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Now here is someone who is intellectually honest. I am a Mormon myself and believe that we stand or fall on the veracity of that book. All the criticism, ignorance of history, rabid hatred and misunderstanding of Joseph Smith, unwillingness to even consider that it could be true all have no significance if the book is true. 99.99 percent of the people frothing at the mouth in this forum have never cracked the cover. I personally have only met one man in my life who has honestly read the book and has not been convinced of its truth. Apart from 11 eyewitnesses, there have been amazing discoveries about the book over the last several decades such as word print analysis proving at least 27 distinct writers, as well as the discovery of ancient Hebrew writing style known as 'chiasmus' replete throughout the book. Chiasmus as a literary structure was unknown in Joseph's time. See this page for more scholarly research and a challenge to all the naysayers. http://www.jefflindsay.com/BOMchallenge.shtml Still, 'a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still', so just read the book, then decide yourself. As for Mitt, I served for years as a Mormon bishop just as he did. Believe me, he has spent many hours without financial compensation helping the poor and needy, repairing marriages, working with and supporting troubled youth. He knows and understands poverty. He is a great man, a great problem solver and will reach across the aisle to create pragmatic compromises to get the job done for us and for our economy.

And, why should they care to learn 1 x value = value? The problem with the way we teach maths is we teach it mechanically just like that instead of in a practical context in which that knowledge is utilized. Optimal learning occurs when people are engaged in a task. Mechanical, rote learning and the division of subjects in our education are no longer acceptable or effective in a fully integrated world.

In this particular context, it came up when I was attempting to teach fractions. Hard to teach if the kids don't know that 2x1 = 2, so I had to go back and cover some basic properties of multiplication and addition.

And while a practical context is useful, the fact is, that kids can't effectively utilise knowledge in real contexts until they've learnt the skills first. http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml

Simply, it's more effective to teach students "mechanically", and then quickly get them to real contexts. I used to be very uncomfortable about this approach, but then I had a couple of experiences a few years back.

At the start of this year, my grade 8 students were complaining about the "application" of mathematics (Practical, real world skills such as estimation, fractions, decimals, etc.).
But then I was forced by my school to teach a new algebra approach that focused on the abstract skills FIRST, and then the real applications last. I thought the students were going to be up in arms, because this was a pretty abstract topic to begin with. To my complete surprise, after one week, even the most voracious complainers were saying "This is fun! I can do this! This is easy!"
Since then, I've come to the conclusion that when a student complains about the real world application of a particular topic, usually what they're really complaining about is the how hard they find it. Rather than trying to make things more realistic, I dig down and help them learn the basic skills. Doing this, I now have an extra week at the end of each topic to cover realistic applications at a much higher and harder level than I've ever been able to do and the kids are happier and prouder of their achievements than ever.

And, how many operations per second were the computers in their school capable of?

Not that long ago, humanity was almost exclusively agrarian. Someone could learn everything that they needed to be successful in their world without even going to school.

The world changes. If education doesn't to keep pace with the nature of the world people live in, the direction of our results will continue downward.

I'd agree with you about there being less to learn, if it wasn't a simply observable fact that most people knew more basic maths in my grandfather and father's generation than they do today. Even my wife, who hated school mathematics and was only able to scrape through, has a much higher mathematical ability than 1/2 of my year 10 students.

I read about "Directed Teaching" (also called "Directed Instruction") in the book "Supercrunchers" by Ian Ayers and have done a little research since. Here is a good article: http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml . I went to Catholic schools (over 50 years ago) and the experience of directed teaching read as similar to how I was instructed by all those nuns. In the last year, every single time I've brought up the subject to a public school teacher I've been met with anger, fear, and VERY strong resistance. They hate my argument that, "If teachers were really concerned about being the best, they would adopt what works." (Forgive the rhetorical fallacy in that statement. Reason is usually not a prominent feature of these conversations by that point.)

I'm not a teacher, but over the last 40-some years I've never had a 4th-grader (or older) that I couldn't teach to do Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division and Square Roots in their head in less than two months. There is no excuse for people graduating from school without those skills. (I teach them the Trachtenberg System of Basic Mathematics. Teachers hate that because they don't know what the student is doing, but they know it works better than what they are teaching.)

Another interesting read is "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ . This book disturbs me for its lack of citations and the fact that it reads as if it were constructed on the same blueprint as a Dan Brown novel, but if you are concerned about the "school-as-prison" mentality, it is a good place to start. One of his other books, "Dumbing us Down" is very thought-provoking. He claims it takes about 200 hours to teach English Reading and Writing. If that's so, how can people spend 12 years in school and graduate without the ability to read and write?

As an interesting side note: The new head of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) is removing the barbed wire around his schools so they don't look so much like prisons. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6886238.html

BTW, Jeff Lindsay's argumentation

http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMProb2.shtml

is wrong. The Book of Mormon doesn't talk about these animals, plants, and technologies as being rare oddities. It talks about major domesticated species and major technologies, plus societies that were using them as part of their regular activities. This is not analogous to the huns' or Vikings' horses or to Middle Easter lions.

Also, you can't have it both ways: either, the terms in the Book of Mormon have specific meanings or they do not. You can't pick a specific meaning when you want to make an argument for something (cement) and a non-specific meaning when the book is erroneous (horses, pigs, steel, iron, etc.)

My view is just the existing, mainstream archaeological view: the Americas got settled via the Bering bridge somewhere 13000-40000 years ago.

You seem to be under the impression that the Book of Mormon contradicts that idea.

Except for Viking contacts, they developed independently until Columbus landed.

Sure, that's the current archeological understanding; but there's no reason to pretend it's impossible for a small group of newcomers to have absorbed themselves into the larger group of existing natives.

