Evidence for God from Science

As to the treatment by those in the other forum, I will admit that it is not always to my liking. But I have never encounered a forum that did not have people who appeared hostile at times.
I will however suggest that it is a forum with very heated debate, and one in which tempers sometimes are lost. Often we react to the way we are being treated, and the insults on that forum come from all sides. The worst treatment I have ever encountered was on a site that was predominantly evangelical. I think you will find imperfect people anywhere.
I will however admit, that your presentation of yourself on that forum was not likeable. It appeared that you made it a mission to disagree with anything that was ever said by any LDS, even if it had nothing to do with whether or not the church is right.
I also will admit to not having read all of your posts. This is a conclusion I made after reading what I considered enough.

As to the moderators, there are not many instances in which they are needed. For the most part people are very respectful to each other. I do however respect your desire for some kind of response.

Sargon

Fortigurn,

Thank you for your patience. I have had a very busy week at school, and I needed to put this off. After re-reading our present discussion, I realized that it is not altogether clear to me what your position is, other than to show that mormonism is false.

To be more specific, in our discussion about the history of the production of the Book of Mormon, you have taken a stance that attempts to reject my arguments, by giving various alternative explanations. But what I am not sure about is just what exactly your opinion is of what transpired. You have suggested a number of times that Joseph could have hidden his secrets from his wife and scribes, via a curtain, or some other medium, perhaps inside the hat.
But you have also suggested that his scribes were part of the conspiracy, that they knew he was lying, and were in on it.

I am not sure how to move forward, because I do not know exactly where you stand.

What I am convinced of is that no matter what the evidence suggests, there will always be a desperate alternative explanation.

Sargon

I have given thought to your insistence for proof that the Book of Mormon is a translated document. What type of thing would constitute as proof? For me, the description of Joseph sitting down with the plates, looking at them, and reading to his scribe what they say is evidence for translation. What other type of evidence is necessary??

The only other type of evidence for translation would be for someone to get ahold of the gold plates, and analyze them. The existence of those gold plates is undeniable, having been seen by so many. But noone has been able to find them since, because they were taken by the angel.

So what we have is a book that everyone who ever had anything to do with its production swears is an authentic translation. We have descriptions of how this process appeared from an outsider's point of view. We have a book loaded with evidence that it could not have been the production of any 19th century american, yet you ask for more.
When is enough? If an angel appeared to you, and gave you the plates, would that be enough?
I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, because that is not how God works.

Sargon

Sargon wrote:As to the treatment by those in the other forum, I will admit that it is not always to my liking. But I have never encounered a forum that did not have people who appeared hostile at times.
I will however suggest that it is a forum with very heated debate, and one in which tempers sometimes are lost. Often we react to the way we are being treated, and the insults on that forum come from all sides. The worst treatment I have ever encountered was on a site that was predominantly evangelical. I think you will find imperfect people anywhere.

And yet the behaviour towards you on this forum, from non-Mormons, has been of a higher quality than the behaviour towards non-Mormons on the LDS forum. Other non-Mormons are inevitably going to draw conclusions from this.

I will however admit, that your presentation of yourself on that forum was not likeable. It appeared that you made it a mission to disagree with anything that was ever said by any LDS, even if it had nothing to do with whether or not the church is right.

That is not true. I was regularly active in a small number of the many live threads on that forum. I confined myself to the same kind of issues as I usually confine myself in discussions with Mormons - archaeological claims, claims about the Bible, translation of the Book of Mormon, historical events in Mormon history.

Thank you for your patience. I have had a very busy week at school, and I needed to put this off. After re-reading our present discussion, I realized that it is not altogether clear to me what your position is, other than to show that mormonism is false.

Do you mean my position, or my aim? My position is that I believe Mormonism is false, just as you believe it is true, but you knew that. My aim in this thread (and the other threads in this forum), has been to present you with the evidence for the case you have claimed has no evidence against it, namely that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

To be more specific, in our discussion about the history of the production of the Book of Mormon, you have taken a stance that attempts to reject my arguments, by giving various alternative explanations. But what I am not sure about is just what exactly your opinion is of what transpired. You have suggested a number of times that Joseph could have hidden his secrets from his wife and scribes, via a curtain, or some other medium, perhaps inside the hat.
But you have also suggested that his scribes were part of the conspiracy, that they knew he was lying, and were in on it.

