existence of the people written about in the BoM or their supposed migration pattern, we can say with as much certainty as we have about languages we CAN attest to that “Reformed Egyptian” is hogwash.

You have no evidence that Reformed Egyptian never existed. None of the above proves any such thing. The most you can say is that your scientific investigation provides no evidence that such a thing existed. You cannot jump to the conclusion from that that it never existed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying unlikely things don’t happen: Malagasy is spoken thousands of miles away from its nearest linguistic relatives, and there are a few isolated pockets of Khoisan languages spoken in eastern Africa, far away from southern Africa, where all other Khoisan languages are found. These facts, however, are explained by historical migrations, which are yet another form of evidence that does not exist for the people described in the BoM.

Maybe not yet; but that is no proof that it never happened or never existed.

Yes, except for everything I listed above that exists at least in some form for languages that aren’t made up, but not at all for “Reformed Egyptian”. You can’t fool me into discarding the principles by which the field of Linguistics operates just because we’re dealing with a language that your holy book was supposedly written in. As a point of comparison, the languages of people spoken of in the Bible HAVE been found and documented (Hittite, Canaanite languages, etc), lest you think I’m just picking on Mormons. As I said earlier, I’d be the first to gleefully welcome Reformed Egyptian into the study of acient languages, if only there was anything to actually base the existence of it on. Linguistics and language is not a matter of faith. I may pray to get through my research, but I don’t appeal to my religious faith to make arguments one way or another about the data I work with (or lack thereof). That’s not science…not even a social science like linguistics!

I don’t need to fool you. You are fooling yourself I am afraid by demanding scientific proof for something that is designed to be accepted by faith, as Paul said: “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25); and: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Cor. 3:19). Here is more:

1 Corinthians 1:

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

---

27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.

Sorry, faith is not evidence! Faith is actually the belief in something in the absence of evidence. I have FAITH that Jesus Christ resurrected, because I trust and believe in the accounts of those who witnessed His presence among them after the crucifixion (who vastly outnumber the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s “miraculous” translation of the golden plates). Since I have that faith in those accounts and in every word spoken by our Holy Saviour regarding this and everything else in the Bible, any lack of scientific evidence does not bother me in the slightest.

Thank you:

John 20:

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

I also believe because of the evidences of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses to me that it is true.

zerinus

 

[oneGODoneCHURCH]

It may be evidence for something; but it is not evidence or proof that Reformed Egyptian never existed.

We never claim that we can produce evidence that Reformed Egyptian existed—and you “guess” wrong! It is not “inconvenient” for us that we make no such claim either.

You have no evidence that Reformed Egyptian never existed. None of the above proves any such thing. The most you can say is that your scientific investigation provides no evidence that such a thing existed. You cannot jump to the conclusion from that that it never existed.

Maybe not yet; but that is no proof that it never happened or never existed.

I don’t need to fool you. You are fooling yourself I am afraid by demanding scientific proof for something that is designed to be accepted by faith, as Paul said: “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25); and: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Cor. 3:19). Here is more:

1 Corinthians 1:

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

---

27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.

Thank you:

John 20:

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

I also believe because of the evidences of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses to me that it is true.

zerinus

It is nice to see you quote Scripture for a change other than some thing out of Mormon text.

To accept Christ on faith and the testimony from the Bible is one thing. First of all it was written by people known to have existed in a language know to exist. To believe in something such as the BoM that claims to be a translation from a language that there is not only no other evidence of but the Original that it was translated from does not even exist is just plain foolish. also given that the there is no evidence of the people in said book were ever to have existed. non what so ever. I could come closer to believing that THE LORD OF THE RINGS is a true story. At least there the beings have been used in other works of fiction, myth, and fable.

Face it the BoM is a poorly written work of fiction at best. At worst is an out and out attempt to deceive.

