TBM's: Killer blow to the Book of Mormon?

[_The Nehor]

What would TBM's consider to be a "killer blow" to the Book of Mormon?

God telling me he was just kidding.

God being unwilling to clarify what I thought He had allready told me was my choking point. A couple of years ago I began to ask God, "are you serious?". Evidently He had nothing to say. So either He's too embarrassed to fess up or it wasn't Him in the first place.


Nehor,

For God's sakes, make sure you offer to shake his hand. I mean, how in the world would you really know otherwise??

I would but the angels don't come with every revelation. Either that or they're hiding in my closet and mocking my interior design skills. I suspect the latter.

[_guy sajer]

Easy answer: NOTHING.

Historians could unearth a verfied affidavit written and signed by Joseph Smith himself saying he made the whole thing up and Charity (and her ilk) whould still claim there was no killer blow and that the evidence was with them.

If you've ever seen "Life of Brian," it's a bit like that--"how would you like us to f*** off Master?"

[_dartagnan]

Mormon apologists for the most part, will never believe a killer blow can exist. Pacman over at FAIR said this exact thing when someone asked the TBMs what kind of evidence could there be to dissuade them from the Church's truth claims. He said point blank, "no amount of evidence." He was later compelled to go back and remove it because it was so telling. It pretty much proved the apologetic position was not grounded in reason. It was grounded in feelings. Nothing concrete that we know we know can get in the way of what a TBM feels he knows.

DCP knew this would appear intellectually bankrupt so he offered some unlikely scenario. He said if an affidavit were uncovered signed by Joseph Smith, which said the LDS Church was just a prank the whole time, then that would be enough to convince him. But I don't believe an authenticated statement like this would really do the trick. He would probably rationalize how Satan had temporarily been able to take hold of the "Prophet" in order to test the future saints. He would dedicate a dozen FARMS reviewers to tackle the subject for at least a decade while waiting to "find out all the facts" before drawing the obvious conclusion.

After all, it is what the spirit says that counts right? All physical evidence is irrelevant. It can only serve to strengthen testimonies, never destroy them.

God telling me he was just kidding.

Can you differentiate between self-induced feelings and whatever it is that you think "comes" from God?
Once I realized that it was impossible for me to do so, that pretty much threw a killer blow to one of my favorite apologetic lines. Ultimately it is circular reasoning anyway. It is from God. How do you know? Because the missionaries say good feelings wil be from God.

I mean even if you do hear voices in your head how do you know it is from God? Because the LDS missionaries tell us so and we believe it because we want to. Confirmation bias and a social need for acceptance helps us blind ourselves to the fact that we have been hearing voices and feeling feelings like these all our lives. We just didn't have anyone explain to us where they came from, from an objective, biological point of view. Nothing about the Mormon testimony cannot be rationally explained via science. Nothing.

The emotion factor is generally considered a mystery for humans and the LDS fairy tale version of it all makes many feel like, "Yea, wouldn't it be cool if that were true"? So once they have convinced themselves that their self-induced feelings of goodness is actuallyGod's way of "confirming" whatever it is the missionaries told them, it is all downhill from there.

The LDS manage to baptize the ignorant for the most part. I have had TBMs tell me flat out that they probably wouldn't have joined the church if they knew certain things, especially about the Book of ABraham. And the Church knows this too, which is why they keep the missionary discussions on a very superficial level.

This is why baptisms have taken a sharp nosedive since the internet age. People are more critically inclined and usually check up on things before swallowing the bait, hook line and sinker. Mormonism is not successful anymore for teh same reasons telemarketing scams are becoming less successful. They are forced to move to third world countries where people don't always have internet access.

[_Trevor]

Mormon apologists for the most part, will never believe a killer blow can exist. Pacman over at FAIR said this exact thing when someone asked the TBMs what kind of evidence could there be to dissuade them from the Church's truth claims. He said point blank, "no amount of evidence."

As Jonathan Z. Smith said, and I paraphrase: prophets and kings are made; they are not inherently prophets and kings. What makes them such? A community sets them apart as such.

The Book of Mormon is a sacred text because Mormons hold it as sacred. It is not sacred because an actual angel really visited Joseph Smith and gave him plates of gold bearing a real history of an actual ancient American civilization.

[_charity]

Since my name has been brought up in the thread, I suppose I should do the courteous thing and respond.

What would be a killer blow to the Book of Mormon? Nothing that men can come up with. All the arguments against the historicity are just fried froth. You can't prove a negative. You can prove that the Book of Mormon does describe a real people in a real place when archeological evidence for the place is discovered, or records are discovered and translated by *ahem* non-LDS scholars.

