The Book of Mormon is a GOOD book marg!!!

[Guest]

Trevor, you seem not to be aware of the work that has been done on the Book of Mormon pointing to it being an ancient text. Either that or you dismiss anything that FARMS puts out on the subject.

Glenn, it is you who seem to be suffering with a misunderstanding. As apologists have told me many times, FARMS scholarship on the Book of Mormon is written for believers, not to "prove" anything. My understanding of science and scholarship is not that I take things on faith and then discuss them as though they were in fact what other people claim them to be. Some people do in fact choose to operate this way. All FARMS scholarship begins with a testimony and under the premise that the book is ancient. Someone who has no testimony and who needs reasons to consider the book ancient will not be helped by FARMS scholarship, unless he compromises his scientific/scholarly standards. I am not willing to do that.

The lack of recantations is important to their witness because if the whole thing was a hoax, what better time to reveal it than when you are no longer a part of it. Especially when some of those who parted did not leave on good terms with Joseph.

Unless they were hoaxed and not hoaxers. It seems to me like it wouldn't be that difficult to trick an untrained person into believing that a bogus artifact was ancient. There are some other famous examples. How would they be able to tell? At what point, years later, and when the artifact had disappeared, would you imagine them getting wise to the fact that the plates were bogus?

Some of the witnesses were also scribes for Joseph Smith in the translation process. There were others also, such as Emma and visitors to Joseph or Emma while the translation was taking place. Their descriptions of the recording process rule out any sort of reference material, I.e no books, no maps, no notes, not even a Bible. Just the plates and the seer stones and a hat. Your "Joseph fooled them" theory does not account for that.

I remain unimpressed by the translation process as evidence of anything other than Joseph Smith's own abilities. Go to a carnival and witness lots of things *you* can't do. That does not mean they can't be done.

Actually, Joseph Smith did not have to prove anything. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints do not have to prove anything. Joseph Smith stated that the Book of Mormon was translated by the power of God. The Book of Mormon invites all who would like to know of its veracity to ask the author, God if it be true or not. That is all the proof that is needed, a spiritual witness.

Joseph Smith actually went to great lengths to prove that the Book of Mormon was an ancient record. That is why he made up stories, falsified plates, and then pulled off the whole phony translation show. Obviously he thought he had something to prove. The LDS Church and its members don't feel they have anything to prove because they have been taught that, where the Book of Mormon is concerned, they can accept the worst kinds of evidence and simply believe. The question of whether the book is "true", of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with its historicity or antiquity, both of which cannot be determined by good feelings after prayers.

It is the Book of Mormon critics who have to prove that it is not what it claims for itself. They are the ones who got/get all hot and bothered about it. They have done a poor job dealing with Book of Mormon scholarship.

Here is where you most fundamentally get it wrong and are completely inconsistent. You have just told me that the basis for buying into the Book of Mormon is a spiritual witness. That is, as you say, "all the proof that is needed." I don't know how it is that you convince a person who accepts this kind of evidence as determinative of reality that they are wrong. Essentially, you are telling me that what you feel is true, and that it is all you need to discover truth. The rest of your worldview is made to conform to the good feelings you had after you prayed.

People associated with FARMS have, time and again, told us that their work is not designed to prove the Book of Mormon is ancient, but that it is a further confirmation for those who already believe in its antiquity. In other words, "for people who believe that their good feelings can prove something is real, here are a few other interesting and suggestive thoughts that bolster your almost completely baseless position. To critics of the world, we dare you to disprove this, but you have to prove that the Holy Spirit is not real and have a signed affidavit from Joseph Smith wherein he admits that he made all of this up."

In other words, the believer is in a position where he challenges the unbeliever to falsify unfalsifiable and quite frankly ridiculous claims. It is for this reason that the average non-believing scholar simply raises an eyebrow and moves along. They have better things to do with their time than discuss the galactic overlord Xenu with Scientologists.

