Pharyngula

Posted by: defiantskeptic | September 3, 2009 2:41 PM

That'd almost be clever if it wasn't completely idiotic.

Posted by: Aetre | September 3, 2009 2:43 PM

Maybe the proper response would be to throw the catch-22 back, boomerang style? Something like: "Do you believe in using human reason to work out problems? When beliefs held by faith are shown to be irrational, do you discard the beliefs? Are you willing to look through history with a critical and skeptical eye and attempt to understand it, as best as possible, knowing that in order to understand certain concepts you do not necessarily have to believe in them? Do you trust scientific inquiry? If not, then you cannot write an appropriate or fully accurate history of religion..."

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 3, 2009 2:43 PM

We must be up to Catch-45 or -46 by now.

Posted by: Eamon Knight | September 3, 2009 2:52 PM

Pretty much the same as the Protestant fundy claim: if you don't have the gift of faith; if you don't TRULY BELEEEEEVE, then of course you'll think it's all a load of bollocks, because Satan has blinded you to the TRUTH. It's just special pleading, given a nice coat of gilt paint and sprinkled with glitter.

Posted by: Mike Wagner | September 3, 2009 2:55 PM

I could never be a good prophet.

I've never been convicted of fraud, or had a habit of swindling people.

I've never beheaded or stoned someone for questioning the truth of my words.

And I truly can't stand people who can look at the complexities of the world around them and say "It's all explained by this book that mostly concerns itself with slavery, rape, and genocide in the desert!"

Posted by: Tristan Heydt | September 3, 2009 2:56 PM

I bet you'd *love* to criticize the Mormon church, wouldn't you, you athiests! But you can't!

It isn't *for* you!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | September 3, 2009 2:57 PM

An illiterate con-man becomes a prophet? Sure, I believe in miracles.

Posted by: raven | September 3, 2009 2:58 PM

Just how are they going to enforce the "no criticism rule"? Excommunicate all non-members that criticize the LDS church?

That will surely work very well. I want mine suitable for framing to hang on the wall.

They will need to print up a few hundred million of them for the USA alone. Since they've managed to baptize billions of dead people, that should be no problem.

Posted by: Suzanne | September 3, 2009 3:07 PM

It's actually pretty hard to get excommunicated, unless you have, uh, you know... extramarital sex, especially gay sex. I've never bothered to try because I don't want missionaries/home teachers on my back, but a relative of mine became a clergyperson in another religion and specifically asked Salt Lake for excommunication about twenty years ago, and they never got around to it. Overall you just don't want to come to their attention because they frakkin' bill you for tithing and other "donations" if they know where you live. Inconsequential, but creepy and annoying.

Posted by: Personal Failure | September 3, 2009 3:11 PM

Verily . . . I've read the BoM. That's what I remember. Verily, verily, verily.

Posted by: lady howdy | September 3, 2009 3:11 PM

@Eamon Knight #7: Shouldn't that be *guilt* paint?

/cue the groans....

Posted by: Steve | September 3, 2009 3:18 PM

My ex-wife was from Utah, from a Mormon family (her greatgranddad was even a polygamist). She left the LDS church when she was a teenager, and her parents disowned her for several years over it. After we moved from Utah to Virginia, they actually tracked her down and showed up at our door looking for her. I basically had to threaten them to get them to stop coming by our apartment. If that's not a cult, I don't know what is. Out in Utah, we non-believers called the Mormon temple garments "Jesus Jammies."

Posted by: James Sweet | September 3, 2009 3:20 PM

The Church calls such research "anti-Mormon" just to demonize what is actually historical research done according to standards that are acceptable everywhere except Mormondom. Get rid of the "anti-Mormon" label, and think instead "pro-accuracy" and read whatever you damned well want to read.

This of course is complicated by the existence of (mostly Baptist) sects which LD$ Inc. quite properly refers to as "anti-Mormon"... basically evangelicals fundies who have decided that Mormonism is evil, not because it drives young gay teens to suicide, rapaciously tithes its congregations, and uses intimidation and harassment on ex-members... but because Joe Smith had the audacity to say that he saw God and Jesus side by side. Oh noes!

Up until the Prop 8 debacle, most people picketing the Mormon church were even bigger assholes. I mean, which of the following two groups is worse:

a) a group that hates gays, women, blacks, Democrats, and anyone who thinks for themselves?

or

b) a group that hates gays, women, blacks, Democrats, anyone who thinks for themselves, and Mormons?

So the existence of the "anti-Mormon" label is, unfortunately, not completely crazy. It's applying it to anyone who dares criticize LD$ Inc. that is a problem..

Posted by: Charles | September 3, 2009 3:25 PM

I couldn't really get past the "First Caution", that you can't address church history without addressing the influence of the divine.

Easy.

There aren't any.

Move on.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 3, 2009 3:34 PM

Best description I've ever read of Mormonism: 19th century Scientology.

Posted by: Lynna | September 3, 2009 3:37 PM

James Sweet @25

This of course is complicated by the existence of (mostly Baptist) sects which LD$ Inc. quite properly refers to as "anti-Mormon"... basically evangelicals fundies who have decided that Mormonism is evil,...

Yes, of course you're right. I had forgotten about the vocal fundies who really are irrationally anti-mormon. (Now there's a concept that will boggle the mind.)

To get an idea of what it can be like for Mormons to leave the fold when their family members remain in the church, here's a quote from a letter written to Steve Benson by one of his grandaunties:

Oh, Steve, your family and Grandfather love you so much. You are one of our Father in Heaven’s choice spirits. Satan always works on the Lord’s strongest and most intelligent and choice spirits the hardest. You had to be one of the Lord’s most intelligent and noble spirits. That’s why Satan is working on you so hard through other people. Don’t give in, Steve. The Lord loves you and needs you...

Posted by: Emma | September 3, 2009 3:39 PM

"EVERYTHING has a spirit. Before everything was created in tangable matter it was created in spirit. Read the book called "Earth, in the beginning" Since you are not LDS you may or may not believe what it says. I have read it and am reading it again and I believe it to be true.
Guess it would blow your mind to know that this earth was not created in this solar system. The earth as it is now was created elsewhere and is now in a fallen state due to the fall in the garden of eden.Our earth has a spirit and that spirit is female. You really must read the book and also the book called Eve and the choice made in Eden. GREAT book!"

You have to be kidding me....and I think I am a little dumber just from reading that....

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 3, 2009 3:41 PM

Totally different realms.

Wheeeeeeee! NOMA!

Posted by: Daniel | September 3, 2009 3:43 PM

This argument is not as insane as one might think. In fact, its probably the most logical argument a Christian (or in this case Mormon) can make - and its the one I would use if I were religious (if). But effectively the writer acknowledges that critical study of his religion would lead a rational person to determine its bogus. However in this claim, God is actually proactive and reaches out 'by the Spirit' to instill belief in a person. Basically he's saying a person doesn't choose to believe, God chooses for them. I'm sure any of us atheist would believe in God if God came to us directly and introduced himself (assuming we hadn't been taking any illicit drugs at the time).

The question for the Christians and Mormons is: Since by their own admission education alone is not adequate to instill belief, why does God cherry pick who will be touched by this so called 'Holy Spirit'and who won't? Plenty of non-believers are warmly open to the possibility of religion (though maybe not the ones on this particular forum), in fact they'd probably prefer the simplicity of a God over the cold realities of physics, so why do they never receive this 'spiritual witness of the truth' as Elder Packer calls it.

Probably because there's nothing out there... though if I'm wrong, I'll be here till 5pm if the Holy Spirit wants to come touch me.

Posted by: Mandrake | September 3, 2009 3:45 PM

Guess it would blow your mind to know that this earth was not created in this solar system. The earth as it is now was created elsewhere and is now in a fallen state due to the fall in the garden of eden.

So, what, does that mean we earthlings all live and work in the universe's mailroom?

Posted by: raven | September 3, 2009 3:49 PM

Just how are they going to enforce the "no criticism rule"? Excommunicate all non-members that criticize the LDS church?

Lynna, I hope you saw the joke. You can excommunicate non-members but it is a lot like running over roadkill.

I'm aware that they do excommuncate theri own intellectuals, apostates, and heretics. The RCC does it too but they are so short of priests that they just make up rules for automatic excommunication and make their adherents do it to themselves.

Posted by: greenishblue | September 3, 2009 3:52 PM

The Irreligiosophy podcast had an entire episode about Packer's talk: http://www.irreligiosophy.com/?p=655

As a Utahn and a former Mormon, I am greatly disturbed by the way the LDS church encourages people only to pursue "faithful histroy." They actively encourage people to disregard facts. Disgusting.

Posted by: senor | September 3, 2009 3:53 PM

@41

Well if you can communicate dead non-members I guess it makes sense that you can excommunicate non-members.

Posted by: James Sweet | September 3, 2009 3:56 PM

Unless Christopher Hitchens is wrong, I recall him talking about how an angel named Moronie (sp?) visited Joseph Smith, not God and his Son/other self.

Smithy-Boy had a number of visitations. I actually forget the exact order and combinations (it's been awhile since Mormon Sunday School) but he was visited at various times by Moroni, God&Jesus, and John the Baptist. Maybe more that I can't remember.

He was NOT visited by a white salamander. However, the late-20th century church leadership was so cognizant of Smith's batshit insane-itude, that they thought he might have been. It would be funny if it weren't so depressing...

Posted by: Nomen Nescio | September 3, 2009 3:59 PM

On December 12, 2004, Grant Palmer, author of the book, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins" was disfellowshipped. [...] Mormon leaders may pass around rumors later about sexual misconduct, but intellectual integrity is enough of a sin to get you kicked out.

almost makes me wish i'd been raised mormon, just so i could try for the compliment and honor of being kicked out.

Posted by: James Sweet | September 3, 2009 4:02 PM

@Lynna:

the vocal fundies who really are irrationally anti-mormon. (Now there's a concept that will boggle the mind.)

hah! Indeed...

To get an idea of what it can be like for Mormons to leave the fold when their family members remain in the church...

:/ It's crap like this that makes me realize I'm actually kindof lucky. My parents are most definitely TBMs still, but they don't really hound me about it. There have been some awkward moments, and a few depressing instances have resulted. But for the most part it has only been a few isolated instances. I made clear in my mid-20s that any time they tried to pitch their religion to me, I would firmly and calmly tell them I wasn't interested, then hang up/leave and not talk to them for a couple of weeks. That worked.

Posted by: Jimi 45 | September 3, 2009 4:10 PM

It is an easy thing for a man with extensive academic training to measure
the Church using the principles he has been taught in his professional
training as his standard. In my mind it ought to be the other way around.

Fine, but you're no longer doing academic work. You're engaging in an emic ontological dialectic.

I'm a religion studies specialist with a couple of colleagues I deeply respect who are Mormon scholars of Mormonism. One quit the mainstream LDS, in part, because of this type of silliness. The other, I am confident, would follow suit if push came to shove and she couldn't do her job as a scholar.

Of course people "of faith" have the right to critique the way their beliefs, practices, and experiences are presented in academia. Sometimes those critiques are valid. But the approaches like the one Packer suggests will quickly make work of the scholars who apply it irrelevant, and their qualifications to teach little more than glorified seminary degrees.

Posted by: Desert Son, OM | September 3, 2009 4:10 PM

That Catch-22. It's the best catch there ever was.

"Snowden lay dying in back."
-Joseph Heller, Catch 22

No kings,

Robert

Posted by: jimi 45 | September 3, 2009 4:14 PM

MikeyM: "Mandatory 'You wouldn't dare look into Muslim history' post"

I just spurted milk out of my nose at the screen when I read that.

Odd, though, since I haven't been drinking milk.

Posted by: Lynna | September 3, 2009 4:16 PM

For those who want to know what a temple-worthiness interview is like, there's a humorous take posted at
http://selfportraitas.com/archives/2009/08/just-how-righte-1.html

I especially like her answer to the question about chastity.

Posted by: Liveliest Crib | September 3, 2009 4:20 PM

Tad:

Religion, *all* religion, is fundamentally focused on the mystical. Are you claiming that science and reason embrace the mystical, and are the proper tools for examining mysticism?

If so, fine. But to me that sounds just as silly as saying that you should use religion to study geology or chemistry.

Totally different realms.

Really? NOMA?

Actually, science is not a body of, or categories of, knowledge. It is a method for gaining knowledge. Essentially, if a claim is empirical in nature, if it can be observed and measured, science is the appropriate method for determining whether it is true.

Religion makes all sorts of empirical claims. Simply labeling them "mystical" does not alter the nature of the claims. It just means that you're saying, "My claim is true by magic, and science can't study it." Moreover, there's no method for determining the truth of the claims of any religion that makes religion a proper tool for obtaining knowledge. The method is simply that someone will receive a personal revelation, and anyone who doubts it will be ostracized.

I really don't understand your beef here.

I guess not. The beef is with the argument that unless one already accepts the Mormon religion, one should not/may not criticize it.

Posted by: shonny | September 3, 2009 4:21 PM

The thing with all these loopy superstitions is that they don't really lead anywhere useful or interesting. It is like being in a dark cellar thinking you are blind, and that's how it has to remain.
Fortunately for the rest of us who are willing to explore, the cellar has many exits where we find enlightenment. And it doesn't take that much of an effort either.

Posted by: Lynna | September 3, 2009 4:24 PM

@54, Krakauer's book is mentioned (and links provided). I second the recommendation for the book.

How the Mormons treated Krakauer is a good example of the sort of thing they can and will do to non-members in attempts to silence or discredit them.

At the end of June, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints issued an official "response" to my new book, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Disseminated nationwide more than two weeks before my book was scheduled to appear on bookstore shelves, this preemptive attack was authored by Richard E. Turley, Jr., a high-ranking church official who serves as managing director of the LDS Family and Church History Department. In his lengthy, carefully worded screed, Elder Turley characterized Under the Banner of Heaven as "a decidedly one-sided and negative view of Mormon history." According to his assessment, my book was written as "a condemnation of religion generally," and the Mormon faith in particular.

Dissent from official church teachings is not tolerated in the LDS faith. Because of this obsession to rigidly control how the Mormon past is interpreted and presented, histories sanctioned by the LDS Church tend to be exceedingly partisan and notably incomplete. For example, in 1997 the church released a manual (published in 22 languages, and designated as required reading for virtually every Mormon adult) titled the Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, in which this great Mormon leader was intentionally portrayed as being monogamous-despite the fact that few scholars, Mormon or otherwise, would dispute that Young actually was married to at least twenty women, and was probably married to more than fifty. Even a cursory survey of other LDS sanctioned publications will reveal a similarly disturbing sanitization of the historical record... I am especially disappointed that they feel such an urgent need to attack writers, like me, who present balanced, carefully researched accounts of Mormon history that happen to diverge from the official, highly expurgated church version.

Posted by: IamMyownLeprechaun | September 3, 2009 4:26 PM

Tad wants his magisteria to stay un-overlapped.

