Day 5 was probably the best day out of the week and the perfect ending to an awesome trip. We started the day at Ephraim Church with worship then transitioned into prayer then some words of encouragement and some tools to prepare ourselves for the task to come later that night. The testimonies shared from ex-LDS members were amazing and to see them now burning with the spirit of God was truly a breath of fresh air.
After leaving Ephraim Church, we stopped at the local thrift store because the girls needed some supplies for the pageant that night (you will see in the video). After getting all of the things we needed we headed back to the Junelle's stone house to do some work but we were side tracked in some worship with Junelle before we planted flowers and did some painting.
When we were all cleaned up Junelle, who is awesome, invited us to have dinner at her place where we ate and worship and got ready for the pageant.
Here are some videos, enjoy...
Pre-Pageant
The Pageant
Part 1: recap
Part 2: recap
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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206 comments:
1 – 200 of 206 Newer› Newest»you guys are all my heros. it sounds like you had a wonderful trip, and that God used you in amazing ways. What a blessing.
WOW, Guys that was great!! I pray that many seeds where planted in the hearts of the LDS you talked too.
I'm a former Mormon myself. I would love to go out to one of these LDS events one day soon. To be able to tell them the truth of who Jesus really is would be an awesome experience.
In Christ,
Melissa G.
Darren and I just got a chance to sit and watch/read your experiences. WoW! I just love how much video journaling added to the week, awesome stuff (I mean "tight").
Thank you for your thank you, it made me cry.
We sure miss you guys, it was such an unreal time to see you all get ready to be J.S. wives, worship with such great music and grill chicken salad (with our favorite grill-boy) together...we should do it more often!
Well, this is shaping to be another big week, keep us all in prayer - we need lots of it.
I really wish you were here to keep us (me) focused. One of my greatest memories of your time here was watching you boys skip through J.S. wives singing praises to God to keep their focus on Jesus. I will keep that picture in my heart forever...there really is no better way to bless others than to help them to look to the King!
Love to you all...in the love of Jesus..."the wildest being in existence"
Junelle
I just heard about a group soon to be formed called Formerly Anti-Mormons. The group will be centered around a 12 step program for recovering anti-Mormons that can’t (regardless of how hard they try) leave the church/Joseph Smith alone - it’s supposed to be similar to the way alcoholics overcome alcohol.
The one girl, Paula, that I’ve traded emails with said coming off of hard-core anti-Mormonism was very much akin to “kicking the bottle” as she put it - she said her mind was “totally consumed” with it and that it was extremely difficult to “break-free” but she did it.
Anyway if anyone here is trying to break free of anti-Mormonism this may be a good thing for you.
Check them out at:
http://www.RecoveringAntis.com
The Anti-Mormon Recovery Guide
Contact info: recoveringantis@gmail.com
Jason,
Thank you for posting the links. I will keep Susan in my prayers. As I read her story my heart broke. Anyone can be swept up in a false religion, even people who fight against it.
As disciples of Jesus Christ (of the Bible) we are to fulfill the Great Commission. Even if that means showing the LDS the errors of Mormonism. They need to know the truth and come to have a regenerative relationship with their Savoir.
Hi Melissa, Susan's story is just one of many that will eventually be posted and I think what they are doing is a wonderful service for victims caught up in the anti-Mormon lifestyle and mindset of obsessive hatred for Joseph Smith.
I don't think you realize just how badly some of these rabid anti-Mormons need help.
I am a former mormon and have intimate knowledge of how hard it is to leave the LDS church. It hurts to leave behind everything you have ever known, your family, your friends, your identity and your corrupted belief system for this new thing called…Jesus…Until you do it.
I know that leaving the LDS church was probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life and it has also brought me the greatest joy. It is grace alone by faith alone through Jesus Christ alone that fills us up and makes us new.
I used to hate it when Christians would question my faith. Mormons are typically very afraid to have their doctrine and beliefs questioned… that is why they throw out the term “anti”, it is to get the questioner to stop questioning. Character assassination instead of digging into the word of God. I believe that to ask questions of our faith and others is a SUPER Christian thing to do, the gospel of Matthew has over 90 questions…Jesus isn’t afraid of questions…he loves them.
I think it is huge to questions mormon’s beliefs in their doctrine and history. Ephesians 5 says to expose the things done in darkness…Most mormons don’t know their own history, it has been hidden from them…let’s let them see it and then they can decide what to do with it. I did.
When I was coming out of the church in my new relationship with Jesus, I like every former mormon I have met, we go through all stages of grief. It is super common and important to realize that this is part of healing from brainwashing. If you need a good resource for this google “Coming out of the cults and into the Church”. Anger btw is a normal reaction to the lies we have been fed, "Holy anger" is okay with Jesus...he understands ...he felt that way, too.
The information that has been posted on this site and others about “recovering antis” is simply a front for wolves in sheep’s clothing.
If you have questions about leaving Mormonism, testing out your new path with Jesus, trying to deal with mormon brainwashing, etc. Have Stephen put you in touch with me.
There is a real message of hope, healing, and love…His name is JESUS.
Love to you in HIM,
Junelle
Thanks for sharing your story Junelle .
Carl Mosser & Paul Owen are two very well known Evangelical scholars that have done the hard research on the LDS position that the typical anti-Mormon avoids. They are the first honest evangelical scholars to truthfully survey the landscape and report on the depth and breadth of LDS scholarship and claims about the Book of Mormon.
These are evangelical Christian scholars and they point out very clearly the Book of Mormon is on very solid ground.
Since you were once LDS Junelle did you know that the Book of Mormon is filled with ancient Hebraic literary techniques, linguistic features, cultural patterns and many other authentic markers, ideas and concepts that Joseph Smith would not have been capable of fabricating?
Did you know that recent discoveries in Mesoamerica bear out many things in the Book of Mormon that no one in Joseph's time could have known?
Did you know Lehi's trail down the Saudi Arabian peninsula has been discovered as well as Nahom, Bountiful and the port they sailed from? Again, things Joseph Smith could not have known in the early 19th century.
If you don't believe me at least read the Mosser/Owen paper:
http://www.cephasministry.com/mormon_apologetics_losing_battle.html
You will discover that after years of research they concluded that the current and past crop of anti-Mormon books lack credibility.
"A third conclusion we have come to is that currently there are, as far as we are aware, no books from an evangelical perspective that responsibily interact with contemporary LDS scholarly and apologetic writings.3 In a survey of twenty recent evangelical books criticizing Mormonism we found that none interact with this growing body of literature. Only a handful demonstrate any awareness of pertinent works. Many of the authors promote criticisms that have long been refuted; some are sensationalistic while others are simply ridiculous. A number of these books claim to be "the definitive" book on the matter. That they make no attempt to interact with contemporary LDS scholarship is a stain upon the authors' integrity and causes one to wonder about their credibility."
Their paper is well worth the read. Cheers. Jase
Here's the complete link to the Mosser/Owen paper, it got cut off:
www.cephasministry.com/
mormon_apologetics_losing_battle.html
Jace,
I have looked into the BOM and all it’s fancy literary frivolities. Our Bishop, Brother Snow in Chapel Hill, NC wrote a book on it and made it part of his message to us on Sundays…is that testimony building?
I am really interested as to your take on how the BOM was translated, do you know?
If you believe in a God and in a deceiver called Satan you know that occultism breeds all kinds of strange things…tricky writing doesn’t really matter in my mind, is it important?
There is no evidence in the so called discoveries in Mesoamerica…there are pagan temples and strange satanic symbols and symbols of death…I was just there in May - great stuff.
Did you know that J.S. got the names for Comorah and Moroni from the Comoros Islands off of the African coastline? They were in Captain Kidd books he was reading as a kid. Funny boy!
There is no solid ground for the BOM. It doesn’t have any real evidence at all…none…zip…
It doesn’t take a “scholar” to figure it out…
God doesn’t try to trick us or make things complicated or confusing…
It is much more simple than all of this.
The best thing to do is to get real with God, it isn’t about the Book of Mormon anyway is it? Jesus isn’t mormon is he?
It comes down to who is Jesus to you? A mormon brother or the Almighty God?
I will pray for you tonight in the name of Jesus,
Junelle
I am so sick of the term "anti-Mormon". Just because I highly disagree with the LDS doctrines, believe that Smith was a false prophet, and the Book of Mormon is a work of plagiarism doesn't mean I have hate or animosity to the LDS people.
I have no problem being anti-Mormonism. I do hate how the teachings of Smith and LDS doctrines are taking many people away from the one true Jesus Christ. As a former Mormon I will do my best to witness to the LDS people every chance I get.
I recently had an LDS missionary tell me that since I was no longer in the LDS church, I was now in the church of the devil. If you do a search for the pre-1990 LDS temple endowment session you will find that they do target Christian pastors as being in employ of Satan. Oh, but the LDS NEVER attack Christians right?
Junelle - Advocacy of the Comoros/Moroni link is an act of serious desperation and has been proven false a thousand times.
That's exactly the kind of thinking Mosser and Owen take down in a big way - the trailer-park, National Enquirer-type stories about Joseph Smith. But hey, have at it. If that's the level of scholarship you have to offer then I really have no further interest in a discussion - you simply will not be able to follow along.
Btw, you can check out my personal Website: www.JosephSmith.com
We did a really cool Flash presentation a few summers ago showing the journey of Lehi from Jerusalem to ancient Mesoamerica - check it out, you might learn something.
It's been fun. Cheers. Jason Bosarge
Melissa - If it's not obvious to you at this point that the counter-cult movement lacks the skills necessary to answer the hard questions put forth by the immense amount of scholarly literature on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon I'm not sure I can help you.
That's why I think you are the perfect candidate for the 'Anti-Mormon Recovery Guide' when it comes out. "The years tell much that the days never know" and the detritus of your life will be a serious spiritual poverty if you continue your current path.
Your fixation on Joseph Smith is rather creepy - if you truly had as your mission the Great Commission then you would have ONE message and ONE gospel for ALL people. And you would teach that gospel to all and let the chips fall where they may.
Then, you wouldn't even have to bother with Joseph Smith - who's HE? If you had the true gospel that's what you would preach to everyone.
We have plenty of spiritual and intellectually plausible ways to support our scriptural canon and doctrine - and we DO it, daily.
You guys waste time with redneck anti-Mormon propaganda and actually think you're on to something BIG when you're not - that's why Junelle got steamrolled so easily.
Shame. Jase
My "fixation on Joseph Smith is rather creepy." LOL, I didn't realize by knowing that he was a false prophet made me have a "creepy fixation". :)
This "12 step program" sounds "rather creepy" and very suspicious to me. It has the LDS church written all over it. What better way to try and lead people to your religion than to mess with their heads, making them think there is something wrong with them?
Actually the truth is quite the opposite, to the chagrin of many of us the church doesn't even get involved in the anti-Mormon debate - they ignore it completely.
The Recovering Antis group is fully independent of the church and is comprised of LDS and non-LDS people.
"is comprised of LDS"
Yep that's what I thought.
If I understand it correctly the LDS folk were at some point "anti-Mormon" - to what level I have no idea.
No scandal. No calumny.
Jace,
It has been a funny head game for you to tell us we are consumed with J.S. when it is in fact YOU! Oh, man did I laugh my head off this morning!
I am super not interested in your J.S. You can have all of him yourself.
I am only interested in the ONE that means anything at all...Jesus. I am sure Melissa would agree with me, no one else will ever be need again.
There is beauty in the simplicity of God and having your eyes be able to see with clarity and focus. I don't care how you view me, you don't hurt my feelings, I just want you to be able to see the King of Kings.
Jace, Do you know Jesus?
Junelle - Of course I know Jesus. I also believe in the 1st century doctrine of theosis, I believe Christ was the first fruits of theosis and I reject hypostasis - the "Unmoved Mover", ex nihilo et al are out the window. Thank God for the Restoration.
There was a point in time where Joseph Smith stood alone against 18 centuries of darkness and priestcraft such as yours - he no longer stands alone. Jase
Jace,
Joseph Smith did more than anyone to keep the church together, more than Peter, more than Paul and more than Jesus himself, didn't he? (J.S. last public discourse before he was murdered)
I can see why you like him so much...he's your idol.
He can't help you. He can't save you. He can't love you like you need to be loved. J.S. is not who you need.
I loved your smarty-pants answer about Jesus, it helps me to know how to pray for you.
I love you in Jesus this morning, Jace, and I am off to share the truth with mormons all day!
Junelle
Junelle - I wish you nothing but the best in your endeavors. I advocate total freedom in all things and if an LDS person hears your message and decides to join with you then more power to them.
People leave the church every day - nothing wrong with that. Godspeed. Jase
Junelle,
What is so sad and awful about the LDS religion is that it is "man worship”. They worship Smith, and their god, who is an exalted man. They are the ones who have a "fixation" on Joseph Smith. Have you ever read the words to their song "Praise to the Man"? They act like when you leave the LDS church you are somehow “hurting” Smith. They put you in the same group of people who shot him.
What's even more heartbreaking to me is that it's all about a religion for them. They do things for a religion, so they can climb the l social status ladder of their religion.
For Christians it's ALL about Jesus, who we know is our God, our King, and our Savoir. We do it all for Him to glorify Him. The LDS do everything they do to glorify themselves, Smith and their religion. I PTL, everyday for saving me. God has shown me that happiness doesn't come from a religion, but from him. Being a part of His family has changed my life in ways that it I am only beginning to see.
Melissa,
Beautifully stated...{HUG} Hope to meet you some day you sound like an amazing person!
Junelle
That's right girls ignore the hard thinking done by Mosser & Owen and just keep making up your fairy tales. At some point you will have to sync with reality:
"We realize that what we say will not be welcomed by all... ...However, much like testifying against a loved one in court, we cannot hide the facts of the matter. In this battle the Mormons are fighting valiantly. And the evangelicals? It appears that we may be losing the battle and not knowing it. But this is a battle we cannot afford to lose..." - Mosser/Owen
Here you have two very smart Evangelical Christians taking great pains to point out that you guys are LOSING the spiritual battle against LDS claims. Harsh. Brutal. But the truth often is. It's a wake up call indeed.
"Our fourth conclusion is that at the academic level evangelicals are losing the debate with the Mormons. We are losing the battle and do not know it. In recent years the sophistication and erudition of LDS apologetics has risen considerably while evangelical responses have not.4 Those who have the skills necessary for this task rarely demonstrate an interest in the issues."
Ouch. More earth-shaking reality.
The bottom line is you would have to be completely clueless or outright lying to say that we do not fully accept the entire soteriological structure of Christianity with Jesus Christ as the superior sinless substitute and the only possible way for salvation to occur.
You should feel right at home here:
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
Jase
"Fairy tales"?? LOL!! You LDS are ones to talk.
BTW, What do you think about this "fairy tale"?
Ether 15:31 - And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died
So this guy Shiz has his head cut off, struggles for breath, then dies. Talk about a "fairy tales".
Tell me Jase, how does one have their heads cut off and still be able to try to "rise up"?
Ouch!! More proof that Smith was bogus.
It's actually the exact opposite. Since I'm not an expert on neuroanatomy let's consult an expert:
M. Gary Hadfield, "Neuropathology and the Scriptures"
"...Shiz's death struggle illustrates the classic reflex posture that occurs in both humans and animals when the upper brain stem (midbrain/mesencephalon) is disconnected from the brain. The extensor muscles of the arms and legs contract, and this reflex action could cause Shiz to raise up on his hands..."
"Cutting the brainstem in this location causes the muscles which extend (straighten) the arms and legs to contract. This makes the arms and legs rigid, which would raise a corpse up until lack of oxygen and blood loss caused eventual muscle failure."
"With the death scene of Shiz, Joseph Smith provides the reader with a vivid example of a catastrophic mid-brain injury which is consistent with a weary, sloppy cut made by the exhausted Coriantumr. Being a seasoned warrior, Moroni likely knew that such behavior would be relatively rare on the battlefield, even if he did not understand the rather precise neuroanatomy needed to cause it.
Shiz's death throes are a realistic touch, and represent a phenomenon that went unrecognized in the medical literature of the modern era until 1898. It is one more mark of the Book of Mormon's status as genuine history."
My goodness Melissa. How does it feel to wake up "owned" every morning?
Jase
So that you fully understand the import here: Shiz's death throes are now born out by modern medicine as being factually correct - however that knowledge didn't come about until 1898, 54 YEARS after Joseph Smith's death.
So it would have been impossible for Joseph Smith to have made that up since he was not 1) familiar with battle-field decapitation and 2) had NO access to medical journals that would come out 54 YEARS in the future.
Sheesh. Post something that actually pushes your cause forward. Jase
How does one struggle to breathe with their HEAD cut off?? LOL, I have to admit J.S did write some funny stuff.
If you have a problem with what I am posting, here's a novel idea, Stop responding to my posts.:)
From the same source as the previous post: "If the person — as in Shiz's case — were face down, the body would appear to rise up, with the neck bent backward and the face upraised. This dramatic positioning would make it appear as if the person was 'struggling for breath,' even though such behavior is a mere reflex, and not intentional."
I don't have a problem with what you are posting - keep em coming. : ) Jase
The verse says that his head was "smitten off".
Are you saying that "smitten off" means that it wasn't completely cut off?
Jase,
Thanks for your comments. You seem to feel that the LDS faith has substantial evidence. you linked us to an article written 10 years ago. That article was not written to either engage LDS apologetics, or to thrown in the towl, simply to say that Evangelical Scholars ought to take the LDS apologists seriously. I agree with them, that there should be a debate, and that we should define what we are debating. Right now, you are arguing with Junelle and Melissa, both former members who have found new spiritual life in Christ outside the LDS church. It seem like you want to talk about something else though. Why dont you throw out some of the robust LDS apologetics and let us weigh in (or let the derth of evangelical thoughtfulness be seen). Thus far I have not seen any persuasive evidence for the Book of Mormon, and I have read a decent amount of FARMs publications and looked at the linguistic similarities between ancient near eastern language. I dont buy it, but would love to hear your take.
Loren
Hi Loren. Yes the article is ten years and old and it still hasn't been answered. Imagine that.
Mosser and Owen are extremely smart evangelicals and they know what they're talking about - that's prima facie. Did you actually read the entire paper?? I ask because if you had I don't think you would be asking me to "throw out some robust LDS apologetics" so you could "weigh in". My goodness why not just START with the questions posed by Mosser and Owen?
So. Let's do just that. Show us the "derth of evangelical thoughtfulness" by answering the issues raised in the paper.
Just a few issues (3) pointed out by Mosser & Owen:
1) "Roger R. Keller, a former Presbyterian minister armed with a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Duke University, has written a monograph arguing on the basis of distinctive word usages that the Book of Mormon cannot be the product of a single nineteenth-century author, but rather is the product of several ancient writers."
Have you Loren conducted your own in-depth author-attribution studies? Keller's paper is easy to find, why don't you find it, study it and refute his conclusion of "the product of several ancient writers"or you could do your own word-pattern ratio studies.
2) "John Welch has argued for an ancient vorlage based on chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon."
In case you are not aware Loren Chaiasmus can be quite complicated and is a mark of the ancient world. It just so happens that the Book of Mormon is filled with Chaistic complex writings. Please enlighten us on HOW Joseph Smith could have produced even ONE chaistic structure using antithetic parallelism.
3) "Stephen D. Ricks, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at BYU, has written a detailed article discussing King Benjamin's coronation in Mosiah 1-6 against the backdrop of ancient Near Eastern treaty literature."
Wow Loren. We all know extremely sophisticated chiasmus is really hard to explain but now you need to explain how in the world Joseph Smith could have nailed an ancient Israel coronation rite perfectly.
I'll stop at 3 items but we're far from finished, you get the easy ones first. The Mosser/Owen paper is loaded with much much more. I think it's obvious to anyone that if you truly wanted to show the "derth of evangelical thoughtfulness" you would simply go through the Mosser/Owen paper and answer each issue in detail and I wouldn't have to point them out to you here.
Now, you should know, the pop-culture anti-Mormon pablum that you are used to consuming has been obliterated. Its destruction is sure and complete in case you are not up to speed on the latest research and study - that's exactly what Mosser & Owen explain so clearly. So when you answer the above issues do not make the mistake of falling back on the trailer-park musings of Hellenized Creedal Chrisitan propaganda - that's not going to work here.
Show us via your personal study and exhaustive research how our very young 19th century farm boy could produce such amazing non-gibberish complex superstructure that he could not have known about nor had access to 1829.
Thanks. Jason Bosarge
Hopefully you will all make sure to visit http://blog.mrm.org/ {Mormon Coffee blog} and see what happened at Pageant last night...
What people group should ever be kept from a bathroom? Unreal.
Junelle
Junelle,
How anti-Christian of THEM!! Just because I disagree with the LDS teachings doesn't mean that I would deny them basic needs.
Your post makes me wonder how they knew the LDS from the non-LDS. Did they LDS have to produce their temple recommend before they were allowed to use the facilities?
Melissa
Sorry, I have one more thing to say about the LDS banning non-LDS from using the restrooms at Manti:
Is that a way to show "the love of Christ" to people?
Even for those non-LDS who are very nasty to the LDS, why couldn't the LDS take the "higher road" and be kind. Stuff like this only fuels the fire for their fight against the LDS church.
For me it's just one more thing that shows how the LDS church truly does feel about non-LDS, and how mean and spiteful they can really be.
Melissa
Jase,
I would love to interact with you regarding the issues you set fort (or rather, that owens and Mosser set forth). To give them the attention they deserve I will have to wait until I get back to the office. Let me just give you a few links to books written to address the issues raised in that article that was published 10 years ago. You are probably aware of these, but I thought that others reading along may be intreted in seeing what some evangelicals have done in the post Ownes/Mosser article days.
http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Defenders-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/0970906307/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214086751&sr=8-10
http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Answer-Christian-Worldview-Geisler/dp/0830827358/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214086988&sr=8-11
http://www.amazon.com/New-Mormon-Challenge-Richard-Mouw/dp/0310231949/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214087034&sr=8-1
also of note are:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Apocrypha-Essays-Mormon-Mormonism/dp/1560851511/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Sidney-Rigdon-Portrait-Religious-Excess/dp/156085197X/ref=pd_sim_b_35
and, with some reservations, but also worthy of a read:
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/New-Approaches-Book-Mormon-Explorations/dp/1560850175/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214088438&sr=1-1
I hope the links work properly. I dont expect you all to read all these, but many of them do demonstrate a high level of scholarship and interaction with Book of Mormon history and theology.
Evangelical apologetics with LDS members is still "catching up." By catching up, I mean that LDS apogogists are still orienting Evangelicals to the battlefield. New apologetics are being created, that each demand special attention. That is the way this works. LDS scholars develop an argument, and evangelicals assess its merits. Hopefully as time goes on, LDS members and evangelicas will listen to and respond intelligently to one another.
Loren
Hi Loren. Fair enough. I'll wait until you "get back to the office" to give my questions "the attention they deserve". Meanwhile I'll make an interim post to clarify at least one thing you said:
"That is the way this works. LDS scholars develop an argument, and evangelicals assess its merits"
The truth is that we do not pose "arguments" rather we state the truth through years of research, often times hard on the ground work, and evangelicals choose to accept it, dance around it or deny it.
"..It is a point of fact that the Latter-day Saints are not an anti-intellectual group like Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons, in distinction to groups like JWs, produce work that has more than the mere appearance of scholarship..."
Mosser/Owen didn't just make that up. They didn't just buy some books at the bookstore to come to that conclusion AND more importantly Mosser/Owen research doesn't consist of a bunch of links to Amazon of books they haven't even read. That's exactly the kind of research they find embarrassing.
"..The scholarship of Mormon writers is often rigorous. In the least their work warrants examination. Further, we have had a number of opportunities to converse with several leading LDS academians...."
Notice the emphasis. Actual unbiased research. Instead of heading off to Manti with magic markers and marching around with a creedal free-love Joseph-is-a-scamp hand-wringing peace-sign Jesus-hippie world-view attitude they actually did some real scholarly investigations. Imagine that.
Before that ground-breaking Evangelical paper the antis could get away with National Enquirer, redneck, back woods, hysterical, sensationalism in the vein of Dogberry, Brodie, Decker et al but now our dynamic duo swings into action to check the would-be excitement:
They kill it, burn it, stomp the ashes, salt the earth, burn the salted earth, burn the salty earthy ashes, stomp that out, pour gasoline around, burn the remaining mess, and then spit on it to put it out.
"..Last summer we even spent three days at BYU attending the FARMS/BYU sponsored International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because of our opportunities to interact with LDS scholars we believe that we can (in part) see where they are coming from and where they are headed..."
For anyone that takes the time to check it our scholarship is rock solid - you can count on it. So when we tell the world that it was a billion to one odds that ANYONE in 1829 could have nailed an ancient Arabian place name location with detailed directions from that location to a VERY fertile Arabian coast it is 100% true. Let's see... when they get to NHM let's have them change from a southern direction to an eastern direction before continuing toward the coast.. yea that's it. AND let's have NHM be a burial ground! That will be a nice touch. Considering that there was absolutely ZERO knowledge of Saudi Arabia in 1829 Joseph sure was one lucky farm boy.
When we tell you that knowledge about ancient Mesoamerica was a veritable black hole in 1829 and that for Joseph to understand incredibly complex topics like cosmic urban symbolism, ancient olive culture, a dead-on mathematically accurate monetary system with Egyptian, Babylonian and Israelite analogues, accurate Akkadian words 37 YEARS before Akkadian could be deciphered, pre-Columbian widespread literacy when all frontier Americans saw was savage uneducated Indians, new discovery of Maya bees & honey harvesting (pre-Columbian), perfectly accurate Semitic names, pre-Christian Christianity that identifies the Messiah, Migdall, El Pilar ruins, new discoveries of ancient Mesoamerican religious and military fortifications, accurate detailed ancient warfare and complex military strategy explained by a frontier American farm boy that had NEVER seen or experienced war directly, details of accurate body armor but NO leg armor which has now proven 100% accurate, accurate descriptions of daily life in an Mesoamerican context, 2000 year old ancient American dialog showing in 19th century frontier America - impossible (Alma 18) and on and on - when we tell you these things you can COUNT on it to be accurate and true.
Anyway - after you answer the items in the previous post feel free to pick any one of the items in the above paragraph. And we're STILL just getting started. There are hundreds if not thousands of items we can discuss.
Cheers. Jason Bosarge
Jason,
How do you know if Loren has read these books or not? Your personal attacks, arrogance and smart-aleck remarks aren't helping me or anyone else see the LDS religion as Christian. In fact you are proving just the opposite. I really feel sorry for you and other LDS who don't have a relationship with Jesus, but with a religion. If you had a relationship with Jesus you would not be acting like you are just because people disagree with your religions doctrines. I really wish you could have a life that revolved around your Savior, instead of a religion you have to endlessly, and cruelly defend.
Melissa
Hi Melissa - I applaud the fact that you and Loren are evangelical Christians - I have no quarrel with that at all. I'm not trying to convince you to join with me in my faith.
My original reason for posting here at all was simply to let you know of the Anti-Mormon Outreach Foundation and the recoveringantis.com Website and the upcoming Anti-Mormon Recovery Guide. I think it's a good thing that many people have successfully come out of the lifestyle and cult of anti-Mormonism and obsession with Joseph Smith and moved on to a focus of their own faith whatever that may be.
Basically I think you should just focus on what you believe and not let Joseph Smith take you off your game - which is blatantly obvious has happened.
Now Loren said this in a previous post: "Why dont you throw out some of the robust LDS apologetics and let us weigh in (or let the derth of evangelical thoughtfulness be seen)."
So I'm replying with exactly what she asked for. Do you not find it interesting Melissa that the original questions STILL have not been answered? And now we have a whole new batch to tackle. I understand that it must be a frustrating and difficult challenge but there's no need to boo hoo about the hard thinking required to answer these questions. If you're going to play in this arena you might want to come prepared and actually know what you're talking about because if you don't the truth is going to be awfully hard to swallow.
And for your other point I know for a fact Loren hasn't read all of those books. In my post I made it clear that there would be no "falling back on the trailer-park musings of Hellenized Creedal Christian propaganda - that's not going to work here" - but that exactly what Loren did. Instead of real answers we got links. What's more if Loren had read those books she never would have included 'Mormon Defenders' because she would know it's just a re-hash of the same old stuff couched in "scholarly language.
And that violates the rules set forth by the paper: "In a survey of twenty recent evangelical books criticizing Mormonism we found that none interact with this growing body of literature. Only a handful demonstrate any awareness of pertinent works."
and: "Many of the authors promote criticisms that have long been refuted; some are sensationalistic while others are simply ridiculous."
and: "A number of these books claim to be "the definitive" book on the matter. That they make no attempt to interact with contemporary LDS scholarship is a stain upon the authors' integrity and causes one to wonder about their credibility."
I don't want to have to give you a whole discourse on Method but the ONLY decent book in the list was 'New Mormon Challenge' - know why? Because it was a multi-author effort lead by Mosser and Owen themselves. They actually make some very excellent arguments however it is now six YEARS old and getting very out dated. If Loren had known that she would have quoted FROM the book instead of citing it as a pitiful holy grail save-the-world-from-the-Mormons at any cost 3rd reference. It should have been front and center, but it wasn't.
But let's be clear: it's the TRUTH you guys are fighting - not me. And that's precisely why your little militant mob movement of persecution from the pulpit will eventually fade away. I know it starts in the academic circles and then slowly filters down to the commoners and less educated but I had NO idea it would take TEN YEARS for you guys to even know Mosser/Owen existed. Ouch.
That paper is rather hard to find but it's something you should have known about a long time ago. Could have saved you all these years of wasting time.
Cheers Jase
Jase,
Again with Joseph Smith? Are you sure you’re not the one who’s fixated on him? The man is dead he can't hurt anyone; anymore. My focus is now on my Savoir, not a religion.
Instead of running behind the skirts of Owen and Mosser, I'd really like to see some individual thought and response from you. So far all you’ve done is promote another brainwashing cult (anti-Mormon recovery) and the work of mortal men. Your obsession with these two things is a little scary.
I don't run to research papers for guidance in proving my religion; I have the word of God and the Holy Spirit. That's all I need.
Melissa
Hi Melissa - the entire 2nd half of my last post to Loren has nothing to do with Mosser/Owen and is the result of my own personal research and study - go back and read that part carefully. There's FAR more there than what you'll find in the M/O paper.
The bottom line is if you or Loren would just answer the questions we could wrap this up real quick.
The way Loren made it sound is all I had to do is "throw out some of the robust LDS apologetics.."
and then she would rather quickly "weigh in ([and] let the derth of evangelical thoughtfulness be seen)"
I've "thrown it out there" just as I was asked to do.
I'll be waiting for Loren's response.. Or you can answer the questions as well if you're up for it. I figure with all the years you've spent fighting against Joseph Smith you should have a little more up your sleeve than Shiz and his battle ground demise.
Jase
Jase,
Years of fighting Smith? Honey, I've only been out of the LDS church for around 18 months. I have no "fight" with J.Smith, he's dead remember? My only concern is that people come to know Jesus Christ and are saved.
What I've learned from past experience in talking to the LDS is that you have no interest in what I have to say. I could never answer those questions in a way that would convince you, you already have your mind made up. Even if I did try, is that going to lead you or any LDS to Jesus Christ? No, I didn’t think so. Sorry, I have better things to do with my time.
Melissa
Hi Melissa. Well I'm sorry you left but I'm glad you are happy now. Like I said I have no quarrel with you personally.
