Joseph Smith - Prophet of God

[Rolling_Stone]

Either Joseph was indeed a true prophet or he was a deceiptful fraud?

Being raised as a Mormon, I see it as a "yes" and "no" sort of thing. The human mind acts like a sieve through which spirit acts so everything passing through it is conditioned, modified and polluted by the human element. Therefore, revelations are many and varied. I like The Impersonal Life and the URANTIA Book, but I'm not going to equate them with God's word the way Muslims equate the Koran with God's word as that would be idolatry.

 

[Autodidact]

too bad archaeology does not disprove the Book of Mormon =/. nor does any other of the claims made against it.

Lack of evidence is not the same as Proof against.

So you agree that there is no archeological evidence to support the statements in the BoM?

This would be true, except that:
1. The descriptions in the BoM are of things that you would reasonably expect to leave a lot of evidence, such as huge battles between thousands of men armed with swords, shields, armor, bows and arrows, large cities, infrastructure for agriculture and herding, and so forth.
2. In fact we have a lot of archeological evidence for a lot of people in America, none of them mentioned in the BoM, and it doesn't match the BoM.
3. Even the plants and animals don't match.

So while it's not definitive proof, it's very strong evidence that the things described in the BoM never happened.

 

[Autodidact]

I call this the "tuck your tail and run" technique. You know I'm not a literalist, and no one is asking you to become an expert. Rather, I think someone with an open mind might look at what DeepShadow has posted and be able to admit there is some evidence. Is it conclusory? Of course not. But neither is the other side.

Can't come to a conclusion without researching the other side. It is not incumbent on me to deal with all the issues. I have chosen to spend my time researching the North American archeology. I assume that anything about the old world could have been known to a clever and fraudulent author. I find literary analysis extremely subjective. Now, if you want to talk about what I'm talking about, feel free. If not, then we have no common ground for conversation.

 

[Autodidact]

Oh, really?

So, the world has always been round, but at one point, people believed it to be flat. There was, for some time, no evidence that the world was round. By your reasoning, that means the world really wasn't round because there was no corrobative evidence.

And, tell me, what's the definition of "hearsay," the word you used in your post?

The evidence was always there, it just took people a while to figure out what it meant.
Actually, this is a good example of how science works. First, people figured out that despite all the apparent mountains, etc., the world is mostly flat. Which, from our point of view, it is, because the degree of curvature is so small. Then people figured out that if you actually calculate the degree of curvature, it's a ball, which was a huge improvement. Much later, someone figured out that it must have a slight bulge around the middle, so is not a true sphere. And finally, someone else figured out that the bulge is slightly south of center, so it's a very subtle pear shape, which is where we are now, the best theory we have. In the future, someone may figure out something else to further refine it.

With the BoM, the trend is all the other way. The more they research, the more the evidence indicates that what the BoM says never happened.

By your reasoning, I may as well start believing in the Invisible Pink Unicorn now, because in the future we may find some evidence that She is real.

 

[Autodidact]

Either Joseph was indeed a true prophet or he was a deceiptful fraud?

Being raised as a Mormon, I see it as a "yes" and "no" sort of thing. The human mind acts like a sieve through which spirit acts so everything passing through it is conditioned, modified and polluted by the human element. Therefore, revelations are many and varied. I like The Impersonal Life and the URANTIA Book, but I'm not going to equate them with God's word the way Muslims equate the Koran with God's word as that would be idolatry.

Or he was crazy. Or he never meant the Book to be taken as non-fiction. Or he was trying it on as a joke, and then got carried away. Or he started as a con, but eventually started believing his own baloney. Or...any number of possibilities.

 

[DeepShadow]

Look, I'm not a Mormon and am not going to become one. I have a limited amount of time.

I respect that. If you want me to stop knawing this old bone, you need only stop making statement unsupported by the data. "Joseph Smith concocted the Book of Mormon" is unsupported by the data you've presented, because you fail to explain how he accomplished the fraud; you fail to connect him to the crime, as it were.

