Total Mormon Stupidity

[_Inconceivable]

But if in all these cases, and many more, he was only speaking as a man ...

malkie,

That is funny. God was only speaking as a man. Hilarious. Thankyou.

[_Paul Osborne]

The Nehor.

who like me, just so happens to be a member of

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Paul O

[Guest]

The title of the thread definitely leaves a lot to be desired, but the link - Wow! just Wow!

I used to think Ash was fairly level-headed. His MormonTimes stuff as of late had me re-evaluating that assessment, but this really takes the cake.

The word "horse" is clearly loan shifted, unless we can identify a pre-Columbian horse (inconclusive dates for bones are promising!) then we will tout how astoundingly accurate the book is for getting the word "horse" correct.

So many gems.

"...the Welsh cognate to the English chariot, signifies, among other things, a "dray"--which Webster's defines as "any of several wheelless land vehicles used for haulage," and for which it gives as a synonym nothing less than travois; dray is obviously cognate with the verb to drag--or a "sledge" (which term is, itself, related to words like sleigh and sled--which also plainly denote wheelless vehicles).43"

43 Daniel C. Peterson, posted 3 May 2002 at http://p094.ezboard.com/fpacumenispages ... 1&stop=100 (accessed 30 January 2008).

So the word "chariot" is so precisely translated that is hearkens back to Welsh roots for sled and not how a 19th century person would think of a chariot, but yet the worse horse is so ambiguous that it could mean any animal larger than a greyhound. And, yes as Dwight noted, a number of footnotes like this are from message boards(!)

This sounded interesting.

At least a few non-Mormon scholars believe that real horses (of a stature smaller than modern horses) may have survived New World extinction. The late British anthropologist, M.F. Ashley Montague, a non-LDS scholar who taught at Harvard, suggested that the horse never became extinct in America. According to Montague, the size of post-Columbian horses provides evidence that the European horses bred with early American horses.49

so I look to footnote 49 and get:
Paul R. Cheesman, The World of the Book of Mormon (Bountiful, UT: Horizon Publishers, 1984), 194, 181.

Aargh! The entire article looks like he never interacted with a primary source, but overwhelmingly relies on favorable interpretations of previous favorable interpretations of prior work. I wonder if I look up Cheeseman's source if I'll find Montague or Nibley citing Montague...

citation 50 was cool - a cryptozoology newsletter!
50 http://www.strangeark.com/nabr/NABR5.pdf

[_Joseph]

bemont writes: :I've tried, but I'll try again.


[ quote="name"]whatever they said[/quote ]

It is very easy."

-----------------------------------------
==========================

see bemlont, I posted what your wrote. Thanks for he help. doesn't it look nice?

As for the Title. READ THE LINK and it fits perfectly. That piece is one of the most Asinine things ever written by Mormons in trying to explain stupidity.

[_John D the First]

I don't know too much about Tapirs, or the sources this guy uses, but appealing to the concept of loan words does not seem to me too far fetched. It gets away from the unrealistic idea of an isomorphic translation and recognizes that our animal taxonomies are not eternal verities. It also beats attempts to place a horse in America at this time. The general approach will help Mormons be flexible in their acceptance of current scientific knowledge, even if it contradicts a literal interpretation of Book of Mormon language.

[_NorthboundZax]

I don't know too much about Tapirs, or the sources this guy uses, but appealing to the concept of loan words does not seem to me too far fetched. It gets away from the unrealistic idea of an isomorphic translation and recognizes that our animal taxonomies are not eternal verities. It also beats attempts to place a horse in America at this time. The general approach will help Mormons be flexible in their acceptance of current scientific knowledge, even if it contradicts a literal interpretation of Book of Mormon language.

The entire article would be better if he just cut to the chase:

Given:
- Current science and the Book of Mormon times are in conflict over the term horses in the New World in pre-Columbian times.
- The Book of Mormon is true

Therefore:
Either we shouldn't trust science on that point or else the word 'horse' means something that is not a horse without impinging any way on the 'trueness' of the book.


JD1 - if loan shifting is perfectly viable for nouns (horse = tapir/deer/whatever; steel sword = wood sword/obsidian club/whatever), how can we be sure that other nouns mean what they say? For example maybe temple really means maizeburger stand/Toucan preserve/whatever. Is that an implication you find acceptable? Any reason verbs and adjectives wouldn't also be susceptible to loan shifting?

[_Blixa]

The title of the thread definitely leaves a lot to be desired, but the link - Wow! just Wow!

I agree. I'm glad I didn't miss it. Thanks for drawing my attention to it, Simon!

[_John D the First]

JD1 - if loan shifting is perfectly viable for nouns (horse = tapir/deer/whatever; steel sword = wood sword/obsidian club/whatever), how can we be sure that other nouns mean what they say? For example maybe temple really means maizeburger stand/Toucan preserve/whatever. Is that an implication you find acceptable? Any reason verbs and adjectives wouldn't also be susceptible to loan shifting?

Good question. I'm not sure at what point you go from recognizing the ambiguities in language and communication to having a total free for all. It's the fuzziness of this line that makes the arguments kind of weak for apologetic/polemic purposes. In such contexts interlocuters strive for univocity (along with church correlation haha)... a quest that I am getting kind of peevish about.

I guess it would have to dealt with on a case by case basis. There would have to be some reasonable approximations between signifieds; and perhaps some communicative/cognitive barrier to achieving a perfect inter-subjective match between signifier and signified. I don't know enough about Tapirs to address the former, but one can quite often make a case for the latter.

In general, if the Book of Mormon corresponds to a real ancient text, I'm sure that animal nouns are only the start of approximating mismatches. If it actually read like an ancient text (like say, the Book of Jubilees) would it have reached anyone in the 19th century? Probably not. It's a weak apologetic, I know (because the gospel is supposed to be THE SAME at every time and place, and so forth)...but I'm not really out to convince anyone. I think the Book of Mormon can speak for itself as a spiritual text, however flawed.

Cheers,

j