What Mormonism really teaches... (genesis, church, Revelation, LDS)

[TRANSPONDER]

I know that we shouldn't post vids and nothing else, but they are explanatory.

first one - Polygamy. Joseph Smith started it, twisting the arms of the women, to become another of his wives - that's the thing that'[s wrong rather than polygamy as such - though of course polyandry was never even considered.

And Brigham Young carried it on, and others after that. And lies were told about - to their own people, too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjzHTMkmMfc

Next one Abraham Papyrus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE

I also watched an apologetics vid trying to explain this as the 'Book of Abraham' exposing False (Egyptian) Gods. This is a barefaced lie as anyone folowing the actual "Translated" words can see: it [purports to be a story os what happened to Abraham while in Egypt and the pictures are identified person by person as the people involved, including of course Abraham. What has that to do with 'false gods'?

There is only one answer, or rather two. Deliberate Lying for the faith or such denial that the fellow will not actually look at what he is talking about. Not only does he not know - he doesn't WANT to know.

3rd one DNA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcDNuLrcggc

I looked at an apologetics talk supposedly refuting the conclusions that DNA refutes the Mormon claim that present Native Americans (North, South and central) are descendants of the Lamanites - one branch of the hebrews who sailed to America, the others being the Nephites who were exterminated by the Lamanites, the last survivor writing the account of the se peoples on golden plates which he buried and then he (Moroni) appeared to Joseph Smith (in "Spirit" form and told him where to find them.

The refutation (so far as i gleaned) was to claim that the objections were by people without expertise cherry -picking Scientific papers to construct some sort of case.

This is a total lie as the video will show. These are experts in the field who had to doubt the claims of LDS because of the DNA evidence.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER

Thanks for starting a thread on the subject. And for stating clearly what the teachings are or are not.

You're welcome.

Now what I have seen that raises questions are articles or videos by ex - Mormons who now doubt the validity of the teachings (which is one thing) and Christians pointing out how the teachings differ from Christianity (which is another argument).

Well, some Christians may see our teachings as differing from Christianity. But I know that at least 16 million Christians see it otherwise. Mormonism holds that there was a significant apostasy in the Church that Jesus Christ established as part of His ministry here on earth. While this didn't happen overnight, it was pretty much complete within a couple of hundred years after His death. Christianity of the fourth century, for instance, was radically different from Christianity of, say, 40 A.D. Mormonism claims to be a restoration of original Christianity, so it's obviously going to be different from "mainstream" Christianity. We believe everything the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ and His gospel. We also believe a number of other things the Bible is silent on. The most important teaching of Christianity as a whole is that Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, condescended to take on a mortal body, teach a new gospel of love, mercy and forgiveness, take upon Himself the sins of mankind, die at the hands of His enemies and rise again that we may all be promised life after death. Mormons believe all of these things. We also believe that a true Christian seeks to emulate Jesus Christ in the way we treat our fellow human beings. In all of these things we are most definitely teaching Christian doctrine. Our belief that Jesus paid a post-resurrection visit to the American continent to teach His "other sheep" that were "not of [the same] "fold" as those in the Holy Land, and our belief that a record exists of those people certainly shouldn't be enough to disqualify us as Christians.

There are also the results of research that casts doubt on claims in LDS. Two examples being DNA research that shows that Native Americans in North, Central and South America (even though J. Smith seemed to refer to North America as the location of the events described) have no Jewish DNA markers, but markers that indicate a N Asian origin.

I presume that the location was placed later (in LDS thought) in S America because there were remains of ancient civilisation that there wasn't in the North. This was later made a smaller location in Central America to try to get over the lack of Jewish DNA traces, but it is simply the same problem in a smaller N. American sample - No Jewish DNA.

Joseph Smith made an assumption. I don't know upon what he based his assumption, but evidence that was not available in his day has led more recent LDS leaders and scholars to make a different assumption. There is nothing in The Book of Mormon itself that really zeros in on where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place. The area in which it could have taken place is hundreds of thousands of square miles.

As to the matter of Native Americans supposedly carrying no traces of Jewish DNA, there are a number of explanations for this (although only a fraction of them have ever been tested). Here's how one of the reasons was explained to me. The following is an experiment anyone can do to demonstrate the process by which the Nephites’ generic markers could not only easily have disappeared over time, but how they almost certainly would have done. The concept is known to scientists as "genetic drift."