Are you on Facebook? My profile is here: facebook.com/people/Jason_Bosarge/578498735
Feel free to link to me, always glad to have more friends. Loren, Junelle, I'd be glad to link to you as well. :)
Jase
Hey Jase,
I just wanted to make sure you understand the meaning of the word "dearth." You have used it in a way several times the makes me think you may not be on the same page as I am.
How about this. I will post and try to interact with one of the questions you suggested (any one in particular we should start with?), and I will throw out a backwoods old school argument that I have not heard a great response to (you probably will be able to answer it really easily, but it would be helpful for me). Will that work?
Loren
Hi Loren. I honestly read your "derth" comment as being sarcastic. Start with whatever you would like - any of the issues would be great.
Thanks Jase
Hi Loren. While you're picking your topic I just want to remind you of the ground rules rooted in the M/O paper:
You can't use ANY anti-Mormon material from 1830 to 2002. Of that 172 year period the M/O paper says:
"A number of these books claim to be "the definitive" book on the matter. That they make no attempt to interact with contemporary LDS scholarship is a stain upon the authors' integrity and causes one to wonder about their credibility."
So, sadly that rules out anything by the Tanners, Brodie, Decker et al. It also rules out any works after 2002 that simply revive old theories and allegations which unfortunately for you is the majority tactic of the post-Brodie writings.
If you want any applause at all you will need to bring us some new light that answers the hard questions (like the ones I listed) - no falling back on imputed thoughts and psychobiographical laziness.
I and several members of the B'nai B'rith Organization await your in-depth research.
Cheers, Jase
Hi Loren, I want to give you a clear example of really shoddy scholarship to drive home the Mosser/Owen point that most involved in the counter-cult movement lack the skills and training necessary to answer the hard questions.
At the recent Manti Pageant Bill McKeever is toting around a 100 pound weight stack (similar to what the Tanners do at their bookstore) claiming that the actual gold plates were double his weight stack (200 pounds) and therefore Joseph Smith could NOT have ran through the woods while fighting off attackers holding the plates. He gleefully stands in the great and spacious building mocking the beliefs of the various LDS adherents that land in his little trap.
Here's the REAL research and the truth: Those who actually handled the plates claim they were much lighter.
"...William Smith, a brother of the Prophet who had handled and hefted the plates in a pillow-case, claimed on several occasions that the set of plates weighed about sixty pounds, as did Willard Chase, while Martin Harris said that they weighed forty to fifty pounds."
Joseph Smith's brother William specifically said that the material of the plates was "a mixture of gold and copper." (William Smith interview, The Saints' Herald, 4 October 1884, 644)
"The cautious statements by other witnesses, including Joseph Smith himself, who spoke of the plates as having "the appearance of gold," suggest that the metal may have been an alloy" ("The Testimony of Eight Witnesses," Book of Mormon; and Joseph Smith Jr., "Church History," Times and Seasons, 1 March 1842.)
What's more, it's highly likely the plates were made from tumbaga. "Tumbaga was the name given by Spaniards to a non-specific alloy of gold and copper which they found in widespread use in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica."
"Tumbaga was widely used by the pre-Columbian cultures of central America to make religious objects. Like most gold alloys, tumbaga was versatile and could be cast, drawn, hammered, gilded, soldered, welded, plated, hardened, annealed, polished, engraved, embossed, and inlaid." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbaga)
Are you starting to see the big picture now?
I'm not going to do ALL of the research for you but the actual weight of the plates was approx. 60 pounds or less - probably closer to 45 pounds.
Bill McKeever is either a liar, a skill-less hack or both, either way he is clearly intellectually out-gunned. How embarrassing for your camp and evangelicals everywhere to have this anti-Mormon Truther running around at pageants outright lying to kids and teenagers that don't have enough of a grasp of the situation to defend themselves. Kids and teenagers! Bill McKeever has stooped to pushing his propaganda on kids. Shameful. This is a serious stain on his integrity and certainly causes one to wonder about his credibility especially when the truth is so easily found.
As is usually the case with fanatical agenda pushers the means justify the ends even if those means include outright lies.
"..the sophistication and erudition of LDS apologetics has risen considerably while evangelical responses have not.."
"..at the academic level evangelicals are losing the debate with the Mormons.."
Loren, now that you know the truth and for the sake of truth, will you denounce Bill McKeever tactics on this thread? Junelle? Melissa?
Ref:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4wJC4pb284
Keller’s argument is basically that through statistical analysis he sees considerable evidence that he is able to discern the editorial voice of Mormon and Moroni, as well as the voice of the book which they are abridging. If the Book of Mormon is an abridgment of archaic texts, then this would certainly lead to the credibility of Joseph Smith and his claims to have translated the Book of Mormon. Here are some thoughts regarding Keller’s work.
1. I have not personally taken the time to do my own statistical analysis (though I think it would be an interesting endeavor). However, if we accept that Keller has correctly interpreted the data (which I will grant for argument sake), what does that prove. Well, it would prove that: A) Joseph Smith was truthful in his claim to have translated the Book of Mormon from ancient documents, B) that Joseph Smith was incredibly crafty (read deceitful) in authoring the Book of Mormon, C) that the differing vocabulary and frequency distributions are due to some other reason (I will throw out a few possible reasons why later). Thus, the mere existence of the findings described by Keller does not establish the credibility of Joseph Smith, but they do force us to take the claim of his translation of ancient documents seriously.
2. Why would one expect to find such differences? Well, if we being with the assumption that Joseph Smith discovered and translated the plates, then when we discover the findings of Keller we are lead to see them as evidence for Smith’s claim. However, if we are leaving Joseph Smith’s translation/authorship on the table, and approach the evidence, we will still have some work to do to discover if this is indeed evidence or not. If Smith was the true author of the work (not the translator), it make perfectly logical sense to have the vocabulary frequencies that are found. Remember, those who see the Book of Mormon as the work of Joseph Smith would never claim that the vocabulary frequencies and distributions should be evenly distributed over the whole book. Rather, fiction authors often will alter their language, slang, dialect depending on the character speaking. So, it is not difficult to see Smith employing standard writing practices, which give an air of authenticity. Thus, Mormon stresses the need for hope, love and baptism, while Moroni sees the eminent blood, destruction, suffering and the need for faith. It makes sense then that each character would use those particular words more than the other. Thus, the mere fact that there are differences does not tell us if Smith is the author or translator of the work. Simply that the differences exist. If we found other evidence that called Joseph Smiths character into question, we might be tempted to believe that he was in fact the author, and that his intent in authoring the Book of Mormon in the manner that he did was to deceive.
3. Other explanations of the vocabulary differences. Well, we have seen that the mere existence of the frequencies of vocabulary differences can either be explained by Joseph Smith’s authorship or translation of the Book of Mormon. In the one case, it is the natural product of the translation, in the other case, it is the product of a human intending to lead people to believe his fiction was actual history. Yet there is another possibility. It is possible that the entire work was done by Joseph, and that the differences are related to other factors, such as the scribe he penned the work with, the biblical texts (if any) he was working from, the natural thrust of the story- possible that the vocabulary follows the story line. Even in the works of Paul, many people judge various letters to be written by a different person based on the vocabulary and frequency distribution (not even the LDS church believes this). This is often due to the date of his letter, the intent of his letter, and the scribes nationality or level of education.
4. Keller’s work is not iron clad. He himself sees his work only as offering considerable evidence that the original writings of Mormon and Moroni are distinguishable from each other. Thus, it may well be the case that there is no important statistical difference between the various portions of the Book of Mormon.
5. So, which why ought one lean. Was Joseph Smith the translator or author of the Book of Mormon. Well, I suggested that one way we could approach that question was to look at Smith’s Character. Here is one question that I have had lately. It may be no big deal, but, to me it is certainly a strike against Smith’s credibility.
In investigating the three witnesses, I came across David Witmer’s “An Address to All Believers in Christ.” This book was written toward the end of his life, and he affirms his faith in the inspired nature of the Book of Mormon. This work can be found on-line at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Address_to_All_Believers_in_Christ, it is public domain. One of the things that was of interest in this book is his claim that Joseph changed several key statements in D & C. In chapter 8 of part 2, Whitmer notes several changes to Smith’s original revelations. The first major change is seen in the present day D&C 5:4. It reads, “And you have a gift to translate the plates; and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you; and I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this, for I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished. However, in the original 1833 ed. of the Book of Commadments (which you can purchase on-line in the Vol. II of “Joseph Smith Begins his Work”), the corresponding chapter and verse (4:2- pg. 10), says, “…and he has a gift to translate the book, and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift, for I will grant him no other gift.” Notice here that the change did not substitute a ‘like word,’ but changed the original meaning. Whitmer argues that it is as if … “God had commanded Joseph to pretend to no other gift but to translate the Book of Mormon, that he would ‘grant him no other gift,’ and then afterwards God changed his mind and concluded to grant him another gift (pg. 57).” The original revelation was plain that there would be no other gift, while the present version also adds, “until my purpose is fulfilled in this,” and “until it is finished,” thus opening the door for future translations (which Joseph delivered- Pearl of Great Price, and the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible).
Whitmer takes exception to many other changes, but one other of note is present day D&C 18:4-5. This one is especially appalling to Whitmer because, as you will see as you read the description of the revelation, Whitmer was present at its reception. As Whitmer received the revelation and it was originally printed (Book of Commandments, 1833), it said, “…for in them are all things written, concerning my church, my gospel, and my rock. Wherefore, if you shall build up my church, my gospel and my rock, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you (Book of Commandments 15:3-4, pg. 35). You will notice in the present edition of the D&C, there is a striking change. “For in them are all things written concerning the foundation of my church, my gospel, and my rock. Wherefore, if you shall build my church upon the foundation of my gospel and my rock, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you.” Notice the bold additions. Here the word them refers to the plates- that is, the Book of Mormon. Originally, the revelation commanded Smith and Whitmer and others to rely upon the plates alone for the building up of the church. But the revelation was changed to mean the plates are merely the foundation for any other changes church leadership desire. Whitmer goes on to show the various ordinances and offices that where added that would not be allowed given the original wording, and which thus necessitated the change to be made. This certainly seems to go against Smith’s credibility since the changes were made in his life time, and he could easily have prevented the change. This leads me to believe that out of the two options above, it is easy to see Smith as willfully crafting a narrative or “revelation” to suit his purposes, which is disingenuous at best.
ps. it is a slippery slope to say that everything the Tanners or others have said with regards to LDS is flawed just becasue one is not convinced by some of thier arguments.
Also, I fail to see how you come to this conclusion, "You can't use ANY anti-Mormon material from 1830 to 2002," from Mosser and Owens quote, "A number of these books claim to be "the definitive" book on the matter. That they make no attempt to interact with contemporary LDS scholarship is a stain upon the authors' integrity and causes one to wonder about their credibility." The fact that a number of the books in the 172 year period do not interact with contemporary LDS scholarship does not mean that none of the books are of value, or that none of the work is imporitnat in its own right. All they are saying is that in general, much of what has been written misses the mark because it does not address the questions or scholarship of modern LDS scholars. I see no reason to abide by your groudrulls, though I will probably basically stick to them anyway.
pps.
I know you have a problem with much of protestantism's response to the mormon apologetic of late, but you also have to say that there has been a lot of terrible apologetic approaches for the book of Mormon as well. Two popular apologetic approaches I find lackeing that I have been hit with by several LDS missionaries are the 17 marks of the true church, Joseph 's prediction of the civil war. There are a ton of wholes with both of these arguments. The problem is not just on our side.
Jace,
I already looked into your plates questions years ago. Your own Funky-FARMS has said that the "golden" plates (that were over and over again stated to be pure gold by all the original characters in this charade) with their tumbaga-ness would be 53+ lbs and would still be grossly overweight for you to haul under one arm for 3 miles (jumping and dodging and fighting off bad guys) and then have your elderly mother grab from you through the window.
I can't believe that you actually believe this stuff. Let go of having to validate the church - they (it) doesn't care about you. Try to look at things objectively?
Bill is simply telling the mormon truth based on what they have said. Ask him for his sources?
Always sending up Jace in my prayers!
Junelle
BTW, for the record...
I take J.S. at his word with this story and still believe that he meant *gold plates* and didn't do the math.
Hi Loren - What we need to compare is not just the Book of Mormon authors to each other but in a real wordprint study we compare the Book of Mormon against OTHER writings or dictations of Joseph Smith - that is very key. We also compare them against Olver Cowdery, Solomon Spaulding etc.
Even if a person consciously alters their writing style there are subconscious traits that they cannot alter and powerful software will show that - so if your B and C items were true it would be rather trivial to detect the fraud.
You claim: "..Rather, fiction authors often will alter their language, slang, dialect depending on the character speaking. So, it is not difficult to see Smith employing standard writing practices, which give an air of authenticity.."
So yea, that would never work. Regardless of how 'in character' Danielle Steel gets in some romance novel it would take a computer about 10 seconds to figure out exactly what's going on.
We also have to keep in mind Loren that we have plenty of eye witness accounts that the entire process was a dictation - and the Book of Mormon manuscripts bear that out. The original manuscripts have the type of errors that one would make while "listening" to someone and the printer manuscript has the type of errors one would make when copying another document. That is irrefutable. So the point is that dictation is exactly how the Book of Mormon was produced, and that being proven, we can also believe the eye witnesses in the amount of time it took to produce which was less than 90 days - so for Joseph Smith to have produced such a colossally complex work AND keep his "characters" in true form for over 500 pages with no contradictions is just beyond the pale. You have just created true super-human. What an amazing feat.
Let's look at exactly how wordprint studies work:
"Basically a computer wordprint test consists of determining the subconscious patterns of non-contextual word usage on the part of an author. We all use non-contextual words, like "the ' "and ' "of ' etc., in ways that uniquely characterize our writing. These patterns cannot be imitated. A computer wordprint test can identify these patterns in an author's writings. Scholars have used wordprint tests to detect ghost writers. No ghost writer has ever fooled a wordprint test. Wordprint tests have also been successfully used in cases where a book's authorship has been disputed. Studies have shown that wordprints can survive the translation process.
The first substantive wordprint tests done on the Book of Mormon were performed in 1980 by Wayne Larsen, Alvin Rencher, and Tim Layton, all of whom are experts in statistics. Utilizing computers, these scholars conducted three types of tests on the Nephite record: MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance), Cluster Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis.
The three most important results of these tests were:
(1) that the Book of Mormon was written by many different authors, exactly as it claims;
(2) that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon; and (3) that the wordprints of the Nephite writers and those of Solomon Spaulding do not match (Larsen, Rencher, and Layton; Larsen and Rencher).
Shortly after the Larsen-Rencher-Layton test results were published, a group of scientists, now known as the Berkeley Group, began their own wordprint project. This group was composed of several non-Mormon experts and one LDS scholar, John Hilton, an adjunct professor in the statistics department at Brigham Young University. The group's goals were to verify the accuracy of wordprinting and to check the results of the Larsen-Rencher-Layton results.
The tests conducted by the Berkeley Group were even more conservative and rigorous than those done by Larsen, Rencher, and Layton. They incorporated six points which were not used in earlier Book of Mormon wordprint studies, such as the development of a "wrap-around" word-group counting method to help break apart clusters of similar words, and the use of the earliest Book of Mormon manuscripts. The Berkeley Group compared the two Nephite authors who have the largest number of 5000-word texts, Nephi and Alma. The group selected and analyzed three independent writings of these two authors. The wordprints in these writings were also measured against the wordprints of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Solomon Spaulding. After years of research and testing, a brief paper describing the Berkeley test results was published in 1987. A more detailed article on the results appeared in the Summer 1990 issue of Brigham Young University Studies. Like the Larsen-Rencher-Layton wordprint study, the Berkeley tests deal a fatal blow to the Spaulding theory; they also refute the idea that Joseph Smith was the author of the Nephite record (J. Hilton). I quote from Hilton's report on the Berkeley Group's test results:"
"By using a new wordprint measuring methodology which has been verified, we show that it is statistically indefensible to propose Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery or Solomon Spaulding as the author of the 30,000 words from the Book of Mormon manuscript texts attributed to Nephi and Alma. Additionally these two Book of Mormon writers have wordprints unique to themselves and measure statistically independent from each other in the same fashion that other uncontested authors do. Therefore, the Book of Mormon measures multiauthored, with authorship consistent to its own internal claims. (J. Hilton 101)"
So your item number 4 claims: "Keller’s work is not iron clad." which is true but you also conclude: "..Thus, it may well be the case that there is no important statistical difference between the various portions of the Book of Mormon."
I think you can see based on the above that your conclusion may need to be re-thought. In fact you might benefit greatly from the Larsen-Rencher-Layton studies.
David Whitmer was a VERY powerful Restoration witness. Even after having a rather serious falling out with Joseph Smith he insisted to his death-bed that what he saw was real and factual. The bottom line on Joseph Smith's character is you can either believe his enemies (which were many) or his friends (which were many more). If you truly have an interest in knowing the character of Joseph Smith send me an email at jr@josephsmith.com and I'll reply with a pdf file called "Remembering Joseph". It's filled with first hand accounts of people who knew Joseph Smith - diaries and journals filled with details rarely seen.
Regards, Jase
Ref: Michael T. Griffith, The Book of Mormon--Ancient or Modern?
Junelle, I thank you for your prayers.
thanks for your response Jase, but I think there are several other important issues to take into consideration. Issues that have to call Keller, along with the Berkeley groups findings into questions. It has been known for over 10 years that the word print analysis has serious limitations in various contexts. It is severely handicapped when: 1. the sample size is too small, and 2. when a work has been edited or revised. About a 4-6 months ago I picked up a copy of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon. my spouse and I have taken time to go through and find all the places where the current edition has been altered from the edition Smith first distributed. We marked each change in 1st Nephi, and I must admit, it is quite a spectacle. There are words and phrases that are used over and over again that get changed, or altered. These words are used no matter who is supposed to be authoring a particular text. Statistical analysis of today's book of Mormon is seriously flawed if one imagines that this will reveal anything about authorship after hundreds and thousands of the subconscious author tendencies the test is designed to detect are removed or altered.
Further Jase, nice skirting the issue of the changing of the D&C. I hope you simply buying some time and doing some research, because that was evasion at its worst. I told you that was a troubling character issue, and all you could do was offer counter heresy that Joseph was a good man. Heresy is not as powerful as documented deceit, so lets deal with that.
Loren
ps. I have no doubt that Joseph Smith was a good man by most peoples standard. He was a charismatic leader, a person who invested in others, and was, most likely, sacrificial in his giving and care for others. This says nothing of his moral character however. What I am concerned about is not his dealings with other people per se, but his ethics and character. By most peoples standard Haggard was a good man, and a good leader, but morally, he was corrupt and depraved when no one was looking. It certainly seems he had no problem changeing revelations without notice to suit his needs, which is a serious character flaw, at least this is how Whitmer felt.
pps.
In the last sentence of my June 24th post, I meant hearsay, not heresy. Sorry if this confused you at all. Sometimes I start typing and forget to check what I wrote.
Loren: "[Wordprint analysis] is severely handicapped when:
1. the sample size is too small, and 2. when a work has been edited or revised."
1. The sample size was over 30,000 words - which is FAR more than enough to do a wordprint analysis.
2. The wordprint studies I sent you were done on the early Book of Mormon manuscripts - no changes, no edits no revisions.
The conclusion reached by non-LDS as well as the LDS scholars working on the project were as follows:
(1) that the Book of Mormon was written by many different authors, exactly as it claims;
(2) that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon;
(3) that the wordprints of the Nephite writers and those of Solomon Spaulding do not match
Now in the face of the evidence above it's impossible for your arguments against the wordprint analysis to stand - is that a statement you would agree with?
Please answer the above question before I move on to the David Whitmer issue.
There are several lingering issues for me.
1. Do you know who the colleagues that worked with Hilton are? They are never mentioned, and it would sure help the case of the article if we could speak to them and determine if he misrepresented their findings, or if they approve of the method. We also have no information about the qualifications of the team, other than Hilton himself.
2. Why were his findings never published in peer-review literature. It is only a chapter in a book published by FARMS and an article in a BYU. This is not to say that if it is published by BYU it cannot be credible, but it would certainly help the cause if the methodology and results passed peer review. Often people citing the Berkeley study want to bolster the case by declaring that the team was made up of several non-LDS peers (an attempt to pass peer review of some kind), yet as noted above, who they are and what their qualifications are are never noted.
3. Hilton himself understands that an author imposes an external structure (like quazi-KJ speak) the author's wordprint pattern is modified, and the accuracy of the wordprint analysis is compromised.
4. if a word print anyalisis was done on the words of Jesus in the Book of Mormon and that of the bible and it was found to not have the same word print, would you conclude that they were a diffrent Jesus. What if the wordprint of Jesus in 3 Nephi and that of the D&C turned up different, would that lead you to believe that the Jesus of the Book of Mormon was different than the Jesus of the D&C. In other words, how far could on take this type of analysis? A lot of work needs to be done in peer reviewed journals to determine the validity of such an approach with any certainty. The only peer reviewed use of the wordprint analysis drew strong criticism (on the use of the analysis to determine Hobbs authorship of several documents).
5. it is interesting that in comparing Nephi to Alma the study excludes large portions of the text. In fact, the most common phrase of all was excluded, which would surly have increased their similarity ("and it came to pass," and Old testament quotes were removed- it would be interesting to leave these in and see how similar Nephi and Alma turn out to be). Their assumption is that when quoting from the OT they would not be speaking in their own voice, but that of the OT. However, there are places of departure from the Masoretic text in the reproduction of the OT material. These changes are not always consistent with either the Dead Sea scrolls or the LXX, and thus may be Smiths own reworking (or at least that is why one might be interested in keeping this text in the analysis for study). Removing this text is a flaw in the methodology.
6. Wordprint analysis has not been shown (to my knowledge) to be able to discern the difference between writing style. Thus, it would be interesting to see how similar the book of Jeremiah is with Lamantations (Poetry vs. Prose). It is one thing to attempt to do wordprint analysis on a letter, or a journal of a person, but quite different to subject that same author's work in a different Genre. I understand that you feel it could detect an author writing in different dialects (though I would like more info on this), but I have no confidence that if Joseph Smith adopted a King James esqu style, it would be quite different from his own writing.
7. Basically, it is a no-brainer to see that if we subject Smith's journal and his correspondence it would be very similar. But to imagine that this similarity would carry over to a whole different genera is error. I would like to see something like this done with the letters of tolken and the fiction of tolken. That would add some credibility to the study.
7. I find it odd that when comparison was done between Nephi and Nephi, the number of rejections was 5. This contains twice the number of rejections work written by the same author ought to have (compare to the results of Smith to Smith for example).
I would love to hear your take on the D&C changes. I hope it is more significant than "continuing revelation."
Epilogue:
Loren, If the conversation is going to continue you will need to give me some empirical reason for rejecting the wordprint studies - so far you have not done that. You may need to personally track down the Berkeley colleagues or spend several years doing the wordprint studies yourself. The hard work has been done (over years) and the burden of proof is now on the skeptical party.
You can't be a trespasser on the grounds of scientific method with some parochial barefoot no shirt Decker opinion and actually think it's going to work. You'll need to pull the double-wide elsewhere.
The conclusions you reach are simply inaccurate: "..Wordprint analysis has not been shown (to my knowledge) to be able to discern the difference between writing style.." what in the world are you talking about? I have no idea. But it's not rooted in reality. That's at least one major point of a wordprint study - to figure out an author based on subconscious style - the very things that no one can fake. But you have our 19th century upstate New York farm boy planning for every possible advance against his deception. Omg, the fog of anti-Mormonism is palpable.
I may be wrong but it sounds like what you know of David Whitmer is at best a distortion of truth and a perversion of history - we all know he rejected the institutional church but one should not be led to the wrong conclusions from that. Anyway, I see no reason to move on to the D&C red herring issue until we can resolve the above. Like Brodie and two missed periods I'm expecting a LOT more.
Cheers. Jase
wow Jase,
I expected a lot more from you than a simple dissmissal and evasion. I thought you were going to bring some actual arguments. I gave several reasons why wordprint analysis should not be accepted in this case. You have done a good job at dissmissing several of those arguments, and have provided information I was unaware of, which I appreciate, but there are several importaint issues still on the table.
1. If you are going to claim that the credibility of the study is bolstered it being conducted by a panel of non-LDS members, I would like you to supply information regarding those members of the panel. I can find no information about them, and see no reason to buy the bate. I could be proven entirely wrong about that, and they may have impeccable credentials. That would certainly show me that Hilton had a desire to have his conclusions peer-reviewed, and that shows me he would not just be out to pull the wool over the eyes of wishful thinking LDS members.
2. Why exclude the phrase, "and it came to pass." This is a serious method error. It would be instructive to see the ratio of sentences that begin with that phrase. I think that would show a greater similarity that when we exclude that abundantly used phrase.
3. Why exclude the OT material. Hilton himself acknowledges that paraphrasing obliterates the wordprint of the source text and imposes the wordprint of the secondary author." The OT text as we have in the Book of Mormon does not match any known version word for word, and the secondary authors (Moroni and Mormon) were known for their abridgment, thus that material should reveal their own hand. (Hobbes and "A Discourse of Laws": Response to Fortier
Author(s): John L. Hilton, Noel B. Reynolds, Arlene W. Saxonhouse. Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4, (Autumn, 1997), pp. 889-903)
3. In Hilton's own article in BYU Studies, 1990 (On Verifying Wordprint Studies: Book of Mormon Authorship), he acknowledges that the wordprint is designed to catch free-flow words that arise from the authors own subconscious writing style. He is also forced to admit that "If the author consciously imposes an external structure, the free-flow of the authors wordprint pattern is modified, and accurate wordprint measurements become more difficult to obtain." Certainly, if Joseph Smith was writing the Book of Mormon (and not translating it), he was imposing an external structure (King James speak- and a hack job at that based on the number of corrections that had to be made due to improper King James english). Based on Hilton's own words, one has to admit that if Joseph is the author (not the translator), then the wordprint would be difficult to obtain (due to the imposition of the external structure).
4. I would love an explanation as to why Nephi and Nephi have a rejection level of 5, when 6 is considered by Keller to be a 99% chance the author is not the same.
Now Jase- you are not living up to my expectations on two counts.
1. You are not interacting with the issues- just skirting them, offering ad hominem arguments instead (doublewide, etc). I have raised serious method issues, as well pointed out Hilton's and the Berkeley groups own understanding of the limitations of the wordprint analysis.
2. I thought we agreed that I would tackle an issue and give you an issue. Thus far you have entirely avoided the issue I have put on the table. And to be clear, my issue is not with Whitmer as a witness. I merely use him to point out the real problem, which is the changes of the D&C. This is much more substantial that the majority of the changes in the Book of Mormon, as it changes doctrine and polity.
Thanks again for the exchange.
Epilogue Redux |~
Ok Loren, I'll give you the research:
John Hilton and the Berkeley Group : Methods
"The "Berkeley Group's" method relied on non-contextual word patterns, rather than just individual words. This more conservative method was designed from the ground up, and required works of at least 5,000 words.
The Berkeley Group first used a variety of control tests with non-disputed authors (e.g. works by Mark Twain, and translated works from German) in an effort to:
(1) demonstrate the persistence of wordprints despite an author's effort to write as a different 'character'
(2) demonstrate that wordprints were not obliterated by translation (e.g. two different authors rendered by the same translator would still have different wordprints).
The Berkeley Group's methods have since passed peer review, and were used to identify previously unknown writings written by Thomas Hobbes.
The Berkeley Group compared Book of Mormon texts written by Nephi and Alma with themselves, with each other, and with work by Joseph, Oliver, and Solomon Spaulding. Each comparison is assessed based upon the number of "rejections" provided by the model. The greater the number of rejections, the greater the chance that the two texts were not written by the same author. Tests with non-disputed texts showed that two texts by the same author never scored more than 6 rejections; thus, one cannot be certain if scores between 1–6 were written by the same or different authors. Scores of 0 rejections makes it statistically likely the two texts were written by the same author.
...each "rejection" is statistically independent—this means that the chance of two different authors being the product the same person can be determined by multiplying the chance of each individual failure.
Thus the chance of Nephi and Alma being the same author is found by:
chance of 7 rejections x 8 rejections x 9 rejections x 10 rejections
= 0.005 x 0.001 x 0.0001 x 0.00003
= 0.000000000000015
=1.5 x 10-14
This is a roughly 1 in 15 trillion chance of Nephi and Alma having the same author. Hilton rightly terms this "statistical overkill".
As John Hilton put the matter, if wordprinting is a valid technique, then this analysis suggests that it is "statistically indefensible" to claim that Joseph, Oliver, or Solomon Spaulding wrote the 30,000 words in the Book of Mormon attributed to Nephi and Alma. The Book of Mormon also contains work written by more than one author. Critics who wish to reject Joseph's account of the Book of Mormon's production must therefore identify multiple authors for the text, and then explain how Joseph acquired it and managed to pass it off as his own."
So Loren, I'm asking for empirical reasons for rejecting the studies. The burden of proof is not on me or anyone else - but on you directly since you reject the hard research.
The study has been peer reviewed and successfully used in ANOTHER study. My goodness.
Do you not realize that if Joseph Smith had written the Book of Mormon the wordprint studies would have blown the door right off the charade? Do you not understand that that information would be bandied about by every anti-Mormon on the planet? Do you not comprehend that the debate would be OVER?
The Berkeley Group "went to great pains to immunize the methodology from criticism" through the use of control tests.
Do you not understand the science? Do you not realize how insanely EASY it would be to compare Joseph's known writings to the Book of Mormon to prove once and for all that he's the author if he was? Well tests have been done and the results cannot be debated: Joseph Smith did not author the Book of Mormon.
"People should know when they are conquered." - Quintus
Jase
hey thanks for the recap of the Hilton method. it is interesting that you left out the several loop holes in the method that I would like to talk about. It is very interesting that you refuse to engage the issues I have set forth in my last three posts. You routeenly simply point to the study, when I am telling you why there are fatal flaws in the study.
because you dont seem to be able to remember what they are when you respond, here is a recap of the issues you have not responded to, and a new thought or two.
1. Leaving out the OT material. I realize that you will want to say that they excluded OT quotations becase the author will be quoting from a different author, so it would skew the results. However, Hilton makes the point (see my last post for the citation) that when an author takes another persons work and passes it on (paraphrasing, or abridging), the author destroys the previous author's wordprint and adds his own. Thus there should be no reason to get rid of the OT material.
2. Leaving out the phrase- "and it came to pass." One of the tests is supposed to give a ratio of the fraction of sentences that begin with the word 'and.' If we exclude from the study every sentence that begins with the phrase, "And it came to pass...," then we are severely handycapping the abilty to give the true fraction.
3. Based on the study and the statistics you provided, can you give me the chance that Nephi was written by Nephi? five rejections seems pretty high.
4. Hilton says, "to be a valid measurmen, the words must be essentially the free-flow choice of the purported author." He goes on to say that, "deliberatly writing to an externally imposed pattern which restricts the normal noncontextual word choices of the writer or repetitively using normally noncontexual words in textually importiant ways can also change the wordprint patterns." (Pg. 14 footnote from his article in BYU Studies). John Fortier points out that it is "one of the most fundamental premises of wordprint analysis, that an author writes in a consistent wordprint when writing free-flow prose, but that this pattern is abandond when writing is constrained. (Fortier, "The Last word," The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4, pg. 909). Certanily one's free-flow prose will be constrained by adopting a King James style writing, when one is not accustomed to that style (as Smith was obviously not: one can tell by observing the number of corrections that needed to be made to make the Book of Mormon read like real KJ).
