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BeNotDeceived wrote: ↑

Tue May 07, 2024 7:50 pm

6. Temple building - how and why do they continue to build temples when it's been proven membership is decreasing?

I am sure their numbers show that activity rates and tithing contributions are higher in areas where a temple is accessible.

Easy. The witnesses to the supposed "longer scroll" didn't describe any unique features that aren't in the papyrii that we still have. The only supposedly unique feature was that the scroll was "long." Now, "long" is an extremely subjective descriptor. As I remember it, and my memory is way worse t...

Maybe Don Bradley could reconstruct the lost Spalding manuscript?


By the way, for an excellent unbiased summary of the Lost Spalding manuscript theory see:
The Spalding-Rigdon Theory: Did a Dartmouth Man Author a Divine Text?

MAGA Mormons need to buy Trump a white horse.

Why go to all of these unprovable theories? Who wrote the Book of Mormon? Joseph Smith.period Because it's interesting to find out where he got his ideas. If God can just wave his magic wand, why ask how something was done? Religion is so much more interesting when one no longer believes in divine ...

Crowned? Not so much. More like he was nominated and voted on. Here are the minutes from the Council of the Fifty meeting where he was voted in as King. Er Erastus Snow arose to repeat the expression of Er [George J.] Adams the other evening for he feels this to be the happiest moment he ever enjoye...

Weird how the Church tries to hide documents that don't prove Smith made stuff up.

I look at it this way.
We have the Book of Mormon.
It was clearly created in the 19th century in a very specific 19th century milieu.
How exactly that was done is irrelevant to the fact it was a 19th century production.

The last time I expressed my skepticism in these parts regarding the "Dartmouth Connection," I was chided for materializing out of the blue to mock people (in that instance, Randy Bell) and for not keeping an open mind. I thought my emphatic rejection of Nielsen's theory on the other board as "utte...

There is an interesting thread about this going on over at MAD here. With a poster named Zosimus arguing that this Kircher was a well known figure who could have influenced Joseph Smith. (Kirsher was known to John Smith at Dartmouth who taught Hyrum.) Ben McGuire is arguing that Kirsher was not that...