Unfortunately, the Eye of Sauron is a prohibited explosive device - all you need to do to set it off is have some hobbit somewhere to throw a magic ring into a volcano.
Leaving aside the Book of Mormon, there is no physical evidence for the presence of people from the Middle East in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus.
Indeed, what graphonomic evidence there is indicates exactly that: Canaanite inscriptions are found in Georgia and Tennessee as well as in Brazil; and Mediterranean coins, some Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, are found in Kentucky as well as Venezuela.
I would call coins and inscriptions "physical evidence".
And, in fact, Smith tried to have his work authenticated and failed.
By whom? By Anthon? Anthon's own comments on the matter are inconsistent.
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).
It is very unlikely that the major events described in the Book of Mormon have left no trace.
Nobody's saying they left no trace. Have you read anything I've written?
I gave one example - the Book of Mormon describes a series of wars where a very specific type of fortification was used - earthen mounds with wooden embankments on top.
Archeologists have found these very same types of fortifications, dating to the same time period.
The Book of Mormon describes a set of large-scale natural disasters during a very narrow time frame (33 AD). Archeologists have found ample evidence of those disasters.
What's this "no trace" you keep talking about?
You can't have it both ways - you're trying to say that things the Book of Mormon gets right are merely coincidence, and then you turn around and pretend those coincidences don't exist.
If you're going to continue to pretend that demonstrable empirical evidence doesn't exist, then I see no reason to continue this discussion.
Smith transferred some generic statements from the Bible to the Americas
Such as? We're talking about civilizations, not doctrines, remember.
he placed languages, animals, and technologies in the Americas that simply did not exist here.
Again, you're confusing "we haven't found evidence yet" with "evidence does not exist, period".
A hundred years ago, you would have been one of those people saying "Native Americans simply did not use cement." And yet now we know they did.
Just because you haven't found it yet doesn't mean you never will - this is especially true of archeology.
So, you have a bunch of weak coincidences and a bunch of strong blunders.
You have failed to show any evidence that they're "weak" coincidences; you haven't even described what a "weak" coincidence is compared to a "strong" coincidence. Would you be any more willing to accept a "strong" coincidence as evidence? If not, why even bring up the difference?
Furthermore, you have consistently failed to demonstrate any blunders, let alone strong ones. I'll leave that discussion to the other branches of this thread.
So the conclusion is pretty clear: you're not even bothering to research the claims you're making about the Book of Mormon.
I mean, what's the problem with killing or dying at all in your religion if it merely gets people to paradise or hell faster?
The problem with killing is, as I have repeatedly stated, with the exception of self-defense, we do not have the right to take someone else's life - only God does.
As for dying... well, I'm not afraid of death, but I'm not perfect yet, so I'd prefer to continue to live so I can continue to improve myself.
Also, my wife would be pissed at me if I died before her;)
I have no idea what "free will" means and I didn't bring it up; don't muddy the waters by dragging in another concept.
Oh, but you did bring it up, and it's very on-topic. You said:
And if they misbehave, ultimately, it is the fault of the parents for not intervening earlier.
I responded that by your logic, if I kill someone right now, it's not my fault - it's my dad's fault for not teaching me better.
In other words, you're arguing that none of my actions are my own responsibility - they are the fault of those who raised me. Of course, their actions would be the fault of those who raised them, and so on.
By your logic, nobody can make choices, because we're simply acting the way we were raised to act.
You're arguing that nobody can choose to act contrary to his or her upbringing - as a direct result, your argument that you can make moral choices is fallacious, because it's not a moral choice if you're only making it because that's how you were raised!
Free will is the ability to choose one's actions for oneself, regardless of one's upbringing or environment.
If you do not have free will, you cannot make moral choices.
So, why did he exterminate the inhabitants of Sodom, but doesn't exterminate all the other people who aren't going to repent?
There are any number of reasons it could be so. One possible reason is that culturally, at that time, an oathbreaker's life was forfeit. As such, it is possible that the entire city was forfeit by their own cultural standards.
Another is that the people of the city told the prophets: if God really thought we were so wicked, he'd destroy us, therefore we won't believe until he does it. An example of "be careful what you wish for".
The bottom line? I don't know - the reason isn't given, so it could be anything. It's silly to assume a malicious motive where no motive is given one way or the other.
Therefore, killing people who reject God is a moral act according to you.
No, I've said it's morally acceptable for God to wipe them out.
I have never said it's morally acceptable for humans to wipe each other out.
And what reason would there be for the story of Sodom to be in the Bible if not to tell everybody loud and clear that anybody who rejects the God of the Bible deserves to die?
Perhaps because the event in question occurs during an account of the life of Abraham, and it was a significant event in his life?
You do realize that the Bible does not claim to be a complete compendium of God's interactions with mankind, right?
Does that mean you think we deserve to die?
Of course not. It doesn't affect my salvation if you choose to reject the gospel; it's your choice, and it only affects you.
No, I insist that the book cannot be what it claims to be because there is lots of physical evidence suggesting that it is not authentic and little physical evidence suggesting that it is.
"little"? I've given six specific examples (each comprising two specific facts, when you include the time period) - examples that contradicted contemporary scientific opinion and later turned out to be demonstrably true.
You dismiss those examples without even addressing them.
Then you claim there's "lots of physical evidence" against the Book of Mormon without providing a single example.
Could you, perhaps, address the evidence I've brought up, and provide facts to back up your own claims?
Is that really too much to ask?
Yes. So why is it that he neither left the book, nor rubbings or tracings of it, nor any other physical evidence.
Because it was more important that the religion be established than that the archeological community have the intellectual curiosity satisfied.
I have told you before: the Book of Mormon describes animals and technologies that clearly did not exist in the Americas, and it contradicts linguistic and genetic facts.
Animals and technologies that are not known to have existed in the Americas.
That is not the same as saying that those animals and technologies "clearly did not exist" in the area.
I've already given one example of a technology that you yourself would have previously used as evidence of your claims: cement.
When the Book of Mormon was published, it described the use of cement in ancient American construction.
Had you been alive at the time, you would have said "it is known archeological fact that there was no cement use in that time period or area".
And yet you would have been wrong - it's demonstrably wrong, now.
No, "there is as yet no archeological record" is not the same as "it is archeological fact that it could not have existed".
You're making an absurd leap of logic. It's like saying "all civilizations that ever lived on earth have left traces of their existence." In reality, it is only true that all known civilizations have left traces of their existence; it is neither provable nor disprovable that other trace-less civilizations have existed.
I'm still waiting for examples of "linguistic and genetic facts" that contradict the Book of Mormon.
He wasn't "accurately predicting future discoveries".
He wasn't? What do you call it when the book posits the use of cement during a time period thought by contemporary scientists to have no knowledge of cement, and then decades later archeologists find cement construction dating to that time period?
What do you call it when the book posits population migrations during specific time periods, and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book posits the use of metal plates as a common method of preserving writing (a laughable claim by contemporary knowledge), and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book posits a river in a valley in the Arabian desert in an area thought by contemporary experts to have no such river, and later exploration locates that river just where it is supposed to be?
What do you call it when the book posits a lush green area - green enough to be described as "Bountiful" - in the desert, in an area thought by contemporary experts to have no such desert, and later exploration turns up multiple candidates for the described greenery?
