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Get a life and stop talking about Mormons, go to the church and pray and see for yourself if this is true or not, You guys have NO right to be Judging other people and their religions.
...you do realize you bumped a 4 month old thread...
People were done talking about Mormons until you bumped this
I am working through my postgraduate studies and was pleasantly interrupted one day by two charming LDS Elders. They gave me a Book of Mormon, which I read. It is a fictional account of a period of American history from 600 BCE to 400 CE. I think the LDS should drop this oddly cobbled together fiction and pick up the Lord of the Rings as a more worthy alternative. Their present Prophet could chuck in a few chapters of Isaiah, add a few bits of the 4 Gospels, change a few names and voila a new improved Book of Mormon is created. I am sure that is how Joseph Smith did it.
Get a life and stop talking about Mormons, go to the church and pray and see for yourself if this is true or not, You guys have NO right to be Judging other people and their religions.
Have you read the Bible and the LDS canon? Within those texts there are clear directions on testing religious practice. Read more and stand up for what you believe. I believe that the LDS books; the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham are works of obvious fiction. It is for you to give a clear and reasoned testimony why the LDS use fictional accounts of the history of the US circa 600BCE to circa 400CE through the Book of Mormon and a fictional account of Abraham through the Book of Abraham. Kind regards GrahamC
From what I know of it it describes Hebrews settling in the Americas complete with the domestic animals Jews had. This is pretty much impossible because if that occurred there should have been traces of those animals, and the diseases they carry, in the New World at the time of Columbus or the Viking. However there was no such animals or diseases in Pre-Columbian America.
Now possibly one could argue it's an exaggeration of an actual event. That the actual amount of Lamenites, etc was really far smaller than it might imply. Maybe it was no larger than the population of Vikings at L'Anse Aux Meadows. Or possibly it could be valid as an allegory rather than as a literal history. However the idea of American Indians as having Jewish ancestry, which I believe is Mormon doctrine/dogma, is IMO pretty obviously not true.
Still there are some very good Mormons out there and one of them really helped me out once when I was a complete stranger. So if the Book of Mormon makes them better people okay. Just as long as they don't expect me to believe it's plausible as history.
As for Smith himself I don't know him or his motivations. I think it's certainly possible he was going through something and the Book of Mormon allowed him to say what he needed to say about religion. I guess that implies he was lying, in so much as it's saying he knew no guy named Mormon or ancient civilization was involved, but not all lying represents the same kind of insincerity or motivation. Thomas Chatterton claimed some poems he wrote were from the Middle Ages because he lacked the confidence, or something, to believe people could accept him as a poet. Many of the values I think Smith placed in the work are good values. I think they might even relate to moments he felt inspired in a religious or spiritual sense. However maybe he felt they needed the authority a claim of antiquity could bring. Or maybe he was deluded and believed they were in some sense ancient. Who is to say?
Mormons sometimes claim that attitudes like this is because the BoM is new, but I don't think that's true in my case. It's more that the BoM seems to rest on a claim that can easily be refuted by archaeology and genetics. Now if I'm wrong on that, and belief in literal Jewish tribes in the New World is not important to believing in the BoM, than I'll concede the BoM is not any different than books written by the founder of Baha'i or the Pentecostal movement or whatever.
Last edited by Thomas R.; 05-22-2010 at 09:21 PM..
I am working through my postgraduate studies and was pleasantly interrupted one day by two charming LDS Elders. They gave me a Book of Mormon, which I read.
You read the entire thing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GrahamC
It is a fictional account of a period of American history from 600 BCE to 400 CE.
LDS don't hold that it's fictional, and there are plenty of reasons to think twice about just presupposing it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GrahamC
I think the LDS should drop this oddly cobbled together fiction and pick up the Lord of the Rings as a more worthy alternative.
By all means, please elaborate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GrahamC
Their present Prophet could chuck in a few chapters of Isaiah, add a few bits of the 4 Gospels, change a few names and voila a new improved Book of Mormon is created. I am sure that is how Joseph Smith did it.
But that doesn't explain how he managed to sneak in so many ancient Near Eastern literary and lexical conventions (like Bethlehem being a part of the "land of Jerusalem"). It doesn't explain how numerous names long asserted to be silly inventions by Joseph Smith have turned up in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions and onomastica. It also doesn't explain the correlation between specific Old World sites unique to the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and recently excavated areas. Lastly, it doesn't explain how 30% of the lexicon of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages can be shown to be influenced by Afro-Asiatic and Semitic languages.
From what I know of it it describes Hebrews settling in the Americas complete with the domestic animals Jews had. This is pretty much impossible because if that occurred there should have been traces of those animals, and the diseases they carry, in the New World at the time of Columbus or the Viking. However there was no such animals or diseases in Pre-Columbian America.