 

[Carl_Nicholas]

John 20:

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.[/INDENT]

I also believe because of the evidences of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and of the Holy Ghost, which witnesses to me that it is true.

zerinus

Hi Z,

The above bible quote is Jesus speaking right ( ALL OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR ) and I don’t think that it references Joseph Smith, does it??

What evidences of the witnesses are you suggesting ??

God bless,
Carl

 

[rpp]

Seems to me that an poorly educated person having an argument about linguistics with a college educated professional linguist is rather silly. I mean it would be like arguing with a professional astronomer that the Moon is made of cheese.

As for me, I would (and have on this forum) been corrected by those who are better informed than I am on certain issues.

Personally, I have never heard of “reformed Egyptian” as a language or script. But then I am not well informed about archeology or linguistics. Therefore, I can only take dzheremi’s word for it as he is an actual expert. That and the person on the other side of this “debate” does not have a reputation for posting authentic facts.

 

[dzheremi]

Hahaha. Okay. My mistake. I had assumed I was speaking with someone with a basic understanding of how science works, namely, if you make a claim about something, YOU present the evidence for it. It is not up to me or any other linguist to investigate your claims in the absence of any evidence. If I tell an astronomer that there is a planet made of chocolate pudding just beyond the moon that the reincarnated body of Elvis Presley lives on, it is MY responsibility to present something that points to that end. If science worked the way you are trying to make it work, nobody would get any real work done because of all the crackpots out there with their tinfoil hat theories! Here in the real world, the absence of evidence pointing towards a given conclusion amounts to a lack of support for that conclusion. We don’t have to say “well, maaaaybe Elvis lives on a planet of chocolate pudding just beyond the moon; we can’t say for sure that it’s not true”, because there isn’t any evidence of it to begin with!

It gets better: We can go to the moon. We can see that there’s nothing in the neighborhood that would support such a claim. Similarly, we can go to North, Central, and South America, see the sites where the original inhabitants of the Americas lived and see that there is nothing at all even remotely resembling what the BoM claims, be it in the realm of language, metallurgy, agriculture, etc. What’s more, it’s not just that we don’t see what the BoM tells us was there, but what we DO see in the form of remnants of cultures that existed during the time that the BoM is supposedly about directly contradicts the BoM’s story! Whether you want to accept them or not, the facts are that no native peoples in any part of the Americas ever spoke or wrote in any form of Hebrew or any other Semitic language. They spoke Uto-Aztecan languages, Na-Dene languages, Eskimo-Aleut languages, etc. Some of these languages are still spoken, sometimes in quite large numbers (Nahuatl has ~1.5 million speakers in Mexico), so they ARE attestable. These languages tell us something about who the indigenous Americans are (and who they are NOT; they are not Israelites), and why the BoM’s story regarding these people is flat out wrong.

If you want to accept all this stuff as an article of faith, fine, but for someone who has actually done the work and gotten the education necessary to be able to able to comment with at least some authority on issues like this, your incessant “well, it COULDDDD be true; you don’t know! My opinion is just as valid as yours!” responses are beyond insufferable (would you say that if I were a medical doctor and we were arguing over surgical techniques? Somehow I doubt it, so why not extend a certain amount of respect to other professions?). It’s not just wrong, it’s wrong.even

 

[RobHom]

I apologize in advance if I offend anyone, but there are portions of this thread where…what I read has as much or little substance as the answers to these questions:

Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?

If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make any noise?

Shazzzam…zot, ouch!!

But seriously folks, proving or disproving a negative …is an act of futility…

 

[RebeccaJ]

No need. The Catholic Church embraces everyone, including Mormons.

God bless those Jesuits.

Yes, that teaching is speaking about non-Catholics, which, by your Catholic baptism, you are not in that category.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I imagine it’s only a matter of time before there are enough Mormons in communion with Rome to qualify for our own rite.

Oh yeah, we’ll see how that goes!

 

[zaffiroborant]

I imagine it’s only a matter of time before there are enough Mormons in communion with Rome to qualify for our own rite.

About the time we see the SLC Temple put on shows enacting temple ceremonies past and present for the tourists.