I have spent a lot of it learning about archeological evidence that decimates the BoM.

But instead of sharing it, you share lack of evidence, which is not the same thing. I'd love to see you grade someone's term paper: "Well, you left twenty points out entirely, and I'm not going to pay attention to anything you got right, so you fail."

Any elementary school student knows to evaluate by the nomber of things got right, not the number of things got wrong or even omitted. If I give you a sheet of complex calculus problems, you are likely to get a few wrong, even if you know calculus. But with every one you get right, the chance that you are getting them right by chance drops drastically. If the problems are sufficilently difficult, getting one of them right is enough to show you know calculus; the others may be simple errors in (mathematical) translation.

I am not going to become an expert of Egyptian names to discuss that. Someone else will have to take up that cudgel; I'm not interested.

Then you refuse to touch any of the data that YOU said was relevant?! Namely, the things that were discovered after the book was printed...that support it?

Are such post-publication discoveries only relevent when they support your cause?

May I assume that you feel the same about New World archeology? In that case we have no common ground to discuss.

On the contrary, I offered the works of Ixtlilxochitl, and you called it a coincidence, which is hardly a scientifically robust conclusion. The chance of matching a dozen major dates on the Long Count is statistically insignificant--should I show you the math? Yet you embrace this astronomical coincidence while hypocritically calling Mormons logically unsound for embracing answers that are scientifically valid, such as saying we don't have all the evidence yet.

Wanna go around on this issue again? It's perfectly valid to say that the evidence is incomplete, and that we can wait for more evidence. Darwin did this with the tongue of a moth--predicting the length based on the size of a flower stamen. He was laughed at for his prediction, but he was vindicated by further discoveries after his death.

More evidence supporting the Book of Mormon arrives all the time, but you won't acknowledge most of it because you arbitrarily refuse to examine Old World data.

Of course, if you're really just tired of me beating this dead horse, you can simply stop saying stuf like "scientific evidence PROVES the Book of Mormon is a fraud," because that will be cherry picking. You are entitled to eat all the cherries you find to your liking: I won't force feed the rest to you. But when you say ALL the fruit of the Book of Mormon is scientifically rotten, I will remind you you have refused to taste the stuff that isn't rotten!

P.S. The author of this post uses a base-ten numbering system.

 

[madhatter85]

So you agree that there is no archeological evidence to support the statements in the BoM?

This would be true, except that:
1. The descriptions in the BoM are of things that you would reasonably expect to leave a lot of evidence, such as huge battles between thousands of men armed with swords, shields, armor, bows and arrows, large cities, infrastructure for agriculture and herding, and so forth.
2. In fact we have a lot of archeological evidence for a lot of people in America, none of them mentioned in the BoM, and it doesn't match the BoM.
3. Even the plants and animals don't match.

So while it's not definitive proof, it's very strong evidence that the things described in the BoM never happened.

exactly, it is not difinitive proof, you have yet to give me proof that the book of mormon is false.

And DeepShadow is right, every time we bring up something that supports it such as civilizations that were discovered, after the BoM was written, with a different name but the dates and events match perfectly, you conclude "coincidence" when there is astronomical odds agains "coincidence" in the case that entire civilizations perfectly paralell eachother as far as geography, chronology, and events.

 

[DeepShadow]

With the BoM, the trend is all the other way. The more they research, the more the evidence indicates that what the BoM says never happened.

Says the person who "isn't interested" in the data that actually supports the book. Funny, more Old World stuff is being discovered all the time that Joseph Smith could have had no knowledge of, that he actually got flak for.

Alexander Cambell, who has the dubious distinction of the author of the first anti-Mormon pamphlet, claimed that Joseph's great error was in saying Lehi performed sacrifices. This was a dead giveaway, and was seized upon by all the scholars of Joseph's age, because they all knew that only Levites could perform sacrifices! Aha!

