LDSToronto wrote:BrianH,
I'm going to open the kimono a bit and let you have a peek at what I was doing in this thread. You see, the moment you started posting it became evident that you were not here to have a discussion about the truth claims of the LDS church, rather you were more interested in attacking the LDS people by denigrating their beliefs and treating them with disrespect.
Go back and read through this thread and you will quickly and easily discover that you have consistently avoided my questions thereby demonstrating that your views on the matter at hand do not deserve any respect, let alone the acknowledgement that there is any truth in them. Your evasions are insulting. You seem to think that such lame tricks can actually fool people who are not Mormons.
You can search this board and see what my position is on the LDS church and you can see what the position of others are as well. If you do this, you will find that we all have different views about the church. But let me tell you what makes us different than you:
I have not asked you what your position is on the LDS church. That is not the issue here. The question here is what it has always been, and remains the question you have consistently ignored, even while pretending to be interested in a dialog: a challenge to Mormons to present some actual reasons to think that the LDS "prophet" translated the Book of Breathings correctly to somehow end up with the so-called "Book of Abraham". The example in particular is his identification of the easily recognized and well-known sons of Horus as Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash.
None of us think it's cool to attack the LDS people.
When LDS people are as rude as those here have been, they will just have to take what they get.
The church and it's doctrine, history, policies and leadership, those are fair game. But critic, ex-mo, never-mo, and believers alike hold many LDS close to our hearts.
It is your own behavior here which has earned my contempt. Your dishonesty and evasions make it clear that you think you can fool me with such transparent trickery. Its like watching a 9-year old kid doing a dime store magic trick and getting all pissy when the big kids in the room point out that they know how he did it.
From the get-go I could tell you were going to get wrapped around the axle very easily and so I decided to take a very slow and detailed approach to our discussion. The very first thing I did was establish a position and see how you would react. My next step would have been to start exploring various options with respect to my position and to your position. However, you don't seem to have the patience.
Too bad your slow and detailed approach failed to even attempt an answer to my rather simple, direct and easy question. Your self-righteousness is only exceeded by your ability to perhaps fool yourself into actually believing your own trickery. You STILL have not even TRIED to answer the first question I asked, even after I have repeated it to you a dozen or so times. I think asking you the same question over and over and over and over again only to see you pretend I did not ask it is a rather profound example of patience.
Rather, you seem hellbent on getting a quick answer to a very specific question. You have held me and others to a standard that you don't feel obliged to honour - you insist on scholarly evidence when you won't provide it yourself and you refuse to explore anything outside the very narrow scope of 4 specific Egyptian symbols and a very specific translation.
Not a quick answer, just ...an answer. Sadly (for you and Mormons everywhere that is) you obviously have no answer.
The thing is, we could have a very enriching conversation here. I know the apologetic side of the Book of Abraham debate and I know the critical side of the debate as well. I can not claim expertise in either side - there are others that frequent these forums that should be considered "best in the world" with respect to these topics, pro and con.
We cannot have an enriching conversation as long as you refuse to answer my questions and toss out all the red herrings, accusations and lame rhetorical parlor ticks you have posted here. Far from "enriching" in any sense, it has been just another example of how empty LDS excuses really are.
I am also not an Egyptologist, a biblical scholar, a historian, nor an expert on ancient texts or civilizations. My training is in mathematics. But, I can read and my comprehension is reasonably good, so citations are a wonderful thing to help those of us who aren't as well-educated as you claim to be.
No one expects you to be any of those things. If you could read, why did you miss the basic question of this thread so many times? The answer is clear. You most certainly CAN read, and it appears that your comprehension is good. The problem is, you do not have anything even close to an ANSWER, and you know it. So ...you do what I have watched Mormons do for 3 decades: issue counter challenges, deflect, evade, dodge and ultimately proclaim your own imaginary victory.
Nonetheless, your question can not be answered with a few citations. Your questions need to be answered within the context of LDS theology, Old Testament historical settings, and Abraham's own cultural setting. Yet, every time I have made an attempt to slowly bring you into these areas, you have resisted and run back to the shelter of a narrow position.
Wrong again. The original document has nothing to do with LDS theology, the Old Testament or even Abraham as you have been told to "think" by your organization. It is simply a portion of the Book of Breathings, including a common "breathing permit" so well known and universally recognized by archaeologists and Egyptologists. That IS the normative scholarship on this document, T, which is NOT the only one of its kind. There are MANY examples of this document perpared for MANY mummies and also found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It is nowhere recognized as having anything whatsoever to do with Abraham or the Old Testament except in the LDS church which consistently fails to provide any reason to believe their claims.
My friends consiglieri and honorentheos and darthj have fast-forwarded this debate by bringing you to places that I was slowly leading you towards. Not in an attempt to convince you, but in an attempt to show you that there is more than one way to think about the things that you have focused on. The way you have responded shows that you are incapable of engaging on this level. You are insulting and you get wrapped around the axle on small points. I will continue to beat on you, though, because I really don't like the way you treat people and I want your close-mindedness to be cached in google for all generations of time.
Wrong yet again. Until you can provide some actual EVIDENCE that will confirm that Smith's translation is correct, there is no "other" way to think of it than to dismiss it as a hoax, as all non-LDS experts have done, and as even some LDS experts now admit.
But you and I and everyone here knows that you will not present any evidence. Instead you will continue to play the games Mormons always play - assembling desperate, self-serving speculations all the while insinuating, equivocating, evading, deflecting, accusing and ultimately insulting those who simply point out that you have not even begun to meet even the lowest portion of any rational standard of proof.
The question here is a REALLY simple one. If your so-called "prophet" and his organization were simply telling the truth, you would not have to use all the evasive, transparent trickery you have been trained to use. I bet you do not even know that you are doing it.
-BH
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H.[/quote]