 

[zerinus]

Hahaha. Okay. My mistake. I had assumed I was speaking with someone with a basic understanding of how science works, namely, if you make a claim about something, YOU present the evidence for it. It is not up to me or any other linguist to investigate your claims in the absence of any evidence. If I tell an astronomer that there is a planet made of chocolate pudding just beyond the moon that the reincarnated body of Elvis Presley lives on, it is MY responsibility to present something that points to that end. If science worked the way you are trying to make it work, nobody would get any real work done because of all the crackpots out there with their tinfoil hat theories! Here in the real world, the absence of evidence pointing towards a given conclusion amounts to a lack of support for that conclusion. We don’t have to say “well, maaaaybe Elvis lives on a planet of chocolate pudding just beyond the moon; we can’t say for sure that it’s not true”, because there isn’t any evidence of it to begin with!

You seem to be incapable of understanding plain English. Your study of linguistics seems to have deprived you of the ability to understand simple language. We do NOT claim to prove our religion on the basis of scientific evidence. Religion is a matter of faith, not of scientific evidence. If that is what you are looking for, then you are barking up the wrong tree. What we DO claim is that science does not DISPROVE our religion. Now if you claim that it does, then the burden of proof is on YOU to provide such evidence—and I don’t believe that you have, nor ever can.

It gets better: We can go to the moon. We can see that there’s nothing in the neighborhood that would support such a claim. Similarly, we can go to North, Central, and South America, see the sites where the original inhabitants of the Americas lived and see that there is nothing at all even remotely resembling what the BoM claims, be it in the realm of language, metallurgy, agriculture, etc. What’s more, it’s not just that we don’t see what the BoM tells us was there, but what we DO see in the form of remnants of cultures that existed during the time that the BoM is supposedly about directly contradicts the BoM’s story! Whether you want to accept them or not, the facts are that no native peoples in any part of the Americas ever spoke or wrote in any form of Hebrew or any other Semitic language. They spoke Uto-Aztecan languages, Na-Dene languages, Eskimo-Aleut languages, etc. Some of these languages are still spoken, sometimes in quite large numbers (Nahuatl has ~1.5 million speakers in Mexico), so they ARE attestable. These languages tell us something about who the indigenous Americans are (and who they are NOT; they are not Israelites), and why the BoM’s story regarding these people is flat out wrong.

If you want to accept all this stuff as an article of faith, fine, but for someone who has actually done the work and gotten the education necessary to be able to able to comment with at least some authority on issues like this, your incessant “well, it COULDDDD be true; you don’t know! My opinion is just as valid as yours!” responses are beyond insufferable (would you say that if I were a medical doctor and we were arguing over surgical techniques? Somehow I doubt it, so why not extend a certain amount of respect to other professions?). It’s not just wrong, it’s not even wrong.

Let me tell you what is wrong with that argument. For a long time people argued that the Book of Mormon cannot be true, because it claims that horses existed among the Nephites, when we know that horses didn’t exist in America before Columbus. Then, when the remains of horses were unexpectedly discovered, they now argue that horses became extinct 10,000 years ago, which puts them outside of the timeframe of the Nephites! Very convenient!

My friend, religion and science don’t go together. You cannot prove or disprove religion on the basis of scientific evidence. If you are that “scientifically minded,” then my guess is that you do not really believe in any religion at all, not just in Mormonism; because the type of arguments that you are presenting can be used to undermine any religion (including Catholicism), not just Mormonism; and you are not being very honest with yourself or others when on a religious forum you try to attack Mormonism on the basis of scientific evidence, when you know that that type of argument can be turned around to attack the very religion that you are supposedly trying to defend.