Put 10 red marbles and 10 blue marbles in a jar. Pick one marble at random and check the color. Let's say it's red. Return the marble to the jar, but also take a marble of the same color from a bottle of spares, and put it in a second jar. The new marble (the one you just put in the second jar) will represent the red lineage. It's the lineage you want to track. Keep repeating this process, picking one random marble each time until the second jar has twenty marbles. (Always return the original marble you picked to the jar you took it from. That jar must always contain 20 marbles.) Of the 20 marbles in the second jar, you might have 8 red ones and 12 blue ones. After you've got 20 marbles in the second jar, start the whole process over again, this time picking marbles from the second jar and adding marbles of the corresponding color from your pile of spares to a third jar. By the time you've got 20 marbles in your third jar, you may have 5 red ones and 15 blue ones. By the time you're working on your fourth or fifth jar, you will likely have only blue marbles. If you have even one red one, though, repeat the process. You are guaranteed to have all blue by the time you get to the sixth or seventh jar. Blue will be fixed and red (the lineage you were trying to trace) will be gone forever. The lineage of the two men and their wives who, with their children, came to the American continent in about 600 B.C. is almost certain to have been lost during the 1600 years since their known descendants were last heard of.

A relatively recent scientific project known as the deCODE Project offers another fascinating example of the problems in tracing specific genealogies. As part of this project, DNA samples of people born in Iceland after 1972 were traced back to the year 1742. It was discovered that the vast majority of the people alive today in Iceland are the descendants of a very small percentage of the people who lived in 1742. 1742 is less than 300 years ago, and yet many, many people living at that time have no genetic lineages represented in Iceland’s population today. This is not to say that they have no descendants in Iceland. It’s just that none of these lineages can be genetically traced.

The other Biggie is the Abraham Papyrus which casts doubt on the claim that Joseph Smith could translate ancient languages. Quite simply this is an Egyptian papyrus that Smith acquired and 'translated' as a tale about Abraham apparently in Egypt, when it is a well known Egyptian funeral text. This was Explained in various ways, first that it wasn't what Smith had (?) the original being lost in a fire. However they hadn't and turned up later on (being returned to the LDS Church) and they are clearly the Egyptian funerary text well known from many other examples.

The other explanation was that Smith did not translate Egyptian so much as be "inspired" to recover the Abraham story while looking at the Egyptian text. Apart from this being a faith -based rebranding of making Stuff Up, Smith's journal records refers to translating the letters and these being put in a journal, each letter giving a 'translation' of an entire sentence or paragraph.

Yes, that is a "biggie" and I don't have time to address it at this time. I'll try to get back to you on it, though.

For me, these are two killers for the truth of Smith's writings. Whether it differs from Christianity doesn't bother me as i find both sets of teachings incredible an unhistorical, but the fact is that 'Heaven' and 'spirit' are different things in LDS teaching from Christian. LDS heaven is a planet (in Space) and spirit is a solid boy of a different kind of matter, not the disembodied matterless minds that Christians seem now to have in mind, though they often do seem to slip into an idea of a solid body than can flit about and walk through walls. But there we are.

I'm not sure you've got that quite right. I know that many non-LDS Christians believe in a literal Heaven and not just a Heaven that is a state of mind. They look forward to seeing their loved ones there and living forever in God's presence in a real place. I have never in my life heard an LDS person describe Heaven as "a planet in space." Theologically speaking, it existed prior to the creation of our universe, so it's really next to impossible to try to describe it in the same terms we use to describe the universe as we know it.

Likewise, I think that most Christians today would describe a "spirit" as a "life force." That is certainly the way it is used in the Bible. When God was said to have breathed the breath of life into Adam's physical body, Adam became a living soul. Where we differ from mainstream Christianity is in our belief that "all spirit is matter, but... more fine or pure" than the matter we generally speak of that makes up our material world. We believe that a spirit can exist both independently of a physical body and residing within a physical body. I think that most Christians, if they were to stop and think about what they really believe, would agree with that statement. They do, at any rate, use the word "spirit" in both contexts.

I saw in a recent video that the idea of a one god in a trinity was rejected by Smith who taught that God was the father of Jesus (and Satan, too) by his wife, and both God and Jesus had to die to be raised to 'perfection'.

