apolgetic strawman - the Book of Mormon as copy

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Excellent point. I believe the church at some point in the future will move to this strategy. So far they are clinging to the "Joseph was a either a prophet or a con-man" doctrine, but in order to survive they are going to have to develop an acceptable middle ground. Members in 1880 probably thought there was no way the church could drop polygamy, but they did, and it turned out to be a great decision. I'm not sure what the middle ground on the Book of Mormon will be, but the church has successfully reinvented itself for self-preservation in the past, and it can do it again.

This is really funny. We have survived for years without abandoning Joseph as a prophet. We will survive into the future as far as we need to before the Millenium comes without running away from the Book of Mormon.

Talk about a false argument. We did not "drop" polygamy. It is still practiced today. Living men may be sealed to more than one wife. I know a number who are. And I am not talking about Fundamentalists. Since we must bow to the demands of an unconstitutional law, the only qualifier is that the man may only be sealed to one living woman at a time. I don't see how anyone could say that the Church would be in trouble today if the federal government had left them alone. The modern culture accepts multiple sexual partners and even really admires those men and women who engage in those practices. Heck, by modern standards, even the most polygamous of the leaders of the church were pikers. None of the could come anywhere close to Bill Russell's claim of 10,000 sexual partners. And he is a celebrity icon.

Only time will tell of course. But you can't deny the church has been actively mainstreaming for the past 100 years. I just have a feeling they will eventually need to "mainstream" their doctrine of the Book of Mormon. They don't need to drop Joseph Smith as prophet, I never said they did, and they never will. I totally agree with you there. They can find a fuzzy middle of the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction or whatever while still maintaining Joseph was a prophet.

You really don't believe the church dropped polygamy? Do you tell that to your non-mormon friends? Most TBMs are very defensive of polygamy around non-mormons and are quick to point out the church dropped it in 1890. What about all those disclaimers that the church makes the media put on all their stories about polygamy? Like the one before Big Love: "The Mormon Church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890." So you are correct, the church did not drop polygamy, they banned it. LOL. Your comments make it look like you are a polygamy defender. Is that true? Are you closer to the FLDS than the RLDS? It can get you in trouble with the church if you defend polygamy too much. Be careful.

[_gramps]

None of the could come anywhere close to Bill Russell's claim of 10,000 sexual partners. And he is a celebrity icon.

I think you mean Wilt Chamberlain....and he claimed 20,000 partners!

(Dang...when did he have time for basketball?)

Hey, when you are that tall, you should be able to multitask, no? :)

[_charity]

Your name was not in there for the "star power", sorry to disappoint you. You have in fact advocated the ideas that I talked about. You argued that there's no way the Spaulding works serve as a basis for the Book of Mormon, because you've read them, and they're way different. The point is, are there things Spaulding wrote which Joseph and/or his helpers in writing the Book of Mormon might have adopted into his/their theology, or inspiration for the fictional story of the Book of Mormon? Does the Spaulding writing contribute to either the theological or the historical belief milieu (ie: ancient
Americans as Israelites, as a theme) that Joseph and/or his helpers drew upon in creating the Book of Mormon?

Okay. I see what you were saying. I had read the claim that the Spaulding writing had been used, while you were saying the ideas were. There is no way that the author of the Spaulding manuscript and the Book of Mormon were the same person. Unless you were to posit that when Spaulding wrote the "Manuscript Story" he was trying to write down, pretending to be a juvenile who couldn't write well, and then when he wrote another manuscript which became the Book of Mormon he was writing as an adult.

But now I see you are talking merely about borrowing ideas, not a literary piece.

Also, there are differences between the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews, but does that negate the likelihood that Joseph and/or his helpers were influenced by it, either in terms of possible theological elements, or else in helping to design the fictional story elements of the Book of Mormon?

You guys act as if all you have to do is demonstrate some differences between these works and the Book of Mormon, and the whole topic can safely be completely dismissed. You've missed the point. It may have been argued somewhere, by someone, in the past that the Book of Mormon is just a direct ripoff of one particular work, and there may still be a theory that perhaps Sidney Rigdon helped write the Book of Mormon based on a Spaulding manuscript that he stole, or whatever. Be that as it may, the common critical argument today is that the Book of Mormon is a work firmly based on 19th Century American theological and historical currents of thought, and that can be demonstrated by pointing out various contributions to that milieu which also happen to be things Joseph Smith taught, or wrote, either in the Book of Mormon, the D&C, the Book of Abraham, or whatever.

Okay. Now you can read what I wrote about correlation and causation.

[_Sethbag]

It seems to me you cite correlation between ideas in the works of Joseph Smith and ideas in ancient works on Enoch all the time. Are you admitting that the correlation is essentially meaningless?

What exactly are you claiming when you point out that someone has identified something Joseph Smith said about Enoch which was somewhat similar in nature to something someone said about Enoch anciently? Are you not implying to us all that this could only be because Joseph Smith received that knowledge through revelation?