Posted by: Liveliest Crib | September 3, 2009 4:27 PM

My brother was the best man at a Mormon friend's wedding. It was, to say the least, strange.

Since non-Mormons are not allowed inside the Mormon temples to watch religious ceremonies, my brother had to dress up in a tux, and stand outside the building with the ring. At a certain point, the groom came out to get the ring, said all was going well, and went back in to complete the marriage.

Whatever.

Posted by: Eamon Knight | September 3, 2009 4:31 PM

Feynmaniac @29 wrote: Best description I've ever read of Mormonism: 19th century Scientology.

Mormonism and Scientology are my favorite examples of obvious con-jobs that succeeded in becoming serious religions (not as big as eg. Catholicism, but still way bigger than local-fringe-cult status).

The major religions (Christianity, Islam, etc.) have their origins shrouded by time and a lack of decent surviving records -- we don't for example, have birth records for Roman Palestine that would give us a shot at determining whether there ever was a Jesus bar Joseph born in Bethlehem. This provides a convenient plausible deniablility to these religions w.r.t. their historical claims -- they may not be able to prove them, but it's difficult to definitively disprove them, too.

Not so with Mormonism and Scientology, both of which arose well within the modern period, within the era of mass communication and widespread literacy (there were large-circulation newspapers by the early 19th century; and Scientology is well into the radio and television era). So we know, beyond all rational doubt, that their respective founders *made the whole thing up*. And yet both these swindles continue to attract millions of adherents.

What are the chances that the geneses of Christianity, Islam, and the rest, are any more honorable, or any more connected to some supposed transcendent "truth" or revelation?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 3, 2009 4:36 PM

And give your 16-year-old (younger?) daughter to this lecherous 56-year-old as his next "plural bride." Otherwise you'll all burn in Hell.

Two of Joseph Smith's "brides" were 14 when Joe decided he needed new bed warmers.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 3, 2009 4:37 PM

OT; but since I brought up Krakauer, his new book is finally coming out in 12 days (but who's counting?):

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Men-Win-Glory-Odyssey/dp/0385522266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252010231&sr=8-1

Posted by: Drosera | September 3, 2009 4:39 PM

Hypatia's Daughter @18,

But I really like [the Mormons] because they made me take a hard look at other Xtian beliefs. I saw how clearly stupid the LDS were compared to regular Xianity. Then it slowly dawned on me that regular Xianity was just as dumb, but I hadn't noticed because I was used to it.

Exactly. Christianity must have started with some liar who claimed that Jesus had risen from the dead, that hundreds of people had witnessed this, that there was an empty tomb, etc. St. Paul seems to be a likely suspect.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 3, 2009 4:40 PM

What I meant to say (clicking issues today ...)

OT; but since I brought up Krakauer, his new book is finally coming out in 12 days (but who's counting?):

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Men-Win-Glory-Odyssey/dp/0385522266/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252010231&sr=8-1

Krakauer and Dawkins just a week apart. I'll be very blissful at the end of September ...

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252010311&sr=1-2

Posted by: Drosera | September 3, 2009 4:54 PM

Tulse @76,

Synchronicity exists!

Posted by: Heidi | September 3, 2009 4:54 PM

I bet Joseph Smith was L. Ron Hubbard's hero.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 3, 2009 4:56 PM

Well, if a person can know and do anything just by faith, then I'm a skilled brain surgeon just because I claim to be.

Posted by: daveau | September 3, 2009 5:01 PM

Heidi@83-

Absitively. I'm taking notes for when I start my own phony-baloney religion.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | September 3, 2009 5:10 PM

If the mantle is far, far greater than the intellect, perhaps we should have an old fashioned cage-match. Match the mantle against the pure chocolaty goodness of the intellect.

To the pain!

Please? I'd PPV that.

Posted by: PixelFish | September 3, 2009 5:15 PM

James Sweet @25: The presence of the irrational Mormon-hating Baptists and fundies actually does a lot for the church in terms of getting their members to band together under the banner of persecution. Persecution is one of those historical things we suckle off of the doctrinal teat--the massacre at Hans Mill and the killing of Joseph Smith, always framed as martyrdom, make the foundation for many a lecture in Sunday School. History lessons about the pioneer crossings where Mormons fought the elements, mobs, governments, etc are passed down. As a Mormon youth, you are told that you belong to a "peculiar people" (damn straight!) and that Mormons are often persecuted for their beliefs. So when somebody point-blank points out the issues with the LDS doctrine, the traditional Mormon response is to turtle up and ignore anything you say from that point on. The well has been poisoned. You are anti-Mormon if you criticise the church on any grounds, not just irrational ones, or so the thinking goes. Furthermore, they often do an advance poisoning of the well re: disaffected members. Members are told that people only leave the church for three reasons: They are lazy, they want to continue sinning (ie... having sex before marriage, smoking, watching R-rated movies, drinking coffee), or they were offended by a mere mortal member. Obviously there's no room for serious doctrinal issues or substantive schisms. It's really easy to find yourself pigeon-holed in the anti-Mormon category.

Suzanne @17: Right in most particulars because while there are a number of things that will get you excommunicated, if the church thinks they can get you to pay tithing OR just be counted for membership records (they are super bean counters) they will sorta fudge things over and look the other direction. UNLESS....you are a vocal cranky monkey. Apostasy is one of the first things on the list of seven that will get you excommunicated, but they mean loud cranky apostasy, not keeping-quiet-so-I-don't-upset-the-fam apostasy. Abortion, paying for or getting one, will get you exed. Being gay AND acting on it will get you exed. Repeatedly and openly denying the authority of the church presidency and the Twelve Apostles will get you exed. Murder and extramarital sex will get you exed. Pedophilia will get you exed. (Pre-marital sex will just get you a talking to and not being able to take the sacrament.) In fact, you could pretty much do everything on this list, but they won't ex you until somebody else knows or unless you run around announcing it. At which point they try to hush it up or ex you. Because of the stigma over ex-communication, many people who leave the church over doctrinal reasons request that the church remove them from the roles pre-emptively.

Hypatia's Daughter @ 34: Actually there's some discussion on ex-Mo boards about whether or not Joseph Smith took the name from the capital of the Comoros Islands, Moroni. Incidentally, the hill where he claimed to find the plates he says was called Hill Cumorah. Yeah.

Daniel@37: The question for the Christians and Mormons is: Since by their own admission education alone is not adequate to instill belief, why does God cherry pick who will be touched by this so called 'Holy Spirit'and who won't? The Mormon answer to this is that the Holy Spirit will manifest to anybody who has a truly open heart. (I trust you see the scam in that statement.) Mormons reconcile this empathetically because they don't believe in hell. They believe in a three-tiered heaven with the devout non-believers and well-meaning folk in the middle tier. The highest level is of course reserved for devout Mormons who have had the full temple rites AND for folks who were never taught Mormon doctrine while alive but accept the doctrine in the afterlife. (Pascal's Wager gets really screwy in Mormon discussions, incidentally.)

JBlilie: While Mormonism is certainly a scam and a religious ponzi scheme, mainstream Mormonism does not practice polygamy. It's important to bear that in mind, because bringing up polygamy is the surest way to get a mainstram Mormon to think you don't have all the facts. The polygamy sits at the back of the doctrine, natch, but it doesn't have much bearing on how the modern Mormon lives or interacts with the church. Their cog-dis tool for THAT is: God changes the laws according to the times and what his people need. What you can do is wonder why God changed the laws, and when do they think God will let gays get married. It blows their circuits.

Liveliest Crab @69: Weird. The church is very emphatic about ring ceremonies not taking place inside the temple, so your friends must've decided to ignore that. Exchange of rings is always supposed to take place outside as it isn't part of the LDS vows. (I skipped my younger sister's wedding. I wasn't going to fly across the US to stand around outside the temple in the hot August sun and not see anything anyway. I sent her a nice Kitchenaid mixer which she adores, and we never had an issue about it.)

...

I third the Jon Krakauer book. He gets a few minor details wrong about the general Utah culture, but he's right on the money re: church history. They really do teach a very one-sided version to you when they are pushing the "Your ancestors crossed the plains and suffered so you could be raised in God's true church" angle. They never talk about Joe getting arrested for treasure hunting scams or Joe telling his Danite body guards to break the printing press of somebody who criticized Joe. They never talk about Bigamy Young rescinding the autonomy of the Relief Society (the women's auxiliary) and telling women they could no longer preach or give blessings. They never talk about the very sketchy civil rights history of the church, or mention that Ezra Taft Benson (church prophet about three guys back)wrote the forward to a white supremacy manifesto. They tell their members that they don't play at politics, but still organised a large part of the movement behind Prop 8 and arranged to have the Equal Rights Amendment killed.(For the longest time, I thought the ERA must be really heinous, and then I read the actual text and thought, WTF?) The church is really skeevy sometimes, supporting dictators like Auguste Pinochet, just so they can get missionary access to a country. Incidentally, if you try to explain any of this to a TBM (True Believing Mormon) they'd look at you like you'd grown a third head and sadly cluck their tongues at how you'd fallen prey to the machinations of Satan.

Posted by: Doug Little | September 3, 2009 5:19 PM

Whoops, just scanned through the responses, someone already bought it up.... Carry on.

Posted by: PixelFish | September 3, 2009 5:21 PM

Forgot to mention, this isn't even my favourite Boyd K. Packer talk. No, that honour belongs to "For Young Men Only."

http://www.lds-mormon.com/only.shtml

Seriously, this shit is hilarious. (Too bad it ruins so many lives bcause people believe it.)

....

Incidentally, if Thomas S. Monson (current prophet) and Gordon B. Hinckley (last prophet) have their issues, they are the John Paul II to what promises to be Boyd K. Packer's Cardinal Rat. (He's next in line for the presidency of the church and prophethood if Thomas S. keels over.)

Posted by: Silva | September 3, 2009 5:23 PM

That sounds a lot like the first pitch I ever heard from a Mormon, except that he also added a bunch of stuff about how it was evil to worship idols like the Virgin Mary. I tried asking him not to go there (superstition or not, I'm still a woman... from a matriarchal family no less), but he was already revved up.

Warning: DO NOT date someone who claims to be a lapsed Mormon unless you are certain it is true!

Posted by: James Sweet | September 3, 2009 5:28 PM

@PixelFish:

As a Mormon youth, you are told that you belong to a "peculiar people" (damn straight!) and that Mormons are often persecuted for their beliefs.

Indeed, just yesterday I was telling my wife about this. She said, "Every September, I would think to myself, 'This year I will finally be cool.' Did you feel like that?" I replied that, well, uh, maybe for a couple years in middle school, but for a lot of my childhood I thought that I was part of a special and different group of people, and I didn't really want to be cool. "I assumed the reason I was unpopular because I was smart and righteous." heh...

Posted by: Pixelfish | September 3, 2009 5:35 PM

Carl Buell: One of the proofs the church likes to hold up as the divine origin of the church is that Joseph Smith had very little education. "How could a man with a second grade education have written this book?" they announce from the pulpit while waving a copy of the modern, heavily edited Book of Mormon. (The original version was full of double negatives and folksy sentence construction.)

Then my seminary teacher would talk about how Biblical scholars discovered a form of Hebrew poetry called chiasmus and look at this example in the Book of Mormon and Joe couldn't have known about this, so obvs was translating from the Book of Mormon, not making shit up. Nevermind that Shakespeare has the same form in some of his sonnets, or that Joe was writing Biblical fan fic and probably unconciously picking up the structures inherent in the Bible. Nope, it's evidence of GOD'S HAND!

Incidentally, one of my best friends as a kid, her dad was a Biblical studies teacher at WhyBeYou (aka BYU). He was made to resign and was later excommunicated because his studies contradicted things that the church taught. Yay for scholastic freedom and integrity.

Posted by: Prof. Bleen | September 3, 2009 5:43 PM

If you made up a religion for a syfy (ugh) story like the Mormon religion, no one would buy it

Posted by: Canuck | September 3, 2009 5:53 PM

Crock. Of. Shit.

I simply can't understand how anyone can actually believe this crap. Boggles my poor atheist mind. The level of delusion in the human population is the thing that frightens me most of all.

Posted by: Alen W | September 3, 2009 5:55 PM

It just beggers belief that people can believe this religion. That they can't see that the only reason they believe it is because they were indoctrinated in it as children (probably).

How embarrassing, seriously, what a bunch of absolute fucktards.

Posted by: scarn | September 3, 2009 6:01 PM

It just beggers belief that people can believe this religion. That they can't see that the only reason they believe it is because they were indoctrinated in it as children (probably).

How embarrassing, seriously, what a bunch of absolute fucktards.

My family are all devout Mormons. I'm the apostate atheist. None of them, so far as I can tell, are fucktarded about anything in life except this religion. Those who are old enough have advanced academic degrees or are successful in business and in their personal lives. None of them are particularly stupid but they are incurious and not particularly critical about what they believe. I think for most of them (I have a bunch of siblings) the religion gives them a community and a real sense of security. The idea of leaving the church is terrifying, and my decisions have always confused them.

Posted by: Qwerty | September 3, 2009 6:19 PM

Ahhh... Everything is true because we say so and you can't criticize the truth unless you are a true follower who believes it's all true.

My favorite line from this is "And, if you viewed Rembrandt only in black and white, you would miss most of his inspiration." Apparently, he's never examined Rembrandt's etchings or drawings as many of these are monochromatic.

But who am I to criticize as I am not a "true believer."

Posted by: Drosera | September 3, 2009 6:21 PM

Liveliest Crib @82,

Here's my 'theory'.

On the Origin of Christianity by Means of Unnatural Selection

It seems that the earliest records about Christianity are things St. Paul wrote. By his own admission he had been a prosecutor of a cult of followers of Jesus Christ and was even involved in killing them.

It is probable that at some point, for reasons that are now shrouded in mystery (a guilt complex?), he decided to take over this sect and to make it his own. Maybe by that time the people who had started the sect had become disillusioned that their hero had not returned from the dead as promised; in other words, it seemed that he wasn't the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament.

Then, one day, Paul had a brilliant idea: Jesus had risen from the dead after all! He was the Messiah. What a selling argument for the waning Jesus cult! Paul immediately started spreading this fantasy as far away from Israel as he could, since this would diminish the chance that actual witnesses would come forward to protest. Some of his cronies wrote up the texts that were later incorporated in the gospels, and behold, Christianity took off.

I am assuming that a person called Jesus of Nazareth, who believed that he was the Messiah, actually existed. I am also assuming that no supernatural events actually happened.

The fact remains that there are still the actual words supposedly spoken by Christ. We can safely assume, however, that these were for the most part, like the narrative itself, the work of posthumous ghost writers. Call them Holy Ghost writers if you want. It seems likely that Christ himself couldn't even write. The poor guy would never know how popular he was to become, and that the likes of Billy Graham would speak in his name and make a fortune out of it. And that he would even meet Joseph Smith.

