If you weren’t saying as much, then I apologize. It seemed obvious to me, but I suppose I tend to do that with so much anti Mormon stuff here.
Well then perhaps you should pause and read the arguements first. With that said, there is plenty of evidence from Roberts work that points to a non-inspired source(s) of the bom. And as cited above, Roberts openly regards some portions as a work of fiction. That in itself points to a loss of faith. But then much of mormon teaching involves exalting faith over facts doesn't it.
Connect the dots -
- DNA evidence shows a completely different ancestory or the Amerindians than predicted by the bom.
- No bom cities, artifacts, ruins, writings have been uncovered
- Mormon GA Roberts demonstrates that Smith et al could have composed the bom from books and stories already present at the time.
- The gross anachronistic portions, biology and technology not supported by any discovery.
And this doesn't even begin to cover such parallels (identified by Roberts too) to Josiah Priest's "Wonders of Nature and Providence", which shows that it was nearly universal belief in 1824 (6 years before the first edition of the bom) that Indians were descendants of the 'lost' tribes of Israel. Again, this doesn't even begin to touch other sources Smith could have drawn upon.