It doesn't describe many domestic Near Eastern animals, but some of the names do overlap. However, that doesn't at all mean they were the same species. People tend to name things in new locales after familiar things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
Now possibly one could argue it's an exaggeration of an actual event. That the actual amount of Lamenites, etc was really far smaller than it might imply. Maybe it was no larger than the population of Vikings at L'Anse Aux Meadows. Or possibly it could be valid as an allegory rather than as a literal history. However the idea of American Indians as having Jewish ancestry, which I believe is Mormon doctrine/dogma, is IMO pretty obviously not true.
But there are DNA markers found most prominently in Near Eastern (and specifically Jewish) populations found in Native American blood, and a large Native American family of languages can be shown to have significant Near Eastern influence. "Pretty obviously not true" is, by itself, a fallacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
Still there are some very good Mormons out there and one of them really helped me out once when I was a complete stranger. So if the Book of Mormon makes them better people okay. Just as long as they don't expect me to believe it's plausible as history.
So far I've seen nothing in your argument that supports your assertion that it's implausible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
As for Smith himself I don't know him or his motivations. I think it's certainly possible he was going through something and the Book of Mormon allowed him to say what he needed to say about religion. I guess that implies he was lying, in so much as it's saying he knew no guy named Mormon or ancient civilization was involved, but not all lying represents the same kind of insincerity or motivation. Thomas Chatterton claimed some poems he wrote were from the Middle Ages because he lacked the confidence, or something, to believe people could accept him as a poet. Many of the values I think Smith placed in the work are good values. I think they might even relate to moments he felt inspired in a religious or spiritual sense. However maybe he felt they needed the authority a claim of antiquity could bring. Or maybe he was deluded and believed they were in some sense ancient. Who is to say?
Mormons sometimes claim that attitudes like this is because the BoM is new, but I don't think that's true in my case. It's more that the BoM seems to rest on a claim that can easily be refuted by archaeology and genetics.
But there are DNA markers found most prominently in Near Eastern (and specifically Jewish) populations found in Native American blood, and a large Native American family of languages can be shown to have significant Near Eastern influence. "Pretty obviously not true" is, by itself, a fallacy.
Do you have a non-Mormon source to cite on this?
From what I can tell American Indians tend to be in Haplogroup Q and C3B. Q can be found in Yemenite Jews, but both groupings are largely Central Asian. Haplogroup J, G, H, & E (which seems to be more found in Jews) are not common among indigenous Americans. Where they do occur it can be explained through intermixing with whites in the last five centuries. There is some evidence of bodies with "white" haplogroups in Labrador and Washington state, but these are dated from 6,000 BC or earlier so too early for what is suggested in the BoM.
So far I've seen nothing in your argument that supports your assertion that it's implausible.
The Hebrews of that period would have been in the bronze or iron age. There is no evidence of Bronze or Iron implements from Pre-Columbian upstate New York so far as I know. The only thing I know of is some tribes in the Hudson Bay area who used Iron, but I'm uncertain if any of these date from before the tenth century. I am unaware of any Bronze items in the New World outside Peru.
I'm not Mormon, but I was wondering what Non-Mormon Christians think about the Book of Mormon (Another Testament of Jesus Christ).
Do you think that Smith was crazy and made it all up?
Was it not the word of God?
If it was, do you believe everything it says, even if you're not a Mormon?
Do you not believe in it because it was written (translated) in the early 1800's and not 2000 years ago or older?
Do you really think Jesus appeared in the America's after his death?
If you don't believe the book, why not?
Do you think now a days, like in Smith's case, God can tell someone to find something buried or directly talk to them to write down new stories for people to read and follow.
I'm just curious to see what people's thoughts are.
Remember the South Park episode about Joseph Smith and the beginning of Mormonism? Yeah, that's about what I think about it.
Of course at the end of the episode the Mormon boy ends up rather sympathetic.
"All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you're so high and mighty you couldn't look past my religion and just be my friend back. You've got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls."
I'm not a fan of South Park, but I liked this speech. Well except for maybe the last three words of it.
Here, here, and here. There were two Latter-day Saint geneticists on the final paper, but they're two of fifteen authors, and there's nothing in the paper with which anyone could take any issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
From what I can tell American Indians tend to be in Haplogroup Q and C3B. Q can be found in Yemenite Jews, but both groupings are largely Central Asian. Haplogroup J, G, H, & E (which seems to be more found in Jews) are not common among indigenous Americans. Where they do occur it can be explained through intermixing with whites in the last five centuries. There is some evidence of bodies with "white" haplogroups in Labrador and Washington state, but these are dated from 6,000 BC or earlier so too early for what is suggested in the BoM.
The Hebrews of that period would have been in the bronze or iron age. There is no evidence of Bronze or Iron implements from Pre-Columbian upstate New York so far as I know.
Upstate New York has nothing to do with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
The only thing I know of is some tribes in the Hudson Bay area who used Iron, but I'm uncertain if any of these date from before the tenth century. I am unaware of any Bronze items in the New World outside Peru.
The Bronze Age ended in 1200 BCE across most of the Near East. The Hebrew groups from the Book of Mormon start coming across around 600 BCE.
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