It's of course just a theory... It still needs some work.

Posted by: scarn | September 3, 2009 6:31 PM

Drosera at 113,

There have been scholarly attempts to read the gospel texts and find "authentic" sayings of the man called Christ.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

There really isn't very much. As I understand it aside from the Pauline epistles the earliest gentile church relied on oral gospels and stories that weren't written down for decades, so it's fairly easy to see how, without a written record, mythology could be built fairly quickly.

Posted by: kamaka | September 3, 2009 6:37 PM

to the extent that an historical Jesus actually existed

I doubt it. That Saul/Paul made it up out of whole cloth is pretty likely.

Posted by: Aureola Nominee, FCD | September 3, 2009 6:41 PM

Drosera @113:

Ever heard of Hyam Maccoby?

His "The Mythmaker - Paul and the Invention of Christianity" argues a position very close to your own, and although he cannot actually prove it beyond any reasonable doubt he nonetheless provides a compelling narrative that explains what we know about those events far better than the official Christian pseudohistory does.

Posted by: Drosera | September 3, 2009 7:05 PM

kamaka,

I doubt it. That Saul/Paul made it up out of whole cloth is pretty likely.

It's possible. But I think it is slightly more plausible that a person who believed that he was the Messiah actually existed and that his followers started the cult, later to be annexed by Paul. Jesus was in my view the fairly unimportant nucleus that formed the snowball, and later the avalanche of Christianity. But since this can not be proved or disproved I am not particularly attached to this idea. :)

Aureola Nominee, FCD,

I've never heard of Hyam Maccoby. Thanks for the tip.

Once you assume that the supernatural elements in the NT are inventions the whole thing falls apart. The rest follows, because it depends too much on these supernatural bits.

Posted by: MichelP | September 3, 2009 7:09 PM

Just swap a few terms, names, and locations and you get the same flavor of dazzling xtian circularity: the book is true because god says so in the book is true because god says so in the book is true because god says so in the book ....

If you don't jump on their merry-go-round, you can't understand how the universe spins around it.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 3, 2009 7:10 PM

But I think it is slightly more plausible that a person who believed that he was the Messiah actually existed and that his followers started the cult, later to be annexed by Paul. Jesus was in my view the fairly unimportant nucleus that formed the snowball, and later the avalanche of Christianity.

Have you seen Jesus of Montreal? About an actor hired by the Montreal diocese to revive their passion play. Let's just say it parallels the framework you just laid out. Pretty decent flick.

Posted by: Drosera | September 3, 2009 7:23 PM

Can't say I have, MAJeff.

Posted by: CJO | September 3, 2009 7:36 PM

It's possible. But I think it is slightly more plausible that a person who believed that he was the Messiah actually existed and that his followers started the cult, later to be annexed by Paul. Jesus was in my view the fairly unimportant nucleus that formed the snowball, and later the avalanche of Christianity. But since this can not be proved or disproved I am not particularly attached to this idea.

In my view, it's always less plausible (because less parsimonious) to say that a specific person needed to have lived and have had some fairly specific kind of career in order for a religious tradition with accompanying literary output to arise. But I don't think Paul made it up out of whole cloth, either.

Here's a sketch of my theory (and I am attached to this idea): The first Jesus was a post-resurrection Jesus. That is, Jews of a sectarian, apocalyptic bent in Roman-occupied Palestine, under the influence of scriptures like the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah and not a few syncretic Hellenic ideas, conceived of a figure who had lived and been executed in the mythic past. This figure had risen from the dead and was now appearing to "the elect" to announce, as in Mark 1, that the kingdom of god had come near.

So the apostles (messengers) were never disciples (students), and the reason that "Paul's gospel" was as good as the Palestinians', who later were converted for narrative reasons into diciples, is because they all shared this, the Good News of the Risen Christ, a purely mythical conception with no purported historical figure at its core (at least not a specified one that anybody could find anything out about --"Jesus" was a very common name, and was perhaps being used as a signifier for this unknowable-ness or anonymity, as a living, as opposed to resurrected, figure).

The narrative gospels are a later corruption/elaboration of this earliest tradition, and the reason the evangelists could get away with it was essentially the war with Rome 66-73 CE. In the chaos and misery following that event, it was possible to move the mythic past forward into the era of Pilate, and make the narrative specifically a historical fiction, set in a determinate time and place, which the story, transmitted in isolated units of tradition derived from "the elect's" experiences of a risen god-man figure, had not been before.

Just a sketch, as I say (and rather a clumsily written one, sorry), but I believe this approach makes the most sense of the texts we have.

Posted by: Iris | September 3, 2009 8:10 PM

John B. Sandlin @130:

I also do not find their assurance that everything in their book is true because their book says it's true convincing.

And they would no doubt find it unconvincing that any other book is true because it says it is. Funny, the way that works.

Posted by: kamaka | September 3, 2009 8:23 PM

CJO @ 129

Hmmm...interesting take on things. One guy "seeing" a ghost is all it would take to get the ball rolling...

"Paul made it all up" has one thing going for it, though. It drives the christers wild. ('Cause they do know he made so much of it up?)

Posted by: Lynna | September 3, 2009 8:30 PM

The Hayden excommunication story is linked to @#124. What I like about that story is the telling detail of the White Guy in Charge being momentarily flummoxed when a woman shows up with a man who is not her husband. This is still the way things go in my community. One of my Mormon friends was given grief recently over attending our writing workshops because men other than her husband were often there -- for her, it would have been better if the whole group was female.

The other telling detail from the Hayden story is that a room full of men hold the court and then pass judgement on a woman.

I was kicked out of a cult once in a similar manner. A bunch of men get together and tell you that you are not living by the rules. Of course, you can always repent. In the case of the cult, repentance would have been more acceptable if accompanied by a large donation.

Posted by: not a gator | September 3, 2009 8:36 PM

Some people took Carlos Castenada seriously. Not to mention Erich von Daeniken (the big racist), and that Lemuria/Atlantis/Mu crap from the 1960's.

Some people just want to belieeeeeve.

Posted by: nick bobick | September 3, 2009 8:48 PM

Another early Mormon that not too many people know about is Sidney Rigdon. There is some pretty good evidence that he was the real power behind the church (most early members eere brought in from his previous congregation), and is the most likely person to have written the Book of Mormon. The Mormons more or less "expunged" his theology from their history about 90 years ago.

Pixelfish, Lynna, and others might find it interesting to read about this individual. Lots out there.

Posted by: Rick T | September 3, 2009 9:39 PM

CJO and kamaka,
You both might find The Forbidden Gospels blog interesting.
April DeConick, who is a professor at Rice has written a series on her blog called Creating Jesus. These 24 posts give a good overview of how the theology of Jesus came to be and under what influences. Very scholarly and I can't detect any apologetics in it at all.

Posted by: kamaka | September 3, 2009 10:30 PM

How old are the commenters here?

Thirteen?

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Posted by: PixelFish | September 3, 2009 10:36 PM

Nick @139: Ah, poor frustrated Sidney. Must've been teeth grindingly frustrating for him to watch leadership of the early church pass onto Bigamy Young, when he'd been within a hair of retaining power. But he wasn't very popular--having publically denounced polygamy, I believe, and the other main candidate for leading the church besides Brigham was a little boy--Joe's son. (Eventually Emma, Joseph's first wife, takes the kid and renounces the teachings of polygamy and says Joe never practised it, and she and her next husband start the RLDS church.)

Mormons only get a small dose of Sidney history, 'tis true, and it's mostly couched in how he went up against Brigham and failed. As usual the winner gets to write history. Emma and Sidney are usually portrayed quite harshly in mainstream Mormonia. (Oh, they both get their due for their roles pre-dead-Joe, but their actions afterwards are sort of tacitly castigated.)

I do disagree with Spalding on the theory that Rigdon might have written the Book of Mormon. The timing seems wrong, for one thing, particularly since instances of the Book of Mormon seem to be extant before Rigdon joined the church as it was then. But he did help Joe "re-translate" the Bible and probably had a huge formative force on the D&C and other church doctrine.

Posted by: HP | September 3, 2009 10:39 PM

So, is Boyd Packer any relation to Alferd Packer? Same part of the world, and all.

Personally, I blame the Wendigo.

Posted by: PixelFish | September 3, 2009 11:03 PM

Seth R. sez: That speech by Boyd K. Packer was given in front of a gathering of Church Education System teachers. So it's hardly meant as a general speech to all Mormons in academic pursuits.

Yeah, it was just intended for the Mormons teaching the young Mormons. Whaddya mean "trickle down effect"?

This sort of excuse gets pulled out all the time. "Oh, the church handbook of instructions is only for the bishops." "Oh, that talk was directed at the young men, and shouldn't apply to anybody else." "This is more advanced doctrine, not intended for the layman." (That one gets busted out all the time, and indeed is often used to justify not teaching all of Mormon history. Because the unprepared mind might quiver in shock!)

Posted by: kamaka | September 3, 2009 11:14 PM

not a gator @ 144

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki

Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki voyage was an attempt to prove the islands of the South Pacific were populated by Amerinds from South America.

When Cook was touring Polynesia, it did not escape his attention that their double-hulled canoes were excellent sea-crafts. Beyond all doubt, the Tangata Maori were Asian in origin, and used their incredible navigation skills to emigrate throughout the Pacific. And somewhere along the line, they landed in present day Peru. The sweet potato, ubiquitous throughout Polynesia, was/is called kumar in Peru, kumara in the Maori language.

Why Heyerdahl believed the migration went the other way is beyond me.

HRH Kalakaua in "The Legends and Myths of Hawai'i" relates an oral history (pg 119) of one Paumakua having voyaged east to where the sun rises and returning with "red people". This would be circa 1100 ce. So it's likely the Tangata Maori visited the Americas multiple times.

The mormons and the Hawai'ians...thats another story...any of the Kanaka Maoli in Utah care to tell us your story??

Posted by: PixelFish | September 3, 2009 11:36 PM

...statements from other church leaders favoring objective academic inquiry.....

Yeah, statements like this one:

In our time the belief that science and technology can solve all of mankind’s problems has become a theocracy. I would despair if I thought our eternal salvation depended on scientific, technical, or secular knowledge separate from righteousness and the word of God. The word of God as spoken by His prophets through the centuries justifies no other conclusion. Many believe that the transcendent answers to life’s questions lie in the test tube, in the laboratories, in the equations, and in the telescopes. This theocracy of science leaves out the ultimate answer to the overarching question, "Why?"

Theocracy of science....???

From the same talk: Now comes the challenge to prevent the scientific, technical, and intellectual from stifling the spiritual enlightenment in our lives. As someone once said, "The greatest of undeveloped resources [in our country] is faith; the greatest of unused power is prayer." Technology may help us communicate with each other and the world, but not with God.

Here's a statement about how love of learning can be used to turn people to Satan's purposes:

Some "learned" souls delight in leading others astray, all in the so-called name of learning. Years later their victims may realize that they have climbed their ladder of learning, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall.

and

There are the so-called learned people who have let their intellect undermine their spiritual moorings and who would also attempt to lead the faithful away from those who are appointed by the Lord to lead. There are those who feel that our leaders are out of touch with the realities of the day. They would attempt to lead members by substituting their own knowledge for the revelations from God to His prophets.

Intellectual in the church parlance is often a derogatory term. Intellectuals, it is understood, are putting their faith in the arm of the flesh, yadda yadda, and not relying on the wonderfully spindly and fickle compass of faith.

Objective scientific enquiry doesn't count in the church unless you pray afterwards to make sure that your data all toes the line and is acceptable to Heavenly Father. There are plenty of talks where science and enquiry are mentioned positively, but never without the yoke of faith being hung like an albatross around the neck of the enquiring.

Posted by: Cthulance | September 4, 2009 12:17 AM

I have so many great stories from my years in Mormonism. One of my favorites occurred when I was about 14 years old and traveling with a youth group (accompanied by adult chaperones of course) to Washington D.C. to get baptized for dead people in the LDS temple there.

We went to a mall one evening (taking a breather between dunkings for the dead) and a few (a very few) of us went to the bookstore. I was browsing the science section. One of my priesthood elders walked up and asked, "What are you looking at?"

"A book on astronomy," I replied.

"Ohhhh, you shouldn't look at those kinds of books, those are of the devil!" he confidently asserted with an affectation of great confidence and concern.

It took me a second to figure out that anyone could be so stupid.

"I think you mean astrology," I offered.

"Oh." He thought a moment. "Oh. Well then I guess that's okay."

I'm still not sure he understood the distinction.

Posted by: wright | September 4, 2009 1:15 AM

"Calvin ball goes religious."

Bob L @#20 for the win!!

Posted by: Trev | September 4, 2009 1:36 AM

Sawyer: "There are larger enemies in a battle against ignorance."

Unless you happen to be gay. I applaud your understanding and willingness to see good in others (I really do, that isn't meant to be sarcastic), but the Mormon church and its members contributed vast sums of money to support Prop 8 in CA. These people are NOT content to just believe their own bullshit - they want to foist it on everyone else. Then there's their take over of the Boy Scouts....

Posted by: PixelFish | September 4, 2009 2:14 AM

Sawyer: I love my LDS fiends and family, but it doesn't keep me from banging my head against stuff when I have to deal with their beliefs intruding in my life, or see it ruining theirs. (And there's extra head banging for getting the family news letter and seeing your otherwise loving, intelligent cousins cheerfully announce how they spent their summer working to push Prop 8 through.)

Sure, maybe there are larger enemies in the fight against ignorance, but they aren't the enemies I can ACTUALLY take on. And these are the ones controlling the lives of my loved ones.

Posted by: Craig | September 4, 2009 3:37 AM

As an ex-Mormon with strong feelings about Mr. Packer, I wish I had seen this thread earlier today and not right before bed. Ah well, more comments tomorrow.

Posted by: Sven | September 4, 2009 5:07 AM

Cool. So by accepting all that crap they choose to ignore the real world.
Therefore they are not allowed to criticise the real world. So if they stay out of the real world (and of the internet) it's practically a win-win!

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 4, 2009 7:12 AM

The major religions (Christianity, Islam, etc.) have their origins shrouded by time and a lack of decent surviving records - Eamon Knight

I don't think that's so for Islam: we know quite a lot about Muhammed; and pretty damning much of it is, too - e.g. the massacre of Jews at Qurayza in 627 CE.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 4, 2009 7:49 AM

I thought Kon-tiki was a proof-of-concept, which would substantiate claims that the Polynesians could have done it. not a gator

Heyerdahl thought the Polynesians came from the Americas (in at least two waves, from different places, one possibly starting from Asia. This was a highly eccentric view even when he made his voyage, and is conclusively disproved by both archeological and genetic evidence: Polynesia was settled from west to east, starting from the Asian mainland. Given that we know they reached Easter Island, Polynesian navigators certainly could have reached Peru.

