The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

[_zerinus]

I am quite grounded in my Mr. Potato Head fantasy and you are grounded in your Book of Mormon fantasy. The difference is Hasbro created Mr. Potato Head and is real. Your Book of Mormon fantasy is as made up and as imaginary as the Golden Plates.

Saiz Mr. Potato Head! What Potato Head saiz doesn’t count!

[_I have a question]

Mormonthink does a much better job than Callister at summarizing the arguments for the book being man-made...

The most important point the critics make concerning the writing of the Book of Mormon deals with the possible, the plausible and the probable which can be summarized by this question: What is more probable, that Joseph Smith wrote the book or that a divine being showed a treasure-hunting Joseph of 14 the location of golden plates and then through supernatural use of a scrying with rock in a hat those plates revealed a completely unknown civilization (traces of which still cannot be found)? Critics believe that Occam's razor be used to rule out option 2.

However, this page addresses some additional concerns. First, translation of the Book of Mormon did not take place in less than three months; it spanned a time period of over a year and Joseph may have been working on the text for years before the date reported as when he started.[4] Second, the "most correct of any book on earth" has undergone more than 3,000 textual and grammatical corrections.[5] Some of these corrections included significant changes in doctrine. Third, a large portion of the Book of Mormon simply quotes the Bible, including translation errors unique to the King James Version. Fourth, stories in the Book of Mormon directly parallel stories from Joseph's life, such as his father's dream of the tree of life when Joseph was five years old.[6] Fifth, the Book of Mormon is no more complicated than other works of fiction, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and related works. Finally, the ideas in the Book of Mormon bear strong parallels to ideas popular in New England at the time and several other books. Sixth, Joseph may have had help.

[_Lemmie]

Really my only contention is that it seems a bit silly to suggest Elder Callister tackled the authorship question when he took (at best) no more than a cursory glance at the arguments and compiled them in the manner he did....

ETA: I see, just a few posts back, IHAQ did an excellent job highlighting why the way this argument was presented reads as rather disingenuous.

you noticed that, too, Xenophon? He's also asked a key question a number of times:

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

Here, see if you can find it....
God-Given or Man-Made?

You're looking at this entirely backwards.
The starting point is to assess if the "God-Given" arguments hold water.
If they don't then, by default it's Man-Made.

So, the arguments for the Book of Mormon being God-Given, what are they?

He's not genuinely attempting to explore the idea that the Book of Mormon could be man-made. He's trying to make sure his audience don't explore it.

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

Ihaq's question has been carefully ignored, because if it were addressed, it would expose the disingenuous process being attempted.

Another way to look at this process:

the speaker postulates A (god-given)
then he states others can only disprove A using 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (his definitions, types of man-made).
the OP then says others have to prove one and only one of the 5,
and if not,
then A is proven true.

It's just a twist on saying that the OP doesn't have to prove the Book of Mormon is true, others have an obligation to prove it is not true.

Nlot only that, it adds the illogical stipulation that not only is authorship the only question to address in the proof (note OP's assertion it's primary), but that others can ONLY choose from one of the OP's stipulated, poorly and illogically expressed five, and nothing else.

As Themis noted,

The article you posted was horrible and simple minded. It lacked facts and reasonable logic. In many ways it is the old you cannot show exactly how it was done so it must be magic. Magicians today do it for entertainment, but in the past they did it to gain power, resources, women, and followers. All of which Joseph did.

No wonder the OP wants this "proof" process to be the only one followed. It violates so many rules of logical discourse that it amounts to nothing more than a hollow exercise in disingenuousness and intellectual dishonesty.

It does, however, seem to answer honorentheos' question as to why post this talk at all. This disingenuous method of arguing is nothing new to the OP. Callister's talk fits his style perfectly.

[_mentalgymnast]

Then we have nothing further to share/communicate with each other about on this topic. I realize that at some point we're going to part ways. This seems to be that juncture/place.

Translation: Just like Z, MG is incapable of addressing the argument.

We are coming from different starting points/assumptions. I don't see how we can really get around that. If you believed in a creator/God, we would have a common starting point. We're not even on the same planet, so to speak. We're not starting on the same page. It doesn't take us long to find that we're talking past each other.

I could say to you that you're incapable of addressing the argument(s) from the point of view of there being a creator/God. You're asking me to take God out of the picture.

Unfair? Loading the bases? Stacking the deck?

You seem to want to control the discussion in the sense that you would like a creator/God to be out of the discussion and/or not part of the picture...or at least irrelevant to the picture that we can only observe/see through the natural senses. I can't do that. So from that perspective you're right, I am not willing to and am incapable of looking at those things which we are discussing without holding open the 'God option'.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

You still have it wrong.

I don't believe I do. As I've said, I think that the Book of Mormon's provenance is primary to the discussion. Above everything else.

I see that you chose to ignore my inquiries in regards to Jacob 5.

Any thoughts on the provenance of that chapter in the Book of Mormon? Or is this...as you were saying earlier in regards to something else I interjected into the discussion... "irrelevant"?

Regards,
MG

[_Goya]

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

[_I have a question]

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

Here, see if you can find it....
God-Given or Man-Made?

You're looking at this entirely backwards.
The starting point is to assess if the "God-Given" arguments hold water.
If they don't then, by default it's Man-Made.

So, the arguments for the Book of Mormon being God-Given, what are they?

He's not genuinely attempting to explore the idea that the Book of Mormon could be man-made. He's trying to make sure his audience don't explore it.

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

Anything MG? Anything from Callister? Anything at all?

Try an easier one, how do you know it's not Satan-Given in an attempt to deflect people from joining the true Church of Seventh Day Adventists?

[_zerinus]

Mormonthink does a much better job than Callister at summarizing the arguments for the book being man-made...

You and the rest of the critics keep missing the boat on this one. It is not the job of the Church to "prove" anything. It is the job of the critics to "prove" their case. When they fail, the truth of the authorship claims of the Book of Mormon is established by default.

[_I have a question]

Mormonthink does a much better job than Callister at summarizing the arguments for the book being man-made...

You and the rest of the critics keep missing the boat on this one. It is not the job of the Church to "prove" anything. It is the job of the critics to "prove" their case. When they fail, the truth of the authorship claims of the Book of Mormon is established by default.

You appear to be exactly wrong.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philoso ... n_of_proof

Shifting the burden of proof
One way in which one would attempt to shift the burden of proof is by committing a logical fallacy known as the argument from ignorance. It occurs when either a proposition is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proved false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proved true.

Russell's teapot
Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy, coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion.[1] He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong. Russell's teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, and in various other contexts.

[_spotlight]

He is not trying to. His objective is to demolish the arguments of the critics against it. When all the arguments of the critics against it are destroyed, the truth of the authorship claim of the Book of Mormon is established by default.

No it's not. Chap summarized why way back on the 1st page of this thread:

The apologetic tactic works like this:

(a) Suggest that there is something about the Book of Mormon that is hard to explain by normal means.
(b) Having done (a), suggest that 'God did it' solves the problem.

The arguments for (a) are usually (shall we say) open to criticism. But leaving that aside, the leap to (b) involves introducing a completely undefined and inexplicable factor, whose very existence and logical coherence is open to doubt.

At the very least if we were to accept the existence of a god we should be open as well to the existence of the adversary of god and then the explanation can be the adversary did it. So god did it is not the only option by default.

Someone online once remarked to me that the first order of business in dealing with Mormons is teaching them how to think. He was right. The conversion process teaches people to think incorrectly after which they are trapped in a box, the key to which lies outside the box.