4. Hilton also suggests that the method of testing could be sensative to changes of genre. In fact, he is concenred that "changing genre might artificially cause additional rejections." Thus they only tested text from the Book of Mormon from the same genre. Why then is he, or anyone else, comfortable testing those results against Joseph Smiths personal writings (obviously a differnet genre). There is a serious methodology question here, one that could drum up additional rejections. If they wanted to remain even remotely fair, they should have taken material from Smiths own didactic work.
5. When Smith's work was compared to Alma's, two of the blocks of 5000 words yeilded only three rejections, one yeilded 4, and one five (along with the two 7's). This averages to under 5 rejections. So, according to the test, it seems inconclusive regarding who the author is of Alma.
6. Another red flag should be raised when one of the three blocks of text used to sample Joseph Smith is confessed to be a "dictated" and "carefully pollished" work by his "clearks" (From the Pearl of Great Price). Even if the wordprint was accepted as genuine Smith (somehow not altered by the clerk transcribing or "polishing"), it would then cast doubt on the original authorship of the Pearl of Great Price at the least.
7. John Fortier has peer reivewed Hilton and company's work on Hobbs and exposed serious problems with the work. Not only has he shown that Hilton and company had a false positive, but that their work developed a wordprint for Frances Bacon that shows "that Bacon did not write his major English works." He says, "The results of their new testing, however, are so extraordinary that they further call into question the validity of the method." (quote is from the above cited sourse, pg. 912). Further, testing by Hilon and others was done on Bacon's literary works, and his personal letters, and the results showed that only one of 25 standard works of Bacon passed the test. In fact, Fortier says that their results "are enough to sound a warning to the academic world." He conjectures that if we let Hilton decide who wrote what, scholars of Shakespeare, Locke, Mill and Austen will all be out of a job.
8. A graduate student at BYU has also found problems with the wordprint method. Edward Durrett has found the Wordprint method to generat false conclusions when used to determine authorship of the works of E. A. Poe.
ok, there are some real methodological issues here. You cant just point to the results and say, 1 and 15 Trillion. If the method is fallacious, then one cannot draw the conclusions Hilton and others want to draw.
Further, I am still waiting for you to interact with the D&C issues I raised. It may be no big deal to you, but it does alert us that Smith is no stranger to altering texts, and intends to deceive, at least in regards to religious texts.
Hi Loren. I had a fun and busy weekend and am just now getting around to responding to your thorough post. I'll try tonight but may not be until tomorrow or later.
Btw, I had a chat with Paula from the Anti-Mormon Outreach Foundation. I try to stay in touch to find out when the Recovery Guide will be complete. She said it's "in production" and offered to send me a snippet with permission to pass it on.
Here's a portion from the upcoming Recovery Guide:
As an active anti-Mormon I was consumed (actually consumed is a mild word choice) with thoughts about the church, Joseph Smith, polygamy, Brigham Young, the living apostles, the prophet, the Book of Mormon and on and on. I was living and breathing how best to put anything "Mormon" in as bad a light as possible regardless of what I had to do. I mean I was dead serious and I felt very strongly that I was called of God to lie if necessary as long as the church was in a bad light. I lived on the Internet and anti-Mormon blogs and boards. Posting on every board I could became an obsession! I just had to get the word out about how horrible Joseph Smith really was. My life's work was to literally bring down the LDS church. I was angry that a cult could bring in over 5 billion dollars of tithing revenue each and every year without fail. I was angry and racked my brain at how their missionaries could be SO effective and how the church could be so well organized. I was blown away that over 300,000 people would respond to their message each and every year. I was
Thankfully for me various family members noticed what was going on. I wasn't normal and was quite out of control to the point that I did not spend any real quality time with my family and the neglect was starting to wear on my relationships. The truth is that my inability to be truly effective against the church was starting to cause depression and a lack of interest in anything that didn't further my cause. So one night my husband and my best friend (they planned a confrontation) sat me down for a serious talk. They planned the night perfectly by taking me out to Madeline's (steak house) where we talked for 3 hours and long story short I agreed to get "help" - but I had no idea what that would be. They convinced me that fighting so vehemently against an organization that distributes millions in humanitarian aid around the world each year is probably not a good idea regardless of how opposed I was to their doctrine. They actually convinced me (but I did protest) to see the good things about my own beliefs that I could promote instead. They must have been inspired by God to say the things they said. When I did finally seek help (over a month later) I was told almost the same things.
The therapist I saw said he had "no treatment for anti-Mormonism" but a solution was still possible. He basically said I suffered from "weak thinking" and an inability to control and focus my thoughts on good, positive and uplifting ideas and that my "anti-Mormonism" was essentially a mental disease. I was floored. However I was still somewhat resistant to the idea of therapy until I learned one very important thing: the huge toll my thinking was taking on my body and overall health and that if I didn't get it straightened out I could lose as much as five years or more of life due to ill health or worse. At that point I started to listen. Here's what I learned:
When your brain works right you work right. When your brain has trouble you have trouble in your life.
Bad for your mental wellbeing and overall health:
* low brain blood flow
* drugs
* drinking everyday
* lack of exercise
* less than 6 hours of sleep each night
* chronic stress
* no stress management technique
* smoking
* caffeine
* negative thinking
* focusing on what you hate in your life
* stop learning
Notice two key items that were plaguing me: negative thinking and focusing on what you hate. That was it! A light went on for me at that time. I realized then and there what a serious waste of time it was for me to focus on what I hated. It was bringing me down in a big way. However, I couldn't just stop thinking about what I hated I had to actively and consciously change my mental habits. Here's what I learned:
Good for your mental wellbeing and overall health:
* new learning...always have a new project
* a healthy diet (you are what you eat)
* great sleep
* social connections (being with other people)
* positive thinking...gratitude...focus on what you love.
* meditation to make clearer better decisions
* empathy
* learn from you own mistakes
Notice the key items of positive thinking, gratitude and a focus on what you LOVE. Is your thinking and focus day in a day out helping or hurting your mental wellbeing and overall health? If needed write out 5 things you are thankful for each day to help with anti-Mormonism related depression.
I also learned the following:
"Most anti-Mormons caught in the pit of anti-Mormonism might be able to make the necessary adjustments except for one thing; by and large they're locked into the social mind-set that they need to struggle against the pervasive evil to "overcome" the dark-side. The truth is that when you struggle against a perceived evil your own vibration is lowered to that level. Instead we must consciously allow more light into our consciousness eventually affording no room for darkness within the self. This in turn reflects outwardly and in fact is the only way positive change comes about."
What does that mean? It means that you MUST drop the pathological anti-Mormon, negative and stress inducing thinking completely. There is no wiggle room here. You need to walk away. Take a breather. You need to move on. Your health and life depend on it. I highly recommend a book called "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale. He's a non-LDS author and absolutely amazing. You can pick up a copy at Amazon for around $2. Happy recovery.
Paula J.
I must say, I like it. I can see it helping a LOT of people who've been brainwashed into thinking they're fulfilling the "Great Commission" by fighting against something rather than promoting what they believe. Thank God for this group.
Don't forget to bookmark their Website: recoveringantis.com
Cheers. Jase
wow,
Now I understand what you have been talking about. It seems like Paula was in real need of theapy. Her quest against the LDS really sounds like it reached unhealthy levels. It consumed her to the point of neglecting real relationships. That can certainly be a problem. Here is one thought for you though. You speak as though confronting another idea/religion at all is inherently unfruitful and should be avoided. You say people should promote what they believe, not against someone else. This is strange comming from an LDS member. The LDS church rests on the idea that Christian (non-LDS) church is an abomination and the great whore of the earth. Missionaries are going out every day telling people the Bible is corrupted, the church was overcome by evil, and Joseph Smith and the restoration is the answer. Now, I actually dont have a problem with this sort of activity, and if I am putting my faith and trust in the wrong place, I want to know about it and I hope there are people willing to take the time and sacrifice to let me know. However, when Christians do the same thing to LDS members, it is taken to be anti-mormon or anti-Joseph Smith. Can you explain the difference to me. By the way, I have know many poeple who believe that the great commission actually means we ought to go actively share our faith, and that Paul advocated breaking down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowlege of God (which would tend to include false religions/philosophy). These people are not like Paula in your example, the love Jesus and desire to live an obedient life.
Loren
I can see where Paula is coming from, I think that she has an interesting story. I would love to talk to her myself. I hope that you will give me her contact info?
I think that because of my personal experience of coming out of mormonism, and the many others that I know that have been through the same process, we could really help her.
I could share some of the healing work that has been done in my life when I finally came out from under that black cloud and messy thinking called mormonism.
I looked into new-age types of healing as well (it is much safer to focus on self-help instead of looking into "the mormon whore" of Christianity).
The main problem is that it is still about *us changing and working on us* and when we get right down to it, we are incapable of re-tooling ourselves. What we need is a completely new mind and a new heart.
Coming out of mormonism is one of the toughest and ugliest things you can do in your life and when you finally are set free you are a mental mess! I lived it, I know!
Jesus totally understands that kind mess, look at Paul! That is who HE IS, the Great Physician(the only real doctor) He is all about healing our mental anguish, brokenness and pain.
He gave me this amazing thing called GRACE and covered me with HIS LOVE so completely that my heart was changed and my mind began healing. It is an absolute miracle and something that I never would have understood before experiencing it. This is what Jesus does, not us.
I would love to share this with Paula and invite her to come to our recovery program that is set up here in Ephraim Utah. We would love to show her what actually works in the healing process out of Mormonism and show her that sharing our new faith in Jesus Christ with mormon people is an awesome gift to us. That helping others come out of the church through patiently showing them reality and truth is a huge BLESSING that God lets us be a part of.
I personally don't know of anything more beautiful in life than seeing truth take root in a mormon and see that amazing light of Jesus turn on in their lives.
No self help group/book/person does this, it is an act of God and we live to see it happen! That is why I step out in Jesus every day...to be a part of HIS GLORIOUS ADVENTURE. He is all about setting the captives FREE!
I hope that you will share this with Paula and let her know that what she went through is typical only of someone who was not completely set free of mormonism...
There is a *REAL* way out and I would love to meet her and introduce her to people that have come out of mormonism (healed by Jesus Christ himself)and are the most dynamic,loving, and amazing servants of God I have ever witnessed.
These are individuals that are on the frontlines of this battle against cultish thinking (mormonism) and live to watch what God does in people's lives.
Why don't you come out to see us as well Jace? We would love to worship Jesus with you and pray with you?
Hi Junelle. Paula's point is that she had to come out of anti-Mormonism - that's exactly what she had to recover from. And you know what? I have NO idea what her current religious affiliation is. I know the Anti-Mormon Outreach Foundation is comprised of former anti-Mormons who are now LDS and others who have religious affiliation elsewhere - but I don't personally care. This isn't about someone converting to a religion but rather about real people getting out of a destructive mind-set and lifestyle.
You can contact the group at recoveringantis@gmail.com (that's the email I use) and just address your email to Paula.
My understanding is that the Recovery Guide will have stories from several different people caught up in the anti-Mormon religion and how they broke free of the bondage - so should be something for everyone in the Guide.
When I was in New York I was personally attacked by a crazed anti-Mormon street preacher so I know what it's like to face these people up close. The wild-eyed glazed over look screaming that I was going to hell - it was all very un-Christian.
Anyway, the point is there are some very strange anti-Mormons in the world that have completely lost their minds and have no real grounding in reality - which is exactly where anti-Mormonism eventually leads everyone caught in its grasp. If you're not there yet just give it some time and the hate will build.
So yea Junelle why don't you email Paula now that she's broken free of the anti-Mormon cult and try to get her to head down to Ephraim to relive it ALL over again - I'm sure she'll just jump all over that.
Cheers. Jase
Jace,
Do you ever wake up on the right side of the bed? You are super cranky.
Didn't Hinkley share with the world the prophecy, "be nice, be friendly, be super sweet to others" or something like that?
junelle
Jase, are you giving up on us?
Keep in mind I'm not trying to convert you to the church. It's OK with me if Loren doesn't want to believe two independent word-print studies showing that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon.
Since I do a lot of server coding I was given the opportunity to do the back-end programming for antimormonrecovery.com. I think it's a worthy cause so I'm spending most of my spare time there heads-down in the zone.
Be sure and check out the site: http://www.antimormonrecovery.com - from what I've seen it's going to be pretty cool (you can get on the go live list). Xavier has already had over 300 (and counting) notify requests so far and the site has been up for less than a week.
Anyway, between that site and the Anti-Mormon Recovery Guide from recoveringantis.com you should have plenty of resources to help you get your life focused on your own religion and not be so obsessed with Joseph.
Cheers mate. Jase
Have you guys heard of the Narrative of Zosimus?
"The Narrative of Zosimus is a Christian apocryphal document written in the third century, but probably modified in various respects in the following centuries. The document tells of a vision seen by a holy man named Zosimus where he was shown a group of "the blessed" who had separated themselves from the Jews before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C."
Sound familiar to anyone? Seems the Book of Mormon account of Lehi leaving Jerusalem was known somewhat at least in the 3rd century or even sooner.
"The ancient narrative that bears this name records traditions about a righteous people who left Jerusalem at the time of the prophet Jeremiah. They were led by God to an ideal land across the ocean. Based on those two connections alone, the text is of obvious interest to students of the Book of Mormon, which relates a similar history."
"Not only are the sources behind this intriguing composition very ancient, but judging by the number of copies of it that have now been located in some of Europe's oldest museums and libraries,6 the work [the Narrative of Zosimus] must have been fairly well-known in the early centuries of Christianity, at least in certain areas away from the main control centers. Texts of the Narrative have survived in Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Karshuni, Arabic, and Greek"
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2671/Zosimus.htm
"He then meets an angel who introduces him to the Recabites (from Jeremiah 35), who tell him how their forefathers left Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day, and that they had their history written down on stone plates."
"Consider the following overview. According to the Narrative of Zosimus, a righteous man named Zosimus, dwelling in a cave in a desert, prays to the Lord and obtains spiritual passage to a land of blessedness. In order to arrive at this land of promise, Zosimus must wander in the wilderness without knowing where he is being led. He is pushed to the point of exhaustion but attains his destination by constant prayer and divine intervention.
Zosimus at length arrives at the bank of an unfathomable river of water covered by an impenetrable cloud of darkness. Catching the branches of a tree, Zosimus is transported across the water where he sits beneath a beautiful tree, eating its fruit and drinking of the life-sustaining water that flows from its roots. Zosimus is then met by an angelic escort, who asks him what he wants, shows him a vision in which he thinks he beholds the Son of God, and ultimately introduces him to a group of righteous sons of God.
These elders tell Zosimus of their history and instruct him in their ways of righteousness. Their history is "engraved" upon soft stone plates.10 The Narrative explains how the group of sons, led by their father, escaped the destruction of Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah and how, as a nation, they survived the scattering of Israel. They were allowed to occupy their otherworldly land of paradise and abundance only because of their righteousness.
Their religion is based upon prayer and chastity, and they receive knowledge of the wickedness of the outside world by revelation. Notwithstanding the wickedness of the people at Jerusalem, Zosimus rejoices when he is shown a book in which he learns that mercy will be extended to the inhabitants there."
The many parallels between the early chapters of the Book of Mormon and this Narrative typically require little elaboration:
* Dwelling in the desert (1 Nephi 2:4)
* Being led by prayer and faith (1 Nephi 1:5; 11:3; 16:29)
* Wandering through a dark and dreary waste (1 Nephi 8:7)
* Being caught away to the bank of a river (1 Nephi 8:13)
* Crossing to the other side of a river or abyss and passing through a great mist (1 Nephi 8:32)
* Coming to a tree whose fruit is most sweet above all other fruit (1 Nephi 8:11)
* Eating from the tree, which also gave forth a fountain of living waters (1 Nephi 11:25)
* Being greeted by an escort (1 Nephi 11:2–3)
* Being interrogated as to desires (1 Nephi 11:2)
* Beholding a vision of the Son of God or of those like sons of God (1 Nephi 1:6; 11:29)
* Keeping records on soft plates or tablets (1 Nephi 3:24; 9:1–6)
* Recording the history of a group of people who escaped the destruction of Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah (1 Nephi 1:4; 7:14)
* Being led to a land of promise and of great abundance because of righteousness (1 Nephi 18:25)
* Practicing constant prayer (Alma 34:21–27)
* Keeping high standards of chastity and piety (Jacob 2:25–28)
* Receiving revelations concerning the wickedness of the people of Jerusalem and the Old World (1 Nephi 10:11)
* Obtaining assurances of the mercy to be extended to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the world who repent and enter into covenants with God (1 Nephi 1:14; 10:3)
pretty silly new argument to bring up. I thought you were going to bring real arguments. This one is imaginative at best, and grasping at straws. At worst it is down right deceptive. I fear that this is what the majority of LDS apologetics does. It hangs any semblance to having a historical text on imaginary hooks.
There are numerous problems.
First, the two copies we have are from the middle ages. It appears that parts of the story was known by 250 AD. However, because is has no witness prior to the church age, and because of the many references to the Lord (Resurrection of Lord in three days, etc.), it is obvious that the story is not authentic (ie. not more ancient than the Bible). Instead, what you have is a great example of one of the many works written by Christians in the first several centuries after Christ.
Second, even if it was authentic, and reported actual events, the events recorded are so different from the Book of Mormon accounts to render any surface similarities trivial. Note the following account.
"X. Hear, ye sons of men, hear the way of life of the blessed. For God placed us in this land, for we are holy but not immortal. For the earth produces most fragrant fruit, and out of the trunks of the trees comes water sweeter than honey, and these are our food and drink. We are also praying night and day, and this is all our occupation. Hear, ye sons of men; with us there is no vine, nor ploughed field, nor works of wood or iron, nor have we any house or building, nor fire nor sword, nor iron wrought or unwrought, nor silver nor gold, nor air too heavy or too keen. Neither do any of us take to themselves wives, except for so long as to beget two children, and after they have produced two children they withdraw from each other and continue in chastity, not knowing that they were ever in the intercourse of marriage, but being in virginity as from the beginning. And the one child remains for marriage, and the other for virginity.
XI. And there is no count of time, neither weeks nor months nor years, for all our day is one day. In our caves lie the leaves of trees, and this is our couch under the trees. But we are not naked of body, as ye wrongly imagine, for we have the garment of immortality and are not ashamed of each other. At the sixth hour of every day we eat, for the fruit of the tree falls of itself at the sixth hour, and we eat and drink our fill, and again the water sinks into its place. We also know you who are there in the world, and who are in sins, and your works, for every day the angels of the Lord come and tell them to us, and the number of your years. But we pray for you to the Lord, because we also are of you and of your race, except that God has chosen us, and has set us in this place without sin. And the angels of God dwell with us every day, and tell us all things concerning you, and we rejoice with the angels over the works of the just, but over the works of sinners we mourn and lament, praying to the Lord that he may cease from his anger and spare your offences."
This sounds nothing like what the Book of Mormon records regarding the culinary and sexual reproductive habits of the inhabitance of the new world.
Lastly, even if it was an ancient record (which it is not) and lined up with the book of mormon (which it does not), it would not prove much because one could argue that Smith simply borrowed the story to jazz up the stories he used to tell his family about the inhabitance of the "New World." (See Lucy Mack's biography about Joseph to hear about his tales of ancient religion and peoples and wars of the inhabitance of the new world, prior to his translation of the plates)
ok, that should just about take care of that. Did you ever want to talk about the changing of the D&C or are you still trying to find a way to evade that discussion.
despite all the "similarities" you point out, there are many many dissonances which make any similarities seem trivial at best. For one, the person who leaves Jerusalem is Rechab the son of Jonadab
Loren, you are obviously missing the point. No one is suggesting an exact match.
"On a general level, the text describes a righteous group that left Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah, crossed the ocean, and arrived in a promised land. This striking initial connection to the Book of Mormon is further continued in many details of the Zosimus narrative, which suggests that both texts grew out of a common historical and cultural heritage."
So the key is that both texts grew out of a common historical and cultural heritage.
"Not only are the sources behind this intriguing composition very ancient, but judging by the number of copies of it that have now been located in some of Europe's oldest museums and libraries,6 the work must have been fairly well-known in the early centuries of Christianity, at least in certain areas away from the main control centers. Texts of the Narrative have survived in Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Karshuni, Arabic, and Greek"
The Narrative of Zosimus "must have been fairly well-known in the early centuries of Christianity"
"He then meets an angel who introduces him to the Recabites (from Jeremiah 35), who tell him how their forefathers left Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day, and that they had their history written down on stone plates."
Here's the complete details from an article by Noel B. Reynolds:
***
Narrative of Zosimus
Another text that contains instructive parallels to the Book of Mormon is the Narrative of Zosimus, an early Christian document widely circulated in the first centuries AD that was listed in the ninth-century canon of Nicephorous with apocryphal works that were to be discarded.16 The traditions upon which this narrative is based most likely predate the birth of Christianity and are reflective of more ancient Jewish thought.17 John W. Welch has demonstrated that the Zosimus narrative parallels the story of Lehi and Nephi in 1 Nephi in several key aspects.18 On a general level, the text describes a righteous group that left Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah, crossed the ocean, and arrived in a promised land. This striking initial connection to the Book of Mormon is further continued in many details of the Zosimus narrative, which suggests that both texts grew out of a common historical and cultural heritage.
History tells us nothing about Zosimus. In the narrative he is a righteous man who receives an angelic visitation in response to prayer. The angel informs him that he will be taken to a land of blessedness. Zosimus wanders without guidance through a wilderness and, though exhausted, arrives at the land of blessedness through prayer and divine intervention. He then encounters an "unfathomable river of water covered by an impenetrable cloud of darkness," which he crosses by grabbing the branches of a tree.19 Reminiscent of the tree of life, the beautiful and fruit-laden tree next to a fountain of water gives nourishment to Zosimus, who then converses with an angelic escort who, after inquiring what he wants, allows him to see a vision of the Son of God.
After the vision, Zosimus is introduced to a gathering of the righteous sons of God, who share with him their history written upon stone plates. According to this history, these righteous sons of God were led from Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah to this paradise on account of their righteousness. To Zosimus they stress the ideals of prayer and chastity and show him a book through which Zosimus learns that the inhabitants of Jerusalem, though wicked, will be shown mercy by God. Zosimus then returns from the land of blessedness to the world.
The parallels between Zosimus's journey and Lehi's and Nephi's vision of the tree of life—including the emphasis on prayer and faith, wandering through a dark and dreary wilderness, a river, a great mist, the tree of life next to the fountain of living waters, the angelic escort, the interrogation of desires, and the vision of the Son of God—are numerous and significant. Likewise, the intriguing similarities between the exodus of Lehi's family from Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah and Zosimus's account of the history of the sons of God in the land of blessedness also strongly suggest that the two texts are connected in some significant manner. But the connection would seem to be an ancient one, as there is no evidence that the Zosimus narrative was available in English until decades after the publication of the Book of Mormon.20
Although the exact connection between the Narrative of Zosimus and the Book of Mormon will likely remain obscured by the passage of time, the similarities appear too extensive to explain by an appeal to mere coincidence. At the very least, Joseph Smith made a bold, bald assertion by claiming that Jesus had alluded to the Nephites—Israelites separated from the main body of Jews in Jerusalem at the time it was destroyed by the Babylonians and still living across the ocean—when he told his disciples in the Old World about the existence of "other sheep" whom he must also visit and bring (see John 10:16; 3 Nephi 15:16–17). Little could the young translator have dreamed that a text such as the Narrative of Zosimus would later surface, preserving just such a belief among early Palestinian Christians.
***
You can also look up the article from John W. Welch for even more extensive research and detail.
If you don't understand how truly astounding it is that first century Christians knew of a "righteous group" fleeing Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day just before the Babylonian siege and their eventual journey to a "promised land" across the ocean then I can only conclude a serious lack of depth on your part of anti-Mormon thought since Dogberry started barking the Book of Pukei.
Classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcAxqyfFp-c
jase,
You said, "No one is suggesting an exact match," while in the same your post clearly impling that the Book of Mormon and this apocryphal book both tell of the same migration ("the two texts are connected in some significant manner," and "Although the exact connection between the Narrative of Zosimus and the Book of Mormon will likely remain obscured by the passage of time..."). It is like you want to say, look, here is a patristic Chrisitan who knew about the new world Christians, but at the same time you recognize the dissodence and so just want to sweep over the details. The problem which you conveniently look beyond is that the strories are more and more different the more you read them. The surface similarities are striking, but they fade the more you look at the details. What this means is that the journey the apocryphal story condures up (which has no history of acceptance) could not possibly be related to the story of the Book of Mormon in any way except to be a basic outline of the story Smith adopted when constructing his own religious fiction. You try to negate this possibility by claiming no english version was around by this time, but that is both unproven, and not needed. All Smith would need is to read or hear a sermon or story where this theme is recapitualated by a person who could read the story in any avalible language. Now, unless you are willing to say there were no Americans who could read Greek, Latin, Syriac or a variety of other languages, I dont think you can argue Smith could have had no exposure to this story. I well concede that this apocryphal story could be the spark, the seed of Smiths idea, but in no way can the two be used to uphold or demonstrate the verasity of the other.
As for the verse in John 10 you pulled out of context, you may want to do some work with Biblical exegesis before you try and say the "other Sheep" are LDS. If this is a new direction you would like to go, I would be happy to discuss John 10 with you, but my guess is that you will likely use circular logic to show that he is speaking of LDS rather than any textual/exegetical argument. What you seem to want to do is say John 10 shows Jesus was aware of New world "Christians," but Jesus can only be meaning that if LDS story is true. Thus, it does not help support LDS doctrine, one must assume LDS doctrine is true before John 10 can be used to support it. But this is the very diffinition of circular logic- assuming the truth of the point you want to prove. As this will be unsatisfactory to any but an LDS member, we might as well forgoe that discussion.
Loren
Loren said: "Now, unless you are willing to say there were no Americans who could read Greek, Latin, Syriac or a variety of other languages, I dont think you can argue Smith could have had no exposure to this story. I well concede that this apocryphal story could be the spark, the seed of Smiths idea"
Are you really serious?? You really honestly think someone was reading/teaching/preaching the Narrative of Zosimus in 19th century rural upstate New York?? Based on what grounds?
Are you suggesting that someone just went down to the Palmyra library and picked up a copy of a an extremely rare first century Christian document? It was just lying around?
So before we go any further I want to be clear you are 100% going on record that that is a plausible & reasonable idea?
Jase,
what I am saying is that it is entirely possible that in 1820's and 30's a person (read Joseph Smith) could well have been aware of or had some contact with one of a number of different storyies of lost tribes that had migrated, or of some sort of journey to a land of blessing overseas. The Narrative of Zosimus is one of several of that sort of story. the Jewish Psudapigrapha contains a book called the History of the Rechabites with is similar theme, and the Voyage of St. Brenden would also share the theme. While not wildly popular in Smiths day, it is not impossible for him to have come in to contact with, and been captiviated by the stories and themes they represent.
Again, becasue of the striking differences, it is clear that Smith is not plagerising, and that it is probable he is not even talking about the same event, merely that the surface connections need not be thought to be independent of one another, just as Zosimus is probalby dependent on the Jewish Pseudapigraphal account.
you asked for the grounds upon which I would dare suppose one might be aware of Zosimus or other writings about a lost tribe that settled in the Americas, well, I am not sure if you know much about the popular opinions of American Indians in the early to mid 19th Century, but there was quite the speculation then regarding thier origination. Ethan Smith, a pastor in Vermont, wrote a book called, a View of the Hebrews, where he claimed the American Indians were the lost tribes of Israel. Immanuel Howitt and William Penn held and propigated the same view. President Jefferson even wrote a letter to Lewis (from Lewis and Clark) to seek evidence that the American Indians were Jews. Books like A View of the American Indians by Israel Worsley in 1828, American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West by Josiah Priest in 1835, and the before mentioned View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith in 1825, all worked together to create a spirit of enthusiasm that deeply favored the Native American/lost tribes of Israel connection. This ferver did not come from no where. The search for them stems from the ancient Jewish and Christian writings centuries before that set a foundation for all those 19th century works (including the 1830 Book of Mormon).
Loren, you're throwing out red herrings all over the place. Every school boy knows 'View of the Hebrews' has been thoroughly vetted and comes up wanting. You can read the 1825 version for yourself (at one time BYU had it online) and you will quickly see the lack of any real connection to the Book of Mormon. Like Brodie with the Spaulding theory you'll retreat from that line of thinking.
So it sounds like you are backing away from the idea that our frontier farm boy had access to the Narrative of Zosimus in 1829 and instead are going with a more general theory of inspiration from "some sort of journey" - smart move. However, you've got our 23 year old Joseph pulling information from all over the place. The Voyage of St. Brendan etc. It's a typical tactic to find some remote parallel and like magic have Joseph pull it from his vast frontier library.
The problem you now run into though is explaining exactly how Joseph came up with direct hits on complex place names and detailed directions along the Arabian peninsula and rich descriptions of the coast line of the Arabian Sea when that degree knowledge of Saudi Arabia was virtually nil in 1829.
For example:
There is very compelling evidence that the place the Book of Mormon calls Nahom [1 Nephi 16:34] bears an authentic place name still present on the Arabian peninsula. They further show that neither Joseph Smith nor any person in New York living in the 1820s could have had access to the kind of information we find in the Book of Mormon.
and
"By describing in such precise detail a fertile Arabian coastal location, as well as the route to get there from Jerusalem (complete with directions and even a place-name en route), Joseph Smith put his prophetic credibility very much on the line. Could this young, untraveled farmer in rural New York somehow have known about a fertile site on the coast of Arabia? Could a map or some writing other than the Nephite record have been a source for him? The answer is a clear no. … Locating such a precisely defined place anywhere in the world would be a remarkable thing, but to find a site (and only one) exactly matching the criteria in that most unlikely and barren of all regions – Arabia – must appeal to the honest in heart as compelling evidence that Nephi’s account is based on reality."
Even if Joseph Smith had by some fortuitous chance learned of a fertile region on the southeastern shores of the Arabian Peninsula, the Book of Mormon specifies the characteristics of that region.
* Bountiful was nearly eastward from a place called Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1).
* Terrain and water sources from Nahom eastward apparently permitted reasonable access from the interior deserts to the coast (1 Nephi 17:1–3).
* Bountiful was a fertile region (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* It was a coastal location (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* Fruit and wild honey and possibly other food sources were available (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6).
* The availability of fruit (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6) and the plentiful nature of the region suggests the availability of fresh water at this location as well.
* Timber was available that could be used to construct a ship (1 Nephi 18:1).
* A mountain was nearby (1 Nephi 17:7; 18:3).
* Substantial cliffs existed near the ocean from which Nephi’s brothers might attempt to throw him into the sea (1 Nephi 17:48).
* Sources of flint (1 Nephi 17:11) and ore (1 Nephi 17:9–10) were available in the region.
* Suitable wind and ocean currents were available to carry a vessel out into the ocean (1 Nephi 18:8–9).
"Researchers have been able to identify only one location along the whole southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula that meets all these criteria. … [O]ur conclusions agree with those made by Hugh Nibley in his pioneering work fifty years ago on Lehi’s desert journey: "It would have been quite as impossible for the most learned man alive in 1830 to have written the book as it was for Joseph Smith."
Loren, there is much much more - I've only listed a few items here. Can you explain how Joseph got such detailed information about Saudi Arabia in 1829 when the information simply wasn't available?
