Book of Mormon Evidence

[_ldsfaqs]

Evidence.....

Pt 1 Unquestionably Powerful Archaeology for the Book of Mormon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK1NMmgW5o8

[_Runtu]

Evidence.....

Pt 1 Unquestionably Powerful Archaeology for the Book of Mormon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK1NMmgW5o8

Great, so Kerry starts out with a massive strawman and runs with it. Two strawmen before he's gone 90 seconds.

Either way, this has nothing to do with my post, which I suspect you didn't read.

[_Buffalo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qjsRJvvfIU

[_Drifting]

It is a difficult position to defend when your best evidence for the Book of Mormon is the Book of Mormon.

[_zeezrom]

The first archaeological claims related to the Book of Mormon concern the purported facts of 22 September 1827: the actuality of metal plates preserved in a stone box. This used to be considered a monstrous tale, but concealing metal records in stone boxes is now a documented Old World practice. Stone offering boxes have also been discovered in Mesoamerica, but so far the golden plates are still at large—as we would expect them to be.

for what it's worth, I recently designed the Stone Box Moroni used to store the prizes. We have some major engineering challenges for a hill in New York state.

[_Runtu]

Wow, as much as I like Kerry, this video is painful to watch. The part with the deer was nice, and I do enjoy his accent.

It's bizarre that he spends almost all of his time presenting strawmen arguments alleged to be the major arguments of the critics. He cites Gee, Tvetdnes, and Roper's article, which is problematic in itself, as they seem to have taken some major liberties with the names.

But, hey, if this works for you, lee ...

[_Quasimodo]

Great stuff! He does sound like a nice man. The telling part of his risponce is this:

The truth of the matter necessarily goes beyond physical evidence, as
evaluated at any given moment of archaeological inquiry, and can only be
had from a secure source -- God's revelation.

He seems to give up any claim to real evidenced at this point and falls back on the old apologist line "a feeling in the bosom". This, of course, assumes that Joseph Smith wasn't fibbing a little. A very hard assumption to make.

This is something else that caught my eye:

The bow and arrow example is a good
case in point. Sure, the book mentions them and Mesoamerican archaeology
has them, but so far not in the same period. So this should not count as
a confirmation at the level of specificity with which we are now
approaching the matter. We will be super-specific and critical in what
we are doing, and evaluate each point on a scale that goes from no
evidence to positive and confirmed evidence in specific details. The bow
and arrow is currently an intermediate category where they are in the
supposed right place but not at the right time.

The Bow did not exist in the Americas until about 500 AD. Absolutely no evidence for it before then. To me this is like saying: "We know that the automobile did exist in America. We just have to find one from 2000 years ago".

Thanks, Runtu, for the great post!

[_Runtu]

By the way, Kerry asserts that no critics have ever dealt with the names mentioned as being "genyoowine." I would imagine that's news to the authors of The New Mormon Challenge. You can see a lot of their discussion here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MLrugt3clU4C

[_zeezrom]

The Bow did not exist in the Americas until about 500 AD.

Learned something today

[_Quasimodo]

for what it's worth, I recently designed the Stone Box Moroni used to store the prizes. We have some major engineering challenges for a hill in New York state.

Very nice illustration, Z. I like the idea of hollowed logs for drainage! A french drain of large sized gravel might have worked as well provided it attained the ground surface below the box.

Damn, those Nephites were smart.