Don't trust those videos. Yes, we do reject the notion of a "three-in-one" God. The doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in 325 A.D. It was not taught by Jesus Christ himself or by His Apostles. We believe in a Godhead comprised of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost (aka Holy Spirit). I won't go into any more detail about our belief concerning the relationship of these three personages unless you want me to. I've never heard anything about God and Jesus having had to die to be raised to perfection. Mormons believe that both of them were both divine and perfect "in the beginning," that is from before the foundation of this earth. The video you watched apparently attempted to paraphrase our doctrine in such a way that it kind of got skewed in the process. I already discussed what we believe the relationship between Jesus and Satan, so I'll just ask you to read that post rather than repeat myself in this one.

There are also doubts I (and others) had about things referred to in LDS scripture that didn't existin America. Catle, Chariots, Horses too, probably. Even if (as I recall Katz arguing) 'chariots' mean some kind of wagon, the wheel itself was not known in America. Nor were cattle or horses except perhaps in prehistoric form.

The system of currency in the Book of Mormon doesn't make a lot of sense, either.

I'm going to have to get back to you on this, too. It's a huge subject, and I don't have huge amounts of time.

I know this covers a lot of problems unrelated to the claim I referred to that some say that these problems, discrepancies and teaching of J Smith that are not taught to the faithful and others that are taught that are not in J Smith, but I just touch on reasons to doubt the truth of LDS teachings by me or by Other Christians, which is what the thread will come down to in the end, I doubt not.

I'm not absolutely positive I'm understanding what you're trying to get to in this final paragraph, but it seems to me that I more or less addressed this in my previous post to you. If there's a specific doctrine, problem or "discrepancy" you'd like to discuss in greater detail, please feel free to ask me your questions.

The matter of Polygamy is going to have to come up, too, as this was a fact and a practice up to the time Utah dropped it in order to join the US Union. I was surprised to hear that many Mormons don't know of this.

What? I can't imagine Mormons not knowing this. Certainly all of the Mormons in Utah and the western states do. I can tell you that it's definitely taught as part of Church history and any Latter-day Saint who has ever actually studied that history knows it.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

And if that's what y'all believe, that's fine. But as I feel about bible passages (and for that matter Buddhist writings) with no independent verification...I have trouble buying it. Not that it matters what I think about it.

And that's fine. If you have trouble buying it (or any other religion's writings, for that matter), I'm okay with that. I certainly wasn't trying to convince you of anything; I was just trying to answer your question, and I hope I was able to do so.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

You're welcome.

Well, some Christians may see our teachings as differing from Christianity. But I know that at least 16 million Christians see it otherwise. Mormonism holds that there was a significant apostasy in the Church that Jesus Christ established as part of His ministry here on earth. While this didn't happen overnight, it was pretty much complete within a couple of hundred years after His death. Christianity of the fourth century, for instance, was radically different from Christianity of, say, 40 A.D. Mormonism claims to be a restoration of original Christianity, so it's obviously going to be different from "mainstream" Christianity. We believe everything the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ and His gospel. We also believe a number of other things the Bible is silent on. The most important teaching of Christianity as a whole is that Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, condescended to take on a mortal body, teach a new gospel of love, mercy and forgiveness, take upon Himself the sins of mankind, die at the hands of His enemies and rise again that we may all be promised life after death. Mormons believe all of these things. We also believe that a true Christian seeks to emulate Jesus Christ in the way we treat our fellow human beings. In all of these things we are most definitely teaching Christian doctrine. Our belief that Jesus paid a post-resurrection visit to the American continent to teach His "other sheep" that were "not of [the same] "fold" as those in the Holy Land, and our belief that a record exists of those people certainly shouldn't be enough to disqualify us as Christians.

Joseph Smith made an assumption. I don't know upon what he based his assumption, but evidence that was not available in his day has led more recent LDS leaders and scholars to make a different assumption. There is nothing in The Book of Mormon itself that really zeros in on where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place. The area in which it could have taken place is hundreds of thousands of square miles.

As to the matter of Native Americans supposedly carrying no traces of Jewish DNA, there are a number of explanations for this (although only a fraction of them have ever been tested). Here's how one of the reasons was explained to me. This experiment can easily be replicated by anyone who is interested in seeing for themselves how it works. It demonstrates "genetic drift."

