You want to start throwing around legal terms, as if the miniscule amount of evidence for the Book of Mormon can somehow be considered a preponderance of evidence - that would convince a jury? Are you serious?
If so, I'd like to see it. It is certainly your duty if you want to claim that it's not fiction.
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...
You want to start throwing around legal terms, as if the miniscule amount of evidence for the Book of Mormon can somehow be considered a preponderance of evidence - that would convince a jury? Are you serious?
If so, I'd like to see it. It is certainly your duty if you want to claim that it's not fiction.
You can study the witnesses, their testimony and lives. If it does not convince you that is your choice. The point is that is what we have. We have the Book of Mormon, the accounts and the witnesses. That is more than your claim in simply dismissing them. If you choose to do so why do you?
But clearly it is not enough for you. Offer some other theory or evidence then.
For me I am not sure, but I have seem nothing more compelling or providing more proof than this for some other theory. What is your proof it is fiction?
Jason Bourne wrote:What is your proof it is fiction?
I don't have proof that it's fiction. You can't prove a negative like that (especially when the claims of the Book of Mormon are unfalsifiable - take the evershifting views on Book of Mormon geography for example).
However, I'm convinced it's fiction based on the lack of evidence - evidence that should be there if it weren't fiction, but isn't. In other words, show me the money.
I don't think your average LDS would disagree with me even. The only reason TBM's 'know' the Book of Mormon is 'true', is because of their 'testimony', not because of a preponderance of evidence.
WK: "Joseph Smith asserted that the Book of Mormon peoples were the original inhabitants of the americas"
Will Schryver: "No, he didn’t." 3/19/08
Still waiting for Will to back this up...
Jason Bourne wrote:You can study the witnesses, their testimony and lives.
The witnesses were all friends or family of Joseph Smith. Nobody outside his circle of influence backed him up. If it was genuine, you would think he could find more than 11 witnesses. He couldn't even find any learned to endorse his gold plate characters sample. Were they all anti-mormons? It seems if there was anything to the Book of Mormon more, and especially the Book of Abraham, relgious scholars, archeologists, history buffs, etc. from all over the world would be interested. The response to these amazing discoveries is overwhelming apathy.
Last edited by Guest on Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
"We of this Church do not rely on any man-made statement concerning the nature of Deity. Our knowledge comes directly from the personal experience of Joseph Smith." - Gordon B. Hinckley
"It's wrong to criticize leaders of the Mormon Church even if the criticism is true." - Dallin H. Oaks
Even if you are willing, which you appear, to disregard all the (in my opinion striking) connections between the Book of Mormon and 19th century New England (here is a link to dan vogel's book, now online, Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon that give more insight into some of this: http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/indian/preface.htm ) you are still left with the dilemma of finding an ancient American culture that corresponds to the description offered in the Book of Mormon. While the Book of Mormon is mainly meant to be a religious text, there are an abundance of cultural details offered that can be analyzed and compared to ancient America, particularly Mesoamerica, which apologists almost universally agree has to be the locale. If you haven't yet visited my website I invite you to do so, because I went into the very serious, fundamental contradictions and inconsistencies between the culture described in the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. This is far more serious than a superficial anachronisms that could, under the right circumstances, be excused as a translation artifact - these are very basic inconsistencies that are contextual and impossible to wave away as a translation artifact. As "sexy" and obvious as the horse or metallurgy anachronisms may be, in my view, the most serious anachronism is the proposition that the most powerful Mesoamerican polities - the very ones that set the trend for the entire area - were actually JudeoChristian. This defies all reason. The most powerful polities of ancient Mesoamerica were the ones the rest of the smaller polities COPIED. So if the most powerful were actually Judeo Christian, we would see echoes of that all over Mesoamerica. And these polities described in the Book of Mormon *had* to be the most powerful mesoamerican polities - no other polities of the time period would have the social complexity described therein.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Why in the world should we take the witnesses' testimonies seriously when notable church leaders dismissed these same witnesses as having little to no moral character?