Posted by: Ray Moscow | September 4, 2009 8:35 AM

I was going to mention the great website josephlied.com, but it seems to have died. I just get a evangelical rebuttal to Mormonism there.

Too bad -- josephlied.com was excellent.

Posted by: Ray Moscow | September 4, 2009 8:46 AM

Nick @139: "Another early Mormon that not too many people know about is Sidney Rigdon. There is some pretty good evidence that he was the real power behind the church (most early members eere brought in from his previous congregation), and is the most likely person to have written the Book of Mormon. The Mormons more or less "expunged" his theology from their history about 90 years ago."

Yep, Rigdon (IIRC, a Baptist preacher turned to the Disciples of Christ by Alexander Campbell) also turned his Disciples of Christ congregation into Mormons and thereby provided one of its biggest early boosts of its members.

Rigdon had written a novel with many of the elements of the BOM which mysteriously went "missing" shortly before the BOM was "revealed".

After Smith's death, he lost out on the power struggle with Brigham Young and joined the vast dustheap of near-forgotten religious frauds.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 4, 2009 8:55 AM

Sawyer: "There are larger enemies in a battle against ignorance."
Unless you happen to be gay.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

In addition to just believing crazy-ass shit, the LDS church is an anti-gay hate organization.

Posted by: Ray Moscow | September 4, 2009 9:06 AM

spamlds@172: "However, there is a difference between deciding for oneself that Mormonism is not a valid choice and hatefully disparaging it to others. Therein is the difference between exercising individual agency and engaging in anti-Mormon hatred."

Spam, it is not necessary to "hate" Mor(m)ons or Mor(m)onism to see that their doctrines and beliefs are contrary to all evidence and just plain wrong.

However, I do hate those, like religious apologists, who spread misinformation and ignorance just to make themselves feel better. It's a personal thing.

Posted by: raven | September 4, 2009 9:22 AM

Therein is the difference between exercising individual agency and engaging in anti-Mormon hatred.

Playing the persecution card, I see. Nonsense. Many of the more knowledgeable and vocal commentors are ex-Mormons who have family and friends who are still members. Criticism does not equal hatred except in your lying mind.

Speaking of hate, Mormons have a remarkable capacity to hate all their own. They hate the gays. They oppress their women. They hate atheists and discriminate against them in the boy scouts. They used to hate nonwhites until that "revelation" They hate catholics.

According to them, I'm a gentile going nowhere special after death. While they are the real Jews on their way to being gods with their own planets someday.

Well it is a free country and we all have our own opinions. According to the vast majority of the world's xians and others, The Real Jews are just arrogant idiots following one of many false religions founded quite recently with good documentation by someone who just Made It Up.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | September 4, 2009 9:26 AM

Nice post, Walton

Posted by: Doug Little | September 4, 2009 9:33 AM

Several things,

Second, his reply does not disparage science, getting a proper education, or seeking truth through science. It simply states that the spiritual knowledge that comprises a "testimony" of the Church is a personal confirmation that comes from God to the individual. Millions of people have that confirmation. Hundreds of thousands receive it annually. Regardless of what happens afterwards, whether they remain faithful, or whether they remain with the Church, they felt the Spirit of God testify to them that the message of the LDS Church is true.

If this is so and God can encroach on the physical universe, then it is indeed within the realm of science to test for it. You can't have it both ways. Either God is outside the sphere of the physical and cannot interact with it or God can interact with the physical world and we can use science to test for such interactions. Oh and another thing just because someone makes a personal claim about God doesn't mean it's automatically true. If that were the case we would be inundated with alien lifeforms as all the UFO sightings would be true also. It comes down to

I don't think you saw what you thought you saw.

Posted by: Carlie | September 4, 2009 9:38 AM

Walton, very impressive takedown.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 4, 2009 9:48 AM

scarn @109:

"the religion gives them a community and a real sense of security. The idea of leaving the church is terrifying"

Indeed, this is the primary function of religion: Comfort and fellowship. That's why it is still around ...

Posted by: strangebrew | September 4, 2009 9:53 AM

Mormonism...as well as ALL the other xian con jobs...just exemplifies the gullibility of the hard of thinking...

Obviously some folk 'think' they must believe is some such nonsense...matters not a lot what...the great thing about the American way is that you have ample choice of scam to get ya scrawny arse screwed by!

How anyone can seriously consider the founding principles of the Mormon bollocks as factual revelation really needs even more serious medical help...if not involuntary incarceration in a mental institution...they are a rank embarrassment to mankind let alone themselves...

Posted by: JBlilie | September 4, 2009 9:58 AM

I second Jesus of Montreal. It's a good movie and makes some good points about many things, including religion, Xianity in particular.

Posted by: paul | September 4, 2009 10:26 AM

Did anyone else read the title and think he was talking about the Earth's mantle? I instantly thought, "No shit, the mantle is super hot and huge compared to anything my warm, soupy brain has to offer."

Posted by: Drosera | September 4, 2009 10:31 AM

spamlds @172,

First, it should be noted that neither the original email, nor the letter that prompted Elder Packer's reply are included here. We don't have a context in which to place his remarks.

What difference would it make?

Millions of people (...) felt the Spirit of God testify to them that the message of the LDS Church is true.

People feel a lot of things. That does not make it true. And I am convinced that you are lying anyway.

Last of all, Mormonism has no hostility toward science.

Except when you are an independent historian who wants to investigate the origins of the LSD church, or a scientist who pokes his nose in other sensitive areas of Mormonism. Now that you are here: What is your stance on the Theory of Evolution?

Nevertheless, we recognize that there are truths that can only be understood by the Spirit of God. Personal revelation is a real thing.

I just got a personal revelation that Joseph Smith was a total fraud. You don’t believe me? That’s reciprocated.

The test to know whether or not the Church or the Book of Mormon are true is not a scientific one.

If historical research demonstrates that Joseph Smith was a convicted con-man and a liar who constantly changed his stories, if science falsifies the factual claims in the BoM, if textual research shows that many passages of the BoM are copied from the faulty King James translation of the Bible, if the whole content of the BoM is just one awful mess of pseudo-archaic English with no merit whatsoever, neither literary, historically or ethically, then we have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that the BoM is a worthless fake. (It is a category error to say that a book is true or false.)

To those who show this sincerity by living the principles, the knowledge comes in an unmistakeable way.

What knowledge? That polygamy is right or wrong? That black people are cursed with the color of their skin? That gays go to hell?

If you find that greater happiness comes to you by living according to principles of virtue, then you'll come to know that they are true principles. You can know by your own experience.

So you are happy when your wife is reduced to an unpaid servant?

However, there is a difference between deciding for oneself that Mormonism is not a valid choice and hatefully disparaging it to others. Therein is the difference between exercising individual agency and engaging in anti-Mormon hatred.

As long as Mormons are trying to spread their religion to obtain a global theocracy, I feel free to point out that it has both evil as well as ridiculous tenets, and that it is all based on what is probably the most evident instance of fraud in the annals of religion. And that is saying a lot, when you realize that the history of religion is one farrago of fraud and deception.

Posted by: kamaka | September 4, 2009 10:40 AM

spamlds @ 172

However, there is a difference between deciding for oneself that Mormonism is not a valid choice and hatefully disparaging it to others.

WTF? I've followed this thread, I don't read much "hateful" here, just a lot of well earned criticism.

A scientist who applies the wrong test to validate his hypothesis will get indeterminate results. The test to know whether or not the Church or the Book of Mormon are true is not a scientific one.

Really, you lay out this kind of bullshit and then turn around and play the victim. Don't insult my intelligence.

Posted by: strangebrew | September 4, 2009 10:59 AM

#172 spamlds

Total drivel...you stand accused of promoting and supporting an evil and criminally insane premise...you have no evidence just desperate assertions, and tragically almost comical disparate appeals to subjectivity and naivety...but still no evidence... go away and pray to your delusional god that you gain a little rationalism...or...in the very least a little honesty.

Posted by: Edward Lark | September 4, 2009 11:14 AM

Last of all, Mormonism has no hostility toward science. Indeed there have been many Mormons who have been noted inventors and scientists. We value education.

This was certainly my experience growing up in the church in the 1970s/80s - at least to a point. Science education was advocated and celebrated in my home, with a father who was an amateur astronomer, brother who became and engineer and sister who went on to become a doctor.

The problem is that I do not believe this is accurate of the current state of church doctrine and practice, which has become increasingly anti-science and more evangelical. I remember being taught that God was god partly because he had a perfect understanding of the laws of the universe. In that light, scientific research was a way to uncover the mind of God. However, as historical and scientific evidence has accumulated that directly contradicts church dogma - native american origins being only the most prominent - the church itself has grown more and more anti-intellectual. There are still some artifacts from the pro-science days. BYU still has an excellent biology department, from what I hear. But an increasing amount of the church membership is science ignorant (at best) or flagrantly anti-science.

Nevertheless, we recognize that there are truths that can only be understood by the Spirit of God. Personal revelation is a real thing.

And here lies the reason why there are so many scisms from "the official" LDS church. Personal revelation is placed at such a premium that when a majority church is required to change and adjust to the surrounding society, as it must to maintain a majority membership - e.g., ending polygamy, allowing blacks to become full members, paying lip service to equality between men and women, etc. - the individual's in the church whose "personal revelation" doesn't match up with the changes will get upset. If they can find enough like-minded individuals, they form their own "restored/reformed/etc." church, the claim of which is that it is following the "true" path, while the mainstream church toddles its "fallen" members off to telestial/terrestial hell.

Given the pride of place that personal revelation occupies in the LDS church, it is actually amazing they they have been able to hold together any coherent membership at all. This is actually one of the primary jobs of Mormon missionaries - policing the doctrinal understanding and practice of the various stakes, wards and members. Especially in the already "saturated markets" of U.S./Europe, maintaining doctrinal homogeneity is much more the "mission" than is recruiting new members. There are also numerous Mormon publications (Ensign, etc.) and a practice whereby individual members are visited and given doctrinal lessons by other members (home teaching/relief society visits). The visits work the two-fold purpose of maintaining doctrinal homogeneity and providing a sort of soft-policing of the membership that works to catch those that might be straying in either belief or practice and exert social pressure to conform.

Posted by: inkling | September 4, 2009 11:24 AM

LDS: When LSD isn't enough of a mindfuck for you.

-

Posted by: Lynna | September 4, 2009 11:38 AM

Great post @163, Pixelfish. Irony content is high: "theocracy of science."

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 4, 2009 11:43 AM

jjn,

The scientific method is the principal way that we as humans gain knowledge. Everyone uses it extensively, although perhaps not formally. However, it does have limitations (i.e. it is ever-evolving and is not absolute).

Those, of course, are the strengths of science, not limitations.

There are some who believe that knowledge can come in other ways than the scientific method. They have tested this method throughout their life and it has proven to be reliable when utilized appropriately. - jjn

Oddly enough, though, they come to a very wide range of mutually incompatible "knowledge", with absolutely no way of deciding who is right. The contrast with science and other forms of rational enquiry, which produce real knowledge, could not be clearer.

Is there currently a way to scientifically and conclusively prove that I love her? I don't think so. Does that make my love for her any less real? I realize this example is over-simplified, but it highlights the fact that there are some things which are very real that cannot be proven scientifically.

Why are the religious so predictable? I think this must be about number 14 in the handbook. Not so much over-simplified, as ridiculous. In fact, your love for your wife could be investigated scientifically, since we know (for example) that feelings of love are associated with heightened levels of oxytocin. More to the point, it is certainly a matter subject to objective empirical investigation. If, for example, you claim to love her while beating her, cheating on her, etc. (not an unknown thing for men to do), others are entitled to conclude that you do not, in fact, love her.

If you or another scientist have not obtained knowledge through spiritual means or if this spiritual method cannot be proven by science, does it mean it does not exist?

But if incompatible claims to knowledge are made by different people claiming to use "spiritual methods", then we know some of them at least are wrong. And if the "spiritual method" leads to "knowledge" that we can show scientifically to be wrong - as it emphatically does in the case of the LDS - then we know that their "spiritual method" is a load of hooey. Once a religion starts reliably coming up with "knowledge" that can later be verified by scientific (or mathematical or historical) methods, then it will be time to take its "spiritual method" seriously.

Posted by: Sara | September 4, 2009 12:21 PM

One of the most basic tenets of any faith is "you can only disagree with me if you agree with me".

It's not ridiculous or absurd. It's just god, testing his believers' suspension of disbelief and its limits.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 4, 2009 1:59 PM

Question from Xian: "Without God, how do you know that your wife loves you?"

(Leaving aside the absurdity of connecting belief in God with spousal affection) A: "I don't know (and you don't know whether your wife loves you) but she acts exactly as if she loves me."

There is nothing else.

Q: "Do you believe your consciousness is just the random result of atoms and molecules?"

A: "No, my consciouness is an organized reaction, shaped partly by genes and embryonic development and partly by learned responses, to a world consisting of semi-random events, ultimately derived from interactions of molecules and atoms."

Posted by: Drosera | September 4, 2009 2:47 PM

Personal Failure @19,

Verily . . . I've read the BoM. That's what I remember. Verily, verily, verily.

The most common catchphrase of all in the Book of Mormon is “And it came to pass.” It drives you crazy. The BoM can be perused on the site of the Skeptic’s Annotated Book of Mormon, which has the advantage, compared to other on-line versions, that you are entertained with amusing or informative marginal notes. You almost feel pity for the Mormons, who have to read, and perhaps even to learn the BoM.

It is like a poorly written parody of the most tedious parts of the Bible. I have yet to see a more witless, mind-numbingly vacuous and vapid book. Everything in it is hazy and unspecific, without any detail that might breath life into the narrative, if you can call it a narrative; it is as if you find yourself in a nightmarish and intangible no-man’s land outside time and space, without sound, smell and color. If there are striking turns of phrase now and then, these invariably turn out to be plagiarized from the Bible; for the rest it just drones on and on in an endless stream of repetitive verbiage.

At times — rather frequently, in fact — it effectively becomes a self-parody. If Joseph Smith had any sense of humor (a commodity usually in short supply with the founders of religions), he must have chuckled when he wrote things like this:

And now, as I have spoken concerning these plates, behold they are not the plates upon which I make a full account of the history of my people; for the plates upon which I make a full account of my people I have given the name of Nephi; wherefore, they are called the plates of Nephi, after mine own name; and these plates also are called the plates of Nephi. [1 Nephi 9:2]

It literally defies belief that people could ever think that the BoM was divinely inspired. What a low opinion of their god such people must have. All the other overwhelming evidence apart, the abominable quality of the Book of Mormon alone is sure proof that any copy of it is worth less than the paper on which it is printed.

Posted by: Pacal | September 4, 2009 3:10 PM

The circular logic of the Mormon Church is not unusual. I.E., only true believers can judge truth claims.

