"If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit." Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, October 2009 General Conference

Also just a reminder folks...for those of you who don't believe in Santa Claus you'll have to crawl under or over or around "The Night Before Christmas".

Or so it seems to me...

At the end of the day the BoM was probably my primary reason for deciding I no longer believed.

Not the lack of archeological evidence, just the internal problems in the book that made it seem hokey. (I've read it more than 50 times - 1 Nephi probably 100.)

WHERE ARE THE GOLDEN PLATES?
WHERE ARE THE GOLDEN PLATES?
WHERE ARE THE GOLDEN PLATES?

This is the only response I have when some idiot starts blubbering and blathering about the Book of More-dumb.

Southpark nailed it......DUMB DUBM DUMB DUMB DUMB!

That's exactly what I did. If the BOM was true then it was all true. I found evidence that the BOM is not true, therefore it's all not true. Thanks for the head's up Elder Holland!

I just flung it aside and left.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/dna-and-the-book-of-mormon

"Nothing in the Book of Mormon precludes migration into the Americas by peoples of Asiatic origin."

Nothing except the Asiatic migrations happened before Adam and Eve. I sent in my letter and was done.

My "apostacy" was based on on;y feeling the spirit twice, 1 of which was demonstrably false.

But I reread all the scriptures before I left.

Without the NEED to justify them, it is really easy to see the BoM for what it is- a puff peice comprised of large amounts of borrowed ideas and plagiarism.

I was the ward clerk when I made my decision.
I was all alone in the clerk's office.
I pulled my triple-combination out and fed it through the paper shredder section by section.
There wasn't much left to crawl over or around, lol.

I walked out, and I never went back.

Paper shredder! Awesome! I picture the branch chipper scene in the movie Fargo, Nephi going through! Awesome!

I still wish the bishop had walked in just then to see it.

As I did it, I assumed he would (as he was always popping in to grab something).

Alas he didn't.

...physically or metaphorically.

Flimsy is a good description.

Tens of millions of readers, but only a small percentage have joined, because of reading that garbage. New converts join for social reasons, welfare, out of loneliness, wanting the fake promises, to hit on the missionaries, etc. The Mormons' greatest source of new members is newborn babies. We were trapped in the cult long before we could read. Maybe that's what he meant by "crawling."

--or did he mean we were crawling like creatures possessed by Statn?

forestpal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Flimsy is a good description.
>
> Tens of millions of readers, but only a small
> percentage have joined, because of reading that
> garbage. New converts join for social reasons,
> welfare, out of loneliness, wanting the fake
> promises, to hit on the missionaries, etc.

I asked my brother the Institute Director how many of the people he baptized on his mission had actually read the Book of Mormon all the way through. His answer was, "none of them."

It's not even good fiction.

There are parts of it that I think are good fiction. They are few and far between though.

I bet I know the 3 parts that are good fiction:
--Laban's head chopped off
--Ammon chops arms off
--Shiz head chop & subsequent headless pushup

lol. I know I picked the most gruesome parts... but y'know that's what sells in Hollywood :P

Yeah, I like those ;)

My favorites:
Amalickiah/Ammoron/Moroni/Teancum - especially Amalickiah's rise to power.

2 Nephi 4 - psalm of Nephi is quite good if you still believed in a god.

1 Nephi 11-12 is pretty impressive how the Lehi dream interpretation is mixed with Christ's ministry.

Some of Abinadi's speech is threaded pretty well.

Some of the stuff in King Benjamin's speech.

It's why I tend to think that someone like Syndey Rigdon had a hand in writing the BoM. Or may Oliver or Joseph had some talent.

King Benjamen's speech was heavily plagiarized from the farewell sermon of a prominent circuit preacher, that Joseph Smith had attended.

Do you have a reference to this? I don't doubt it; I've just never heard it before.

Translation: You apostates are nothing but a bunch of f*cking snakes

I didn't have to crawl over, under, or around the Book of Mormon. I smashed a big hole right through the middle of it. I tried to read it again right before I left the church, and I got to the point that I couldn't read a single chapter without finding something ridiculous in it. I quit believing primarily because the BofM is undoubtedly a work of fiction that was written by someone who was intimately familiar with the KJV Bible and the religious dogma of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity.

I'd like to get my 2 cents in on this one:

First of all, of all the lies that Holland has uttered, this speech to me is his greatest and his master piece. When I was a TBM back at the time of this speech, I was in awe by it. I thought, wow, it really must be true. Since then, I was declaring on the mountain tops that the BOM had been irrefutably proven true, even though I hadn't heard the other 999 elements that Holland declared existed that testified to it's truth, I knew they had to be there.

On day 1 of my study out of the church, when a friend declared on facebook that she left the church, I asked her why which is what got me started. I told her that I always felt there was something missing and not all there with the church. But I told her that I believed because I felt there was a "lot of data" in support of the book. As of right now, I can't remember what any of that is, except perhaps Nahom (NHM). But I think what it had really come down to was the effectiveness of brainwashing that took place in that Oct 2009 speech. I "knew" that all the critics of the BOM like Ethan Smith (who based on the speech I thought was a critic) were debunked. Then when I learned about Ethan Smith and his 1820's book, I studied all up on it and wondered how on god's green earth it had been debunked.

