My First Encounters with Institutional Mormonism

[_Jason Bourne]

This is a very interesting thread.

Last week I had the opportunity to go on a lovely Caribbean cruise. I love to go on cruises. This is the sixth we have taken. One of our ports was Cozumel. Because we have been there twice and once to Cancun I thought it would be fun to take a tour of Chitzen Itza and see the Mayan ruins there. It was impressive. I wish we would have had more time. A large part of the day was taken in travel time.

The tour guide seemed very knowledgeable. He noted that his mothers side of his family was of Mayan decent. He talked about his features, his round face and slants of his eyes and noted he could pass for an Asian person (and I agreed). He covered what science tells of of where the Mayans came from-not the middle east, but from north and east Asia across the land bridge and so on.

When we were at the ruins he did talk about carvings of a bearded white person and said nobody knows who this really was but the Mormons think it was Jesus visiting the Mayans and other that were part of the ten lost tribes. He said others speculate that perhaps a Viking somehow made it to Central America.

I pondered the DNA issue for most of the day and found it a major issue for the Book of Mormon.

Today on my way to work I listened to part 4 of the Mormon Stories interview of Brant Gardner. He discussed the issue of other peoples being here when Lehi arrived and the dilution of the DNA. But Dehlin pressed him about this and commented on the silence of the Book of Mormon about others. I think Brackite treated this issue will above. All Gardner could say is we cannot dismiss an ancient text because when what we from a modern perspective expect to be there is not. But to me it seems like if there were many others the text would address it. It would talk about how these savages were converted to the truth, how then joined the Nephites and others the Lamanites. And if the intellectually and spiritually superior Lehites mingled with the others why didn't the Lehite culture dominate?

The problem with this and the rest of Gardner's defense is that it ALL has to be based on thin plausibility. I could buy some of it if it were a few things that rested on such defenses but it is not a few. It is almost all of it.

And the fact is the D&C and the history Joseph Smith wrote points to the American Indians being direct descendents of Lehi. No where do we see a small group mingling into a very large group. Not at all.


As an aside I wonder if LDSFAQ is one Obiwan. The styles are similar as is the claim of convert to apologist to anti back to active member apologist. The name calling, anger and rage is similar as well.

[_Fence Sitter]

As an aside I wonder if LDSFAQ is one Obiwan. The styles are similar as is the claim of convert to apologist to anti back to active member apologist. The name calling, anger and rage is similar as well.

Yes, I believe he has said as much.

[_Brackite]

He forgot? It wasn't important? He was writing on gold plates and did not feel like it? The book is an abridgement and perhaps it was on the unabridged version?

Again why me, we can see that by comparing 1st Nephi Chapter 18, verse 25 with Jacob Chapter Seven, verse 26 that there were not "others" in the Promise land when Lehi, Nephi and their families arrived.
Here is Jacob Chapter Seven, verse 26 again:

Jacob 7:26:

[26] And it came to pass that I, Jacob, began to be old; and the record of this people being kept on the other plates of Nephi, wherefore, I conclude this record, declaring that I have written according to the best of my knowledge, by saying that the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days.

(Italic Emphasized Mine.)



The Book of Mormon Prophet Jacob describes the people of Nephi as "being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem" towards the end of his life. If there were "others" in the Promise land when Lehi, Nephi and their families arrived, and some of them joined with the people of Nephi, then it would Not make any sense that the Prophet Jacob would describe the people of Nephi as "being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem" towards the end of his life. The Book of Mormon Prophet Jacob then goes on describing that the people of Nephi, his people, were "hated of our brethren," which means that all of the Lamanites were their fellow Israelite brethren. There are Not any Scriptural Passages within the Book of Mormon that mentions "others who are non-Israelites" in the Promise land.

I think Brackite treated this issue will above.

Thanks, Jason!!!

[_Simon Southerton]

I believe there needed to be a reaction because LDS scholars realised the DNA science profoundly contradicted what most Mormons believed about the ancestry of Native Americans.

Actually it started when you began to actively attempt to lead people away from the LDS church. And that seemed to be your purpose. No one cared very much about your understanding until you began to claim that the Book of Mormon was false and Joseph was a fraud. Your article in the postmo magazine set much of it off. I think however, that the dna issue is no longer an issue for most Mormons. It blew over after some damage.

