DiscussMormonism.com

Trollbin wrote:

Manetho wrote:I'm no fan of the Bible, but its origins are more complex than being simply "made up." It's a collection of myths, nationalistic founding legends, folktales, sermons, prophecies, prayers, and proverbs, as well as heavily biased but loosely accurate accounts of real history. And it's the product of dozens of authors over the course of centuries. I haven't read the Book of Mormon, but if it is the product of one or two authors working in the 1820s—and nobody outside Mormonism seems to think it's too complex for that—then it must be much less diverse in content and style than the Bible. There's more room in the Bible to find something inspiring, simply because it's so diverse.

So you just confirmed what I said - the Bible is a collection of made up stories. Thanks for not disputing what I said in the least.

He did dispute it. He said, "its origins are more complex than being simply "made up," and explained why. What a maroon you are, TROLLBIN.

Polygamy-Porter wrote:Just curious, when you say these things in person, does your breath smell like cow feces?

Because you are spewing lots of b***s*** here.

READ the Bible by age 7. Read or just flipped the pages?

ACTIVE in "about" five other religions AND attended four others by the time you were the age of 8.

ACTIVE as what a 5, 6, 7 year old CHILD???

Are your eyes brown? Because you are so full of s***, I'd bet they are brown.

How many times have I relayed something from my history and you people have falsely called me a liar, and then I prove you wrong, and you still won't get a clue?
I don't lie, unlike you people.

Yes, I had FULLY read the Bible every page by age 7.
And yes, by age 10 I had attended 10 different religions and been active in 5, plus the LDS Church.
And yes, I remember entirely what I saw, knew, and thought during those years.
Not everyone lives a sheltered ignorant non-reflective and lack of experience life and childhood like you.

Do I really need to find the various family's I lived with during those years, get "Testimonial Letters" just to prove you people bigoted lying jerks yet again, like I just had to recently prove I was in fact a Marine and was correct in what I said two guns looking similar (when I served)?

No, I'm not.... I have no contact or even know the names of some of those anymore.
But, I specifically remember when I read it. It was when I had the Chicken Pox, and I stayed at a neighbors for a week for whatever reason I can't remember, they taught me how to read better, since I was a little behind due to all the moving, and after that my first big book was the Bible. I was interested in truth and right, and having been in several religions already, and so I wanted to know and understand things for myself, so I read the entire Bible within a couple of months. I was then able to compare it with what I had seen and was taught in the various religions, and saw for myself that they were wrong in various ways. Then when I came upon the LDS Church, it was the only one that fit the book fully and accurately. Anyway, sometimes kids are very smart..... Not my problem if you can't comprehend that, especially for me being so. You have no idea who you're judging in your ignorance. Your "caricature" of me, just like your caricature of Mormonism and Mormons is not truth and reality.

grindael wrote:

Tobin wrote:So you just confirmed what I said - the Bible is a collection of made up stories. Thanks for not disputing what I said in the least.

He did dispute it. He said, "its origins are more complex than being simply "made up," and explained why. What a maroon you are, TROLLBIN.

Still suffering from your selective reading problem I see grindael.

Manetho wrote:I'm no fan of the Bible, but its origins are more complex than being simply "made up."

It's a collection of myths, nationalistic founding legends, folktales, sermons, prophecies, prayers, and proverbs, as well as heavily biased but loosely accurate accounts of real history. And it's the product of dozens of authors over the course of centuries. I haven't read the Book of Mormon, but if it is the product of one or two authors working in the 1820s—and nobody outside Mormonism seems to think it's too complex for that—then it must be much less diverse in content and style than the Bible. There's more room in the Bible to find something inspiring, simply because it's so diverse.

Please try to compare the underlined, bolded parts grindael! As an exercise, try reading it over and over to yourself quietly and see if you comprehend it.

ldsfaqs wrote:
Yes, I had FULLY read the Bible every page by age 7.

Reading and comprehending are two very different things.

Manetho wrote:I'm no fan of the Bible, but its origins are more complex than being simply "made up." It's a collection of myths, nationalistic founding legends, folktales, sermons, prophecies, prayers, and proverbs, as well as heavily biased but loosely accurate accounts of real history. And it's the product of dozens of authors over the course of centuries. I haven't read the Book of Mormon, but if it is the product of one or two authors working in the 1820s—and nobody outside Mormonism seems to think it's too complex for that—then it must be much less diverse in content and style than the Bible. There's more room in the Bible to find something inspiring, simply because it's so diverse.

Yes. I always laugh when apologists compare the Book of Mormon to the Bible. The Bible is an ancient text. Nobody disputes that. It's like comparing journals of WW2 veterans to a fictional WW2 story written by a 12 year old based on Call of Duty. Even atheists can read the Bible and learn about real ancient people, their culture, and their myths. WE don't know who wrote the various books of the Bible, and most if not all are more recent than they claim, but they are ancient documents written about ancient cultures. Even the horrific things in the Bible help us understand a little bit about those cultures.

sunstoned wrote:I was raised in a very LDS environment. On my mission, I read and studied both the Bible and Book of Mormon. This included reading both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon straight through multiple times. I did this to try and gain a testimony. It never happened. But I did gain an appreciation of the New Testament. For me it does have a spirit to it, along with some very Valid teachings about love and forgiveness. There is a richness there that I feel comes from multiple authors. The Book of Mormon on the other hand always seemed contrived and shallow to me. It doesn't read like an ancient text.

