Book of Abraham--false, but Book of Mormon--"true"

[Alphus and Omegus]

So you are saying it’s possible that the earth is 6,000 years old and Jesus did ascend to heaven as the resurrected Son of God?

I don’t think being more or less absurd than these ridiculous claims changes a whole lot.

Catholics and regular Protestants have had centuries to abstract these claims into "metaphor." Mormons are headed that way, but they're much less further along.

[Gadianton]

Are they really a metaphor for the typical Christian believer?

The way I see it, it's more like the centuries of time grandfather the nutty beliefs in.

[Alphus and Omegus]

I think it depends on who is speaking, but yes, time makes faith claims seem more rational to people, just because of the familiarity. Obviously the "flesh and blood" of the eucharist is one of the most absurd beliefs you can have, but it's such an old belief that a lot of people have trouble realizing how irrational it is.

But it is also true that both Catholicism and Protestantism have very large and long-standing traditions which are anti-fundamentalist. I personally know a number of non-denominational Christians who don't think Adam and Eve were real, even as they think that the Jesus tales are real.

[Moksha]

These three, while each in his or her own way dismisses the BoAbr, insisted that they yet believed the Book of Mormon to be of divine origin.

What a shame that the Prophet did not have sufficient time to fully publish the Book of Joseph from the Kinderhook Plates.