I haven't made any dogmatic statements about how the Book of Mormon came about. My arguments have been directed at demonstrating the lack of evidence for how it is claimed to have come about. I am demonstrating that there is less evidence that it was inspired, than there is that it was the work of men.

I am not sure how to move forward, because I do not know exactly where you stand.

I thought I had made myself pretty clear, but I hope the above helps.

What I am convinced of is that no matter what the evidence suggests, there will always be a desperate alternative explanation.

What the evidence suggests so far is that the Book of Mormon was the work of men. You have provided no evidence for some of the most fundamental claims regarding the Book of Mormon, such as the existence of the plates and the process of translation. On the other hand, we have evidence that the claims made in the Book of Mormon are untrue (the archaeological evidence alone is crippling).

Sargon wrote:I have given thought to your insistence for proof that the Book of Mormon is a translated document. What type of thing would constitute as proof? For me, the description of Joseph sitting down with the plates, looking at them, and reading to his scribe what they say is evidence for translation. What other type of evidence is necessary??

What would constitute proof is very different to what would constitute evidence. Proof would require full verifiability, which would require the plates. For evidence, we can make do with the witnesses. But the problem is that the witness accounts do not describe a process of translation.

The only other type of evidence for translation would be for someone to get ahold of the gold plates, and analyze them. The existence of those gold plates is undeniable, having been seen by so many.

How many?

But noone has been able to find them since, because they were taken by the angel.

I don't even have to dispute this. I only have to point out that there's no evidence for it, and that it places the Book of Mormon in an unverifiable position.

So what we have is a book that everyone who ever had anything to do with its production swears is an authentic translation. We have descriptions of how this process appeared from an outsider's point of view.

How it appeared was a process of revelation, not translation.

We have a book loaded with evidence that it could not have been the production of any 19th century american, yet you ask for more.

What evidence? Feel free to list basic categories (archaeological, textual, evidence of the supernatural, etc), rather than detailed evidence.

When is enough

I would rather ask 'When can we start?'.

If an angel appeared to you, and gave you the plates, would that be enough?

If the message was in harmony with the gospel revealed in the Bible (Galatians 1:6), it would certainly help.

I don't anticipate that happening anytime soon, because that is not how God works.

Well apparently that's how He worked with Smith and 8 witnesses.

Fortigurn wrote:And yet the behavior towards you on this forum, from non-Mormons, has been of a higher quality than the behavior towards non-Mormons on the LDS forum. Other non-Mormons are inevitably going to draw conclusions from this.

Fortigurn you have been very clear and very professional IMO. Perhaps it is I that has been less warm to this faith than you..

Fortigurn wrote:What the evidence suggests so far is that the Book of Mormon was the work of men.

Very true.. From the book "Who really wrote of BoM" we learn that Solomon Spalding began to look to writing as a possible way of producing the income needed to cover his debts and provide for his family.

"When his brother Josiah visited him, he "found Spalding in poor health and low spirits, writing a work of fiction, suggested by the opening of [an Indian burial] mound, in which were discovered human bones and some relics indicative of a former civilized race. He entitled his work "A Manuscript Found" and in it imagined the fortunes of the extinct people. It was because of deteriorating health that Spalding began to look to writing as a possible way of producing the income needed to cover his debts and provide for his family. Thus what had started as a hobby to pass the time would soon be transformed into the last vain hope of a dying man."

"In addition, A Manuscript Found contained so many recurrences of the phrase "And it came to pass" that some of Spalding's friends and neighbors lovingly referred to him as "Old Come to Pass." Even a cursory examination of The Book of Mormon's text (as originally published in the 1830 edition not the more recent "official revisions") shows an inordinate number of verses either beginning with or containing the phrase "And it came to pass" or some variant of it more than 15 times as many as can be found in the entire 1611 King James Bible."

From the book "Who Really Wrote the BoM."

