Sethbag wrote:Stemelbow, please, with sugar on it, for your own sake, please go rent, buy, borrow, or steal a copy of
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Thanks for the reference. I own the book and have read it. I have also read Collapse by the same author. The first one was much better, but I recommend you read it if you haven’t. the collapsing of societies and their causes is quite intriguing.
If you want, also listen to the
Mormon Expression podcast on Guns, Germs, and Steel that I did with some of the other posters from this board. With all its flaws and warts, it also discussed some very interesting points, IMHO, that you should be exposed to.
I'll listen to it later. How's that? I don't mind revisiting that book at all.
Included in these points are the following:
1) Horses provided such a huge military and economic boost to every single society that's ever been documented as having them, that it has radically boosted their competitiveness with respect to their neighbors without horses, and lead to the horse-owners out-competing them
In truth as a “person of faith” I have to assume that there is information out there that we in our many efforts fail to completely grasp. Diamond covers this to some extent, as I recall. I’ll explain myself thusly: Sometimes theories are created by various sources and specialists. Once these theories are created specialists tend to work off them. Once evidence is found to bring the theories into question, then its time to revisit the premises—its time to re-evaluate what we think we know. Mr. Diamond, I believe, used the example of written language. It was maintained that written language originated in a certain time and place, but items were found that moved the written language time and place. Adjustments had to be made. I can’t remember the specifics on this, but it had something to do with a circular object found with writing on it which was dated to a much earlier time than expected. Anyway, us faith-holders have to continue with the assumption that though there are good theories and ideas concerning archaeological, geographical, and historical research, they are not the last sayings on the matter.
2) The possession of domesticated horses, cattle, sheep, the organized production of wheat, barley, and other food crops and animals, and so forth have always lead to explosions in the populations of those societies that possessed, developed, or inherited these technologies.
As I recall you are correct on this.
3) The Book of Mormon description of the Lamanites as this booming population of savages, yet due to indolence and laziness, they were not as industrious as farmers and ranchers and whatnot as the Nephites, is completely ass-backwards. If the Nephites really practiced organized agriculture and the production of wheat, barley, corn, and so forth, and raised domesticated horses, cattle, sheep, and so forth, they would have dominated the Lamanites not only technologically, and militarily, but also numerically This is exactly the opposite of what the Book of Mormon depicts.
There’s a great deal of possible complexity here, if you ask me. I don’t think the Book of Mormon depicts the Lamanites as always indolent and lazy, not prone to agricultural production, nor the domestication of animals. Nor does it always depict the Nephites as creatively productive. And in some, surely not a whole lot, there is a great deal of inter-mixing between the two groups. In the end though, I’m not expert enough to read the text with a keen enough eye to make too many more observations. In addition I admit also, I’m not expert enough to assess whether what the text depicts is very conversant with what specialists paint as reality.
The Book of Mormon simply isn't credible as a history of peoples who actually existed. Societies in ancient days, with access to food production and animal technologies as described in the Book of Mormon, reacted very, very differently in real life to how they are shown in the Book of Mormon, which shows that Smith et al. didn't really know what they were talking about.
I don’t know if I can quite buy your statement here. I’ll have to mull it over more.
Not to mention, the development of organized agriculture based on wheat, barley, and so forth, and domesticated cattle, sheep, and horses, would have been so widespread and have spread so fast throughout the area that the notion that all of these practices should have left no traces not only in archeological digs, but also on the cultures, art, and remains of the civilizations that really did exist in the ancient Americas, is outlandish, improbably, non-credible, and simply doesn't deserve to be believed.
Its outlandish because we have a perspective that we must find certain things to make conclusions regarding what the people did anciently. Well, if people did things we can’t predict, if people had things we have no knowledge of, how can we safely make all our conclusions? What if they did it in a very unpredictable way? I don’t know if that’s even a possibility but I pose the question for consideration. If I had Mr. Diamond’s ear I wouldn’t mind hearing his thoughts.
Do yourself a favor. Read more about the real world. Come to a better understanding of how things really have occurred in the history of human civilization and colonization of the Earth. It rewards itself in many ways, and in many more than just rendering the Book of Mormon mythology all the less likely really to have happened. There is a real history of humanity on Earth, that is incredibly more interesting than the made-up one foisted upon you by the likes of Joseph Smith. It is your real history as much as it is mine and everyone else's on this board. Claim it as your own, and start to learn it, and appreciate it. You don't have to keep believing the children's stories of Mormonism.
I agree it will be a benefit to me to read more. I read. I try. I am currently reading
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong. I’m only about 150 pages into it. I’m also reading, as I have time, works by both Epictetus and Seneca, Stoic Philophers. I’ve been mulling over their works for the past few weeks. But in the end, indeed, I have much to learn. I am such a fool only wishing I had a decent grasp on reality. Reading seems to help me feel like I can grasp something. I just haven’t grasped it yet (pep pep).