“Genetic Drift”: The following is an experiment anyone can do to demonstrate the process by which the Nephites’ generic markers could not only easily have disappeared over time, but how they almost certainly would have done.

Put 10 red marbles and 10 blue marbles in a jar. Pick one marble at random and check the color. Let's say it's red. Return the marble to the jar, but also take a marble of the same color from a bottle of spares, and put it in a second jar. The new marble (the one you just put in the second jar) will represent the red lineage. It's the lineage you want to track. Keep repeating this process, picking one random marble each time until the second jar has twenty marbles. (Always return the original marble you picked to the jar you took it from. That jar must always contain 20 marbles.) Of the 20 marbles in the second jar, you might have 8 red ones and 12 blue ones. After you've got 20 marbles in the second jar, start the whole process over again, this time picking marbles from the second jar and adding marbles of the corresponding color from your pile of spares to a third jar. By the time you've got 20 marbles in your third jar, you may have 5 red ones and 15 blue ones. By the time you're working on your fourth or fifth jar, you will likely have only blue marbles. If you have even one red one, though, repeat the process. You are guaranteed to have all blue by the time you get to the sixth or seventh jar. Blue will be fixed and red (the lineage you were trying to trace) will be gone forever. The lineage of the two men and their wives who, with their children, came to the American continent in about 600 B.C. is almost certain to have been lost during the 1600 years since their known descendants were last heard of.

A relatively recent scientific project known as the deCODE Project offers another fascinating example of the problems in tracing specific genealogies. As part of this project, DNA samples of people born in Iceland after 1972 were traced back to the year 1742. It was discovered that the vast majority of the people alive today in Iceland are the descendants of a very small percentage of the people who lived in 1742. 1742 is less than 300 years ago, and yet many, many people living at that time have no genetic lineages represented in Iceland’s population today. This is not to say that they have no descendants in Iceland. It’s just that none of these lineages can be genetically traced.

Yes, that is a "biggie" and I don't have time to address it at this time. I'll try to get back to you on it, though.

I'm not sure you've got that quite right. I know that many non-LDS Christians believe in a literal Heaven and not just a Heaven that is a state of mind. They look forward to seeing their loved ones there and living forever in God's presence in a real place. I have never in my life heard an LDS person describe Heaven as "a planet in space." Theologically speaking, it existed prior to the creation of our universe, so it's really next to impossible to try to describe it in the same terms we use to describe the universe as we know it.

Likewise, I think that most Christians today would describe a "spirit" as a "life force." That is certainly the way it is used in the Bible. When God was said to have breathed the breath of life into Adam's physical body, Adam became a living soul. Where we differ from mainstream Christianity is in our belief that "all spirit is matter, but... more fine or pure" than the matter we generally speak of that makes up our material world. We believe that a spirit can exist both independently of a physical body and residing within a physical body. I think that most Christians, if they were to stop and think about what they really believe, would agree with that statement. They do, at any rate, use the word "spirit" in both contexts.

Don't trust those videos. Yes, we do reject the notion of a "three-in-one" God. The doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in 325 A.D. It was not taught by Jesus Christ himself or by His Apostles. We believe in a Godhead comprised of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost (aka Holy Spirit). I won't go into any more detail about our belief concerning the relationship of these three personages unless you want me to. I've never heard anything about God and Jesus having had to die to be raised to perfection. Mormons believe that both of them were both divine and perfect "in the beginning," that is from before the foundation of this earth. The video you watched apparently attempted to paraphrase our doctrine in such a way that it kind of got skewed in the process. I already discussed what we believe the relationship between Jesus and Satan, so I'll just ask you to read that post rather than repeat myself in this one.

I'm going to have to get back to you on this, too. It's a huge subject, and I don't have huge amounts of time.

I'm not absolutely positive I'm understanding what you're trying to get to in this final paragraph, but it seems to me that I more or less addressed this in my previous post to you. If there's a specific doctrine, problem or "discrepancy" you'd like to discuss in greater detail, please feel free to ask me your questions.

What? I can't imagine Mormons not knowing this. Certainly all of the Mormons in Utah and the western states do. I can tell you that it's definitely taught as part of Church history and any Latter-day Saint who has ever actually studied that history knows it.