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
beastie wrote:Why in the world should we take the witnesses' testimonies seriously when notable church leaders dismissed these same witnesses as having little to no moral character?
Didn't some of the very same witnesses also provide a similar witness for James Strang?
Regardless, I would ask Jason whether he considers the witnesses Strang produced for his ancient writings & stuff as credible, if not, why not?
The very notion that something MUST be true (or that is may very well be true) because a small group of people have "witnessed" seeing something is absurd on its face. People lie. They lie all the time. They lie for all sorts of reasons. More, people are easily duped. The evidence for this is all around us.
What about the people who have "witnessed" to alien abuductions, UFOs, Big Foot, etc., etc.. Are we therefore compelled to take their witness seriously too?
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
beastie wrote: As "sexy" and obvious as the horse or metallurgy anachronisms may be, in my view, the most serious anachronism is the proposition that the most powerful Mesoamerican polities - the very ones that set the trend for the entire area - were actually JudeoChristian. This defies all reason. The most powerful polities of ancient Mesoamerica were the ones the rest of the smaller polities COPIED. So if the most powerful were actually Judeo Christian, we would see echoes of that all over Mesoamerica. And these polities described in the Book of Mormon *had* to be the most powerful mesoamerican polities - no other polities of the time period would have the social complexity described therein.
I agree. We nitpick over horses and steel and elephants, but those are peripheral anachronisms to the main one, Christianity. Not only were the most powerful and techonologically advanced regimes Christian, but everyone was a Christian for a 300 year period after Christ came, and Christian churches dotted the land from sea to sea. This is the overriding theme of the Book of Mormon, and this overriding theme is an anachronism. It just doesn't fit with what we know about the Americas. It does however work well as a 19th century story about ancient america.
"We of this Church do not rely on any man-made statement concerning the nature of Deity. Our knowledge comes directly from the personal experience of Joseph Smith." - Gordon B. Hinckley
"It's wrong to criticize leaders of the Mormon Church even if the criticism is true." - Dallin H. Oaks
Who Knows wrote:Just because a few people say it's a 2,000 year old historically accurate book written on gold plates in an unknown language, brought to the earth by god's angel, doesn't make it so. It's a 19th century piece of fiction, till you can demonstrate otherwise. Sorry. That's just the way it is.
Sorry
It is called witnesses and a pre-preponderance of evidence. where is yours?
There are 1000's of people claiming to have seen aliens from another planet, or that have been abducted.
Do you believe them?
<No, I don't, by the way>
"What does God need with a starship?" - Captain James T. Kirk
Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch. - Robert Orben
Here's a statement with witness names attached to it. He even got his Uncle Hank to sign it, well not really sign it, but his name is printed on it. Who are we to argue with Uncle Hank?
THE TESTIMONY OF NINE WITNESSES
We want everyone in the world to know that Josh Anderson, the translator of this work, has shown unto us the ancient leather plates that were the source material which he translated from. The leather plates were in a box, and we each hefted the box, and it seemed like it had some leather plates in it! Josh also let us run our hands over the leather plates while it was covered with a towel. Josh said we couldn't look under the towel, but he unveiled a corner, and we beheld the corner of the plates were brown and had the appearance of leather. We ran our hands over the towel, and felt the leather plates through the towel, and they felt like genuine ancient leather plates. Josh described to us what the engravings looked like, and they seemed like the type of engravings Indians would use. And this we bear record, that Josh has shown unto us the box with the leather plates in it, and we have felt the leather plates through the towel, and hefted the box, and saw an actual corner of the leather plates, and we know of assurity that Josh got the leather plates the way he said he got them. We give our names unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen - we promise.
JOSH ANDERSON, SR PAT ANDERSON ASHLEY BAKER JENNY BAKER DALLIN BAKER HEBER BAKER MATT BAKER UNCLE HANK BECKY HENDERSON
"We of this Church do not rely on any man-made statement concerning the nature of Deity. Our knowledge comes directly from the personal experience of Joseph Smith." - Gordon B. Hinckley
"It's wrong to criticize leaders of the Mormon Church even if the criticism is true." - Dallin H. Oaks