Would you go back to church if an ancient city were unearthed and provided absolute proof of the BOM?

I must be really sleepy (or dense ;) ), because I don't understand why an ancient chariot near Palmyra is so out of the ordinary.

Ancient Rome conquered that part of Syria in the first century BCE, so why would a chariot be out of line?

I dunno. I am going to bed now.

Goodnight, all. Sweet dreams.

;o)

Rome, Indiana conquered Syria?

Whoa! Go Hoosiers!

Rome, Georgia. You don’t mess with the Dawgs.

Rome N.Y.

Let's say they dig up some chariots, a bunch of rusty old swords and writings engraved on stone and metal. Archaeologists determine that some of the writings are Hebrew and some...well...they're calling it "reformed Egyptian" because it's a system of writing that seems to have used elements of hieroglyphs to create a phonetic alphabet.

Then they find a chamber about 200 feet under the Hill Cumorah. They never found it before because nobody looked that far down. It's lower than the water table, but appears to be so well constructed that it has remained dry inside all these years. They date some leather items found in the chamber back to the 5th century AD. There are numerous metallic records and a large sword that says Laban on it. And that's just the start of it, they find a map that shows where Zarahemla was and that leads to endless discoveries.

I have to say I would be impressed, shocked, surprised, excited and worried. It seemed so obviously false and made-up, how could I have reached the conclusions that I did with such certainty and now find that the Book of Mormon was giving us the straight poop all that time, no matter how ridiculous and implausible it seemed?

But then, I would have to wonder why something so momentous led to something so silly and banal as the LDS Church. A prophet guy like Joseph Smith gets this Book of Mormon thing right, and then just moves on to polygamy, secret handshakes and fraudulent financial institutions? The Book of Mormon contents are still a lot of ho-hum religious sermons mixed in with a whole lot of nuttiness, real or not.

Then I would be forced to realize that even if the basic tales in the Book of Mormon are true, it does not follow that the LDS church is what it claims to be, what with the "prophets" being unable to even agree on something as trivial as whether the "Mormon" nickname is okay.

The Book of Mormon even tells tales of the constant cycles of falling away from true and correct belief. Who's to say it didn't just happen again?

When I was a teen, something like the discoveries fantasized about above would have been the realization of my fondest hopes. I wanted it all to be true. I was tired of things like being told that I couldn't see the golden plates because the angel took them to heaven.

But indulging in the above fantasies just underscores how ridiculous it is. There's nothing but dirt and decomposed cow dung near Cumorah, a place where more than a quarter million people supposedly fought and died with swords and stuff. In Europe, you can find ruins and artifacts all over the place from lesser events that occurred much earlier. The above fantasy is as far-fetched as fantasizing about being an astronaut who splashed down on an island and discovers a beautiful genie in a bottle, who will do anything I command, including instant teleportation anywhere on earth. Actually, the latter fantasy seems more plausible.

Thanks so very much for your well thought out post. Sometimes I have a fantasy that this could happen even though I know it's just ridiculous.

I guess I'm trying to justify past ideals that I had.

But on the other hand I really can't wait for all of LDS to collapse under the myth.

If they found all that i still wouldn't worship the LDS god. He's immoral and a jerk. And I can not Revere or worship the god they have described.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2018 10:52AM by dogblogger.

"...an astronaut who splashed down on an island and discovers a beautiful genie in a bottle..."

If church had 1960's Barbara Eden, I'd go back.



Yeah, I'm a dog.

But would you go back to the future as well?

I do hope they find that map of Zarahemla, so I can go vacation there. Maybe I'll find a bone that DNA's Hebrew! But then, excited Archaeologists might be excavating and finding tons of those bones.

That’s slightly less likely than proving a Yugo is a Lamborghini.

There have been several of these lately: Would you go back to church if...

No. No ifs. I would not go back to the cult.
Period.

Of course I knew it would be a stretch asking this hypothetical however as most of us believed it before I thought it would be interesting to revisit.

Quite amazing how ones thought process can go from A to Z.

Not even if you had a full frontal lobotomy?

There hasn't been any proof of BoM civilizations near Palmyra, or anywhere on the American continents.

Yet there is sparse ancient civilization history, which shouldn't be surprising given indigenous people lived here long before Europeans colonialized America. What it isn't about are Lamanites or Nephites or ancient Israelites coming here on a boat.