Whether I believe in God or not is not the point. It doesn't take a non-believing position to refuse to accept deplorable standards of evidence as probative. And it is always the person who makes extraordinary claims who has the responsibility to prove them to others. If a few people are fooled into expecting less than what they should in this regard, I am sorry for them. It remains the job of the man who believes in aliens to prove they exist before the rest of the world has any obligation to take him seriously.

But if you wish for me or anyone else here to accept what you say then you need to do more than just say something. If you or anyone else wishes to seriously undermine the Book of Mormon, they have to impeach the witnesses. You can ignore them if you want to, but there can be no valid argument that the Book of Mormon did not come forth exactly as Joseph claimed if the testimonies of those witnesses and the scribes is not effectively impeached. All of the myriad theories, Spaulding Manuscript, View of the Hebrews, etc. cannot get off the ground
Joseph did not just walk out of his room one day with the Book of Mormon under his arm and proclaim that he had translated it from some gold plates that he had been given by angel. He showed the plates to at least eleven people. The translation was done openly, I.e. there was a witness, a scribe who was with him as he dictated. That process has been recorded and corroborated. It was done over over a period of time, not just presto and done. Heck, even unauthorized excerpts were printed during the process.
The choice of whether you believe those men or not is up to you. I have laid out the reasons I feel the testimonies of those men are important. Feel free to prove me wrong or at least show me some evidence that I am wrong. Right now all I have is eleven men telling me something and you telling me "they must have been fools, hoodwinked" without giving me anything to back your opinion up.

Yes, once again we are back to the "you have to believe before you believe" nonsense. I have told you pretty clearly why it is that I do not believe the Book of Mormon is ancient. I have no compelling evidence to look at that suggests it is ancient. The witness of uneducated men that they saw an artifact is about as good as it gets, and this is really close to meaningless. If you find nothing suspicious about evidence like that, then I would have a difficult time imagining what it would take to pry you away from the delusion that the Book of Mormon has anything to do with ancient history. Your standards of evidence are so low, and your bias so clear and well-entrenched, that it would take a Herculean effort to help you understand how thin the evidence for Book of Mormon antiquity truly is.

I am not interested in arguing leprechauns and aliens with the believers. I simply add my objections as a non-believer. I think that offering this perspective is a useful act inasmuch as it affirms the warranted suspicions and lack of belief among others here. We have no obligation to accept the existence of Nephites. We are here to tell people that in the end, there is no evidence that Nephites existed past the good feelings that people get when praying about a book full of things they already have good feelings about before they pray.

[_Yoda]

. Actually, audio books are the wave of increasing of the illiterate masses.

Although I would agree that audio books are an attempt to appeal to the masses, I don't agree that they are necessarily an appeal for illiterate masses.

For instance, I love to read. The problem is, I have very little time to leisure read. Before my sabbatical, I had an annoying hour long commute to get to and from work. That was really the only alone time I had. So, when I was in the midst of reading "Da Vinci Code", I bought both the audio book AND the regular book. I listened to the audio book in the car on my way to and from work, and then, read from the actual book at night. (And yes, I know that "Da Vinci Code" is hardly great literature, but it was a fun read for me. ;) )

My point is that the people I talk to who love to read tend to use the audio books as a way to "fill in the gaps", so to speak, when driving, etc.

[_haleray]

I agree with liz, many people feel that they don’t have any time to read books. The commute to, and from, work is a great time to ‘read’ the scriptures. I was able to ‘read’ not only the Book of Mormon but all the scriptures, as well.
I however feel that it is frustrating, just hear Leviticus in the Old Testament, or most of the Book of Mormon where Mormon complains that he has no room to write anything, then virtually every other verse he puts down what year it was. It is not written like today, for example I would write August 24th 2008, but the Book of Mormon would write it as; it’s the twenty and fourth day of the eighth month of the two thousand and eighth year of our Lord. It gets old and redundant after a while.

[_Ray A]

When anyone can work out how Jews practising the Law of Moses also practised Christianity in 600 BC, do let me know. Nay, back to the time of Adam.

That is when I'll take the Book of Mormon seriously as an ancient text.