Basically, you're merely saying "the evidence may not contradict it, but it doesn't support it."

It's a monumentally magic leap of logic to go from that to your earlier statement that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be. (Yes, those were your words. Want me to link you to a specific post?)

All you ever do is point to Mormon apologetic web sites.

... did you even look at them? Of course not - if you had, you'd see that every single site I've linked to has provided sources for its statements.

And I do read the sites you point to, and all I can say is: you don't convince me.

You obviously didn't read the site regarding Hebrew in Uto-Aztecan; you thought the site had just four examples as the entirety of its proof!

Had you actually read the site, you'd have seen:

a) A summary of Stubbs' findings, with links to his full research
b) A full description of the methodology used
c) A comment of "here are four examples"
d) A cited, non-LDS scholar's comments on Stubbs work as being thorough and well-done
e) A five-part video presentation on the subject - a video that refers to a FEW HUNDRED such pieces of evidence conforming to the rigorous process outlined in part a, all of which I'm sure can be found in the full research linked to in part a.

You clearly didn't read any of that except the four examples (part c), because if you had, you would not have tried to pretend that the four examples were the entirety of the evidence.

No, I have faulted you for not coming up with specific dates and times.

Yet again you're proving you didn't read any of the sources I linked. Yes, jefflindsay.com is the site of an LDS apologist. That does not make his information irrelevant, and it's arrogant in the extreme of you to imply that is the case.

Guess what? The sources I link have consistently provided specific academic or historical sources for all of their statements.

You want to know when cement was supposed to have been used? You could have read the article on cement in the Book of Mormon that I've linked you to four or five times now, and you would have found reference to ancient American cement being used in "the middle of the first century B.C." right near at the beginning of the section linked.

And if you had ever read the Book of Mormon, you'd see right in the footnote at the bottom of the page where it talks about the people becoming experts in cement use because they didn't have enough trees:

"46 B.C."

Gee. It sure seems to me that "the middle of the first century B.C." matches up pretty well with "46 B.C."

And just to make sure you're convinced:

One of the most notable uses of cement is in the temple complex at Teotihuacan, north of present-day Mexico City. According to David S. Hyman, the structural use of cement appears suddenly in the archaeological record. And yet its earliest sample "is a fully developed product." The cement floor slabs at this site "were remarkably high in structural quality." Although exposed to the elements for nearly two thousand years, they still "exceed many present-day building code requirements." This is consis

They exist, they just don't relate in any way to the Middle East.

Nobody said they did.

Yes, bogus claims.

"I didn't even bother with basic fact-checking" (which is what you did, or rather didn't, do) is never followed by "therefore their claims are bogus".

You can't just say "OMG BIAS THEREFORE FALSE". No degree of bias automagically invalidates the evidence, especially when the methodology and data are clear and public, as is the case with Stubbs' research, and especially when non-biased parties concur with the conclusion, as is also the case with Stubbs' research.

Do you have evidence that Stubbs' research methodology was wrong, or are you just going to fall back on "because I said so" again?

I'm saying there is not a shred of DNA evidence for the presence of Jews. You simply come up with all sorts of reasons why we haven't seen it.

Suppose I travel deep into China, marry a chinese farmer, have a few kids, and then die. A thousand years pass by, and you take random DNA samples of Chinese people in the area.

Your argument is like complaining that, a thousand years later, you can't find my DNA among the Chinese people, and that therefore I must not have gone there at all.

Regardless of whether or not I actually did go there, the conclusion is absurd - the best you can say is that there's no DNA corroborating the idea that I lived China, you cannot extend that to rule out the idea.

You are extending your DNA complaint well beyond the scope of the question DNA can answer, and as such your argument is baseless.

Show me peer-reviewed, non-religiously affiliated studies and journals, together with multiple independent fact checking.

The same site I linked you to quotes a non-LDS scholar approving of Stubbs' work.

But it's not like your opinion that it's "junk science" even matters - you didn't even read it.

You simply haven't even been able to come up with a single plausible timeline and scenario that would explain what we see today.

You're pretending I've tried to "come up with" a timeline during this discussion.

In fact, the only claim I've made has been to say "the Book of Mormon's claims about specific events and technologies have thus far been entirely corroborated by archeological evidence."

The fact that you think a plausible scenario can't exist merely means that you haven't bothered to even research whether such a timeline is possible - that is, you have apparently not read the book you claim is false.

So, let me ask you directly - have you ever read the Book of Mormon in its entirety?

If not, you have no reasonable basis for claiming it "cannot" be what it claims to be, because you don't even know what it says.

If you have, then could you kindly provide an example of some claim it makes that is contradicted by archeological evidence?

As I have indicated, you're clearly unwilling to bother reading the linguistic research I have cited, and as such your complaints on that matter are irrelevant.

Oh, and if you want me to provide a timeline for things, you're going to need to be more specific. Do you just want me to corroborate particular archeological or other discoveries and their dates with their counterparts in the Book of Mormon?

Or do you want me to provide a detailed timeline of the Book of Mormon and point out every single detail that's corroborated by archeological or other empirical evidence? This I am not willing to do myself - it would literally be a lifetime of work.

Instead, I would link you to others who have done much of the work already. If you refuse to research those on your own, you wo

They exist, they just don't relate in any way to the Middle East.

Nobody said they did.

Yes, bogus claims.

"I didn't even bother with basic fact-checking" (which is what you did, or rather didn't, do) is never followed by "therefore their claims are bogus".

You can't just say "OMG BIAS THEREFORE FALSE". No degree of bias automagically invalidates the evidence, especially when the methodology and data are clear and public, as is the case with Stubbs' research, and especially when non-biased parties concur with the conclusion, as is also the case with Stubbs' research.