What do you call it when the book makes specific claims regarding military fortifications used during a specific time period, and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book makes specific claims about a large-scale natural disaster at a specific point in history, and later archeological finds confirm it?
These are all descriptions which were supposedly fabricated from whole cloth by a man who, by your own admission, had no knowledge of ancient America.
That list (which is by no means complete) sounds suspiciously like "accurately predicting future discoveries" to me. Can you tell me how it's different?
He didn't need access to formal education. He need some practical skill and experience with using language, and he got plenty of that from his family.
And yet the Book of Mormon does not at all reflect contemporary 1820s American English. What, exactly, was your point?
(In fact, Mormons don't seem to be able to make up their mind which volcano is supposed to be responsible.)
This, folks, is what we call a "red herring". The Book of Mormon does not identify a particular volcano, it merely identifies that there was such large-scale activity at a particular time - activity which, as I just mentioned, has been confirmed by archeological records.
Smith was apparently trained at memorizing and reciting texts.
Not a single eyewitness account of the translation process supports the idea that he was reciting a memorized text. For example:
"Martin [Harris] found a stone which closely resembled the seerstone with which Joseph sometimes used when translating. Without Joseph's knowledge Martin substituted Joseph's stone with his own. When Joseph began translating, he paused for a long time and then exclaimed, 'Martin, what is the matter, all is as dark as Egypt.' Martin then confessed that he wished to 'stop the mouths of fools' who told him that the Prophet memorized sentences and merely repeated them." (Millennial Star, 44:87. This was a newspaper, not scripture, so don't get too excited.)
If you say he was merely reciting a memorized text, you're going to have to produce at least one eyewitness account that corroborates your position - because I have plenty which contradict your claim.
Smith was clearly skilled in several areas; complete dunces don't go on founding large religious organizations. But no supernatural explanation is needed to explain either the text, its content, or its authorship.
Certainly not; and yet, what motivation could he have had for such an elaborate deception? For that matter, what possible motivation could Joseph's accomplices have had for perpetuating the hoax?
The usual level at which people are willing to even start considering extraordinary claims is a 99% significance level, although considerably more evidence would be required for something as extraordinary as the claims about the Book of Mormon.
Do you realize that if Joseph had merely said "I found this book buried in a hill" and handed the gold plates to a university for translation, the book would be hailed as the greatest native American archeological find to date?
No, the truth is, your objection has no basis in the factual accuracy of the book one way or another.
Your objection rests entirely in the fact that the book claims to be divinely inspired - and no amount of empirical evidence will convince you otherwise.
You said it yourself - "considerably more" than 99% of the (empirically testable) claims made by the Book of Mormon would have to prove true before you would even start to consider that it might be what it purports to be.
You don't care how much of it turns out to be empirically proved true. You will continue to insist the book cannot be what it claims to be, merely because it claims to be inspired of God.
As you pointed out, Smith probably knew nothing about ancient American history or scientific opinion.
How do you reconcile that statement with the fact that many testable statements made in the Book of Mormon (which at the time were considered absolutely ridiculous by experts in the field) have turned out to be extremely accurate decades after the fact, while none have been proven false? How could someone who knew nothing of native American history make so many accurate statements about it?
Why do you consistently refuse to address any of these coincidences (e.g. cement, warfare, natural disasters, large population migrations, and the timeframes associated with them)?
Why is it easier for you to believe that someone unfamiliar with scientific opinion could make dozens of wild guesses, which were the opposite of contemporary scientific opinion, and then turn out to be right about all of them, than to believe the Book of Mormon is what it says it is?
Here's a question for you: what is the statistical probability that someone could make dozens of random guesses about an ancient civilization, including guesses about economic practices, warfare tactics, population migrations, technology and architectural practices, and the historic time frames for each of those things, and turn out to be right about all of them?
Put another way, what is the statistical probability than an entirely fictional civilization and its fictional history would turn out to have actually existed as described?
I'm not a professional statistician, but I'm pretty sure the odds are fairly high against it.
I hope you realize, that's exactly what you want me to believe.
So... I have a question for you.
What possible motivation could Joseph have had to instigate this hoax? For that matter, what motivation could the three witnesses have had to perpetuate it? What possible motivation could these men have had to continue perpetuating it, even after they became bitter toward Joseph?
Could it have been wealth? Not likely; the book was never sold for more than cost, and Martin Harris at least went into debt to get the book printed. Yet they maintained their position even after leaving the church, even though it caused them no end of grief. Joseph lived almost in poverty his whole life; he continually gave anything and everything he and his family didn't need to survive in order to help others.
Could it have been fame? Not likely; even before it was published, they were ridiculed. And after, when they had become separated, they could have gained far more fame by denouncing the Book of Mormon and being the person to expose Joseph's supposed fraud. Yet they did not do this - even when given the opportunity. One of the three witnesses even went to great personal expense to contradict a pamphlet claiming he had denied it, despite the fact that he had separated himself from the church.
Could it have been for power? Not likely; the witnesses were given very little responsibility, and certainly after leaving the church they would not have power anymore, so why maintain their position?
Could they have been duped by Joseph? Perhaps at first, you might think - but then why, after becoming bitter with Joseph, would they still have maintained their position that the Book of Mormon was true?
The only alternative left is that they were telling the truth. Every other possible explanation for the actions of these men defies any semblance logic.
Perhaps you can explain that to me with your precious statistical analysis.
Yet, there is no genetic, linguistic, or archaeological record of them.
Uh... you're ignoring the entire native American archeological record.
There has been a lot of study in the area of how certain native American languages are similar to Hebrew, for example, and there's obviously plenty of archeological records of them.
I've even mentioned some of those archeological records (discovered long after the Book of Mormon being published), which the Book of Mormon got exactly right, including the time frame - and yet you seem to handwave those into nonexistence.
In other words, you're pretending the obvious evidence does not exist, and then telling me my position is untenable because (so you say) there's no evidence.
For example, before the Book of Mormon was published, it was thought by experts in the field that baptism by immersion was not introduced to the native Americans until the Europeans showed up; and yet, later archeological discoveries prove that the Book of Mormon was accurate in saying they practiced it long before then.
I'm beginning to understand that no matter how much archeological proof we dig up, you're going to handwave it away as lucky coincidence.
Perhaps you could actually address the evidence I've brought up.
For example, how do you reconcile that:
a) The Book of Mormon posits the use of cement by the early ancient Americans b) Contemporary historians thought the idea was preposterous c) Decades later archeologists discover that not only did ancient Americans use cement in their construction, but that the time period matches that of the Book of Mormon's cement use.
How could Joseph Smith have accurately guessed the time period of cement use, when experts in the field didn't believe cement was used by the ancient Americans at all?
the Book of Mormon is full of animals and artifacts for which there is not a shred of evidence in the Americas prior to European arrival.
Sure; but that's what people have been saying for a century, and we're finding more of these artifacts all the time.
I've given some examples; I can give more.
What I am saying is, the more archeologists learn of ancient America, the more similar their understanding becomes to the societies described by the Book of Mormon. You want me to believe this increasing similarity is mere coincidence.
And the few bits of writing system we get from Smith are neither American nor Middle Eastern.
I'm unaware of Joseph Smith providing samples of supposedly Book of Mormon-era writing which is neither American nor Middle Eastern. Could you, perhaps, provide references for that claim?