For your information, Mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the world; and if people went after scientific evidence for religion, then its growth rate would be zero, and so would be the growth rate of every other religion. If that is what you are looking for in religion, then you are barking up the wrong tree. We do not provide such evidence, and we do not claim that we can. But apparently there are enough people out there who consider the claims of Mormonism to be credible enough (based on personal revelation—the testimony of the Holy Ghost—not scientific evidence), that they are willing to join it in droves. Our religion is intended for them, not for you. If that is not up your street, then have a nice day. We are not out to argue with people of your kind. We take our message to those who are willing to look at it on the basis of a different kind of evidence than the scientific one. Our message is intended for them, not for you.

zerinus

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

You seem to be incapable of understanding plain English. Your study of linguistics seems to have deprived you of the ability to understand simple language. We do NOT claim to prove our religion on the basis of scientific evidence. Religion is a matter of faith, not of scientific evidence. If that is what you are looking for, then you are barking up the wrong tree. What we DO claim is that science does not DISPROVE our religion. Now if you claim that it does, then the burden of proof is on YOU to provide such evidence—and I don’t believe that you have, nor ever can.

Let me tell you what is wrong with that argument. For a long time people argued that the Book of Mormon cannot be true, because it claims that horses existed among the Nephites, when we know that horses didn’t exist in America before Columbus. Then, when the remains of horses were unexpectedly discovered, they now argue that horses became extinct 10,000 years ago, which puts them outside of the timeframe of the Nephites! Very convenient!

My friend, religion and science don’t go together. You cannot prove or disprove religion on the basis of scientific evidence. If you are that “scientifically minded,” then my guess is that you do not really believe in any religion at all, not just in Mormonism; because the type of arguments that you are presenting can be used to undermine any religion (including Catholicism), not just Mormonism; and you are not being very honest with yourself or others when on a religious forum you try to attack Mormonism on the basis of scientific evidence, when you know that that type of argument can be turned around to attack the very religion that you are supposedly trying to defend.

For your information, Mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the world; and if people went after scientific evidence for religion, then its growth rate would be zero, and so would be the growth rate of every other religion. If that is what you are looking for in religion, then you are barking up the wrong tree. We do not provide such evidence, and we do not claim that we can. But apparently there are enough people out there who consider the claims of Mormonism to be credible enough (based on personal revelation—the testimony of the Holy Ghost—not scientific evidence), that they are willing to join it in droves. Our religion is intended for them, not for you. If that is not up your street, then have a nice day. We are not out to argue with people of your kind. We take our message to those who are willing to look at it on the basis of a different kind of evidence than the scientific one. Our message is intended for them, not for you.

zerinus

For one Mormon teacher, worlds did collide:

Denver Post/March 4, 2001
By Susan Greene
Colorado City, Ariz. - A mural in DeLoy Bateman’s science classroom shows Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.

Such teaching aids are standard in most high schools. But not here in the hub of Mormon fundamentalism, where such an image can cause a man like Bateman to lose his religion.

In a community that believes the sun is God’s home, Bateman teaches it’s a thermonuclear reactor. To children who think Earth was created 7,000 years ago, he explains it’s 4.5 billion years old. His collections of fossils and dinosaur bones blatantly challenge townsfolks’ theories about creation.

But it’s Bateman’s lunar landing mural that most boldly confronts local teachings.

Because church prophet LeRoy Johnson prophesied in 1968 that man would never land on the moon, his followers and their descendants are certain it never happened.

As a teenager, Bateman listened to radio reports of Armstrong’s July 1969 landing with Johnson, who was his grandfather. They agreed that the event, as the astronaut put it, marked “one giant step for mankind.”

Below is an excerpt from an article in “The Young Woman’s Journal”, an LDS magazine of the 1890s. The article is dated “Feb 6, 1892”:

"Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet.

As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do - that they live generally to near the age of a 1000 years.

He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style.

In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet, in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age; that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea, and - to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can now behold with your eyes.

The first two promises have been fulfilled, and the latter may be verified.

From the verification of two promises we may reasonably expect the third to be fulfilled also."

Seems science and Mormonism have collided before.

