Posted on 02/19/2007 4:52:58 PM PST by sevenbak
For myself, I'll pass... Been there...
10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.
Yes it has. Another poster posted the Articles of Faith for some reason. I wondered if that was the reason.
Must 've been.
You also believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet. He was a deceiver. Big difference between Christianity and the faith of this charlatan. Surely you don't believe there were horses in the Americas prior to Columbus (as Joseph Smith wrote in his little book of fiction)? And there's no evidence that iron was used to make weapons in the Americas, as Joseph Smith again wrote. All sorts of "mistakes" in his writings ... you have to draw the conclusion that it's flawed because it was written by a flawed man who was ... just making it up using King James-like English.
It's hard to question your faith, but there is a lot to question about Mormonism, Saundra.
Saundra,
This is really important. It's really important that you evaluate the foundation of your faith. If you find errors in it, then you really should consider whether or not the doctrines put forth by its founder are true ... or false. Please consider the following (from http://contenderministries.org/mormonism/bomproblems.php ):
1) Linguistics. Why, if the American Indians were descended from Lehi, was there such diversity in their languages, and why were there no vestiges of Hebrew in any of them?
2) Why does the Book of Mormon say that Lehi found horses when he arrived in America? The horse did not exist in the Americas until the Spaniards brought them over in the sixteenth century.
3) Why was Nephi stated to have a bow of steel? Jews did not have steel at that time, and no iron was smelted in the Americas until the Spanish colonization.
4) Why does the Book of Mormon mention “swords and cimeters” when scimitars (the current spelling) did not come about until the rise of Islam after 500 A.D.?
5) Why does the Book of Mormon mention silk, when silk did not exist in the Americas at that time?
Why, Saundra, is the truth of the Bible not sufficient? Why is what Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, taught and accomplished on the cross not sufficient? Why is Joseph Smith and his error-filled book necessary? Please consider dropping him and his teaching and turn to the simple truth of pure Scripture. It will be hard, and many Mormon friends will challenge you and even turn to hate you, but you know the truth that this book is wrong through and through. And that Jesus (as manifest in the Bible) is sufficient.
Theo, James Spencer's brochure has been circulating since the 1900's. At least come up with something original.
1a. Why is there such diversity in the Amerindian languages if the American Indians were all descendants of Lehi?
This question misses the mark entirely, for the Book of Mormon nowhere claims that "the American Indians were all descendants of Lehi." Never. And, in fact, the best contemporary Latter-day Saint scholarship on the Book of Mormon argues that the Jaredites and the people of Lehi were not alone in the Americas.4 Furthermore, it might be noted that the remarkable linguistic complexity of the pre-Columbian New World is rather difficult to explain on the basis of any unitary theory of Indian origins, including the one that has them all coming across a Siberian land bridge. As one recent discussion of the subject observes, "Of the world's approximately 3000 languages, that is tongues that are mutually unintelligible, about 400 were spoken in the Western Hemisphere." But it is not merely the number of languages that impresses; far more than that, it is their variety and distinctness:
Linguists, beginning with Major John Wesley Powell in the 19th century, have classified these languages into about 100 "families" of genetically related tongues, similar in scope to the Indo-European family (which includes most of the languages of Europe, Persia and India).5
In other words, there were approximately one hundred language families in pre-Columbian America that were as distinct from one another as the Indo-European family (which is made up of such varied languages as English, Sanskrit, Russian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Norwegian, Persian, Irish Gaelic, and Hindi) is distinct from Chinese, Sumerian, and Arabic. Furthermore, even in the view of those most committed to an Asian origin for the American Indian, at best only a few languages of the New World can be even tentatively linked with Asian tongues:
With the exception of Eskimo, speakers of which are found on both sides of the Bering Straits, no native American language has been found to have positive connections with any in the Old World, although some arguments have been advanced for the affinity of Athapascan (spoken in northwestern North America and by the Navajo and Apache of the American Southwest) and certain languages of eastern Asia.6
Thus, despite the uncontested fact that mainstream anthropological opinion overwhelmingly agrees that the ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia, even very establishment discussions of pre-Columbian linguistics acknowledge that "one cannot point out Asiatic origins for New World languages."7
All of which goes to say that the diversity of Amerindian languages presents no greater a puzzle to believers in the Book of Mormon than it would to Mr. Spencer, were he to consider the matter carefully. (Incidentally, it is rather amusing to see fundamentalist Protestants, in their efforts to discredit the Book of Mormon, making use of anthropological theories about Ice Age Asiatic immigrants crossing a land bridge at the Bering Straits twenty thousand years ago. How do they reconcile such theories with their typically literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis? Contemporary anthropology, they should note, is a sword that can cut both ways.)
