How important should the Joseph Smith papyri be?

[_Themis]

There is no reason to assume that because there are variations in papyri of this type that those variations mean what is on the facsimiles has anything to do with Abraham. It is just like the missing scroll portions. There is ZERO evidence to think that what is on the missing portions of the papyri is any different from the extant portions. Equally there is zero evidence that the variations in the papyri have anything to do with Abraham.

"Look Anubis is is in between Hor and the funerary bier!!! We have never seen that before! That must be Abraham on the bier!!!"

is no more valid than

"Look Anubis is is in between Hor and the funerary bier!!! We have never seen that before! That must be an alien on the bier!!!"

For a good impartial article of Book of Breathings and the Book of Abraham I recommend this excellent article by Lanny Bell
The Ancient Egyptian "Book of Breathing," the Mormon "Book of Abraham.' and the Development of Egyptology in America

Agreed

[_Uncle Ed]

I love how you want to follow a certain rule about everything we see needs a cause until you get to the first cause, which you want to call God, and then you want to ignore the rule. You also haven't provided why any cause that may have started the universe we see cannot be just some natural cause with no intelligence or design.

Who said that Necessary Cause is a "rule?" The NC Is the maker of the "rules". You can assume "turtles all the way down" and it doesn't answer the demand for a Cause of intelligence. But if you really think that existence lacks intelligence of any sort, I guess we don't have any common ground to discuss this. To me the assertion that the unaware universe always existed yet can come up with awareness in us and other life forms is just ex nihilo.

Existence is inarguable. Our sapience is also. The whole world of humans (the universe) is no mindless accident....

[_Uncle Ed]

Is anything that Joseph Smith wrote/translated/received/revealed a bad thing today?

Yep, the explanation that a dark skin signifies a curse from God.

B Young taught that, and he said Joseph Smith taught it. But we have no record of Joseph Smith teaching this "doctrine", do we? In any case, like United Order and polygamy, it is dead doctrine, so not something Joseph Smith taught, that the Church teaches, today....

[_Themis]

Who said that Necessary Cause is a "rule?" The NC Is the maker of the "rules".

You did right here.

The Cause is the only Existence that is itself uncaused.

You again make more assumptions of NC the maker of rules.

You can assume "turtles all the way down" and it doesn't answer the demand for a Cause of intelligence.

Why does there have to be a demand for a cause of intelligence? I am also not the one making all these assumptions you cannot back up.

But if you really think that existence lacks intelligence of any sort, I guess we don't have any common ground to discuss this.

You mean existence or your FC/NC? Again I haven't made any assumptions. I am only saying yours are not really backed up.

To me the assertion that the unaware universe always existed yet can come up with awareness in us and other life forms is just ex nihilo.

How can you know it didn't? You are just making assumptions that it needs some kind of intelligent creator since that is what you want to believe.

The whole world of humans (the universe) is no mindless accident....

Just another assumption without evidence.

[_Uncle Ed]

...

The whole world of humans (the universe) is no mindless accident....

Just another assumption without evidence.

We have minds. There is no evidence that such can exist without being caused. Existence is inarguable and requires explanation. Both of these facts are evidence that our own existence is not the result of mindless happenstance. If you believe in mindlessness resulting in happenstance, it is you who ought to provide some evidence that this is even possible. I'll wait forever....

[_Themis]

We have minds. There is no evidence that such can exist without being caused.

So?

Existence is inarguable and requires explanation.

It doesn't require anything. Just because we exist is not evidence for anything except that we exist.

Both of these facts are evidence that our own existence is not the result of mindless happenstance.

No it's not. You are again making the assumption that because we exist that it must be by design. You need to back this assumption up with more then just assertion.

If you believe in mindlessness resulting in happenstance, it is you who ought to provide some evidence that this is even possible. I'll wait forever....

I'm not the one making the assumptions here. Nether has good evidence for them, so we cannot really know either is correct.

[_ludwigm]

We have minds.

Minds? At least one mind.

We? At least some of us. At least me.

At least I have one. And that is what counts.

[_Bazooka]

Is anything that Joseph Smith wrote/translated/received/revealed a bad thing today?

Yep, the explanation that a dark skin signifies a curse from God.

B Young taught that, and he said Joseph Smith taught it. But we have no record of Joseph Smith teaching this "doctrine", do we? In any case, like United Order and polygamy, it is dead doctrine, so not something Joseph Smith taught, that the Church teaches, today....

Hold your horses there ED.

Your question was "is anything that Joseph Smith wrote/translated/received/revealed a bad thing today?"

I gave you a valid and specific example and now you want to change the question to one about teaching and what Joseph did or didn't teach?

Come on, don't be so disingenuous.

[_Uncle Ed]

Hold your horses there ED.

Your question was "is anything that Joseph Smith wrote/translated/received/revealed a bad thing today?"

I gave you a valid and specific example and now you want to change the question to one about teaching and what Joseph did or didn't teach?

Come on, don't be so disingenuous.

Did Joseph Smith receive the doctrine of Blacks being cursed? B Young said so. That's not Joseph Smith saying so. Joseph Smith also said that he had only taught half or less of what he had received, because the Saints couldn't handle the rest. Maybe the Blacks being cursed was included in that portion! In a moment of weakness Joseph Smith burbled something about it and subsequently B Young taught it in Utah, with the negative results that still dog the Church today in spite of 1978. But that isn't the Church's fault today, it's the fault of people not letting the past remain in the past.

Is anything Joseph Smith taught (which implies that he "received" it first) a bad thing today? Is it actively causing a bad influence today?...

[_DarkHelmet]

Well...we have the papyri with facsimile 1 on it, don't we....so we have enough to rationally speculate about it's (f1) translation.

Yeah, but besides the fact that the Egyptians are notorious for covering up embarrassing history (and thus the meaning of the facsimilie could have been changed), there are also things like this to cast doubt upon the anti Mopologetic speculative assumptions:

“[B]oth Facsimile 1 and Facsimile 3 are assumed to belong to the Book of Breathings Made by Isis because they accompanied the text in the Joseph Smith Papyri. Yet the contemporary parallel texts of the Book of Breathings Made by Isis belonging to members of the same family have different vignettes associated with them. Instead of a scene like Facsimile 3, most Books of Breathings Made by Isis show a man with his hands raised in adoration to a cow. This indicates that the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham do not belong to the Book of Breathings.” John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid, "Facsimile 3 and Book of the Dead 125," Astronomy, Papyrus and Covenant, Neal A. Maxwell Institute

So this brings us back to the original question in this thread. If you and John Gee and Brian Hauglid believe facsimile 1 and Facsimile 3 are ancient artifacts constructed by Abraham, shouldn't they be worth more than they actually are? Aren't they priceless? As it is now, I don't think anyone would care if the janitor accidentally tossed them in the garbage (certainly non-mormons wouldn't care). If someone dug up a big heavy chunk of gold, but every appraiser and all the evidence says it's actually just pyrite, why would anyone continue to believe it's gold? If you buy the catalyst theory, it doesn't matter, but if you believe Joseph Smith's claim that it was written by the hand of Abraham, why isn't it treated as such by the world?