Do you have evidence that Stubbs' research methodology was wrong, or are you just going to fall back on "because I said so" again?

I'm saying there is not a shred of DNA evidence for the presence of Jews. You simply come up with all sorts of reasons why we haven't seen it.

Suppose I travel deep into China, marry a chinese farmer, have a few kids, and then die. A thousand years pass by, and you take random DNA samples of Chinese people in the area.

Your argument is like complaining that, a thousand years later, you can't find my DNA among the Chinese people, and that therefore I must not have gone there at all.

Regardless of whether or not I actually did go there, the conclusion is absurd - the best you can say is that there's no DNA corroborating the idea that I lived China, you cannot extend that to rule out the idea.

You are extending your DNA complaint well beyond the scope of the question DNA can answer, and as such your argument is baseless.

Show me peer-reviewed, non-religiously affiliated studies and journals, together with multiple independent fact checking.

The same site I linked you to quotes a non-LDS scholar approving of Stubbs' work.

But it's not like your opinion that it's "junk science" even matters - you didn't even read it.

You simply haven't even been able to come up with a single plausible timeline and scenario that would explain what we see today.

You're pretending I've tried to "come up with" a timeline during this discussion.

In fact, the only claim I've made has been to say "the Book of Mormon's claims about specific events and technologies have thus far been entirely corroborated by archeological evidence."

The fact that you think a plausible scenario can't exist merely means that you haven't bothered to even research whether such a timeline is possible - that is, you have apparently not read the book you claim is false.

So, let me ask you directly - have you ever read the Book of Mormon in its entirety?

If not, you have no reasonable basis for claiming it "cannot" be what it claims to be, because you don't even know what it says.

If you have, then could you kindly provide an example of some claim it makes that is contradicted by archeological evidence?

As I have indicated, you're clearly unwilling to bother reading the linguistic research I have cited, and as such your complaints on that matter are irrelevant.

Oh, and if you want me to provide a timeline for things, you're going to need to be more specific. Do you just want me to corroborate particular archeological or other discoveries and their dates with their counterparts in the Book of Mormon?

Or do you want me to provide a detailed timeline of the Book of Mormon and point out every single detail that's corroborated by archeological or other empirical evidence? This I am not willing to do myself - it would literally be a lifetime of work.

Instead, I would link you to others who have done much of the work already. If you refuse to research those on your own, you wo

You have to come up with an explanation for this discrepancy: why are there no monuments, no writing, no DNA, and no linguistic traces?

No monuments? You've got to be kidding me. You're pretending the vast swaths of native American ruins don't exist?

No writing? I already gave you one example, correlating with the Anthon transcript - Mexican seals dating no later than 400BC which use characters found on the Anthon transcript.

No linguistic traces? I've already linked you to ample information on the subject.

Your DNA complaint is based on the premise that the Book of Mormon claims all native Americans are direct descendants of a group of Jews from Jerusalem. That is not the case.

As is discussed the above-linked article regarding languages, the evidence suggests that the group of Jews arrived in the Americas and merged into a much larger group of natives. As such, the Jewish DNA contribution to the group as a whole would be negligible. A lengthy treatment of the subject can be found here.

Your original claim was:

purely based on linguistic and historical criteria, it is clear that the Book of Mormon cannot have come into existence the way the Mormon church claims.

You have utterly failed to demonstrate that this is the case.

In fact, you apparently refuse to provide any evidence whatsoever - you merely refer to a vague complaint about linguistics (which I have thoroughly debunked) and DNA (regarding which again I have given you more than sufficient information to study before you renew your complaints).

Smith was skilled at language and traveled widely: both obtaining a few samples of badly translated Hebrew and then imitating them would have been easy for him, in particular given his and his family's fascination with religious matters.

He was an uneducated farmboy, and he wasn't a skilled linguist until a decade after the Book of Mormon was published.

I suggest you read this. It's a (satirical) description of what Joseph Smith's life must have been like, had he been plagiarizing, inventing, and accurately predicting future discoveries as people like you claim he was. Even if you don't agree with the premise, it's an entertaining read.

You see, people like you want me to believe that Joseph Smith was:

a) uneducated (as he had no access to formal education)
b) highly educated (being a skilled linguist and an accurate-to-the-point-of-clairvoyance historian), despite not having access to such education until later in his life
c) extremely lucky regarding dozens of then-insane guesses about ancient American history which later turned out to be remarkably accurate both in content and timeframe
d) possessed of a photographic memory such that the hastily-written, fictional Book of Mormon would be found to contain no internal inconsistencies after almost two hundred years of examination.
e) capable of writing six to seven pages per day, almost every day for almost three months.

Those last two are what baffle me about your claims. Today's best writers of fiction - who don't try to masquerade their work as fact - cannot rid their books of internal inconsistently entirely, and they have years to write their books and professional editors and consistency-checkers to comb the text for problems.

(You might claim that he spent far longer writing, but the burden of proof would be on you, since no known historical evidence to date - neither within the LDS Church nor outside of it - supports that hypothesis. Here's an examination of the timeframe involved.)

And you want me to believe he did all that, without ever later modifying anything he wrote, so perfectly that almost two hundred years later nobody still has been able to find any internal inconsistencies in the book.

In other words, in an effort to convince me Joseph Smith was a fraud, you're trying to convince me Joseph was the smartest writer who has ever lived.

The most likely explanation is that Smith picked up some phrases and constructs while traveling and then liberally used them to produce something that sounded like a translation from some ancient language.

Where, exactly, do you posit he traveled that enabled him to "pick up some [Hebraic] phrases and constructs" - including the chaismus, which was not recognized as a Hebraic literary construct until recently - with a good enough understanding to use them properly?

At the same time, the Mormon church is exaggerating the complexity and significance of these constructs.

