Like, in your need for proof, do you care about the DNA of Native Americans, anachronisms in the BoM, or maps/geography being off or having no trace of these battles and civilisations? Do you consider the historic church stuff bothersome, even if it comes from "anti-Mormon" sources?

I find myself less concerned with history, because it is dubious to me that we can prove anything in history in general happened the way it was written down and recorded. I am more obsessed with stuff the church itself admits to and concedes and the logical failings of it, or the mental gymnastics needed to explain it.

Like, if J.S. used a seer stone and hat for "translation/revelation" why were the plates and Urim and Thummim necessary at all? Same with the book of Abraham which the church admits the text is not on the papyri; why was the papyri needed?

which camp are you in? Do you lean more towards the history stuff as proof or do you find yourself more stubbing your toe on the lack of logic or reasoning in just basic explanations from current church leaders?

Sorry to keep circling on these same topics. I am, as we speak, researching this stuff USING church approved sources and I find those old...hm, defense mechanisms, are still in place in regards to old accounts, J.S. and B.Y. quotes, and BoM historical study. Yet it completely comes apart for me when I read the essays and the church leaders dance around the seer stone and the blatant deception of church approved art never showing the translation that way. Like, I can still find room to doubt my doubts when it comes to the crumbs left behind from time. who really really knows 100%? But when the church itself says stuff like "the BoM repeats errors from the KJV because God revealed it to J.S. that way" and yet "most correct book ever on the earth" I just....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2020 11:09AM by thegoodman.

I like both history and proof, as well as good old common sense and logic.

For instance, it was proof when over 6,000 Incas in Peru had their DNA tested, and all had Asian ancestry, not Middle Eastern.

Good old common sense tells me than when JS was arrested for "glass looking" because he failed to show "hidden treasure" for his neighbors, it made me rationalize that if it had really worked, he would have made himself wealthy doing it, as well as his neighbors.

As for when church leaders speak, it is the same thing as when a teenager opens his or her mouth: it's usually a lie. :)

valkyriequeen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I like both history and proof, as well as good old
> common sense and logic.
>
> For instance, it was proof when over 6,000 Incas
> in Peru had their DNA tested, and all had Asian
> ancestry, not Middle Eastern.

One of my pet peeves here. The Middle East is in Asia, or at least a huge chunk of it is. Please say EAST Asian or whatever. Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran... All of these are Asian countries, as much as China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand etc are.

Both. Setting high standards for external verifiable proof trumps convoluted arguments or history for me generally. I'm willing to change my opinion as additional evidence is clarified over time.

We've seen from earlier religions how they morph what they claim to try and stay relevant as people weigh facts that become obvious. It's hard to give them any credibility. When they depend on faith and interpretation, it is an admission they are pulling stuff our their rear, IMO. They are mostly institutions of wishful thinking and Orwellian history.

I would like to suggest two sources you may find of value.

First "The history of Joseph Smith by his mother."

Get the latest version with footnotes etc. While the first version was rounded up and destroyed by Brigham Young, a later version was published in church publications after extensive review by members of the Smith family including Joseph F Smith and George A. Smith.

Pay particular attention to the revelations of Joseph Smith SENIOR and compare them to first Nephi.

The second is "An address to all believers in christ" written by David Whitmer addressing why he, as one of the three witnesses left the church. It is easily found on the internet.

History was never the deciding factor for me, it basically was just a confirmation of what I already knew, the icing on the cake. The whole story never made sense, and I had a hard time believing in God anyway because God never communicated with me in a way I could recognize, despite a lot of trying and wishing for him to be there. So I was already mentally checked out when I discovered the history stuff. What I take issue with is the willful deception by the church, and the "we have always been honest" gaslighting they are trying to get away with. How many people have been deceived by their blatant and intentional lying? How may people have given money that could have been used to feed their families? How many people have neglected to spend time with their loved ones because they were providing free labor to this lying, manipulating, corporate organization pretending to be a church? That is what makes me angry when finding out the history, and the attempts by church leadership to cover it up.

Ever been with someone who told a story from his past, a story that you were part of, and the details they remember differ from what you thought took place?

Shoot, even two close friends or spouses, can go through the same meat grinders and/or roller-coasters and tell completely different stories about what happened and the results.

Of course, this is why I don't believe in anything that claims to be non-fiction. Other than descriptions that document reproducible science, I don't think there is such a thing as non-fiction.

So obviously, to me, 'historical accuracy' is a pleasant myth.

That's what I'm like. For instance, part of my Mormon programming had me defending J.S. and early church leaders from criticism because early anti-Mormons were obviously biased sources writing negative versions of history. It's like when I tell people the story of my marriage and divorce; it's from my point of view, with me as the protagonist of the story, and victim. I'm certain my ex has stuff they'd say from their point of view painting me in a villainous light.