[_dartagnan]

Thanks for my new sig line charity.

[_charity]

You really don't believe the church dropped polygamy? Do you tell that to your non-mormon friends? Most TBMs are very defensive of polygamy around non-mormons and are quick to point out the church dropped it in 1890. What about all those disclaimers that the church makes the media put on all their stories about polygamy? Like the one before Big Love: "The Mormon Church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890." So you are correct, the church did not drop polygamy, they banned it. LOL. Your comments make it look like you are a polygamy defender. Is that true? Are you closer to the FLDS than the RLDS? It can get you in trouble with the church if you defend polygamy too much. Be careful.

The doctrine of plural marriage is still the law, but only when the Lord commands it. It will be the law in the Celestial kingdom. The doctrine has not been repudiated. The practice has, and when the Lord withdraws the command the practice of it becomes sin.

I am a defender of the law of the Lord. Whatever that is. Monogamy is now the law. I defend that. When the Lord commands something different, I will defend that.

[_Runtu]

The doctrine of plural marriage is still the law, but only when the Lord commands it. It will be the law in the Celestial kingdom. The doctrine has not been repudiated. The practice has, and when the Lord withdraws the command the practice of it becomes sin.

I am a defender of the law of the Lord. Whatever that is. Monogamy is now the law. I defend that. When the Lord commands something different, I will defend that.

If the law of the Lord were sacrificing virgins to volcanoes, would you defend that?

[_SatanWasSetUp]

The doctrine of plural marriage is still the law, but only when the Lord commands it. It will be the law in the Celestial kingdom.

So the CK will be kinda like Colorado City.

The doctrine has not been repudiated. The practice has, and when the Lord withdraws the command the practice of it becomes sin. I am a defender of the law of the Lord. Whatever that is. Monogamy is now the law. I defend that. When the Lord commands something different, I will defend that.

So you defend whatever the Lord commands. And those commands come through who? The Prophet? Let's pretend the Lord commands something that seems sinful, for example polygamy. Polygamy is no longer illegal, so the Mormon prophet announces that the Lord told him that it is OK to resume doing polygamy. In fact the Stake Dances will now be for single women and all the men. Would that be cool to you? I'm just wondering because I want to understand the real attutude of a faithful mainstream Mormon toward polygamy.

[_Trevor]

It seems to me you cite correlation between ideas in the works of Joseph Smith and ideas in ancient works on Enoch all the time. Are you admitting that the correlation is essentially meaningless?

What exactly are you claiming when you point out that someone has identified something Joseph Smith said about Enoch which was somewhat similar in nature to something someone said about Enoch anciently? Are you not implying to us all that this could only be because Joseph Smith received that knowledge through revelation?

Let me spell this out for you very carefully, Sethbag. Correlation does not equal causation. When faced with copious evidence that others in Joseph Smith's time wrote books, or portions of books, that addressed the place of American natives in the Biblical world view, and then the Joseph Smith story about a treasure quest that led to the discovery of an ancient text about Hebrew Christians in BC America, it is clear that the cause Joseph Smith provides for the appearance of that text must take precedence over any correlation with other books of his time.

This must be the case in spite of the fact that we have absolutely no evidence of Hebrew Christians in Ancient America outside of the Book of Mormon. In fact, you should not expect to find any hard evidence, or correlation of any kind, with the book's purported ancient environments. But this does not matter. Remember: correlation does not equal causation. Lack of correlation of any kind is actually a virtue. Since the best documented story for the Book of Mormon in the time it came forth is the one provided by Joseph Smith, it must be the case that he was visited by an angel and given a set of gold plates that he translated with a rock in his hat.

I hope I have been of some service to you.

[_charity]

The doctrine of plural marriage is still the law, but only when the Lord commands it. It will be the law in the Celestial kingdom.

So the CK will be kinda like Colorado City.

I've been to Colorado City. I think that would be more the Protestant defintion of hell.

The doctrine has not been repudiated. The practice has, and when the Lord withdraws the command the practice of it becomes sin. I am a defender of the law of the Lord. Whatever that is. Monogamy is now the law. I defend that. When the Lord commands something different, I will defend that.

So you defend whatever the Lord commands. And those commands come through who? The Prophet? Let's pretend the Lord commands something that seems sinful, for example polygamy. Polygamy is no longer illegal, so the Mormon prophet announces that the Lord told him that it is OK to resume doing polygamy. In fact the Stake Dances will now be for single women and all the men. Would that be cool to you? I'm just wondering because I want to understand the real attutude of a faithful mainstream Mormon toward polygamy.

You evidenlty don't understand the process. When the Prophet declares the word of the Lord, the Lord expects us to have Him confirm it to us. If the Lord tells me that what the Prophet said was His will, then, yes, I would obey it.