I should note the Church itself has no comment on language constructs or anything else; these are independent studies performed by both members and non-members of the LDS Church.

Furthermore, Hebraic constructs by themselves are insufficient evidence of anything one way or the other, but when taken together with all the other evidence I've brought up, it makes for an inexplicably long series of coincidences.

There's nothing "unparalleled" about them. Every major religion makes claims like this about its holy books.

No fictional book, certainly not one written by an uneducated American farmboy, has ever fabricated from whole cloth so many details about an ancient people in a relatively unknown part of the world that decades later turned out to be entirely accurate, as has turned out to be true for the Book of Mormon.

This isn't just some wild claim about the Book of Mormon - it's demonstrably true.

For example, the Book of Mormon mentions the use of cement in ancient America. This was considered by people like you to be an absurd and obvious mistake for over a century - until archeologists discovered the widespread use of cement in ancient America during the same time period described by the Book of Mormon.

The Mayans were, for many years, considered to be a strongly peaceful people, and the descriptions of lots of wars in the Book of Mormon seemed to contradict that perception of the Mayan people. It wasn't until several decades after the Book of Mormon being published that archeologists discovered that the Mayans were in fact a very warlike people - again coinciding with the time periods described by the Book of Mormon.

Yet you would have me believe that Joseph Smith magically made dozens of accurate guesses about ancient American history despite his lack of education, and despite the fact that then-current scientific understanding of those areas was contradictory to his writings.

If Joseph had fabricated his history based on then-current knowledge of the Mayans, for example, wouldn't the people of that time period in the Book of Mormon have been described as peaceful? If, as you claim, it was a fabrication, then he was committing a grievous error by deliberately contradicting known scientific opinion! How fortunate, then, that several decades later he turned out to be correct.

I could go on. I'll just link you here again, though.

What other religion's holy book has a similar record?

That's a very good question. In different words, how many agreements like that are chance coincidences and how many are starting to amount to evidence. That's a question you and your church need to answer

What? The question was to you - how many coincidences and lucky guesses do there have to be before you will begin to consider the possibility that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be?

Me and my church cannot answer that question for you, it's silly to pretend we can - I was asking for your opinion!

There's nothing "unparalleled" about them. Every major religion makes claims like this about its holy books.

No fictional book, certainly not one written by an uneducated American farmboy, has ever fabricated from whole cloth so many details about an ancient people in a relatively unknown part of the world that decades later turned out to be entirely accurate, as has turned out to be true for the Book of Mormon.

This isn't just some wild claim about the Book of Mormon - it's demonstrably true.

For example, the Book of Mormon mentions the use of cement in ancient America. This was considered by people like you to be an absurd and obvious mistake for over a century - until archeologists discovered the widespread use of cement in ancient America during the same time period described by the Book of Mormon.

The Mayans were, for many years, considered to be a strongly peaceful people, and the descriptions of lots of wars in the Book of Mormon seemed to contradict that perception of the Mayan people. It wasn't until several decades after the Book of Mormon being published that archeologists discovered that the Mayans were in fact a very warlike people - again coinciding with the time periods described by the Book of Mormon.

Yet you would have me believe that Joseph Smith magically made dozens of accurate guesses about ancient American history despite his lack of education, and despite the fact that then-current scientific understanding of those areas was contradictory to his writings.

If Joseph had fabricated his history based on then-current knowledge of the Mayans, for example, wouldn't the people of that time period in the Book of Mormon have been described as peaceful? If, as you claim, it was a fabrication, then he was committing a grievous error by deliberately contradicting known scientific opinion! How fortunate, then, that several decades later he turned out to be correct.

I could go on. I'll just link you here again, though.

What other religion's holy book has a similar record?

That's a very good question. In different words, how many agreements like that are chance coincidences and how many are starting to amount to evidence. That's a question you and your church need to answer

What? The question was to you - how many coincidences and lucky guesses do there have to be before you will begin to consider the possibility that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be?

Me and my church cannot answer that question for you, it's silly to pretend we can - I was asking for your opinion!

But for Mormonism, it's particularly simple: purely based on linguistic and historical criteria, it is clear that the Book of Mormon cannot have come into existence the way the Mormon church claims.

I assume you have examples? Because I've seen several claims of this sort, and so far they've all been rubbish.

Furthermore, there are several things described in the Book of Mormon that are quite clearly supported by history, but only discovered by scientists long after the Book of Mormon was published. If you're interested in examples, you'll find this page an interesting read.

"The Land of the Free, where the allowable length of the grass in your yard is regulated."

Don't worry, the issue will soon be solved:

http://www.jefflindsay.com/NLCN.shtml "National Lawn Care Now!"

all the best,

drew

I'm aware of how many wives Joseph Smith had - but I would point out that there is no evidence that any of those relationships were sexual in nature (other than with Emma), something given further support by the lack of children by any of these other wives. His primary purpose appears to have been building eternal ties. More information can be found here.

As JrnyFan said, there are definitely not 50,000 Mormon polygamists living anywhere. There are groups of people who claim to be Mormon, or Fundamentalist Mormon, but they are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

What I meant was ridiculous was the insinuation that Mormons still practice polygamy. You didn't say that, but it could be (and was) inferred from your comment.

If that's the case, how do you explain Young's position? He adamantly proposed what I was talking about.

Perhaps he was mistaken? No one ever said prophets were perfect. In any case, please provide references that have Brigham Young teaching what you say he taught, since you are saying he taught it.

I may have to dig some into this, but everything I can tell from the Bible is that plural marriage was NEVER endorsed by God. Allowed, yes, endorsed, no. No Biblical character ever had good consequences come about because of plural marriage.

