Replies

“And there is a well-established history of its truth.”

There is nothing that establishes that Christ walked on water, or that Mary was in fact a virgin when she gave birth, or that Christ did in fact live a sinless life except for the word of the apostles. Validating the existence of places and persons and some events doesn’t prove the Bible is the word of God.

“Smith claims he had plates. Well, those would be interesting... but they can’t be seen.”

There were many who did see them and handle them. They testified of it and their testimony is contained in the BoM.
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/thrwtnss
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/eghtwtns
Even when some of them became personally disaffected with Joseph Smith, they still never denied the truth of their testimony all their life.

“Smith claims he translated from an ancient language. Well, if he had written down the ancient language, that would certainly testify on his behalf... but he didn’t”

Actually, he did write down a sample of the language. http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Anthon_transcript The events in that article about Professor Charles Anthon fulfill a biblical prophecy in Isa. 29: 11

“The original translations were removed, so Smith had to redo them... but he’s got an unsustantiable story as to why the details wouldn’t match.”

There was nothing re-translated. Joseph translated the first part of the plates, written by Lehi. Martin Harris was his scribe had was taking a lot of flack from his friends and his wife who were quite hostile to Joseph’s claims, so Martin pestered Joseph to allow him to take the translation of Lehi’s writing to show his wife. Martin lost possession of the manuscript and God revealed to Joseph that a plot was afoot to alter the missing manuscript, then wait for Joseph to present a re-translation so they could falsely accuse Joseph of translating it differently the second time around and use that as evidence that Joseph was a fraud.

God instead told Joseph to just carry on translating from the point where he left off. God in his foreknowledge knew this would happen and and was prepared for it. The next part was Nephi’s account of the same events so nothing vital was lost and the plot against God’s prophet was foiled. I fail to see what is unsustantiable about Joseph’s account.

Marin Harris was there for all this, and he was quite willing to mortgage his farm, risk his money and his reputation, to get the BoM published. He had nothing worldly to gain from it, his actions demonstrate the he too believed the BoM to be the word of God.

“There’s no record of anything Smith claims,”

That’s painting with a pretty broad brush. I also disagree with the claim. There are many evidences of many different kinds that support the claims of the BoM, also evidence that ‘unique’ aspects of Mormonism were in fact part of early Christianity as Joseph claimed.

“and it requires believing that everything we think we know is false.”

Again that is a very broad brush. There are many doctrines in orthodox Christianity that we reject, but there is a lot of common ground as well.

“You persistently refuse to supply me with a reason to believe the seemingly outlandish claims of the Book of Mormon and the seemingly ridiculous claims of Smith.”

It isn’t our job to force anyone to believe anything. I don’t even know what claims you consider outlandish either. Even so, reason can only take you so far. There is a lot of evidence that indicates the plausibility of if it, but even with absolute proof of the Nephites, you still won’t know if the BoM is the word of God or not unless you approach God about it. Even if there was no evidence for the BoM at all (something often falsely asserted), arguing that lack of proof is proof they didn’t exist and the BoM a fake is a logical fallacy.

I find it hard to understand why a Christian would resist the idea of asking God about something so important.

Actually, he did write down a sample of the language. http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Anthon_transcript

The events in that article about Professor Charles Anthon fulfill a biblical prophecy in Isa. 29: 11

<SNIP>

Caractors. The title of the above book, "which may be* the original paper carried by Martin Harris to show Charles Anthon," according to Mormon scholars. ("What Did Charles Anthon Really Say," Reexploring the Book of Mormon, p. 76) Of course no sealed or unsealed gold plates were delivered to the learned Anthon nor anything else that might in any sense be called a book (or even a readable excerpt from a book) so this whole fabrication is more than faintly ridiculous.

*"may be..." Take note of the apologists' sorry stab at leaving themselves a minimally loopy loophole here. They had to be aware (they're scholars) of the unsettling fact that the "Caractors" are amateurishly faked and foolishly fraudulent. Truly unsettling is the fact that Latter-day Saints are thought to have high standards of probity and honesty to uphold. Read this, from p. 75 of the aforementioned publication:

Caught on the horns of a dilemma, and having unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 29, Anthon took the easy way out: He tore up the statement he had innocently given to Harris and denied Harris's story. Today Anthon's cover-up appears more blatant than ever.

