Posted by:
randyj
(
)
Date: December 21, 2016 06:38PM
I just noticed that the old Jack West slideshow and lecture about his travels to South and Central America has been put on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0CnnBqs_QI bought my own copy of that when I was on my mission in Australia 42 years ago. I probably showed it to a dozen or so investigators. The presentation was so long and dry that most of the investigators lost interest about halfway in. I actually edited the audiotape to cut the running time down by about half. I also shared the presentation at a couple of youth firesides after I got home from my mission. I still have that filmstrip and cassette tape packed away somewhere. I also have the related book titled "The Book Of Mormon On Trial." If you listen to any of the video, the little beeps you hear every so often were to notify whoever was running the filmstrip to advance the strip to the next corresponding photo.
Ironically, in 1976---the year I returned from my mission---the LDS anthropologist John Sorenson wrote an article in which he criticized productions such as West's as being amateurish and inaccurate. You can read his article here:
http://ida.net/graphics/shirtail/john.htmDespite Sorenson's criticism, I see that some enthusiastic person has put West's comic-style book on the internet:
http://bookofmormonontrial.com/index.htmlI ate that stuff up as a naive young TBM, but when I began studying my way out of the church using reason and skepticism, I quickly saw how silly the whole book was. One of West's silliest arguments concerned the charge of lack of evidence for the wheel in ancient America. He "proved" his case with this example:
http://bookofmormonontrial.com/table-of-contents.htmlFrom this link, go to page 502 to see the drawing of four giant stone wheels which West claimed were wagon wheels created by ancient Americans to haul stones to build ancient temples and cities. In actual fact, the giant stones are common discarded millstones, which can be found all over the world. When I was a naive TBM, it would have never occurred to me that those stones were anything but what West claimed they were---giant wagon wheels. But as I got older and wiser, I realized that no team of draft animals could pull a wagon of that size and weight, let alone carrying a load of giant stones. The stone wheels would have broken apart while rolling, and furthermore, ancient America had no draft animals to pull that sort of vehicle. The whole idea is preposterous, and it's a shame that someone would put West's long-discredited book on the internet.