It appears you are unfamiliar with the story of how Abraham had his son Ishmael, in which the Lord promises Hagar an exceeding multitude of posterity. If that's not endorsement, I don't know what is.

IANAE (I Am Not An Egyptologist), but hieroglyphs are pictures. Not to discount the difficulty, but I imagine when faced with concentrating on their meaning, I could probably get it. Have you ever asked, "how did he get ANY of it wrong if he was divinely inspired?"

See, you ignored what I said. In any case, you cannot prove that modern egyptologists themselves are correct (since they don't even know what all the various meanings the symbols can take on are).

Charlatan!=laziness. He was a failed treasure hunter.

But he never had a goal to get treasure. He was constantly giving away his own money to his followers. He never was wealthy by any definition of the word. I read up a bit more on this "treasure hunter" accusation:

There is some evidence that [Joseph Smith's] father was involved in treasure hunting, a common activity among poor New England farmers who hoped through the use of magic to discover buried money, and it was necessary for Joseph to extricate himself from the mistaken notions of that superstition... In November 1825, Joseph and his father worked briefly with a man named Josiah Stowell of South Bainbridge (Afton), New York, who believed a Spanish treasure was located in Harmony, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River. The project failed, and the Smiths gradually separated themselves from the money-digging activities of their neighbors

Calling him a "failed treasure hunter" hardly reflects the actual situation.

Ummm...that man could be as God is the first heresy.

Is it? Then why did early Christians contemporary with Peter and Paul believe it to be so, as Father Vajda's research showed?

• Jesus commanded his disciples to be perfect, even as God is perfect.
• Paul told the Romans that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
• Paul told the Hebrews that we will be partakers of God's holiness.
• Paul told the Ephesians that we can be filled with the fulness of God.
• Peter taught that we are promised that we may become "partakers of the divine nature".
• John said that we will be like Christ.

Eastern Orthodox writer Dr. Seth Farber ("The Reign of Augustine," The Christian Activist: A Journal of Orthodox Opinion, Vol. 13, Winter/Spring 1999, pp. 40-45,56) notes that the Orthodox church believes this as well.

This page is a good in-depth examination of this belief.

Try reading the first few chapters of Genesis - it was the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve. That man could "be like God" as it were, is no original idea and can easily be derived by mis-reading scripture (as was do

If that's the case, how do you explain Young's position? He adamantly proposed what I was talking about.

Perhaps he was mistaken? No one ever said prophets were perfect. In any case, please provide references that have Brigham Young teaching what you say he taught, since you are saying he taught it.

I may have to dig some into this, but everything I can tell from the Bible is that plural marriage was NEVER endorsed by God. Allowed, yes, endorsed, no. No Biblical character ever had good consequences come about because of plural marriage.

It appears you are unfamiliar with the story of how Abraham had his son Ishmael, in which the Lord promises Hagar an exceeding multitude of posterity. If that's not endorsement, I don't know what is.

IANAE (I Am Not An Egyptologist), but hieroglyphs are pictures. Not to discount the difficulty, but I imagine when faced with concentrating on their meaning, I could probably get it. Have you ever asked, "how did he get ANY of it wrong if he was divinely inspired?"

See, you ignored what I said. In any case, you cannot prove that modern egyptologists themselves are correct (since they don't even know what all the various meanings the symbols can take on are).

Charlatan!=laziness. He was a failed treasure hunter.

But he never had a goal to get treasure. He was constantly giving away his own money to his followers. He never was wealthy by any definition of the word. I read up a bit more on this "treasure hunter" accusation:

There is some evidence that [Joseph Smith's] father was involved in treasure hunting, a common activity among poor New England farmers who hoped through the use of magic to discover buried money, and it was necessary for Joseph to extricate himself from the mistaken notions of that superstition... In November 1825, Joseph and his father worked briefly with a man named Josiah Stowell of South Bainbridge (Afton), New York, who believed a Spanish treasure was located in Harmony, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River. The project failed, and the Smiths gradually separated themselves from the money-digging activities of their neighbors

Calling him a "failed treasure hunter" hardly reflects the actual situation.

Ummm...that man could be as God is the first heresy.

Is it? Then why did early Christians contemporary with Peter and Paul believe it to be so, as Father Vajda's research showed?

• Jesus commanded his disciples to be perfect, even as God is perfect.
• Paul told the Romans that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
• Paul told the Hebrews that we will be partakers of God's holiness.
• Paul told the Ephesians that we can be filled with the fulness of God.
• Peter taught that we are promised that we may become "partakers of the divine nature".
• John said that we will be like Christ.

Eastern Orthodox writer Dr. Seth Farber ("The Reign of Augustine," The Christian Activist: A Journal of Orthodox Opinion, Vol. 13, Winter/Spring 1999, pp. 40-45,56) notes that the Orthodox church believes this as well.

This page is a good in-depth examination of this belief.

Try reading the first few chapters of Genesis - it was the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve. That man could "be like God" as it were, is no original idea and can easily be derived by mis-reading scripture (as was do

The doctrine about African-Americans wasn't Joseph Smith, but it beared through several of the prophets, including Young. It was actively practiced.

I have already commented on this sufficiently here. On a related note, I spoke with my father who grew up in the church before 1978 (he was 18 at the time). His recollection is that the only thing the church taught about blacks was "Everyone on earth will eventually receive the priesthood. We just don't know when." There is nothing racist about that (quite the opposite).

On plural marriages, it was practiced in scripture but never endorsed by God - simply allowed.

God gave David and Solomon the privilege of having multiple wives. They abused that privilege, and it was taken away.

The LDS only recinded the practice AFTER government pressure, and there are still super-fundamentalist groups that practice it (and one wonders if they still would were it still legal).