1b. Why is there no indication of Hebrew in any of the Indian languages?
On the unwarranted assumption that "the American Indians were all descendants of Lehi," this is a difficult question. Without that assumption, it poses far less of a problem.
It is not at all uncommon for a language to disappear quite completely when it is covered up by foreign invasions or colonization, or when its speakers are assimilated into another, often larger, population. Very little Etruscan, for instance, survived into Latin, and even less exists in modern Italian, Spanish, or French. Indications of the ancient pharaonic language are quite rare in Egyptian Arabic. No Sumerian lives on in the Arabic dialects of Iraq. American English preserves only a few American Indian terms. English has virtually eliminated Irish Gaelic. The Greek of such great Hellenistic cities as Antioch and Alexandria is irretrievably gone. These examples could be multiplied indefinitely. Few things are better attested in human history than the death of languages.
But the question, as stated, appears to rest on a debatable presupposition in any case. It is not universally conceded that "there [is] no indication of Hebrew in any of the Indian languages." One recent study presents 108 equivalences between Semitic languages (particularly Hebrew), and the languages of the Uto-Aztecan family (which include such tongues as Paiute and Shoshone, Hopi, and the language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl). The similarities do not demonstrate that the Uto-Aztecan languages descend from Hebrew alone, but they certainly hint, if they are genuine, that Hebrew may have been among the ancestors of those languages.8 Given that the Book of Mormon does not require all American Indians and their languages to descend only from Hebrew stock, such a conclusion, if accurate, is entirely consistent with Latter-day Saint belief.
2. The horse is mentioned in the Book of Mormon as existing among the Nephites of America, but the horse did not exist in the pre-Columbian New World.
Even if one assumes that the true horse (Equus equus) was absent from the Americas during Book of Mormon times, it remains possible that the term horse in the Book of Mormon-which, by the way, does not occur very often, and even then in rather puzzling contexts-refers simply to deer or tapirs or similar quadrupeds thought by the Nephites to be analogous to the horse. (It should be noted, incidentally, that no Book of Mormon text speaks of people riding their "horses.") Both Mayan and Aztec texts, for instance, appear to refer to Spanish horses as "deer" and to their riders as "deer-riders." But there is archaeological reason to believe that horses may, in fact, have existed in the Americas during Book of Mormon times. The question remains very much open.9
3a. Nephi is said to have had a "bow of steel." But the Jews did not know steel in Nephi's time.
We understand much less than might be guessed about references to "steel" in the ancient Old World, to say nothing of the far less well-known New World. The terminological difficulties are considerable. Nevertheless, recent evidence appears to "show that steel was indeed well known in the ancient Near East to such an extent that the 'Iron Age' may be considered a misnomer: it was really a Steel Age."10 So Mr. Spencer's confidence about the limits of ancient metallurgical knowledge seems highly exaggerated.
Military historian William J. Hamblin's discussion of Nephi's "steel bow" has been widely available since 1990 and was circulated in various forms even earlier. A specialist on the Near East, Hamblin suggests that the "steel bow" fits rather well into the ancient world of Nephi and his contemporaries.11 "I have found weapons and armor in the Book of Mormon to be consistent," he writes, "with patterns in the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica."12
3b. There was no iron smelted in the Americas until after the Spanish conquest.
The verb to smelt does not occur in the Book of Mormon, in any of its forms, so it is not entirely clear what we are to conclude from this "question." Only once, in early Jaredite history, do we seem to find a reference to the process (Ether 7:9). Iron was, evidently, relatively rare in the ancient New World, as the Book of Mormon itself attests.13 But iron of one origin or another was indisputably present and used in pre-Columbian America, and the question of whether or not iron was ever smelted in Mesoamerica is by no means closed.14 Several tons (tons!) of worked iron ores were very recently found at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, in southern Mexico.15
Amusingly, one piece of carefully fashioned iron ore recovered from ancient Mesoamerica appears to function as a compass needle, from what Professors Michael D. Coe and Richard A. Diehl identify as perhaps the "world's first compass."16 I call this discovery amusing because critics of the Book of Mormon have misguidedly mocked Lehi's Liahona for many decades, on the unexamined assumption that compasses originated in China and only emerged from that ancient nation during the period of the European Middle Ages. (Latayne Colvett Scott's The Mormon Mirage will serve to illustrate the argument, with her complacent allusion to "the fact that compasses weren't used in the western world until the twelfth century A.D. according to history books.")17 But the apparent Olmec compass needle, like the Olmecs themselves, dates to a period several centuries before Christ.