But all the critics can say is that to date there hasn't been any such thing discovered. Hardly a strong argument. Just recently there was a discovery in Mexico city that changed some of the "known" facts about the Aztecs. The whole point of scientific discovery is that it keeps happening. It never is finished.

But the real problem is that when you have a witness from God, it is very hard to deny. Some people do, as witnessed here on this thread even. "Reinterpret their experience" is what some have called it. There are two possiblities. One--the person really is denying the Holy Ghost, which is a very serious thing to do because they know they are doing it. There is no question. That, of course, wouldn't be what they told us. Or else they had some experience they had labeled "the witness of the Spirit" but it wasn't, so it isn't that hard to rethink.

[_solomarineris]

In another thread, charity, described various reasons why she thinks the critic's are not "winning", I suppose you could say, and she wrote about not seeing any "killer blows" to the Book of Abraham. I posed this question to charity in the existing thread but now I'm curious.

What would TBM's consider to be a "killer blow" to the Book of Mormon?

For some it is "No Amount of Evidence".
But there is a catch; Traditional Hierarchy generation after generation introduced Book of Mormon as a literal, historical facts and proselyting success spread faster then wildfire.
Now that the bottom is falling out faster than Church ever imagined, they don't seem to make any major changes.
It will be truly sad to see bare & empty truth someday.
Personally I am extremely glad that I am not in charge of this slow demise.
I wouldn't let it happen. I am not saying I would be definitely successful, I am saying the least I could do is go down fighting

[_dartagnan]

What would be a killer blow to the Book of Mormon? Nothing that men can come up with.

I rest my case.

This is the antithesis of reason.

[_beastie]

DCP knew this would appear intellectually bankrupt so he offered some unlikely scenario. He said if an affidavit were uncovered signed by Joseph Smith, which said the LDS Church was just a prank the whole time, then that would be enough to convince him. But I don't believe an authenticated statement like this would really do the trick. He would probably rationalize how Satan had temporarily been able to take hold of the "Prophet" in order to test the future saints. He would dedicate a dozen FARMS reviewers to tackle the subject for at least a decade while waiting to "find out all the facts" before drawing the obvious conclusion.

I was thinking of the EXACT same thread, Kevin. I remember it well. I had long been saying to the apologists that their current defense of the Book of Mormon effectively rendered it unfalsifiable. Of course they deny this is so, because to admit that their defenses were tantamount to rendering the book, as an historically ancient text, unfalsifiable would be as good as admitting they were engaging in pseudo-science. And yet, this was all DCP could come up with.

This is what amazes me - you have a text that is supposedly a document originating from ancient Mesoamerica, and NOTHING - no amount of information about ancient Mesoamerica - could falsify the text???? Amazing.

And the utter hubris of believers who insist that they KNOW - not just have faith but KNOW - that God told them it's "true", and therefore, NOTHING can falsify it except further information from GOD - never fails to take my breath away.

[_Trevor]

And the utter hubris of believers who insist that they KNOW - not just have faith but KNOW - that God told them it's "true", and therefore, NOTHING can falsify it except further information from GOD - never fails to take my breath away.

This statement may apply well to the apologists, but do you really think that hubris is the right word for the average believer who has simply been taught to use the word "know" in this way? For them the whole thing is about divine witness, and they generally don't study ancient history to verify or challenge their position.

[_Mercury]

Since my name has been brought up in the thread, I suppose I should do the courteous thing and respond.

What would be a killer blow to the Book of Mormon? Nothing that men can come up with. All the arguments against the historicity are just fried froth. You can't prove a negative. You can prove that the Book of Mormon does describe a real people in a real place when archeological evidence for the place is discovered, or records are discovered and translated by *ahem* non-LDS scholars.

But all the critics can say is that to date there hasn't been any such thing discovered. Hardly a strong argument. Just recently there was a discovery in Mexico city that changed some of the "known" facts about the Aztecs. The whole point of scientific discovery is that it keeps happening. It never is finished.

But the real problem is that when you have a witness from God, it is very hard to deny. Some people do, as witnessed here on this thread even. "Reinterpret their experience" is what some have called it. There are two possiblities. One--the person really is denying the Holy Ghost, which is a very serious thing to do because they know they are doing it. There is no question. That, of course, wouldn't be what they told us. Or else they had some experience they had labeled "the witness of the Spirit" but it wasn't, so it isn't that hard to rethink.

Wow, unfalsifiable evidence. Can I buy some pot from you?