I have actively attempted to lead Mormons away from the false belief that Native Americans are descendants of Israelites. They are not. While there are apostles continuing to tell Native Americans they are the descendants of father Lehi I will continue to expose that lie.
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/6 ... ation.html Unfortunately many Mormons who stop believing the Lamanite myth also stop believing the church is true.

That's the price a church pays for expecting its members to believe things that science has shown to be false.

[_Simon Southerton]

I believe there needed to be a reaction because LDS scholars realised the DNA science profoundly contradicted what most Mormons believed about the ancestry of Native Americans.

Actually it started when you began to actively attempt to lead people away from the LDS church. And that seemed to be your purpose. No one cared very much about your understanding until you began to claim that the Book of Mormon was false and Joseph was a fraud. Your article in the postmo magazine set much of it off. I think however, that the dna issue is no longer an issue for most Mormons. It blew over after some damage.

I have actively attempted to lead Mormons away from the false belief that Native Americans are descendants of Israelites. They are not. While there are apostles continuing to tell Native Americans they are the descendants of father Lehi I will continue to expose that lie.
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/6 ... ation.html Unfortunately many Mormons who stop believing the Lamanite myth also stop believing the church is true.

That's the price a church pays for expecting its members to believe things that science has shown to be false.

[_Chap]

... many Mormons who stop believing the Lamanite myth also stop believing the church is true.

That's the price a church pays for expecting its members to believe things that science has shown to be false.

And who could disagree with that?

[_tapirrider]

The problem with rationalizing it away using a "dominant population" is that it leads to a preadamite doctrine and requires discarding the universal flood. It is a very serious matter to label a group of people as not being from Adam and Eve.

I don't think it's a problem. There doesn't seem to be any modern revelation on the extent of Flood. Hebraically from the Old Testament, the Flood could easily have been local. So I certainly don't think it unreasonable for the Church to have stuck with traditional christianity on the issue pending further revelation as to the details.

The Church itself doesn't seem to have a problem with pre Adamites as per the 1931 statement. Whether or not there were pre Adamite lines that passed by/around the garden and Adam and Eve doesn't seem to be of any consequence. The Church has already stated doctrinally that the rib story is "surely figurative" so while I believe Adam and Eve must be actual historical people, what other details are/are not figurative or metaphorical is generally not stated.

The 1931 statement considered people that had lived and died long before Adam. What it does not address is co-Adamites, people not from Adam and Eve but who lived during the times of Adam and continued after that. This brings in the issue of the flood. A local flood does allow co-Adamites to live on through Biblical times. Those issues were not part of the debate between Joseph Fielding Smith and B. H. Roberts. James Talmage did not consider that either. He said this: “I do not regard Adam as related to – certainly not as descended from – the Neanderthal, the Cro-Magnon, the Peking or the Piltdown man”. (The Earth and Man, Deseret News, November 21, 1931)

It is a very serious matter to label a group of people as not being from Adam and Eve. What about the Americas before the Book of Mormon stories? Did the people have spirits that were children of God? Or were the Book of Mormon people the first children of God to come into America? Does the dominant DNA in American Indians indicate that they were not from Adam and Eve? How recently did they get souls that were spirit children of God? There is no revelation on this and the 1931 memo was not about these issues.

Australia comes into this too, because the Book of Mormon tells about people from Adam coming to America but the Australian aborigines were isolated from contact until more recently. What about their souls? The Mormon church has not had the success with them that it has with Polynesians. Will this pre-adamite theory play on the Polynesian members to look down on Australia's aborigines?

bcspace, these are very risky things to play around with. Take a hard look at the U.S. in the 19th century. The pre-adamite theory was used to justify the slavery of Blacks and the atrocities against the American Indians. Right now in the 21st century it is a major part of Christian Identity's racism. The pre-adamite theory establishes superior people and inferior people when it gets mixed in with the Bible like this.