Thanks for your quick response. Yes, there are many Christian videos taking issue with Mormon teachings, and that (as i said on the other thread) is more a debate between them as I don't buy either. What interests me are claims that some original teaching have been dropped by the LDS church and others introduced that were original. That's a matter for investigation.

Obviously science and archaeology will attract me more as evidence. The matter of the Abraham papyrus is done and I'd say dusted. The appearance of the actual papyri has done with some of the objections and the claims that it was all about something else is another matter.

The DNA evidence should be fairly clear. Wherever J. Smith supposed the events to have taken place, it had to be in America. Genetic drift does not seem to me to explain the problem. Y chromosomes and Mitochondrial DN (X chromosome) apparently gets passed down as unchanged markers of ancestry. This is the science, and genetic drift does not alter that. The results show no similarities to Jewish DNA and all indicate links to N Asian DNA.

I'll look at your post on Jesus and Satan (brothers or not?) but - as i said - the papyrus and the DNA are the biggies, as you say. I did look at a couple of apologetics videos but, as i explained, the simply lied, frankly.

I'll just say that, if anyone can do a job of sticking up for LDS, you can

Oh yes, I was trying to find stuff on the history and archaeology. I found one apologetics video arguing that the sea trip was possible. It didn't impress me that the fellow referred to Roman ships which he claimed were solid enough to do the trip. Now, given that ships around 500 BC (the rough date of the Nephite Migration) were rowed as much as propelled by a sail and were more suitable for the Mediterranean and coast -hugging voyages, some boats could have made the pacific trip, though it would be risky, but it did not impress me that the bod referred to Roman shipping of the later type (the originals were trireme - Greek type ships) of around a couple of hundred years later than what was later Babylonian times (c 500 B.C). It doesn't so much refute the argument but is very slippy historical argument.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

And that's fine. If you have trouble buying it (or any other religion's writings, for that matter), I'm okay with that. I certainly wasn't trying to convince you of anything; I was just trying to answer your question, and I hope I was able to do so.

Quite. As always, there is a Wider audience in mind that persuading One person (though i will be open and say that, if you came to see that Mormon beliefs just aren't feasible, it would be nice no end) and anyone curious about where the evidence points might find the thread interesting.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER

Thanks for your quick response. Yes, there are many Christian videos taking issue with Mormon teachings, and that (as i said on the other thread) is more a debate between them as I don't buy either. What interests me are claims that some original teaching have been dropped by the LDS church and others introduced that were original. That's a matter for investigation.

To me personally, it's the most compelling evidence there is, and it's abundant. Actually, linguistic evidences figure in there pretty high, too. At any rate, Jewish-Christian first- and second-century documents describe a religion that has much more in common with Mormonism than with mainstream Christianity today. See, despite the fact that you are (so far as I know) an atheist, you are still looking at what's "original" based on what Christianity today teaches. I don't believe that any "original" Christian teachings are absent from Mormonism's teachings, but if you think that doctrines such as the Trinity, original sin, eternal torment for non-believers, etc. were part of what Jesus Christ taught, you will obviously see it differently.

Obviously science and archaeology will attract me more as evidence.

And they attract me least, for the simple reason that there is so much left to be discovered. Look, for instance, at archaeology as it pertains to the Bible. Despite the fact that certain biblical sites have been positively identified, many have not. Today, thousands of years after the events in Exodus supposedly took place, there are still more than twenty possible candidates for Mt. Sinai! Some scholars do not believe that the city of Jericho even existed at the time the Bible says it did, and many dispute the Israelite conquest of Canaan as ever having taken place. Bible archaeologists have a considerable edge over Book of Mormon archaeologists, and yet most Christians never doubt for a minute but that every event described in the Bible actually happened exactly as described.

The matter of the Abraham papyrus is done and I'd say dusted. The appearance of the actual papyri has done with some of the objections and the claims that it was all about something else is another matter.

I don't know that it's done and dusted, but as soon as you conclude that it is, you stop being open to all other evidence. In all honesty, I am very ill-equipped to discuss the papyrus issue, and it is not a deal-breaker for me, simply because it's merely one factor among many that I have taken into account in determining that I'm on the path that's best for me.

