Probably many of you already know this, but I didn’t. There’s a lot of plagiarism in the Book of Mormon, but I didn’t know about this specific verse before. This Mormon guy was trying to prove that the BoM is not Trinitarian. So he he told me to look up 2 Nephi 31: 8. Here it is;


“Wherefore after he was baptized with water the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove.”


That sounded like something from the New Testament to me, so I checked. This is Luke 3:22:


“And the holy ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him…”


Of course the book of Luke was written hundreds of years after the alleged date that Nephi would have been writing. Joseph Smith had a bible. So my conclusion was that the words were lifted from a real text, but my Mormon opponent said it was a red herring. I blocked him and moved on. But not before recording my new knowledge. You really can learn some things from fools.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2016 07:51PM by donbagley.

Here are some more....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nwrPJARws
Enjoy!
Mormons want to believe lies and live lies. Whatever works....

Sometimes fools teach me things I never wanted to know, too.

Glad I blocked him, Saucie. He was also very arrogant.

I'm not qualified to define Trinitarianism at length. I just liked that the Mormon guy gave me a plagiarized verse to prove his point.That was funny to me.

Are his initials "JM"? You mentioned that he was very arrogant. I have had experience with a mopologist that is mind blowingly arrogant. He is extremely skilled at using many, many words and saying close to nothing.

His initials aren't JM. I did look him up, and he's a consultant for some kind of MLM energy group that I couldn't find anywhere. It's called New Power, he says. He probably rants from home. Mom's home.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Glad I blocked him, Saucie. He was also very
> arrogant.


That type always is Don... They think they know it all and they are smarter than anyone else on the planet.

you Did good !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2nd Nephi 29:3&4. There was no such word as "bible" in the time-line of the BOM.

There was no such THING as a "Bible" in Nephi's time.

Jews didn't canonize their scriptures until well after Nephi's
time:

http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=172

Mormons who argue against the doctrine of the Trinity have no
idea what that doctrine says. That he's using a passage cribbed
from the New Testament to argue AGAINST the BOM's trinitarianism
is suspect since the New Testament is what was used by early
Christian theologians to deduce the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Holy Ghost descending in the form of a dove in no way
contradicts the doctrine of the trinity. It only contradicts
the Mormon-apologist, straw-man version of the doctrine of the
Trinity--a version, by the way, for which people were burned at
the stake as heretics, for promulgating in the middle ages.

If I were trying to argue FOR the doctrine of the Trinity, I
would be a LOT better off with the BOM than without it.

Thanks for the post.

Lots of Trinitarians (like me) believe that the verse from Luke is strong evidence of early Christian belief in the Trinity. Some non-Trinitarians (like United Pentecostals) find Luke to be a proof-text somehow for a Unitarian Godhead. I don't see that.

I am a NeverMo and LDS ideas are very confusing to me. To me it is kinda like Mormons have one god and two half-gods.

You are about to hear, however, that the Trinity does not exist because God does not exist and, anyway, the Trinity was not an accepted Christian belief until Constantine, and you have to agree with me or you are soft in the head because I know the truth and if you don't agree with me you are operating on beliefs and feelings and not the truth which I and others who agree with me know.

I often wish we could discuss ideas and concepts without beating each other up about everyone being required to accept what a few KNOW to be true.

(Watch what happens now.)

***sigh***

Again, thanks for the post.

Steve

That whole chapter of 2 Nephi is hilarious.
It's written in past tense, even though it's supposed to be a "prophecy" of the future.
It uses "Christ," when that Greek word was completely unknown to Jews of the time, and any of the Hebrew, Aramaic, or even Egyptian equivalents would have been something like "messiah" or "savior."
It copies a number of other bible verses (changing the words slightly), straight from the NT.

It's such a transparent attempt to put NT verses as a "prophecy" into the mouth of imaginary Nephi 500+ years before the supposed events of the NT that it amazes me everyone doesn't see right through it.

Oh, and note to the guy above:

There's little to no evidence of the idea of the "trinity" until the early 2nd century CE. From that point until the later (4th century CE) "councils," it was an idea that was very controversial in the various christian groups of the time. That's when it was declared "orthodoxy."
Those are facts, demonstrable by evidence. Whether you like 'em or not.
It's hard for people who rely on facts and evidence to consider the verse from Luke in question "strong evidence of early Christian belief in the trinity." Since it doesn't say anything about the trinity, and it describes Jesus and the holy ghost as two separate things...
But, hey, since most of the bible is vague, poorly-worded, written by unknown authors at mostly unknown times and completely unverifiable, it's no wonder people argue what what it "means," right? :)

Thanks much, iich2k.


