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Post #735507

Author
RicOlie_2
Parent topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/735507/action/topic#735507
Date created
12-Nov-2014, 3:27 PM

You answered my questions well in your second post. It seems that fairmormon has already addressed the letter here:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director

To which the author of the letter responded here:

http://cesletter.com/debunking-fairmormon/

Fairmormon again responded here:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director/Debunking_FairMormon

I do not find some of fairmormon's responses satisfactory (e.g. its explanations for the KJV errors in the Book of Mormon), but I spent the better part of my afternoon going through fairmormon.org and cesletter.com, and have found that much of Jeremy Runnells' methodology seems flawed (some of it I would not have noticed without you pointing it out). I think that I would have found him less convincing if I had been more knowledgeable about Mormonism to start with.

As time goes on, I'm seeing patterns on both sides of the debate between Christians and critics. Christians often have a tendency to dismiss good arguments from the other side rather than responding to them, while critics tend to exaggerate, and find parallels where there are none (e.g., the place names in the Book of Mormon compared to real or Biblical names, or in a more obscure example, comparing Jesus of Nazareth with Jesus ben Ananias (I think that's the name) in Josephus, and drawing out the parallels with sneaky wording. Reading the passage in Josephus about him makes if fairly clear that they're different stories).