I will give a big Amen to that!

K

Jersey Girl wrote:

ldsfaqs wrote:
Yes, I had FULLY read the Bible every page by age 7.

Reading and comprehending are two very different things.

I comprehended just fine..... Like I said, I remember many of my thoughts about different things back then, including things stated in the scripture compared to what various religions taught. My mind was pure, objective, rather than biased.
So, I saw the actual truth, rather than accepting whatever the various religions said was the truth.

That's not all I did.... I was studying all kinds of things by that time.
I was even studying in depth religious history, the history of the Catholic and Protestant Sects for example, and those history's made more clear that I was reading the history of religions that couldn't possibly be true according to the Bible.
I wasn't your average kid.... My varied experienced life has from a young age made me very exploratory, observant, and reflective even at a very young age. I've said before, well before I was 13 I was reading the Articles rather than the Comics of Newspapers. I also liked to watched the news from a very young age. Almost no kids likes to do those things, and if they do, it's usually much older.

But, believe what you want.... you will. I guess Geniuses don't exist either?

http://www.teachthought.com/interest/th ... -all-time/

I'm not going to claim I was/am a genius of these sorts, but my knowledge and understanding for my age was in fact unprecidented.
I was told my real father could hear a song once and then play it as good or better than the original song on the Piano.
Sometimes people are gifted.... It's not a fantasy. Sometimes gifts manifest due to some sort of trauma when the brain is developing.
At the age of two, my real mother put me in a tub of hot water, and I got 3rd degree burns on my lower body.

Manetho wrote:I'm no fan of the Bible, but its origins are more complex than being simply "made up."

It's a collection of myths, nationalistic founding legends, folktales, sermons, prophecies, prayers, and proverbs, as well as heavily biased but loosely accurate accounts of real history. And it's the product of dozens of authors over the course of centuries. I haven't read the Book of Mormon, but if it is the product of one or two authors working in the 1820s—and nobody outside Mormonism seems to think it's too complex for that—then it must be much less diverse in content and style than the Bible. There's more room in the Bible to find something inspiring, simply because it's so diverse.

Please try to compare the underlined, bolded parts, Tobin.

DarkHelmet wrote:Even atheists can read the Bible and learn about real ancient people, their culture, and their myths. WE don't know who wrote the various books of the Bible, and most if not all are more recent than they claim, but they are ancient documents written about ancient cultures. Even the horrific things in the Bible help us understand a little bit about those cultures.

Exactly. The Bible is just more diverse and more sophisticated than the Book of Mormon. It represents the evolution of an entire culture over nearly a thousand years. It's possible to see the perspectives of the different authors, the contradictions where different traditions were awkwardly welded together, and the evolution of Jewish, and eventually Christian, theology over time. Lumping the Bible together with the Book of Mormon because they are both "made up" obscures a lot of important differences.

Manetho wrote:

Manetho wrote:I'm no fan of the Bible, but its origins are more complex than being simply "made up."

It's a collection of myths, nationalistic founding legends, folktales, sermons, prophecies, prayers, and proverbs, as well as heavily biased but loosely accurate accounts of real history. And it's the product of dozens of authors over the course of centuries. I haven't read the Book of Mormon, but if it is the product of one or two authors working in the 1820s—and nobody outside Mormonism seems to think it's too complex for that—then it must be much less diverse in content and style than the Bible. There's more room in the Bible to find something inspiring, simply because it's so diverse.

Please try to compare the underlined, bolded parts, Tobin.

And that is why I'm stressing reading comprehension here. I said, "the Bible is a collection of made up stories." I didn't say the Bible is ONLY a collection of made up stories. And just for your reference, the Book of Mormon also contains sermons, prophecies, prayers, proverbs, and references some historical events the same as the Bible. That was unimportant to the point I was making which you failed to comprehend.

Tobin wrote:And just for your reference, the Book of Mormon also contains sermons, prophecies, prayers, proverbs, and references some historical events the same as the Bible. That was unimportant to the point I was making which you failed to comprehend.

The point is, the Bible really is ancient. If we assume every story in the Bible is fictional, then it's a collection of ancient stories thousands of years old from various authors spanning about 1000 years. Assuming it's fictional, we can glean a lot about these ancient cultures from the Bible the same way humans 2000 years from now can learn about 20th and 21st Century america by studying our films. That is why there are secular Bible study courses in colleges across the country. The Book of Mormon is a single book written over the span of a few months in the late 1820s. We can learn a lot about Joseph Smith by reading the Book of Mormon, but we learn nothing about ancient Native Americans. The Book of Mormon is not taken seriously by secular scholars.