You can teach your children, you can punish them, but killing them is wrong, no matter how much they may misbehave.
Let's examine why you believe that it is wrong for parents to kill their children:
It ends their life, and you believe there is nothing after this life.
Now, if we suppose that God exists as described by the scriptures, then we must also suppose that there is an afterlife as described by the scriptures; as such, killing people who are unwilling to repent does not erase them from existence, it merely moves them to the afterlife "early".
From God's point of view, he's helping them: he's reducing the number of sins for which they have to repent.
That's why you find it objectionable: you don't believe in an afterlife.
And if they misbehave, ultimately, it is the fault of the parents for not intervening earlier.
If I kill someone right now, it's my dad's fault for not teaching me better?
You seem to be arguing that there's no such thing as free will - an argument that makes your earlier claims (that you can make moral choices) absurd. You see, if you do not have free will - if all of your decisions are explicitly traceable to some root cause - then you aren't making a moral choice, you're merely doing what you were raised to do.
God is exterminating the inhabitants of Sodom because they follow a different religion and reject him.
Uh... no. "They rejected him" does not mean God timidly knocked on their door and said "excuse me, but it'd be nice if I could get a moment of your time" and they closed the door in his face.
Instead, if a people is said to have rejected God, then they both know his teachings and knowingly decided to ignore them.
So, you are saying that you think that genocide of non-Christins "seems pretty level-headed" to you.
No. I'm saying, if God tells a people which knows the gospel "you really need to shape up, or I'll have to destroy the city", and they decide to ignore him, well then he'd better follow through - what kind of impotent God doesn't follow through on his promises?
This is common sense. If the government makes laws, but does not enforce them, people will lose respect for the government. If a father makes rules for his children, but does not do anything about it when his children break those rules, his children will never learn to obey him. If a schoolteacher never imposes penalties on her class for disruptive behavior, the class will ignore her.
Why should it be any different for God?
There was no reason to exterminate them, he could have just let them live our their existence on earth.
There were plenty of reasons.
1) By sparing them from having to repent of a lifetime of sins, he was showing them mercy. 2) By removing them from the area, he was preventing them from harming the spiritual well-being of other peoples that would come later. 3) He was, most likely, carrying through on his word.
not only did God admit to his sin, he also encouraged millennia of violence by Jews and Christians against those who hold different religious beliefs.
Uh... what? Nowhere does the Bible ever encourage violence against non-Christians. If you think it does, please cite specific verses.
Some people have extrapolated and taken matters into their own hands, yes - but they were wrong to do so. No man has the right to arbitrarily take the life of another.
Of course. Yours truly happens to be an apostle of discordianism, though he has long forgotten his full title.
Uh... what? I read the Wikipedia article on discordianism, and I can't find any facet of the belief that even vaguely fits my religion; the fact that one of its founders is/was an ex-member of my church is irrelevant.
The real question, of course, is why I should think these people have a direct connection to an entity that I don't even believe in.
I wouldn't expect you to believe merely because someone tells you; I only brought it up to point out that your original question:
why there haven't been any not-considered-insane prophets for about 2000 years, and very likely none in the future.
Is, from the perspective of my religion, based on a faulty premise.
But still, someone claiming to speak with god today better provide some damn good evidence, or I'll call him insane and/or a con-man. Because both of these are very, very much more common than anyone who even warrants closer inspection on the god-talk claim.
I agree that con-men are far more common than prophets. Even the Bible tells us to beware of false prophets, of the wolf in sheep's clothing; the Bible tells us to examine the things a supposed prophet does to see whether he is good or bad.
For example, anyone who's ever read a biography of Joseph Smith must admit he was an extremely selfless, kind man, who devoted his life to helping others, quite apart from whether or not he was a prophet. Were he a con-man, would he not have used his position as supposed prophet to increase his personal wealth? Instead, he continually lived in near-poverty until his death.
That's just one example. I don't expect the one example to convince you of anything; I'm merely pointing out that you can judge to some degree whether someone is what they say they are by looking at their actions.
a) how is what you call "praying" different from what I call "talking to the wall" ?
You aren't praying if you don't believe you're praying. Attempting to pray to a God you are unwilling to believe exists is indistinguishable from attempting to talk to the wall.
b) how would I know any answer is from what you call "god" when there are so many more mundane well-documented sources of inner voices, visual images, etc?
I don't know that I can answer that question. I must decide what I believe based on what I have experienced; I would expect you to do the same.
the power of our brains to delude itself is fascinating.
Oh, I quite agree - but that by itself does not invalidate the premise that God might speak to us.
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!
If you have a choice between incapacitating and killing and you choose killing, you certainly violate the commandment against killing.
In the situation of self-defense I outlined above, I do not believe that to be true.
That's actually called "omniscience", and it's different from omnipotence.
Yes, I mistyped. It was very early in the morning;)
Well, that's not the explanation God gave to Abraham; he didn't say "I'm killing them because none of them are ever going to repent". But, hey, maybe he just doesn't know how to express himself.
God's exact words were:
"Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."
I read this to mean that God intended to examine whether the residents of those cities "have done altogether according to the cry of it" (meaning, the gospel). That is, whether they have repented.
"And if not, I will know."
Seems pretty clear, to me.
(I realize, after reading the succeeding verses, that I had Abraham's numbers slightly wrong, and that it was God doing the searching, not Abraham, but the point remains the same.)
In fact, Abraham specifically raises the point you raised:
23 Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? 24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? 25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? 26 And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
So here we have God saying "Well, I'm going to go see if they're willing to repent, and if they're not, I'll destroy them." Abraham says "You're not going to destroy the righteous with the wicked, are you?" God says "No, Abraham, if I find righteous people, I'll spare everyone for their sakes."... Seems pretty level-headed to me.
So, you are a moral relativist then? It's not OK for you to murder people, but it is OK for God to murder people?
If I build a house, is it not morally acceptable for you to demolish it without cause, but it is morally acceptable for me to demolish it without cause. Surely you'll agree with that?
Thus, God being the architect and owner of the human race (so to speak), God has the right to destroy it as he sees fit, though we do not.
If that's moral relativism, then yes, I'm a moral relativist. I do not believe morality is merely a set of black-and-white rules; I believe morals can change depending on the situation.
Thus it is morally acceptable to kill in the defense of oneself or one's family, but it is not morally acceptable to kill an innocent stranger.
Where else do you want me to conjure them from?
What I meant was, you're creating discrepancies in morality where none exist, in an attempt to show that discrepancies exist.
Then perhaps the presence of numerous Hebraic language structures in the original text of the Book of Mormon would be of interest to you.
You see, you would have me believe that Joseph Smith - a farmboy with a third-grade education, whose main source of reading was the King James Bible - fabricated the Book of Mormon.
How could such an uneducated farmboy include legitimate Hebraic language structures (such as the Hebraic conditional, lengthy sentences using circumstantial clauses, Hebrew figures of speech, the chiasmus, and so on) that are not found in the King James Bible and on top of that, how could he use them consistently and properly?
(The chiasmus is particularly strong evidence, as it was not known to be important in Hebrew writing until the 20th century, and yet it occurs multiple times in the Book of Mormon.)
I can provide examples of these language structures occurring numerous times in the Book of Mormon if you wish.
