The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?

[_Dr Exiled]

Mormonthink does a much better job than Callister at summarizing the arguments for the book being man-made...

You and the rest of the critics keep missing the boat on this one. It is not the job of the Church to "prove" anything. It is the job of the critics to "prove" their case. When they fail, the truth of the authorship claims of the Book of Mormon is established by default.

No. You have it wrong and this goes back to the original question ... why are you posting here? Do you like getting a rise out of people when you say such silly things as you did above? Clearly you know that the church claims it is the one and only church, run by Jesus himself, and that the Book of Mormon is the way to find out this truth. So to baldly claim that the burden is shifted either shows you just want to create drama or you need a lesson in logic.

[_mentalgymnast]

1, 2, a little bit of 3, and maybe a little bit of 5. Joseph was a magician. Not the card trick or rabbit out of a hat type. Joseph like many others tried to convince people he had special powers to see things on a rock inside his hat. It's basically the same thing as the crystal ball. He was successful enough to convince a man to pay him to search for treasure. A treasure he never found(from what I understand it was because of a guardian spirit protecting the treasure ), and while the man continued to believe he could see things, his family did not and had Joseph arrested. The article you posted was horrible and simple minded. It lacked facts and reasonable logic. In many ways it is the old you cannot show exactly how it was done so it must be magic. Magicians today do it for entertainment, but in the past they did it to gain power, resources, women, and followers. All of which Joseph did.

OK. I didn't address this earlier because I didn't think it was reply worthy. Nothing against you, Themis. I just don't think that your short reply does justice to the arguments of the critics which Callister reviews with us in his talk. To say "1, 2, a little bit of 3, and maybe a little bit of 5" doesn't really say much. You then go on to portray Joseph as a simple con man...as though this proves your 'belief' that 1,2...with a dash of 3 and 5 are at the root of the production of the Book of Mormon.

That's not going to fly. Where's the beef?

You then say the talk was "horrible and simple minded". Sure, you are entitled to your opinion...but anyone can say something like that in regards to anything they have a predisposition to have a bias towards.

Also, I have asked for a little detail of this complexity but so far have not been given anything in the past. Everything we see in the Book of Mormon are ideas that were already out there.

I'm not arguing against that at all. Although I might quibble on your usage of the word "everything".

The backbone of the Book of Mormon story is from a popular idea then...

Themis, I'm assuming you've read books/articles dealing with the rich milieu that was available at the time of Joseph Smith. No one is arguing otherwise. Yes, the twelve tribes, masons, Catholics, etc., were in the 'air of conversation'. But as you know(?), the Book of Mormon doesn't follow that "backbone" of conversation (not sure which part of that backbone you might be pointing to specifically) in the way you might expect it to. I think you're statement above really doesn't do justice to all of the apologetic research that has been done. There seems to be a tendency around here to 'brush off' the immense amount of research that apologists...and Mormon writers that wouldn't necessarily call themselves apologists...have done in some of these areas of discussion/debate, by using one liners or short little quips like "horrible and simple minded" and/or "the backbone of the Book of Mormon story is from a popular idea then" as though these little 'blurbs' fully flesh out and explain/conclude all there is to be said.

They don't. But I think you know that.

...that has been debunked long before our time.

And that idea is (?)...and how does that connect with the Book of Mormon and what it actually says? Not saying that you might not be onto something, but I'd like to know exactly what you're saying here in a bit more detail.

Regards,
MG

[Guest]

We are coming from different starting points/assumptions.

No, you are coming from a point of dogmatic presumption that there is a god. I am coming from a point of I don't know, let me see the evidence. Then I find no evidence for a god and plenty of reasonable explanations for what others take to be evidence for a god and finally lots of evidence that flat out contradicts many aspects of those beliefs that are tied up in the overall god belief such as a fall of an original pair, Adam & Eve, or a flood of Noah, or a universe that continues to be filled with shining stars forever, violating the laws of physics, etc.

I don't see how we can really get around that.

It is a problem for you only. It is a barrier you cannot get around. I am not so trapped by any commitment to dogma.