Wilford Woodruff makes abundantly clear in Official Declaration 1 that he was prepared to let the church be smashed into oblivion if God didn't interfere. If it were simply a matter of peer pressure, the Church would have caved long before it did.

Looking at the book of Abraham from a non-mormon historical perspective, it's laughable how Smith - a charlatan and treasure hunter with no theological experience (proven historically) could even pretend to know how to translate it.

The "charlatan and treasure hunter" persona that anti-mormons are so fond of portraying is demonstrably not true. Joseph once had a short-term job (that is, he needed a job to feed his family) as a gold digger, a venture that was very unprofitable. And a charlatan? He was constantly working in one effort or another - whether that be traveling to preach, farming, planning and constructing a city (Nauvoo which, by the way, was way ahead of its time in terms of street layout, and formed the basis of the street layout of Salt Lake City), running said city, running a rapidly growing church... You get the picture. He never let other people provide for him while he sat around doing nothing. He never sat around doing nothing. Does that sound like a charlatan? I didn't think so.

NO secular translation comes close to what he proposed.

Perhaps not as a whole (from a modern secular perspective... Egyptology is a vague science at best, unlike mathematics), but how did he even get a single character right?

I quote from this site because it answers your comment better than I can (emphasis mine):

As for the Egyptian facsimiles published with the Book of Abraham (see www.lds.org for Facsimile 1, Facsimile 2, and Facsimile 3), there are fascinating "direct hits" and "near hits" that Joseph makes in his interpretation that simply were not possible for even a scholar to do in the 1830s. However, Joseph's commentary has been heavily condemned by many Egyptologists. In some cases, where Joseph Smith was obviously close to plausible interpretations of symbols based on modern knowledge, his critics amaze me by focusing on some minor point that makes Joseph technically incorrect, in their view, while avoiding the monumental question: "How did a farm boy in the 1830s even get close to interpreting a single symbol properly?" It does not surprise or disappoint me that scholars can find fault with Joseph's commentary, for there are many levels of meaning possible in Egyptian symbolism. We still don't grasp much of what Egyptian thought was all about among the multiple elite priestly groups who kept many of the records, and without that understanding, it is hard to assess the ultimate meaning intended by the author of a passage or diagram. Egyptology is not an exact science like mathema

The problem is that the aforementioned misunderstanding is held by Mormons. I spent 16 years as one, 1974-1990, and it was specifically taught to me that blacks are marked for their iniquity.

I'm sorry you were taught incorrectly; I know from experience that some members of the Church hold incorrect notions of what the Church believes, and those people are sometimes in teaching positions in the Church. This was not something taught by Joseph Smith. The Church has consistently believed in modern revelation, and Brigham Young sometimes said of what he preached "This is my interpretation of X". While I agree that the statement of a Church leader should generally be accepted as the Church's belief on a particular topic, unless it is the prophet himself stating that X is official Church doctrine, it is not official Church doctrine. What is official church doctrine will always be consistent with what is found in the scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.

I have found that this page is a good, in-depth explanation of the issue of blacks and the priesthood; I will quote two sections:

One fairly reasonable theory is that in a hierarchical church in the U.S. before the end of slavery, it would be chaos to have slaves be made priesthood leaders over their masters. To deal with the realities of life in a nation that had slavery, excluding the priesthood from slaves could make sense as a realistic non-doctrinal but possibly inspired policy. In the 1840s, a restriction on slaves would be nearly synonymous with a restriction on blacks, and whatever policy Joseph Smith might have taught (without documentation) may have been instituted as a restriction on blacks per se.
[...]
[It] may be possible that the reason the Lord waited so long to reverse the restriction on blacks (or the reason the Church waited so long to ask the Lord for new guidance on the matter) was because that much time was needed before white society was really prepared to accept blacks as priesthood holders and thus leaders in their Church. This doesn't ease the pain for the black members who felt they were second-class members for all that time. If there is any merit to this theory - and I personally suspect there is - then we whites in the Church have an even greater responsibility than previously imagined to go the extra mile to oppose racism, repudiate past racist attitudes, and truly live up to the teachings of living and past prophets who taught that salvation is offered to all, and are all alike before God.

This is as good an explanation as any I could come up with.

Note that the Book of Abraham was later hilariously falsified.

Because you brought this up, the burden is on you to prove it was "hilariously" falsified. However, because I like jumping the gun, here and here you can find information about secular evidence that the Book of Abraham is, in fact, legitimate (at least in secular terms). Rather than waste space here copying+pasting from those two pages, I will ask you to read them. There is a rather long list of secular evidence (ignored, of course, by popular anti-Mormon literature).

As for White, the conclusions of a random scholar do not interest me. Any non-LDS scholar is going to assign some economic or sociopolitical reason for the change in doctrine, guaranteed, but that does not mean they are correct.

The Sao Paolo temple was dedicated two years prior to this announcement; blacks could enter the Sao Paolo temple to perform baptisms for the dead, so the argument that they needed blacks to fill the temple is incorrect.

I wonder how McConkie knows that he is now blessed with light and kno

The problem is that the aforementioned misunderstanding is held by Mormons. I spent 16 years as one, 1974-1990, and it was specifically taught to me that blacks are marked for their iniquity.

I'm sorry you were taught incorrectly; I know from experience that some members of the Church hold incorrect notions of what the Church believes, and those people are sometimes in teaching positions in the Church. This was not something taught by Joseph Smith. The Church has consistently believed in modern revelation, and Brigham Young sometimes said of what he preached "This is my interpretation of X". While I agree that the statement of a Church leader should generally be accepted as the Church's belief on a particular topic, unless it is the prophet himself stating that X is official Church doctrine, it is not official Church doctrine. What is official church doctrine will always be consistent with what is found in the scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.