God Bless,
Prodigal Son1

 

[majick275]

You seem to be incapable of understanding plain English. Your study of linguistics seems to have deprived you of the ability to understand simple language. We do NOT claim to prove our religion on the basis of scientific evidence. Religion is a matter of faith, not of scientific evidence. If that is what you are looking for, then you are barking up the wrong tree. What we DO claim is that science does not DISPROVE our religion. Now if you claim that it does, then the burden of proof is on YOU to provide such evidence—and I don’t believe that you have, nor ever can.

Let me tell you what is wrong with that argument. For a long time people argued that the Book of Mormon cannot be true, because it claims that horses existed among the Nephites, when we know that horses didn’t exist in America before Columbus. Then, when the remains of horses were unexpectedly discovered, they now argue that horses became extinct 10,000 years ago, which puts them outside of the timeframe of the Nephites! Very convenient!

My friend, religion and science don’t go together. You cannot prove or disprove religion on the basis of scientific evidence. If you are that “scientifically minded,” then my guess is that you do not really believe in any religion at all, not just in Mormonism; because the type of arguments that you are presenting can be used to undermine any religion (including Catholicism), not just Mormonism; and you are not being very honest with yourself or others when on a religious forum you try to attack Mormonism on the basis of scientific evidence, when you know that that type of argument can be turned around to attack the very religion that you are supposedly trying to defend.

For your information, Mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the world; and if people went after scientific evidence for religion, then its growth rate would be zero, and so would be the growth rate of every other religion. If that is what you are looking for in religion, then you are barking up the wrong tree. We do not provide such evidence, and we do not claim that we can. But apparently there are enough people out there who consider the claims of Mormonism to be credible enough (based on personal revelation—the testimony of the Holy Ghost—not scientific evidence), that they are willing to join it in droves. Our religion is intended for them, not for you. If that is not up your street, then have a nice day. We are not out to argue with people of your kind. We take our message to those who are willing to look at it on the basis of a different kind of evidence than the scientific one. Our message is intended for them, not for you.

zerinus

once again the tired old sales pitch. it has been proven over and over again that mormonisn is NOT the “fastest growing religion” anywhere by any measure. pentecostals, SDA’s and many others are in front. what does that mean anyway? fastest growing must be true? that doesn’t seem to be the case. convert retention rates are abysmal for the LDS right now as well so the “growth” they have is really quite illusory. no one is joining “in droves” but those who are seem to be needy people desperately looking for some welfare assistance who leave once they get on their feet. Those who feel mormon claims credible fall mostly in the born into it category and tend to avoid any deep look into proving it’s claims. they stay safely within the realm of faith promoting rumors and revisionist history spun by the LDS propagandists.

your own example of the horse argument shows the proven facts that demonstrate the inaccuracies of the BoM. the FAIR and FARMS grasping at straws and jeff lindsays flights of fancy cannot overcome what is now obvious. Pre-columbian peoples were not of israelite origin, they came from asia. they didn’t write in reformed egyptian or an mid-eastern derived script. they wrote in pictographs developed over time from their Asiatic language roots. they did not have metal armor or weapons and they did not ride horses or chariots into battle. they didn’t have million man armies fighting in upstate new york, they didn’t ride submarines, weave linen, cultivate wheat or barley or domesticate honeybees. they didn’t have wine and they certainly didn’t have bibles.

Joseph Smith was a con man who is still fooling people today. this puts mormons in the same boat as SDA’s, JW’s and Islam.
Maybe that’s the fastest growing religion…“deceived by false prophets”

 

[dzheremi]

Hahaha. I thought Islam was the fastest growing religion? Or Pentecostalism? I guess everyone gets to claim that! Anyway, I’m pretty much done with this argument, but just for clarification, I did say several posts ago that it is not actually about religion, but about what linguistically attestable. Many of the languages spoken of in the Bible have been found and documented, but if there were absolutely no evidence of them, and no evidence that they should have ever been where they are claimed to have been, then I would have to treat the passages dealing with them in the Bible as fiction, just as I treat the Mormon account of the languages of the Americas as fiction.