Is the Book of Mormon Divinely Inspired?

[MG 2.0]

1. I'm always open to being wrong.

2. Impugning the motives of others is rarely considered to be good form.

3. It's good that you find yourself to be "VERY interesting."

You are very kind, Morley. Very, very kind.

1. That’s a good position to take. We all should follow that example.

2. That is true. I shouldn’t have done that.

3. A bit of hubris, I suppose.

Thanks for your measured response. I was over bearing.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

But like I said, this forum is for all. And I have just as valid views and opinions…and yes, information…to share as you or anyone else.

And I’m more than willing to take a balanced/civil track to honoring other points of view even if I often disagree with the initial presupposition that many here seemingly take that God doesn’t exist.

I have no problem with that. And I hope you and others have no problem with the fact that I do believe.

By the way, where have all the theists gone? Did they get pushed away?

I was interested in having a theist comment on the debate between a Mormon and a Catholic linked to in the first post of this thread.

Oh well.

Regards,
MG

Mg I am a theist and I have posted . I can continue a bit. I think it is worth recognizing that the Book of Mormon has inspired people and in some ways been an influence for good. I do not think it makes much sense to think of it as inspired by dark forces. I think the inspiration is the hope and goals expressed in the Bible and carried forward in the Christian tradition which is the primary source bed of the book. I can see second hand divine inspiration.(inspired by ideas that are related to divine inspiration)There are other books like that. I like George McDonald or perhaps Dickens Christmas Carol.

I think it is fair to recognize earnestness in the composition of the Book of Mormon. It is not a joke, trick or some thing that could be done as a demonstration. It took years of preparation, investment of imagination as well as some real attachment to what is being communicated in the book.

Can such a think be fiction? I think it is very possible. Human imagination has a momentum. We enjoy stories. We like stories to fit our hopes and fears. People can put a lot of effort into that. Much more effort than is put into an assignement(could you or I go home and create a book like the Book of Mormon? No we could not.)

I can appreciate that point of view. The problem is the condensed time in which the translation occurred and the testimony of the witnesses which seem to support a short translation period in which Joseph had a seerstone in a hat with no other apparent ‘props’.

http://www.eldenwatson.net/BoMIntro.htm

Scroll to link at bottom of the page.

Yes, there have been many works of world literature that are worthy of our attention. It seems as though in some respects the Book of Mormon falls into a class of its own.

Regards,
MG

[dantana]

[

I can appreciate that point of view. The problem is the condensed time in which the translation occurred and the testimony of the witnesses which seem to support a short translation period in which Joseph had a seerstone in a hat with no other apparent ‘props’.

The church must be true because - the Book of Mormon was produced in a miraculous manner because - it was done in such a short time span because - witnesses testified of such because - Joseph told them so.

[Marcus]

Mg I am a theist and I have posted . I can continue a bit. I think it is worth recognizing that the Book of Mormon has inspired people and in some ways been an influence for good. I do not think it makes much sense to think of it as inspired by dark forces. I think the inspiration is the hope and goals expressed in the Bible and carried forward in the Christian tradition which is the primary source bed of the book. I can see second hand divine inspiration.(inspired by ideas that are related to divine inspiration)There are other books like that. I like George McDonald or perhaps Dickens Christmas Carol.

I think it is fair to recognize earnestness in the composition of the Book of Mormon. It is not a joke, trick or some thing that could be done as a demonstration. It took years of preparation, investment of imagination as well as some real attachment to what is being communicated in the book.

Can such a think be fiction? I think it is very possible. Human imagination has a momentum. We enjoy stories. We like stories to fit our hopes and fears. People can put a lot of effort into that. Much more effort than is put into an assignement(could you or I go home and create a book like the Book of Mormon? No we could not.)

I can appreciate that point of view. The problem is the condensed time in which the translation occurred and the testimony of the witnesses which seem to support a short translation period in which Joseph had a seerstone in a hat with no other apparent ‘props’.

http://www.eldenwatson.net/BoMIntro.htm

No, the timeline, whether the one above is used or others that seem to have a more realistic assessment, doesn't address huckelberry's points, or really any issues under discussion.

We've discussed this before, I've always liked this take:

The evidence that the Book of Mormon was really produced in just a few months seems to be nothing but statements from interested parties. If we were simply trying to decide which composition time frame were more likely, out of idle curiosity, then those statements might be sufficient evidence to pick "three months" as the leading candidate. It would still be an academic dispute as to whether the claims of rapid composition were reliable. More cynical scholars would suspect Smith of concealing his much longer preparation time just to burnish his image as a literary prodigy. The short time frame would by no means be an accepted fact.

The evidence for rapid production of the Book of Mormon is at best maybe 60-40 against a much longer composition period with notes from which Smith somehow cribbed. The prior odds of a genuine prophet, even for people who accept that such prophets exist, are very low. A 60-40 piece of evidence doesn't raise them enough to matter for anyone. If they were one in a million before you thought about the composition time frame issue, then they improve to 1.5 in a million.

So harping on about how miraculously rapidly the Book of Mormon was produced is an alarmingly bad argument from Mormon apologists. If an extra 0.5 in a million is a prize worth contesting for them, then they cannot have a real case. And furthermore they must know it, even if they don't recognize that they know it, because wasting time and bandwidth on that 0.5-in-a-million point was their choice. If they thought they had a more powerful argument than that, they would have used it, instead.