Then we get the Dead Sea Scrolls, and one of them tells us that anyone could perform sacrifices if they were more than three days' ride from Jerusalem. And of all things, Nephi says they went THREE DAYS RIDE just before he says they performed sacrifices. Wow, how did Joseph Smith know about that?!

I'm really sorry you don't want to study the OW stuff, Auto, but I'm going to keep bringing it up if you say things like this, that we are always getting more and more data that is against the Book of Mormon. Because it's not true. You are only looking at half the data--if that--so any solid conclusion you draw will be premature.

 

[madhatter85]

Even If they proved the book of Mormon correct through Archaeology, what would you do about it Auto? Melissa? what if they could prove down to the very smallest detal, dates, times, names, events? what would you do then?

 

[DeepShadow]

It is not incumbent on me to deal with all the issues.

Is it incumbent upon you to support your claims?

I assume that anything about the old world could have been known to a clever and fraudulent author.

That's a huge assumption. Are you saying the in the nearly two hundred years since the Book of Mormon has been published, we haven't learned anything about the Old World? Anything at all?

What do you base this assumption on? Are you seriously saying that everything that is in, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls, was already available to a competent scholar?

 

[DeepShadow]

Since this thread is about Joseph Smith's fruits, and people have jumped on the Book of Mormon's authorship as his (rightly or wrongly), one wonders where are the thematic elements in the book that suggest 19th century authorship? Why, at a time when Biblical romances were all the rage, did Joseph include NO romances, not even the names of most of the women? If it is, in fact, the product of Joseph's racism, why does he make a dark skinned grou (the People of Ammon) the most righteous, and a light-skinned group (the Gadianton Robbers) the least righteous?

Moreover, where are the relationships between whites and natives as found in contemprary works? Where are the Happy Hunting Grounds? How is it possible that this supposedly 19th century work about white man and red man gets no influence at all from James Fenimore Cooper?

Since some people here are stuck on lack of evidence as evidence, I thought I'd throw that out. There is a gaping lack of evidence of any 19th century authorship. Where would any 19th century American author get the idea of having one of the toughest guys in his book SWOON to show emotion? Why on earth would any 19th century American refer to a valley as "firm and steadfast." A mountain, sure, but a valley?!

Of course, all these things are found in other cultures and times, but you can just feel free to ignore that and keep picking rotten cherries.

 

[Melissa G]

Whatever, The LDS Book still fails lamentably to have any tangible evidence to support it's ludicrous propositions. Add to that Smith's shady past, and subsequent nonsensical efforts with later translations, when the divine wouldn't help out lol, and you have a very dubious work. What astonishes me, is that in this modern age, you can be sold that dross.

Melissa

 

[Autodidact]

I respect that. If you want me to stop knawing this old bone, you need only stop making statement unsupported by the data. "Joseph Smith concocted the Book of Mormon" is unsupported by the data you've presented, because you fail to explain how he accomplished the fraud; you fail to connect him to the crime, as it were.

Oh, I thought Joseph Smith wrote the BoM.

But instead of sharing it, you share lack of evidence, which is not the same thing. I'd love to see you grade someone's term paper: "Well, you left twenty points out entirely, and I'm not going to pay attention to anything you got right, so you fail."

When it is reasonable to expect evidence of something, and it isn't found, that constitutes evidence against.

On the contrary, I offered the works of Ixtlilxochitl, and you called it a coincidence, which is hardly a scientifically robust conclusion. The chance of matching a dozen major dates on the Long Count is statistically insignificant--should I show you the math? Yet you embrace this astronomical coincidence while hypocritically calling Mormons logically unsound for embracing answers that are scientifically valid, such as saying we don't have all the evidence yet.

I don't recall this exchange or ever reading that name before. Can you refresh my memory?

What I'm looking at, and for, are material objects: stone, metal, buildings, weapons, infrastructure, fossils, etc. Got any?

Wanna go around on this issue again? It's perfectly valid to say that the evidence is incomplete, and that we can wait for more evidence. Darwin did this with the tongue of a moth--predicting the length based on the size of a flower stamen. He was laughed at for his prediction, but he was vindicated by further discoveries after his death.