So this leaves me with one of three conclusions:
a) Joseph obtained perfect knowledge of Hebrew language structures through some supernatural means in order to commit his fraud b) Joseph met someone with said perfect knowledge of Hebrew language structure who taught him what to include in the book - including the chiasmus which was not yet recognized by experts in Hebrew literature - in order to make his fraud appear legitimate c) The book is what it purports to be
You tell me, which is more likely?
Option "a" is absurd, and option "b" equally so quite apart from the lack of evidence that Joseph ever knew such a person. What other option is there?
There are large volcanic eruptions in the Americas every few decades.
Not on that scale.
Furthermore, the Book of Mormon isn't even very specific about what happened.
It's not? That's an absurd claim; 3 Nephi 8 is very specific.
It should also be noted that some native american legends refer to these same disasters as well, and in the same time frame.
Baptism by immersion exists independently in many religions and cultures and Smith described it because it's part of Christianity. So, there's nothing to be explained here.
Despite answering "Neither" to my list of options, you in fact chose option 1, "made a series of guesses with unparalleled accuracy".
That's what you're claiming, isn't it? That it was just a bunch of lucky guesses?
How many guesses have to be lucky before you'll actually consider the possibility that it's true?
And the Mormon church is now trying to justify its existence (and keep the money coming)
I'm curious what you think the money is being used for, because it's not going into the pockets of church leaders.
by highlighting those parts that accidentally appear to have real-world parallels.
So here we've got a book that:
a) Has descriptions which happen to match real-world discoveries made decades after it was published b) To date has not been empirically disproved... most people would call that "evidence".
And I'm still waiting for the evidence that you must believe exists that conclusively proves the Book of Mormon is a fabrication.
The question won't go away just by ignoring it, you know. I really do want to know what empirical evidence you've seen (and in what fields) that has convinced you so thoroughly that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be.
Under Christian/Mormon theology, the penalty is eternal/infinite and you always get caught, so the expected benefit never outweighs the risk.
Don't be silly. If you allow for the possiblity that God will judge based on circumstances - as I believe he will - rather than fixed absolutes, then your whole complaint disappears.
Consider: A crazed man breaks into my home with a crowbar, screaming that he's going to beat my wife to death. Before he can, I pull out a gun and shoot him.
There is no doubt in my mind that God would consider killing the invader completely justified - I have an obligation to protect my family.
Therefore, I can, in fact, make a moral decision: I can now choose whether to shoot the invader such that he dies, or I can choose to incapacitate the invader such that he is longer a threat to my family but will recover from his wounds (presumably in prison).
Given that God will not punish me for killing the invader, the only basis left for deciding to incapacitate instead of kill is that of morality - it is morally better to incapacitate him, rather than kill him.
Belief in God does not in any way negate the ability to make moral choices.
And even if there was nobody righteous there, given that you claim that free will exists, all those people still would have had the opportunity to change their ways if God hadn't killed them first.
If one is to believe in a consistent God, one must conclude that those people had been given numerous opportunities to do so; furthermore, from a certain perspective, it's actually merciful to wipe them out.
Consider: God, being omnipotent, knows the future. He knows whether people are going to repent, how many sins they will commit before they do so, and so on.
Thus, if God knows that an entire city full of people is not going to repent, then it is more merciful to kill them now, so they can't sin anymore!
(Note that I do not believe that babies go to some sort of eternal punishment under any circumstances, and thus whether babies died is largely irrelevant.)
So, you are saying it is moral and justifiable to kill people who reject your God?
No, I'm saying it's justifiable for God to kill people who reject him.
I'm not God, I don't get to make that choice, nor would I want to.
How does that square with your claim that you tolerate and respect people with different beliefs from yours?
By not being my claim at all, obviously.
It's easy to point out discrepancies when you're conjuring them from thin air.
Are you a linguist and statistician? If not, you lack the skills to make that determination.
I'm what you'd call an enthusiastic amateur. Are you a linguist and statistician?
That's anecdotes not evidence.
Uh... No. An anecdote is "a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical".
The Book of Mormon contains a fairly detailed description of a set of volcanic eruptions occurring 1800 years before Joseph Smith's birth in an area of the world he knew nothing about.
Years after the Book of Mormon is published, archeologists discover that, lo and behold, there is plenty of physical evidence of a large set of volcanic eruptions in the same time frame as those describe in the Book of Mormon.
That's not an anecdote; it's evidence.
The Book of Mormon describes the ancient american peoples as having practiced baptism by immersion - something that, until that time, was believed to have been introduced to the americas a full 1000 years after the time period described by the Book of Mormon.
Now, you can go on tours of ancient american ruins where you can see baptismal fonts predating the European arrival.
That's not an anecdote, that's evidence, and just two examples.
These are things that Joseph Smith could not possibly have known. The foremost experts in American archeology didn't know these things in the 1820s and 1830s - how could Joseph Smith, who had just a third grade education, have known about these things long before the foremost experts in the field?
If you claim the Book of Mormon is a fabrication, then you are making one of three claims:
a) Joseph Smith made a series of guesses about historical events in unknown parts of the world with unparalleled accuracy. b) Joseph Smith somehow encountered people who, rather than sharing their knowledge with experts in the field of archeology, decided to share their knowledge with an uneducated farmboy and then not share it with experts in the field. c) Joseph Smith was from the future.
So, which is it?
I know enough about some fields to know that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be.
If you know enough to make that statement, then you must have at least one example where the Book of Mormon cannot possibly be what it claims to be. So, what's your example?
Torturing them, murdering them, and infecting them with horrible diseases is wrong, immoral, and illegal.
Sure; but when did God ever do that?
The cost of committing murder for Christians is eternal damnation, loss of paradise, etc., and since you assume God is omniscient, you cannot get away with it; if you truly believe that, you can never rationally choose to commit murder. Since murder is never rational for you, you never have to make a moral choice about it.
You're willing to admit that the law knows there are circumstances where killing another person might be admissible; why are you unwilling to admit God might see things the same way?
An omnipotent God could create a world in which we have free will and can learn from our mistakes, yet still can't do serious harm to each other.
I respectfully submit that such a world could not exist. "Omnipotent" does not mean "able to violate the laws of causality"; it merely means "able to do anything that is possible to be done".
I do not believe in a God that can violate the basic laws of the universe.
Worse yet, according to the Bible, God himself has tortured and murdered, even the innocent.
Oh, really? I'm very interested to see examples of God torturing and/or murdering innocents.
You know, I recall one very specific story where God wanted to destroy a pair of cities because they had fully and completely rejected him, and Abraham said, "Wait! Will you spare the city if I can find a hundred good people?"
God said, "Sure." Abraham searched and searched and couldn't find any.
"Wait! Will you spare the city if I can find fifty?" "Sure." "Ten?" "Sure." "One?" "Sure."
Finally, Abraham tracked down Lot and his family - who, based on what happened later, weren't really the best of people anyway - and they leave the city (which of course is promptly destroyed).
This God, who was willing to spare an entire city of wicked people for the sake of a single good person, is the same one you're saying maliciously tortured and murdered innocent people?
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.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the Eye of Sauron is a prohibited explosive device - all you need to do to set it off is have some hobbit somewhere to throw a magic ring into a volcano.
Leaving aside the Book of Mormon, there is no physical evidence for the presence of people from the Middle East in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus.