My conclusion was that it was a sad, yet effective effort and brainwashing true believers into ignoring any such criticism of the BOM as people would trust their beloved leaders that evidence against the BOM was all based on unsubstantiated claims.

Holland while I was on my mission was one of my apostle heros. I loved listening to him speak, and I thought I felt the spirit so strong with him.

Now, I despise the man. He is less than an inch tall to me and using his own vocabulary, he's a sad, pathetic, worthless excuse of a human being. He's a liar of the worst kind. A liar because he owns the hearts and minds of so many, including me > 6 months ago. He still owns the hearts and minds of many friends and family of mine.

Based on seniority and age, he's highly probably to become the president of the church some day, presumably within the next 20 or 30 years.

He didn't lie when he said he's not a dodo. That he is not. He is very intelligent and is consciously deceiving the people that love and admire him so much. BUT he's not deceiving anyone else, not me (anymore), and not 7 billion other human beings on earth. If there's a hell, he's going there.

After Anointed One's experience with Elder Holland, I don't give much strength to whatever said Elder happens to preach. There may be a gem in there somewhere that's general good guidance, but if it comes from a source that's known for tearing down others just because he can, I don't care too much to pay attention to it.

He was obviously trying to scare current believers into remaining in their mormon cave.... since nobody outside of mormonism (academia or theology) gives the book any credit whatsoever.

I hope Phineas and Ferb found him this summer. It was on their list of things to do.

The BOM never made it into my heart like it so profoundly touched Elder Holland. It was boring and I never could get through the whole thing no matter how many times I tried. I also flung it aside like yesterday's news and left.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2012 01:10AM by suckafoo.

The reality is that family pressure, and a hundred other things like that are more difficult to get around than the BOM.

+1

I earnestly read as part of my pledge to Ezra Benson's challenge (yuck!). I attempted to reconcile its claims with known history (i.e. the Smithsonian). Anyone remember The Book of Mormon on Trial? Yeah, I lapped that one up. I also read Nibley's Lehi in the Desert to find 'evidence' and 'proof'. But the BOM was a do-good, feel-good activity, something one does to tick off from a list of other do-good activities. It was so easy to toss away when I decided there was no god and the church was a phony.

How does one crawl over, under or around over a flimsy piece of trash? One doesn't, it's not necessary.

I did, however, use the BoM as a nice steeping stone as I rose out of the dark pit that is Mormonism!

> "If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject....

Not "foolish" or "misled", but foolish or misled ENOUGH. If you have to reach this unknown quantity of ENOUGH to reject the BofM, then how foolish, and misled are the members? To reject it, am I foolish, and misled JUST ENOUGH to have fallen for it in the first place, and are the sheeple FAR MORE foolish, and misled?

> such a person, and if he
> or she leaves this Church, it must be done by
> crawling over or under or around the Book of
> Mormon to make that exit."

I like how he paints the BofM as a bully blocking our exit from TSCC. He says a lot when he casts the person leaving as a coward, and resorts to name-calling: "foolish", "misled", dishonest, etc. He makes this fictional standard "apostate" a straw man for the valiant book-as-bully to humiliate, and vanquish in his fact-free, emotional rant. This is a lame appeal to emotion, and authority. As an English major, this is an abuse of his intellect. He knows very well he is spouting propaganda filled with straw men, weasel words, and all kinds of fallacies.

> "heretofore unknown text
> teeming with literary and Semitic complexity"

This is laughable. There are Trekkies who likewise find complexity, and profound impact in their lives from devotion to their hobby.

I don't crawl or step around imaginary things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2012 04:27AM by atheist&happy:-).

I spent a year while deployed to Afghanistan researching the claims and counter-claims concerning the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I research every issue as far as I could. I went through thousands of pages of research and apologetics. I did not read a lot of the fundamentalist Christian crap, because it is not trustworthy for the most part, but I really dug deep into the academic articles. I was open to all reasonable explanations. On almost every issue, the Book of Mormon came up short. If the truth of Mormonism relies on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, then the Mormon Church is not true.

If the Book of Mormon is historical as Joseph Smith claimed, then there had been some extreme divine intervention to hide evidence of its truth.

Yeah, I liked the part in the first copy of the BOM (the most correct book on earth) where the people went "that a way to the valley because that's where they was a preachin."

And the fact that the first BOM worshiped Christ as Lord, not the trinity like the second printing did. (Can we say Catholic the abominable church according to the BOM?)

I just thought the leadership had become corrupted by corporate greed...the BOM? What did it have to do with the wicked lying,stealing activities of the Apostate Apostles????

Sheesh Holland! Really?

Book of Mormon is why I'm a non-believer.

The Book of Mormon was the usher who directed me to the door and wished me well.

It was so painfully obvious that it was a fraud that there wasn't anything to crawl around, over, or under.

I hadn't given it much thought. I can prove that the Book of Abraham is a fraud, and I won't follow a prophet who is a part-time fraud, you know?