The 1931 memo was not about these issues, it was about people that lived before Adam but were gone from the earth in Adam's time. It was also before WWII, before the Holocaust. Hitler's ideas were borrowed from 19th Century writings about the pre-Adamite. One of the most influential on Hitler was Arthur de Gobineau's book.

http://www.archive.org/stream/inequalit ... 8/mode/2up
"We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the ancestor of the white race."

How does that compare with the Book of Mormon? Lehi and his family were white until the curse on Laman and Lemuel. Lay the Book of Mormon next to pre-Adamite writings and it all goes down into the sewer from there.

I cannot thank Simon Southerton enough for his efforts to show that the American Indian are not what Mormonism has claimed. Now what I see with apologist attempts to salvage the Book of Mormon is a reckless direction into the racism of the 19th century. That is to be expected I guess when a 19th Century work of fiction is believed to be the word of God.

[_Drifting]

I don't think it's a problem. There doesn't seem to be any modern revelation on the extent of Flood. Hebraically from the Old Testament, the Flood could easily have been local. So I certainly don't think it unreasonable for the Church to have stuck with traditional christianity on the issue pending further revelation as to the details.

From the officially published website of the Church...

FLOOD AT NOAH’S TIME
See also Ark; Noah, Bible Patriarch; Rainbow.
During Noah’s time the earth was completely covered with water. This was the baptism of the earth and symbolized a cleansing (1 Pet. 3:20–21).

Bcspace is clearly an apostate.

[_Equality]

The church's magazine, published on its web site, contains this article by a BYU professor:
http://www.LDS.org/ensign/1998/01/the-flood-and-the-tower-of-babel?lang=eng

Many of us have fond memories learning about Noah and his ark during our days at home and in Primary. Perhaps our parents and teachers held up a picture of Noah preaching to laughing and mocking people as he stood in front of the partially built ark, or perhaps they showed us a picture portraying the ark filled with animals standing on the deck as the great vessel rested in the water. Later, our Sunday School or seminary teachers added to our knowledge of this great man, his righteousness, his missionary work, and the revelations surrounding the building of the ark. As Latter-day Saints, we treasure this sacred, true account of one of God’s great prophets who lived so long ago.

Not everyone throughout the modern world, however, accepts the story of Noah and the Flood. Many totally disbelieve the story, seeing it as a simple myth or fiction. Typical of some modern scholars, one author recently discounted the events of the Flood by using such terms as “implausible,” “unacceptable,” and “impossible”; he stated that believers who would hope to provide geologic or other evidence regarding the historicity of the Flood “can be given no assurance that their effort, however sustained, will be successful.” 1 Another author titled his book The Noah’s Ark Nonsense, 2 revealing his disbelief that the Flood actually took place.

Still other people accept parts of the Flood story, acknowledging that there may have been a local, charismatic preacher, such as Noah, and a localized flood that covered only a specific area of the world, such as the region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers or perhaps even the whole of Mesopotamia. Yet these people do not believe in a worldwide or global flood. Both of these groups—those who totally deny the historicity of Noah and the Flood and those who accept parts of the story—are persuaded in their disbelief by the way they interpret modern science. They rely upon geological considerations and theories that postulate it would be impossible for a flood to cover earth’s highest mountains, that the geologic evidence (primarily in the fields of stratigraphy and sedimentation) does not indicate a worldwide flood occurred any time during the earth’s existence.

There is a third group of people—those who accept the literal message of the Bible regarding Noah, the ark, and the Deluge. Latter-day Saints belong to this group. In spite of the world’s arguments against the historicity of the Flood, and despite the supposed lack of geologic evidence, we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth. We are assured that these events actually occurred by the multiple testimonies of God’s prophets.

[_Runtu]

Here's the current Old Testament Student Manual on the Flood:

(4-14) Genesis 7:7. Were Any Saved by Means Other Than the Ark?

“During the first 2200 or so years of the earth’s history—that is, from the fall of Adam to the ministry of Melchizedek—it was a not uncommon occurrence for faithful members of the Church to be translated and taken into the heavenly realms without tasting death. Since that time there have been occasional special instances of translation, instances in which a special work of the ministry required it.