O.K., To date, there has been no archeological evidence supporting the BoM, and tons of it against it, but this situation could change at some time in the future. We may also find the Lost City of Atlantis.

More evidence supporting the Book of Mormon arrives all the time, but you won't acknowledge most of it because you arbitrarily refuse to examine Old World data.

There are only so many hours in the day. Take it up with someone else.

Of course, if you're really just tired of me beating this dead horse, you can simply stop saying stuf like "scientific evidence PROVES the Book of Mormon is a fraud," because that will be cherry picking. You are entitled to eat all the cherries you find to your liking: I won't force feed the rest to you. But when you say ALL the fruit of the Book of Mormon is scientifically rotten, I will remind you you have refused to taste the stuff that isn't rotten!

I don't think I have said that. What I have said is: the archeological evidence against the BoM being true is extremely strong.

P.S. The author of this post uses a base-ten numbering system.

What is your point?

 

[Autodidact]

Since this thread is about Joseph Smith's fruits, and people have jumped on the Book of Mormon's authorship as his (rightly or wrongly), one wonders where are the thematic elements in the book that suggest 19th century authorship? Why, at a time when Biblical romances were all the rage, did Joseph include NO romances, not even the names of most of the women? If it is, in fact, the product of Joseph's racism, why does he make a dark skinned grou (the People of Ammon) the most righteous, and a light-skinned group (the Gadianton Robbers) the least righteous?

Moreover, where are the relationships between whites and natives as found in contemprary works? Where are the Happy Hunting Grounds? How is it possible that this supposedly 19th century work about white man and red man gets no influence at all from James Fenimore Cooper?

Since some people here are stuck on lack of evidence as evidence, I thought I'd throw that out. There is a gaping lack of evidence of any 19th century authorship. Where would any 19th century American author get the idea of having one of the toughest guys in his book SWOON to show emotion? Why on earth would any 19th century American refer to a valley as "firm and steadfast." A mountain, sure, but a valley?!

Of course, all these things are found in other cultures and times, but you can just feel free to ignore that and keep picking rotten cherries.

Literary creativity.

 

[Autodidact]

Here's the argument:

According to the BoM, there were several migrations of people from the ANE to America centuries ago. Some of these people increased their population more quickly and dramatically than any actual people in history ever have, until there were millions of them. The BoM never mentions them ever encountering any other people in America. These people had, among other things:
horses
chariots
swords
cows
wheat
milk and dairy products
barley
figs
smelting
gold
silver (these used in trade)
large cities
and other things too numerous to mention.

If this were true, we would expect to find archeological remains of their cities and temples, together with their general way of life, the extensive infrastructure of an agricultural econom based on wheat and barley, such as threshing, grain storage, mills, the infrastructure associate with metallurgy, such as mines, smelting, forges, etc., wheels and wheeled vehicles, metal weapons, etc., etc.

The archeological evidence indicates that none of these things were known anywhere in America prior to the 16th century.

Meanwhile, there actually were people in America throughout this period, and some parts of America were extensively settled, and had agriculture and fairly advanced civilization. These people had entirely different crops, utensils, animals and weapons than those described in the BoM.

So the BoM describes a people who should have left archeological, and didn't, while failing to mention people who were actually here and did leave extensive archeological evidence.

 

[Bishka]

What is your point?

Ditto.

 

[Autodidact]

Ditto.

My point? Have I not been clear?

 

[Bishka]

My point? Have I not been clear?

If you had been, do you think I'd be asking the question? :sarcastic

 

[madhatter85]

Literary creativity.

That is your opinion and you have yet to provide facts and hard evidence.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

Or he was crazy. Or he never meant the Book to be taken as non-fiction. Or he was trying it on as a joke, and then got carried away. Or he started as a con, but eventually started believing his own baloney. Or...any number of possibilities.

Hard to take seriously someone who advertises impeachment of a president in a religious forum...unless politics is your religion.