You distill my point with absolute perfection. As a matter of fact, you were one of three I knew would respond. I actually expected it to be one of the other two. I thought you were too discerning that there was a potential trap.

But my disappointment remains. Often most of us must navigate your helpful guidance about what is true in order to have a discussion. It is good to have the final arbiters of truth so immediately available.

Your points about the tense in the BoM is most useful, though. And and I would have completely missed the use of "Christ".

Steve

It wouldn't accept my screen n Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And and I would have completely missed the use of "Christ".

For other linguistic anachronisms (such as "Bible", mentioned above), see my article "Linguistic Problems of Mormonism"
http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm

Would it help at all to challenge the notion of the Trinity on the basis that it isn't even defined by the Christian Bible?

I'm not keen on saying that it isn't even called by name in the Bible because that may well be one of those linguistic anachronisms that RPackham is so adept at pointing out. But I don't believe that there is even a concise doctrinal explanation in the Bible. There are of course sections that are used to explain the preferred interpretation. However in the whole of the history of this century's long dispute I have never heard of one smoking gun, just tenuous logic supported by questionable interpretation.

I will admit that the Trinity is the most logical solution to a strict monotheistic viewpoint. Of course Jesus cannot be a separate god if there is by definition only one god. And of course Jesus must be god if he is to accomplish something so dramatic as the salvation of everything. I just question your inference that the bible, in any way, established the doctrine. The doctrine was established out of necessity and then the bible was used to, questionably, support it.

time spent "debating" mormons is time that is deducted from your life.

And I'm not good with conflict, but I'm getting to where I can roll it off, and that's progress. I let the guy have the last word, and he tried to continue the discussion. I blocked him, and I decided to write about it. It really did amuse me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2016 12:00AM by donbagley.

"time spent 'debating' mormons is time that is deducted from your life."

When I debated Mormons on the 'net---which I did for about eight years---I was posting on forums where dozens or hundreds of people were reading. So, I wasn't necessarily trying to convince the particular arrogant, incorrigible fanatic Mormons to whom I wrote of their errors. I knew that there were a lot of other readers who might have never, or rarely, responded, but who were influenced by what I wrote.

I've heard from several people who started out as TBMs or outright apologists who have told me that my writings were a factor in them leaving the church. Hell, the original director of research for FAIR, Kerry Shirts, told me that I was one of two Ex-Mormon internet critics who influenced Kerry & friends to found FAIR in the first place.

A lot of my writings have been published in whole or part on this website as well as on Mormonthink, UTLM, Deconstructor's website, and others. I would estimate that the number of TBMs who have been helped out of the church at least in part because of my writings to be in the thousands. The stuff that I and other Ex-Mormons like myself have written over the last two decades is a big reason why the church published all of their recent essays in church history. If you've noticed, few newbies come here asking questions about church history or doctrine etc. any more. That's because they can learn the facts from the various websites that Ex-Mormons have taken the time to publish.

I consider the time I spent debating TBMs to be productive to the goal of exposing Mormonism as the fraud it is. The way I looked at it was, I had spent so much of my free time while I was a TBM doing church stuff---probably averaging 10 hours a week for 20 years---that I considered the time I spent writing against Mormonism to be a means of setting things right, as well as being mentally and emotionally therapeutic for me.

Thank you for fleshing that out, Randy. I too hope to reach others, casual readers perhaps. It's information that is being purposefully withheld to the detriment of members.

Yeah, but as Grant Palmer has indicated, roughly 25% of the BoM was copied and pasted directly from the 1769 edition of the King James Bible, complete with errors. Much comes from other books, with little attempt to hide the plagiarism. And then it was rather unskillfully cobbled together into what is is. It's crap, and yet people like my DW try to defend it by using worn out indicators of "proof" by people like Hugh Nibley.

Another doctrinal point which I believe is even more difficult or impossible to explain is why the Book of Mormon does not mention anything about the three degrees of Glory. It is supposed to be the most perfect book and the one which teaches correct doctrines about eternal life, but no mention of Joe's three degrees of glory. There's a lot of doctrinal explanation about heaven and hell, which as everyone has pointed out in these comments, comes directly from the protestantism prevalent in Joseph's day, Yet, it is strangely silent about the one doctrine that Mormons claim is so unique to their faith.