On the contrary:
Indeed, what graphonomic evidence there is indicates exactly that: Canaanite inscriptions are found in Georgia and Tennessee as well as in Brazil; and Mediterranean coins, some Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, are found in Kentucky as well as Venezuela.
I would call coins and inscriptions "physical evidence".
And, in fact, Smith tried to have his work authenticated and failed.
By whom? By Anthon? Anthon's own comments on the matter are inconsistent.
I'm unaware of other attempts. Cite or retract.
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).
It is very unlikely that the major events described in the Book of Mormon have left no trace.
Nobody's saying they left no trace. Have you read anything I've written?
I gave one example - the Book of Mormon describes a series of wars where a very specific type of fortification was used - earthen mounds with wooden embankments on top.
Archeologists have found these very same types of fortifications, dating to the same time period.
The Book of Mormon describes a set of large-scale natural disasters during a very narrow time frame (33 AD). Archeologists have found ample evidence of those disasters.
What's this "no trace" you keep talking about?
You can't have it both ways - you're trying to say that things the Book of Mormon gets right are merely coincidence, and then you turn around and pretend those coincidences don't exist.
If you're going to continue to pretend that demonstrable empirical evidence doesn't exist, then I see no reason to continue this discussion.
I'm curious what animals and technologies you're referring to that you're so sure "simply did not exist here".
In case you've missed any of my other half-dozen requests for examples, could you please provide some?
Smith transferred some generic statements from the Bible to the Americas
Such as? We're talking about civilizations, not doctrines, remember.
he placed languages, animals, and technologies in the Americas that simply did not exist here.
Again, you're confusing "we haven't found evidence yet" with "evidence does not exist, period".
A hundred years ago, you would have been one of those people saying "Native Americans simply did not use cement." And yet now we know they did.
Just because you haven't found it yet doesn't mean you never will - this is especially true of archeology.
So, you have a bunch of weak coincidences and a bunch of strong blunders.
You have failed to show any evidence that they're "weak" coincidences; you haven't even described what a "weak" coincidence is compared to a "strong" coincidence. Would you be any more willing to accept a "strong" coincidence as evidence? If not, why even bring up the difference?
Furthermore, you have consistently failed to demonstrate any blunders, let alone strong ones. I'll leave that discussion to the other branches of this thread.
So the conclusion is pretty clear: you're not even bothering to research the claims you're making about the Book of Mormon.
I mean, what's the problem with killing or dying at all in your religion if it merely gets people to paradise or hell faster?
The problem with killing is, as I have repeatedly stated, with the exception of self-defense, we do not have the right to take someone else's life - only God does.
As for dying... well, I'm not afraid of death, but I'm not perfect yet, so I'd prefer to continue to live so I can continue to improve myself.
Also, my wife would be pissed at me if I died before her ;)
I have no idea what "free will" means and I didn't bring it up; don't muddy the waters by dragging in another concept.
Oh, but you did bring it up, and it's very on-topic. You said:
And if they misbehave, ultimately, it is the fault of the parents for not intervening earlier.
I responded that by your logic, if I kill someone right now, it's not my fault - it's my dad's fault for not teaching me better.
In other words, you're arguing that none of my actions are my own responsibility - they are the fault of those who raised me. Of course, their actions would be the fault of those who raised them, and so on.
By your logic, nobody can make choices, because we're simply acting the way we were raised to act.
You're arguing that nobody can choose to act contrary to his or her upbringing - as a direct result, your argument that you can make moral choices is fallacious, because it's not a moral choice if you're only making it because that's how you were raised!
Free will is the ability to choose one's actions for oneself, regardless of one's upbringing or environment.
If you do not have free will, you cannot make moral choices.
So, why did he exterminate the inhabitants of Sodom, but doesn't exterminate all the other people who aren't going to repent?
There are any number of reasons it could be so. One possible reason is that culturally, at that time, an oathbreaker's life was forfeit. As such, it is possible that the entire city was forfeit by their own cultural standards.
Another is that the people of the city told the prophets: if God really thought we were so wicked, he'd destroy us, therefore we won't believe until he does it. An example of "be careful what you wish for".
The bottom line? I don't know - the reason isn't given, so it could be anything. It's silly to assume a malicious motive where no motive is given one way or the other.
Therefore, killing people who reject God is a moral act according to you.
No, I've said it's morally acceptable for God to wipe them out.
I have never said it's morally acceptable for humans to wipe each other out.
And what reason would there be for the story of Sodom to be in the Bible if not to tell everybody loud and clear that anybody who rejects the God of the Bible deserves to die?
Perhaps because the event in question occurs during an account of the life of Abraham, and it was a significant event in his life?
You do realize that the Bible does not claim to be a complete compendium of God's interactions with mankind, right?
Does that mean you think we deserve to die?
Of course not. It doesn't affect my salvation if you choose to reject the gospel; it's your choice, and it only affects you.
No, I insist that the book cannot be what it claims to be because there is lots of physical evidence suggesting that it is not authentic and little physical evidence suggesting that it is.
"little"? I've given six specific examples (each comprising two specific facts, when you include the time period) - examples that contradicted contemporary scientific opinion and later turned out to be demonstrably true.
You dismiss those examples without even addressing them.
Then you claim there's "lots of physical evidence" against the Book of Mormon without providing a single example.
Could you, perhaps, address the evidence I've brought up, and provide facts to back up your own claims?
Is that really too much to ask?
Yes. So why is it that he neither left the book, nor rubbings or tracings of it, nor any other physical evidence.
Because it was more important that the religion be established than that the archeological community have the intellectual curiosity satisfied.
I have told you before: the Book of Mormon describes animals and technologies that clearly did not exist in the Americas, and it contradicts linguistic and genetic facts.
Animals and technologies that are not known to have existed in the Americas.
That is not the same as saying that those animals and technologies "clearly did not exist" in the area.
I've already given one example of a technology that you yourself would have previously used as evidence of your claims: cement.
When the Book of Mormon was published, it described the use of cement in ancient American construction.
Had you been alive at the time, you would have said "it is known archeological fact that there was no cement use in that time period or area".
And yet you would have been wrong - it's demonstrably wrong, now.
No, "there is as yet no archeological record" is not the same as "it is archeological fact that it could not have existed".
You're making an absurd leap of logic. It's like saying "all civilizations that ever lived on earth have left traces of their existence." In reality, it is only true that all known civilizations have left traces of their existence; it is neither provable nor disprovable that other trace-less civilizations have existed.
I'm still waiting for examples of "linguistic and genetic facts" that contradict the Book of Mormon.
He wasn't "accurately predicting future discoveries".
He wasn't? What do you call it when the book posits the use of cement during a time period thought by contemporary scientists to have no knowledge of cement, and then decades later archeologists find cement construction dating to that time period?
What do you call it when the book posits population migrations during specific time periods, and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book posits the use of metal plates as a common method of preserving writing (a laughable claim by contemporary knowledge), and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book posits a river in a valley in the Arabian desert in an area thought by contemporary experts to have no such river, and later exploration locates that river just where it is supposed to be?
What do you call it when the book posits a lush green area - green enough to be described as "Bountiful" - in the desert, in an area thought by contemporary experts to have no such desert, and later exploration turns up multiple candidates for the described greenery?
