http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Wonder-Generation-Discovery/dp/1400031877

Just finishing this book. It ranges from late 1700s to mid 1830s. The Mormon genesis is in the middle of a romantic flowering of science. In this book the author mentions Columbus in drawing comparison to the scientific giants of this period. Columbus just KNEW there had to be a route to The East going West. When the birth of the professional scientist was happening these "natural philosophers" just KNEW that there was a scientific future that had to happen.

And in comparison, Smith&Co just KNEW Native Americans were Lost Israeli Tribes.

Mormonism is a colossal religious failure in the middle of a Romantic dawning of what we now know as modern science. Maybe Mormonism was "cool" back in Victorian times. Maybe it was cutting edge religion that made Christianity inherently a global affair.

The truth as we know it in the 21st Century is how much of a failure Mormonism truly is. It was born during the birth pains of modern science. It was attempting to offer better explanation for the failing of Christianity as the explanation for human existence and origins.

It failed. In a Postmodern world we are watching Mormonism's demise and a casualty in the world of information. Its claims are easily disproved and its mechanism for change (i.e. "revelation") is not rigorous enough to keep informed minds enamored with it.

Christ in America just HAD to be. It was a big religious development. But Jesus was a local phenomenon. His ancient history doesn't export well in an era of information and a science of history that Nietzsche predicted.

And anyone including my little family who thinks Mormonism is some sort of personal or global salvation is wrong - epically so.

The Indians being Hebrews was a popular idea that was going
around during Smith's time and place. "View of the Hebrews"
makes a passionate plea for that viewpoint, and it wasn't
original even then.

The scientific view during Joseph Smith's time is evident in
the things he produced. The Book of Mormon mentions that the
earth goes around the Sun:

". . . yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the
face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets
which move in their regular form do witness that there is a
Supreme Creator."
--Alma 30:44

In Biblical times there was no thought of the earth's motion.
In Joseph Smith's time, there was. In Biblical times, the
planets moved in irregular form across the zodiac with
"retrograde motions." It was only after Copernicus and Galileo
that the idea of regular orbits of the planets was known. In
Joseph Smith's day the planets in their regular orbits around
the Sun was used as evidence of a creator. The orbiting
planets were likened to the gears in a watch to show a
creator. Alma's argument is straight out of the early 1800s.

"7 Now the set time of the lesser light is a longer time as to
its reckoning than the reckoning of the time of the earth upon
which thou standest.

"8 And where these two facts exist, there shall be another
fact above them, that is, there shall be another planet whose
reckoning of time shall be longer still;

"9 And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one
planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which
Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord’s time; which Kolob
is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those
planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou
standest."
--Book of Abraham 3:7-9

This fits the idea that the TIME of a day on a planet is it's
rotational period. There was no thought of such things in
Biblical times, but these things were well known in Joseph
Smith's time. It was well known (and had been for over a
century) that the moon's rotational period was much longer
than the Earth's. Even the idea that the planets that were
seen
in the sky were at all like the earth was totally foreign to
ancient thought.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2013 11:39AM by baura.

You've got it.

William (or Vilhelm) Hershel revolutionized the popular concept of a vast space instead of the traditional one holding everything in the universe existed in The Milky Way.

Smith placed Kolob in Hershel's Universe.

L. Ron Hubbard continued Smith's tradition of placing metaphysical beliefs in more concordance with the evolution of science with his religious nonsense added to his Dyanetics.

I guess with cults it is how far back you want your delusions to go in being in harmony with the latest advances in science.

Mormonism obviously failed and has to exist with cult tactics to survive - just like Scientology.