You feel quite strongly that this whole journey of Lehi was made up - so in order for your theory to be plausible please explain where he got the source material. Jase
Jase, you seem to have no problem shifting the conversation, and moving the discussion all over the place. Does this mean that you concede:
1. Wordprint study is not as reliable as those who use it to verify the Book of Mormon would lead people to believe it is.
2. There is no explanation other than deciet for the changes in D&C that I have described.
3. That it is entirely plausible that Joseph Smith got his idea of part of Isreal relocating to the new world from the enthusiam with which the early 19th century endorced that idea.
If you have given up on those points, then I would be glad to move the discussion and show you further flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith which you brought up in your last note.
Hi Loren,
[1. Wordprint study is not as reliable as those who use it to verify the Book of Mormon would lead people to believe it is.]
If you don't want to accept the two independent Wordprint studies we discussed there's really nothing more I can say. We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I personally have no need for the Wordprint studies, just think they are interesting.
[2.There is no explanation other than deciet for the changes in D&C that I have described.]
I did some looking into this last night and prepared a response. However I'd rather not divert the thread at the moment. So if you would move forward with what you said in item 3 we can exhaust that issue and then I will post my response to the D&C question.
Sound fair?
Jase
Jase
1. For wordprint analysis, I gave strong reasons why one ought not put much weight and credibility in that type of proof on June 26th, and you responded with, "Hi Loren. I had a fun and busy weekend and am just now getting around to responding to your thorough post. I'll try tonight but may not be until tomorrow or later," on June 29th, but have never responded to one of my 8 observations that strike at the core of wordprint analysis methodology. I assume you distenced yourself from that argument in your most recent post because you are convinced, as I am, that it cannot bear the weitht of proof that you and many LDS members would like it to.
2. As for the D&C questions I posed, I posed that question for you back on June 24th, and that was only after you also tried to stear the conversation to the weight of the plates. You seem to have no problem offering new arguments when it suits you, but you have pattenly refused to offer any words regarding the one "backwoods/oldschool" arguemnt I have given to you (as per the agreement on June 22).
3. As to the third point, I think I have shown that there was a spirit in the air in the early to mid 19th century linking the Hebrews to the American Indians, and that one of the reasons for this was the long standing speculation (Jewish and Christian) that a lost tribe migrated to a land of blessing.
Now, if you would like to talk about a new line of argumentation, namely that there a place names Smith provides that cannot be explained by his authorship, I would be willing to go down that road with you, but first, I would like closer on the first three lines of thought we have discussed.
Loren
Loren, I come to a different conclusion than you do on the wordprint studies, it's as simple as that. If you throw out wordprinting for the Book of Mormon you will have to throw it out for pretty much everything else - your choice. If you feel a few points you whipped up in 10 minutes of Internet research refutes 7+ years of painstaking study, research, analysis and peer review - bravo. You are more than welcome to that conclusion and I don't feel the need to talk you out of it. So no I have not distanced myself from the argument I just no longer feel the need to go out of my way to show you otherwise. As I said before we can agree to disagree on this point - it's ok.
The D&C issue you raised is weak at best. I have a ready answer but I'm really interested in seeing you explain how Joseph Smith had detailed (very detailed) information about Saudi Arabia in 1829.
You said: "If you have given up on those points, then I would be glad to move the discussion and show you further flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith which you brought up in your last note."
So I feel I've said enough about item 1, the Wordprint studies. Really no need to belabor that point any further. I have an answer for the D&C issue but there's no need to divert the thread right now. Especially since you make it sound so easy to explain the deep, in depth Saudi Arabian ground knowledge possessed by our Upstate New York farm boy Joseph.
Can't you do a quick copy/paste from some old anti-Mormon book you have lying around? Should be a fairly trivial task and then we can move on.
And yes, everyone knows about the Jewish Diaspora and general speculation about lost tribes in the North etc etc. But the task at hand, that you said you could easily explain is this:
The Book of Mormon specifies very detailed characteristics of ancient Saudi Arabia, some (not all) are as follows:
* Bountiful was nearly eastward from a place called Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1).
* Terrain and water sources from Nahom eastward apparently permitted reasonable access from the interior deserts to the coast (1 Nephi 17:1–3).
* Bountiful was a fertile region (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* It was a coastal location (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* Fruit and wild honey and possibly other food sources were available (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6).
* The availability of fruit (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6) and the plentiful nature of the region suggests the availability of fresh water at this location as well.
* Timber was available that could be used to construct a ship (1 Nephi 18:1).
* A mountain was nearby (1 Nephi 17:7; 18:3).
* Substantial cliffs existed near the ocean from which Nephi’s brothers might attempt to throw him into the sea (1 Nephi 17:48).
* Sources of flint (1 Nephi 17:11) and ore (1 Nephi 17:9–10) were available in the region.
* Suitable wind and ocean currents were available to carry a vessel out into the ocean (1 Nephi 18:8–9).
So please explain how Joseph Smith got that information in 1829. Thousands of anti-Mormon books have been written since then, surely one of them must cover this in detail. Jase
Jase,
when we finish talking about these geographical issues, will you man-up to the D&C issues I have raised? That would be great. If you will agree to that, we can continue.
Just so I am clear, what exactly are you claiming. Can you clarify your position so that I might have a better idea as to how to evaluate your position. Namely, spell out a bit clearer where you are claiming Nahom and Bountiful are located (give me present day place names). I can guess what you will say, but I would like you to take a stand on that.
Loren,
For Nahom see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahom
The map shown is the location I agree with.
Known criticisms include the following (Vogel 2004, p. 609):
* The fact that the Book of Mormon does not explicitly mention contact with outsiders during Lehi's journey.
* It is suggested that the pronunciation of NHM is unknown and may not relate to Nahom at all.
* It has been suggested that Joseph Smith simply created the name Nahom as a variant of the Biblical names Naham (1 Chron. 4:19), Nehum (Ne. 7:7) and Nahum (Na. 1:1), although this fails to account for the plausible placement of the actual location of NHM relative to the description of character Lehi's purported journey in the Book of Mormon story.
Also of note:
Availability of information on NHM to Joseph Smith
"Critics state that Joseph Smith could have learned about the existence and location of NHM from existing 19th century sources or from acquaintances who had access to additional libraries. Libraries available to Joseph Smith would have been the Manchester Public Library and the library at Dartmouth College, at neither of which Smith was a member, although it is unknown whether any of his acquaintances had access to additional libraries or books from Europe that were brought to America and kept in private libraries. Of the books dealing with the ancient Near East that were available in the Manchester library before 1830, LDS scholars suggest that none of these would have given Smith good information on ancient Arabia, and that they would have provided him with inaccurate information even if he had been able to gain access to them (Peterson). When Smith was five years old, his family moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire and lived there from 1811 to late in 1813, just down the road from Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth library acquired a copy of Robert Heron’s translation of Niebuhr’s work (which had information regarding NHM), but not until 1937. Therefore, this information was not available in its library during the time that the Smith family lived in the town of Lebanon (Brown 2001).[9]"
However, for our discussion we are not only concerned with where Nahom is but how and by what sources Joseph Smith could have learned of Nahom (NHM) and how could have so cleverly had the Lehite party turn East at Nahom to put them on a direct course to a very fertile area they called Bountiful. All of which has been proven.
Bountiful: Oman. The two best locations that have been found are Salalah and Khor Rori.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful_(Book_of_Mormon)
Also see: http://www.nephiproject.com/
The guys from Nephi Project have spent years on the ground in Saudi Arabia detailing Book of Mormon archaeological sites relating to First Nephi.
They say: "we are the actual discoverers of over 100 new evidences that the Book of Mormon is a true history"
They have a wealth of verified information that Joseph Smith simply could not have known in 1829.
But you are going to show us exactly how he knew it.
And yes, I've said in my last two posts that I already have a response prepared to your D&C question and that I would post it after you explain Joseph's amazing ability to have information that NO ONE else had in 1829.
Cheers. Jase
I suppose we could start the discussion with two observations. One that directly answers your question, the other that questions your presupposition regarding the inscription.
1. How could Joseph Smith known about the site. Well, If I were forced to defend that possition, I would point out (as you already know) that there were several works in print in Smith's day that showed that place name. In 1763 a German surveyor and mapmaker named Carsten Niebuhr produced a map which contained the place name "Nehhm" at a location approximately twenty-five miles northeast of the Yemen capital Sana'a. In 1792 Robert Heron published a two-volume English translation of Niebuhr’s first work titled Niebuhr’s Travels through Arabia and Other Countries in the East. Now, we have no record of either of those two books being held by a public library or at Dartmouth in Joseph's day, but that is a far cry from proving that he could not have seen such a map. By the time Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, Heron's book had been out in English for almost 40 years. I would put the probabilities higher than an average person because he was so interested in the topic or migration of the Jews, and would have sought out information about the ancient world. I cant prove that this is the case, but neither can you prove that no one he was aquatinted with could have had a copy, or access to copy. It simply means that it is within the realm of possibility the smith new of a location with a similar place name to the one he used in the book of Mormon.
2. Before I would ever get too wrapped up in a discussion of number 1, I would have to say that I challenge the presupposition that the place name archeologists have found in Yemen correlates at all to Smiths work. Correct me if I am wrong, but we have found a tribal name, probably pronounced Nihm (Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 1999). However we pronounce it, there is no evidence that the tribal name is also a place name. The only evidence that one could offer is Nephi's testimony of a place name Nahom in 600 BC (Aston's method of verifying the find at www.lehistrail.com). But again, this is circular reasoning; assuming the book of Mormon is true, when that is what the archeological find is meant to authenticate. Its faulty reasoning to use the Book of mormon to authenticate a find which is supposed to authenticate the Book of Mormon. Without Nephi's testimony, all we have is a tribal name similar to the place name Smith uses. Even ardent LDS scholars (BYU's Kent Brown, "The Place that was called Nahom: New light from Ancient Yemen") have to admit that it is indeterminate that at the time there was a place called Nihim or Nehem, or any combination of NHM for that matter.
So, did Smith just make it up? well, as you pointed out, it would not be difficult to figure out how Smith came up with such a name. He was in the habit of coming up with biblical sounding names, and Nahom is very close to several Biblical names (sharing the same consonants). Also, it is not surprising that a tribe which shares a similar alphabet and grammar would come up with a tribal name with NHM, which could be associated with stone cutting (which might explain why we have an inscription cut in stone from them today). There were a variety of names in the Ancient world with those consonants, so Smith would be safe using the consonants and filling in any vowels he wanted.
On a side note, Ensign, Feb 2001 covered the find in an article entitled "Book of Mormon linked to Site in Yemen." Its conclusion is that, "this is the first archeological find that supports a Book of Mormon place-name other than Jerusalem or the Red Sea..." I can certainly understand the value of this discovery for an LDS hopeful. But if this is the best/only thing going for you archeologically, you are on shaky ground at best. We dont have a place-name for sure, only a tribal name that LDS infer relates to some place in the area. But even then, we are not at all sure that this tribe is related at all to the place Smith talks about. The only way to prove this is to use the Book of Mormon for support, but that just wont work. One must take on faith that NHM relates to Smiths story, and that is not what archeology is supposed to do.
Now, if we had an abundance of other archeologcal support, one might be tempted assume there is a connection here, but the lack of any New World evidence casts an overwhelming shadow of dubiousness on all other archeological claims. We would need something air tight, and air tight is not what we have here.
Loren,
When you describe Joseph Smith as a studious steadfast learner, expert researcher, dedicated pupil and detailed specialist you contradict volume after volume of early anti-Mormon writings and "eye-witness" testimony that Joseph Smith was a lazy local-yocal shiftless bum that'd never done a days work in his life. Doesn't sound like the kind of character that would be ensconced in libraries seeking out ancient Saudi Arabian place names from the likes of Niebuhr and his explorer buddies. In order for you to paint this scholarly picture of Joseph Smith you have to throw out well over a hundred years of anti-Mormon thought - so at least we're making some progress. I applaud your discovery, tacit though it may be.
Anyway, looking through Niebuhr's "Travels Through Arabia and Other Countries of the East" we can see that he references a principality called "Nehhm" (as you indicated in your response) (Nahom). To be more specific Chapter VIII is titled "Of the Principalities of Nehhm and Khaulin" and Nehhm gets only a few sentences. In fact in the entire book Nehhm is only mentioned twice on page 62. There are no further descriptions or details.
The version I'm reading does not have the maps but ancient maps that show Nehhm can be found on the Internet.
You said: "By the time Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, Heron's book had been out in English for almost 40 years."
But so what? It doesn't do one thing for us. There's not one shred of similarity between Niebuhr's writings and the Book of Mormon. Not one thing. And a map showing the word Nehhm means nothing at all.
Loren: "I would have to say that I challenge the presupposition that the place name archeologists have found in Yemen correlates at all to Smiths work"
The truth is quite different than your conclusion. Turns out that the place identified as Nahom (Nehhm) today was actually an ancient burial ground and a "place of mourning".
In correlation with that information the Book of Mormon text explains that the place they called 'Nahom' was indeed a burial ground and it was the place they buried Ishmael.
Now this information has only recently been discovered. Niebuhr is clueless on this fact. So not only do we have Joseph getting the place name right and directions from there to 'Bountiful' but he also nailed the fact that it was a burial ground.
So as far as Nahom goes you have not shown in any way, shape or form my "flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith".
How did Joseph get this information? How did he know Nahom was an ancient burial ground and how did he place it in the precise location it needed to be to get the party to Irreantum?
Niebuhr is out. He is absolutely silent on Nahom being an ancient burial ground. I have a digitized copy of the book and have searched the entire text. I will await your answer. Jase
Now, as difficult as getting Nahom correct (precise location, burial ground etc) the task gets infinitely more complex as we dig a little deeper. Let's explore some more "flawed thinking" as you put it, of the journey.
1.
Early in their travels through the Arabian Peninsula Nephi mentions a grand river valley. Let's quote from someone that's been there, on the ground doing the hard research:
"Nephi's mention of a river valley, possibly with fruit trees, seed-bearing plants and grain, seemed totally out of place (see 1 Nephi 2:6; 8:1). Yet, this shoreline is the general area where the valley of Lemuel should be found. However,what caught my interest most was the stream that started in the canyon near its upper end and ran down the wadi virtually all the way to the sea. The small desert river appeared to flow continually night and day, year after year. At the time the Book of Mormon was first published, the claim that a river ran in arid northwestern Arabia could not be checked. Western explorers did not venture into this remote area until well after 1830.2 Today it is a different matter. - A New Candidate in Arabia for the Valley of Lemuel"
Now we have an extremely remote area of Saudi Arabia. How did Joseph Smith know in 1829 to put a deep river valley that emptied into the Red Sea in exactly that spot? It's there, you can go see it for yourself. There wasn't a soul alive in 1829 that could have made that claim. Maybe you feel some Bedouin wanderer made his way to Upstate New York and filled Joseph in on a few details for a book he was writing?
I don't think Niebuhr was crazy enough to travel that deep into the Arabian mountains. So please tell us how Joseph got his information.
2.
The iron-ore needed to construct the tools to make the ship is found in the exact same area Nephi claims he found it - it has been proven. You can go there today and see the iron-ore for yourself. The only way that ore could have been known was by someone who was actually there at the time. You had to physically be present and climb the exact mountain to see the iron-ore in plentiful supply - if memory serves me it was in the form of magnetite and no extraction methods were required.
Now that was quite a claim by Joseph Smith in 1829 and a bold one knowing that one day someone may go check up on him. And people have. And he was dead on right.
Loren task:
Show us how Joseph Smith in 1829 could have known that iron-ore could be found on the coast of present day Oman in the exact spot where Nephi was to build the ship. Please note the iron-ore was found on the surface and didn't require mining. The iron-ore has been verified and found in this exact location. If you conclude that Joseph Smith would have had to visit Saudi Arabia in order to gain this in-depth knowledge please show how he got there and what time-frame he made the visit. I have a friend that has been to that exact location and I will tell you it's extremely hard to get to even with a guide.
So the question is, how did Joseph Smith know about the iron-ore easily acquired without serious extraction methods?
I appreciate you taking the time to point out the "flawed thinking" of years of on-the-ground research and study.
The journey of Lehi was long and complex so we're just getting started. After you answer these we have much much more to cover.
Jase
Jase,
I have to tell you, I feel like you are grasping at straws here. All we know from the inscription is that, "Bi'athar, clearly a man of wealth and importance and the grandson of Naw'um, member of the Nihm tribe, donated three altars to the temple." (http://farms.byu.edu/publications/
jbms/?vol=10&num=2&id=255)
To read that NHM is a term for mourning is again an act of faith. It could equally be a number of different things, like a growl of a lion, or by extention, a Kings words, or to suffer or groan. it has a range of meaning, and to simply pick one that suits you is an unwarrented leap. I would just assume that it refered to the lion, which is a reference to royaltee. The fact that the benefactor lists his grandfather probalby denotes that he is a man of some clout, and his tribe could well be a rulling clan in the local area. The fact that there lies a burrial ground 25 miles to the north (which is over a days journey) does not mean anything, unless you are saying that that location is NHM, but then we would need some sort of evidence for that claim. The much more logical answer is that when this alter was constructed, funds were raised by the local inhabitance, and three alters were funded by this wealthy man in the community. This is a common practice in the ancient world, and we see inscriptions with local benefactors listed in various places (not unlike the common present day practice of haveing a library named after you or a wing of a hospital). There is nothing to suggest otherwise.
by the way, your "on the ground researcher" did not say that a river emptied into the Red sea as you claim. He/she said it made it virtually to the sea, meaning it does not empty into the sea, it has some other terminating point.
Can you give me the name of the river you think is a canadate for Laman, that forms a river valley, flows continually, and empties into the Red Sea.
As for Ore, ore is a common resource. It is not specific, like he found nickle, just ore. Lets not even talk about the Steel bow he was supposed to have been using to hunt on his trip. Again I have to question your pressupostions. you said that ore, "found on the coast of present day Oman in the exact spot where Nephi was to build the ship," and that I should explain that. Well, my question is, why think that that was the location Smith was talking about. The only reason is because Ore was found there. It is not as though Smith said, and then we camped near this city and found ore in the mountian on the east. If he said that we could go to the city, look to the mountains in the east and say, wow, he was right. Instead he says it was a costal city with trees and ore. So, now LDS members go out scavanging for a costal city with those things and say, this is what he must have been talking about. It is simply a mater of faith, or circular reasoning. Neither one is how archeology is supposed to be used. At best it can show that there may be candidates for the location in existence; And that is certainly helpful for the LDS cause. But it is not archeological evidence.
now that we have covered NHM, I expect to see your report on the changes I mentioned in the D&C.
Loren, should we pick a remote far away country that you know absolutely nothing about and have you write detailed descriptions of its interior as well as write accurately about things of which no one has any knowledge? Would you be willing to make that attempt? How do you think your little document would turn out? I bet it wouldn't take long to find out you didn't know what you were talking about. You might be able to fool people for a time but when someone gets around to actually going there and checking up on you the charade would be decidedly over.
You should know by now that Saudi Arabia was a veritable black hole in 1829 especially for the extreme remote areas that we are discussing. Niebuhr gives us no real help at all but to you, just a few posts ago, Niebuhr was the magic bullet. A most excellent source for young Joseph you excitedly explained - but then we actually start reading Niebuhr. And the smile slowly fades. He's as vacant as everyone else is at that time.
You claim that Khor Kharfot is the designated location of Bountiful "because Ore was found there" and you further claim that that is the "only reason". I honestly have to wonder if we are even discussing the same topic or maybe you are simply not reading my posts completely. So, I will lay out all of the facts as they are known today and you can explain the "flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith" which is exactly what you said you would do.
Bountiful: (Irreantum) (Khor Kharfot) (Southern Oman)
1. The location must lie nearly eastward of Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1).
Khor Kharfot is situated less than one degree from due east of Nehem (Nahom). Nephi's account specifies that Ishmael was buried in "the place which was called Nahom" (1 Nephi 16:34). Nephi's phrasing suggests that Lehi's group did not originate the name but learned it from local inhabitants. Modern Nehem includes an extensive traditional burial area with tombs dating as far back as neolithic times, long predating Lehi's day. The roots of the name itself in Hebrew refers to mourning, consoling, and complaining of hunger, thus fitting perfectly the events recorded by Nephi after the death of his father-in-law, Ishmael (see 1 Nephi 16:35–39).
Loren, you indicated in one of your posts that the discussion regarding NHM was complete. However it is not quite there. I have at least one more post coming on that.
2. The coast must be accessible from the interior desert.
The valley of Wadi Sayq leads to the ocean from the desert interior, and is the only wadi that flows from the high desert eastward toward the coast. The coast is accessible by traveling through the bottom of Wadi Sayq (River Valley). Access to the southern coast from the interior of Oman is usually difficult and in some places impossible.
How did Joseph Smith know in 1829 that this particular lush area would have a river valley that gave overland access to the ocean from the interior?
3. Both the general area and the location when the Lehites camped must be fertile and capable of producing crops.
Khor Kharfot is the most fertile site on the southern Arabian coast. The region of fertility extends two miles into the Wadi Sayq. Khor Kharfot is quite fertile. Although the record does not say that the party grew crops from the seeds they brought from Jerusalem, the Kharfot area is sufficiently fertile to have supported such crops.
4. It must be a coastal location (1 Nephi 17:5).
There is evidence of inhabitation and use as a small seaport during the Islamic period. Water was available through freshwater springs and an ancient river.
5. It must be very fertile, with "much fruit and also wild honey" and small game. (1 Nephi 17:5-6).
Nephi describes Bountiful as yielding "meat" (perhaps small game that could be hunted), "much fruit," and "honey" (see 1 Nephi 17:5, 6; 18:6). Trees grow naturally, some bearing fruit, and there are nesting birds, a variety of small animals, bees that provide wild honey and abundant fish. Nephi's use of the expression "the land of Bountiful" suggests that not only was the specific encampment fertile (see 1 Nephi 17:6), but the general area ("land") was also quite fertile (see 1 Nephi 17:5, 7). The Wadi Sayq/Khor Kharfot area lies at the eastern end of the most naturally fertile section of coastline on the whole coast of Arabia, a small strip only a few miles in length bounded by arid terrain on three sides and ocean on the fourth.
6. Timber must be available with which to build a ship (1 Nephi 17:8).
A number of sizable trees exist in the area, with evidence of ancient forests. These trees could have provided sufficient lumber to build a ship. Numerous large trees are still found at Khor Kharfot almost down to the ocean, and they were certainly even more plentiful in the past. (Drought in recent centuries has reduced the natural forests that formerly covered the sides of the valley and the surrounding mountains.) Timber from several species identified at Kharfot—particularly the sycamore fig (Ficus sycamorus) and the tamarind (Tamarindus indica)—would have been suitable for building a seagoing craft.
7. Freshwater must be available year-round.
Water was available through freshwater springs and an ancient river. Kharfot contains the largest source of freshwater on the Arabian coast, and there is evidence that water was even more abundant in ages past. By comparison, eastern Yemen has only three small and irregular streams of coastal water in its 700-mile length, yet in the Dhofar province of Oman alone, small streams and springs are found at Rakhyut a few miles east of Kharfot and in the Salalah foothills, in addition to Wadi Sayq.
8. A mountain must be located nearby to account for Nephi's reference to going to a mountain to "pray oft" (1 Nephi 18:3).
A large mountain overlooks the west end of the beach. A mountain prominence that Nephi referred to as "the mount" (1 Nephi 17:7; 18:3) was close enough to the campsite that he could go there to "pray oft" (1 Nephi 18:3). Nephi's choice of words indicates that he was referring to an isolated and prominent mountain rather than a mountain range. Fittingly, at Kharfot the highest and most prominent peak is isolated directly above the little western plateau where evidence of former settlement is most abundant and on which Lehi's family would have been most likely to camp.
9. Cliffs overlooking the ocean must be present to account for Nephi's brother's attempt to throw him "into the depths of the sea" (1 Nephi 17:48).
Cliffs rise above the ocean in this area.
Loren, here we are getting into some amazing incredible detail. How would Joseph Smith know this kind of detailed topographical data about Bountiful without actually being there? Clearly if Nephi were going to be thrown into the depths of the sea they had to be near a cliff that fell away into the ocean. And this location has exactly that.
10. Ore and flint must be available with which to make fire and fabricate tools to build a ship" (1 Nephi 17:9)
A form of flint is available on the surface in large quantities. Ore from which metal could be smelted for making tools must have been available near enough to the camp that Nephi could be shown where to find it without unusual effort, along with flint to start a fire (see 1 Nephi 17:9–11, 16). Oman has a history of copper smelting over several thousand years, but the primary known deposits are in the northern half of the country. However, a recent FARMS-sponsored survey of the area surrounding Kharfot revealed numerous small sources of specular hematite that could yield iron suitable for making shipbuilding tools.7 The same general area, only a few miles inland from the coast, also has unusually extensive surface deposits of chert, a form of flint useful for starting fire. This distance from the coast would not have posed the same problem with ore that it likely would have with timber, since only small quantities of ore would have been necessary, as opposed to large quantities of timber.
11. No resident population at the time of the Lehite's arrival.
Ancient ruins show that Khor Kharfot was occupied intermittently, although it is currently uninhabited.
12. Wind and ocean currents capable of carrying a ship out into the ocean (1 Nephi 18:8)
The coast is well suited to sailing, with seasonal winds in the fall blowing east. Arab and earlier sources assure us that at a particular season of the year, voyagers from the Red Sea and the southern Arabian coast routinely sailed eastward to southern India and Ceylon. Nephi could have used the same winds from Kharfot to sail across the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, every few years the marine and meteorological phenomenon popularly known as the El Niño effect changes the pattern of winds across the Pacific so that travel in an easterly direction, even as far as America, becomes possible for a period of a year or two.
We also need to consider the incredible difficulty of even claiming that there was a lush fertile land on the coast of Southern Oman. Khor Kharfot is a very well hidden area even today and totally unknown to anyone in America in 1829. To even make the claim that such a place existed in the deserts of Arabia in 1829 was met with ridicule.
Loren, in order for your claim of showing "flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith" to have any credibility at all you need to give plausible source documentation showing where Joseph Smith got his very intimate detailed information on Arabia.
Please go item by item when you explain.
Now the exploratory knowledge obtained by Niebuhr (which doesn't concern any of the parts of Arabia we are discussing) was extremely hard won knowledge. Meaning that he had to be there to get it. And just being on the ground as an explorer in Arabia takes a tremendous amount of effort and work. So it is with Joseph. This intimate detailed knowledge of ancient Saudi Arabia can only come by being there. It comes in no other way. A deep study of the Book of Mormon and one would have to conclude that Joseph Smith spent a very large portion of his life there, on the ground, camping, exploring that continent from top to bottom. But, it is well known that Joseph Smith never left the America's.
So when we conclude that Joseph wasn't there we have to conclude that Nephi was. Someone had to be. Since there's no other way to gain the detailed information.
However, if we are to believe you, 23 year old Joseph knew more about Saudi Arabia than ANY man alive in the world in 1829. And without ever setting foot on that continent he was able to describe directions and locations in great detail with amazing accuracy. Logic says that's not even possible.
The truth though is far more sensible and glorious:
And I am the same who hideth up this record unto the Lord; the plates thereof are of no worth, because of the commandment of the Lord. For he truly saith that no one shall have them to get gain; but the record thereof is of great worth; and whoso shall bring it to light, him will the Lord bless.
For none can have power to bring it to light save it be given him of God; for God wills that it shall be done with an eye single to his glory, or the welfare of the ancient and long dispersed covenant people of the Lord.
And blessed be he that shall bring this thing to light; for it shall be brought out of darkness unto light, according to the word of God; yea, it shall be brought out of the earth, and it shall shine forth out of darkness, and come unto the knowledge of the people; and it shall be done by the power of God. - Moroni (Mormon 8:14-16)
Jase
Jase,
The flaw in your thinking is assuming Khor Kharfot is bountiful. It is pretty neat that southern Oman has a lush uninhabited location, but that does not automatically show us that that is the Bountiful of the Book of Mormon. What we would need is some archeological link to show us that location is the right place. A bunch of circumstantial stuff is not going to do it. Further, if we have no Nahom then we dont know that this place is nearly eastwardly of that supposed location either. Furhter, there is currently debate about the possible locations of Bountiful, which shows that there are several candidates, so Khor Kharfot is not such a diamond in the rough. It is one of several possible locations.
tell me what archeological link does Nehpi have with Khor Kharfot.
Hi Matthew,
For several years I felt that Khor Rori was an excellent location for Bountiful. However after more in-depth research and study I've concluded that Khor Kharfot is the location as it has every characteristic mentioned by our eye-witness Nephi. Whoever made the detailed descriptions we have in the Book of Mormon had to be physically there - there's no way around that. They had to personally walk through the wadi sayq or river valley from the interior of an extremely harsh desert. Exploratory knowledge of a vast desert landmass does not come free, in fact Niebuhr was the only surviving member of his expedition so in his case the price to gain detailed knowledge was very high.
"It is pretty neat that southern Oman has a lush uninhabited location" isn't it though? I'd say that's quite the understatement since no one alive in 1829 could have known anything at all about a lush honey producing, fruit-growing, timber-filled fresh water oasis on the coast of a vast desert wasteland.
However. If you are following the discussion that Loren and I are having the issue isn't necessarily if Bountiful is located at Khor Rori port or at Khor Kharfot - we know for certain it's in the Dhofar region of modern day Oman - but again, location is not the issue.
Rather, the issue is how did Joseph Smith obtain such intimate detailed accurate knowledge of ancient Saudi Arabia without ever setting foot on that dusty landscape?
Each of the 12 items in my previous post are ALL present just as indicated by the Book of Mormon. You can go to Oman see it for yourself.
Do I need to remind you the year was 1829? Saudi Arabia was a black hole in terms of accurate information and the one guy that actually spent some exploratory time on the ground there (Niebuhr) did not even begin to venture into the extreme locations detailed in the Book of Mormon. (I know, I've read much of his writings)
So I'll ask you as well Matthew, where did Joseph get his information? Please carefully read my previous post and address each item one by one. There are thousands of anti-Mormon books for you to choose from, surely one of them must address these issues. I encourage you to do plenty of copy/paste if it helps your point.
Also, if you personally think Joseph Smith went to Saudi Arabia on multi-year exploratory expedition please explain why you feel that way and what years you think he was there. Keep in mind he would have had to go before he was 23.
Oh and btw, Loren is working on finding the sources Joseph used as well so maybe a shout out to her will do some good.
Cheers, Jase
Matthew,
You realize that if Joseph Smith had written the Book of Mormon as his critics claim that we wouldn't even be here discussing honey bees, fruit trees, timber, Nahom, Shazer, River of Laman, Valley of Lemuel, Khor Rori, Khor Kharfot, Bountiful, Dhofar, Irreantum, interior desert, Wadi Sayq, fertile soil, coastal locations, the mount, the cliffs, iron-ore, flint, ship building, tools, easterly winds and on and on right? You do realize that don't you? You know enough about how the world works to understand that Joseph Smith simply had no way of knowing even one or two of the rich details we find in the Book of Mormon let alone the more than 100 evidences found so far and counting right?
I don't care what you think about Joseph Smith but the day has come that you can no longer cling to antiquated out-dated mudslinging emotional hyperbolic anti-Mormon thought. You have to get with the times and come to the realization that Joseph Smith did not and could not have written the Book of Mormon and that it was written by someone on the ground living breathing and suffering in the barren wasteland that is the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. And that these people were guided by God out of hell on earth into a beautiful lush coastal oasis - but the oasis wasn't a final destination, just a brief stopping point on the global God-directed Jewish Diaspora.
