gdemetz wrote:Which is easier; to have a whale swallow a prophet, or to heal a blind man, or to feed thousands with only a few loaves and fishes?
It always amazes me how Mormons and Christians attempt to support absurd folklore and myths in the Bible by referring to other folklore and myths in the Bible. In fact, the Old Testament is conclusive proof that Mormonism is false and that Jesus is not divine. The Old Testament is full of stories that are nothing more than outrageous folklore and myths. For example: 1) Adam and Eve--humans were on the earth thousands of years before this mythical story of origin; 2) Noah's Ark--impossible for a number of reasons; 3) the Tower of Babel--see below; 4) Lot's wife getting turned into a pillar of salt because she disobeyed God's command not to look back at the destruction of Soddom--think what God would have done to her if she refused to become one of Joseph's plurar wives; 5) Lot's daughters getting him drunk and raping him on successive nights and then giving birth to the fathers of Israel's two traditional enemies, the Ammonites and Moabites,who were thus incestuous bastards; 6) Moses being commanded by God to have the Israelite armies kill every man, woman and child occupying the promised land so the Israelites could take over the land and then when the armies wouldn't kill the women and children, Moses being angry and making them go back and kill the women and children; 7) God forbidding Moses to enter the promised land because instead of talking to a rock to command the rock to give forth water for all the thousands of Israelites and their animals to drink, Moses got the rock to give up the water by striking the rock with his staff; 8) The battle of miracles between Moses's God and the Pharaoh's magicians (there isn't even any archeological evidence any large number of Israelites were ever slaves in Egypt); 9) Jonah and the Whale (or was it Giapetto and Pinnochio?), etc., etc., not to mention all of the back-dated prophesies and conflicting theology in the book.
Jesus was a devout Jew who considered the Old Testament as sacred scripture. If you believe the Gospels, Jesus quoted from 24 different books of the Old Testament, including Genesis. The New Testament as a whole quotes from 48 books of the Old Testament. Never once did Jesus tell his followers that the Old Testament was not sacred scripture. Thus, because the Old Testament is full of tall tales made up by an ancient, superstitious people, Jesus could not believe in it and still be God. Some Christians attempt to get around this problem by arguing that you aren't suppose to take the Old Testament literally. That is not what Jesus said. The Mormons can't use this dodge because Joseph Smith clearly taught that the Old Testament was sacred scripture and was to be taken literally. Mormon leaders continue to the present time to teach that at least Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel stories are literally true. Most damaging to the Mormons, the Book of Mormon says that the Jeredites travelled to the new world in their submarines at the time of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. This story is simply a myth of origin. Numerous languages existed many hundreds of years before the Tower and people were scattered over the earth many hundreds of years before the Tower. Moreover, does it really make sense that these ancient people believed that they could build a tower that reached into the heavens or that God thought they could do so and that he had to scatter the people and confound their language as opposed to just having a good celestial laugh or maybe destroying the tower by lightning after the people had worked on it for ten years or a thousand years? Consequently, because the Tower of Babel (and the other stories Joseph believed in) is pure fiction, Joseph could not have been a prophet. Add this to your list.
If you want to support the truth of your Biblical folklore and myths with more folklore and myths, you might as well include stories of Zeus and Thor and Hercules.