[I Have Questions]

You posted a link and assigned everyone to come up with something interesting, challenging, deep, or new that Jacob Hansen had to present. Many of us tried. We returned and reported. You decided that we must not have delved deep enough, since all we found were the same, old, boring, chunks of merde things that apologists have all come to rely on, these days. Frustrated with what you saw as our failure, you decided to have a look for yourself. However, from what you posted, it's obvious that you couldn't find anything that was interesting, either.

This is a very good TL;DR summation of this thread.

[I Have Questions]

Because MG finally made good and watched some of his video and posted his thoughts, I watched the first 10 minutes.

Out of the gate Jacob comes swinging with "NHM", which was also Hamblin's go-to discovery. The Bible has a book called Nahum and given the sheer number of Bible names and Bible-riffed names in the Book of Mormon, its pretty obvious it is Bible fan fic. And Jacob massively oversells it, as if anyone but Mormon apologists have agreed that NHM would have or has ever meant Nahom. More on Jacob's hilarious overselling at the end of this post.

Phillip Jenkins has an epic takedown of NHM here:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... m-follies/

While I certainly can't compete with Jenkins, I apparently did my own study of Nahom back when I was thinking about Book of Mormon names.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=151744

Hamblin was right about one thing. He knew that he had to account for the chance appearance of the three letters appearing together, and so he did a bogus calculation showing it to be some ridiculous number and ceded the point later (another apologist corrected him). But he was right to take that into account. My interest in how names appear is similar to Hamblin's thoughts about what kind of names we'd expect to find. (not detailed odds)

Now back to Jacob's overselling. Jenkins hits it out of the park here:

To give the authors credit, they honestly cite the inscription word as Nihmite, without pretending it was “really” Nahom. Yet despite this precise quotation, the story morphs and expands in popular retelling, until it becomes something like “The Book of Mormon describes a place in Arabia called Nahom. And now scientists have discovered inscriptions using the same name at that very place! Whoa!”

That quotation is about verbatim Jacob's sales pitch to his Catholic friends! LOL!

I note that MG 2.0 hasn’t responded to your points Gadianton. Perhaps he missed your post.

[Morley]

I can appreciate that point of view. The problem is the condensed time in which the translation occurred and the testimony of the witnesses which seem to support a short translation period in which Joseph had a seerstone in a hat with no other apparent ‘props’.

Wow. A woefully inaccurate book full of bad history, goofy theology, and unscientific ideas; a book that was largely plagiarized; one bursting with anachronisms; a 1400-year-old tome rife with 19th Century Yankee ideals; a revealed work said to have come from golden plates that were later taken away to heaven, but really read off a rock placed in a hat. None of that really made me believe.

But now that I know that this book was composed quickly? Sign me up! I believe!

Yes, there have been many works of world literature that are worthy of our attention. It seems as though in some respects the Book of Mormon falls into a class of its own.

Ha! Virtually no one outside the faith thinks of The Book of Mormon as 'world literature.' Otherwise it would be taught in English American Literature classes right alongside The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick.

You're right though, The Book of Mormon may indeed fall into a class of it's its own.



edit: Fixed grammar.

[Chap]

[...]

So here’s the thing. For disbelievers to essentially tell believers that their views are not as welcome as others is one point of view. I just don’t happen to agree with it.

You may not come right out and say it…but, well, it’s not too hard to figure out.

But like I said, this forum is for all. [...]

Dear fellow board members. Please see above. On that, I'd like to say:

1. I have repeatedly said in previous posts that I really do not care what MG, personally chooses to believe. If he needs to believe in a benevolent entity that is in some way the 'creator of the universe' (assuming that concept makes any sense), then he is welcome to go ahead and do that.

2. If on the other hand he comes to a discussion board and advocates his views, then (the clue is in the name), I am by the nature of the context free to argue my side of things, which amongst other things, involves pointing to the fact that the term 'god' he likes to introduce into his propositions is left essentially vacuous. Moreover, the notion that the use of such a term enables one to answer some kind of 'Ultimate Question' about the entire cosmos is highly questionable, and one has to ask why he can't be content simply to say "I don't know".

3. However, it seems that being questioned and having his views regarded with radical scepticism really upsets MG. So in his post he tries, as I think he has done before, to find grounds for claiming that I am "tell[ing] believers that their views are not as welcome as others", which would, of course, be a breach of one of Shades' fundamental rules for this board. Just to make myself clear: I think MG's views are open to serious criticisms, and I shall continue to express those criticisms whenever he turns up here and I have the time and energy required to do so. But like everybody else who stays within Shades' board rules, he remains free to express them as often as he likes. So long as he realises that on this board which has 'Discussions' in its name, his views will be, well, 'discussed'. Can't he deal with that?

[Moksha]

Anti-Mo: "Now I have an excuse to not move my lazy butt to Church for two hours."

Are you calling us to repent and return to Church? What if President Oaks then wants to kick us out? Is there a gap in this divine inspiration?

[Gadianton]

However, it seems that being questioned and having his views regarded with radical scepticism really upsets MG. So in his post he tries, as I think he has done before, to find grounds for claiming that I am "tell[ing] believers that their views are not as welcome as others",

I think this gets to the crux of the problem. MG has a different idea about what it means to be "welcome" to express his views. There's a huge difference between respecting someone's right to say something and respecting what they say. The board "welcome" policy I take to equate to the former, not the latter.