Furthermore, recent evidence suggests, contrary to conventional theories that denied the use of metals in Mesoamerica before A.D. 900, that metals may have been known in Mexico and Guatemala at least as early as 1000 B.C.18 The notion that "New World archaeology reveals a complete absence of metals," and that "no iron . . . [has] ever been recovered from pre-Columbian archaeological sites" appears to be nothing more than an element of anti-Mormon mythology.19
4. The Book of Mormon mentions "cimeters" (scimitars). But scimitars are unknown until the rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D.
This is simply untrue. "There can be no question," says Assyriologist Paul Y. Hoskisson, "that scimitars, or sickle swords, were known in the ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Period, that is, about six hundred years prior to Lehi's departure from Jerusalem."20
5. The Book of Mormon says that the Nephites had silk. However, silk did not exist in pre-Columbian America.
If, by "silk," we are required to understand only the fiber spun into a cocoon by the Asian moth Bombyx mori, there may well have been none in the Nephite New World. However, many cloths are known to have existed in the Americas, deriving from both plant and animal sources, that are virtually indistinguishable from silk proper. (Furthermore, few Americans-emphatically including the uneducated frontier farm boy Joseph Smith-would have had even the slightest clue as to their precise actual names. "Silk" would be about as close as they could come.) As one account of the question summarizes the available data, "Mesoamerica . . . exhibits almost an embarrassment of riches for the 'silk'. . . of Alma 1:29. All but the most trivializing critics should be satisfied with the parallels."21
No thanks. I am not interested in going the rounds back and forth about my faith--I have been doing it for years and I have gained little value from it. Both sides always start out with either the most optimistic or most negative assumptions possible and I think neither cases are legitimate.
Let me give you example:
The Mountain Meadow Massacre--
Extreme Anti-Mormon sentiment:
Brigham Young conspired and coordinated to kill the Fancher Party emigrating from Arkansas to California.
Extreme Pro Mormon Sentiment:
The Indians did it and the Mormons only got involved because the Arkansas Mericats poisoned wells and killed Mormons.
Likely Middle Ground:
No coordination by Brigham Young because the 4 wagons that went north from Salt Lake City was never harmed at all even though they traveled weeks through Mormon communities. This destroys the thesis that Brigham Young coordinating if he decided to wipe out only half of the Fancher party.
James Buchanan declaring war against the Mormons and the Fancher party making threats of recruiting a mercenary army to kill the Mormons, and the local leaders erronously thinking that the party was spying for the United States Army were more likely reasons why the local Mormons overacted and killed the second half of the Fancher party which went through Southern Utah.
These circumstances are the biggest reasons for the attack, because the Mormons had never attacked any before that or anyone after and that was the conditions that were in play.
I acknowledge that both the extreme positions are wrong but the anti's are like most issues very unreasonable and ascribe the worst motives and the worst possible conclusion. I can't have discussions with that kind of mindset and maybe you don't think this way and are more reasonable but I am not willing to find out.
You are partially right I'm sure.
Intentional innoculation.
I would not be at all surprised to discover that the Romney camp didn't plant the person who spoke against mormonism.
Then they got the crowd to boo the question and the questioner, and now all of tolerant America knows its a bad thing to consider anyone's religion to be "wrong."
The truth is that mormonism is not in the line of historic Christianity, and it was long considered a cult. That it has grown to a larger denomination probably removes it from "cult" status (sociological definition of cult/sect), but it will never be in the line of historic Christianity.
That's not possible.
So what you are saying is that Joseph Smith was a blaspheming apostate?
Or was he just "misinformed"?
I am saying neither. See my Post 140.
Oops. Make that Post 104.
Because as an EVIL Mormon, he willl force the conversion of the rest of us under penalty of beheading.
Just like 'they' always do.
You're free to believe what you want to believe. Even if it's fiction.
Scripture is sufficient for me.
Straw Man fallacy.
Wait a miute.... the heckler was a Romeny plant, and the retirement community he was speakign at were in on the ploy to boo the heckler ad give Mitt a standing O?
I don't think I'll ask you who think killed JFK. ;-)
Quite right. Scripture should be used to clear and clarify, strenthen and edify.
It's sufficent for me too.
That very same heckler :>)
(I wouldn't be surprised if it were a plant. Nor would I be surprised if it were a question they had hoped would come up.)
All that said, Romney is still a flip-flopper
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