For the anti-Mormon this is a whirlwind of change. A sea change. It is drastic and dramatic. It is wild and enraging. It is devastating. But you have to face it - he didn't write it.
Once you come to that conclusion you then need to decide who or what inspired it. Was it inspired and brought forth by the gift and power of God as the book claims? Or is Satan behind it? That's what you have to ask yourself once the sober truth hits you that it clearly wasn't produced by a 23 year old farm boy in 19th century frontier America.
jase.
I was just reviewing FARMS' initail report of Khor Kharfot (http://farms.byu.edu/publications/insights/?vol=13&num=9&id=26). It lead me to several questions. First, they are more upfront than you seem to be regarding what they actually found. They admitted that the only real wood sources they found were shrubs, plants, dates and fig trees. Hardly the stuff you would make an trans-oceanic voyage with. They dont want to let you down too much in the article, so they add, "It is not yet known how the present ecosystem and plant species might differ from those of three thousand years ago. A Greek source describes a kind of tree growing in nearby Bahrain..." So they say, there is nothing there now, but maybe in the past, and in a location not too far we found some wood. However, to say that Bahrain is close by is an overstatement if I have ever heard. If this is what the "New Mormon Apologetics" are, then it is nothing new, just simple overstatement and deception.
Further, they are also blunt that they found no ore. Another pro-mormon cite says that they found most of the elements from the book of Mormon at Khor Kharfot, but that there was nor ore (http://www.meridianmagazine.com/bookofmormon/060118bountiful.html). W. Revell Phillips and his team did find Iron ore in 2000, but this was Kilometers away from Khor Kharfot. Not nearly as convienent as you try to make it sound. You make it sound like they just found iron laying around on the beach. Phillips tells us that one can find it in Oman, but that it was probably accessable by sea (meaning it is not at the site as it would have to be if the Book of Mormon were correct).
Phillips also makes the point that the timber situation in souther Oman is not what an LDS enthuseist like yourself would like it to be. He says, "The modern Omani workmen, however, say that local acacia trees, widely scattered over the arid Omani landscape, have trunks about the right size and curvature for a ship's ribs. The keel and outer planking, however, require long, straight, dense timber, apparently not presently available near Sur. Teakwood, they say, is ideal for shipbuilding and is imported from nearby India to the shipyard at Sur, where the huge logs are transported by narrow-gauge railway cars and fed into large horizontal band saws.
The shipping lanes between India and Africa, with a stop in southern Arabia, have transported teak for centuries.7 Perhaps Nephi obtained teak timbers by trading frankincense, honey, or some other local product at the busy port of Kane, in Yemen, or Khor Rori, in the Dhofar, if local timber was not adequate."
Basically, he cant explain long timber, so he hypothesizes that it was shipped in from other locations. How comfortable are you with this hypothesis? (http://farms.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=9&num=2&id=225)
So, if you are playing the home game, instead of Khor Kharfot being a great candidate, at almost all point it falls short. It is not easy accessible by the Easterly rout, it does not have timber or ore immediately available, and I cant find any references to abundant fruit (besides figs and dates). So, unless you are willing to say that the actual materials Smith claimed were there need not be actually there, and you can make the location a major shipping port with access to those materials, you are striking out.
I agree with Matthew, the flaw in your thinking is assuming that what Smith describes is Khor Kharfot (though that is probably the best candidate). I dont have to find a source for his knowelege, because you have not shown that a place like he describes is even existant. It is true that many features are similar, and that itself is remarkable, but not to the degree that you seem to imply.
Further, even if it did match precisely, it would still not prove that was the location, unless we also had some physical archeological evidence. That would certainly help your cause.
Jase
Just as a PS. to my last point, I did not want you to think I had missed your change of position regarding the location of Bountiful (Aug. 4th, vs. Aug. 7th). You are clearly building the ship while you fly it, making claims and believing Smith before weighing the facts. I am glad that you seem reasonable enough to conclude that the first two candidates your offered would not meet the criteria by a long shot, and have at least retreated to the best possible location in Khor Kharfot. However, this location too, as I mentioned in my last post, leaves much to be desired unless you are a man of unflinching faith and a vivid imagination.
Loren,
About the timber you said:
"Phillips also makes the point that the timber situation in souther Oman is not what an LDS enthuseist like yourself would like it to be. He says, "The modern Omani workmen, however, say that local acacia trees, widely scattered over the arid Omani landscape, have trunks about the right size and curvature for a ship's ribs. The keel and outer planking, however, require long, straight, dense timber, apparently not presently available near Sur..." "...Basically, he cant explain long timber, so he hypothesizes that it was shipped in from other locations."
Loren, if you read the article carefully Phillips is talking about Khor Rori. He's simply trying to make the case for Khor Rori being Bountiful - he's not saying it IS Bountiful just throwing out a hypothetical. He's not talking about Khor Kharfot which has been the topic of our discussion.
Khor Kharfot matches ALL points described in the Book of Mormon. The Aston's have been to Khor Kharfot and here's what they say about the timber:
"...In the valley’s interior I had already discovered huge seams of flint lying exposed on the ground. English botanists identified the timber trees as very suitable sea-resistant wood suitable for shipbuilding. One surviving tree measured some 47 feet in circumference; another stood more than a hundred feet tall — all a stone’s throw from the shoreline. "
I've seen the pictures the trees are in fact very very real and as you can see from the description quite adequate enough for building a ship.
About the ore you said:
"Further, they are also blunt that they found no ore. Another pro-mormon cite says that they found most of the elements from the book of Mormon at Khor Kharfot, but that there was nor ore... ...W. Revell Phillips and his team did find Iron ore in 2000, but this was Kilometers away from Khor Kharfot."
Loren, this is absolutely perfect. The ore isn't supposed to be right there at the Bountiful campground. The ore is the ONE thing that would be somewhat hidden in a mountain area - that's EXACTLY why Nephi prayed and asked the Lord to show him where the ore was. Starting to see the point? We want the ore to be a few kilometers away. When I talked about the ore being readily available I meant that it did not require serious extraction methods - nothing more. Nephi still had to be guided to its location.
So thanks for bringing up that point - it's an excellent one for Khor Kharfot. Brilliant.
The Astons also say "A variety of wild fruits and wild honey abounds and large timber trees grow — almost to the waters edge." I'll look for more details on this.
Remember Lewis & Clark?? The ONLY way anyone in the world gets detailed information about lands they've NEVER been to is by going there. It's sort of how our world works. You need to explain how Joseph Smith got the detailed information. If your explanation isn't plausible then we must conclude that Nephi was the one actually on the ground there. It's as simple as that.
Why don't you just admit that yes it would have been impossible for Joseph Smith to have known these details? You don't have to accept him as a prophet but at least be honest with the evidence. You know someone had to be on the ground in Saudi Arabia to know the details - they come in no other way.
Jase
Jase,
do you think Ore a few days journey away is implied in the text (that would be too far away in my mind anyway)- See Noel Reynolds Farms article for the distance being a few days journey. He suggests that they might have had a closer store, but it sure seems he would have to suggest that in order for Khor Kharfot to qualify as Bountiful.
He also recognizes the problem with the timber, and says there is evidence of ancient timber, though it is not present today. That puts a large question mark at the least on there being a large store of quality timber.
What I object to any way is your method here Jase. You seem to have no problem with "reverse engineering." You looked until they found something like they wanted to find and declared it to be Bountiful, without any other corroborating research.
LDS members are so gung ho about archeological discoveries, why have they not been even able to find Cumorah or Zarahemla (hugh civilizations rather than small migrationary stop overs).
Until you are able to show me that Khor Kharfot is the place Smith was describing in the Book of Mormon I have no need to show you a source for his information as you request.
Still waiting for the D&C comments you have prepared.
Loren,
You said: "do you think Ore a few days journey away is implied in the text (that would be too far away in my mind anyway)"
Yes. Why not? Considering they had already traveled just over 2000 miles from Jerusalem I don't think a few days exploration for ore would be a big deal. It wouldn't surprise me if they explored the entire Dhofar region once they were on the coast. Considering they were going to be there a few years it would be wise to know your surroundings.
Reynolds says: "Specular hematite is the form of iron most commonly used in primitive smelting procedures, and stores of specular hematite have been reported on the Mirbat plain, just a few days' hike to the east of Khor Kharfot."
I think that's absolutely perfect and spot on to the Nephi narrative.
Reynolds again: "Recent geological surveys show that this and other forms of iron ore were available even closer to the site, making Nephi's account of being shown by the Lord where to find ore perfectly plausible in Khor Kharfot."
I honestly have no idea how you come to the conclusions you come to. Do you believe that God can guide and direct his children Loren? That's exactly what happened here. On his own Nephi probably could have discovered the ore in six to nine months. But it was wise to pray for guidance and that's exactly what he did. Again, it fits the narrative perfectly.
~
You said: "He also recognizes the problem with the timber, and says there is evidence of ancient timber, though it is not present today. That puts a large question mark at the least on there being a large store of quality timber."
What question mark Loren?? Again, that's not what he says. I'll quote verbatim:
"Anciently, this part of Oman was heavily forested, and numerous sizable trees exist at Khor Kharfot."
Not only does Reynolds say numerous sizable trees currently exist at Khor Kharfot but the Astons as well measured one tree to be 42 feet in diameter. So I have NO idea what you are talking about - the trees are THERE and around the time of Nephi there is evidence of an entire forest of large trees.
You are aware that Oman was known as an ancient shipbuilding nation right? No? Neither did Joseph since that wasn't known by anyone in 19th century frontier America.
~
You said: "What I object to any way is your method here Jase. You seem to have no problem with "reverse engineering." You looked until they found something like they wanted to find and declared it to be Bountiful, without any other corroborating research."
Ahem. You object to my method? Do you not know how archaeology and anthropology work? Do you not know what an incredible bulls-eye it is to use the Book of Mormon as a guide to finding places that match exactly what it says??
No "corroborating research"?? Thousands and thousands of hours on the ground and YEARS of intensive labor and effort doesn't qualify? Vetting several different sites along the Dhofar coastal region and finally settling on the the candidate that fits exactly isn't corroborating enough?
I have to assume at this point you are just joking around Loren because you are just coming up with absurd conclusions.
You said: "LDS members are so gung ho about archeological discoveries, why have they not been even able to find Cumorah or Zarahemla (hugh civilizations rather than small migrationary stop overs)."
Again, you are simply not up on the research. We have excellent candidates for many of the major cities in Mesoamerica. "The Land of Zarahemla is located in the Grijalva River valley in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, The valley is surrounded on the south, west and north by mountainous wildernesses as described in Alma 22:27."
There's much much more about ancient Mesoamerica and one of my favorites is cosmic urban symbolism but there's really no need to get into that now.
Why should we divert now since you still have to show us the "flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith" which you have not even come close to doing.
~
You said: "Until you are able to show me that Khor Kharfot is the place Smith was describing in the Book of Mormon I have no need to show you a source for his information as you request."
I've shown you far more than you deserve to see. You will not "show a source" for the information because you can't. And you never will. Seriously, think about it for a second; if you could you would gladly do it. So don't pretend that you won't do it simply because I'm not following through (when I clearly have) just admit that you have no source and that you would waste the rest of your life trying to find it.
Jase
Jase,
I said I had no need to show you a source, and I ment just that. I did not say I would not show you a source, I said I need not. The reason is because you have not put evidence on the table. Archeology does not just say, wow, this looks a lot like a place I remember reading about. It says the above, and then takes the extra step and says, and here is some physical evidence that leads me to believe that this is the location. Evidence would be engravings, period pottery, tools etc. You have none of that, and that is why it is a jump to claim you found the spot. you mentioned several vetted locations, but have not vetted a single one. We already discussed the demerits of NHM.
I would also add, if you conclusion that you have found boutiful is only as solid as your conclusion about Zerahemla or Cumorrah, then you are on shaky ground indeed. Your church cannot and will not take a stand on any cite being the real deal, because they know that they would be guessing since the place does not exist. This is unlike Christianity which can claim dozens of places and can verify many historical figures and events. So far, your church has not put one out there for the world to test. That should tell you something Jase.
Answer me this, If I asked your prophet where Cumorrah was, what do you think he would say. Is it upstate NY, Meso America. Where?
Here is a good rule, stay out of the archeological game unless you have the goods.
Now, if you want to change your claim and say, the description of bountiful is not impossible due to the fact that we have found locations on the coast of Oman that meet the description, I would be more than happy to grant you that. That is a far cry from what you seem to want to claim. Yes, it does show that what smith claimed about bountiful is not absurd. But is there physical evidence to show that we have found the location, no.
Loren,
You said: "I said I had no need to show you a source, and I ment[sic] just that. I did not say I would not show you a source, I said I need not..."
Just so I'm 100% clear on this: are you saying that you have a source but that you just don't want to show us?
I think we all understand that you don't need to show anything. We get that concept quite nicely. The question is are you just holding back some amazing incredible source that Joseph Smith had that gave him detailed descriptions of extremely remote parts of Saudi Arabia all the way back in 1829.
That's the question.
Jase
Jase,
my point was that the only reason I would need to have to demonstraight Smith had a source for the location would be if it could be proven that the location you propose was the actual Boutiful from the Book of Mormon account. If it cannot be proven, then one need not assume Smith had that place in mind, and thus I would not need to demonstraite how he could have had knowlege of that place.
That is what I was saying.
ps. I suppose my point is that you have created a false dichotomy. You seem to imply that if I cannot demonstrate a source, then the Book of Mormon account must be of ancient origen. That dichotomy can only work if it is established that Khor Kharfot or some other place is Boutiful from the book of Mormon. Becuase you have offered no real archeology to defend that possition, I do not need to buy into your request for a source, and Smith's account is still just suspect.
"That dichotomy can only work if it is established that Khor Kharfot or some other place is Boutiful from the book of Mormon."
We have 12 exact matching points and all other possible locations on the coast have been vetted and found lacking.
Khor Kharfot matches every single description given in the Book of Mormon narrative plus it is only 1 degree off from being exactly due East of Nahom. Do you honestly think Joseph Smith could have known even 2 of those points without having ever been to Saudi Arabia? Especially when the details given ran counter to the prevailing knowledge of Saudi Arabia at the time?
In terms of biblical archeology we don't and cannot have absolute proof for many critical aspects of Christianity, the things that matter most to us. We can't go dig something up to prove the Transfiguration of Christ. Archeology can't prove that Christ actually worked out the Atonement or that He was resurrected. For all of those events we must rely on eye-witness testimony, faith, the spirit and personal revelation.
The following Q/A is from christiananswers.net:
What archaeological discovery would you point to as the most convincing evidence for the Bible being God's Word?
Any one discovery can be explained away as coincidence, or an alternative interpretation can be given to disassociate it from the Bible. It is the weight of a myriad of discoveries that demonstrates the Bible to be the Word of God.
So Loren, even for the bible no single discovery is sufficient but adding things together gets us somewhere. So it is with Bountiful - one or two items matching up, no one is getting excited. Six or seven matches and we start to raise an eyebrow or two. Every single point matching (12), a place name and very specific directions and we're getting into the realm of very high probabilities.
While no one has been digging in the dirt since we're not allowed to do that Oman yet there is plenty of evidence of past settlements, irrigation, fences etc in Khor Kharfot. So until we can break out the pocket loupe and sampling kits Joseph's astounding in-depth knowledge of the Arabian desert begs an explanation.
Jase,
Your comments are mistaken and mis-leading.
You are confusing lots of things, which makes my job harder, but I will try to explain some things that should iron out the problems.
1st. your method of determining that Khor Kharfot is the Boutiful of the Book of Mormon is circular logic at best. It is not as though some archeologist was studying the area and found an inscription and settlement that showed Nephi and his companions were there, and then other scholars came and identified the cite as Boutiful based on literary features from the Book of Mormon.
Instead, you assume the Book or Mormon is true, and then go through the process of elemination to find where Boutiful is. This is why your method is both anti-intelliectual and not convincing for any non-LDS member. you cannot both assume the Book of Mormon to be true and use it to find Boutiful, and offer Bountiful as evidence for the Book of Mormon. That is circular my friend.
Here is the deal. no one would have ever gone there and thought, through physical evidence, some guys probably lived here for some time and built ships, and were of Hebrew origin. The only thing you have to tell us that Khor Kharfot is Boutiful is the Book of Mormon, and that is not good evidence for a non-LDS member who does not accept Book of Mormon as true.
2nd- this is not the case with the Judeo-Chritian tradition. Like you say, not every event or location can be proven (through physical evidence/ without assuming the veracity of the Bible), but there are many that can. There are many people and places and even events that archeology has confirmed, that support the historical claims made by Biblical literature. In this regard, the Book of Mormon does not deserve a seat at the table with the Bible.
Further, the way you handled the quote from Christian answers.net was very misleading (a standard LDS apologetic technique I am learning). Their point was that when many archeological discoveries are documented (physical evidence like inscriptions and other identifiable material discovered) that line up with what the Bible says, it begins to add tremendous credibility to the witness. You took that and said a bunch of circumstantial evidences point us to conclude that the location you propose is Bountiful. That is not at all what the writer was saying. A bunch off circomstantial things do not make a place solid evidence, where as a bunch of solid evidence does add strong credability to a theory. Thus, the wealth of Biblical archeology strenghtens the case for the verasity of the Biblical witness, but a bunch of interesting geological discoveries in Oman do not point us to the real location of Bountiful unless we have some solid archeological discovery to help us verify it.
Loren
Loren,
You said: "you cannot both assume the Book of Mormon to be true and use it to find Boutiful [sic], and offer Bountiful as evidence for the Book of Mormon. That is circular my friend."
Tell me what you think of the following:
You assume a treasure map to be true, you then use the map to find the treasure, you then offer the treasure as evidence that the map is true.
Jase
Jase,
Here is the fun part though. Your LDS team developed the "map" after they began to have interest in Khor Kharfot. There was no list of 12 things, and they just kept looking and looking until they found the one place that matched up. Actually the Book of Mormon does not require a list as developed as you mention. There need not be cliffs, Flint, limited populations and the like. Many places could be considered to meet the basic criterion the Book of Mormon lays out.
This is where your little experiment to break circularity falls apart. The treasure would count as good evidence for the map being true, however, our problem is identifying Khor Kharfot as the treasure. You have no evidence aside from the Book of Mormon that says we have something of value (religiously speaking). If Smith said, "and in Bountiful you will find under a great Oak tree plates of gold with reformed Egyptian inscriptions," and we found them there, then that would certainly give the Book of Mormon some credibility. What i have been taking great pains to say to you is that you have offered no compelling/archeological evidence that Khor Kharfot is the place the Book of Mormon describes as Bountiful. That is why you remain tied up in circularity. The only evidence you have for Khor Kharfot being of any value is the Book of Mormon itself.
Loren
Loren,
I don't need to "break circularity" because there is none to begin with. Using the Book of Mormon as a guide to find Bountiful is not a case of circular logic. I'm not assuming the conclusion in the premise. I do not give equality between the premise and conclusion without high probability evidence to back it up.
You said: "the Book of Mormon does not require a list as developed as you mention. There need not be cliffs, Flint, limited populations and the like. Many places could be considered to meet the basic criterion the Book of Mormon lays out."
That is simply false. The description of Bountiful in the Book of Mormon is extremely clear and critical to the issue - each point must match up or we have nothing. Each item including the directions must match up or the map fails:
* Bountiful was nearly eastward from a place called Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1).
* Terrain and water sources from Nahom eastward apparently permitted reasonable access from the interior deserts to the coast (1 Nephi 17:1–3).
* Bountiful was a fertile region (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* It was a coastal location (1 Nephi 17:5–6).
* Fruit and wild honey and possibly other food sources were available (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6).
* The availability of fruit (1 Nephi 17:5–6; 18:6) and the plentiful nature of the region suggests the availability of fresh water at this location as well.
* Timber was available that could be used to construct a ship (1 Nephi 18:1).
* A mountain was nearby (1 Nephi 17:7; 18:3).
* Substantial cliffs existed near the ocean from which Nephi’s brothers might attempt to throw him into the sea (1 Nephi 17:48).
* Sources of flint available in the region. (1 Nephi 17:11)
* Ore (1 Nephi 17:9–10) was available in the region.
* Suitable wind and ocean currents were available to carry a vessel out into the ocean (1 Nephi 18:8–9).
Each above point does match up. That's where your claim of circular logic fails. You can go to Khor Kharfot and see it for yourself. You can actually get on the ground and do some fact finding - no one can hold you back.
There is irony here. The irony is that you are the one engaging in circular logic:
'The Book of Mormon is a false record, Joseph Smith was a fraud, therefore the Book of Mormon is false.'
You entertain this logical fallacy based on nothing more than a religious ideology stolen from the Jews and a creedal mindset that tells you God doesn't speak to prophets in our day - nothing more than your opinion is on the scale and when we weigh it in the balance you come up lacking. You can say Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon all day long but that does not make it so - we need something a little more solid than your opinion and I've asked you again and again to show me the source documents and you can't (oh wait, you don't need to) but you were so willing to show source documents when you thought Carsten had all the answers. But alas, Carsten got vaporized.
The weight of the evidence that we do have is clearly on the side of the Book of Mormon being an authentic historical record with accurate directions to a hidden location in the deserts of Arabia - a true treasure indeed. Based on what I've given you so far we must skew the favor towards the Book of Mormon and away from made up theories.
You said a few posts back that you had a problem with "my method". Let's quickly review the things we've discussed in the various posts in order to see the Loren method first hand.
High-level recap of the Loren a priori rejection method:
We have multiple Wordprint studies where one took over 7 years of painstaking research (peer reviewed, non-LDS on the team) to show Joseph did not write the Book of Mormon. Each independent study shows Joseph is not the author:
Roger R. Keller, former Presbyterian minister said "the Book of Mormon cannot be the product of a single nineteenth-century author", Larsen-Rencher-Layton wordprint tests showed "the Book of Mormon was written by many different authors" and that "Joseph Smith was not the author", the Berkeley Group tests showed without doubt that "Joseph Smith was not the author of the Nephite record" and that "the Book of Mormon measures multiauthored".
You reject all of the studies as flawed and/or incomplete. Each one. Every single wordprint test that doesn't agree with Loren's opinion is wrong. Loren thinks 10 minutes of Internet research and reading a few articles can debunk YEARS of conservative rigorous testing by experts in statistics.
Does Loren produce a reputable Wordprint study that shows conclusively that Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Mormon? No. Of course not.
~
We have the Narrative of Zosimus that clearly shows 1st century Christians knew of an exodus of a righteous group from Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day and that that group was led by God to a "promised land". The narrative even has them crossing the ocean, a narrative that clearly parallels the Lehi journey - you reject that outright as well AND amazingly claim that somehow Joseph Smith got his hands on a 1st century Christian document that was just lying around somewhere so that he could squeeze the exodus account into the Book of Mormon. Again, your opinion rears its ugly head here and logic goes right out the window.
~
We have amazingly rich details of ancient Saudi Arabia that no one alive in 1829 could have known - you first claim that Joseph Smith somehow got his hands on some Carsten Niebuhr. Since he explored Arabia and all he MUST be the source! - that's a fun idea until we actually start reading Niebuhr only to discover his book is as barren as the Empty Quarter when it comes to the extreme remote parts of the vast desert wilderness that Nephi was wont to travel in and describe in great detail. You completely ignore the sobering fact that the detailed information given in the ancient record could only be known by someone who was actually there. Caught in your own circular logic you can't see the evidence for what it is.
By rejecting the power of God you are forced to give a 23 year old uneducated farm boy powers far beyond any other man of his time in order to explain the astounding detail and in-depth knowledge he had of foreign lands he had never been to as well as the unprecedented knowledge of ancient customs, rites and ceremonies.
Anti-Mormon heads are spinning and hands are wringing wondering how it can be so. But such is the work of God in every age. So the next time you get out the magic markers and poster board and head down to the Manti pageant all of this will be lurking in the back of your mind - how you got utterly lost in Saudi Arabia with the dizzying array of evidence pouring forth from that continent bearing testimony of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
It should be clear to all that once you move outside of the hyperbolic National Enquirer stories about Joseph Smith and into the real world of on-the-ground research you are clearly out of your element.
Jase
Jase,
Wow, on several fronts.
1st, when a person offers up an outlandish claim, the defalt possition is not blind belief, but a need for concrete evidence. It is not circular to withhold belief from the conclusions you draw until I see good proof. On the other hand, you do utilize circular reasoning in assuming Khor Kharfot is Boutiful. You have shown no archeological evidence, only made up circumstantial evidence. You obviously have simply cut and pasted the things Boutniful must have, along with the verse needed to support it, and have not checked on them.
First, it has to be Near Easterly from Nahom, but as we already discussed, No LDS scholar or hopeful can show where Nahom actually is. We have one inscription regarding a family/tribal name as a benefactor of a temple, and at that it is only the same consenants, not vowls. Lets be honest, you have no idea where or if there was such a city. If that is so ambiguous, why shoud I buy that Khor Kharfot is eastwardly of that made up city. We can talk about this more. I thought I made this clear in previous posts, but you keep bringing it up.
You say Flint would be required, but 1 Nephi 17:11 (which you cite) says no such thing. 1 Nephi does not indicate flint would be used. Of course flint would work well, but would not be required. Also the Book of Mormon does not state whether Nephi already had these "rocks" with him, or if he located them at Bountiful.
You have previously argued that there could be no resident population (your point 11). Yet again, this has apparently been stated because of the fact the resident population was not mentioned. This is not a good reason for requiring little or no local resident population. During the previous eight years, no mention was made of any other contact with people, yet many LDS say that Lehi's group were slaves, or at least served the local population, and this was the reason it took 8 years to traverse what should have only taken a month or so to traverse.
1 Nephi 17:48 does not show a need for cliffs as you state. Being desirous to throw Nephi into the sea, does not indicate they actually attempted it at all, or needed a nearby cliff to have that desire. Jonah 1:12 has a similar desire, with no cliffs implied.
the more and more we probe, the more we find made up criterion added to make it appear that you have something that matches with the Book of Mormon. In reality, the actual requirements are much less, and could be seen to be fulfilled in a number of costal locations in the area (thus the debate even within LDS circles).
About Word Print, I cant believe you are still brining that up. I posted with about 8 or so good reasons why we should reject word print (the method was exposed to be faulty in pier reviewed literature, it would force us to deny Frances Bacon wrote any of his standard works, etc). You have never responded to those points.
Loren,
We are not dealing with "circumstantial evidence". There's nothing circumstantial about these on the ground facts. You keep making up your own conclusions to fit your pre-disposed thoughts and ideas. You are free to do that, to each her own.
There clearly must be cliffs. Do you think his brothers were going to baptize him? If you read the entire verse it's obvious Nephi's life was in danger.
"And now it came to pass that when I had spoken these words they were angry with me, and were desirous to throw me into the depths of the sea; and as they came forth to lay their hands upon me I spake unto them.."
You said: [it] "does not indicate they actually attempted it at all.."
You are clearly wrong. They did attempt it. I think you can see that for yourself. So why do you conclude they do not make the attempt?
Your reference to Jonah 1:12 gets us nowhere since Jonah was on a ship. Don't need cliffs when they can throw him overboard. So your reference actually lends credence to my point. Nephi had to be thrown from something. But hey, please suggest something else - I'd love to hear it. Until then we'll stick with the obvious. Besides the cliffs are there. However since you are so insistent they be thrown out, go ahead, we still have 10 other spot on matches. There's just no way you are going to make this go away regardless of how much you want it to.
~
I was not bringing up the Wordprint studies to try to re-ignite the discussion but rather as a way to show your "a priori" rejection method - that's all. If years of study and effort don't match your opinion you reject it outright. And the point was that no one should trust your rejection since it's just based on arm-chair research and no real work.
~
You obviously are not understanding circular logic. In the following statement you are assuming the conclusion in the premise:
The Book of Mormon is a false record, Joseph Smith was a fraud, therefore the Book of Mormon is false.
That is circular logic. It has no regard for what side of the belief system you happen to be on. Circular logic is agnostic to that. You give equality between the premise and conclusion without high probability evidence to back it up - you have only your opinion.
Here's one example of how you can break out of your own circular logic:
1) Produce any Wordprint study that shows conclusively that Joseph Smith did in fact write the Book of Mormon. Why waste time debunking studies that you were not a part of? It's easy to sit at home in your comfy computer chair and make up reasons why the studies are flawed - but why should anyone believe you? You weren't there. You didn't spend years of your life and time in the lab actually doing something.
The opinions you offered back in June, while somewhat good, are not sufficient to overcome the hard evidence of at least 3 fully independent studies.
So produce one that proves without a doubt the opposite of what the studies claim. Come to the table with the hard evidence to prove your case instead of just debunking the work of others.
Jase
Jase,
I am sorry, but Christianity has been in the business of debunking faulty thinking for 2000 years. I do not hide my assumption. I believe the book of mormon to be a work of J. Smith, and not of God. I am willing to be corrected on that, and so I appreciate your work to prove the opposite, but so far you have not offered me anything that I can accept as real evidence for the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
You are a difficult person to debate because I offer solid points to the contrary of your possition, and you complain that I am a priori dismissal of your point, yet you do zero work to refute my evidence. Usually, this means that you are the one who refuses to follow the evidence where it leads.
Further, I do not need to offer you wordprint analysis because, as I have covered and you have not even attempted to counter, wordprint methodology is not a full proof method, and not even a good method in circumstances like we have with the Book of Mormon. Far from arm chair analysis, I offered you real scholarly problems offered by objective scholars regarding the work of Hilton and others using the wordprint analysis on Hobbs and Frances Bacon. What has been discovered (even though FARMS seems to be oblivious to this fact, is that wordprint analysis has been shown to be ineffective by peer review. It has not stood the test, and so I need not, and ought not offer you a test that is based on faulty method.
As I said, I recognize that I am starting with the assumption that the Book of Mormon is not the Word of God, but I am not using that to govern my conclusions. I am not circular. I am willing to weigh the evidence you offer, and see to what degree it stands scrutiny, or if it is just "wishful thinking." You have yet to provide evidence that could shape that conclusion, though I am open to that possibility. I have lots of evidence that the Bible is the Word of God, and so I feel it is entirely reasonable to hold that position. You however hold the book of Mormon to be the word of God, and assume that conclusion in the face of no good evidence, and despite overwhelming problems. So far you have not offered any solid evidence, and have refused to discuss even one difficulty that I have offered for discussion. In your most recent argument you have to assume the book of mormon is true in order for your evidence to work. That is circular. Thus far I have made no argument where, in order for the evidence I have offered to count, one must assume my conclusion in advance.
Not only that, but the evidence you have recently offered is even worse than what you started with. I understand you think you need cliffs, but there is nothing that demands cliffs (I brought up the boat illustration because apparently Nephi is building a boat). I know you think you need flint (at least you used to) but there is nothing in the text that demands it. They are made up requirements to give an air of connection. In the end, it is just misleading and deceitful, like everything else. Perhaps it is time to discuss the problems with the D & C I mentioned.
Jase, have you ever been offended by the gospel?
Loren,
You said: "I have lots of evidence that the Bible is the Word of God, and so I feel it is entirely reasonable to hold that position."