If you believed in a creator/God, we would have a common starting point.

But there is no reason to presume the existence of such anymore than the flying spaghetti monster which was invented to illustrate the nature of the problem of accepting sky daddies based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

We're not even on the same planet, so to speak.

Correct and true of Mormons in general. I am on earth and you are on Kolob.

We're not starting on the same page.

Correct again. You are on the page of unwarranted starting presumptions and I am on the page of what does the evidence tell us, what does the evidence eliminate as a possibility.

It doesn't take us long to find that we're talking past each other.

Fine but don't pretend that our starting points are somehow equally valid. Yours is indeed "less than" in this conversation.

I could say to you that you're incapable of addressing the argument(s) from the point of view of there being a creator/God.

That position requires a starting presumption that is unjustified. But if there were a creator god then you have an explanation for the source of the Book of Mormon in the being of the adversary and Callister's argument falls apart. That you don't see this is especially troubling to your claim to be able to think. Especially when Joe admits he was deceived by Satan when he received a revelation to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon.

You're asking me to take God out of the picture.

No, I'm asking you to justify with evidence why he gets to be in the picture.

Unfair? Loading the bases? Stacking the deck?

That's the result of dogmatic beliefs, yes.

You seem to want to control the discussion in the sense that you would like a creator/God to be out of the discussion and/or not part of the picture...

You are describing your position here merely reversed. You want him in the discussion without justifying why he should be there. Fine I want Odin and Allah there too. See how that works?

or at least irrelevant to the picture that we can only observe/see through the natural senses.

I can't observe anything through any other senses and call BS on your claim that you can do so. How do you establish your claim? You haven't addressed the problem I raised for this at all.

I can't do that. So from that perspective you're right, I am not willing to and am incapable of looking at those things which we are discussing without holding open the 'God option'.

I am not closing the god option. It's on the table as long as you can substantiate a valid reason for it to be there any more than say why Allah or Odin should not be on the table as well and for the very same reasons you wish Mormon deity to be there.

[_Jersey Girl]

You and the rest of the critics keep missing the boat on this one. It is not the job of the Church to "prove" anything. It is the job of the critics to "prove" their case. When they fail, the truth of the authorship claims of the Book of Mormon is established by default.

Had the church been fully transparent from it's inception, none of us would be having this conversation.

Missing the boat, indeed.

[_zerinus]

At the very least if we were to accept the existence of a god we should be open as well to the existence of the adversary of god and then the explanation can be the adversary did it. So god did it is not the only option by default.

If you cannot "believe" the authorship claims of the Book of Mormon, you have that right. What you don't have the right to do is to falsely claim to have an alternative explanation, when you don't. That has been the story of the "critics" so far.

Someone online once remarked to me that the first order of business in dealing with Mormons is teaching them how to think. He was right. The conversion process teaches people to think incorrectly after which they are trapped in a box, the key to which lies outside the box.

Too bad it always seem to the the other way round.

[_Jersey Girl]

That is the copyright page.

Speaking of copyright. Why did he try to sell it?

I am not aware that he did.

You really should, then, enroll in Professor Darth J's classes, the series called Know Your Religion.

Apparently, I know LDS church history better than he does.

Ironic, no?

[_Lemmie]

We are coming from different starting points/assumptions.

No, you are coming from a point of dogmatic presumption that there is a god. I am coming from a point of I don't know, let me see the evidence. Then I find no evidence for a god and plenty of reasonable explanations for what others take to be evidence for a god and finally lots of evidence that flat out contradicts many aspects of those beliefs that are tied up in the overall god belief such as a fall of an original pair, Adam & Eve, or a flood of Noah, or a universe that continues to be filled with shining stars forever, violating the laws of physics, etc.

I don't see how we can really get around that.

It is a problem for you only. It is a barrier you cannot get around. I am not so trapped by any commitment to dogma.

If you believed in a creator/God, we would have a common starting point.