What do you call it when the book makes specific claims regarding military fortifications used during a specific time period, and later archeological finds confirm it?
What do you call it when the book makes specific claims about a large-scale natural disaster at a specific point in history, and later archeological finds confirm it?
These are all descriptions which were supposedly fabricated from whole cloth by a man who, by your own admission, had no knowledge of ancient America.
That list (which is by no means complete) sounds suspiciously like "accurately predicting future discoveries" to me. Can you tell me how it's different?
He didn't need access to formal education. He need some practical skill and experience with using language, and he got plenty of that from his family.
And yet the Book of Mormon does not at all reflect contemporary 1820s American English. What, exactly, was your point?
(In fact, Mormons don't seem to be able to make up their mind which volcano is supposed to be responsible.)
This, folks, is what we call a "red herring". The Book of Mormon does not identify a particular volcano, it merely identifies that there was such large-scale activity at a particular time - activity which, as I just mentioned, has been confirmed by archeological records.
Smith was apparently trained at memorizing and reciting texts.
Not a single eyewitness account of the translation process supports the idea that he was reciting a memorized text. For example:
"Martin [Harris] found a stone which closely resembled the seerstone with which Joseph sometimes used when translating. Without Joseph's knowledge Martin substituted Joseph's stone with his own. When Joseph began translating, he paused for a long time and then exclaimed, 'Martin, what is the matter, all is as dark as Egypt.' Martin then confessed that he wished to 'stop the mouths of fools' who told him that the Prophet memorized sentences and merely repeated them." (Millennial Star, 44:87. This was a newspaper, not scripture, so don't get too excited.)
If you say he was merely reciting a memorized text, you're going to have to produce at least one eyewitness account that corroborates your position - because I have plenty which contradict your claim.
Smith was clearly skilled in several areas; complete dunces don't go on founding large religious organizations. But no supernatural explanation is needed to explain either the text, its content, or its authorship.
Certainly not; and yet, what motivation could he have had for such an elaborate deception? For that matter, what possible motivation could Joseph's accomplices have had for perpetuating the hoax?
The only rational explanation
The usual level at which people are willing to even start considering extraordinary claims is a 99% significance level, although considerably more evidence would be required for something as extraordinary as the claims about the Book of Mormon.
Do you realize that if Joseph had merely said "I found this book buried in a hill" and handed the gold plates to a university for translation, the book would be hailed as the greatest native American archeological find to date?
No, the truth is, your objection has no basis in the factual accuracy of the book one way or another.
Your objection rests entirely in the fact that the book claims to be divinely inspired - and no amount of empirical evidence will convince you otherwise.
You said it yourself - "considerably more" than 99% of the (empirically testable) claims made by the Book of Mormon would have to prove true before you would even start to consider that it might be what it purports to be.
You don't care how much of it turns out to be empirically proved true. You will continue to insist the book cannot be what it claims to be, merely because it claims to be inspired of God.
As you pointed out, Smith probably knew nothing about ancient American history or scientific opinion.
How do you reconcile that statement with the fact that many testable statements made in the Book of Mormon (which at the time were considered absolutely ridiculous by experts in the field) have turned out to be extremely accurate decades after the fact, while none have been proven false? How could someone who knew nothing of native American history make so many accurate statements about it?
Why do you consistently refuse to address any of these coincidences (e.g. cement, warfare, natural disasters, large population migrations, and the timeframes associated with them)?
Why is it easier for you to believe that someone unfamiliar with scientific opinion could make dozens of wild guesses, which were the opposite of contemporary scientific opinion, and then turn out to be right about all of them, than to believe the Book of Mormon is what it says it is?
Here's a question for you: what is the statistical probability that someone could make dozens of random guesses about an ancient civilization, including guesses about economic practices, warfare tactics, population migrations, technology and architectural practices, and the historic time frames for each of those things, and turn out to be right about all of them?
Put another way, what is the statistical probability than an entirely fictional civilization and its fictional history would turn out to have actually existed as described?
I'm not a professional statistician, but I'm pretty sure the odds are fairly high against it.
I hope you realize, that's exactly what you want me to believe.
So... I have a question for you.
What possible motivation could Joseph have had to instigate this hoax? For that matter, what motivation could the three witnesses have had to perpetuate it? What possible motivation could these men have had to continue perpetuating it, even after they became bitter toward Joseph?
Could it have been wealth? Not likely; the book was never sold for more than cost, and Martin Harris at least went into debt to get the book printed. Yet they maintained their position even after leaving the church, even though it caused them no end of grief. Joseph lived almost in poverty his whole life; he continually gave anything and everything he and his family didn't need to survive in order to help others.
Could it have been fame? Not likely; even before it was published, they were ridiculed. And after, when they had become separated, they could have gained far more fame by denouncing the Book of Mormon and being the person to expose Joseph's supposed fraud. Yet they did not do this - even when given the opportunity. One of the three witnesses even went to great personal expense to contradict a pamphlet claiming he had denied it, despite the fact that he had separated himself from the church.
Could it have been for power? Not likely; the witnesses were given very little responsibility, and certainly after leaving the church they would not have power anymore, so why maintain their position?
Could they have been duped by Joseph? Perhaps at first, you might think - but then why, after becoming bitter with Joseph, would they still have maintained their position that the Book of Mormon was true?
The only alternative left is that they were telling the truth. Every other possible explanation for the actions of these men defies any semblance logic.
Perhaps you can explain that to me with your precious statistical analysis.
Yet, there is no genetic, linguistic, or archaeological record of them.
Uh... you're ignoring the entire native American archeological record.
There has been a lot of study in the area of how certain native American languages are similar to Hebrew, for example, and there's obviously plenty of archeological records of them.
I've even mentioned some of those archeological records (discovered long after the Book of Mormon being published), which the Book of Mormon got exactly right, including the time frame - and yet you seem to handwave those into nonexistence.
In other words, you're pretending the obvious evidence does not exist, and then telling me my position is untenable because (so you say) there's no evidence.
For example, before the Book of Mormon was published, it was thought by experts in the field that baptism by immersion was not introduced to the native Americans until the Europeans showed up; and yet, later archeological discoveries prove that the Book of Mormon was accurate in saying they practiced it long before then.
I'm beginning to understand that no matter how much archeological proof we dig up, you're going to handwave it away as lucky coincidence.
Perhaps you could actually address the evidence I've brought up.
For example, how do you reconcile that:
a) The Book of Mormon posits the use of cement by the early ancient Americans
b) Contemporary historians thought the idea was preposterous
c) Decades later archeologists discover that not only did ancient Americans use cement in their construction, but that the time period matches that of the Book of Mormon's cement use.
How could Joseph Smith have accurately guessed the time period of cement use, when experts in the field didn't believe cement was used by the ancient Americans at all?
the Book of Mormon is full of animals and artifacts for which there is not a shred of evidence in the Americas prior to European arrival.
Sure; but that's what people have been saying for a century, and we're finding more of these artifacts all the time.
I've given some examples; I can give more.
What I am saying is, the more archeologists learn of ancient America, the more similar their understanding becomes to the societies described by the Book of Mormon. You want me to believe this increasing similarity is mere coincidence.
And the few bits of writing system we get from Smith are neither American nor Middle Eastern.
