darth_ender said:
Aw, crap! You're right! I had nothing to go on but a flimsy story about 11 men, and you threw it out the window! *sob* How could you!?!
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I am not going to produce proof that the God or Christ or Joseph Smith or this church is real to you or anyone else. But to me, the belief I have does not rely on these 11 men you so easily and quickly dismissed without real thought or research of your own. The evidence I have I believe comes from a higher source. My testimony is based on far more evidence, both scientific and spiritual, than you give me credit for.
Good use of mocking sarcasm as a defense. If you're just going to get on the defensive when you can't answer something, this thread probably wasn't a very good idea. I felt my question was legit and fair.
I am not sure why you think I am easily and quickly dismissing your eleven men without real thought or research of my own (other than the obvious answer: because my conclusions are different than yours). I grew up in an area with a very high population of Mormons, my closest friends growing up were Mormons, and just about every neighbor and friend I ever had from childhood to my early teens tried to convert me every chance they got. I've studied with many Mormons and spent a fair deal of my own time reading about their history and about their leaders. It is a subject I've always found really interesting, and I've spent a good deal of time in it.
There is so much objective tangible evidence that raises some very large exclamation points such as the Book of Abraham written in hieroglyphs really being Egyptians texts having nothing to do with Abraham, or the history of the Americas as presented in the Book of Mormon being entirely at odds with historical evidence, or all scientific data showing the Native Americans originated from Asia and were most certainly not descendents of the Hebrews (I'll definitely take some time to look into the case you mentioned), it is kind of hard for me to even begin to think in a way that would make all these inconsistencies and lose ends fit together.
I know Mormon apologists have an answer for everything point I could possibly bring up, and all are explanations they are 100% confident in, but all those answers have one very large factor in common: they all start in the middle and work their way outward. They all start with the conclusion, and build a circle of semi-plausible explanations and potential evidences around that conclusion; rather than looking at the evidences and following them to the most plausible conclusions. So no, I am not impressed with Mormon academics, while they may not be dismissive of contrary evidence, they certainly don't treat it fairly.
A non-Mormon and entirely non-biased observer isn't going to look at the same pieces of evidence as a Mormon and come to the same conclusions. No one else is going to look at what remains of the Joseph Smith Papyri, translate it, and say, "Yeah, see, if he translated these in a "nontraditional" way, they could say things totally different than what real Egyptologists have found them to say, therefore we can conclude that the Book of Abraham is totally legit". Only someone starting at, "These have to be legit, but the evidence clearly indicates otherwise... so how?" would come to these kinds of conclusions.