In a very similar way many Freudians operate. Iève read over and over again from Freudians that the only people to judge Freudianism are Freudians or those who have tried and believed it for years, i.e., psychoanalysis. And of course if a non Freudian disputes the Scientific basis, (very little) of Fruedianism we read or hear analysises of the psychology of the critic, because resistance to Freudianism can't be based on its lack of scientific rigor. The typical Freudian tact is that resistance to a Freudian proves it right and of course agreeing with a Freudian claim proves it right. Heads I win, tails I win logic!

Posted by: IaMoL | September 4, 2009 3:22 PM

You know, if half the hateful stuff said in these comments were said about jews or blacks, you'd be called a racist or anti-Semite.

So criticizing Mormonism and pointing out the stupidity of it, (or Scientology or Heaven's Gate or Westborough Baptist Church) is akin to being a racist? Hardly - you ignorant, racist Mormon moron.

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | September 4, 2009 3:39 PM

Ducky hardly.
Showing the fundamental absurdity of the Mormon religion belief is hardly discrimination. We do it with pretty every other religion as well. How are historical facts about the inconsistency and wrong doings of the church considered discrimination?

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 4, 2009 3:52 PM

Just because Mormons don't have an ACLU or anti-defamation league to point out the hate and bigotry exhibited in these comments - Armsakimbo

It's not hatred or bigotry to point out that the LDS was founded by a man with a record of making money by supposed divination, or that its doctrines (in addition to being utterly at odds with known historical fact) regard women as inferior to men, or that it was long officially racist, or that it is now in the forefront of homophobic campaigns. These are all simple facts.

Nor is it hatred or bigotry to laugh at the utter absurdity of mormonism; and this I shall continue to do whenever this ridiculous and fraudulent load of fetid dingoes' kidneys happens to come to my attention. And you can tell your "prophet" from me to stuff a golden tablet where the sun doesn't shine.

Posted by: Doug Little | September 4, 2009 4:01 PM

Ducky,

From the immortal account of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Help, Help I'm being repressed.

Armsakimbo,

Last time I checked the Mormon church is neither a racial or ethnic group. Being part of a church is a choice, being part of a racial group is not.

Posted by: doug Little | September 4, 2009 4:16 PM

Ducky,

As for perscution, the LDS church has gone through it in the past

from Wikipedia.

All of the party except for seventeen children under eight years old—about 120 men, women, and children—were killed. After the massacre, the corpses of the victims were left decomposing for two years on the open plain, their children were distributed to local Mormon families, and many of their possessions auctioned off at the Latter Day Saint Cedar City tithing office.

Is that the type of persecution you were talking about?

Posted by: raven | September 4, 2009 4:28 PM

History deems that the LDS church has gone through perscution....

Sure. And they have persecuted groups back rather viciously.

After the massacres in the midwest, the Mormons massacred a large group of settlers at Mountain Meadows. We know little about that massacre because no adults were left alive.

Then the Mormons persecuted blacks and nonwhites until their "revelation".

Nowadays they persecute gays and atheists whenever and however they can. They also routinely and pervasively discriminate against gentiles in any area where they are a majority. And against women as a matter of cult doctrine.

You need to look a little closer to see where the hate comes from and who hates who.

As to equating Mormons with Jews and blacks and pointing out their flaws. Blacks is an apples to oranges comparison. Try Jews, Catholics, and fundie xians. Read this blog. There is lots about the silly and malevolent aspects of all three, mostly the worst of the lot, the fundie death cults. And they do have their defenders. PZ Myers gets death threats by the dozens from xians and the Catholic league foams at the mouth and bites his ankles. You are ignorant and lazy, or lying.

PS Looks like the LDS church has their own troll mob. And a rather stupid mob it is. Why am I not surprised?

Posted by: Doug Little | September 4, 2009 4:38 PM

I wouldn't expect any witty repartee from Ducky, he seems to be a drive by troll, such a shame too, he has been thoroughly Pwn'd.

Posted by: Carlie | September 4, 2009 4:44 PM

Choosing to be a Mormon is not the same as “choosing” to be a Jew or dark-skinned of (very recent) African descent.

What's interesting, though, with this and other fundamentalist isolationist religions, is that in some ways people who are raised in it really don't have the "choice" to believe it. It is literally all they've ever been told, and if they've been sheltered from other viewpoints and had their critical thinking skills purposely stunted, how would they know any better? It's like a kid being raised to think that the color blue is called "green", and never hearing anything to the contrary. Is it the kid's choice to believe something wrong? I would say no. That's why it's so important for atheists to be vocal and in-your-face and out there in public, and yes, loudly criticizing and mocking the absurdities of religion, so that it can be loud enough to penetrate all of those defenses the religious groups have built up.

Posted by: jjn | September 4, 2009 5:44 PM

Re: Knockgoats

You claim that the strengths of the scientific method include that it is ever-evolving (often coming to mistaken conclusions) and incapable of coming to an absolute conclusion? The fact that you are incapable of recognizing weaknesses with this method when they clearly exist hurts your credibility. Please don't misunderstand, the scientific method is extremely valuable and has produced wonderful results. It is instrumental in my life on a daily basis. However, there is another way to knowledge. The fact that people claim contradictory spiritual knowledge does not negate the fact that it exists. That only proves that many, many people do not understand the principles upon which it operates.

Regarding your comments on oxytocin and love - the research in this area is primitive at best and has largely been derived from animal studies, however, your response has nothing to do with the point of the comment - there are plenty of things that science doesn't have a satisfactory answer for, although I'm confident it will someday. In fact, I'm sure there is a physiological response when people have spiritual experiences. Someone like you might say that this proves there is no such thing as a spiritual experience and it is the effect of some hormone, neurological activity, or other physiological response. Someone like me would say that the physiological response is connected to the spiritual experience. You also state that the way I treat my wife could be empirical evidence of my love for her. What about a person who makes tremendous positive changes in their life due to what they describe as a spiritual experience or a renewed faith in God? What might your conclusion be in that scenario?

Please understand that I am indebted to the scientific method for saving my life, but I am also indebted to the spiritual method for doing the same. You may roll your eyes, but I have been warned and protected by quiet promptings of a spiritual nature that have literally saved my life on more than one occasion. These are promptings that have given me specific knowledge that I NEVER would have known of my own accord. These are just a few examples of many, but it isn't appropriate to share them in this venue. You are correct that they cannot be replicated on demand, and therefore they probably cannot be proven to a third party; however, that does not make them any less real to me.

Perhaps an example might help provide clarity for some readers. If you were alone on a golf course and you hit a hole-in-one, there might be many who wouldn't believe you. Perhaps if you had a history of playing good golf, it would be more believable, although it would be nearly impossible to replicate it in the same place and in exactly the same way and even if you did replicate it after 10,000 shots it would still not prove that you did it the first time. Many would chalk it up to chance. This doesn't change the fact that it happened. You are so certain that you could never deny it.

I may never be able to conclusively prove to a third party that I have received spiritual knowledge. Fortunately, that is not something that God expects or probably would even allow. My relationship with God is my own, and it is the responsibility of each person to determine if He is there and, if so, who He is. The water is certainly muddied by countless individuals who do not understand this process and who mistakenly (and sometimes deceitfully) claim spiritual experiences. I respect your point of view and understand where you are coming from, but I believe you are missing out on a significant part of what this life has to offer if you aren't willing to seek knowledge from God.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 4, 2009 6:22 PM

You claim that the strengths of the scientific method include that it is ever-evolving (often coming to mistaken conclusions) and incapable of coming to an absolute conclusion? - jjn

An alternative way of describing these "weaknesses": it is self-correcting, and always ready to consider new evidence. Unlike religion.

In fact, I'm sure there is a physiological response when people have spiritual experiences.

Yes of course there is. In fact, they can be fairly readily reproduced in the laboratory.

What about a person who makes tremendous positive changes in their life due to what they describe as a spiritual experience or a renewed faith in God? What might your conclusion be in that scenario? - jjn

That it was a powerful experience. It has no bearing whatever on whether their beliefs are true. Indeed, it cannot show they are true, since people with very different "spiritual" experiences and beliefs claim such effects.

however, that does not make them any less real to me.

When a man thinks aliens are talking to him through the shower-head, or that God has told him to go out and murder women, he can also say it's "real to me".

I may never be able to conclusively prove to a third party that I have received spiritual knowledge. Fortunately, that is not something that God expects or probably would even allow.

How convenient.

The water is certainly muddied by countless individuals who do not understand this process and who mistakenly (and sometimes deceitfully) claim spiritual experiences.

Oh, right. But you are different. In your case it's the real thing. Just as it is for Philip Garrido.

I respect your point of view and understand where you are coming from

No, you don't.

I believe you are missing out on a significant part of what this life has to offer if you aren't willing to seek knowledge from God.

Why should I give any credence whatever to what you believe?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 4, 2009 6:42 PM

jjn #233

You claim that the strengths of the scientific method include that it is ever-evolving (often coming to mistaken conclusions) and incapable of coming to an absolute conclusion? The fact that you are incapable of recognizing weaknesses with this method when they clearly exist hurts your credibility.

The term you are overlooking is "self-correcting." Luminiferous aether was shown not to exist and it was dropped as a scientific concept. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species 150 years ago and evolutionary theory has changed considerably in that time with some parts of Darwin's theory being shown to be wrong. Unlike religion (any religion), science doesn't pretend to come "to an absolute conclusion." This is not a weakness of science.

The fact that people claim contradictory spiritual knowledge does not negate the fact that it exists.

This is so much bovine feces. Prophet A claims to have "spiritual knowledge" that X is true and Y is false while Oracle B claims to have "spiritual knowledge" that X is false and Y is true. Is Da Lawd lying to one of them? Or did they both just make up what Da Lawd said? I've noticed with the vast major of people who claim that Da Lawd talks to them that what Da Lawd says is remarkably similar to the listener's prejudices.

Let's take your boy Joe Smith. He gets tired of his wife and wants a different bedwarmer. All of a sudden, Joe gets a revelation that Da Lawd thinks that Joe screwing bunches of women is just a spiffy-keen idea. Fast forward to 1887. The Edmunds-Tucker Act allowed seizure of LDS property and assets. All of a sudden, President Wilford Woodruff gets a new revelation from Da Lawd. It seems that Da Lawd had second thoughts about Mormon men having more than one sex partner and that plural marriage was a no-no. I have the strong suspicion that if Edmunds-Tucker hadn't become law, that lawful-in-the-eyes-of-Da Lawd bedhopping would still be part of the Mormon cult. BTW, while Mormon men could screw as many women as they wanted, the reverse was not permitted.

Posted by: kamaka | September 4, 2009 6:46 PM

'Tis Himself @ 237

You forgot the OM.

Posted by: Sastra | September 4, 2009 7:03 PM

jjn #233 wrote:

I may never be able to conclusively prove to a third party that I have received spiritual knowledge. Fortunately, that is not something that God expects or probably would even allow. My relationship with God is my own, and it is the responsibility of each person to determine if He is there and, if so, who He is. The water is certainly muddied by countless individuals who do not understand this process and who mistakenly (and sometimes deceitfully) claim spiritual experiences.

So, in general, again and again, we see that faithfully following the method of trusting one's interpretations of mystical experiences leads to flawed conclusions which cannot be corrected. However, God wants people to use this unreliable method anyway -- because some of the people who trust themselves, will be right. The ends justifies the means.

God wants people to be unethical. He wants us to abdicate our responsibility to self-doubt, and deliberately confuse doubting ourselves, with doubting God. There's a contradiction there, an internal one for your belief.

If you're mistaken, you will not be able to correct yourself, because you've given yourself no way to know if you're wrong. You will seek confirming evidence, and always find it -- because that is what our biases lead us to do. You recognize this as a problem -- for others.

Not for you. Because, if you're right, you did the right thing. The approved thing.

No. Even if you're right, and have really received confirming personal evidence from God, you ought to doubt it. Because it's too easy -- and common -- to make a mistake.

Better to be wrong, for the right reason, than right -- for the wrong one.

Posted by: truebutnotuseful | September 4, 2009 8:15 PM

spamlds wrote @ #172:

Mormonism has no hostility toward science. Indeed there have been many Mormons who have been noted inventors and scientists. We value education.

I think some of the leaders of the Mormon church might just disagree with you (or were they merely "speaking as men?"):

Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, v. 1, pp. 141-42:

I say most emphatically, you cannot believe in this theory [of evolution] of the origin of man, and at the same time accept the plan of salvation as set forth by the Lord our God. You must choose the one and reject the other, for they are in direct conflict and there is a gulf separating them which is so great that it cannot be bridged, no matter how much one may try to do so.

Joseph Fielding Smith, Man: His Origin and Destiny, p. 184:

It has been truthfully said that organic evolution is Satan’s chief weapon in this dispensation in his attempt to destroy the divine mission of Jesus Christ.

Boyd K. Packer, “The Pattern of Our Parentage,” Ensign, Nov. 1984, 66:

Surely no one with reverence for God could believe that His children evolved from slime or from reptiles.

Russell M. Nelson, “The Magnificence of Man,” Ensign, Jan. 1988, 64:

Through the ages, some without scriptural understanding have tried to explain our existence by pretentious words such as ex nihilo (out of nothing). Others have deduced that, because of certain similarities between different forms of life, there has been a natural selection of the species, or organic evolution from one form to another. Many of these people have concluded that the universe began as a “big bang” that eventually resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it.

To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It is unthinkable! Even if it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages or renew its own worn corners or reproduce its own subsequent editions!

Ezra Taft Benson, “The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God,” Ensign, May 1975, 63:

Now, we have not been using the Book of Mormon as we should. Our homes are not as strong unless we are using it to bring our children to Christ. Our families may be corrupted by worldly trends and teachings unless we know how to use the book to expose and combat the falsehoods in socialism, organic evolution, rationalism, humanism, etc.

Posted by: IaMoL | September 4, 2009 8:50 PM

Tis Himself @ 237

You forgot the OM.

Posted by: John Morales | September 4, 2009 9:40 PM

jjn:

The hasty/sweeping generalizations, weak analogies, straw men, and guilt by association arguments set forth in responses to my post are surprising from a self-proclaimed logical group.

This is your assertion...

I apologize that I don't have the time to respond to each one, but I will try to succinctly address a persistent and common fallacy in these posts.

... which you carefully avoid trying to sustain, except via another assertion, equally unsupported.

Heh.

Posted by: chrisD | September 4, 2009 11:51 PM

Arms Akimbo

The picture on this site will give you insight as to the nature of our esteemed armsakimbo's post. If sciblogs chooses to have user pictures, you absolutely MUST force this one upon Arms Akimbo so no one ever mistakes him/her for the real thing ever again.

Posted by: Sastra | September 5, 2009 12:08 AM

Hole in one? No witnesses?

This is actually a poor analogy, because we all concede that golf holes exist, and that people often hit balls into them, even from great distances. A hole-in-one is only unlikely. Less so, if jjn's a good golfer.

A better analogy to 'knowing that God has imparted knowledge to me' would be claiming that you got a hole-in-one because a golf fairy grabbed the ball in the air, and threw it into the hole.

