Top 10 Falsifiable FAIRMORMON Claims

[Kishkumen]

Kevin Barney is good people. I note that Everybody Wang Chung's information is much more on point. He can place male Almas in Palmyra of Joseph Smith's day. That's a far cry better than Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

[Shulem]

Heavy weight (pun intended) scholar Daniel Peterson has weighed in on the subject:

“Alma,” Deception, and I

Since that time, though, I’ve been told that, in fact, there were some non-Latter-day Saint American men before and during the period of Joseph Smith who may have borne the name Alma. (The computerization of genealogical and census materials makes searches for such names far easier than they were even just a few years ago.) I haven’t personally investigated this claim, since Alma isn’t a topic that I address much any more. Perhaps I’ll do it, sometime, but my current priorities lie elsewhere.

If true, though, it would obviously weaken somewhat — though I don’t think that it wholly obviates — my suggestion that Alma represents minor but genuine evidence for the Book of Mormon’s authentic antiquity. But I would want to know how likely Joseph Smith would have been to know of men named Alma. How common was the name among males in early America? Did certain regions favor it more than others? If so, where? In places with which Joseph Smith was familiar?

I address this topic now because somebody challenged me yesterday on the matter, accusing me of lying, of deliberate deceit, because, in the presentations that I used to make in which I would devote perhaps a minute or two to the name Alma, I failed to mention the fact — again, I’m assuming it to be true — that at least a few early American men bore that name.

I fail to see how the name Alma in the Book of Mormon strengthens an argument for authentic antiquity in the least degree. It's just a name, not the most common, but it got around. I'd be willing to bet that Smith knew someone named Alma and thought highly of that person.

[Shulem]

Alma Smith
Gender: M
Birth: 1799, Danby, Rutland, Vermont

ALMA SMITH!

Alma was born 5 years before Joseph Smith Jr., in the town of Rutland Vermont which is about 30 or so miles southwest of Sharon Vermont, as the crow flies.

I'd say there was a good chance the Smith's in Sharon knew the Smith's in Rutland.



Score!

[Shulem]

Joseph Smith Papers

​October 30 Hauns Mill Massacre​ was 18 or 19 whose names as far as I recollect, were as follows: . . . . Jacob Potts, Charles Jimison, John Walker, Alma Smith aged about 9 years old

Another Alma!

[Shulem]

Joseph Smith Papers

Alanson Ripley, Seymour Brunson, Charles [C.] Rich,
Francis Higbee, Stephen Markham. Henry G. Sherwood
Lyman Wight Thomas Grover King Fol[l]ett
Tarlton Lewis Amanda [Barnes] Smith Isaac Laney
Merrick Edwd. Partridge, Lyman Leonard, Samuel Bent
Parley P. Pratt Chapman Duncan [Orrin] Porter Rockwell
Thorett Parsons Smith Humphrey John M Burk
Ha[r]vey Redfield Erastus Snow George A. Smith
Ellis Eames William Leyley Rebecca Judd
William Chappline Dr. Isaac Galland Heber C Kimball
Ira Miles Alma Smith Elias Smith
Oliver Olney Zebediah Robinson Sidney Rigdon
Hyrum Smith Orson Hyde

There is no question about it. Joseph Smith knew Almas, left and right!

Mormon apologists/scholars have been sweeping this under the rug in an attempt to deceive the sheep. I'm sure DCP knows about this and joined the Apologetic Lie in defending Mormonism. Isn't that right, Dan? You're a big-FAT liar, and you know it! Please, don't tell me there's a king's name in Facsimile No. 3, because, you'd be lying, just like horny Joseph.

There's no king's name in Facsimile No. 3, but there was most assuredly an Alma Smith among the Smiths prior to the Book of Mormon being written. This changes everything.

I want my money back from that damn church! I was swindled.

Busted!

[Shulem]

Joseph Smith Papers

[201] Smith’s husband, Warren, and ten-year-old son, Sardius, were killed; her six-year-old son, Alma, was shot in the hip. (Amanda Smith, Affidavit, Quincy, IL, 18 Apr. 1839, photocopy; Alma Smith, Affidavit, Hancock Co., IL, 3 Jan. 18400

[214] Three boys originally hid under the bellows: Sardius Smith, his brother Alma Smith, and Charles Merrick. Merrick attempted to escape from the blacksmith shop, was wounded by gunfire, and died four weeks later.

[223] The original Lewis account states that Reynolds “boasted of shooting the too little boys”—presumably Sardius and Alma Smith. It does not state that he made the boast “at public places” or at Richmond.

That ties it.

[Shulem]

The Book of Mormon's use of Alma as a man's name has occasioned considerable amusement among uninformed critics of the book.

We are not amused, nor are we uniformed!

We have the scoop and are sweeping the true piles of dirt that are under the rugs of Mormon scholars.

so far as modern scholarship has been able to determine, he could not have known it from any source existing in his frontier American environment.

You guys are so uniformed! And the scholars have been lying to you.



Joseph Smith was buddies with "Alma"!



The critics win, BIGTIME! This is a new day! This is a new dawn!

[Shulem]

This is a devastating find, Everybody Wang Chung. I would put your discovery among the very most valuable refutations of Mopologetics for the year, if not the most valuable.

I certainly hope Doctor Scratch is paying attention. Where the hell is he?

[Doctor Steuss]

To preempt the potential appeal to the Bar Kochba, here is Symmachus' thread where he so generously shared his knowledge of orthography and phonology:

http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49737

[Gadianton]

I'd say that's a slam dunk, and so far uncontested.