True Philosophical Defenses of Mormonism

[_Robert F Smith]

Bob,

I am out of town for a few days so I will get back to you then. Have a good weekend.

O.K. Same to you.

[Guest]

Case in point.
Jskains: Sure. A lot of religion requires supernatural components. A man who alone can make universes is a supernatural thing. So if He wanted the gold to be very light, then He can make it that way.

God, making gold light since 1820.

If the atomic weight changes..... is it still gold?

It is certainly true that some religions "require supernatural components," but Mormonism does not. Mormon theology posits a natural God in a natural universe (or multiverse). What appear to be "miracles" are really a result of awe from people who don't have a natural explanation ready at hand. Yet today we will hear a General Authority wryly compare his gps device to Lehi's Liahona. We now regard as ordinary technology which heretofore would be called "miraculous." Why? Because our perspective has changed.

"Gold light" was never necessary, as I pointed out in October of 1984 -- see my article online at http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publications/books/?bookid=71&chapid=847.

Ok this is rather tangential, but please explain a global flood, and the ark available space issues without introducing supernatural elements. Please don't argue that LDS doctrine does not require a global flood, I can and have provided dozens and dozens of references from conference talks, lesson manuals and such teaching the global nature of the flood. There is an existing thread on this topic, direct replies there.

[_Robert F Smith]

In fact, however, the major Long Count calendar of the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures used a 360-day year.

Have you ever read The Coming Prince by Anderson? A great read about prophecy. He includes his feeling about the nation Israel, this before 1900. His insight is well worth reading. He goes through the 360 day Biblical year.

Yes, Frank, I have used some of Anderson's observations, but some of his claims are too out of date and undependable to be given strong consideration. I refer to him in my piece on Old World chronological correlations in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 5/2 (1996), 98-147, online at http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=5&num=2&id=126. See note 219 on Anderson.

[_Robert F Smith]

Ok ok, show that the Nephites used the Mayan long calendar.

Better?

The Mayan Long Count calendar was invented by Las Olmecas (Jaredites) and was used by all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures. The Maya are simply the best known of all of them due to all the inscriptions and the few codices which survived. So, it is more correct to say that the Nephites used the Long Count calendar, since they had little or no direct contact with the Maya.

[_SteelHead]

So to correlate and rephrase ideas promoted by Robert and Frank....

We can now employ math, a 360 day calendar year, and vagueries around the actual birth year of Christ to produce "verifiable markers" that either:

The Book of Mormon is right and the prophecies of Daniel are wrong

Or conversely

The prophecies of Daniel are right and the Book of Mormon is wrong.

Depending if you want to fix the birth year to 4 bc or year 1.

I love math.

[_SteelHead]

Ok ok, show that the Nephites used the Mayan long calendar.

Better?

The Mayan Long Count calendar was invented by Las Olmecas (Jaredites) and was used by all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures. The Maya are simply the best known of all of them due to all the inscriptions and the few codices which survived. So, it is more correct to say that the Nephites used the Long Count calendar, since they had little or no direct contact with the Maya.

You still do not show that the Nephites were in meso America.

Lots of supposition, no verifiable markers.

[_Robert F Smith]

Great, now show that the meso Americans were the Nephites and you will have something. And the Herod date is debatable ranging between 7 to 2 bc by most experts. Verifies nothing, except that Mormon apologists will grasp at straws.

I am well aware of the debate on the fringes about the date of the death of Herod the Great, but that is attributable to fundamentalist unease with the facts and with the scholarly consensus that he died in early 4 BC. The best source on this consensus is Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed. (Hendrickson, 1998), 291-301 and The Archaeology of the New Testament (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), 25. In his Handbook, 298, Finegan frankly states that 4 BC is "the widely accepted dating of the death of Herod the Great."

As to the Nephites, Mulekites, and Jaredites having been Mesoamericans, just ask yourself some very simple questions: Where in the New World do we find the only literate, high culture? Where in that New World do we find cement construction and other architectural features described in the Book of Mormon? Where do we find the most exact calendar of the ancient world? Where do we find populations in the millions in relatively small regions? Where do we find highly organized mass warfare and human sacrifice, etc.?