Even if it really did happen, and you saw it, you should still doubt it. As for others, of course they ought to doubt it.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 5, 2009 4:56 AM

Based solely on my belief in God and the belief that he can impart knowledge to me, you have grouped me with 9/11 hijackers, UFO abductees, Philip Garrido, etc. - jjn

Indeed, because that belief is not just false; is highly dangerous. You are claiming special knowledge, which God has imparted to you personally. The rest of us - well, we're just supposed to take your word for it. It is exactly that kind of arrogance which leads to theocracy, religously-inspired terrorism, and the kind of acts Garrido is accused of. You probably lack the other psycho-social characteristics necessary to lead to such evils; but the very fact that such claims are seen as legitimate in a society poses a considerable danger. Challenging them is thus a moral duty.

It is akin to me classifying the atheists on this board as genocidal maniacs because Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot were atheists. - jjn

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot? Well, they had another but closely related form of extreme arrogance: they believed they were serving the mighty force of the dialectic, carrying humanity to a perfect future. While I don't call Marxism-Leninism a religion, as some do, it certainly shares many of the psycho-social characteristics of the Abrahamic religions, with its apocalyptic predictions, revered prophets and texts, schisms and heresy-hunting. You are much closer to these people than most atheists.

Posted by: Red John | September 5, 2009 6:58 AM

Man, I wish I'd had time to post here when it was active. I'm an ex-mormon and about a year ago, an atheist friend (who surprisingly enough I met at BYU) and I found this talk by Packer and tore it to pieces. I think my favorite line is “Some things that are true are not very useful.” Seems like a pretty good description of religious thought.

Posted by: Drosera | September 5, 2009 8:21 AM

jjn @246,

Making these generalizations and painting caricatures of believers as lunatics based on rare and exceptional cases may be a well-worn debate tactic, but it does not create a fruitful, honest, and genuine discussion.

We make these generalizations because we believe that Voltaire was right when he said this:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

When you, or someone of your faith, received a message from god that all gay people should be killed, would you obey your god? Or if one of the church elders had had a revelation to this effect? What would you do?

Do you see my point?

I assume that you are a Mormon (correct me if I am wrong). Now, to me — and I’m sure to almost all of the regulars here — the Mormon faith is utterly absurd. In earlier posts on this thread I have already given several arguments to support this statement. This faith also has some ugly sides to it, like the position of women and gays in society, its goal to establish a theocracy, and its racist past.

When you claim that you get personal messages from god that confirm to you that you have chosen the ‘right’ faith, then this implies that your god is happy with these absurdities and condones those ugly sides. To us, then, this shows that your god is absurd. Since absurdities can’t be true, we reject the existence of your god, and therefore we also reject the possibility that you receive messages from god. You are either deceiving yourself or you are lying to us.

I hope you see the logic, even if you don’t accept it.

Posted by: Polyester Mather DD | September 5, 2009 10:46 AM

The last two Elders I ran into agreed to let my pet giant squid go into the font first to wake up Chthulu if I consented to posthumous baptism, but said to expect five-fold tithing for the extra arms and a pro rata tentacle surcharge.

Posted by: dogmeatIB | September 5, 2009 6:08 PM

Gotta love the "churches" started by convicted confidence men, only slightly less stupid than the "churches" started by science fiction writers...

[rolls eyes]

These yahoos almost make Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc., make sense ... note I said almost.

Posted by: jjn | September 6, 2009 10:48 AM

Re: Carlie

I am happy to have a discussion regarding "anything of substance." You have mentioned general items that are "wrong", but you are going to have to give me a few specific examples. You are also going to have to define what you mean by "wrong." I assume you mean things that are not generally accepted knowledge in the scientific community at this time. I hope you will realize that my time constraints are legitimate. They are not an attempt to dodge any questions. I truly don't have a significant amount of discretionary time to spend on this board and I hope you will understand. I feel these discussions can be helpful, but they are limited by the following (among others):

1. Archaeology has unique constraints as an empirical discipline. Additionally, archaeological research is still very much ongoing and it would be extremely premature to state that we have reached the 'end of the row' on any particular item. For example, I will readily admit that there is a current list of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon; however, that list has actually decreased in size over the years as archaeological research has expanded. I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that this trend could continue. There are also some things that simply may not be preserved at all in the archaeological record and there is clearly a possibility that the archeaological record can be misinterpreted.

2. It will be difficult for this to be a productive discussion if the intent of your questions is only for the sport of debate or simply an attempt to make believers look foolish.

I will assume that you truly want to have a reasonable discussion, while recognizing the limitations that archaeology and 'spirituality' may have.

Posted by: Drosera | September 6, 2009 5:16 PM

jjn @263,

For example, I will readily admit that there is a current list of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon; however, that list has actually decreased in size over the years as archaeological research has expanded. I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that this trend could continue. There are also some things that simply may not be preserved at all in the archaeological record and there is clearly a possibility that the archeaological record can be misinterpreted.

How convenient for you to overlook by far the most likely possibility: that the whole Book of Mormon is a worthless product of the imagination of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr.

You have just shown yourself to be yet another evasive liar for jebus.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 6, 2009 5:34 PM

if the intent of your questions is only for the sport of debate or simply an attempt to make believers look foolish. - jjn

Oh, they manage that without any help from us!

Posted by: Drosera | September 6, 2009 6:27 PM

@ 223 = @ 233

Posted by: Carlie | September 6, 2009 7:06 PM

Ok, let's leave archaeology out of it entirely. Let's take one single physical example.

Alma 24:16 -And now, my brethren, if our brethren seek to destroy us, behold, we will hide away our swords, yea, even we will bury them deep in the earth, that they may be kept bright, as a testimony that we have never used them, at the last day; and if our brethren destroy us, behold, we shall go to our God and shall be saved.

It's not that the swords will be kept bright by God as a symbol of their treaty; it is simply stated that they are being stored so as to show that they have not been used.

There are three possible explanations I can see here:
1. The writer of the scripture didn't know that putting metal in the earth will tarnish it. (writer is wrong)
2. The writer is accurately portraying that Ammon didn't know that putting metal in the earth will tarnish it. (Ammon is wrong)
3. The swords in question were made of a magic metal never seen before or since. (the physics is wrong)

What would be your explanation of this, jjn?

Posted by: jjn | September 6, 2009 10:24 PM

Re: Carlie (#271)

Some have conjectured that the swords referred to may have been the Mesoamerican macuahuitl, which consisted of a wooden shaft and sharp pieces of obsidian as a blade and the word 'sword' was the best English rendering of that instrument. The wood shaft of the macuahuitl would have been easily stained by blood and impossible to clean. Burying them would prevent them from becoming irreparably stained and the presence of wood shafts would explain the lack of reference to rust. I am not necessarily a proponent of this theory, but it has been discussed.

There is one reference to swords rusting in the Book of Mormon and it is related to the Jaredite swords which were found by the people of King Limhi (Mosiah 8:11). This verse make it apparent that at least some of the swords referred to in the Book of Mormon were made of some type of metal and that the authors were aware of rusting or oxidization of metals.

I personally have always thought of these verses as being entirely symbolic of the divine cleansing power that had come upon these people and the fact that they had to forsake their earlier mistakes so that this cleansing could remain in effect. The physical cleanliness and soundness of the actual swords doesn't appear to be the point of this passage. Even the act of throwing dirt on them would clearly make them physically dirty. The fact that they would not be used as instruments of death is apparently what would allow them maintain their "brightness" despite the presence of dirt, mud, and possible oxidization. If this book is of ancient origin, it would follow the pattern of many ancient texts of being highly metaphorical. There are many examples of allegory, metaphor, and other imagery in the Book of Mormon.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 6, 2009 10:37 PM

I personally have always thought of these verses as being entirely symbolic of the divine cleansing power that had come upon these people and the fact that they had to forsake their earlier mistakes so that this cleansing could remain in effect.

I am aghast. Really, such silliness is quite amazing. Metal swords don't tarnish if the users are righteous? I've heard "my strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure" but "my sword doesn't rust because I'm tight with Da Lawd" just boggles the mind.

Posted by: jjn | September 7, 2009 12:02 AM

Re: 'Tis Himself (#275)

I am confused as to how you extracted that thought from my comment. I am not claiming that the swords wouldn't rust or oxidize if they were made of some type of metal. As I said, the point of the passage is not focused on the physical cleanliness or soundness of the swords. It is symbolic of their (the people) being cleansed from prior mistakes and retaining that cleansing by forsaking their earlier disposition toward killing. The point is that the swords would no longer be used as instruments of death. If it had been used for violence against their fellow man, it would still be considered stained no matter how clean and polished it may have been from a physical standpoint. Again, we generally encounter symbolism much more in ancient texts than in modern writing.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | September 7, 2009 12:12 AM

Dear Brother Smoggy,
Act quickly, or the next thing you know corsets, wet suits, bacon thongs and little French nothings will be replaced by generic morman long johns.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 7, 2009 12:28 AM

Fear not Sister Patricia OM,

I have sent Floyd Rubber on a Secret Mission with Silt-Lake -Caty, the sexiest strumpet since Joseph Smith's fiftieth wife, to corrupt and undermine the values of the Mormon Church for the Greater Good of the One True Catholic Faith.

We had thought it would be extremely difficult, but it turns out that those Mormon Patriarchs swing all ways on the sexual compass and will prong almost anything that isn't completely decomposed. So we've blackmailed the lot of them into changing Mormon teaching to require that every adult member of the Church wear a set of my patented vibrating panties (Lynna will tell you how good they are).

The beauty of it is that Floyd Rubber has the master control and he's going to trigger it the next time they're all voting for president. What's the significance of that, you ask? Only that Floyd, Silt-Lake-Caty and myself are starting a new political party called VMJ (The 'Vibrating Mormons for Jesus' party). We're going to take over the USA state-by-climaxing-state.

Yours with Presidential Ambition
Smoggy Baztrubble

PS Yeah...yeah...I know I'm not technically an American, but forty years ago Papa Batzrubble registered my birth in Alaska and placed an advertisement in the local newspaper just in case.

Posted by: jjn | September 7, 2009 12:43 AM

Re: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus (#278)

The fact that metal rusts and oxidizes is hardly a point of "modern knowledge and contemporary scrutiny". It has been known for thousands of years and, as I noted in my post, this fact is referenced in the Book of Mormon itself. This leads me to believe that the authors clearly understood this and the passage is therefore meant to be symbolic. I'm sorry for the repetition, but please also note that the whole context of the passage is about forsaking sin.

Oh, and nice job on the Screwtape parody format of your comments. It does break up the monotony of these posts nicely.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 7, 2009 1:05 AM

Dear Brother JJN,

Thank you for your reply, it wasn't the oxidisation of metal I was referring to--rather the more general strain of arrant nonsense that permeates divinely inspired texts and which we believers are forced to spend so much time accounting for.

And forgive me if I don't bask in praise at your little pat upon the back for my "Screwtape parody". The fact that C.S. Lewis was an intimate of demons isn't something that won him a lot of Brownie points in the afterlife. Right now Clive is busy stapling mail bags with Screwtape, Toadvine and Wormwood in Hell's second-deepest dungeon (the one just above the Mormon dungeon) --the catch being that the bags are made from the skin flayed off their miserable hides every morning in a parody of Promethean misery.

Yours in memory of Marsyas

Smoggy

Posted by: Drosera | September 7, 2009 4:09 AM

That should be the Angel Morula.

Posted by: Walton | September 7, 2009 5:04 AM

jjn,

First off, don't be too downcast by all the abuse flung at you; this is, I'm afraid, the Pharyngula Way, and everyone who comments here has to get used to it.

Secondly, though, I have to say that I am highly sceptical that the Book of Mormon has any historical value whatsoever. In the century and a half since the BoM was first published, archaeologists have uncovered a great deal of material from pre-Columbian America; none of it corresponds to any of the events described in the BoM, nor does it support any of the BoM's claims. I'm not just referring to the assertions it makes about pre-Columbian flora and fauna; there's also the matter of its claims about pre-Columbian demographics. If the Nephites and Lamanites had existed, and multiplied in the numbers which the BoM relates (with entirely unrealistic population growth rates, incidentally), then we would expect to find some archaeological evidence. Not to mention that there's no evidence whatsoever - either DNA, cultural or linguistic - to suggest that any Native American civilisation is of Semitic descent. So the evidence just isn't there.

Not to mention Joseph Smith's other works. He claimed to have translated an Egyptian papyrus as the "Book of Abraham", which, he claimed, was "written by the hand of Abraham". We have fragments of the papyrus in question; in actual fact, it dates from the early Roman period, about 1,500 years after the supposed time of Abraham, and is a fairly ordinary funerary inscription. According to modern Egyptologists, the document does not bear any relation to Joseph Smith's claims. Smith, of course, could not have known this; his "translation" was accomplished a few years before it became possible (thanks to the Rosetta Stone) to translate hieroglyphics, and Smith had no education in Egyptian history.

All in all, the BoM and its ancillary scriptures are impressive stories, considering that they were written by a poorly educated farmboy whose literary influences were largely limited to the King James Bible. (Incidentally, he reproduced many of the translation errors and quirks of the KJV in writing the BoM, and clearly misunderstood the significance of many words and phrases; again, this is understandable for someone who had no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and no access to any other translation of the Bible.) Had Smith lived in a different time and place, and been able to get a better education, he could, as a creative writer and fantasist, have been the equal of a J.R.R. Tolkien. But it seems to me very unlikely that he was a prophet of God.

Posted by: Walton | September 7, 2009 5:39 AM

Drosera: Sorry, I stand corrected. But it's not surprising that Smith, being a semi-literate farmboy, was not aware of the (then very recent) advances in Egyptology.

Posted by: jjn | September 7, 2009 9:15 AM

Re: Knockgoats (#288)

Why do you continue to use this straw man tactic? It takes no exceptional skill to completely restate my claim and then torch something that I never said.

I stand by my statement - the number of anachronisms that existed when the Book of Mormon was written has decreased from then until now. Whether or not you view this as evidence for or against the Book of Mormon is up to you, but my statement is true.

Posted by: djinn | September 7, 2009 1:07 PM

jjn, I looked up the cement reference in the Book of Mormon, and reproduced it below:

Helaman 3:7 And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell.

Cement is used because there is no timber. The problem is that wood is needed to make cement. Ooops. Still an anachronism.

I went to some popular Mormon sites to see what former anachronisms had been rehabilitated, and couldn't find any that weren't just hand waving. Example, "cattle" in the BofM means "bison" or perhaps "llama."

Best things to take off the anachronism list I could find were barley and metal plates, but they failed the test. The giggle test.

The Book of Mormon three-ring gold plate binder is supposed to lose its ananachronistic status because somewhere someone at some time in the past wrote some words on a metal plate and stuck it on a wall somewhere. No metal books; for that matter, no codices of any type in the appropriate time period.

