Mormon Ballard and the Book of Mormon Movie

[Sledge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To3dDHDT65c

This link was posted on RfM.

My children are pretty ignorant of the Book of Mormon. We don't scripture study at home, of course.

One day, a couple of years ago, my son, who was 9 at the time, was playing at an LDS friend's house. He was there while they had to read the Book of Mormon as a family. They were reading this exact section, where Nephi slays Laban.

My son was shocked! The mother laughingly told me that when they got to that part, he said "Wow, a bit violent, isn't it?"

Also, I've always wondered how Nephi tricked the servants by wearing clothes that were covered in blood. Wouldn't that have been a big red flag? Maybe Nephi took the clothes home, washed them, then returned to Laban's house in clean robes to get the plates. Or maybe God helped Nephi out a little and caused Laban to not bleed.

I figure, if God tells you to smite the head off someone with a sword, run the other way (or get psychiatric help). Swords are hard to come by nowadays, so it may not be something any of us will have to face anyway.

[_Sethbag]

Yeah, I had people on mission who started reading the Book of Mormon who stopped reading it at this section and gave it back, explaining that they couldn't believe something like that came from God. I recall at the time trying to defuse their arguments with platitudes about how it was God, so even if I don't understand it, it must have been right, but for some reason that simply didn't help. Now I can look back on conversations like that and sort of see myself the way these investigators were seeing me. And I'm not pleased. I'm disappointed that I was "faithful" enough to buy into such a crappy story, and such a crappy justification for it. The Laban story just doesn't work too well.

I agree with the admonition to run for psychiatric help should anyone ever believe that God is telling them to kill someone. Just remeber the Laffertys, if you need any more reminder of how this goes down.

Also, I thought it was kind of funny that the voice Nephi heard in that movie clip commanded him to do it "in the name of the Lord." Wasn't that voice supposed to be the Lord? Why would the Lord have to command someone by referencing his own name in the 3rd person?

[_asbestosman]

Maybe the Book of Mormon and Bible are OK despite violence because thare aren't considered entertainment?

Also, I've always wondered how Nephi tricked the servants by wearing clothes that were covered in blood. Wouldn't that have been a big red flag? Maybe Nephi took the clothes home, washed them, then returned to Laban's house in clean robes to get the plates. Or maybe God helped Nephi out a little and caused Laban to not bleed.

Maybe Nephi was a vampire and sucked Laban's blood first. Either that, or maybe Nephi derobed Laban before beheading him. Either that or Laban derobed himself while he was drunk and Nephi just picked up the clothes that were lying there on the side.

[_Sethbag]

Maybe Nephi was a vampire and sucked Laban's blood first. Either that, or maybe Nephi derobed Laban before beheading him. Either that or Laban derobed himself while he was drunk and Nephi just picked up the clothes that were lying there on the side.

Where there's a will (to make it work), there's a way. :-)

ps: I realize you were at least half-joking, but seriously, you gotta wonder at how the apologists and those who seek to defend the church always have to come up with these "maybe this happened, or maybe it was this other thing, or perhaps..." when trying to explain something ludicrous or non-faith promoting. At some point, don't people look around and ask themselves, why am I having to try so hard to find ways to make this work?

[_barrelomonkeys]

Interesting youtube video. Thanks for sharing that Always Thinking

[_The Dude]

At some point, don't people look around and ask themselves, why am I having to try so hard to find ways to make this work?

If they are regular church goers then they should know why they have to try so hard: it's supposed to be hard to excuse because that forces you to exercise faith. Why, Larry Poulsen, a retired PhD over on MAD, said so this morning that Mormon left out important details when he abridged the Nephite record because...

If he had included too many potentially provable facts, there would be no need for an exercise of faith in the message of the book.

It's shocking to me that a guy who has probably reviewed over a thousand biochemistry manuscripts in his career can suspend critical thinking when it comes to this topic only. Why is that a god-worthy trait?

[_Runtu]

At some point, don't people look around and ask themselves, why am I having to try so hard to find ways to make this work?

If they are regular church goers then they should know why they have to try so hard: it's supposed to be hard to excuse because that forces you to exercise faith. Why, Larry Poulsen, a retired PhD over on MAD, said so this morning that Mormon left out important details when he abridged the Nephite record because...

If he had included too many potentially provable facts, there would be no need for an exercise of faith in the message of the book.

It's shocking to me that a guy who has probably reviewed over a thousand biochemistry manuscripts in his career can suspend critical thinking when it comes to this topic only. Why is that a god-worthy trait?

I thought your response was spot-on: faith as conspiracy theory. :)

[_silentkid]

Also, I thought it was kind of funny that the voice Nephi heard in that movie clip commanded him to do it "in the name of the Lord." Wasn't that voice supposed to be the Lord? Why would the Lord have to command someone by referencing his own name in the 3rd person?

Maybe The Lord is like Snoop Dogg or Chad Johnson (old ocho cinco) and feels empowered by talking about himself in the third person?

[_karl61]

somehow the Book of Mormon came up in a conversation with a friend and he said "yea, remember that ne"F"e and the number he did. I said who? then I said you mean nephi cutting the head off of laban. he said yea!. It's interesting/funny that Event is the only thing he remembered about the Book of Mormon. They really need Quentin Tarantino to direct that slaying of Laban in the movie.

[_Sethbag]

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins discussed some moral impulses that people seem to have irrespective of whether they are believers in religion. He talked about some studies that have been done where people were asked questions in ethical dilemas.

In one question, there's a trolly car with 5 people on it that is out of control and you see there's a track disruption up ahead and it's sure to derail and kill the five people onboard. You see that there's a siding that you can divert the trolly onto, but there's a guy standing on the tracks on this siding and he'll be killed if you divert the trolly onto it. So, is it OK to divert the trolly onto the siding and kill the man there? Most people said yes, it's ok, regardless of whether they believed in a religion or not.

They then asked another question, which is almost the same thing in concept, but differs in a crucial way. Five patients are in the hospital, and are about to die if they can't get some critical organ transplant. Somehow it is discovered that there's a man sitting in the waiting room whose organs would all be a match for these five patients. Is it OK to seize the man and kill him, and take his organs to save the five other people? Most people answered no, whether they had a religion or not.

The crucial difference here seems to be that most people find it ethically OK to do something that accidentally kills one person if doing so will save more people, but people have an ethical block against the idea of purposefully killing a person in order to use them, against their will, to save more people. Even if death is certain for that person in both cases, there's a difference in peoples' minds between the death being incidental and unfortunate, and the death being specifically used on purpose. I'll have to go look up the description Dawkins used, because it sounds better than my retelling of it, but you get the idea hopefully.

It's interesting to think about this Laban story now, with this in mind. Would you all agree with me that Laban's story is more like the second case, and less like the first? That Laban's death wasn't just incidental, but in fact Laban was specifically killed in order to achieve the "greater good" of the people who would not dwindle in unbelief?

ps: IMHO the biggest defense, besides "the Lord commanded him" to the slaying of Laban, was reminding people that Laban had ripped off the family treasure, and had his guards chase off Nephi and his brothers and potentially kill them. It's as if hey, Laban deserves it. This may have worked back in the 1800s in frontier people, who would hang cattle rustlers and people who committed adultery and whatnot. The thing is, our current social mores don't support the death penalty for something like theft or fraud, so people have a hard time justifying Laban's murder the way they used to.