But there is no reason to presume the existence of such anymore than the flying spaghetti monster which was invented to illustrate the nature of the problem of accepting sky daddies based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

We're not even on the same planet, so to speak.

Correct and true of Mormons in general. I am on earth and you are on Kolob.

We're not starting on the same page.

Correct again. You are on the page of unwarranted starting presumptions and I am on the page of what does the evidence tell us, what does the evidence eliminate as a possibility.

It doesn't take us long to find that we're talking past each other.

Fine but don't pretend that our starting points are somehow equally valid. Yours is indeed "less than" in this conversation.

I could say to you that you're incapable of addressing the argument(s) from the point of view of there being a creator/God.

That position requires a starting presumption that is unjustified. But if there were a creator god then you have an explanation for the source of the Book of Mormon in the being of the adversary and Callister's argument falls apart. That you don't see this is especially troubling to your claim to be able to think. Especially when Joe admits he was deceived by Satan when he received a revelation to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon.

You're asking me to take God out of the picture.

No, I'm asking you to justify with evidence why he gets to be in the picture.

Unfair? Loading the bases? Stacking the deck?

That's the result of dogmatic beliefs, yes.

You seem to want to control the discussion in the sense that you would like a creator/God to be out of the discussion and/or not part of the picture...

You are describing your position here merely reversed. You want him in the discussion without justifying why he should be there. Fine I want Odin and Allah there too. See how that works?

or at least irrelevant to the picture that we can only observe/see through the natural senses.

I can't observe anything through any other senses and call BS on your claim that you can do so. How do you establish your claim? You haven't addressed the problem I raised for this at all.

I can't do that. So from that perspective you're right, I am not willing to and am incapable of looking at those things which we are discussing without holding open the 'God option'.

I am not closing the god option. It's on the table as long as you can substantiate a valid reason for it to be there any more than say why Allah or Odin should not be on the table as well and for the very same reasons you wish Mormon deity to be there.

Very well said spotlight.

which brings the discussion right back to ihaq's position:

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

Here, see if you can find it....
God-Given or Man-Made?

You're looking at this entirely backwards.
The starting point is to assess if the "God-Given" arguments hold water.
If they don't then, by default it's Man-Made.

So, the arguments for the Book of Mormon being God-Given, what are they?

He's not genuinely attempting to explore the idea that the Book of Mormon could be man-made. He's trying to make sure his audience don't explore it.

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

Anything MG? Anything from Callister? Anything at all?

Try an easier one, how do you know it's not Satan-Given in an attempt to deflect people from joining the true Church of Seventh Day Adventists?

[_mentalgymnast]

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

This seems to be a question that has great importance to you and you're going to continue asking it...without feeling as though the questions asked of you are worth answering, I might add, (you seem to have a habit of doing that)...so I'll simply point you to the rest of Elder Callister's talk starting with the heading:

WHERE DID JOSEPH GET THE DOCTRINE?

Not to say that you're going to agree with him...but there it is. You read the talk, I assume?

Now, back to Jacob 5 and some of the stuff I was running by you? Any thoughts?

Irrelevant?

Regards,
MG

[_Lemmie]

Now, back to that evidence for it being God-Given that you and Brother Callister seem so shy about....

This seems to be a question that has great importance to you and you're going to continue asking it...without feeling as though the questions asked of you are worth answering, I might add, (you seem to have a habit of doing that)...so I'll simply point you to the rest of Elder Callister's talk starting with the heading:

WHERE DID JOSEPH GET THE DOCTRINE?

Not to say that you're going to agree with him...but there it is. You read the talk, I assume?

Now, back to Jacob 5 and some of the stuff I was running by you? Any thoughts?

Irrelevant?

Regards,
MG

Yes, irrelevant. Let's stick with the OP topic, and the first questions YOU asked: Man-made or God-given?

What substantial argument does Brother Callister put forward as "evidence" for concluding the Book of Mormon can only be God-Given?

[_zerinus]

No. You have it wrong and this goes back to the original question ... why are you posting here? ...

None of your business why I post here. I post where I like. Go and and find something else to do with your time, and mind your own business.