NOM

...documented use of writing on metal plates,wheeled vehicles, a millennialist tradition among indigenous people, suitable flora and fauna, a town called “Lammuella,” a modern Burmese battleground known as “Kawmoora,” and—of course—the persistent legend of a prophetic brother who left his rebellious kin, taking with him a golden book containing the words of Y’wa, promising that the words from this book would someday be restored.

ulmite wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2017 8:29 am Obviously Moroni took the plates to NY as an angel, the same way he took them out of NY. Or else the 3 Nephites.

deacon blues wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2017 12:14 pm For those who believe Joseph wrote the BOM: do you believe the reference to "the face of the land was changed" was a premeditated explanation by Joseph to account for discrepancies between BOM geography and modern geography? Was Joseph that smart?

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2017 4:10 pm For those who believe Joseph wrote the BOM: do you believe the reference to "the face of the land was changed" was a premeditated explanation by Joseph to account for discrepancies between BOM geography and modern geography? Was Joseph that smart?

deacon blues wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2017 12:14 pmI used to try an equate recent geologic events to the descriptions found in the BOM. Problem is, once I started learning more about geology, no big events line up to the BOM timeline and there were certainly not enough to meet the description of big earthquakes and volcanoes, etc. For example, the great flood of Lake Bonneville was about 15k years ago and affected Utah, Idaho and Oregon. As far as earthquakes, well, big ones trigger off every 200-1000 years along the various fault lines from Alaska down through central America, but there's not evidence they all slipped at once a grand scale to sink big Nephite cities into the ocean or swallow them up. Same problem for volcanic eruptions. Pile on top of all this lack of geologic evidence the anthropological evidence of people all over the two continents being here 12k years ago and now you are way outside the bible timeline. This is all really moot for me now, to me the BOM is complete BS, just a few of the mental gymnastics I used to struggled with as a TBM.

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Wed May 10, 2017 12:14 pm Another one I could never wrap my brain around was the day the sun went down but it was still bright all night, then the three days of darkness. From my youth it never made sense those events happened for the Nephites on one side of the globe but not for the Israelis and Romans on the other side. I used to try to solve it: Did the Earth stopped spinning for 24 hours? But then somebody will be in the light or dark for those hours, yet it only happened on one side of the globe? Maybe it was a super nova that burned super bright for the Nephites for a few hours, then dimmed down to a new star for the shepherds and three wise men? Maybe the Earth was flat back then? I suppose the three days of darkness can be attributed to the smoke and mist of the mass destruction that never happened, except for one small village living by the volcano that never erupted at that time.

The events are presented as literal; they were taught to me as literal. Backing them off to parables and metaphors now is just an attempt to cover up the pile of crap with decaying leaves from the sacred grove.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2017 7:19 am Anything is possible, 'cause Jesus.

Phil Lurkerman wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2017 7:21 pm I've always found the Malay hypothesis fascinating and I'm impressed with the effort Dr. Olsen expended in working through the details. The problem with such alternative geographies though, is that to accept their premise, you have to be willing to view the LDS church - both early and modern - as highly error prone and pretty much all of its leadership incorrect in their beliefs about the Book of Mormon's meaning as it relates to the place of the USA in the divine plan. You also have to believe that God would go to all of the trouble of getting the Book of Mormon translated and published and then allow the organization most associated with it to propagate a false narrative about its true location and provenance - which has caused many to doubt its truthfulness. Either a trickster God or a very apathetic one - take your pick.

For myself, I've come to believe that the most likely location for the Book of Mormon events was the amazingly creative mind of Joseph Smith Jr. In my view, the evidence best supports an imagined entire western hemisphere designed to incorporate and resolve many of the religious, political, and historical disputes of the early 19th century burned-over district of NY and surrounding. I think you really have to want the book to be true in order to locate it anywhere on this planet.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2017 8:09 am... all of this unnecessary ruckus by people who insist on taking the book more literally than the guy who wrote it.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2017 8:09 amThe people who appear to most desperately want the book to be literally true are also the same people who have no problem discounting what it actually says about itself and what their prophets have said about it. I am boggled by their simultaneous adoration for and disrespect of the text.