The DNA evidence should be fairly clear. Wherever J. Smith supposed the events to have taken place, it had to be in America. Genetic drift does not seem to me to explain the problem. Y chromosomes and Mitochondrial DN (X chromosome) apparently gets passed down as unchanged markers of ancestry. This is the science, and genetic drift does not alter that. The results show no similarities to Jewish DNA and all indicate links to N Asian DNA.

Apparently, though, it's not clear at all. If genetic drift doesn't explain how Lehi's lineage failed to be passed down for well over 1000 years (from roughly 400 A.D. until today), you're going to have to explain to me why. You're going to have to provide me with an explanation for why you reject the experiment I described in favor of something else. DNA studies can provide us with answers to unbelievably complex questions, but they are still in their infancy, and to suggest that the case is closed really isn't a very "scientific" way to look at it.

I'll look at your post on Jesus and Satan (brothers or not?) but - as i said - the papyrus and the DNA are the biggies, as you say. I did look at a couple of apologetics videos but, as i explained, the simply lied, frankly.

People do that unfortunately.

I'll just say that, if anyone can do a job of sticking up for LDS, you can

Thank you, but I really don't think of myself as "sticking up for LDS" in the way that some people do. I'm nearly 70 and was raised in an active LDS family. Unlike most LDS kids, though, I was raised to question things and was never made to feel guilty for thinking that something I heard taught in a religious setting might not be quite accurate. My dad was a university professor and I always thought he was the smartest man alive. In the years since his death, I've come to realize that that might have been a slight exaggeration. Still, he instilled in me the desire to figure things out for myself and take whatever path seemed to lead me to where I ultimately wanted to end up. He didn't do this by sitting me down and giving me a lecture to that effect, but I learned it by living in his home for 21 years. When I post, it's generally simply to clear up misconceptions that people have with what Mormonism actually teaches, and not to convince them that it's "the true religion."

Today, despite the fact that I find myself, more often than not, disenfranchised with Mormon culture and many of the policies the leaders of the Church have put into place, I still consider the larger picture. I focus on the things I do believe and on the positive aspects of my religion, and am grateful to have been raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Do I believe every last thing the Church teaches? No. Do I believe every last word of either the Bible or The Book of Mormon to be an accurate description of events that supposedly took place thousands of years ago? No. When it gets right down to it, what I do believe, I believe for the simple reason that I feel God himself has directed me to believe those things. I realize how ridiculous that must sound to an atheist, but I make no apology for following what resonates to me as being true. I could not conceivably be any other kind of a Christian because I don't believe that any other Christian Church teaches the same gospel as was taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and my belief that there is, in fact, a God who knows me personally and loves me deeply is simply something I can't deny. So, I believe what makes sense to me; I reject what doesn't. What's left, I shelve for later consideration. I try not to close any doors so slightly that I can't open them again.

[TRANSPONDER]

Thank you.
By 'Original' I mean what Joseph smith actually wrote, compared to what the LDS later claims as doctrine. That is quite separate from doctrinal disagreements with Christian theology.

The point was made that Native American languages do not indicate descent from Hebrew. I can imagine that Mormon apologists would point up similar -looking words. This is a bit debatable. That is why I rather Like the papyrus and the DNA.

The 'genetic drift' argument shouldn't work if X and Y chromosomes are passed down unaltered. Obviously we now need to know just how the trace back to origins works, but the science is, after all, generally accepted. Perhaps those videos I linked might explain more. We may have to risk a foray into science.

By 'done and dusted' I did clarify this. One apologetic has been buried - the originals have turned up. We know by comparison with many, many similar funerary texts what these figures are and how they should look, and it takes a massive denial to suppose that the reason why one figure's head is missing is because a jackal head (Anubis) was replaced by a human head. There is nowhere to go on this Other than postulating some kind of revealed story Not actually in the Egyptian script.

This doesn't fit the notebooks of J Smith who noted the symbols and what they meant (one symbol being a whole passage in translation) and it doesn't account for the missing tell -tale heads of Anubis or or the Hawk headed spirit conveniently vanishing and being replaced by human heads. Of course there is still room for debate, but I don't see a lot of wiggle -room here.