A grass seed called "little barley" is found in the Americas and used as a food by Native Americans, but the linguistic similarity doesn't mean that "little barley" is anything but distantly related to old world barley.

What jjn has only sort of referenced is that the current apologetic thinking has the events in the Book of Mormon occurring in a tiny tiny area somewhere (most likely) in Central America. This makes the anachronism problem worse for him because all that stuff in the book (silk, horses, elephants, swine, goats and wild goats, cureloms, cumoms, chariots, steel, iron, reformed egyptian) now needs to be all stuffed in an increasingly smaller spot.

I stand by my statement -- the number of anachronisms that existed when the Book of Mormon was written has increased from then to now.

I'll give an example of a specific new anachronism. Native Americans turn out to be embarassingly free of Jewish ancestry.

Posted by: djinn | September 7, 2009 2:52 PM

Better reference for the Book of Mormon metal plates that just popped up.

Turns out Joseph Smith knew about a book, Jahn's BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY published in English in 1823 (Andover, MA) that stated: "Those books [of the ancient Jews], which were inscribed on tablets of wood, lead, brass, or ivory, were connected together by rings at the back . . ."

Joseph Smith mentions this specific book in the TIMES AND SEASONS (Sept. 1, 1842) to vindicate the Book of Mormon.

(copied, more or less, from an email sent into www.mormanity.blogspot.com)

Posted by: jjn | September 7, 2009 5:52 PM

Re: djinn (#295 & #297)

So a few google searches later and you have reestablished the Book of Mormon anachronism of cement? First, timber is not required to make cement. Fuel is required to make cement. Timber is a form of fuel, but construction-quality timber is not required. There are plenty of forms of fuel besides construction-quality timber. Let's also not forget that the presence of cement in pre-columbian america was not at all known at the time the Book of Mormon was published. Due to the complexity of producing cement, this is no small detail.

I am a bit confused; your two posts are apparently contradictory when it comes to metal plates. Are you saying that record keeping on metal plates is an anachronism or not? One thing is for sure, it wasn't a well-documented fact at the time of Joseph Smith and, based on your first post, you don't think it is a well-documented fact even now (despite the existence of literary dozens of examples of record keeping on metal plates). Please note that the article where Joseph mentions this book was from 1842, 12 years after the Book of Mormon was published. After the Book of Mormon was published, individuals both in an out of the Church sent Joseph all kinds of information (including archaeological research) both in favor of and against the Book of Mormon. It isn't unlikely that he learned of this book after publishing the Book of Mormon. Also, this is just another book that Joseph purportedly would have had to have read and integrated into the Book of Mormon, all while living in rural NY and before the age of 23.

Posted by: jjn | September 7, 2009 10:19 PM

Re: 'Tis Himself (#298)

Yes, there are hundreds of indigenous languages in the Americas and apparently you believe that the linguistic attributes of these languages should somehow tie back to the geographical area where the first inhabitants originated. There have been a few archaeological findings (Peru, Tennessee, New Mexico, etc.) where Phoenician or Semitic-like languages have been found, but if I remember correctly the legitimacy of one or two has been called into question. Linguistic experts have been amazed at the incredible diversification of languages in the New World, which has apparently occurred over a relatively short period of time. There is much controversy as to the origin and classification of these languages even within the New World, much less their origin in the Old World. I am not aware of any strong connections between any New World indigenous language and an Old World language, so I don't know that we can really say this is a strike against the Book of Mormon.

Posted by: Drosera | September 8, 2009 4:26 AM

jjn sounds exactly like those creationists who firmly believe that the myth of Genesis is a factual description of the origin of the Earth. As we all know, they go to any lengths to distort or ignore the evidence against their belief.

And yet, not all Mormons are YECs. For an interesting perspective on a Mormon's views on evolution, the flood, the age of the earth, etc., see this website. I don't know how representative he is, but this guy could be described as an old earth ID-er who argues that the biblical account of the Flood should not be read literally. He also has an interesting quote by Brigham Young, who was the successor of Joseph Smith:

You take, for instance, our geologists, and they tell us that this earth has been in existence for thousands and millions of years. They think, and they have good reason for their faith, that their researches and investigations enable them to demonstrate that this earth has been in existence as long as they assert it has. . . . In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular. You may take geology, for instance, and it is true science; not that I would say for a moment that all the conclusions and deductions of its professors are true, but its leading principles are; they are facts--they are eternal; and to assert that the Lord made the earth out of nothing is preposterous and impossible.

I find it hard to imagine how people can say fairly reasonable things like this (it's still based on religion, but okay), and at the same time continue to believe that the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham and all the other products of Joseph Smith are anything but inventions that clash loudly with the facts of science. The cognitive dissonance must be deafening.

Posted by: djinn | September 8, 2009 10:58 AM

jjn, I realize this is a completley pointless conversation, but wood was used in Central America to make Concrete and cement; you're saying that maybe they could have fossil fuels? Good argument. Not to mention that houses weren't built out of cement, rather they were concrete, with cement mortar. And, Spaniards were all South and Central America from the 1500's on, so people knew all about the concrete and cement.

The point with the archaelogical book from 1823 is that it was thought at the time--got that, at the time -- that d-ring binders made of metal were a part of the ancient world. Joseph knew the book. The book existed prior to the Book of Mormon. This information ended up in the Book of Mormon. So what if the reference were from later--the information was out there for an enterprising young forger. You see, you have no argument.

Besides, the book is wrong. Codices (what we think as books with pages, not to mention the D-ring binder thing)appeared for the very very very first time around 300 BCE--as informal notebooks in Greece. The Book of Mormon metal plate codex-style notebook dates from (according to the book) 600 BC. Woopsie. Twice.

You see, there was a source saying that metal notebooks existed which Joseph Smith knew about. But, the source was wrong.

Posted by: djinn | September 8, 2009 12:57 PM

Drosera, about cognitive dissonance, I grew up in an uber-Mormon family (all ancestors pioneers, much polygamy, from Utah) and I can assure you that Mormons are taught and taught and taught that the world is an evil place, knowledge is very dangerous (the point of this post by PZ) and that one should "be in the world but not of it."

There is also great stock in "feeling the spirit." Anything that you encounter that "lessens the spirit" i.e., anything (such as evolution or unpleasant facts about Joseph Smith's extra-marital dalliances) that might give those ucky cognitively dissonant feelings is de facto of the devil. This works; 88% of Mormons disbelieve evolution according to the latest Pew poll (Feb. 2009 vintage), the lowest of any group other than Jehovah's Witness.

This also creates deep scars in the psyche of mass numbers of people who left, as we, the unbelievers, cannot be guaranteed to talk about only faith promoting material, and are therefore (the 19th c. KJVish talk still creeps into my speech) treated as dangerous. I must admit for a quiet bookworm such as myself (idea of a blowout -- way too many overdue library books), that I am the black sheep of my family (strictly because of my inability to believe) gives me a certain thrill.

When you only listen to Mormon-approved music, read Mormon-approved material, and only hang out with Mormon-approved Mormons, the cognitive dissonance is greatly lessened.

Posted by: Drosera | September 8, 2009 2:25 PM

Djinn,

From one bookworm to another: thanks for sharing your insider's insight. I think that you must sometimes feel like the only sane person in a world full of lunatics. Except that most of the lunatics are not really crazy; they just suffer from some kind of mental block.

Given the murky origins of Mormonism, it is to be expected that asking questions is discouraged as much as possible. What can be more effective than claiming that anything that threatens the faith is from the devil? To make any progress under those circumstances, one should first question the devil, I guess.

Those who do ask questions and yet continue to believe in all the silly stuff are the ones that interest me most. I always wonder how or why they do it. Are there honest people among them? Are any of the church leaders honest people, or are they all essentially as bad as Joseph Smith? Smith himself must have known quite well what he was doing; he would have been the last person in the world to have any faith in the Book of Mormon.

Posted by: jjn | September 8, 2009 3:19 PM

Re: Knockgoats (#304)

So you are essentially saying that Joseph Smith was bound to guess at least some things correctly. That is fine. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but you are giving a reason WHY you think the list of anachronisms has decreased in size. You are still not directly addressing my statement. We can talk all day long about WHY the list has decreased in size, but please don't throw out your knee-jerk 'liar' response simply because the author of the post is "JJN". Your claim that I am a 'liar' for saying that the list of anachronisms has decreased in size is demonstrably false and for someone who probably decries dogma, it sounds awfully dogmatic.

Posted by: djinn | September 8, 2009 6:34 PM

jjn, the Estrucian book is waaaay cool--6 bound sheets, the oldest known pages bound together, found in Bulgaria. Long way from Israel. Plus, you haven't talked your way around the contemporary (to Joseph Smith) reference, which makes metal plates not an anachronism at the time.

Double plus, it takes a huge amount of energy to make cement--if you are, roughly, indigenous, without access to fossil fuels, then without significant lumber no can do. If you don't have trees for houses, you don't have sufficient fuel for cement.

Oh, and jjn, as I mentioned earlier, I grew up Mormon. (I grew up uber-Mormon, I am a direct descendent of the guy who gave Joseph Smith the Book of Abraham, I am also the direct descendent of at least a couple of the people in Sidney Rigdon's congregation that converted to Mo'ism verry early on; I am the direct descendent of people who converted even earlier than that. You name any given event in Mormon history (other than the BoM 'translation') I am the direct descendent (or my ex is, for Mountain Meadows Massacre) of someone who was there. So don't condescend and accuse me of tripping lightly through evil anti-mormon websites to accrue a light sheen of pretend knowledge.

I grew up with the Book of Mormon. I've read it, I think, 5 times--each time it sounded slightly more insane, and let's not even mention the Book of Abraham, which the church itself is backing away from. Slight threadjack; my impression of the book was that it was a series of battle scenes that would screech to a halt for a sermon, then back to the battle. When I heard the theory that Sidney Rigdon had stolen a romance written in the style of the Bible from Solomon Spaulding and then inserted the sermons between the battles, I thought, "that's what happened." The new paper published by Jockers, et al., in "Literary and Linguistic Computing" (peer reviewed peeps!) shows pretty much that.

Back to my childhood and youth as a Mormon. (With reference to Drosera (ps., thank you)) I grew up with such a different view of reality than the adults around me that I decided early on that either I was out of my mind or they were.

Needless to say, I was deeply and suicidally depressed as a child. Thank goodness when I was about 14 I discovered a copy of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Finally the world made sense. It was them.

But then I was stuck with a world where if I was my true self for enven an instant, I had the extremely clear idea that I'd be thrown out on the street as a Very Bad Influence on the rest of the rather large passle of kids. So more pretend, more deep depression, it really sucked.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 8, 2009 7:09 PM

For poor jjn, if he (chosen at random from the set (he, she, it)) stops believing, then he loses everything. If he's married, there's a good chance his wife will leave him, his family won't quite abandon him, but he will be a nonmember of the family; they'll act all weird around him, won't talk to him like an equal, put his name in the temple, pray about him, cry. His friends will abandon him, he'll be alone. It sucks. So pity him.

Strangely, there's another group of people who share a similar risk of familial rejection, and it's queers. The very group the LDS is organizing as a hate group against.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 8, 2009 7:47 PM

jjn #301

There have been a few archaeological findings (Peru, Tennessee, New Mexico, etc.) where Phoenician or Semitic-like languages have been found, but if I remember correctly the legitimacy of one or two has been called into question.

Actually all of these claims have been called into question. All philologists (except those with a religious axe to grind) do not think there is the slightest relationship between any Amerindian language and any semitic lananguage. There is a discussion as to whether the Athabaskan languages* are related to Ainu (an aboriginal language of Japan). But there are no mainstream claims about any Native American languages being related to Middle Eastern languages.

If the Nephites and Lamanites had been inhabitants of the Americas, they would have left linguistic relics. Considering that the Nephites were supposedly here for just under a thousand years and the Lamanites' descendants are
still supposedly here, waiting to become "a white and delightsome people," there would be linguistic evidence for them.

Notice that I'm not considering the two million Jaredites, because the mythology about them is a lot more murky. And the less said about the Mulekites the better, although they supposedly do have a connection with both the Jaredites and the Nephites.

*The Athabaskan languages are (or were) spoken in Alaska and northwestern Canada, southern Oregon and northern California, and the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico.

Posted by: Drosera | September 9, 2009 5:51 AM

djinn @313,

Needless to say, I was deeply and suicidally depressed as a child. Thank goodness when I was about 14 I discovered a copy of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Finally the world made sense. It was them.

That is a touching story, Djinn. You have my sympathy.

Posted by: djinn | September 9, 2009 9:32 AM

Anachronism; not only chronologically misplacement make an anachronism, but so does spatial misplacement, such as horses in the Americas during Book of Mormon times.

It just dawned on me that the Jaredites had gold plates too. They arrived in the Americas just after the Tower of Babel (which also shows why Mormons can't accept evolution as fact because they must accept the Genesis timeframe.) So the date for those three ring binders gets moved way back.

Posted by: jjn | September 9, 2009 12:48 PM

Re: Carlie (#300)

As I have noted before, the study of ancestral DNA is still in its relatively early stages. The purpose of my post here is to refute variations of a claim that I have heard perhaps a dozen times on this board, which goes something like this – ‘there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any Native American civilization is of Semitic descent’. Please note that I have tried to distill the information down as much as possible. Most of what I have included below is based on the results of two relatively recent studies and I have provided the links to the studies that I am referencing if anyone would like to read further. Please note that these are not “Mormon” studies and I don’t know that there were any Mormons listed among the contributors. One study is from 2003 and the other is from 2008.

Many of you may be aware of the mtDNA haplogroups A, B, C, D, and X that are present in Native Americans. The intriguing thing about X is that it is essentially absent in modern north Siberian and East Asian populations. Haplogroup X is divided into two main branches, defined as subhaplogroup X1 and X2. X2 occurs in approximately 3% of the current indigenous populations in the Americas, however, there are concentrations of between 5-25% in certain groups in North America (Algonquian, Sioux and several others). X2 is characterized by a very wide geographic range but also by an infrequent occurrence. It generally comprises

The highest concentration is in the Druze of Northern Israel. The earlier study from 2003 indicated that the high concentration in the Druze may have been related to genetic drift and founder events; however the more recent study noted that these explanations contradict Druze oral traditions. The study sought to resolve this apparent contradiction, and at the same time re-examine the overall mtDNA and Y-chromosome diversity using a sampling strategy which might be more appropriate for the social structure and marriage practices of the Druze population. In so doing, they uncovered an unexpectedly high diversity of Druze X-haplogroup lineages, which together with its high frequency suggest that this population provides a glimpse into the past genetic landscape of the Near East, at a time when the X haplogroup was more prevalent. The findings suggest that the Near East maternal genetic landscape differed substantially in the past from its current structure. As I noted, the origin of haplogroup X has been intriguing to experts since they are essentially absent in Eastern Asia, which may indicate that they did not follow the traditionally accepted land route through Eastern Asia to the Americas. Before this study, no population or geographic region had been identified in which haplogroup X and its major subhaplogroups are found at both high frequency and high diversity, which could provide a potential clue as to their geographic origin. The study suggests that the Druze population of northern Israel may represent just such a population.