Real quick, just so we are on the same page, when you say "lots of evidence" I assume you mean archeology, can you list 2 or 3 specific evidences that prove without a doubt that the Bible is the Word of God? No need for an extensive reply just trying to determine what specifically you deem as good evidence.
Thanks. Jase
Thanks Jase. Good question. We may as well get on the same page here.
Yes, what I mean is really two fold.
1. I find that the Bible is increadably historically reliable. At every point where the jury is in, It comes out vindicated. There are hundreds and hundreds of places, people, and events mentioned in the bible that Archeologists and Historians have proven with hard science to be true. What I mean can be easily seen by open up any Quad of Mormon scriptures. There are a host of pictures that show the actual places that the Bible is talking about. We know were Jerusalem is, where the Temple was, where Bethlehem is, where the Mount of Olives is, where Jericho is, where Shiloh is, and where the cities Paul traveled and wrote letters to are. There are tons and tons of places, names and events recorded in the Bible that have extra-biblical evidence to support. Now, I believe the Bible is more than just a good history book, but at least it has shown itself trustworthy there. When you look at the end of the Book of Mormon in the same volume for archology cites, there are none. Only pictures of J. Smith's farm. Truth be told, there is not one peice of evidence confirmed by extra-Book of Mormon sources for anything, person, or place the book of mormon claims. The Word of God must be true with what it claims to have happened in the past.
2. Isaiah claims more than that though. He claims that more than just accurate with the Past, God is also always (100%) accurate with the future (Isa. 44:7). And just to show off a bit, he prophesied through Isaiah (around 700-680BC) that Cyrus would defeat Babylon. History confirmed this prophecy several hundred years later as Cyrus did defeat Babylon in 539BC. The prophecy was made before Cyrus was even born (isa. 44-45). There are many other prophecies that are fulfilled in the bible, and I would certainly say that those help show that The Bible is more than just an increadably accurate history book.
3. Further, the witness of Jesus and his resurrection, and the historical reliability of those stories, show the Bible to be more than words of men. If Jesus rose from the dead as the Bible claims (and I think we have excellent reasons to believe he did- see William Lane Craig and Garry Habermas on this issue), then his words are more than just words of a man, he is the Son of God, and his confirmation of the OT as God's word gives us excellent reasons to consider both the Old and New Testament as God's word.
To sum up
1. The Bible is an excellent source of Historical facts, figures and events, and even anti-Christians have to admit as much.
2. The Bible has a host of fulfilled prophecies which speak to its divine origin.
3. The Bible has miracles that are on sound historical ground, and are well attested to in non-Christian sources.
All of this gives me a firm foundation to stake my claim of Divine authorship on.
If you need more details on any of the above point, i would be glad to go into more detail (probably mind numbingly so), but I would like to hit on that D&C question before we switch gears.
ps. one more point needs to be made. The Bible has a rich manuscript history that shows the documents have remained intact and unchanged for millennia. We have discovered large portions of the New Testament that date back to the 2nd century, and portions that date even into the 1st Century, just years after the resurrection and assention of Jesus. Again, this is wholly unlike the Book of Mormon. It seems odd that God would allow us to preserve a rich manuscript tradition for both the Old and New Testaments, but would suddenly decide he did not like leaving original language manuscripts so that we could translate them into any language we need to. In essence, every language where the Bible goes is a first translation of the original, where the Book of Mormon can only be a translation of a translation in any language it gets translated into.
Loren,
I appreciate how you feel about the Bible, I share many of those same feelings. However you may have misinterpreted my question - previously you made it sound like you had more than subjective evidence with your "I have lots of evidence" statement. Historical veracity is one thing, evidence and proof is quite another.
I asked one of my Evangelical friends (a Manti Pageant street-preacher) to tell me the number one archeological find that proves the Bible is the word of God.
His answer:
"none, they only prove a degree of historical plausibility.. in other words, arc. [archeology] alone isn't a full proof for divinity"
Do you agree with my Evangelical friend that there are no archeological finds that serve as absolute evidence that the Bible is the word of God?
Jase
Jase,
I think I understand what you are getting at. However, I think Archeology can be tied to the bible being God's word. If we find the bones of Jesus (and lets just assume for the sake of argument that they really are Jesus bones), then the bible is not the word of God, and Jesus is not my savior (at least in no objective sense). Furhter, we see in history (often through archeology), that the prophecies given in the Bible have fulfillment. This also "proves" the Bible to be the Word of God. the more evidence we see, the greater degree of proof, or assureance/certainty that the Bible is what it claims to be.
If there was no concrete evidence, I would hold the claims made to be suspect to a high degree. And if there was historically verifiable evidence against the claims made in the Bible, that would count as proof/evidence against it being God's word.
Ps,
Jase, sometimes I wonder if you even read my posts. you really dont interact with anything i say, and instead create serious straw men arguments. You said, "I appreciate how you feel." I went back and checked and found that I did not ever use the word "feel" in my post. I said that all the evidence I pointed out "gives me a firm foundation to stake my claim of Divine authorship on." Unless you found a way to interpret that as, "this is just the way I feel about the Bible" you are using a horrendous straw man manuver. If you do find me using my feelings on this point cloaked in my post, I would be happy for you to point it out to me and we can explore that, but why not look to that plaguing D&C question you try so hard to avoid.
Loren,
I'm glad we had this discussion. It is critical that we be on the same page. It is also critical that you be on the same page with the rest of Evangelical Christianity.
Does archaeology prove the Bible to be the word of God?
"Responsible [bible] archaeologists are keen at avoiding terms like "proved" or absolutely "certain" when discussing their finds as they relate to the Bible — or anything else for that matter. They choose to speak in terms of high or low levels of probability."
The Bible as God's word must be accepted on faith. You have to believe the eye-witness testimony of others that were there and as much as possible have the spirit confirm your belief. Archeology cannot do that for you. It can prove historical veracity but no further.
Thinking otherwise puts you squarely outside of mainstream Christian thought on the subject of Biblical archeology.
Loren, can you agree that archeology can only offer high or low levels of probability? This will make it possible for us to proceed effectively.
Jase
Jase,
While I do admitt that archeology does not "prove" the Bible (not really even sure anything can be proven outside laws of math and logic), but it does anchor the events of the Bible in history, and thus builds confidnece in the Bible where the truths of Scripture intercect historical events.
I dont think that jives with your feeling that, "You have to believe the eye-witness testimony of others that were there and as much as possible have the spirit confirm your belief." If you think this speaks for most of Evangelicals, I think you are mistaken.
there is certainly some things that we do not have confirmation on, archeologically speaking, but we dont simply rely on eye witness testimony as much as possible unless we know the eye witness, and have determined thier ability to tell the truth. We have a lot of testimony from J. Smith about what happened with the plates, but I dont have a lot of confidence in his ability to tell the truth, especially given his willingness to change the Revelations at his leisure (as in the D&C question I raised). If he is making the whole thing up, Nephi and the other writers are also made up. We have no good reason to belive they even existed, haveing no extra-Book of Mormon source for thier existence, journey, or civilizations. Again, this is all very different from the Bbile, where many many things have been confirmed.
Loren,
I don't mean to belabor this point but I need to be 100% clear where you stand since your post seems a bit contradictory.
Two things:
1) Do you agree that there are only high or low levels of probability when it comes to Biblical archeology?
2) Do you agree with my Evangelical friend when he says archeology "only prove[s] a degree of historical plausibility.." and nothing more.
No need to monologue here - a simple yes or no will suffice. Thanks.
can you tell me what you mean by.
"there are only high or low levels of probability when it comes to Biblical archeology?"
If you mean that archeology cannot confirm events, people or places, I think my answer to your first question is no (if I am understanding you right). I think that there are archeology finds that do give us as close to certainty as we can be about many past events. people, and locations. So, biblical archeology gives us more than just probability. I would be tempted to say certainty, but I am sure there is some skeptic out there who could imagine some conspiracy theory.
I am not sure I can just answer with a one word answer for your second question either without some qualification. I think archeology can give us as close to certainty as we can get about events in the past about many things, and that assurance does lend itself to other areas. Thus, when we find a document check out everywhere we have been able to test, it makes its other details more plausible.
based on my answers, you tell me, did I answer Yes or No to your two questions? I am not sure if I even answered your questions. I want to, but may need more clarification.
Loren,
The question is this: do you have iron-clad proof via archeology that the Bible is the word of God?
You need to go outside of feelings and faith and show just one extra-Biblical proof via archeology etc that the Bible is the word of God or that Christ worked out the Atonement, was resurrected etc
Please post a link to that extra-Biblical proof and I'll read it and we can discuss further.
I dont think your trichotomy of feelings, faith, or proof is a good one. I think we can also use reason. What is reasonable to believe based on archeology, logic, etc. I would not say I have "proof," but I would say that it is very reasonable for a Christian to believe the Bible is the Word of God based on many of the factors I have already posted (archeology, miracles-like the resurrection, and fulfilled prophecy). Archeology lets us know that when the Bible is speaking about human affairs it is correct (the people existed, the places are there, and the events occurred), miracles and fulfilled prophecy that can be verified, or reasonably shown to have happened give us good reason to think that the Bible transcends human origin.
Where does that get us?
Loren,
I agree with you 100% on using reason. Without question we mix faith and reason and come to a conclusion. But what if we're talking to an atheist and we're asked to produce some sort of iron-clad archeological proof that the bible is indeed the very word of God?
The atheist will not accept anything directly from the Bible. What extra-Biblical archeological dig would you show the atheist?
do you want me to give you a list of things I find unquestionable, objective, and therefore convincing archeological data that adds credibility to the Bible? I could also demonstrate the prophecy fulfillment as well, and would be glad to do it if you desire.
I will give that to you if you want it, but before I spend the time, I just want to make sure that is what you want me to do.
Hi Loren,
I was actually looking for more than "data that adds credibility to the Bible" - I'm fully aware of that kind of information. I thought based on your previous posts that you have "lots of evidence" that proves the Bible is the word of God.
Can you just post a link to one extra-Biblical item, archeological expedition or dig that proves the Bible to be the word of God? No big research, just a link, 30 seconds tops. If there's not such a thing let me know and we'll move on. No big deal.
Jase
Allow me to clarify a point as we go on here. I dont have a archeological find that proves the Bible is of Divine origin. Howerver, I do have many finds that do give us archeological proof that the people existed, that the places existed, and the events happened.
You on the other hand, have neither of these. Not only is there no proof of divine origin, Book of Mormon followers also have no archeological data that proves any of the events (at least the ones that are not in the Bible as well) occured, or that the people existed, or that the events happened. So, many details of the Bible have hard, physical, archeological and extra-biblical verrification that gives us proof the the the people and places are real. For example: Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea until 44 CE. According to the Gospels and Josephus, Pilate sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion for insurrection. The first physical evidence relating to Pilate was discovered in 1961, when a block of black limestone was found in the Roman theatre at Caesarea Maritima, a port city in the province of Iudaea, bearing a damaged dedication by Pilate of a Tiberieum.[15] This dedication states that he was [...]ECTVS IUDA[...] (usually read as praefectus iudaeae), that is, prefect/governor of Iudaea. So we see for Pilate has extra-biblical and physical proof of his existence, and his possition. Can you give me one thing that the Book of Mormon has that corrisponds in this way to the Bible (and the Bible has hundreds and hundreds of these non-circumstantial evidences).
Loren,
You said: "Allow me to clarify a point as we go on here. I dont have a archeological find that proves the Bible is of Divine origin."
Thank you. That's exactly the point we needed to make. I think we are now on the same page: archeology can only give one a high or low level of probability - nothing more. The divine aspects of the Bible must be accepted on faith.
"Howerver,[sic] I do have many finds that do give us archeological proof that the people existed, that the places existed, and the events happened."
No one is debating that. The writings of Flavius Josephus give us much of the same. Josephus clearly confirms the people and places existed and the events happened - but Josephus was not a Christian.
"Can you give me one thing that the Book of Mormon has that corrisponds[sic] in this way to the Bible"
You said in a previous post that I should produce some archeological dig, inscription or discovery etc to prove the Book of Mormon is the word of God. By your own admission you can't do that for the Bible so we both will work within the probability construct.
The high probability evidence I have given you since June and the evidence that I will continue to put forth will show clearly and plainly that Joseph Smith could not have produced the Book of Mormon in 1829 under his own power. When you finally come to recognize that fact, you will have to come up with some other solution for why and how it came about.
"Can you give me one thing that the Book of Mormon has that corrisponds[sic] in this way to the Bible"
Can you produce some archeological dig, inscription or discovery etc that proves any of the people or places, or events in the Book of Mormon occured. So far, the best you have done is NHM. However, as we have talked about already, it fails actually identify any geographical location, itself being a family/tribal name not associated with a known ancient location. The Bible has hundreds of pieces of physical evidence that show the people and places existed.
I will ask again, "Can you give me one thing that the Book of Mormon has that corrisponds[sic] in this way to the Bible?"
You have a habbit of ignoring questions I ask. I answer your questions every time. You are not a very good discussion party. Here are two questions you have not even attempted to answer (besides the one posted above."
1. are you been offended by the Cross. Why or why not.
2. What is your explanation for the changes in the D&C I have pointed out to you.
I have shown why the NHM inscription, Word Print analysis, and Khor Kharfot all come up vastly short of anything that would give the Book of Mormon a high probablity, or would justify belief in the Book of Mormon. I would love if we could have a dialogue rather than a one way Q & A.
Loren,
You said: "I have shown why the NHM inscription, Word Print analysis, and Khor Kharfot all come up vastly short of anything that would give the Book of Mormon a high probablity,[sic] or would justify belief in the Book of Mormon. I would love if we could have a dialogue rather than a one way Q & A."
No, you have attempted to debunk years of scholarly study by others - you have NOT produced a single study of your own. You have zero evidence to back up your claims. Again Loren, no one is going to believe your "opinion" regardless of how strongly you feel about it. We need to see you bring some high probability evidence to table to back up what you say.
1) Nahom: If you want to say Nahom is not the location even when it matches perfectly with a due East direction to Khor Kharfot you need to find another suitable location and present it.
You should know: NHM in any of its variant spellings (Nehem/Nihm/Nahm and so on) is not found anywhere else in Arabia as a place-name. It is unique. It is known to appear only once in southern Arabian writings (as a personal name) and a handful of times in northern Arabian Safaitic texts. The fact that the name appears only once as an Arabian place-name argues strongly in itself for a possible link with Nephi's Nahom. It has recently been discovered that ancient Nehem was a burial ground.
The above is high probability evidence. Do you have your own specific evidence that Nahom absolutely cannot be the place spoken of by Nephi?
Yes or No
If Yes, don't just debunk the work of others show us with your own evidence that it could not be the location but you need to overcome the fact that NHM as a place-name is is not found anywhere else in Arabia.
~
2) Wordprints: Can you produce a Wordprint study that shows Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon?? If you can, please do so. You are going up against THREE independent studies. Your theories of why the studies are flawed need to be born out and proven by you or someone else spending the hard time and effort to prove them. Until you do that we'll accept the hard evidence that we do have as being in the realm of high probability.
So to facilitate the dialog I'll ask you a simple yes or no question:
Can you point to a Wordprint study that shows without doubt that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon? Please just answer yes or no, no need to monologue. Either you have it or you don't.
Yes or No
~
3) Khor Kharfot: Are you trying to say that ALL 12 very specific items required for Bountiful are NOT there at Khor Kharfot? Is that what you mean? If so, we have plenty of expeditions to Khor Kharfot that prove otherwise. In order for you to show "further flawed thinking in regards to the journey described by Smith" you need find a plausible source for our farm boy Joseph.
You have failed to produce a single item that shows who he got the detailed information from. I'm not talking about just Bountiful but rather, the evidence we have for the entire journey is very real and very high probability.
Your task here is find the mysterious "man on the ground" - that's what you need to produce. Someone had to be there. Who was it?
So here's your question: do you have the name of the on-the-ground person? (yes or no) Either you have it or you don't.
~
Your questions:
"1. are you been offended by the Cross. Why or why not."
No I'm not offended by the cross. I celebrate the risen Christ and focus on the fact that He lives. Are you offended by the resurrection?
"2. What is your explanation for the changes in the D&C I have pointed out to you."
The changes you speak of, if you are at all familiar with church history were done in the open by committee. Joseph wasn't in some back room making secret changes like you might be thinking:
"First Presidency members were assigned to compile "the items of the doctrine" of the Church from the standard works, including "the revelations which have been given to the Church up to this date or shall be, until such arrangement is made" (Kirtland High Council Minute Book, 24 September 1834; also cited in History of The Church 2:165.). This resolution might suggest the correction of former wording through revelation. [The revised D&C was] issued in August 1835 with a 17 February 1835 preface signed by the Prophet, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams, the revision committee."
Thus, the First Presidency of the time supervised the revisions. God inspires prophets through a variety of means: the prophet may be given precise words to speak or simply receive information which he is to communicate in any way which suits his listeners and that information may be revised for clarification etc. Again, David Whitmer is far more devastating to your cause than he helps it - but we'll leave that for another day.
I look forward to your answers to my questions posed above.
WOW...... I have read your site.... I have one thing to say... I am Mormon, and I LOVE IT!!! ps I was at the Manti pageant in 2007 holding a sign that said "I love Mormons". And protesting against the "Protestors"
They are pathetic.
When you are looking for something wrong in a religion (no matter what religion it is) you will find something strange, weird, or even stupid about it. But when you look at with the mind set, of someone who is trying to find happiness, both in this world and the next. THATS when you will see how awesome being a mormon is.
Also, dont just look at the BOM, look at all the doctrine, and commandments, even the word of wisdom.
:) Good luck. One day you will see what I am sayin.
Your confusion astounds me.
First, I am not sure what you mean about not producing a single word-print study of my own. If you mean that I have not conducted my own personal study, they your point is meaningless because I am guessing you have not either. However, if you mean I have not offered any scholarly word-print analysis that debunks word-print, then your have a short memory. If you recall from the post that you never bothered to respond to (point 4 and 7 from my June 26th), I offered several articles by scholars that deliver a death blow to Word Print analysis as applied to Hobbs and Bacon, and thus, by extension, to the Book of Mormon. What is great about that study is that it has nothing to do with Mormonism, only about their method as applied to the work of Hobbs. It is not Anti-Mormon, just anti-faulty method of determining authorship. So, unfortunately, it is not just my opinion as you seem to think it is. It is the Peer review literature that has a problem with Hilton and Word-Print.
Second, I just really cant get over your circular reasoning. First you argue Khor Kharfot is likely Bountiful because it is "Near Eastwardly" of what you suppose NHM corresponds to. Now, in your most recent post, you argue that NHM has to be the right location because "it matches perfectly with a due East direction to Khor Kharfot." You want it both ways, you want to assume NHM is the Book of Mormon Nahom so that Khor Kharfot is Bountiful, and you also assume Khor Kharfot is Bountiful so that you can prove NHM is Nahom. Does that work for you? It does not work for me.
So, in dealing with NHM, you have a HUGE methodology issue again. You make one large assumption that is unproven. you say NHM does not appear, "anywhere else in Arabia as a place-name." Thus you argue, it must be the location. This makes a huge, and unjustified assumption (which I have already pointed out to you without any response from you). You are assuming NHM is a place name. This is an unjustified conclusion, as NHM is only an inscription relating to a particular person belonging to a tribe. It does not follow that there is necessarily a place-name from the same family name, much less where it would be located. The Burial grounds "nearby" are circomstantial, as there is no inscription there with the tribal name. It is more probable that NHM refers to Stone cutting, which is probably the profession of the man with the inscription (thus the inscription). there is no need for me to posit an alternative location for NHM, because I need not buy the assumption you all too eagerly acquiesce to because there is no evidence there ever was such a location in antiquity. We know the name existed as a family group, but that in it self does not get you the city you need. Sorry.
Lastly, as to Khor Kharfot, I feel a bit like a broken record. You keep asking for sources, but for me to try to find a source would be to buy into your unwarranted assumption. As I mentioned in earlier posts and have not had a convincing rejoinder to, the 12 Highly detailed attributes Khor Kharfot has in common with Bountiful are made up. Probability increases with the number of things that match up, so what LDS scholars want to do is multiply similarities, and to cite that as higher probability. Unfortunately, all they end up doing is being deceitful. There is no need for Bountiful proper having ore, flint, little or no resident population, cliffs. We have already discussed the problems with "eastward of Nahom." If Nahom is where you say it is, almost any coastal location would be nearly Eastwardly. So, when your 12 requirements are cut down to size, the probability is not that great, and probably has several locations that could count (probably why there is still debate among LDS scholars regarding the location of Bountiful).
So, to recap my answers to your questions
1. no reason to even assume NHM is a place name.
2. I have produced scholarly research in academic journals that debunks Word-Print.
3. I am not saying that "all 12" of the points are not there in Khor Kharfot, just the specific ones. I believe you and LDS researchers that Khor Kharfot has access to Timber, fresh water, Costal waters, able to produce some kind of fruit, and a mountain in traveling distance. That cuts down the probability (and specificity) greatly, and is general enough to count for several locations.
Now, I thank you for at least attempting to respond to the questions I have posed, though your responses were inadequate to say the least.
1. Offense of the cross- The bible speaks clearly that the cross offends. Paul took great pains to assure the churches in the provence of Galatia and in Corinth that he does not remove the offense of the cross. In fact, that is what he charges others with. I find many mormons are not offended by the cross because they see themselves as not all that bad off. The cross is the greatest monument to our impotence to contribute to our righteousness, and our wickedness. In other words, it offends us. I am sure you just did not understand my question, but if you have never been truly offended by the cross, then my guess is that the apostle Paul and I would suggest that you have never really understood the cross. (by the way, I do glory in the resurrection, but the resurrection is not as sweet unless you can appreciate the bitterness of the cross).
2. your response to the changes in the D&C are short sited. they changes did not just clarify and issue, they directly contradicted the original revelation. It would not just mean that God is unclear in his instructions to men, but that he lied. If you are conformable with that, your god is much smaller than the God of the Bible who cannot lie, and does not change like shifting shadows. He never had to change his prophecies of the OT by committee, what he spoke was final, and could not return void.
in the end, I find that you support your tenuous claims with even more questionable claims based on scholarship with known faulty methodology. So far, even in the face of the "New LDS apologetics," I have seen no solid evidence for the Book of Mormon. Further, you do not deny that your god changes his revelations, and, if I take your comments at face value, you also completely misunderstand the gospel.
Can you describe the Biblical Gospel to me as you understand it?
Loren,
Obviously I have to ask the questions one at a time. This is really really easy. It should take you about 3 seconds to type 'yes' and 2 seconds to type 'no' figuring 1 second per character.
Now, here's the question, pay attention:
Can you point to a Wordprint study that shows without doubt that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon? Please just answer yes or no. We're not debating "flaws" in Wordprint studies like the isolated incident you pointed out as there are plenty of successful Wordprint studies (federalist papers etc).
We just want to know if any Wordprint study that you are aware of shows conclusively that Joseph Smith did indeed write the tremendously complex Book of Mormon.
Just Yes or No and we can move on.
If you say 'yes' you should also cite the study and post a link (but don't monologue it). If you say 'no' you will simply type no.
Thanks in advance.
I think you might be confused again. you wrote, "Can you point to a Wordprint study that shows without doubt that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon?"
If that is really your question, then No. I know of no wordprint study that shows without a doubt that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon.
I think you just mis-asked the question twice in your post. Allow me to pontificate about the poor quality of the question (even if phrased correctly).
The problem with wordprint is that it is known to produce false results(that is, it rules out people from authorship who are the author, and sometimes applies authorship when it is undeserved). That being the case, the test is unreliable, and we need not lean too heavely on its results. Further, for me to produce a wordprint test of my own which shows Smith wrote the Book of Mormon would be to further exaerbate the problem, for it would be unjustified to conclude that he was not the author, since the test is not accurate.
Imagine a criminal court, and in the court the accused had failed a test (whatever the test was), which is right some of the time, but also known to often have false positives. If the District Attourny offers this test as evidece, I would say that the jury would be justified in disregarding this evidence. It would be unjust to condemn the person on the basis of a test with a known substantial probability of producing false results.
Further, if the Defense team produces its own test (what ever the test might be), which is again known to be correct part of the time and incorrect part of the time, a wise jurror would not allow that test weight too heavely on the decision.
Now, suppose was shown that in particular circomstances, the accuracy of the tests in question was greatly diminished. That is, if the known factors that decrease the tests accuracy are known, and that the District Attourny admits that the test he has conducted was done in those circomstances (think of a confession, we do not accept a persons own confession under certion conditions, ie. mental illness, under durress such as tourture). Now, if we already cannot estime the test too high becasue we know it produces false results, if we now know the conditions which cause the test to malfunction at a higher level, and see that those conditions are present, we would have even more reason to reject the tests results.
Are you following me. If you want to go back to my June post and look at my comments, I show why the test is flawed (produces false resluts), and what scholars have seen to be the factors that greatly increase the liklyhood of a false result from the test. What is amazing is that the wordprint test on the Book of Mormon actually fulfill many of the conditions for a faulty result.
ok, that should answer your question, or at least, the question I think you ment to ask.
Loren,
I assure you, of the two of us, I'm not the one confused - I meant to ask that question. You are totally wrong to say the science of Stylometry is flawed across the board - that is simply not true.
To wit:
"Stylometry [Wordprint studies] is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language. In the last few years it has successfully been applied also to music and to fine-art paintings.
Stylometry is often used to attribute authorship to anonymous or disputed documents. It has legal as well as academic and literary applications, ranging from the question of the authorship of Shakespeare's works to Forensic linguistics."
I'm glad you brought up the legal use of Stylometry. As pointed out above in the legal world Stylometry in the form of forensic linguistics has already proven very effective in actual court cases:
"Forensic linguists have given expert evidence in cases such as the Murder of Danielle Jones posthumous appeal against the conviction of Derek Bentley and the identification of Theodore Kaczynski as the so-called "Unabomber".
"...in an Australian case reported by Eagleson, a "farewell letter" had apparently been written by a woman prior to her disappearance. The letter was compared with a sample of her previous writing and that of her husband. Eagleson came to the conclusion that the letter had been written by the husband of the missing woman, who subsequently confessed to having written it and to having killed his wife. The features analysed included sentence breaks, marked themes, and deletion of prepositions." (R. Eagleson (2004): "Forensic analysis of personal written texts: a case study" in J Gibbons (ed.): Language and the Law. London, Longman, pp.362–373.)
"Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. The ransom note for Jon Benét Ramsey. The anthrax letters threatening our government and media agencies. With the aid of forensic linguistics, the words criminals leave behind in their unsigned letters can be as distinctive as a signature or voice." - Forensic Linguistics, Gerald R. McMenamin
Far from being a failed science Loren, the truth is exactly the opposite of what you say. If you want to continue fighting Stylometry as being very useful in forensic linguistics go right ahead - I have a digital copy of the book and I can continue to cite case law for you.
Also you cannot take the failed tests from some other Wordprint study and apply it to the Book of Mormon Wordprint studies. That's not going to work.
You said: "The problem with wordprint is that it is known to produce false results(that is, it rules out people from authorship who are the author, and sometimes applies authorship when it is undeserved)."
That was somewhat true in the 1950's but the science has progressed considerably:
"In time, however, and with practice, researchers and scholars have refined their approaches and methods, to yield better results. One notable early success was the resolution of disputed authorship in twelve of the Federalist Papers by Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace." - F. Mosteller and D. Wallace (1964). Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
It is critical to look at how the Wordprint study was conducted. Your desire to do a drive-by shooting of ALL Wordprint studies will just not hold up.
Now by your own admission not one single person, evangelical scholar etc has produced a Wordprint study that shows that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and the science is advanced enough now that if he did indeed write it, it should be easy to show.
Loren said: "No. I know of no wordprint study that shows without a doubt that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon."
So in absence of anything showing Joseph Smith to be the author we must accept the high probability evidence we have showing otherwise. And just one of those studies shows the following:
Nephi vs. Nephi- 5 rejections
Alma vs. Alma- 3 rejections
Smith vs. Smith- 2 rejections
Cowdery vs. Cowdery- 1 rejections
Spaulding vs. Spaulding- 2 rejections
Nephi vs. Alma- 10 rejections
Smith vs. Nephi- 12 rejections
Smith vs. Alma- 7 rejections
Cowdery vs. Nephi- 14 rejections
Cowdery vs. Alma- 9 rejections
Spaulding vs. Nephi- 15 rejections
Spaulding vs. Alma- 12 rejections
Please note that any test with over 6 rejections shows different authorship and that each rejection is statistically independent. So in the case of Nephi and Alma being the same author the chance is 1 in 15 trillion.
The above is just one study. We have TWO other studies that we have discussed that show pretty much the same thing and the methods used were different.
~
Now, so far Loren, you've gotten utterly lost and dizzy in the vast Arabian desert. You walk around there in a daze no idea where you're going, delirious from a march into the barren Empty Quarter. Unfortunately you only made it 20 miles or so before your comrades had to carry you back to Nahom. Ouch.
Now you are caught in a haze of Wordprint studies, legal cases and forensic linguistics so vast and effective that your head is spinning right off your shoulders. Our farm boy must have been a one-of-a-kind genius in order to plan ahead so amazingly well that he could thwart all attempts to catch his fabrication using advanced computer analysis. Bravo.
Viva la Revolucion - JosephSmith.com
cute
You have done it again.
You do the same thing you accuse me of doing. You confuse all cases of styleometry with a particular application of wordprint analysis. I do not sweep all cases of styleometry out the door, but I do have questions regarding the particular utilization of the tool in assessing the authorship of the Book of Mormon. As I have already said, there are serious methodology issues with the tests you cite. Here is a laundry list of problems you have not bothered to discuss.
1. Leaving out the OT material. I realize that you will want to say that they excluded OT quotations becase the author will be quoting from a different author, so it would skew the results. However, Hilton makes the point (June 26th post for the citation) that when an author takes another persons work and passes it on (paraphrasing, or abridging), the author destroys the previous author's wordprint and adds his own. Thus there should be no reason to get rid of the OT material.
those are some of the reasons why the study done by Hilton, which you acknowledge is more conservative and rigid than those of its predecessors, ought to be regarded with suspicion.
we can keep talking about this, but I would love to hear you sum up the Gospel as you understand it, just to make sure we are on the same page.
Loren
2. Leaving out the phrase- "and it came to pass." One of the tests is supposed to give a ratio of the fraction of sentences that begin with the word 'and.' If we exclude from the study every sentence that begins with the phrase, "And it came to pass...," then we are severely handycapping the abilty to give the true fraction.
3. Based on the study and the statistics you provided, can you give me the chance that Nephi was written by Nephi? five rejections seems pretty high.
4. Hilton says, "to be a valid measurmen, the words must be essentially the free-flow choice of the purported author." He goes on to say that, "deliberatly writing to an externally imposed pattern which restricts the normal noncontextual word choices of the writer or repetitively using normally noncontexual words in textually importiant ways can also change the wordprint patterns." (Pg. 14 footnote from his article in BYU Studies). John Fortier points out that it is "one of the most fundamental premises of wordprint analysis, that an author writes in a consistent wordprint when writing free-flow prose, but that this pattern is abandond when writing is constrained. (Fortier, "The Last word," The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4, pg. 909). Certanily one's free-flow prose will be constrained by adopting a King James style writing, when one is not accustomed to that style (as Smith was obviously not: one can tell by observing the number of corrections that needed to be made to make the Book of Mormon read like real KJ).