It'd be the same if I really admired someone and went to write the stories of their life, I would be writing it from a perspective of someone who thought this person was really great.

It occurs to me now that the "bad people will write and interpret events from their perspective" goes both ways, with church leaders invested in glossing over faults and crimes and omitting negative things. But even now...I don't trust historians with criticisms/negative perspectives on the church either. It's just muddy enough to say that both sides have their motivations for things they wrote about J.S. and other early leaders. It is safer and feels more grounded to use the churchco words against them.

It's a math thing for me, mostly

When I was a kid, I stopped believing in Santa Claus because it was a math thing, as it became apparent to me that there was no way that some guy was delivering presents to thousands and thousands and thousands of houses in one night.

Conclusion: NO Santa Claus

Later on, science told us that the human genome / " human genetic blueprint" has 56 billion codes, and every one of trillions of cells in the human body has their own copy of that blue print. That against the background of Christian religion telling us that "God" hid the salvation of all mankind -Billions of people- in one person who is really VERY obscure in the larger scheme of things and who most people will NEVER hear of in their lifetime. .....so the same "God" that gave every cell in a human body a copy of the human blueprint (supposedly) also did much worse than hiding the needle of human salvation in the haystack mass of all human population.....


Conclusion: that is one messed up god, who probably does not exist, and IF he does it's far worse than if he does not. As soon as Jesus is removed from the picture, MORmONISM turns into an OBVIOUS pile of CRAP. Everything else that happens is just a footnote of epic buffoonery.

thegoodman Wrote:
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> really knows 100%? But when the church itself says
> stuff like "the BoM repeats errors from the KJV
> because God revealed it to J.S. that way" and yet
> "most correct book ever on the earth" I just....

IF you are going to get into that...then go all the way laying out the epic Smith buffoonery .. where Smith translates the Bible back to its supposed perfect original form, but those passages do not match bible passages that should have been in perfect original form as conveyed via the Book of MORmON .........WHOOPS

http://www.mormonthink.com/jst.htm

Respect for historical accuracy is THE MAIN REASON I left the church. Once I learned how badly bent the church's historical information was, I vowed to bail out.

The number one thing for me was that I realized I was actually an atheist and that I didn't believe any of it. All the other stuff just confirmed it was baloney. I would still be a disbeliever if I had never encountered the other stuff.

ChurchCo doesn't follow (honor) their own claims TODAY.

What happened yesterday and all before right at this instant is 'history'.

All churchco cares about is maintaining their place among contributors /'donors' and their leadership circles aka the 'patriarchal order' which excludes roughly half its members.

Nothing else matters to them, N O T H I N G.

Claims of the BoM’s authenticity did it for me. The more I studied, the more absolutely impossible that narrative became. Faith is one thing, but when confronted with the impossible something has to give.

You could take the view that the world is an illusion, but the illusion is real. This approach also applies to free will, which is considered an illusion by some brain scientists. The fact that it’s an illusion is beside the point and in fact you might be better off believing that free will is real. So maybe you’re asking if it matters that religion is a specific kind of illusion. In the case of TSCC, a rather transparent manufactured illusion. Maybe it doesn’t. From a perspective of higher consciousness, of which the world is a projection, I don’t think it matters. If it works for you, great.

It’s a matter of personal taste. The church no longer agrees with my tastes, which I’ll admit are questionable. However, the cost of being Mormon is insanely high compared to what you get. It’s almost like a cult. Choose beliefs that serve you. Mormonism taught me that no belief, no matter how ridiculous, is offensive to God. So make up your own.

To some degree I agree with your premise, that definitive history is essentially impossible. But you should be aware that this is a point used by more educated mopologists to try and justify fidelity to a religion that's probably fraudulent.

What people like Daniel Peterson and others will say is that because the ancient world was so dynamic but also non-documented, this means that it would always be impossible to find the existence of a small group of people who lived in the jungle and had their artifacts consumed by the forest.

This is a technique that they've imported from biblical fundamentalists who try to use it to explain away things like the evidence for Judaic polytheism and its many borrowings from other, more ancient religions in Phonecia or Babylon.

Your idea of looking within the text itself though is a perfect response to this gambit though.

I would highly recommend reading the original editions of the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants. Both texts have been massively cleaned up by the church to disguise the evident fact that they were written by a barely educated hillbilly. Revelations that were supposedly dictated from God himself are filled with bad grammar and backwoods slang.

For a brief look at this issue, please see this excellent article from RfM member Richard Packham:

http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm

Not really. I have found that history is just one persons observation of what happened.

I have read history books were totally wrong and being taught in schools. I lived through it and it didn’t happen that way.

So as far as I am concerned all history books are fiction and need new Dewey decimal numbers.

Oops. I thought this was a thread about Michael Bay's 'Pearl Harbor'.

Yes.