I don't think the point about archaeology is valid. It is a familiar suggestion that some day new Scientific evidence will turn up to show that pre Columbian America had the wheel, cattle, horses, Iron, even a system of currency. The Inca didn't even have writing - apart from the Quipu which is Not a written system let alone alphabetic. The written languages (quite different and unlike Hebrew) had pictorial writing quite unlike the Alphabetic writing of the hebrews.

All the evidence indicates that these cultures (never mind the N American ones) owed nothing to the Hebrews and, whatever archaeology might show in the future, a civilisation, language and writing related to the Hebrew is not going to show up all of a sudden.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Originally Posted by Katzpur

Okay, I thought you were referring to a present-day tribe. Mormonism teaches that in about 600 B.C. just prior to the Babylonian Captivity, a group of perhaps a couple of dozen (at the most) Israelites left Jerusalem under the leadership of a man by the name of Lehi, a man believed to have been a prophet and a contemporary of Jeremiah. Those who left with him included members of his own family, members of another family and a single man unrelated to either family. Lehi had prophesied of the coming of a Messiah and his life had been threatened. After several years of wandering on the Arabian Peninsula, they were said to have built a ship under the direction of God and sailed across the Atlantic to arrive on the eastern coast of what is now the Western Hemisphere (more than likely near Central America). Two of Lehi's sons were named Nephi and Laman. Laman and another brother, Lemuel, were both antagonistic towards their father while their younger brother, Nephi, was fully supportive of their father.

Once they arrived here (in roughly 589 B.C.), they settled and began to raise their children. They almost certainly intermarried with other people they found already on this continent and their numbers increased significantly. At one point, the friction between the brothers and those who sided with one over the other, grew to such an extent that they split into two nations, taking on the names of the two brothers. They ultimately became known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. Throughout much of "The Book of Mormon" the Nephites were the "good guys" and the Lamanites were the "bad guys." This was not always the case, though. One particular Lamanite by the name of Samuel, has a prominent role as a prophet who preached to the then-wicked Nephites.

"The Book of Mormon" is an account of their religious and secular history. They are believed today to be among the ancestors of certain Indian groups. Since nothing in the book indicates with any certainty where on either the North American or South American continent there settled, or where they migrated to during their roughly 1000-year history, it's pretty hard for archealogists to zero in on which tribes of the hundreds if not thousands that exist today may have bloodlines that can be traced back to any of Lehi's sons.

By the way, we absolutely do not believe this small group of people who arrived on this continent are one of the "Lost Tribes." I've heard this claim from many a non-Mormon, but it simply isn't the case. For starters, a single tribe of the house of Israel would have numbered far more than a couple of dozen people.

Let's begin by examining the actual origins of Mormonism. Along about the 1820's young Joseph Smith, born in 1805 in the state of Vermont, claimed to have been visited repeatedly by an angel named Moroni. According to young Joseph, the angel told him that all existing churches and beliefs were corruptions, but that God had chosen young Joe to bring His one true religion back to humanity. The angel led Joe to a place where he discovered some golden tablets which were covered in strange writing, but which God granted Joseph the power to decipher. Asking help from a friend, Joseph would keep the golden tablets hidden inside a top hat, into which Joseph would then place his face so as to read from them while his friend wrote down his words. After all of the golden plates had been transcribed the angel took them back, but the transcriptions became the Book of Mormon and the basis of the new religion of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS. Joseph Smith was killed by an angry mob in 1844, but during that time he had managed to raise a congregation of several hundred "saints" or Mormons. To avoid persecution this group moved west and settled new the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Today, a little over 150 year later there are an estimated 15 million Mormons worldwide.

Testimony of Three Witnesses
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.

Oliver Cowdery
David Whitmer
Martin Harris


Testimony of Eight Witnesses
Be it known unto all Nations kindreds tongues & people unto whom this work shall come that Joseph Smith junr the author & proprietor of this work has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken which have the appearance of gold & as many of the leave <leaves> as the said Smith has translated we <we> did handle with our hands & we also saw the engravings thereon all of which has the appearance of ancient work & of curious workmanship & this we <we> bear record with words of soberness that the said Smith has shewn unto us for we have seen & hefted & know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken & we give our names unto the world to wit ness unto the world that which we have seen & we lie not God bearing witness of it
Christian Whitmer)
Jacob Whitmer)
Peter Whitmer)
John Whitmer)
Hiram Page)
Joseph Smith)
Hyrum Smith)
Samuel H Smith)