"Two great ancient American civilizations lived in the Palmyra area – the Adena Culture, which existed from 1000 BC to 300 BC, and the Hopewell Culture, which existed from 300 BC to 400 AD. These great civilizations have also been called the “mound builders” because of the thousand of mounds that have been discovered where they lived. The mounds were used chiefly as burial places, but also as foundations for buildings, temples, and fortresses...."

http://www.palmyrainn.com/history-palmyra/

No. They'd have to satisfactorily explain the Book of Abraham, all the other problems with the Book of Mormon, the contradictory accounts of the first vision, the abuse of power associated with polygamy, and all the other revelation fails since then. All those tings and more were deal breakers for me--by themselves.

I went to Palmyra and unearthed a roman coin with a date of 48 B.C. stamped on it.

Nice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2018 12:19PM by Lot's Wife.

"It's a miracle, how could Joseph Smith have possibly known that there was a yearly dating system of B.C. and A.D.!?"

Actually, I don't think Joseph Smith would get that joke, but later apologists would have an explanation *why* he didn't get it. :-)

Even if all the artifacts needed to support both Joseph Smith's stories and The Book of Mormon historicity I would not believe based upon one "fact."

Why are the actual "Golden Plates" missing? I formed this opinion after meeting several Non-Mormons and finding out that they believed that The Golden Plates were in Salt Lake City. It dawned upon me that like The Dead Sea Scrolls, without the actual written words there is literally nothing to believe in here.

I need to qualify this with the following. I believe in non-existent books. I also believe in books with no names that probably existed because while not referenced in the historical records they probably did as a means to explain how technology got disseminated and other things.

But The Book of Mormon was supposedly discovered in 1820. It wasn't lost or destroyed. Some metaphysical entity took it requiring me to believe in the metaphysical in order to believe the physical discoveries. That is unless this is a lie and it really is in SLC.

I would be shocked to have to accept The Book of Mormon as historical like The Bible. I wouldn't believe in it again but it having history would be flooring because it is so obviously a hoax.

So are you saying that if the plates turned up you would believe?

That whole thing confuses me because its Ok to have the peep stone, the Egyptian papyri of Abraham, the mummies etc as direct evidence of 'the lords wonders' but hey presto the plates have gone.

I even read somewhere that even the stone box that the plates were in disappeared. How convenient!

At that time, you could wander around the hill freely during the day. I looked and looked for the stone box. I got really excited when I found something that looked like a stone box. "Whoa!" I thought. "I can't believe other people have missed this all these years! Guess they weren't looking hard enough."

I got close to it and started examining it. Inside I saw that there was a water faucet. I turned it on and water came out. Then I examined the "stone box" more closely and realized that it was just poured concrete that was put there to protect the water faucet. They probably used the water to clean the grounds, water plants, etc. Entirely modern of course.

....And that's the closest I ever personally came to discovering genuine archaeological evidence proving that the Book of Mormon is what it is claimed to be. Should I tell this story in the next Fast & Testimony meeting?

actually took physical, man-made records away in order to hide from the world the only physical evidence that supported his prophet's crazy-sounding story.

Gather together, oh Zion, and worship the God of evidence tampering.

No.

I'd start my own church and members would drive chariots and dress like ancient middle-eastern muscle men.

We would send our missionaries out unto the world using boats and barges crafted by our own hand.

We would erect a tower, where our words could spew forth and be heard by every ear.

We would smote the heads off the wicked.

At least my church would be a truer representation than mormonism.

+1000

If I got all ripped like Moroni, got authentic Nephite clothing made (including the wrist bands), and made a stack of gold plates, it might be fun going back to church.

+2000 sign me up!

Very funny title. Alan you should work for The Onion.

Don't blame me I'm Australian with a brain thats A sandwich short of a picnic!

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We would send our missionaries out unto the world
> using boats and barges crafted by our own hand.

Yes, but would the barges be tight like unto a dish?

Remember when someone found some initials scratched on a rock in the Arabian Peninsula that with a bit of convoluted reasoning could be connected to Lehi's journey? Just never you mind that not one shred of archeological or DNA evidence has been found in the Americas. That rock is proof!
That's not even grasping at straws, that's just plain desperation.

Using a rock in a hat to translate an ancient record is desperation.

They are still pushing that NHM found on a rock in an inhospitable area as Book of Mormon evidence.

Yeah and why is it the leaders tell the members not to worry about ancient FINDS but if they located a fly in amber they would say that Nephi swatted it.

Trying to sell the copyright to a book all you did was translate, with divine assistance, is quite a slap in the face to the author(s), not to mention the divine source of assistance.

That's right up there with joining the Methodist Church after being told to "...join none of them..."

Interesting character/caracter, that Smooth Joe Smith.

the profound implications of that whole copyright fiasco.