As I have said, I am not trying to prove the validity of the Book of Mormon with this evidence; I am simply refuting variations of the claim that there is ‘no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any Native American civilization is of Semitic descent’. Current studies indicate that there is, in fact, compelling evidence of Semitic descent in some Native Americans. I will also save you some of you a follow-up post – yes, I can clearly see that the current coalescence time ranges do not quite line up to the Book of Mormon migration; however, there are new clades and subclades being identified quite often within X2 and it is very apparent (as I have stated ad nauseam) that the research is still very much ongoing and it would be extremely premature to make any firm conclusions on the Book of Mormon based on current results of ancestral DNA research.

Posted by: jjn | September 10, 2009 12:59 AM

Re: truthspeaker (#324)

Did you care to elaborate on your statement or provide some foundation for your disagreement?

Posted by: jjn | September 10, 2009 10:23 AM

Re: Drosera (#326)

Exactly what are you disagreeing with from my post? My two main points were -

1. There is compelling evidence of Semitic descent in some Native Americans.
2. It is extremely premature to make any firm conclusions on the Book of Mormon based on current results of ancestral DNA research.

I realize it is easier to copy and paste what an ex-mormon has written about the X haplogroup, but it doesn't address either of the main points of my post.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 10, 2009 11:19 AM

jjn@327,
Your first link does not work for me: I get a message that the file is broken.

Your claim that "There is compelling evidence of Semitic descent in some Native Americans." is simply ridiculous. There isn't. The abstract for your second link begins:

"Phylogenetic mitochondrial DNA haplogroups are highly partitioned across global geographic regions. A unique exception is the X haplogroup, which has a widespread global distribution without major regions of distinct localization."

It is absurd for you to say that Drosera's quote from southerton does not address your claim: it does, directly.

Here is the abstract from a recent paper:

Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas
The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 82, Issue 3, Pages 583-592
N. Fagundes, R. Kanitz, R. Eckert, A. Valls, M. Bogo, F. Salzano, D. Smith, W. Silva Jr., M. Zago, A. Ribeiro-dos-Santos: (I've just found this is available at
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Fagundes-et-al.pdf

"It is well accepted that the Americas were the last continents reached by modern humans, most likely through Beringia. However, the
precise time and mode of the colonization of the NewWorld remain hotly disputed issues. Native American populations exhibit almost
exclusively five mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups (A–D and X). Haplogroups A–D are also frequent in Asia, suggesting a northeastern
Asian origin of these lineages. However, the differential pattern of distribution and frequency of haplogroup X led some to
suggest that it may represent an independent migration to the Americas. Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes,
that all Native American haplogroups, including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding population, thereby refuting multiplemigration
models. A detailed demographic history of the mtDNA sequences estimated with a Bayesian coalescent method indicates
a complex model for the peopling of the Americas, in which the initial differentiation from Asian populations ended with a moderate
bottleneck in Beringia during the last glacial maximum (LGM), around ~23,000 to ~19,000 years ago. Toward the end of the LGM,
a strong population expansion started ~18,000 and finished ~15,000 years ago. These results support a pre-Clovis occupation of the
New World, suggesting a rapid settlement of the continent along a Pacific coastal route."

Contrary to what you say, haplotype X is found among Siberian populations, indeed specifically among some proposed as likely sources of migration to the Americas:

Phillips-Krawczak, Christine.
Devor, Eric Jeffrey, 1949-
Zlojutro, M.
Moffat-Wilson, Kristin A.
Crawford, Michael H., 1939-
mtDNA Variation in the Altai-Kizhi Population of Southern Siberia: A Synthesis of Genetic Variation
Human Biology - Volume 78, Number 4, August 2006, pp. 477-494

Abstract:
"The native peoples of Gorno Altai in southern Siberia represent a genetically diverse population and have been of great interest to anthropological genetics. In particular, the southern Altaian population is argued to be the best candidate for the New World ancestral population. In this study we sampled Altai-Kizhi from the southern Altaian village of Mendur-Sokkon, analyzed mtDNA RFLP markers and HVS-I sequences, and compared the results to other published mtDNA data from Derenko et al. (2003) and Shields et al. (1993) encompassing the same region. Because each independent study uses different sampling techniques in characterizing gene pools, in this paper we explore the accuracy and reliability of evolutionary studies on human populations. All the major Native American haplogroups (A, B, C, and D) were identified in the Mendur-Sokkon sample, including a single individual belonging to haplogroup X. The most common mtDNA lineages are C (35.7%) and D (13.3%), which is consistent with the haplogroup profiles of neighboring Siberian groups. The Mendur-Sokkon sample exhibits depressed HVS-I diversity values and neutrality test scores, which starkly differs from the Derenko et al. (2003) data set and more closely resembles the results for neighboring south Siberian groups. Furthermore, the multidimensional scaling plot of DA genetic distances does not cluster the Altai samples, showing different genetic affinities with various Asian groups. The findings underscore the importance of sampling strategy in the reconstruction of evolutionary history at the population level."

All the evidence is that haplogroup X has been present in the Americas for a long time before Smith's imaginary migration. It is difficult to describe your "compelling evidence" claim as anything other than either plain dishonest, or the outcome of self-deception. There is no such evidence whatsoever.

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 11:35 AM

The fact that the mormons have to fund an effort devoted entirely to apologetics tells you something. They dwell in the land obfuscation. They are required to believe in the Book of Mormon in order to belong to the church, and this puts them in some very desperate situations indeed.

Still, no amount of obfuscation and reinterpretation of the BoM can get around the DNA problem. In summary, "The amount of DNA variation found in all 5 American Indian female DNA lineage families is sufficient to indicate that they have been present in the Americas for at least 15,000 years, possibly longer. This predates the existence of Israel by many thousands of years." - Simon Southerton

Posted by: Drosera | September 10, 2009 12:06 PM

jjn @327,

I think Knockgoats @329 has answered your questions.

Earlier, @246 you wrote:

Now the floor is all yours to extract a phrase here and there from my post and thrash them into oblivion as the rantings of a backwater religious fanatic/lunatic who has no cognitive ability to detect error in his thought processes or understand the possibility of self-deception.

That is exactly how you come across. When in spite of all the evidence you don't see the obvious, which is that the Book of Mormon is a worthless piece of fiction, then you are indeed a deluded backwater religious fanatic. Sorry.

Posted by: Janine, Vile Bitch, OM | September 10, 2009 12:52 PM

Until jjn can point at the remains of a catastrophic war that wiped out two nation, I can only assume that he is blowing out his anal trumpet. It would seem that battle sites should be found. It would seem that the remains of the abandoned cities should be found.

Posted by: jjn | September 10, 2009 1:55 PM

Re: Knockgoats (#336)

I never claimed that any of the studies I referenced supported Near Eastern migration to the Americas "in the last few thousand years". Those are words that you have added and somehow attributed them to me. My intent was to refute the claim that has been made repeatedly on this thread that there is 'no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any Native American civilization is of Semitic descent.' If the independent and peer-reviewed studies I have referenced qualify as 'evidence', then that oft-repeated claim is simply not true.

Posted by: jjn | September 10, 2009 2:04 PM

As this thread is dying and I will be traveling for the next week for work, I will bow out now and thank you all for the discussion, leaving the last word to you. If possible, please make it to the end of my post before commenting.

We definitely are coming at this from very different points of view, which I believe hinges principally on the question of whether there is a spiritual element or dimension to this life.

This is summarized in an exchange between Christ and Peter in the New Testament (Matthew 16:16-17) – “He [Jesus] saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed are thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.”

And also by Paul in I Corinthians 2:10-14 –
“. . . for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but by the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Based on what Paul is saying, I fully expect many, if not all, of you to be completely incredulous at his teachings. If you have not recognized this spiritual dimension or felt its effects then you will think this is utter foolishness, as Paul states. If there is no spiritual element, then I am completely wrong and I have nobody but myself to blame; however if there is a God and he has designated that knowledge of Him is found only through this spiritual dimension, then there is no amount of research, debate, or experiment that will find Him. If the Creator of the Universe has designated that He is to be known spiritually or in no other way, then I am not at liberty to change that and there is no way for any of us intellectual minnows to somehow trick Him our outthink Him.

I think we can both agree that almost nothing is more injurious than for a person or group to think they are under the influence of the Spirit of God when, in fact, they are not. It pains me that there has been violence carried out in the name of religion or God. How awful. Yet, let us not forget that atrocities have been carried out by individuals of all different religious and non-religious persuasions, which perhaps indicates it is more directly related to the human condition than any connection to religious or irreligious persuasions. And please let us not ignore the tremendous amount of good that is done humbly and quietly, yet effectively, by hundreds of millions of religious people around the world. We may disagree strongly with their doctrine, but their unselfish service deserves our respect.

Regarding the spiritual element/dimension/communication – and I can only speak for myself, personally – it does not lead me to take insane, violent, or mean-spirited action. Sometimes it leads me to knowledge about certain things, but most often it guides and helps me to serve others more effectively and many times it has quietly led me to help others in very specific ways when I could not independently have known at the time that they needed that specific help. I am no Mother Theresa and I have much that I can improve in my life, but if service to others is one of the principal fruits of the Spirit I follow, I am content to continue following it.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 10, 2009 2:23 PM

We definitely are coming at this from very different points of view, which I believe hinges principally on the question of whether there is a spiritual element or dimension to this life. - jjn

Well, that, and the fact that you are determined to defend the absurd rantings of a professional conman as having some relation to the truth, when they very obviously do not.

I am no Mother Theresa - jjn

Well, I'm certainly glad to hear you have not reached the same depths of evil as that corrupt, sadistic bootlicker of tyrants.

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 3:32 PM

No horses in ancient America? Book of Mormon horses were really tapirs. Problem solved!

I do still have a problem, even with the tapirs. Joseph Smith described battle after battle in the BoM, and many of the troops rode to battle on what he called horses (or "translated" as "horses" if you insist). But the vision of troops riding to battle on tapirs is Walt Disney comedy.

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 4:13 PM

Are there honest people among them? Are any of the church leaders honest people, or are they all essentially as bad as Joseph Smith? Smith himself must have known quite well what he was doing; he would have been the last person in the world to have any faith in the Book of Mormon.

So-called prophets have a singular talent for deceiving themselves. Sometimes the con starts out small, say as a little play for money, power, or sex. But the story expands beyond the perpetrators' initial intentions. The characters in the fiction kidnap the author and run away with him. The author begins to believe, loves to believe, that he is special. It's a particularly virulent strain of confirmation bias.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 10, 2009 9:23 PM

But the vision of troops riding to battle on tapirs is Walt Disney comedy.

I have a mental picture of Death as the Hogfather in a sleigh drawn by four pigs: Gouger, Tusker, Rooter, and Snouter. At least Pratchett is a better storyteller than Smith.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 11, 2009 10:57 AM

Dearest Lynna, my sweet vibrating atheist hottie,

You really should read Terry Pratchett, only then will you appreciate absurdity as an art form. As well as that, most of my distant Batzrubble relations feature in his work.

Ig you like Shakespeare, start with Wyrd Sisters.

Smoggles

Posted by: Lynna | September 11, 2009 11:09 AM

I see there's lots o' Terry Pratchett to choose from ... I am fond of W. Shakespeare, so the Wyrd Sisters it is for my first dip.

I'll keep an eye out for the distant Batzrubble relations.

Posted by: Lynna | September 11, 2009 11:29 AM

Knockgoats, The mormons have a backup plan for a Prophet who doubts he is the chosen one. When Monson was recently declared Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, one of the other pudding-for-brains dudes in the Quorum of the Twelve stood up and declared that he knew Brother Monson would have doubts about his worthiness for the role, but Pudding-for-Brains would be there to reassure him. Apparently all the Addled Ones in the upper hierarchy can't be wrong if they stick together and vote together and pander together.

I suspect that the same dynamic may have played out around Joe Smith. First, he's delighted that he scammed enough to get Emma to marry him. Then the scam snowballs until Joe is surrounded by folks who won't let him doubt himself, nor will they let him back down from the scam. Ditto for L. Ron Hubbard, as you pointed out -- sucked in by his own vortex.

BTW, I very much enjoyed your takedown of the supposed Semitic ancestry of Amerindians. Well done. I think our mormon troll was of a pretty high order as far as trolls go, but he had obviously suffered brain damage at the hands of mormon apologeticists. (Is that a word?)

Posted by: Drosera | September 11, 2009 12:47 PM

Lynna,

I think our mormon troll was of a pretty high order as far as trolls go, but he had obviously suffered brain damage at the hands of mormon apologeticists.(Is that a word?)

To be fair to jjn, I would not call him a troll. A deluded backwater religious fanatic, yes, but not a troll.

I think the word is apologists — which is apt, as they should apologize incessantly for the poor quality of their holy scripture.

Posted by: Carlie | September 11, 2009 5:20 PM

Ooo, Pratchett! The first one I read was Thief of Time, and it's still my favorite. Death gets quite a big role in that one.

Posted by: Walton | September 11, 2009 5:48 PM

I've read all the Discworld books. My favourites are the Commander Vimes ones (Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms and Feet of Clay).

Posted by: Walton | September 11, 2009 5:55 PM

Apparently the urim and thurim were special spectacles that allowed Joe to translate the gold plates from Nephitese to bad Jacobian English. Possibly the urim was one lens and the thurim was the other. Or possibly Joe was just using the phrase because nobody actually knows what an urim and thurim is (or are) and he thought it sounded like something someone would use to translate gold plates.

The "Urim and Thummim" are referred to in the Bible (in the Book of Samuel) in the context of divination, but Hebrew scholars are not entirely sure what the phrase means.

According to Joseph Smith, however, the Urim and Thummim were two "seeing stones", bound together as a pair of glasses, which he used to translate the golden plates from "Reformed Egyptian" into English. Go figure.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 11, 2009 6:13 PM

Thanks, Walton, for basically agreeing with what I wrote, but in a non-sarcastic manner. :P

Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | September 11, 2009 10:03 PM

Blast! Wrong thread for 364!

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 11, 2009 10:13 PM

Tapirs are built rather too low to the ground to be effective cavalry mounts. The First President's Hussars will have to settle for oxen or emus or some other more suitable steeds.

Posted by: djinn | November 25, 2009 12:06 AM

Here is a post from a well-thought of Mormon website, "The Millenial Star" documenting how a good number of early "white" settlers to Nort America could have Jewish blood, leading to the "Jewish" haplotype seen in otherwise more-or-less native popluations.

http://www.millennialstar.org/part-vii-sephardic-jews-and-the-lds-connection-the-first-thanksgiving-or-sukkoth-in-america/comment-page-1/