And add to those questions: where do you find a culture that evidences Jewish or Christian religious practices? Where is one that uses horses, chariots, and steel? Where is the massive fields of remains from the last battles of two separate cultural extinction events? Etc, etc, etc.

Again grasping at straws.

Methinks you are confusing verifiable with speculative...

Looks like you have several more threads in mind, SteelHead.

We should hardly expect that the nearly three millennia of non-Jewish Olmec (Jaredite) civlization to be Jewish in character, nor do we know how "Jewish" Mulekite culture may have been. Since Las Olmecas were the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica we have to ask what sort of cultures later peoples would likely express. Most of those cultures were, after all, native peoples which were only indirectly involved with Book of Mormon peoples.

That said, some Mesoamerican peoples had traditions which are compatible with Christianity, and which express Christian beliefs:

Arthur Miller & Nancy Farriss state that, despite the European view of seeming incompatibility between Christian and pagan Maya concepts, “from a Maya point of view, . . such a combination may represent a perfectly coherent system,” i.e., “developing their own cult along lines already established” (in Hammond & Willey, Maya Archaeology & Ethnohistory, 239).

Miller and Farriss further state "that Christ could have been identified in the indigenous mind with Quetzalcoatl or the Maya equivalent, Kukulcan” (“Religious Syncretism in Colonial Yucatan: The Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Evidence from Tancah, Quintana Roo,” in Hammond & Willey, Maya Archaeology & Ethnohistory, 239).

LDS President John Taylor said that "The story of the life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being." (Taylor, An Examination into and an Elucidation of the Great Principle of the Mediation and Atonement of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ [SLC: Deseret News Co., 1882], 201).

Indeed, there was a very ancient resurrection cult built around the original Quetzalcoatl, as L. Sejourne has emphasized (Sejourne in Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropologicos, 16 (1960), 77-90 (Sejourne, Burning Water: Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico [Berkeley: Shamballa, 1976]. See also David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition [Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982]; Burr Cartwright, The Phoenix of the Western World: Quetzalcoatl and the Sky Religion [Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1982]).

Slaughter of an innocent animal (or human) and the sharing of its flesh are central to Judeo-Christian and Mesoamerican tradition (Nancy M. Farriss, “Sacrifice and Communion in Colonial Maya Religion,” Abstracts of Papers of the 44th International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, England, 1982 (Manchester Univ., School of Geography, 1982), 15; Miller & Farriss in Hammond & Willey, Maya Archaeology & Ethnohistory, 239, on resurrection).

Michael Graulich found compelling evidence of Paradise Lost & Regained, along with Death, Rebirth, and Reward or Punishment in Mesoamerican tradition (Graulich, “Afterlife in Ancient Mexican Thought,” in Bruno Illius and Matthias Laubscher, eds., Circumpacifica: I, Mittel- und Südamerika: Festschrift für Thomas S. Barthel [Frankfort: Peter Lang, 1990], 165-188).

See especially
Norman Hammond and Gordon R. Willey, eds., Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Second Cambridge Symposium on Recent Research in Mesoamerican Archaeology, August 29-31, 1976 (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1979), xvi, citing J. E. S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1970).
David H. Kelley, Christian Influences in the Ancient Maya Religion (Calgary: Univ. of Canada, 2004).

[Guest]

Interesting unsupported conjecture, near universal ancient religious practices, mingled with unsupported quotes from the prophet........ Wheeeeeeeee.

So far you have produced 0 verifiable marks.

I would still like to see your response to a non supernatural global flood. Are you going to contribute to the flood thread? Guess I could look up the link.

[_Tobin]

The problem I have with the answer the Nephites got the long calendar from the Olmecs (supposed Jaredites) is that the Jaredites were wiped out. Who taught them this calendar?

[Guest]

Tobin, you are trying to constrain a Mormon apologist with the actual narrative of the Book of Mormon. They ignore it at liesure. It is important to note in olympic level apologetic mental gymnastics: horse means tapir, chariot means sled, a land preserved after the flood wasn't, and steel sword means obsidian laced wood club.