(1) It was the incident that caused Joseph Smith to confess to David Whitmer that some revelations are from God, some from man and others from the devil. And, obviously, Joseph Smith did not know himself which was which until things played out to their conclusion.

(2) What if they had been successful in persuading some sucker to buy the copyright? There was no indication that they were looking for any deeply spiritual person. They were just looking for money. If they had sold the copyright, somebody else would own the rights in Canada for the "keystone" scripture of the restoration. In other words, the new copyright owner would be able to prevent the "restored church" from even using the Book of Mormon in Canada. The new copyright owner would have been able to alter it, or make derivative works from it...Moroni becomes Lady Chatterly's second lover...


Any reasonable person would be extremely disturbed by these implications and would be forced to conclude that Joseph Smith himself did not take seriously any of his own claims about divine inspiration, restoration of the gospel, etc.

I guess that means that Mormons are not reasonable people--at least when it comes to their belief in Joe.

Who actually owns the BOM copyright?

those new editions. But, if I'm not mistaken, the older versions have gone into the public domain due to the amount of time that has passed. So the Church doesn't really have copyright control over older editions. I believe the actual legal owner is Intellectual Reserve, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the "Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"

At the time that JS was trying to sell the copyright it was a new book (ironically) and this just shows that JS was willing to get some cash out of it immediately and lose all control over what was done with the book for several decades.

'Many appendages'

It's hard enough -no pun intended- to keep one Freak in the padded cell under control.

I don't care what's out there.
Just what's in here!

Either god or Jesus could show up and personally tell me that they sanction the Mormon church and I probably still wouldn't go back.

The Mormons would have to do better than make one discovery, or even 1,000 discoveries. There will always be lies. Because that con-man, Joseph Smith, was at the root of the Mormon cult, it will always be based on lies.

Another thing that will never change, is that I will always be a woman. As such, I cannot tolerate the Mormon male's vision of a polygamous heaven, or the priesthood's accusation that Jesus and God are polygamists. Polygamy is NOT and has never been God's way; otherwise the Almighty would have created Man with not one, but many appendages, like an octopus, to accommodate all his wives at the same time.

I will never change enough to go back.

'Many appendages'

It's hard enough -no pun intended- to keep one Freak in the padded cell under control.

No gold plates ?

It's the "dog-ate-my-homework" religious cult.

1. Palmyra is in Syria.
2. My maternal grandfather belonged to the Aleppo Temple....in Massachusetts.
3. Even the so-called First Vision was not in Palmyra.

Like how they did when I saw a picture of a big old-timey cathedral church with onion-like domes and stuff and I sez to my self: "Self, we gotta go see that!"

I asks around an people sez to me: "Why, that there is in Moscow in Red Square."

Cool! I can drive there. So I packed up my mint condition AMC Gremlin, get my old triple AAA map out and hit the road.

Took me a whole day. Finally I arrives in Moscow, which I knew on account of the "Welcome to Moscow" sign. But I can't find that cathedral anywhere. I then remember to ask about Red Square cuz I couldn't remember the name of the cathedral. Then people start telling me I must've been dropped on my head as a baby. Must be a Moscow greeting to strangers. Looked and looked. Never found it. Pretty sure it was a lie just to trick people into visiting Moscow.

I did find a pretty cool museum about underwear at the University of Idaho and some young people throwin' a plastic plate across a large grassy area. But no cathedral or red square.

I just want to the ONE TIME old Jo told the truth or followed the law.

...you realize that you can keep asking questions, along with examining evidence, applying logic, and rejecting appeals to authority...with regard to everything.

So if some glow-in-the dark beings or holograms or whatever appear to you and claim to be God and Jesus and tell you that you must go back to the erstwhile "Mormon" church, now restored to its proper name and led by their selected prophet guy, yea, verily, the one and only Nelson, you can still start asking questions.

"So...you say you're God and Jesus, but how do I know that you're actually who you claim to be and not some fancy technologically advanced projection beamed into my cranium? And if you are who you claim to be, how about starting to really explain some things? Why did you create a world where every living thing depends on the deaths of other living things in order to survive? What could we possibly learn in this kind of life that would have any relevance to life in the spirit world, where death, hunger, sexual impulses, fear, etc. are not constant features?"

If they turned out to be powerful beings, they probably could use their patented mindfuk technology to turn off your critical thinking and make you want to go back to being a faithful Mormon, just like the right kind of drugs could really enhance your temple experience. Or they could literally or figuratively point a gun to your head and give you an "offer you can't refuse." In either case, they're not playing fair. They're just using superior force to dominate and enslave.