http://www.lds.org

In 1829 the Mormon Three Witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer signed a statement of verification that they together had not only personally seen the famous Mormon golden tablets that the angel Moroni had caused Joseph Smith to find, but that God's voice had personally told them that the tablets had been translated by divine power. Cowdery later denounced Mormonism and was excommunicated. Harris later admitted that he never actually saw the plates physically, but only spiritually. Whitmer continued to affirm that he had seen the golden plates, but also that there had been brass plates, which no one else had reported. Whitmer was eventually excommunicated from the Mormon church as well. Despite this, their testimonies are still included in the book of Mormon. The testimony of a second group of witnesses to the golden tablets, known as the Eight Witnesses, was first published at the end of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. These witnesses included Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Joseph Smith, Sr., Hyrum Smith, and Samuel H. Smith. The four members of the Whitmer family were subsequently excommunicated from the Mormon church. Has any of this served to shake the faith of the true believers? Nope! Today there are some 15 million fresh faced Mormons, all thoroughly indoctrinated into sustaining the claim that the golden plates were real, and that the Mormon religion is the one true religion. Once a true believer has been thoroughly indoctrinated into the belief system, including being thoroughly inoculated against listening to the "lies" of others, he/she will not be dissuaded by contradictory evidence no matter how compelling. Even if a story had circulated that one or more of the early disciples admitted that the claim was based on a hoax, what true believer would believe that such a story was anything other then lies made up by enemies of God and the church?

Wikipedia
The Three Witnesses
The Three Witnesses is the collective name for three men connected with the early Latter Day Saint movement who stated that an angel had shown them the golden plates from which Joseph Smith, Jr. translated the Book of Mormon; they also stated that they had heard God's voice, informing them that the book had been translated by divine power. The Three are part of twelve Book of Mormon witnesses, who also include Smith and the Eight Witnesses.

The joint statement of the Three Witnesses—Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer—has been printed (with a separate statement by the Eight Witnesses) in nearly every edition of the Book of Mormon since its first publication in 1830. All three men eventually broke with Smith and the church he organized, although Harris and Cowdery were eventually rebaptized into the church after Smith's death.[2][3] Whitmer founded his own Church of Christ (Whitmerite). All three men upheld their testimony of the Book of Mormon at their deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Witnesses


Unfortunately, the angel took the golden plates back. The church cannot produce them. But we have the word of various church members, who were eventually excommunicated, that the plates existed.

I won't even voice a conclusion here. The facts say all that need to be said.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by Tired of the Nonsense

Unfortunately, the angel took the golden plates back. The church cannot produce them. But we have the word of various church members, who were eventually excommunicated, that the plates existed.

I won't even voice a conclusion here. The facts say all that need to be said.

And strangely enough, even after having been either excommunicated or having voluntarily left the Church, none of them ever retracted their signed statements that they saw and handled the plates. That's the first thing most people would have done if they truly believed themselves to have been conned. Rather, all eleven of them went to their graves having people think they were just a bunch of fools for having believed Joseph Smith. How easily they could have set the record straight and further slandered him.

At any rate, since you apparently have no questions for me and simply want to see your vitriol in print, I'd say we're through talking. You're "Tired of the Nonsense." We're all tired of something; for me it's rude people.

[phetaroi]

To those who question "Well why can't they produce the golden plates (such as my evangelical secretary), I always responded, "Well why can't your produce the tablets with the Ten Commandments". Her answer was, "Well that's different".

P.S. Tired Of The Nonsense...a long post like that about Mormonism and you didn't even mention my home town of Palmyra!!! The first real Mormon church in Palmyra that wasn't just a house was built right across from our house on Canandaigua Road (it was later sold and became the Township Offices), and Joseph Smith's farm was just a half mile over the hill behind our house. During Pageant week, my grandparents (who raised me) used to take in tourists while we had to sleep on air mattresses on the floor of the den :-( . Other relatives took in the "actors" who were in the pageant for several weeks. Palmyra, at least back in the 1950s and 1960s, wasn't exactly Mormon friendly. And that was just pure prejudice. The Mormons I have known have always been friendly and kind people who generally impressed me.