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Mormonicious wrote:All these speculations about the Historical data disproving the Book of Mormon is grasping at straws.

After all, "among" makes it possible.

The more that is found, the more it is POSSIBLE that the Nephites and Lamanites and other ites were there, not prevalent, but just "among" like the remnants of the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel.

Only if you forget the whole inspiration and point of the Book of Mormon. Since the 1600s American colonists were speculating that the natives they encountered were lost tribes of Israel. The Book of Mormon was presented as positive confirmation of the guess, and Mormon apostles were preaching imminent end times, pursuing native women so that they could produce the "white and delightsome" predicted seed.

Water Dog wrote:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261

Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications.

The landscape, near already-known Maya cities, is thought to have been home to millions more people than other research had previously suggested.

Is this the nail in coffin moment for Sorensens work?

How does this information counter Book of Mormon claims exactly? What am i missing? New Mormon apologetics has made Book of Mormon claims so nebulous and malleable plus theyve removed the meaning of words so that nothing means what it says so that that book can still be true and yet have taken place anywhere. So how does this impact current Book of Mormon apologetics?

Craig Paxton wrote: So how does this impact current Book of Mormon apologetics?

Asked and answered. See my post above.

It's so predictable.

There's a very simple apologetic logic that goes:

Scientists are still discovering new things. That means they could discover things that confirm my religious beliefs. Checkmate, people who say science makes my religious beliefs unlikely to be true.

This story, and any story like it, quickly gets fed into that line of thinking.

EAllusion wrote:There's a very simple apologetic logic that goes:

Scientists are still discovering new things. That means they could discover things that confirm my religious beliefs. Checkmate, people who say science makes my religious beliefs unlikely to be true.

This story, and any story like it, quickly gets fed into that line of thinking.

Yes it does, and the flaw is coming from ignoring the probabilities and going only with possibilities. It really IS possible that Yeti, Bigfoot, or whatever you want to call it exists. It is the basis of Meldrum's committing intellectual suicide over taking it so serious. It is not wrong to take it serious. It is wrong to take it serious when the probability is so low. It is also entirely possible, I mean entirely possible that I will win the lottery 18 times in a row. But I don't play. Because the probability says to me, dude use your money for someone in actual need, don't give it away to an organization that doesn't need it. Give it to a better cause because you won't live the 134,296,356,499,306,256,734,009,103,356,222,100,798,456,546,348,777,121,309,916 years to make that very miniscule probability a reality, even though it is possible, eventually.

Craig wrote:So how does this impact current Book of Mormon apologetics?

One of the apologist arguments is that the exaggerations in the Book of Mormon, in particular the large armies, is proof that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text because ancient texts exaggerate these things (make the empire look more powerful etc).

Now that it has been discovered that the civilizations at this time really were this big, the Book of Mormon fails to hit the mark of an exaggerated text and thus has lost all credibility as an ancient text.

The discovery at once proves the Book of Mormon to be a work of fraud. Game over.

Gadianton wrote:

Craig wrote:So how does this impact current Book of Mormon apologetics?

One of the apologist arguments is that the exaggerations in the Book of Mormon, in particular the large armies, is proof that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text because ancient texts exaggerate these things (make the empire look more powerful etc).

Now that it has been discovered that the civilizations at this time really were this big, the Book of Mormon fails to hit the mark of an exaggerated text and thus has lost all credibility as an ancient text.

The discovery at once proves the Book of Mormon to be a work of fraud. Game over.

Ha, yes! I remember that one from a year or two ago. Of course, that will be set aside and forgotten in favor of this.

I welcome the excitement that believers will no doubt have in this find, because it allows for some responses showing how Mayans still don’t begin to equal Nephites/Lamanites.

Not that I ascribe to the “Heartland model” of the Book of Mormon, or any model for that matter, but I offer a one-word rebuttal for the Mesoamerican model of Book of Mormon geography... Zelph!

https://weirdalma.bandcamp.com/track/zelph

Let me know when they find a lost Nephite city. I won’t wait up.

Water Dog wrote:Jokes aside, we now literally have aerial photographs of ancient american civilizations. Mountains and mountains of data which describes a civilization that severely at odds with the Book of Mormon narrative. I'm just waiting for someone to write a decent book, something like Guns Germs Steel, that puts things in context and paints a picture of what those civilizations were really like.

There is mountains of data, there are papers by full time archeologists that show who these people were and how they lived. There are Museums full of tangible evidences of who these people were.

Mopology however ignores what evidence is available, to build a narrative on...and chooses to concentrate on possibilities...basically an "emperors new clothes" mentality.

Some years ago I spent some time e-mailing working archeologists in Mesoamerica and asked them questions about the Book of Mormon and what they are finding...and I received some very interesting feed back...I posted some of them here. It would be interesting to follow up on those with the current LIDAR finding and see what they have to say.

A common comment from some of the archeologists that responded to me was that "mopologists" were racists in that they discredit the Mayans and other Mesoamerican people as being capable to accomplish what they did.

For anyone interested that missed these e-mails the first time I posted them, the last link is really a good one.

I can admit now in the last link, that I edited it to make "him" a "her" in that I was not sure that he would want me posting this publicly. He was actually in the field in Mesoamerica, and enjoyed the conversation as something to do a night.

Also at the time, I was managing on a project, and while digging a plumbing trench discovered what turned out to be a 9000 plus year old burial of a full skeleton. It gets complicated after that in that it was an Native American burial site on university property, and protected from the university that he worked at, and there was a potential legal battle pending as to rights for the body that I discovered. In the end the University lost and did not get to examine the body, although it cost then half a million dollars or more to exhume.They had to pay for private independent archeologist under the control of NA monitors, and delays to the project.

At any rate we discussed it in confidence on both sides in that I could have got in trouble for discussing it while the excavation was underway.

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Markk wrote:http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30228

Wow, that last one really drove home how the secular academic community views Mormonism.

This was a really good blast from the past. Thanks for sharing.

- Doc