Her Amun wrote: For me, the most interesting thing about anti-mormon arguments are the underliyng assumptions behind them.
For me, the most interesting thing - and I'm not just saying this - is when anti-critics zero in on the insignificant, "who really cares" arguments as if Mormonism can withstand any and all serious scrutiny.
Let me know when you (or anyone in the Church) can explain the more absurd parts of Mormonism - and Creationism. Obscuring the meaning of words and the value of actual evidence isn't going to impress anyone on this board.
If you want pure truth (i.e. the utmost truest truth), you know where to turn. If your steering wheel is guiding you towards the Book of Mormon, your Liahona is broken. The truth is in the moustache, not in Moroni 10:3-5.
We should find mention of the aliens that built the Mayan pyramids.
"Surely he knows that DCP, The Nehor, Lamanite, and other key apologists..." -Scratch clarifying my status in apologetics "I admit it; I'm a petty, petty man." -Some Schmo
But aren't these Reform Egyptian characters based on an altered Latinized alphabet that those Mayans obviously deviated from, perhaps in a plot to conceal their true origin from the prying eyes of the Spanish Conquistadors, who would have only twisted them is some Jesuit plot?
I've decided that some parts of the Book of Mormon are true. Just not the parts that Mormons quote so often. The best parts are when the "bad" people articulate their rationale for being "bad".
I think Joseph Smith was just playing a big trick on people, and he didn't really expect it to get as big as it has.
Quote: We would expect to find remains or at least war weapons remaining in areas of the great battles.
Where do we look? -----------------
You start by looking in the area around the Hill Cumorah where these 'last great battles' took place. You look near the current City of Manti, Utah where Brigham Young said ancient prophets had already dedicated the Temple site.
You look in the vicinity of the grave of Zelph, that great white Lamanite warrior as pronounced by Joseph Smith.
You look along the march route of Zions Camp where Joseph Smith said was located the City of Manti, the Southernmost city of the Nephite civilization.
All the prophetic declarations give you locations to check.
To date, not one artifact of this civilization of millions has turned up. Not in the deserts, forests or praries. Nothing at all.
Joseph was commanded to send missionaries to preach to the lamanites in the borders around Missouri (think that was it, my references aren't here) so why not start where God told him lamanites actually were?
So far we have as many artifacts from the Nephites as we do from Harry Potter.
Her Amun wrote:If the Book of Mormon is true, what should we find?
....
In otherwords, what would the Nephite and Jaredites leave behind that is recognizably "nephite" or "jaredite"?
Joseph Smith provided us with a sample of Nephite writing, in the form of ancient "characters" that he copied off the golden plates and gave to Martin Harris for expert validation. This is the only tangible piece of evidence that the golden plates ever existed:
These characters are what we would expect to find if the Book of Mormon was true, yet they remain an unintelligible mishmash, with no similarity to the ancient Maya script that is, to date, the only written language of the pre-Columbian Americas.
This, Her Amun, is what we would expect to find. Now is the time for you to fall back on "why hasn't anything survived" with this kind of writing????
My understanding of these "caracters", are that many (more than thirty) from this fragment can be matched up with Tironian notes - an ancient form of Latin shorthand. Am I wrong?
"If False, it is one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and ruin millions… " - Orson Pratt on The Book of Mormon
Her Amun wrote:For me, the questian isn't one of " why hasn't anything survived", but rather "how will we recognize it as belonging to Book of Mormon peoples".
If I were determined to keep my belief in the Book of Mormon, that's probably the question I would try to get people to ask too. Unfortunately, the obvious answer would be "Umm...read the Book of Mormon and see how it describes the people and their cultures?"
But here's something: in any land suggested as a Book of Mormon land, we should expect to find an entire group of Christians (homogenous, monotheistic, New Testament-style Christianity with no competing religions) and absolutely no warfare or class distinctions, for the two centuries beginning around 34AD. See 4 Nephi. I'm pretty sure 200 years of pure Christianity with no wars or contentions might show up in some kind of records.
The Dude wrote:My understanding of these "caracters", are that many (more than thirty) from this fragment can be matched up with Tironian notes - an ancient form of Latin shorthand. Am I wrong?
Here's one comparison. Characters on the left are from the anthon transcript. Column on the right are tironian notes:
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