“… Methuselah, the son of Enoch, was not translated [with Enoch’s city], ‘that the covenants of the Lord might be fulfilled, which he made to Enoch; for he truly covenanted with Enoch that Noah should be of the fruit of his loins.’ (Moses 8:2.) But during the nearly 700 years from the translation of Enoch to the flood of Noah, it would appear that nearly all of the faithful members of the Church were translated, for ‘the Holy Ghost fell on many, and they were caught up by the powers of heaven into Zion.’ (Moses 7:27.)” (McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 804.)

(4-15) Genesis 7:19. How Could the Flood Cover the Entire Earth, Including Mountains? What Was the Significance of This Immersion?

“I would like to know by what known law the immersion of the globe could be accomplished. It is explained here in a few words: ‘The windows of heaven were opened’ that is, the waters that exist throughout the space surrounding the earth from whence come these clouds from which the rain descends. That was one cause. Another cause was ‘the fountains of the great deep were broken up’—that is something beyond the oceans, something outside of the seas, some reservoirs of which we have no knowledge, were made to contribute to this event, and the waters were let loose by the hand and by the power of God; for God said He would bring a flood upon the earth and He brought it, but He had to let loose the fountains of the great deep, and pour out the waters from there, and when the flood commenced to subside, we are told ‘that the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained, and the waters returned from off the earth.’ Where did they go to? From whence they came. Now, I will show you something else on the back of that. Some people talk very philosophically about tidal waves coming along. But the question is—How could you get a tidal wave out of the Pacific ocean, say, to cover the Sierra Nevadas? But the Bible does not tell us it was a tidal wave. It simply tells that ‘all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.’ That is, the earth was immersed. It was a period of baptism.” (John Taylor, in Journal of Discourses, 26:74–75.)

Orson Pratt declared:

“The first ordinance instituted for the cleansing of the earth, was that of immersion in water; it was buried in the liquid element, and all things sinful upon the face of the earth were washed away. As it came forth from the ocean floor, like the new-born child, it was innocent; it rose to newness of life. It was its second birth from the womb of mighty waters—a new world issuing from the ruins of the old, clothed with all the innocence of this first creation.” (In Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 4:20.)

“The earth, in its present condition and situation, is not a fit habitation for the sanctified; but it abides the law of its creation, has been baptized with water, will be baptized by fire and the Holy Ghost, and by-and-by will be prepared for the faithful to dwell upon” (Brigham Young, in Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 4:20).

(4-16) The Flood Was an Act of Love

“Now I will go back to show you how the Lord operates. He destroyed a whole world at one time save a few, whom he preserved for his own special purpose. And why? He had more than one reason for doing so. This antediluvian people were not only very wicked themselves, but having the power to propagate their species, they transmitted their unrighteous natures and desires to their children, and brought them up to indulge in their own wicked practices. And the spirits that dwelt in the eternal worlds knew this, and they knew very well that to be born of such parentage would entail upon themselves an infinite amount of trouble, misery and sin. And supposing ourselves to be of the number of unborn spirits, would it not be fair to presume that we would appeal to the Lord, crying, ‘Father, do you not behold the condition of this people, how corrupt and wicked they are?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it then just that we who are now pure should take of such bodies and thus subject ourselves to most bitter experiences before we can be redeemed, according to the plan of salvation?’ ‘No,’ the Father would say, ‘it is not in keeping with my justice.’ ‘Well, what will you do in the matter; man has his free agency and cannot be coerced, and while he lives he has the power of perpetuating his species?’ ‘I will first send them my word, offering them deliverance from sin, and warning them of my justice, which shall certainly overtake them if they reject it, and I will destroy them from off the face of the earth, thus preventing their increase, and I will raise up another seed.’ Well, they did reject the preaching of Noah, the servant of God, who was sent to them, and consequently the Lord caused the rains of heaven to descend incessantly for forty days and nights, which flooded the land, and there being no means of escape, save for the eight souls who were obedient to the message, all the others were drowned. But, says the caviller, is it right that a just God should sweep off so many people? Is that in accordance with mercy? Yes, it was just to those spirits that had not received their bodies, and it was just and merciful too to those people guilty of the iniquity. Why? Because by taking away their earthly existence he prevented them from entailing their sins upon their posterity and degenerating them, and also prevented them from committing further acts of wickedness.” (John Taylor, in Journal of Discourses, 19:158–59.)