And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

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Philo Sofee
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Philo Sofee »

doubtingthomas wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:23 am
Philo Sofee wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 1:23 am
This is singularly the most massive wipe out, the nuclear clearing of Mormon apologetics on Nahom anywhere in print. THANKS for that link man!!!
Can you do a video about that?
I most certainly can and WILL. I have been intending to anyway since Jenkins deserves applause for decades, and now this follow up also. It is a bit to wade through and get prepared, and at the moment I am researching and putting together an absolute spanking of Kerry Muhlestein's recent 2016 (in Hale's book "A Reason for Faith") attempt to yet again lie like a bat out of hell show there is every reason to believe in the Book of Abraham.
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by doubtingthomas »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:40 am
doubtingthomas wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:23 am


Can you do a video about that?
I most certainly can and WILL. I have been intending to anyway since Jenkins deserves applause for decades, and now this follow up also. It is a bit to wade through and get prepared, and at the moment I am researching and putting together an absolute spanking of Kerry Muhlestein's recent 2016 (in Hale's book "A Reason for Faith") attempt to yet again lie like a bat out of hell show there is every reason to believe in the Book of Abraham.
Sounds good.
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Philo Sofee
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Philo Sofee »

doubtingthomas wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:41 am
Philo Sofee wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:40 am

I most certainly can and WILL. I have been intending to anyway since Jenkins deserves applause for decades, and now this follow up also. It is a bit to wade through and get prepared, and at the moment I am researching and putting together an absolute spanking of Kerry Muhlestein's recent 2016 (in Hale's book "A Reason for Faith") attempt to yet again lie like a bat out of hell show there is every reason to believe in the Book of Abraham.
Yes please.
Will be my delightful pleasure to do so as quickly as possible. I have spent the majority of my afternoon/evening re-reading many of Ritner's articles, and H. Michael Marquardt's materials, as well as Gee's and Muhlestein's. The Lord hath delivered Muhlestein into my hands, I shall decapitate his argument in tomorrow's video, then get right to work on Nahom.
Lem
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael least died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Lem »

A great explanation of how apologetics -or, at least, Mopologetics works, especially in this “NHM” case:
But that is the nature of apologetics. You start out with the first dubious argument. Then a problematic but possibly related claim comes along. Suddenly the apologist community assumes the first apologetic is fact and only pretends it needs to defend the second.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... m/hgw53y9/
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Lem »

This was posted on Reddit, and credited as a Facebook post from Bokovoy:

So, no. This is not a significant discovery for the Book of Mormon, and honestly, even if the marker said, “Ishmael from Jerusalem: This marker was carved by Nephi the son Lehi,” this would still not change the fact that the Book of Mormon anachronistically relies upon biblical texts known to Joseph Smith, but which did not exist at the time the Book of Mormon uses them, nor would it change the fact that the Book of Mormon anachronistically presents a view of Christianity that historically evolved much later in history, and that the entire Book of Mormon narrative reflects a 19th century racist view of indigenous origins. So even if that actual Nephite marker existed, the text itself would still not be historically reliable as an ancient account.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... d_ishmael/
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by drumdude »

Lem wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 10:46 pm
This was posted on Reddit, and credited as a Facebook post from Bokovoy:

So, no. This is not a significant discovery for the Book of Mormon, and honestly, even if the marker said, “Ishmael from Jerusalem: This marker was carved by Nephi the son Lehi,” this would still not change the fact that the Book of Mormon anachronistically relies upon biblical texts known to Joseph Smith, but which did not exist at the time the Book of Mormon uses them, nor would it change the fact that the Book of Mormon anachronistically presents a view of Christianity that historically evolved much later in history, and that the entire Book of Mormon narrative reflects a 19th century racist view of indigenous origins. So even if that actual Nephite marker existed, the text itself would still not be historically reliable as an ancient account.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... d_ishmael/
Whenever someone makes a comment like this about the totality of the evidence pointing towards Mormonism as a fraud, apologists just say "that is all disputed by LDS academics."