4. Hilton also suggests that the method of testing could be sensative to changes of genre. In fact, he is concenred that "changing genre might artificially cause additional rejections." Thus they only tested text from the Book of Mormon from the same genre. Why then is he, or anyone else, comfortable testing those results against Joseph Smiths personal writings (obviously a differnet genre). There is a serious methodology question here, one that could drum up additional rejections. If they wanted to remain even remotely fair, they should have taken material from Smiths own didactic work.
5. When Smith's work was compared to Alma's, two of the blocks of 5000 words yeilded only three rejections, one yeilded 4, and one five (along with the two 7's). This averages to under 5 rejections. So, according to the test, it seems inconclusive regarding who the author is of Alma.
6. Another red flag should be raised when one of the three blocks of text used to sample Joseph Smith is confessed to be a "dictated" and "carefully pollished" work by his "clearks" (From the Pearl of Great Price). Even if the wordprint was accepted as genuine Smith (somehow not altered by the clerk transcribing or "polishing"), it would then cast doubt on the original authorship of the Pearl of Great Price at the least.
7. John Fortier has peer reivewed Hilton and company's work on Hobbs and exposed serious problems with the work. Not only has he shown that Hilton and company had a false positive, but that their work developed a wordprint for Frances Bacon that shows "that Bacon did not write his major English works." He says, "The results of their new testing, however, are so extraordinary that they further call into question the validity of the method." (quote is from the above cited sourse, pg. 912). Further, testing by Hilon and others was done on Bacon's literary works, and his personal letters, and the results showed that only one of 25 standard works of Bacon passed the test. In fact, Fortier says that their results "are enough to sound a warning to the academic world." He conjectures that if we let Hilton decide who wrote what, scholars of Shakespeare, Locke, Mill and Austen will all be out of a job.
Loren,
I'd be glad to sum up the Gospel:
124 years before the coming of Christ into the world a prophet on the American continent was shown in glorious vision exactly what the Gospel would be.
See my commentary in brackets:
...For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, [His birth as the only Son of God] and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.
[His life and ministry]
And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men.
And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. [His glorious Atonement]
And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.
And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of men even through faith on his name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and shall scourge him, and shall crucify him. [His suffering and death on the cross completing the Atonement]
And he shall rise the third day from the dead; [His resurrection, destroying the bands of death, being the first fruits of theosis] and behold, he standeth to judge the world; and behold, all these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of men.
For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. - Mosiah 3:5-11
The Gospel is that we worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Gospel is about Christ.
So, does knowing and believing and putting faith in the gospel (as you describe it) give you the best your religion has to offer (Eternal Life with your Heavenly Father).
If not, what else must you add to the gospel in order to attain the best your religion has to offer?
Hi Loren,
"what else must you add to the gospel in order to attain the best your religion has to offer?"
I would say I agree with Peter for the need to add to our faith:
"...And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity." (2 Peter 1:5-7)
Diligence: 1. Earnest and persistent application to an undertaking; steady effort; assiduity. 2. Attentive care; heedfulness. [My religion teaches diligence in life and salvation]
Virtue: 1. Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness [My religion teaches a strong moral code]
Knowledge: 1. Familiarity, awareness, or understanding gained through experience or study [My religion seeks knowledge from ALL sources. The scholarship of Mormon writers is often rigorous and has been recognized by astute evangelicals as "intellectual, erudite; skilled in intellectual investigation; trained in ancient languages." etc.]
Temperance: 1. Moderation and self-restraint, as in behavior or expression. 2. abstinence from alcoholic liquors [My religion teaches abstinence from alcohol and other harmful substances]
Patience: 1. The capacity of enduring hardship or inconvenience without complaint [Our pioneer heritage is filled with real examples of true hardship, endurance and inconvenience - lessons that inspire us today]
Godliness: 1. Deeply concerned with God and the beliefs and practice of religion [Our temples show deep concern with God and service to others]
Brotherly Kindness: the love which Christians cherish for each other as brethren [Felt and manifested in some way each and every day]
Charity: Provision of help or relief to the poor; almsgiving [My religion requires the sacrifice of tithing. Our welfare system has been recognized around the world as highly effective in giving aid in life and in emergencies. I was in the Gulf Coast area to check on family just days after Katrina hit and saw first hand charity in action]
"For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:8-11)
So, am I reading you right that you believe you must do those things you mentioned (diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity), in order to have the fullness God has to offer you.
If this is what you believe, you not only are completely misreading 2 Peter, but you also disregard most of what the Bible has to say about eternal life (1 John 5:11-13, Eph. 2:8-10).
If what you said is true, how much of those things is required. Is it perfection, or if you just do it 80%, is that enough. The point is, we will never be good enough to deserve the grace of God and dwell with him. If we obey in order to be good enough, then we are in slavery to the law, and it becomes an idol. The opposite is what Jesus saved us to be. Galatians tells us that it was for freedom Christ freed us from the law of sin and death. That is, we obey his word, not because it can somehow gain us eternal life (for the full price was paid at Calvary). Evangelicals obey because we are free to love and serve God. It is not an idol, and it cannot save, only Jesus provides for eternal life. Evangelicals love God as an end, not a means to an end. If you think your work can merit something that the Gospel of Jesus could not, then God is merely a means to an end for you. He is an object you manipulate to get something. This is not worship, this is using God, and that is not what God desires. This is probably why you have never been offended by the cross. You still think you can be good enough to merit God's favor. You think you can earn his blessing. The truth it, we cannot. In fact, all we deserve from our behavior is curse. But thanks be to God that he became a curse for us, bearing our sin, and giving us righteousness. Our righteousness is not our own doing, it is a gift of God, by grace, so that none can boast.
Lets get to the bottom of this:
1. What makes you think the verse you quote is telling us what we must do to have eternal life?
2. What exactly is are your works said to accomplish that the Cross did not (biblically speaking)?
3. Does it make you uncomfortable that the gospel of the New Testament and the gospel of the latter day doctrine is so radically different when you compare them. (one relying only on the cross of Christ, the other giving an air of dependence on the cross, but really relegating the highest prize of the faith to human work/merit).
Let's discuss your questions one at a time:
"1. What makes you think the verse you quote is telling us what we must do to have eternal life?"
If you think I'm trying to work my way to heaven your argument is specious. It's impossible for anyone to work their way to heaven. Anything I do is an outgrowth of my faith.
I assume based on your post that you are saved. Did you have to do anything to be saved? Did you have to take any action at all or did you just wake up saved one morning? If you did something what was it exactly?
What exactly (and be very specific) should one do to be saved as you are?
Well, Jase. We both agree we have to believe the gospel. That is why my question to you was, "what else must you add to the gospel in order to attain the best your religion has to offer?" to this, you gave me a laundry list of virtues you need.
What role do your works (by this I mean, everything beyond trusting in the gospel) play in your attainment of the best your religion has to offer (eternal life with your heavenly father). If your answer is anything other than, nothing, we have a good discussion ahead of us.
Yes, but before the discussion I need to know your basic concept of salvation. So I repeat:
Did you have to do anything to be saved? Did you have to take any action at all or did you just wake up saved one morning? If you did something what was it exactly?
Just quick replies are fine.
I believe the gospel which was preached. Faith in the promise of God is where my righteousness comes from, not from myself. Do you agree?
Did you have to do anything to be saved? Did you have to take any action at all or did you just wake up saved one morning? If you did something what was it exactly?
I'll say it again...
I believed the gospel which was preached. Faith in the promise of God is where my righteousness comes from, not from myself. Do you agree?
so, are you done discussing?
Nope, I'm just waiting for you to answer my question.
"I believed the gospel which was preached" is just a bit vague - I know Christians that would interpret that many different ways.
Clearly I assume you believe the Gospel but what exactly does that mean to you? Did you say a prayer? Were you baptized?
Did you click a "I have accepted Christ today" button on a Web page? (not a joke)
A popular Website on salvation says that one must do the following to be saved:
Would you like to follow the Romans road to salvation? If so, here is a simple prayer you can pray to God:
"God, I know that I have sinned against you and am deserving of punishment. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve so that through faith in Him I could be forgiven. With your help, I place my trust in You for salvation. Thank You for Your wonderful grace and forgiveness - the gift of eternal life! Amen!"
Have you made a decision for Christ because of what you have learned through the Romans road to salvation? If so, please click on the "I have accepted Christ today" button below."
Do you agree with the above statement?
I respect your salvation and I gave you my fairly detailed thoughts on the topic - just looking for the same from you.
Your asked what I needed to do to be saved. What is needed for eternal life, well, that is clearly spelled out in numerous places in the Bible. One place I like to look (because of its clarity) is 1 John 5:11-13- And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things I have written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
So, eternal life comes through belief in the Son of God (Jesus), and anybody who believes in God's Son knows they have eternal life.
John 6:28 tells us what the work of God is that we ought to do. Jesus says that what God desires from us is that we believe on him whom God has sent (His Son). This is why Paul says in Romans 4:5 that justification comes not through our works, but to the one that believes. Later in 11:6 Paul says that if our justification, our righteous status before God is by grace, they it is no more o works, otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is not more grace... In saying this Paul distances the gospel from any system for attaining righteousness. Our works play no part in our salvation, or our attainment of eternal life. If it is by our works, the it is not grace. And the Bible is clear that it is by grace we are saved, by grace we receive eternal life.
Now, how do we get this belief in Jesus, Gods Son who takes away the sins of the world?
well, Romans 10:14 tells us that belief comes from hearing the gospel preached.
Thus, eternal life is recieved by grace through faith in Christ, and we have faith as a result of hearing the gospel preached (or I suppose we can read the gospel message and put faith in Christ).
That is a bit of an explantation of my previous answer, I believed the gospel which was preached. Faith in the promise of God is where my righteousness comes from, not from myself. Do you agree?
[Faith in the promise of God is where my righteousness comes from, not from myself. Do you agree?]
Are you saying you can do nothing good or righteous by your own power?
well, God's word teaches us that
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Romans 3:10-12 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
clearly I have no ground to stand on if salvation/exaltation is granted based on my righteousness, for my righteousness is as filthy rags before God, and His word says that no one does good, no not one.
Justification occurs as we are found righteous before God, but the righteousness does not come from us, our works, our good deeds. it comes from Christ and Christ alone, and all who are in Christ, are thus justified. See 2 Cor. 5:17-21, Galations 3, Romans 5-6, and many more passages. At the cross, Our sin is transfered to Christ, and his righeousness is transfered to us. That is the basic gospel message. We stand before God, not on our own merit, but 100% upon the merit of Christ.
where does your righeousness come from?
[where does your righeousness[sic] come from?]
I do not accept the creedal doctrine of a non-human species alien god creating men as creatures on a whim - it's a pervasive evangelical world-view that simply isn't true and ranks as a major deadly heresy.
Rather, I believe in the 1st century Christian doctrine of theosis - in its restored form. If you study theosis at all you will understand where my righteousness comes from.
You use the term eternal life - what do you mean by that exactly?
here is a question for you,
where have you studied theosis. Have you ever studied or even read the documents where that term is used (like in Athanasius) outside LDS circles? No non-lds scholars that I have ever known have thought that term was used in the sense that you want it to be used. It was clear to the Athanasius that there is one God, and that we are not him. He was attempting to describe the way in which we become godly. That is, the way we take on holiness (a characteristic of God). Anyway, if you would like to talk about this, it would be fun and instructive, but you are going to have to show me in the original documents why you think the LDS use of the term is correct. If you need to consult secondary sources, your case would be bolstered by making them non-LDS.
Secondly, it seems like you are saying God is human. This flies in the face of many many scriptures where God expresses his transcendence, and his utter ontological difference from mankind. Show me in scripture where you think God is human (not just anthropomophic language, but where he is actually a human), and we can talk about this.
Thirdly, by eternal life I mean eternal existence with Heavely Father. That is what 1 John promises to all who believe on Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that I know today that I have eternal life. Do you know if you have eternal life? I would really like your answer to that question.
Fourthly, you dodged the question I have asked you several times. Where does your righteous status before God come from. I would like to hear your response.
Hi Loren. I've been on vacation hence the reason for the time between responses.
Yes I've read plenty on theosis outside of LDS circles and have come to my own conclusions. The most famous quote from Athanasius is "God became man so that man might become God." and Wikipedia has plenty of additional information. Your conclusions on theosis I'm sure will differ from mine and that's ok. What we can take away from this is that the doctrine of divinization / deification was clearly known and understood in early Christian theology and after 18 centuries of madness and corruption was ripe for restoring.
["..it seems like you are saying God is human"]
Yes my view of God follows theosis to its ultimate conclusion. We have latter-day witnesses to such.
Two of Joseph's close associates reported their own visions of God in the winter of 1832–1833. Both are decidedly not in the trinitarian mold.
Zebedee Coltrin:
"Joseph having given instructions, and while engaged in silent prayer, kneeling...a personage walked through the room from East to west, and Joseph asked if we saw him. I saw him and suppose the others did, and Joseph answered that this was Jesus, the Son of God, our elder brother. Afterward Joseph told us to resume our former position in prayer, which we did. Another person came through; He was surrounded as with a flame of fire. [I] experienced a sensation that it might destroy the tabernacle as it was of consuming fire of great brightness. The Prophet Joseph said this was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I saw him....
He was surrounded as with a flame of fire, which was so brilliant that I could not discover anything else but his person. I saw his hands, his legs, his feet, his eyes, nose, mouth, head and body in the shape and form of a perfect man. He sat in a chair as a man would sit in a chair, but This appearance was so grand and overwhelming that it seemed that I should melt down in His presence, and the sensation was so powerful that it thrilled through my whole system and I felt it in the marrow of my bones. The Prophet Joseph said: 'Brethren, now you are prepared to be the apostles of Jesus Christ, for you have seen both the Father and the Son and know that They exist and that They are two separate personages.'"
John Murdock:
"During the winter that I boarded with Bro[ther] Joseph... we had a number of prayer meetings, in the Prophet’s chamber.... In one of those meetings the Prophet told us if we could humble ourselves before God, and exersise [sic] strong faith, we should see the face of the Lord. And about midday the visions of my mind were opened, and the eyes of my understanding were enlightened, and I saw the form of a man, most lovely, the visage of his face was sound and fair as the sun. His hair a bright silver grey, curled in a most majestic form, His eyes a keen penetrating blue, and the skin of his neck a most beautiful white and he was covered from the neck to the feet with a loose garment, pure white, whiter than any garment I had ever before seen. His countenance was the most penetrating, and yet most lovely. And while I was endeavoring to comprehend the whole personage from head to feet it slipped from me, and the vision was closed up. But it left on my mind the impression of love, for months, that I never felt before to that degree."
["Do you know if you have eternal life? I would really like your answer to that question"]
When you die you will go to Paradise (spirit world) and there you will await the resurrection. Heaven (where God and Christ dwell) is separate from the spirit world. Your relationship with God does not automatically put you in His presence in the afterlife. You & I will await judgement and resurrection like everyone else - at that point we will know where exactly we will serve in the Lord's kingdom.
["Where does your righteous status before God come from."]
I take full responsibility for how I conduct myself in this life but I am justified by the Atonement of Jesus Christ in many things.
hmmm, let me see.
well, did a concept of Theosis exist in the early church- yes. that is not the debate. The debate is what that means. Athanasius meant the same things 2 Peter did when Peter said, "According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: 4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." (2 Peter 1:3-4)
we become partakers of the divine nature as we grow in godliness. Holiness is God's nature, and as we become holy, we partake in that nature/character, but we do not beocome of the same essence, that is the hight of folly. To say that that is what Peter or Athanasius or any other church fathre of repute ment would be seen as utter blasphemy if you tried reading anything else they had written.
we can agree that the doctrine of Theosis existed, but that doctrine, if it means anything, does not mean that we become God's. Not only is it contrary to the early church thinkers writing, and against scripture, but it is non-sensical. It doesn't even make logical sense.
here are a few logical problems for you to solve given your possiton.
1. To whom does God owe worship. If your doctrine is right, God has his own God he worships. If that is true, the God is not alone worthy of worship, for that whom God worships is more worthy than God. But then we ask, but who does that being who God worships worship, etc. etc. It becomes clear real soon that there is no God to worhship who is truly deserving, as no being worthy of real worship will owe worship to another. In the end you have no God. Further, if you say that once you progress to Godhood you no longer owe worship (say that Elohim no longer worships his former God who exalted him), then one must wonder, if a god can become unworthy of worship, was it ever truely worthy of worship. Part of what it means to be worthy of worship is that you are the maximally great being, and as such, are the only thing that is to be worhsiped and adored. This makes no sense on an LDS view.
2. you have another logical problem. if Jesus and Elohim are both God's, which one is omnipotent. If you maintain that they are both God, then one is not the maximally great being. further, if there are other God's who have progressed to Godship, which one of those is maximally great? If being omnipotent is one of the characteristics of being God (which Biblically and LDS scripture maintains), then LDS has no God. Far from being polytheists, they come out more like Atheists, with no omnipotent being (God) possible. You see Jase, two beings cannot share omnipotence as defined in the Bible or Mormon Scripture. Holding to multiple Gods and omnipotence involves a logical contradiction. The only way out is to affirm that no God exists (at least as defined in LDS and Christian scriptures, in which case you cannot be LDS or Christian, but you could be some other form of spirtuallity perhaps), or deny that more than one God exists (and become a Christian).
let me put this another way to expose the real problem. The real problem has to do with the law of non-contradiction. In the case of omnipotence, a being X is God if X has maximal power (among
other attributes). The God described in Mormon Scripture has maximal power. He is
described as almighty throughout Mormon literature and contemporary
and past LDS theologians affirm the omnipotence of God, which means (at least) that God has maximal power. Even if that power is qualified (limited by creaturely freedom,
for instance) it is still maximal (greater than the same power possessed by other beings).
At this point we must ask the critical question: Can two beings be maximally powerful? No. It violates the law of non-contradiction to hold that
two beings can share maximal power. A being cannot be both the maximally great being and not the maximally great being at the same time and in the same sence.
3. I am curious why you directly contradict scripture when you say I dont know if I will be with my heavely father after I die. I quoted you 1 John 5:11-13 which lays it out quite nicely. I even checked the JST version just to make sure the text was not corrupt ;). It tells me that If I have the son, then I have eternal life. In case you are not sure, Eternal life according to LDS doctrine, is the fulness of salvation- dwelling with the Father in the Celestial Kingdom. You say I cant know if I will be with our Heavenly Father, yet Scripture tells me I can know that, and tells me what I must do to know it...I must believe in Christ.
4. What do you make of 2 Cor. 5:21. It must not make much sense to a person who thinks that there deeds can somhow gain them admittance to God's holy presence. No one can ever merit that. it is only by faith in what Christ has done (taken our sin and given us his own perfect righteousness) that we we stand before God. Col. 1:21 lays it out nicely too. Because of Christ, we are holy. the minuet a person think they are holy or righteous by thier own hand, that is the minuet they stopped believeing the gospel.
5. If you happen to agree with plain scripture (which I doubt you will) and agree that your righeousness before God comes from Christ, I have a question. Why would you not know if you will dwell in his presence. If you are endowed with Christ's own righteousness, how much more righteous can you get? What else would have to be done to top him and his holiness that would make you worthy. I hope you see the beauty of Christ,and what he has done for you. You steal his glory when you say his grace is not enough to gain the fulness of what God has to offer.
ok, lets talk about some of these issues.
The standard Evangelical view of God:
The Evangelical creedal God is a non-human species (aka an alien).
The creedal God creates subjects by fiat to rule over meaning he forces people into this world with no choice of thier own. Without choosing to come into this life individuals under such an alien God have no real free will.
The creedal God is a fascist who willingly and by his own power personally throws those who do not accept him into an eternal firey furnace. By any estimate billions upon billions of people (women and children included) who were created against their will are burning right now and will burn for billions upon billions of years into the future.
Since God sustains all life by his power he must also willfully sustain the lives of those partaking in the horrific suffering described above.
So we have:
fiat creations
forced labor
subjects to rule over
no real free will
eternal executions
The above items are all descriptions of what we rightly deem to be the ultimate in evil. Not even Hitler or Stalin come close to being personally responsible for that magnitude and scale of pain and suffering.
Your worldview has millions escaping the fires of Hitler by death (a welcome relief) only to be thrown into a far worse fate by "God" with no escape.
So when you address this god do you kneel in prayer or perform some kind of sieg heil?
wow. on so many levels, wow.
Not only did you completely side step my last set of comments, you also demonstraited a complete miss-understanding of evangelical theology. I dont know what you are attacking.
you logic does not even make sense. listen to your argument.
God creates humans
therefore humans have no free will.
talk about a non-sequitur. I recomend a good book by an LDS gentleman called, "The other Christians." I would read that to bone up on non-LDS theology before you discuss and misrepresent evangelical theology.
Hmm. If I misrepresented Evangelical thought let's clarify:
The Evangelical creedal God is of a non-human species.
Yes or No
Next question:
In Evangelical thought are humans created by fiat at God's will with no choice in the matter?
Yes or No
We're keeping this simple so that I fully understand Evangelical worldview when it comes to God.
Next question:
Evangelical doctrine teaches that all humans that do not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior will be cast into Hell for eternity.
True or False
Again, no need for a thesis, keep it simple.
In Evangelical thought God sustains all life and since man does not exist on a self-existent principle God therefore sustains the lives of all humans suffering in Hell.
True or False
Loren said:
[you also demonstraited[sic] a complete miss-understanding[sic] of evangelical theology]
Please show me where I misalign Evangelical theology. I'll make this easier by grouping the questions. Please just answer yes, no, true or false.
***
The Evangelical creedal God is of a non-human species.
Yes or No
In Evangelical thought are humans created by fiat at God's will with no choice in the matter?
Yes or No
Evangelical doctrine teaches that all humans that do not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior will be cast into Hell for eternity.
True or False
In Evangelical thought God sustains all life and since man does not exist on a self-existent principle God therefore sustains the lives of all humans suffering in Hell.
True or False
***
You make quite a claim that I misrepresent Evangelical thought - please take a few minutes to back up your statement.
Sieg Heil
well Jase, in all your questioning you conveinently failed to ask about the main problem in your thinking that drastically misrepresents the God of evangelical theology. It happens to be the problem I raised in my last post that you must have again disregarded.
My last post highlighted that the conclusion that humans don't have free will was the main problem with your theology. All of those things you say about hell seem horrific if humans don't have free will. However, if we have genuine free will, then God is not a merceless tourturer, but is to be praised for his just punishment of sin.
ps. did you see my Oct. 9th post? if so, were you going to talk about any of the issues I raised?
My post was not to debate free will/predestination etc but rather to describe the nature of the creedal God. Nothing more. Numerous creedal Christians believe strongly in predestination and therefore a significant limit on free will but for sake of argument we can remove the free will references.
So based on your response if we take out the free will issue from my original post you absolutely agree that the creedal God is 100% justified and should be praised for his fascist behavior in his maniacal drive to capture the human soul and subject it to absolute obedience to his authority. Just because someone doesn't accept/confess Jesus Christ (which takes about two minutes or less) they should burn in Hell for billions and billions of years never to get relief. The evil inherent in such a being cannot even be calculated and you like the Hitler youth before you drop the leaflets and push the Sieg Heil Jesus propaganda in the name of your own selfish salvation derived from a book you know nothing about.
Now, the free will issue is removed from my original post - do you still want to claim that I misrepresent the alien fascist evangelical creedal God?
well, Jase, now your problem makes even less sense to me.
You seem to be angry at God for promising to uphold Justice.
If you have a problem with justice, you will have to search your heart and have some alone time with God. You can call God a fascist for having an absolute holy character that forms the objective standard by which we are all judged if you like, I prefer the term Soverign. Only those people who's character is holy as God is holy will ever be able to dwell with him for eternity, "for God is too holy to even look at sin." That is, of course, anthropomophic language to describe God's absolute distain for, and refusal to tolerate any sin to have eternal fellowship with him. He is the standard of righteousness that we are all judged by, and if found lacking, we recieve our just penalty of eternal seperation from our Heavenly Father.
Red Herring. I think you are reading into the text and diverting attention from the original issue - I don't have a problem with justice. I was simply describing the evangelical creedal God to see if you agreed with the description.
Not only do you agree but you seem to embrace the dominant ideology of holy totalitarian rule. Good people of the world have recognized Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the very embodiment of evil and now we need to rightly add Evangelical Heaven to the list.
But maybe there's hope, it seems you are backing away from the traditional evangelical view of "burning for billions and billions of years" to something more sensible, as you said: "eternal seperation[sic] from our Heavenly Father" - are you letting go of the fascist God that personally throws his subjects into the fiery furnace?
Poland's Anne Frank
Rutka Laskier (1929–1943) was a Jewish teenager from Poland who is best known for her 1943 diary chronicling four months of her life during the Holocaust.
Born: 1929
Died: 1943 (aged 14)
Diary entry Feb. 5, 1943
" The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter. Next month there should already be a ghetto, a real one, surrounded by walls. In the summer it will be unbearable. To sit in a gray locked cage, without being able to see fields and flowers. Last year I used to go to the fields; I always had many flowers, and it reminded me that one day it would be possible to go to Malachowska Street without taking the risk of being deported...
...But now I need to think about the near future, which is the ghetto. Then it will be impossible to see anyone, neither Micka, who lives in Kamionka C, nor Janek, who lives in D, and not Nica, who lives in D. And then what will happen?
Oh, good Lord. Well, Rutka, you've probably gone completely crazy. You are calling upon God as if He exists. The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with butts of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death ... It sounds like a fairy tale. Those who haven't seen this would never believe it. But it's not a legend; it's the truth. Or the time when they beat an old man until he became unconscious, because he didn't cross the street properly. This is already absurd; it's nothing, as long as there won't be Auschwitz ... and a green card ... The end ... When will it come? ... "
Please note: " He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with butts of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death "
Sadly Rutka died in a gas chamber with her mother and brother in August 1943 at the Auschwitz concentration camp at age 14.
The moment Rutka died she was met by God and upon the despot tyrant realizing this young girl did not say a 2 minute prayer or acknowledge Christ while on earth he's going to show her what real hell is. The Nazi evil was child's play. So God takes Rutka by the hand and personally leads her to a very hot lake of fire concentration camp and explains that Hitler throwing people "alive into furnaces" is an excellent way to punish unbelievers like her. She protests that she lived a good life, gave her time substance and money to the poor and needy etc etc and that the Nazis were the true evil but god will hear none of it.
Poor Rutka had no idea the alien thug god is a thousand times more evil than the Nazis that destroyed her family and life.
R.I.P.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutka_Laskier :
Rutka Laskier 14 year old girl passes from Hitler's Heinrich Himmler to the creedal God or rather: from evil to maximum evil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler :
As overseer of concentration camps & extermination camps Himmler coordinated the killing of millions of Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups.
Shortly before he died at the end of the war legend has it that Heinrich Himmler repented of his evil and in one of the most sincere episodes that this mortal coil can embark upon he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. Himmler said of that moment:
" I didn't just say a sinners prayer.. I prayed much longer than that... ...I realized that I was incapable of saving myself so I allowed Him to step into my new belief and He changed me from the inside out. I was sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise to be His eternally and I have an assurance that I am completely known by Jesus and that I am His forever. "
Heinrich Himmler the very embodiment of evil in the 20th century who's crimes knew no bounds including the casting into fire men, women and children still alive, one who's deeds out do even Lucifer himself now enjoys eternal felicity with the alien evangelical creedal God in heaven. It is said when God is busy Himmler takes over at the gates of eternal torture personally escorting young girls and boys to an eternal horror that untold billions partake of. One of the most glorious things man can contemplate is God and Heinrich Himmler together forever two fascist peas in a pod of paradise.
Loren says:
"[God] ..is to be praised for his just punishment of [Rutka's] sin."
well Jase you have managed to call God a lot of names. but, once again, you have not offered anything of substance because you fail to understand Biblical Christian theology. I will use a decent amount of scripture in this post because I want to show you that what I say is rooted in scripture and not my own thinking. If you think anything is out of context, I would gladly discuss that with you. My challenge to you is that you read each and every scripture used.
Let me respond in three ways.
1. You seem to have a problem with God, and with his justice. If God sees it fit to punish sin, he is justified. No pot has the right to complain to the potter about the way he was made, or what the potter is going to do with it. God would be perfectly justified in condemning every man, woman, and child who did not measure up to His glory. If you have a problem with that, allow me to offer you some scriptures, Job 40:1-14 (especially vs. 8), and Romans 3:5-8- funny that the scripture actully deals with the argument you raise and calls it a human argument. In case you did not read the Job passage, those don't go over too good with God.
2. you still have not told me why a God who punishes sin is evil. All I can figure, you are upset that the scriptures tell us that left to our own devices, none of us could ever measure up. You, and your prophets will never have enough righteousness to be accepted by God. (see Romans 1:16-17, Romans 10:1-4, Romans 3:21-24, Galatians 3:21-24, Ephesians 2:1-10). Your Himler senario seems outrageous to you because you think that we can have confidence in our flesh (our ability to be righteous before him). The Bible is clear that none of us can ever be good enough. you and Himler and mysellf all are guilty before God and have no hope for salvation. But, while we were dead in our transgressions, Christ offered us a righteousness that comes by faith. Read Philippians 3:1-11 several times to get the point. You are stumbling over the offense of the Cross. The cross is offensive to you because you cant believe that a person who puts faith in Christ just before they die can have so great a salvation. But that is the beauty of the Gospel, there is nobody who is too far from God. It is despicable to you, but to Himler, it was the greatest news he could ever hear. How could God have grace and love even for him. I tell you the truth, Colossians 1:21-22 and 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 are just as true for Himler as they are for you and I.
3. with that said, not let me dismantle your mistaken idea of evangelical creedalism. You say, "that the creedal God is 100% justified and should be praised for his fascist behavior in his maniacal drive to capture the human soul and subject it to absolute obedience to his authority. Just because someone doesn't accept/confess Jesus Christ (which takes about two minutes or less) they should burn in Hell for billions and billions of years never to get relief."
A. fascist- in what sense is God fascist. He is not running a country. I dont think any form of human government will suffice to describe God. if we want to talk about evangelical theology, we will have to abandon pejorative terms that refer to right-wing nationalistic authoritarian regimes. God is omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. If fascist can carry those two connotations, then I am for it, but I don't think it does.
B. Maniacal drive to capture human soul- God does not act in an out of control, wild, or violent. You dont know the eveangelical God. That term does not apply. If you think it does- spell it out for me specifically.
C. "subject it to absolute obedience to his authority"- you say you dont have a problem with justice. The only way justice is possible is if there is an objective standard we all have a duty to uphold. This means we are all accountable to God. Now, what Evangelical Christianity has to say is that the Christian is free to live as God intended, but is realistic about the prospect of ever living a life without sin (unlike the LDS church which mandates a perfect life to live with heavenly father- as we have seen above, this is to rely on the flesh, and not the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ).
D. "Just because someone doesn't accept/confess Jesus Christ (which takes about two minutes or less) they should burn in Hell for billions and billions of years never to get relief."- Here you show your complete misunderstanding of christian theology by confusing the remedy for sin with what condemns humans. The Bible is clear that we have all sinned, and thus stand condemned before God because of our evil behavior. No one is sent to Hell for not believing in Jesus, people are sent to hell where they are separated from God for eternity (quite a bit longer than billions and billions of years) because of immoral behavior (sin). That is the problem, Jesus is the solution to the problem.
