LifeonaPlate,
You have yet to say anything about the increasingly questioning members featured on your blog.
Instead of pontificating, show me evidence: archaeology, DNA, geology, anthropology, dendroclimatology, morphology, pollen, middens, fossils, linguistics, slag heaps, fossils, any Book of Mormon city, or any physical, scientific evidence. And oh yeah, tell me how the sun gets its light from Kolob, LOL.
I want credible, peer-reviewed evidence, and not the pathetic, apologetic EXCUSES for why there is NO evidence. It was the apologists’ pathetic excuses that got my son-in-law out.
Only true believers can swallow that horses mean tapir and deer, silk means rabbit fur, north by south means northwest by southeast, chariots mean sledges, steel swords mean macuahuitls, peepstone means Urim and Thummin, gold means tumbaga, Salamander is true (oops-forgery), DNA was swamped, and so on with all the word smithing (pun intended). How much does it take to get a clue from all the excuses? Pardon me while I laugh at the absurdity, along with the rest of the world.
Yes, I think it is irrational (or gullible) to believe in the Book of Mormon with no scientific evidence for it, and all the scientific evidence against it. Apologists play word games and fool themselves, obscuring reality with verbal fog, as they continue dancing around their dissonance.
Until you show me something more substantial than rhetoric, I’m moving on.
Perhaps the reading I should have first recommended are:
http://mormonthink.com/testimonyweb.htm Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)- by Carol Tavris, on cognitive dissonance, and why people cling to their opinions when evidence clearly shows they are in error.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think- by Thomas Kida, on the weirdness of peoples’ thinking.