I have found that this page is a good, in-depth explanation of the issue of blacks and the priesthood; I will quote two sections:

One fairly reasonable theory is that in a hierarchical church in the U.S. before the end of slavery, it would be chaos to have slaves be made priesthood leaders over their masters. To deal with the realities of life in a nation that had slavery, excluding the priesthood from slaves could make sense as a realistic non-doctrinal but possibly inspired policy. In the 1840s, a restriction on slaves would be nearly synonymous with a restriction on blacks, and whatever policy Joseph Smith might have taught (without documentation) may have been instituted as a restriction on blacks per se.
[...]
[It] may be possible that the reason the Lord waited so long to reverse the restriction on blacks (or the reason the Church waited so long to ask the Lord for new guidance on the matter) was because that much time was needed before white society was really prepared to accept blacks as priesthood holders and thus leaders in their Church. This doesn't ease the pain for the black members who felt they were second-class members for all that time. If there is any merit to this theory - and I personally suspect there is - then we whites in the Church have an even greater responsibility than previously imagined to go the extra mile to oppose racism, repudiate past racist attitudes, and truly live up to the teachings of living and past prophets who taught that salvation is offered to all, and are all alike before God.

This is as good an explanation as any I could come up with.

Note that the Book of Abraham was later hilariously falsified.

Because you brought this up, the burden is on you to prove it was "hilariously" falsified. However, because I like jumping the gun, here and here you can find information about secular evidence that the Book of Abraham is, in fact, legitimate (at least in secular terms). Rather than waste space here copying+pasting from those two pages, I will ask you to read them. There is a rather long list of secular evidence (ignored, of course, by popular anti-Mormon literature).

As for White, the conclusions of a random scholar do not interest me. Any non-LDS scholar is going to assign some economic or sociopolitical reason for the change in doctrine, guaranteed, but that does not mean they are correct.

The Sao Paolo temple was dedicated two years prior to this announcement; blacks could enter the Sao Paolo temple to perform baptisms for the dead, so the argument that they needed blacks to fill the temple is incorrect.

I wonder how McConkie knows that he is now blessed with light and kno

The problem is that the aforementioned misunderstanding is held by Mormons. I spent 16 years as one, 1974-1990, and it was specifically taught to me that blacks are marked for their iniquity.

I'm sorry you were taught incorrectly; I know from experience that some members of the Church hold incorrect notions of what the Church believes, and those people are sometimes in teaching positions in the Church. This was not something taught by Joseph Smith. The Church has consistently believed in modern revelation, and Brigham Young sometimes said of what he preached "This is my interpretation of X". While I agree that the statement of a Church leader should generally be accepted as the Church's belief on a particular topic, unless it is the prophet himself stating that X is official Church doctrine, it is not official Church doctrine. What is official church doctrine will always be consistent with what is found in the scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price.

I have found that this page is a good, in-depth explanation of the issue of blacks and the priesthood; I will quote two sections:

One fairly reasonable theory is that in a hierarchical church in the U.S. before the end of slavery, it would be chaos to have slaves be made priesthood leaders over their masters. To deal with the realities of life in a nation that had slavery, excluding the priesthood from slaves could make sense as a realistic non-doctrinal but possibly inspired policy. In the 1840s, a restriction on slaves would be nearly synonymous with a restriction on blacks, and whatever policy Joseph Smith might have taught (without documentation) may have been instituted as a restriction on blacks per se.
[...]
[It] may be possible that the reason the Lord waited so long to reverse the restriction on blacks (or the reason the Church waited so long to ask the Lord for new guidance on the matter) was because that much time was needed before white society was really prepared to accept blacks as priesthood holders and thus leaders in their Church. This doesn't ease the pain for the black members who felt they were second-class members for all that time. If there is any merit to this theory - and I personally suspect there is - then we whites in the Church have an even greater responsibility than previously imagined to go the extra mile to oppose racism, repudiate past racist attitudes, and truly live up to the teachings of living and past prophets who taught that salvation is offered to all, and are all alike before God.

This is as good an explanation as any I could come up with.

Note that the Book of Abraham was later hilariously falsified.

Because you brought this up, the burden is on you to prove it was "hilariously" falsified. However, because I like jumping the gun, here and here you can find information about secular evidence that the Book of Abraham is, in fact, legitimate (at least in secular terms). Rather than waste space here copying+pasting from those two pages, I will ask you to read them. There is a rather long list of secular evidence (ignored, of course, by popular anti-Mormon literature).

As for White, the conclusions of a random scholar do not interest me. Any non-LDS scholar is going to assign some economic or sociopolitical reason for the change in doctrine, guaranteed, but that does not mean they are correct.

The Sao Paolo temple was dedicated two years prior to this announcement; blacks could enter the Sao Paolo temple to perform baptisms for the dead, so the argument that they needed blacks to fill the temple is incorrect.

I wonder how McConkie knows that he is now blessed with light and kno

However, that does not change the fact that they are and have for some time been involved in the process of puttin' dead folks on their register, doesn't make much sense to me but .... http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BaptDead.shtm l

For many people including myself, The Book of Mormon (a volume of holy scripture comparable and compatible with the Bible and an ancient record) answers the question "when was the Americas populated". The Americas were populated by one group who left Jerusalem circa 600 B.C, led by a man named Lehi, who branched out to become the Nephite and the Lamanite peoples. The other group, known as the Jaredites, came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel.

You can read about it yourself by going to Mormon.org and requesting a free copy of the Book of Mormon for yourself, and you can learn more about the evidences of the Book of Mormon at Jeff Lindsay's website.