Aha! All doubt has been removed. No buts or maybes about it! These thankfully preserved "Caractors" definitely are what Anthon saw and he truly believed, as do these intelligent apologists, that the "Caractors" were exactly what he supposedly claimed. Has a blatant pretense of scholarship stumbled all over itself here?

Think about it. The "Caractors" are the only tangible evidence in existence related to Smith's story. No gold plates, no brass plates, no peep stones, no Urim and Thummim... only these "Caractors," not a single one of which is in the purported languages.

Smith's translation of the Caractors. According to Martin Harris (Joseph Smith - History, 1:64), "I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated,* and he said they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters."

Speak right up now in all truthfulness. Isn't it revealing how Smith started out making a stab at creating believable "caractors" but quickly gave up and produced nothing but squiggles, ending up with a series of nothing more than crude little scribbles? Yet Professor Anthon supposedly translated them!

*Harris must have had two or three pieces of paper with him—one with characters and a translation of them (on the same paper or a separate one) and one with untranslated characters—quite likely the "Caractors." Some Mormon "scholars" have gone out on a limb, sawed it off, and knocked themselves out trying to translate from these true Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic characters a segment that would correspond with a verse from 1 Nephi.

Modern-day experts in Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic. In 1829, any knowledge of these languages possessed by U.S. scholars would have been rudimentary at best. Expertise in them has vastly improved since then. So go ahead, do it. Get any modern expert in these languages to identify which of these "Caractors" are Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic. Better still, accept the claim of Mormon apologists that Anthon did indeed so testify and that his appraisal of the Caractors was correct. (Op. cit, pp. 73-75)

Save your money! Samples of Assyriac/Aramaic and Arabic writing:

What say you? Which of Smith's "Caractors" resemble the Assyriac and Arabic ones? No need to pay experts for their analysis. A child could accurately check this out. These writing systems have remained constant for well over 3000 years.

>> There is nothing that establishes that Christ walked on water, or that Mary was in fact a virgin when she gave birth, or that Christ did in fact live a sinless life except for the word of the apostles. <<

Not of those particuliar events, but those events are not the ones that the apostles used to establish their authority. And, of course, the Virgin birth was prophesied about, in prophesies revealed before the events in question. And given what was established about Jesus, his sinless nature is sort of presumptive, is it not? (Would the son of God sin?)

>> Validating the existence of places and persons and some events doesn’t prove the Bible is the word of God. <<

Not entirely. But I do believe that the human soul innately longs for the teachings of the gospel and of the apostles to be true. And such details are attested to by the apostles and the early Church, as opposed to the Book of Mormon, which was unknown to them.

>> There were many who did see them and handle them. They testified of it and their testimony is contained in the BoM. <<

Yah, like I noted in my later post... a lawyer would only ever put one of the witnesses on the stand. And he only “saw” the plates long after he had a very strong invested interest.

>> Smith claims he translated from an ancient language. Well, if he had written down the ancient language, that would certainly testify on his behalf... but he didn’t <<

A few characters hardly testifies to anything. Even if it had been in actual Egyptian, it would at least mean something, but of course it’s in “reformed Egyptian” so no-one could ever know if it were authentic. Just another unfalsifiable claim. But isn’t odd how with all the archaeological discoveries (King Tut’s tomb, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the City of Jericho), no-one’s ever found significant corroboration for the existence of reformed Egyptian? Of course, part of the problem is that the sample is uselessly small, so it’d easy to find slight clues and bits of evidence, but hard to find significant corroboration.

>> There was nothing re-translated...<<

My bad... I remembered the story wrong. The point is that Smith couldn’t recreate what he had already written, which seems quite odd, except for Smith’s convenient excuse.

>> That’s painting with a pretty broad brush. I also disagree with the claim. There are many evidences of many different kinds that support the claims of the BoM, also evidence that ‘unique’ aspects of Mormonism were in fact part of early Christianity as Joseph claimed. <<

A very broad brush should be easy to disprove, no? And yet, you do not offer a single example.

>> It isn’t our job to force anyone to believe anything. <<

No, but you could come up with a reason I should believe you.