E. "accept/confess Jesus Christ (which takes about two minutes or less)" - I understand that this is offensive to a person who thinks they can establish a righteousness before God based on their own life-work. However, even a cursory read of the new testament will shake that belief from anybody. Eternal life does not come from our works, but by faith in Christ and the righteousness he gives. This is the offense of the cross- it offends the self-righteous. I suggest you read the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16).
Hopefully I have helped you in your understanding of a few things regarding Biblical Christianity. Now lets look at your conclusion, "The evil inherent in such a being cannot even be calculated."
God creates humans and desires to have a relationship with them. Humans, rather than use their free will to obey God and worship him, devise ways to live life independent of God (against his will and moral law), and are thus guilty of law breaking. God is thusly justified to condemn every such person to any punishment he sees fit. God, who is rich in mercy, sends his son to take the curse of the lawbreaking on himself, and lives a perfect life. Those who trust in his sacrifice receive his righteousness, and he takes their sin (see 2 Cor. 5:21 and Galatians 3:13 and Ephesians 2:1-10 specifically). Those who possess this righteousness by faith are written in God's book of life, and they will have eternal fellowship with Heavenly Father, all those who don't put faith in the Son of God will stand before God based on their own merits, and will be justly condemned.
That is a much more accurate assessment of the Biblical Gospel. If you think this makes God evil somehow, let me know.
ps. when did you want to talk about you not having a God (see above posts). My only thought is that you have thrown out some serious red herrings to avoid the question, or to buy some time to figure out how you can come out of this and still call yourself a theist.
I, Jason, Destroyer of Creeds, gave you the most absurd preposterous nonsensical lunatic mad scenario humanly possible: Innocent innocent 14 year old Rutka Laskier vs. ultimate in evil wicked sin Heinrich Himmler and in the name of salvation without effort you are still willing to genuflect to the alien and actually agree that Himmler is in Heaven while Rutka burns in physical fire for eternity.
What if Rutka were your daughter? Would you still bow to the alien god? Knowing he sustains the torture of your own child just a few floors down from where you kneel?
" Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! " Isaiah
I will show you one principle of truth that you will memorize: God does not throw anyone into Hell Loren - they put themselves there.
- JDoC
Jase,
you dont have a problem with me, or with a creed, you have a proble with the cross of Christ. You have a problem with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (just for the record, on your estimation, had Rutka ever disobeyed God. if so, she is a law breaker and has earned emnity between her and God and is need of Christ as much as you or I)
we obviously have a different gospel than you, and Paul warns Christians what to do when people have a different Gospel (Galations 1:8). Do you want to explain your understanding of the gospel?
ps, because my comments are grounded in biblical theology, and the gospel I defend is the pure gospel of the New Testament, your quote from Isaiah refers to you hating the gospel of grace. You call the greatest news this world will ever see evil. Woe to you.
So I expose the evangelical god for what it is, I unmask the evil behind it, I shine light on the fascist infiltration and while it is thus exposed for all to see, a massive gaping wound, you fully embrace defend and excuse it. Not only do you embrace the theology of cruelty you reserve your condemnation only for the one that opposes it. Again, all in the name of protecting salvation without effort.
Communist ideology promotes a supreme ruler that must be obeyed or the subject will suffer punishment by extreme torture and/or death - the fear of pure evil. Evangelical theology promotes a supreme being that must be acknowledged/accepted or the subject will suffer punishment by extreme torture for eternity - the ne plus ultra of fear and evil.
Communist ideology offers subsistence without sacrifice. Evangelical theology offers salvation without effort. The parallels are striking and the concepts of personal absolution appealing since the author of both communist ideology and key principles of evangelical theology are one and the same. The cosmic fingerprints have been lifted from your core doctrine and they do not belong to God's hand. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?
Btw, I am innocent of the charges you make against me. I do not have a problem with justice nor do I hate the gospel of grace - the truth (as is usually the case with your claims) is exactly the opposite.
- JDoC
well Jase, beyond telling me you you dont have a problem with biblical justice and grace, explain to me, biblically, where I am wrong.
The core differnece between our religions (as I understand it) is how we come to exist eternally with our heavely father. You stand on a set of humanly developed ordinances and rest on your own righteousness before God.
I, however, glory in the cross of Christ. I understand the desire to have a check list to go down, and a way to measure your progress to the celestial kingdom, the problem is that is just another strategy to live independent of God, and his Biblicaly revealed path to salvation.
[...beyond telling me you you dont have a problem with biblical justice and grace, explain to me, biblically, where I am wrong...]
Well, I did. This is key, see the bold italic text:
" Communist ideology offers subsistence without sacrifice. Evangelical theology offers salvation without effort. The parallels are striking and the concepts of personal absolution appealing since the author of both communist ideology and key principles of evangelical theology are one and the same. The cosmic fingerprints have been lifted from your core doctrine and they do not belong to God's hand. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? "
I'm telling you exactly what is wrong with evangelical theology. If the fingerprints do not belong to God's hand we only have one other choice - so you need to see the link between communist ideology and evangelical theology and come to some conclusions - for example, why are the two so similar??
I also mentioned the communist ideology of a supreme ruler controlling subjects via fear punishment and death and the dead-on parallel with evangelical thought. You seem to have no problem with that analysis. Is that correct?
- JDoC
Jase, you have a hard time responding to my questions. I know you think the "cosmic fingerprints" dont match, but you need to tell me what evidence you have for that. I spelled out a case for grace using scripture, you are free to show me if I took those verses out of context, or show me where I erred in my analysis. Unfortunately, you dont do that, instead you just tell me I am wrong, and communist. That is not how to dialoge, or have a conversation about this.
2nd- the evangelical gospel is not a gospel of fear. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It is the only religion that can tell you (based on clear biblical teaching) that your salvation has nothing to do with what you have done, but everything to do with what Christ has done. We do good works and obey, not out of fear of punishment, but out of freedom and love. We know our righteousness is not based on our works, for they would never measure up. we serve, obey, and love others because of the kindness and mercy of God. It does require lots of sacrifice from believers, but we simply realize taht our salvation is not based on those works.
third- evangelical theology is not substance without theology. I know you made that claim, tell me why you think that is true (Biblically again if you can)
Further Jase. Can you know that you have eternal life. Your church teaches you that you cant know that, but that is against clear biblical teaching. John 3:36, and 1 John 5:11-13 (and others) teach that we can know that we have eternal fellowship with the Father. How can we possibly know this you ask. It is because of God's grace. The sacrifice has been made, the perfect life lived, and by grace, all who know Jesus and rest in him and his righteousness know that they are holy and blameless before the Heavenly Father (Colossians 1:13, 21-22).
LDS members of course, dont think you can know that because your church teaches you to be self-righteous before God. You need to measure up. Well, you need to wake up, your righteousness will never measure up. If you dont rely on Christ's sacrifice, you stand condemned already because of your evil deeds (John 3:16-18).
I dont know why you keep throwing communism at me. If anything you should realize that the Christian church has rested on these doctrines for two thousand years. any political system you think looks like some aspect or another or Chrisitanity will be a perversion of it.
Why should I stop "throwing communism" at you when you agreed that Rutka was thrown into Hell by an alien dictator-like god and is right now burning in flames while the same alien god has Himmler in Heaven?
Remember you not only agreed to that description but you praised the alien thug for His grand "punishment of sin" committed by 14 year old Rutka.
You talk about a gospel of grace but the reality underneath is that the evangelical god is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It all sounds nice up front but as we dig deeper into evangelical theology we uncover some serious things that we are obliged to call pure evil and your praise of it makes you an accomplice.
So as long as your god looks like a communist dictator, walks like one and talks like one we're going to rightly call him one regardless of the spin of grace you want to put on it.
If you are willing to deny the man-made creedal concept that God is an alien non-human species and embrace the truth that He is actually the literal Father of all spirits then the rest of the erroneous thinking can start to fall away and I will drop the communist tag.
- JDoC
Turn up your speakers everybody this is dedicated to Rutka Laskier the evil 14 year old from Loren the good-soul Christian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMSMViyCVNI
Don't laugh there just may be disco in Hell.
Is anybody else dancing? This is good stuff. From Loren to Rutka!
Lyrics:
Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn!
Burnin'!
To mass fires, yes! One hundred stories high
People gettin' loose y'all gettin' down on the roof - Do you hear?
(the folks are flaming)Folks were screamin' - out of control
It was so entertainin' - when the boogie started to explode
I heard somebody say
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burnin'!
Satisfaction (uhu hu hu) came in the chain reaction
(burnin') I couldn't get enough, (till I had to self-destroy)so I had to
self destruct, (uhu hu hu)
The heat was on (burnin'), rising to the top, huh!
Everybody's goin' strong (uhu hu hu)
And that is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down, yoh!
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burnin'!
Up above my head I hear music in the air - I hear music!
That makes me know there's (somebody)a promise somewhere
Satisfaction came in a chain reaction - Do you hear?
I couldn't get enough, so I had to self destruct,
The heat was on, rising to the top
Everybody's goin' strong
That is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno! (Aah yeah!)
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno, yeah!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down!
Well what do we have here.. another dedication from Loren. This one goes out to Heinrich Himmler the just-in-time compiler kicking back in Heaven with a Snorg hoodie and a glass of lemonade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIcqUokPiTw
Great. Now I have Looks Like We Made It stuck in my head.
Sheesh. I'm going back to Disco Inferno. Thinking of you Rutka.
"From a botanical point of view," writes Dr. [Wilford M.] Hess, a botanist, "Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon is one of the most interesting chapters in all scripture" …. The events described in the allegory [of the olive tree] are botanically accurate ….
"The Book of Mormon: Jacob through Words of Mormon, To Learn with Joy," reviewed by Scott Woolley, 1991 FARMS Review of Books (volume 3, issue 1)
***
… [T]he composer of the allegory of the olive tree [in Jacob 5] must have been well acquainted with ancient olive culture and its significance – someone like Zenos rather than a New World farm boy.
"The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5," reviewed by Terry B. Ball, 1996 FARMS Review of Books (volume 8, issue 1)
***
… [S]heum is a perfectly good Akkadian cereal name, dating to the third millennium BC …. Just how did the author of the Book of Mormon happen to come up with a term like sheum … and just happen to use it in an agricultural context? Was this simply a coincidence? … We think … that reference to sheum in an 1830 Book of Mormon [Mosiah 9:9], thirty-seven years before Akkadian could be deciphered, poses a … "problem" for those who choose to view that text as nineteenth-century fiction.
"Ein Heldenleben? On Thomas Stuart Ferguson as an Elias for Cultural Mormons," review by Daniel C. Peterson and Matthew Roper, 2004 FARMS Review (volume 16, issue 1)
***
… Isaiah 10:29 … reads in part … as follows: "Ramah is afraid …." Second Nephi 20:29 replaces "Ramah" with "Ramath." [One scholar] observes that Ramath "would be the more ancient form of the name, with the old feminine -ath suffix which, in later (usually even biblical) Hebrew disappeared …," being replaced by the later feminine ending -ah. … [T]he Book of Mormon’s change from Ramah to Ramath is truly remarkable.
"Isaiah Interwoven," review by Kevin L. Barney, 2003 FARMS Review (volume 15, issue 1)
***
… [W]e now know something that Joseph Smith could not have known in the 1820s, namely, that ancient Jews did on occasion write their sacred texts in a way that seems to match the Book of Mormon’s description of "reformed Egyptian" [Mormon 9:32].
"Mormonism," reviewed by Daniel C. Peterson, 1996 FARMS Review of Books (volume 8, issue 1)
***
… [E]xamples of Jews keeping records in Egyptian and even writing Hebrew texts in Egyptian characters [Mormon 9:32] and vice versa are known from archaeological excavations at Arad and Ein Qudeirah. … In addition, it has long been acknowledged by scholars that Hebrew texts of the ninth through the sixth centuries B.C. employed Egyptian numeric symbols intermingled with Hebrew text. There are numerous other examples …. In view of the mounting evidence, it is surprising that [anti-Mormons] continue to maintain that Israelite prophets could not have used the Egyptian writing system for their records. This is, in fact, one area in which discoveries made in the last several decades show that Joseph Smith was right on target long before he could have been right unless he really was a prophet.
"Joseph Smith’s Use of the Apocrypha: Shadow or Reality?," reviewed by John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, 1996 FARMS Review of Books (volume 8, issue 2)
***
… [A] longstanding pattern in anti-Mormon literature [has been to] reject[] even the barest possibility that the Book of Mormon could be what it claims, because those claims involve the seemingly ridiculous notion of ancient writing on metal (and gold at that!) [Joseph Smith – History 1:34]. The prospect of writing on metal plates was so foreign to [nineteenth-century] culture that a flippant, dismissive wave of the hand was felt to be all that was needed to reject the Book of Mormon as having any basis in reality. … [D]espite [such] ignorance, we now know of thousands of documents from antiquity that were written on metal. … [One scholar] "shows perhaps fifty things about ancient records that must have been hilarious in 1830 but make perfect sense today" ….
"A Seemingly Strange Story Illuminated," review by Kevin L. Barney, 2001 FARMS Review of Books (volume 13, issue 1)
The items from my previous post and the ones below are only scratching the surface. There are hundreds more.
One thing that comes to mind if you read/study them with an open mind and it is this: the career of the anti-Mormon has a very short shelf-life. It will soon be over.
… [T]wo finely carved incense altars … were discovered by a German archaeological team in ancient Marib, near [Mount] Nihm in Yemen. One of these altars has been dated to the seventh or sixth century B.C., making it roughly contemporaneous with the presence of Lehi and his group. This altar contains an inscription indicating that it was dedicated by a certain man … of the tribe of Nihm. The now firmly attested presence of the Semitic root *NHM [1 Nephi 16:34] in the right place and at the right time is dramatic new evidence for the Book of Mormon account. …
"A More Responsible Critique," review by Kevin L. Barney, 2003 FARMS Review (volume 15, issue 1)
***
The significance of the details in the Book of Mormon regarding Bountiful [1 Nephi 17:5] cannot be overstated:
By describing in such precise detail a fertile Arabian coastal location, as well as the route to get there from Jerusalem (complete with directions and even a place-name en route), Joseph Smith put his prophetic credibility very much on the line. Could this young, untraveled farmer in rural New York somehow have known about a fertile site on the coast of Arabia? Could a map or some writing other than the Nephite record have been a source for him? The answer is a clear no. … Locating such a precisely defined place anywhere in the world would be a remarkable thing, but to find a site (and only one) exactly matching the criteria in that most unlikely and barren of all regions – Arabia – must appeal to the honest in heart as compelling evidence that Nephi’s account is based on reality.
"Bountiful Found," review by L. Ara Norwood, 1995 FARMS Review of Books (volume 7, issue 1)
***
After giving a presentation on architectural proportions pervasive in the ancient world, a Jewish scholar marveled that the monetary system set forth in Alma 11:5–19 was informed by identical mathematical principles. Though he was unwilling to grant that the entire Book of Mormon was ancient, he was convinced that those verses were "unthinkable" when the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. Recent scholarship suggests that the Nephite monetary system has Egyptian, Babylonian, and Israelite analogues. One wonders when Joseph Smith worked out the arithmetic of Alma 11:5–19 or what unlikely source informed him. One finds nothing remotely like it in the culture of the early American republic.
"Trustworthy History," review by Stephen C. Harper, 2003 FARMS Review (volume 15, issue 2)
***
… [A] recently discovered Egyptian lion couch scene like that of Facsimile Number 1 of the book of Abraham … explicitly mentions the name of Abraham. Anti-Mormon critics have been quick to point out the absurdity of associating Abraham with this pagan Egyptian scene, and yet now we have clear proof that this association is an ancient one. Again, these things have only been recently discovered, and Joseph Smith could not have known about them nor had access to them.
Another thing that anti-Mormon critics have scoffed at is the supposedly gibberish names used in the book of Abraham. The place name "Olishem" mentioned in Abraham 1:10 is a good example of this. And yet this name has now been found on a newly discovered inscription dating approximately to the time of Abraham.
"The Book of Abraham: Divinely Inspired Scripture," review by Michael D. Rhodes, 1992 FARMS Review of Books (volume 4, issue 1)
***
… [T]he fact that the Book of Mormon claims that writing was known among pre-Columbian inhabitants of the New World [see, e.g., Mosiah 1] is in itself significant. This assertion would have been counterintuitive to Joseph Smith’s experience, since most Indian tribes in the early nineteenth century were either nonliterate or had only recently adopted some form of European writing. Since Joseph Smith’s day it has been demonstrated that literacy was widespread among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples, dating back to at least 1000 B.C.
"Archaeology and the Book of Mormon," reviewed by William J. Hamblin, 1993 FARMS Review of Books (volume 5, issue 1)
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… [I]n 1883, David Whitmer recalled that
When we (the Witnesses) were first told to publish our statement, we felt sure the people would not believe it, for the Book [of Mormon] told of a people who were refined and dwelt in large cities; but the Lord told us that He would make it known to the people, and people should discover the ruins of lost cities and abundant evidence of the truth of what is written in the Book.
"Editor’s Introduction: Traditions of the Fathers," by Daniel C. Peterson, 1997 FARMS Review of Books (volume 9, issue 1)
Jase, I am at least glad to see you have a sense of humor.
I just want to say three things before we get distracted by some of your other "arguments." These are three problems I have argued for with you that you have not addressed. I would like to at least have you resove them for me before I move on.
1. consept of God- the first thing we I want to hear back from you on is the logical inconsitencies in your understanding of God. You can refer my post a while back for details. I am not sure if you have even read it as you have never given any responce.
2. Gospel- I have layed out the gospel as the NT presents it. The main problem you have with the gospel is the same problem every other religion has with the gospel. You seem to think that only the good people should have fellowship with God, and the bad ones are out. The gospel says, only the humble people have fellowship with God, and the prideful dont. do you see the difference. You obviously have a problem with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which does not suprise me, because every religion has a probelm with, and is offended by the cross. The thing you need to account for is why is the LDS gospel so much different, and should I follow a gospel different than the ones the Apostles preached.
3. Based on the righteous work of Christ, all those who believe in him have eternal life. Your church, however, does not teach that you can know if you have eternal life. Should't blatent contradictions with the Bible (even the JST) concern you?
Jase, as I was reading the Bible this morning I was compelled to ask you, what, do you think, is needed to add to the work of the cross to have eternal life?
[..what, do you think, is needed to add to the work of the cross to have eternal life?]
It is a lie of Satan that you will obtain salvation without effort. That you will obtain simply by acknowledging the supreme leader:
Acknowledge me or burn.
Acknowledge me or suffer eternal torture.
Acknowledge me or die.
Believe in me, acknowledge me and you will have to do nothing - you will not need to take part in your own salvation the supreme leader will do it all. If you do not acknowledge me you will suffer eternal punishment by fire.
etc etc
That idea is fascism in any form it has ever been presented including evangelical Christianity. The evangelical perversion of the cross propagates the lie of personal responsibility being absolved by a simple nod of the head in the direction of the fuhrer.
The truth is the opposite: Christ worked out the atonement in order to draw free men to live a certain way, to DO certain things to take an active role in their own salvation by looking to Christ as the supreme example of how to be and live. He doesn't absolve the individual of personal effort but rather says YOU can DO all things through me by following me - but you must take an active role you must be a part of your own salvation and exercise your free will to follow and walk in the way of the Lord.
So what should you do? You will take up your cross and follow Jesus.
In this way all of God's children will obtain some degree of salvation, there is no burning in fire for eternity as your fascist perversion dictates.
You are so depraved that you glory in the burning and eternal torture of 14 year old Rutka Laskier. Your theology has been infiltrated by the master mind of evil and you don't even recognize it for what it is.
You are as blind as the holy rollers I grew up with in the deep South rolling around on the floor praising the man on horseback, the tyrant for saving you just because you acknowledge Him as supreme ruler with your eyes glazed over.
What a waste of time. Indeed this bears repeating a thousand times:
" Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! "
… Margaret Barker, a Methodist minister who has written extensively on both the Old and New Testaments[, …] recently presented a paper at the Worlds of Joseph Smith conference, 6 May 2005, held at the Library of Congress. She discussed the image of the tree of life in 1 Nephi:
The tree of life made one happy, according to the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 3:18), but for detailed descriptions of the tree we have to rely on the noncanonical texts. Enoch described it as perfumed, with fruits like grapes (1 Enoch32:5), and a text discovered in Egypt in 1945 described the tree as beautiful, fiery, and with fruit like white grapes. I do not know of any other source that describes the fruit as white grapes. Imagine my surprise when I read the account of Lehi’s vision of the tree whose white fruit made one happy, and the interpretation that the Virgin in Nazareth was the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh (1 Nephi 11:14–23). This is the Heavenly Mother, represented by the tree of life, and then Mary and her Son on earth. This revelation to Joseph Smith was the ancient Wisdom symbolism, intact, and almost certainly as it was known in 600 bce.
"Behind the Mask, Behind the Curtain: Uncovering the Illusion," review by Brant Gardner, 2005 FARMS Review (volume 17, issue 2)
… John speaks of a river of pure water representing the waters of life (Revelation [7:17 and] 22:1). Lehi’s dream, however, has two fountains. The fountain of living waters, whose source is at or near the tree (1 Nephi 11:25), and the "river" or "fountain" of filthy water, whose worldly source is at the opposite end of the path and the iron rod (1 Nephi 8:20; 12:16; 15:26-29). John speaks only of one river, … while the Book of Mormon mentions two. As Wilfred Griggs showed years ago, this concept of two rivers, one good and one bad, being near the tree of life is found in the religious literature of the ancient Mediterranean world and dates to the time of Lehi.
"Joseph Smith’s Use of the Apocrypha: Shadow or Reality?," reviewed by John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, 1996 FARMS Review of Books (volume 8, issue 2)
The battles in the Book of Mormon were battles of movement. … They had to move to survive. … [T]he Nephites wore little or no leg armor. The Book of Mormon describes head-plates and breastplates, arm shields and bucklers, but no leg armor. In fact, in one battle, the Nephite soldiers were wounded almost solely on their – exposed – legs (Alma 49:24). The Nephite battles were battles of movement, and leg armor would restrict movement. Nephite armor was perfectly suited to Nephite warfare.
"Warfare in the Book of Mormon," reviewed by Kurt Weiland, 1991 FARMS Review of Books (volume 3, issue 1)
Details that Joseph Smith simply could not have anticipated or known.
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The Book of Mormon describes a political situation that fits Mesoamerica but is not universal to other areas of the world (though it is not completely unknown). Mesoamerican cities had their own governments, but they were typically grouped into spheres of influence. In particular, we have descriptions of kings ruling over kings among the Lamanites [see, e.g., Alma 20]. This is precisely the relationship of Mesoamerican cities as the king-forms were developing. The various fissions and fusions of the Book of Mormon hegemonies accurately reflect the nature of Mesoamerican politics.
"Truth and Method: Reflections on Dan Vogel’s Approach to the Book of Mormon," review by Kevin Christensen, 2004 FARMS Review (volume 16, issue 1)
Astounding details unknown by Joseph Smith or anyone alive in 1829.
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The rapid increase in militarism noted at the end of the Book of Mormon [see, e.g., Mormon 1:8] parallels the known historical rise in militarism in all of Mesoamerica at the same time period.
"Truth and Method: Reflections on Dan Vogel’s Approach to the Book of Mormon," review by Kevin Christensen, 2004 FARMS Review (volume 16, issue 1)
Thus far, we have looked at three of your evidences and seen that in each case, while appearing alluring to the LDS fervent, the evidence comes up lacking any real substance. You have posted several more arguments, and I would be happy to examine your claims, but it seems reasonable that you would answer some of my claims. You have not gotten to the bottom of several issues I have posted numerous times: the changes in the D & C, and the logical problem with the existence of your god, and the differences with the gospel (LDS and protestant)
in response to my questions about the gospel, you have not really responded at all. You have personally attacked the God the argument represents, but you have not attacked the gospel I have presented with scripture.
Here is a question to ponder: lets say for the sake of argument that I am right, and the gospel as I have presented it is true. What right would you or I have to mock God for his plan of salvation? I think the wise thing to do is discuss the scriptures and see how Christ's atonement works. You fall into the fundamental error of assuming the gospel of grace is a gospel without effort. That is not the case at all. The Christian gospel says that Christ lived the life i should have lived, and died the death I should have died.
Christians rely completely on Jesus for eternal life. If relying fully on Christ's righteousness means for you that a Christian will not live a life that denies self and carries their cross, then the only reason you have for living a life of sacrifice is to earn your eternal life. This means you have never really loved God, you have never done anything for Him, only for yourself. You would be the older brother of Luke 12. If you only do good works to attain eternal life, then you never loved the father, you only wanted his inheritance. Christians rely on Jesus for eternal life, and are freed to love him. If you think that you would not do good works if Christ's grace was sufficient for salvation, then you never really loved Him to begin with. If, when you have lost all fear of punishment, you also have lost incentive to live an obedient life, then what was your motivation in the first place...certainly not the love of Christ. (Tim Keller does an amazing job explaining the gospel in these terms in his book, The Prodigal God).
[while appearing alluring to the LDS fervent, the evidence comes up lacking any real substance.]
You have offered your wishful thinking and the only thing lacking any real substance has been your responses. I tell you x based on hard multi-year on-the-ground research and you "respond" to it based on 15 minutes of Internet surfing. You've built a house of cards on a sandy foundation right over a fault line.
The cumulative evidence is devastating to your side. Absolutely devastating. I assume you are aware that if 23 year old Joseph Smith made it all up there wouldn't even be one parallel matching up exactly where it should be and yet we have hundreds.
How long has it been now and you still have not produced a single source for Joseph Smith's in-depth detailed vast unprecedented Arabian knowledge?
Where's the source material you said you would show us?
Whoever wrote First Nephi was on-the-ground in Saudi Arabia - that is not up for debate. Your goal was to find someone that took on the extremely difficult task of a multi-year exploratory expedition to Arabia and came back with amazing accurate details that only Joseph Smith had access to.
The fact that you were so excited about Niebuhr only to be let down hard shows you are groping in the dark, grasping at straws and sinking in quick sand all at the same time.
Do you have the source material?
[..Here is a question to ponder: lets say for the sake of argument that I am right, and the gospel as I have presented it is true. What right would you or I have to mock God for his plan of salvation?]
The problem is that you do not present a plan of salvation. You present a plan of damnation. Your god has been exposed as the Führer in the sky, your gospel is shown to be a plan of damnation pain and suffering if you don't bow to the great one, your afterlife is unmasked as a "heavenly" communist state, you glory in the eternal torture of 14 year old girls, you celebrate pure evil in the form of Himmler in heaven without repentance as long as he simply acknowledges the supreme leader, you have perverted the meaning of the atonement by absolving yourself of personal responsibility, you preach salvation without effort, you call evil good just because your supreme leader is doing the evil, you promote an alien non-human species as your god, fiat creation and conception without consent. In short the cosmic fingerprints have been lifted from your theology and matched to the same hands responsible for the world's foremost evil deeds.
What kind of gospel is that?? It's the blind leading the blind. I can't even for the 'sake of argument' allow that you are right.
You claim: [..You have personally attacked the God the argument represents...]
Wrong. I have only described the evangelical god. The actual attack on the false god started on April 6th 1820 and continued from there. "This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." The evangelical god runs screaming from the room at such a statement.
And again Moses said: I will not cease to call upon God, I have other things to inquire of him: for his glory has been upon me, wherefore I can judge between him and thee. Depart hence, Satan.
And now, when Moses had said these words, Satan cried with a loud voice, and ranted upon the earth, and commanded, saying: I am the Only Begotten, worship me.
And it came to pass that Moses began to fear exceedingly; and as he began to fear, he saw the bitterness of hell. Nevertheless, calling upon God, he received strength, and he commanded, saying: Depart from me, Satan, for this one God only will I worship, which is the God of glory.
I hope you can judge as Moses did.
Roger R. Keller, a former Presbyterian minister converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is currently a professor in the BYU Department of Church History and Doctrine. Impressed by previous wordprint studies of the Book of Mormon, he determined to expand those statistical studies...
For example, Keller notes that Mormon and his son Moroni are the only authors who use "directional designations with respect to various land regions," using such terms as land north(ward), land south(ward), and the like. He further notes that this father-son team share "unique language in referring to the lands of which they speak" …. If, in fact, Mormon is not drawing these terms from the records he is abridging, this is significant indeed. It emphasizes that, for these two military leaders who saw action over a widespread area of Nephite lands and who had to plan their strategy in accordance with the topography of the land, geography was an important issue. Keller writes, "Mormon shows almost no interest in the theological implications of land. As indicated earlier, he is the geographer par excellence. Even his few references in the ‘special use’ category are, for the most part, geographic in nature."
"Not Your Everyday Wordprint Study: Variations on a Theme," review by John A. Tvedtnes, 1997 FARMS Review of Books (volume 9, issue 2)
… [M]any Book of Mormon names that were once ridiculed and dismissed as shallow, modern creations are now attested in authentic Hebrew inscriptions, most of which predate 587 B.C., a time and context in which they could have been known to Lehi’s family. … Joseph Smith … could [not] have known that these names would, long after his death, be attested and dated to an appropriate time period consistent with the claims of the Book of Mormon. … At least fifteen nonbiblical Book of Mormon names are now attested in ancient Hebrew inscriptions, fourteen of which date to before 587 B.C. None of these were known or published in Joseph Smith’s day. Many of these are in a hypocoristic form that was criticized as too modern [e.g., Sam instead of Samuel, as at 1 Nephi 2:5] when the Book of Mormon appeared but can now be shown to be acceptable since it was known in ancient Israel from preexilic times. Additionally, non-Hebrew names such as Paanchi and Pahoran (both Egyptian) are also attested. Then there are as yet unattested Book of Mormon names with valid Hebrew etymologies (e.g., Jershon, discussed earlier). Here are some examples:
* Zarahemla, "seed of compassion," designates the city founded by a descendant of the only surviving son of the Jewish king Zedekiah, who was led to the promised land by the hand of the Lord.
* Current editions of the Book of Mormon render a Nephite monetary unit as shiblum (Alma 11:16). A study of the printer’s manuscript shows that this was actually shilum, which in Hebrew means "payment" or "reward" and is entirely appropriate for the content of Alma 11’s description of the wages of the judges.
"One Small Step," review by John A. Tvedtnes and Matthew Roper, 2003 FARMS Review (volume 15, issue 1)
A better use of the study of chiasmus [an ancient form of Hebrew poetry] in ancient texts should be to demonstrate completeness rather than inspiration. The book of Revelation, for example, is structured in chiastic form to help insure that the text is not added to, or taken away from (Revelation 22:18-19). Texts structured in chiastic form will betray any tampering from an outside source. Once chiasmus is understood, scriptural texts can be analyzed along chiastic lines [e.g., Alma 36 in its entirety]. If the chiasm is incomplete or largely unbalanced, then it would indicate that "plain and precious parts" were removed from the author’s original message.
In the ten chiasm[s] that are common to the Isaiah Chapters in the [Book of Mormon] and [King James Version of the Bible, "KJV"], there are found no embellishments or enhancements in the Bible version. However, textual deletions from the KJ[V] … have seriously degraded the chiastic structure of four of the chiasms and entirely eliminated a fifth chiasmus. … If Joseph Smith had been an imposter and had copied the Isaiah chapters from the Bible, it is inconceivable that he could have made additions to the text that would have filled in the missing elements in five of the ten chiasm[s] that are common to the two texts. …
"The Legacy of the Brass Plates of Laban: A Comparison of Biblical and Book of Mormon Isaiah Texts," reviewed by Garold N. Davis, 1995 FARMS Review of Books (volume 7, issue 1)
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