"official" racist church doctrine

[_Droopy]

Exactly. Indians are lazy and don't like to work.

There's no such idea in the Book of Mormon. Nor any LDS doctrine or teaching relative to this.

For hundreds of years the white man has wondered why Indians are dark skinned savages who are lazy and don't like to work. The Book of Mormon explains why. It is not racist. It is educational.

No. All the Book of Mormon points out, at one point, is what Lamanite culture was at that juncture. There are cultures among us at the present time that have very similar features to that of Lamanite culture in its degenerate form, as well as past cultures of similar hue - of all skin colors. So it is simply accurate observations, from a gospel and higher civilizational frame of reference that you appear to dislike, because you're just a bomb thrower looking for a target, no matter how unlikely.

How then, do you explain the periods of righteousness the Lamanites went through, including those in which they were more righteous and had a culture superior to that of the Nephites?

[_tapirrider]

There are cultures among us at the present time that have very similar features to that of Lamanite culture in its degenerate form

I hope you are not saying that American Indian cultures at the present time are degenerate. Please tell me you are not saying that.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

For all the incessant huffing and puffing about this issue among the secularist critics of the Church, the book itself cannot not be used as a proof text or religious support for racism. It isn't in the book.

Laman and Lemuel’s followers called themselves Lamanites. They became a dark-skinned people. God cursed them because of their wickedness.

Yep. Nothing could be construed as racist in that at all... It's all just, you know, spiritual!

The Lamanites became lazy and would not work.

Droopy. You're not part Lamanite by chance, are you?

- VRDRC

[_lostindc]

lol @ any member of a Bible believing faith mocking Mormonism, especially evangelical...what a rich history, just in the 1900s, of extensive racism.

[_Droopy]

I hope you are not saying that American Indian cultures at the present time are degenerate. Please tell me you are not saying that.

Its well, well over your head, apparently, so consider the argument ended, where you are concerned.

[_Droopy]

I must be going...

[_Bond James Bond]

I must be going...to my paintball range. Oh wait.

Fixed.

[_tapirrider]

Its well, well over your head, apparently, so consider the argument ended, where you are concerned.

Droopy, you said "There are cultures among us at the present time that have very similar features to that of Lamanite culture in its degenerate form".

I'm a little short on patience and your answer is inappropriate. So let me get down to the brass tacks of my question.

1. Which cultures among us at the present time do you have in mind? Be specific.
2. What are the features of the present cultures that make them similar to some mythical "degenerate form of the Lamanite"?
3. Now I will ask you directly. Do you consider the American Indian cultures on the reservations throughout the United States to be degenerate? If yes, please explain why.

[_Darth J]

How then, do you explain the periods of righteousness the Lamanites went through, including those in which they were more righteous and had a culture superior to that of the Nephites?

You mean like in 3 Nephi 2, when the Lamanites turned white because they became righteous? Or Zelph, the righteous white Lamanite whom the Prophet of the Restoration identified?

[_Darth J]

No matter how you struggle, squirm, twist, wiggle, shake, rattle, and roll, there is nothing racial at all in the Book of Mormon. There is ethnicity, there are nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples, but not races. Skin color, or any other morphological trait, has nothing to do with race, and especially in the Book of Mormon.

race

1. a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.
2. a population so related.
3. Anthropology .
a. any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics: no longer in technical use.
b. an arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups.
c. a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, whose members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans.
4. a group of tribes or peoples forming an ethnic stock: the Slavic race.
5. any people united by common history, language, cultural traits, etc.: the Dutch race.