Book of Mormon Wording Change is Official - Salt Lake Tribune

[_Polygamy Porter]

Hi MishMagnet,

This is an sincere question, what is the apologist response to his words? For any other theory to work Joseph Smith's words must be voided. Or are they?

The apologetic response I have heard and read is that Joseph Smith had a "superficial understanding" of the Book of Mormon and his personal revelations regarding the Book of Mormon people and history.

Evidently apologists believe Joseph Smith, restorer of the one and only true church, who communed personally with Nephite angels, Jesus Christ, and God himself, got it all wrong but today's apologists have got it figured out correctly. They understand what Joseph Smith did not.

(sigh)

~dancer~

If that is so, then exactly who are the apologists following?

Good god, did someone just hit your CNTL-ALT-DEL buttons?

[_Jersey Girl]

Porter

And unlike myself and all other former Mormons on this board, YOU were never a Mormon and will never have the level of understand that we do. We former Mormon do not need "meaningful clarification".. we just get it.

Someone please pass the ketchup to Jersey Girl, it will help kill the taste of FOOT that you just placed into your mouth

I consider my not having been LDS a clear advantage on a board like this. If you had bothered to ask for "meaningful clarification" years ago or bothered to think at all, you would have realized what us never-Mormons know from the get go...it's all a fraud and you lived it.

[_Polygamy Porter]

Porter

And unlike myself and all other former Mormons on this board, YOU were never a Mormon and will never have the level of understand that we do. We former Mormon do not need "meaningful clarification".. we just get it.

Someone please pass the ketchup to Jersey Girl, it will help kill the taste of FOOT that you just placed into your mouth

I consider my not having been LDS a clear advantage on a board like this. If you had bothered to ask for "meaningful clarification" years ago or bothered to think at all, you would have realized what us never-Mormons know from the get go...it's all a fraud and you lived it.

And it is quite clear that you do not understand it.

Odd that someone like yourself who has always known that this is all a fraud, WOULD WASTE MORE THAN EIGHT YEARS of your life on it.

[_Casslanpepci]

So what? The introduction was only placed in the Book of Mormon from 1981. Before that time there wasn't one. And Bruce R McConkie wasn't all that reliable in his writings - for example his book Mormon Doctrine wasn't authorised by the First Presidency when it first came out. He had to make changes to subscequent editions, because some entries were his personal views and were not in harmony with Church teachings.

One should also consider the fact that American continent is made up of North, Central and South America. It is ONE land mass. If there had been NO "narrow neck of land" or Central America as it is known, between North and South America but only ocean, [and thus no countries like Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Panama etc], then North America would have been one continent and South America another! But because it is ONE land mass , the "Lamanites" could have spread anywhere from Canada in the North to the tip of Argentina in the South.

Lehi and his family and servants made up only about 30 people. So with intermarriage with exisitng peoples after Lehi's arrival and an indeterminate number of those original inhabitants choosing to follow Lehi's God, there is no reason why many of today's "Lamanites" could not be ancestors of some of todays native populations of North, Central and South America by virtue of the fact that some of their ancestors choose to follow Lehi's God. It does not have to be by blood lines. The fact that the Nephites were wiped out by the Lamanites could explain the problems with finding DNA, though that does not preclude finding DNA among some of today's natives at some future point.

[_gramps]

So what? The introduction was only placed in the Book of Mormon from 1981. Before that time there wasn't one. And Bruce R McConkie wasn't all that reliable in his writings - for example his book Mormon Doctrine wasn't authorised by the First Presidency when it first came out. He had to make changes to subscequent editions, because some entries were his personal views and were not in harmony with Church teachings.

One should also consider the fact that American continent is made up of North, Central and South America. It is ONE land mass. If there had been NO "narrow neck of land" or Central America as it is known, between North and South America but only ocean, [and thus no countries like Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Panama etc], then North America would have been one continent and South America another! But because it is ONE land mass , the "Lamanites" could have spread anywhere from Canada in the North to the tip of Argentina in the South.

Lehi and his family and servants made up only about 30 people. So with intermarriage with exisitng peoples after Lehi's arrival and an indeterminate number of those original inhabitants choosing to follow Lehi's God, there is no reason why many of today's "Lamanites" could not be ancestors of some of todays native populations of North, Central and South America by virtue of the fact that some of their ancestors choose to follow Lehi's God. It does not have to be by blood lines. The fact that the Nephites were wiped out by the Lamanites could explain the problems with finding DNA, though that does not preclude finding DNA among some of today's natives at some future point.

Pipe dreams are not the same as facts.

You seem to be confusing the two. Unless, that is, you have a different definition of "facts" than I have?

Don't get me wrong. Dreaming is nice. I do it a lot, too.

[_beastie]

The apologetic response I have heard and read is that Joseph Smith had a "superficial understanding" of the Book of Mormon and his personal revelations regarding the Book of Mormon people and history.

Evidently apologists believe Joseph Smith, restorer of the one and only true church, who communed personally with Nephite angels, Jesus Christ, and God himself, got it all wrong but today's apologists have got it figured out correctly. They understand what Joseph Smith did not.

What gets me is that this isn't even consistent with their other apologia, notably the loose translation theory.

Joseph Smith as idiot translator could only work if Joseph Smith was a reader, not the active translator creating the text that so many apologists favor today in order to benefit from justifying the many anachronisms as "translation artifacts".

If, as many apologists insist today, Joseph Smith was not simply reading words God provided, but rather was - in some vague, undescribed process - actively creating the text, then the Book of Mormon itself is the direct produce of Joseph Smith' understanding of the story.

So they shoot themselves in the foot. If Joseph Smith' understanding of the Book of Mormon created the text we have, then the Book of Mormon text does not support limited geography theory because Joseph Smith did not understand it in that way. So all their maneuvers to try and get the text to support their assertions are a waste of time.

It always surprises me that the apologists don't seem to realize this. But I think it's part of the ad-hoc model, just responding to individual problems without stopping to think about what it does to the larger picture.

[_harmony]

Lehi and his family and servants made up only about 30 people. So with intermarriage with exisitng peoples after Lehi's arrival and an indeterminate number of those original inhabitants choosing to follow Lehi's God, there is no reason why many of today's "Lamanites" could not be ancestors of some of todays native populations of North, Central and South America by virtue of the fact that some of their ancestors choose to follow Lehi's God. It does not have to be by blood lines. The fact that the Nephites were wiped out by the Lamanites could explain the problems with finding DNA, though that does not preclude finding DNA among some of today's natives at some future point.

Welcome, casslan. I just want to point out that there are no "facts" that support the idea of Nephites and Lamanites. So there is no "fact" that the Nephites were wiped out by the Lamanites.

We deal with facts a bit differently than we do legends and myths here. And we deal with lies quite harshly.