The US military, for example, has developed sensitive electronics to extend the read range of passive RFID tags to large distances, as described in the article, "RFID Sensors: From Battlefield Intelligence To Consumer Protection," RFID Journal, Aug. 12, 2002, at http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/182. Such ultra-sensitive radio frequency receivers rely on filtering systems to separate the RFID signal from background noise.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Christian.sht ml#are

This will answer a lot of your questions. Also, who is to say that is the definition of a Christian. It sure was not Christ who said that.

Acts 11:26
26 And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they aassembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called bChristians first in cAntioch.

Believers in Christ were called Christians.

1. They believe this...One in purpose not one in body.
2. They believe that Christ is the literal son of God through Mary, a mortal.
3. See 2.
4. This is also part of their religion. Missionaries and the Priesthood.
5. This is right too.
6. This too!
7. Since so many people disagree here, the Book of Mormon is just another disagreement..and extension to the Bible if you will.

So far you seem to have hit on most of what they believe. You are just misinformed.

4. Free lawn service.

http://www.jefflindsay.com/NLCN.shtml

I wouldn't call it the evolution of stupidity in the users. It is, however, an overall de-evolution of users. This is by management design. Payroll is almost always the most expensive part of any business. In efforts to manage cost, businesses will invariably utilize available technology to replace *thinking* workers (skilled, intelligent people cost more) with workers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. This is natural, because idiots cost less and are more readily replaced.

Lowering labor cost is a Holy Grail of most corporate management teams. Be it outsourcing to countries like India and lovely China, or doing everything possible to dumb-down any job so the only requirement is a pulse and an ability to follow simple (elementary school level) directions. ("Hi, thank you for calling tech. support...No, sir...I'm sorry...I have to follow the script...I don't know that...I can't...did you reboot?...but I...my head would explode if I tried to answer that question...")

Don't blame users for being stupid. Blame management. I'll say again: it's by design. </rant>

At least balance it out with a inside source: LDS FAQ

In recent years, it has become difficult to have serious discussions of the facts about homosexuality. Because of the intense politics associated with homosexual issues, people are afraid to suggest that there are serious and intelligent reasons for not wishing to condone that lifestyle. This page is Jeff Lindsay's personal attempt to break the silence and offer alternatives to the politically correct deceptions of our day.

Response of a former homosexual to this page:
As a former homosexual sex addict, I found your pages, "Homosexuality: Seeing Past the Propaganda," refreshingly insightful and consistent with what so many of us who have left homosexuality -- disillusioned and disgusted with the reality of so-called 'gay life' -- have experienced.
-- Ben Newman, PeopleCanChange.com
(Received April 8, 2001)

It's time to see past the propaganda - not to evoke hate or intolerance, but to foster reason and knowledge. When it comes to homosexuality, I fully agree that "ignorance = death." Unfortunately, deadly ignorance is being pushed by our schools, by the media, and the many politically correct organs that guide modern thought. So let's start the fight against ignorance right now!

I urge all people to be genuinely kind and loving toward each other, regardless of lifestyle, appearance, orientation, religion, race, etc. Real kindness does not require that we approve and celebrate harmful behavior. We can and must love those with whom we disagree, while still holding to truths that others may not accept. We should be civil and even cautious in how and where we express our opinions.

A note on the issue of hate: I am absolutely opposed to hate. Sadly, I find myself accused of hate for stating my view that homosexuality is harmful or that it can be cured. Please, there is a difference between disagreeing and hating! Many activists choose to ignore the distinction. Debate and honest discussion have been shut down by name calling and the tactics of intimidation. That is wrong, but it's inherent to "political correctness." For example, one well educated man contacted me and accused me of hate. I asked for an explanation and asked if explaining the harms of a behavior was tantamount to hate. His response:

"Yes, it is hate to say that being gay is harmful and can be treated. Because of people like you, too many people who are gay get the message that they are dirty and that being gay is wrong. Get a life!"

If I tell a smoking friend that I think smoking is harmful and curable, it's not necessarily hate. In fact, it can be an expression of concern and even love for that person. Civil disagreement and rational debate are not sins. Of course, many people assume that their homosexual behavior is unavoidably tied to a inherent orientation that they cannot change, that even may be purely genetic. If their behavior could not be changed, then criticizing that behavior might be futile and unkind. But humans are not animals - we can change and control our behavior. People have a choice about their sexual activities, in spite of the desires and temptations they face. Solid evidence shows that some homosexual activities are harmful, and solid evidence shows that change is possible. My message is intended to be one of hope as well of warning, with absolutely no hate. It will offend nonetheless, but I would ask the offended parties to deal with this intellectually rather than turn to name-calling and angry replies.

I know wonderful people in the homosexual community - kind

Of those who oppose the Book of Mormon, you are one of the few who has read it. The vast majority simply regurgitate false information they've heard elsewhere and couldn't explain if their lives depended on it.

There is no way the Book of Mormon was written in the 19th century. There are vast evidences (one example) that it couldn't have been and wasn't. Of course, as one who has such a strong handle on Joseph Smith's motives (odd that he'd willingly die for his beliefs if he's only in it for sex, money, and power, none of which he pursued except to the degree it's healthy and we all do), you wouldn't be interested in those since you're already 100% sure it isn't authentic.

I won't reply again, since it won't do either of us any good. But to other readers of this, never base an opinion or a decision on F.U.D., regardless of the topic, regardless of the source. Either forego an opinion, or take the time to educate yourself enough to have a good opinion, regardless of what that opinion is.

My favourite example was about the American Indians fighting battles with *steel swords* ca. 1000 A.D. (yeah, right -- show me the archeological evidence).

Where, I wonder will this evidence ever turn up.

Alas, however its rather futile to use evidence in the world of such politically charged science. While no one expects an archeological proof to arise amidst this tension, the Book of Mormon is more credible after 180 years of research then when it was written. Not many books written by an uneducated 20 year old farmer in the 19th century can say that.