I'm unaware of Joseph Smith providing samples of supposedly Book of Mormon-era writing which is neither American nor Middle Eastern. Could you, perhaps, provide references for that claim?
You can teach your children, you can punish them, but killing them is wrong, no matter how much they may misbehave.
Let's examine why you believe that it is wrong for parents to kill their children:
It ends their life, and you believe there is nothing after this life.
Now, if we suppose that God exists as described by the scriptures, then we must also suppose that there is an afterlife as described by the scriptures; as such, killing people who are unwilling to repent does not erase them from existence, it merely moves them to the afterlife "early".
From God's point of view, he's helping them: he's reducing the number of sins for which they have to repent.
That's why you find it objectionable: you don't believe in an afterlife.
And if they misbehave, ultimately, it is the fault of the parents for not intervening earlier.
If I kill someone right now, it's my dad's fault for not teaching me better?
You seem to be arguing that there's no such thing as free will - an argument that makes your earlier claims (that you can make moral choices) absurd. You see, if you do not have free will - if all of your decisions are explicitly traceable to some root cause - then you aren't making a moral choice, you're merely doing what you were raised to do.
God is exterminating the inhabitants of Sodom because they follow a different religion and reject him.
Uh... no. "They rejected him" does not mean God timidly knocked on their door and said "excuse me, but it'd be nice if I could get a moment of your time" and they closed the door in his face.
Instead, if a people is said to have rejected God, then they both know his teachings and knowingly decided to ignore them.
So, you are saying that you think that genocide of non-Christins "seems pretty level-headed" to you.
No. I'm saying, if God tells a people which knows the gospel "you really need to shape up, or I'll have to destroy the city", and they decide to ignore him, well then he'd better follow through - what kind of impotent God doesn't follow through on his promises?
This is common sense. If the government makes laws, but does not enforce them, people will lose respect for the government. If a father makes rules for his children, but does not do anything about it when his children break those rules, his children will never learn to obey him. If a schoolteacher never imposes penalties on her class for disruptive behavior, the class will ignore her.
Why should it be any different for God?
There was no reason to exterminate them, he could have just let them live our their existence on earth.
There were plenty of reasons.
1) By sparing them from having to repent of a lifetime of sins, he was showing them mercy.
2) By removing them from the area, he was preventing them from harming the spiritual well-being of other peoples that would come later.
3) He was, most likely, carrying through on his word.
not only did God admit to his sin, he also encouraged millennia of violence by Jews and Christians against those who hold different religious beliefs.
Uh... what? Nowhere does the Bible ever encourage violence against non-Christians. If you think it does, please cite specific verses.
Some people have extrapolated and taken matters into their own hands, yes - but they were wrong to do so. No man has the right to arbitrarily take the life of another.
Of course. Yours truly happens to be an apostle of discordianism, though he has long forgotten his full title.
Uh... what? I read the Wikipedia article on discordianism, and I can't find any facet of the belief that even vaguely fits my religion; the fact that one of its founders is/was an ex-member of my church is irrelevant.
The real question, of course, is why I should think these people have a direct connection to an entity that I don't even believe in.
I wouldn't expect you to believe merely because someone tells you; I only brought it up to point out that your original question:
why there haven't been any not-considered-insane prophets for about 2000 years, and very likely none in the future.
Is, from the perspective of my religion, based on a faulty premise.
But still, someone claiming to speak with god today better provide some damn good evidence, or I'll call him insane and/or a con-man. Because both of these are very, very much more common than anyone who even warrants closer inspection on the god-talk claim.
I agree that con-men are far more common than prophets. Even the Bible tells us to beware of false prophets, of the wolf in sheep's clothing; the Bible tells us to examine the things a supposed prophet does to see whether he is good or bad.
For example, anyone who's ever read a biography of Joseph Smith must admit he was an extremely selfless, kind man, who devoted his life to helping others, quite apart from whether or not he was a prophet. Were he a con-man, would he not have used his position as supposed prophet to increase his personal wealth? Instead, he continually lived in near-poverty until his death.
That's just one example. I don't expect the one example to convince you of anything; I'm merely pointing out that you can judge to some degree whether someone is what they say they are by looking at their actions.
a) how is what you call "praying" different from what I call "talking to the wall" ?
You aren't praying if you don't believe you're praying. Attempting to pray to a God you are unwilling to believe exists is indistinguishable from attempting to talk to the wall.
b) how would I know any answer is from what you call "god" when there are so many more mundane well-documented sources of inner voices, visual images, etc?
I don't know that I can answer that question. I must decide what I believe based on what I have experienced; I would expect you to do the same.
the power of our brains to delude itself is fascinating.
Oh, I quite agree - but that by itself does not invalidate the premise that God might speak to us.
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!
If you have a choice between incapacitating and killing and you choose killing, you certainly violate the commandment against killing.
In the situation of self-defense I outlined above, I do not believe that to be true.
That's actually called "omniscience", and it's different from omnipotence.
Yes, I mistyped. It was very early in the morning ;)
Well, that's not the explanation God gave to Abraham; he didn't say "I'm killing them because none of them are ever going to repent". But, hey, maybe he just doesn't know how to express himself.
God's exact words were:
"Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."
I read this to mean that God intended to examine whether the residents of those cities "have done altogether according to the cry of it" (meaning, the gospel). That is, whether they have repented.
"And if not, I will know."
Seems pretty clear, to me.
(I realize, after reading the succeeding verses, that I had Abraham's numbers slightly wrong, and that it was God doing the searching, not Abraham, but the point remains the same.)
In fact, Abraham specifically raises the point you raised:
23 Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
So here we have God saying "Well, I'm going to go see if they're willing to repent, and if they're not, I'll destroy them." ... Seems pretty level-headed to me.
Abraham says "You're not going to destroy the righteous with the wicked, are you?"
God says "No, Abraham, if I find righteous people, I'll spare everyone for their sakes."
So, you are a moral relativist then? It's not OK for you to murder people, but it is OK for God to murder people?
If I build a house, is it not morally acceptable for you to demolish it without cause, but it is morally acceptable for me to demolish it without cause. Surely you'll agree with that?
Thus, God being the architect and owner of the human race (so to speak), God has the right to destroy it as he sees fit, though we do not.
If that's moral relativism, then yes, I'm a moral relativist. I do not believe morality is merely a set of black-and-white rules; I believe morals can change depending on the situation.
Thus it is morally acceptable to kill in the defense of oneself or one's family, but it is not morally acceptable to kill an innocent stranger.
Where else do you want me to conjure them from?
What I meant was, you're creating discrepancies in morality where none exist, in an attempt to show that discrepancies exist.
Are you a linguist and statistician?
Yes.
Then perhaps the presence of numerous Hebraic language structures in the original text of the Book of Mormon would be of interest to you.
You see, you would have me believe that Joseph Smith - a farmboy with a third-grade education, whose main source of reading was the King James Bible - fabricated the Book of Mormon.
How could such an uneducated farmboy include legitimate Hebraic language structures (such as the Hebraic conditional, lengthy sentences using circumstantial clauses, Hebrew figures of speech, the chiasmus, and so on) that are not found in the King James Bible and on top of that, how could he use them consistently and properly?
(The chiasmus is particularly strong evidence, as it was not known to be important in Hebrew writing until the 20th century, and yet it occurs multiple times in the Book of Mormon.)