It's never going to be possible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mormonism is false, or Scientology is false, or that 9/11 wasn't an inside job. What we can do, however, is show Mormons that the odds of their religion being true are the same as Scientology being true, or the 9/11 conspiracy being true. Kyler has done a great job of showing how poorly apologists respond to that argument.
Lem
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Lem »

I found this exchange from reddit, discussing Bokovoy's comment, to be very interesting:
TruthIsAntiMormonSpirit:

I disagree a bit with Bokovoy here. If there was an undeniable proven stele that said "“Ishmael from Jerusalem: This marker was carved by Nephi the son Lehi" found on the Arabian peninsula that could be proven to be dated from around 600BC in a form of egyptian, that would be a smoking gun IMHO for the Book of Mormon where the anachronisms, although problems, would have to have other explanations for their existence (meaning perhaps Joseph Smith was given the plates, read the whole book with his magic specs, screwed up the 116 pages and God took the plates away permanently so Joseph wrote what he remembered reading was the basic 'gist' of the actual plates but added his own anachronisms. etc. In other words, Joseph remembered the character names but made up the stories and details).

It wouldn't erase the anachronisms, but it would open the door to Nephi and Lehi and Ishmael being actual people that existed instead of being the current Fictional Characters that they, by the evidence, are.

[–]ImTheMarmotKing:

In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella which described an ocean liner named the Titan hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic one April and sinking, leading to devastation, as there weren't enough lifeboats.

Fourteen years later, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, and sank, leading to devastation, as there weren't enough lifeboats.

Some claimed he must have been some kind of seer. But the author offered a much duller analysis; it was just a coincidence.

If we were to compile an exhaustive list of problems for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, it would likely be a list in the four digits. To interpret the Book of Mormon as historical would require our entire view of history to be radically wrong. Why, then, would we take a single find like this hypothesized rock, and reinterpret everything else in light of it? Wouldn't we be more likely to interpret the new find in light of all the other evidence?

The coincidence of such a rock is comparable to the coincidence of the Titanic. Lehi and Ishmael are biblical names. Nephi is adapted from biblical terms (Nephilim). So such a coincidence would not be unexplainable without reworking every other piece of evidence to make room for it. That's what Bokovoy is saying.
IamIamSuperman:

Sounds like apologetics to me.
ImTheMarmotKing:

The exact opposite, actually.

Apologetics is premised on motivated reasoning. Choosing a position, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and interpreting all evidence through that privileged set of beliefs anyway.

I'm advocating the opposite - I'm reminding people that even if such an incredible coincidence arrived, the mountain of evidence in the other direction would still be overwhelming. The only way a single data point like that could possibly overturn or even threaten an overwhelming body of evidence like that is by privileging traditional beliefs about the Book of Mormon to an incredible degree. It only seems reasonable to you because we've spent our whole lives in a bubble where that privileging is taken for granted. Doubly so that you claiming that my treating the evidence in sum rather then giving disproportionate weight to a single piece of evidence somehow shakes out to "apologetics." Take this hypothetical to a scientific community with no vested interest in Mormonism, and it's not even a hard question.

Of course, this is hypothetical particularly since nothing close to that level of evidence actually exists for the book of Mormons historicity, and in all probability never will.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... l/hhbspbr/
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Physics Guy »

It's not the skeptics raining mighty blows upon the Book of Mormon, as in Rasmussen's fantasy, yet doing nothing but shake off a few clods of dust. It's the apologists retreating to a new position every time a position is demolished, like Bugs Bunny building new dams for Blaque Jacque Shellacque at the end of "Wet Hare" (from about 5:30 to the end). Except that the apologists never reach an unbreachable dam like Bugs, but just keep retreating upstream, year after year. The only thing being demonstrated is how long the river is.

It's not even surprising that the apologists can keep on retreating so long without being cornered and having to give up, because the more time passes, the more time Mormon apologists have to think up new defences. So over time we've seen nothing but we'd expect: a continuing series of dodges and shifts ... plus a small accumulation of modest coincidences, which turn up at about the rate one would expect, given how many people have been keeping on looking for them, and which consistently fail to pan out on close scrutiny.
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Moksha »

Is there any way to determine if Ishmael was hot on the trail of the White Whale? What about ambergris particles in nearby soil samples?
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Re: And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom

Post by Dr Moore »

Physics Guy wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 9:41 am
The only thing being demonstrated is how long the river is.
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