I can provide examples of these language structures occurring numerous times in the Book of Mormon if you wish.
So this leaves me with one of three conclusions:
a) Joseph obtained perfect knowledge of Hebrew language structures through some supernatural means in order to commit his fraud
b) Joseph met someone with said perfect knowledge of Hebrew language structure who taught him what to include in the book - including the chiasmus which was not yet recognized by experts in Hebrew literature - in order to make his fraud appear legitimate
c) The book is what it purports to be
You tell me, which is more likely?
Option "a" is absurd, and option "b" equally so quite apart from the lack of evidence that Joseph ever knew such a person. What other option is there?
Seriously, I'm interested in your response.
There are large volcanic eruptions in the Americas every few decades.
Not on that scale.
Furthermore, the Book of Mormon isn't even very specific about what happened.
It's not? That's an absurd claim; 3 Nephi 8 is very specific.
It should also be noted that some native american legends refer to these same disasters as well, and in the same time frame.
Baptism by immersion exists independently in many religions and cultures and Smith described it because it's part of Christianity. So, there's nothing to be explained here.
Despite answering "Neither" to my list of options, you in fact chose option 1, "made a series of guesses with unparalleled accuracy".
That's what you're claiming, isn't it? That it was just a bunch of lucky guesses?
How many guesses have to be lucky before you'll actually consider the possibility that it's true?
And the Mormon church is now trying to justify its existence (and keep the money coming)
I'm curious what you think the money is being used for, because it's not going into the pockets of church leaders.
by highlighting those parts that accidentally appear to have real-world parallels.
So here we've got a book that:
a) Has descriptions which happen to match real-world discoveries made decades after it was published ... most people would call that "evidence".
b) To date has not been empirically disproved
And I'm still waiting for the evidence that you must believe exists that conclusively proves the Book of Mormon is a fabrication.
The question won't go away just by ignoring it, you know. I really do want to know what empirical evidence you've seen (and in what fields) that has convinced you so thoroughly that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be.
Under Christian/Mormon theology, the penalty is eternal/infinite and you always get caught, so the expected benefit never outweighs the risk.
Don't be silly. If you allow for the possiblity that God will judge based on circumstances - as I believe he will - rather than fixed absolutes, then your whole complaint disappears.
Consider: A crazed man breaks into my home with a crowbar, screaming that he's going to beat my wife to death. Before he can, I pull out a gun and shoot him.
There is no doubt in my mind that God would consider killing the invader completely justified - I have an obligation to protect my family.
Therefore, I can, in fact, make a moral decision: I can now choose whether to shoot the invader such that he dies, or I can choose to incapacitate the invader such that he is longer a threat to my family but will recover from his wounds (presumably in prison).
Given that God will not punish me for killing the invader, the only basis left for deciding to incapacitate instead of kill is that of morality - it is morally better to incapacitate him, rather than kill him.
Belief in God does not in any way negate the ability to make moral choices.
And even if there was nobody righteous there, given that you claim that free will exists, all those people still would have had the opportunity to change their ways if God hadn't killed them first.
If one is to believe in a consistent God, one must conclude that those people had been given numerous opportunities to do so; furthermore, from a certain perspective, it's actually merciful to wipe them out.
Consider: God, being omnipotent, knows the future. He knows whether people are going to repent, how many sins they will commit before they do so, and so on.
Thus, if God knows that an entire city full of people is not going to repent, then it is more merciful to kill them now, so they can't sin anymore!
(Note that I do not believe that babies go to some sort of eternal punishment under any circumstances, and thus whether babies died is largely irrelevant.)
So, you are saying it is moral and justifiable to kill people who reject your God?
No, I'm saying it's justifiable for God to kill people who reject him.
I'm not God, I don't get to make that choice, nor would I want to.
How does that square with your claim that you tolerate and respect people with different beliefs from yours?
By not being my claim at all, obviously.
It's easy to point out discrepancies when you're conjuring them from thin air.
Are you a linguist and statistician? If not, you lack the skills to make that determination.
I'm what you'd call an enthusiastic amateur. Are you a linguist and statistician?
That's anecdotes not evidence.
Uh... No. An anecdote is "a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical".
The Book of Mormon contains a fairly detailed description of a set of volcanic eruptions occurring 1800 years before Joseph Smith's birth in an area of the world he knew nothing about.
Years after the Book of Mormon is published, archeologists discover that, lo and behold, there is plenty of physical evidence of a large set of volcanic eruptions in the same time frame as those describe in the Book of Mormon.
That's not an anecdote; it's evidence.
The Book of Mormon describes the ancient american peoples as having practiced baptism by immersion - something that, until that time, was believed to have been introduced to the americas a full 1000 years after the time period described by the Book of Mormon.
Now, you can go on tours of ancient american ruins where you can see baptismal fonts predating the European arrival.
That's not an anecdote, that's evidence, and just two examples.
These are things that Joseph Smith could not possibly have known. The foremost experts in American archeology didn't know these things in the 1820s and 1830s - how could Joseph Smith, who had just a third grade education, have known about these things long before the foremost experts in the field?
If you claim the Book of Mormon is a fabrication, then you are making one of three claims:
a) Joseph Smith made a series of guesses about historical events in unknown parts of the world with unparalleled accuracy.
b) Joseph Smith somehow encountered people who, rather than sharing their knowledge with experts in the field of archeology, decided to share their knowledge with an uneducated farmboy and then not share it with experts in the field.
c) Joseph Smith was from the future.
So, which is it?
I know enough about some fields to know that the Book of Mormon cannot be what it claims to be.
If you know enough to make that statement, then you must have at least one example where the Book of Mormon cannot possibly be what it claims to be. So, what's your example?
Torturing them, murdering them, and infecting them with horrible diseases is wrong, immoral, and illegal.
Sure; but when did God ever do that?
The cost of committing murder for Christians is eternal damnation, loss of paradise, etc., and since you assume God is omniscient, you cannot get away with it; if you truly believe that, you can never rationally choose to commit murder. Since murder is never rational for you, you never have to make a moral choice about it.
You're willing to admit that the law knows there are circumstances where killing another person might be admissible; why are you unwilling to admit God might see things the same way?
An omnipotent God could create a world in which we have free will and can learn from our mistakes, yet still can't do serious harm to each other.
I respectfully submit that such a world could not exist. "Omnipotent" does not mean "able to violate the laws of causality"; it merely means "able to do anything that is possible to be done".
I do not believe in a God that can violate the basic laws of the universe.
Worse yet, according to the Bible, God himself has tortured and murdered, even the innocent.
Oh, really? I'm very interested to see examples of God torturing and/or murdering innocents.
You know, I recall one very specific story where God wanted to destroy a pair of cities because they had fully and completely rejected him, and Abraham said, "Wait! Will you spare the city if I can find a hundred good people?"
God said, "Sure." Abraham searched and searched and couldn't find any.
"Wait! Will you spare the city if I can find fifty?" "Sure." "Ten?" "Sure." "One?" "Sure."
Finally, Abraham tracked down Lot and his family - who, based on what happened later, weren't really the best of people anyway - and they leave the city (which of course is promptly destroyed).
This God, who was willing to spare an entire city of wicked people for the sake of a single good person, is the same one you're saying maliciously tortured and murdered innocent people?
I'm very interested indeed in your examples.
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.