"Once the basic facts of the Spalding Enigma have been set forth, it becomes clear that the issue is whether evidence supporting a conspiracy by Joseph Smith and others to transform Solomon Spalding's manuscript into The Book of Mormon is strong enough to overcome the inevitable question of reasonable doubt. With that in mind, let us begin by noting that present Mormon objections to the Spalding Enigma can be effectively reduced to a list of four basic points:

Objection 1. Sidney Rigdon was neither employed by nor otherwise connected with any print shop in Pittsburgh. In fact, no evidence exists to indicate he was ever in Pittsburgh prior to his having moved there in 1822, six years after Spalding's death (though his son, John Wycliffe Rigdon, does admit his father visited the city as early as 1818). Moreover, Sidney Rigdon denied any involvement in the Spalding Enigma in a strongly worded letter written in May 1839, in reply to allegations made by Spalding's widow.

Counter - New evidence has been uncovered to show that Sidney Rigdon did indeed frequent Pittsburgh during the years 1812-16, thus putting the lie to more than 150 years of often vehement Mormon denials.

Objection 2. The origin of the so-called Spalding Enigma can be traced to the vindictive designs of one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, who engineered the entire myth as part of a personal vendetta against the Mormons for their having excommunicated him in 1833. Indeed, all of the statements of non-Mormon witnesses collected by Hurlbut and others like him between approximately 1830 and 1900 are unacceptable as evidence because of their antiMormon bias.

Counter - New evidence shows that Doctor Hurlbut was clearly not the originator of the Spalding theory. At worst, he was merely the first person to attempt to investigate it in a sincere effort to determine whether it held the key to uncovering the true origin of The Book of Mormon.

Objection 3. Although The Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, no credible evidence exists to show that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had dealings with each other prior to December of that year, thus ruling out all possibility that Rigdon could have supplied Smith with the text for that work.

Counter - There is now compelling evidence that Rigdon did in fact visit Joseph Smith from 1827-1829 just prior to the BoM publication in March 1830. There are eight different people who seem confident in asserting that Rigdon and Smith were together in New York on what appear to have been at least six or seven different occasions between the spring of 1827 and the summer of 1830. All of these people offer what they clearly believe to be either reliable memories or equally valid information received from others.

Objection 4. Finally, comparisons of The Book of Mormon to an earlier Solomon Spalding work called Manuscript Story-Conneaut Creek, a copy of which was recovered in 1833 from an old trunk in Hartwick, New York, show no similarities whatsoever between the two works. In addition, Mormons have consistently argued that no credible evidence exists to suggest Spalding ever wrote anything else, that Manuscript Story-Conneaut Creek and A Manuscript Found are one and the same, and that this alone is sufficient to dispel the Spalding Enigma.

Counter - A considerable body of evidence exists indicating that Solomon Spalding wrote a second novel entitled A Manuscript Found, which disappeared prior to 1833.

Summary - In order to properly present Solomon Spalding's case, and to demonstrate that all of the above objections are historically deficient, it will be necessary to examine these points individually and to carefully consider the facts surrounding each of them."

Doctor Philastus Hurlbut? Sounds like a good name for a bouncer.

Well, it looks like the moderators on that forum are doing whatever they can to find an excuse to throw me out. I made a post in which I expressed my profound respect for an LDS poster who acknowledged that earlier arguments they had made were uninformed and wrong, and I was actually accused of mockery.

You can read the relevant post here.

It doesn't seem to matter how much respect I treat them with, or how many opportunites I give them to explain themselves and their religion, all I get is abuse, malicious motives ascribed to me, and repeated antagonism.

Sargon, if the moderators don't explain their action (despite my request that they do so), would you mind explaining it for me? I have no idea why they responded the way they did.

I can only suggest that they simply are not accustomed to your personality, and a sincere gesture might appear not-so-sincere in light of the level of sarcasm that is sometimes seen on the board. There are not very many sincere antagonists on that board, most of them having a chip on their shoulder. In fact, alot of the LDS have one too.

I personally don't like the mods all that much, but I don't find them to be very inconvenient 99% of the time, and I think most of the critics on that site would agree.

Gman,
I simply am not capable at this time of sustaining a second lengthy discussion on this board, especially within the same string. Also, I am not the best informed on the Spalding-Rigdon theories, having only artificially studied them. I suggest if you are serious about them you might want to bring it up on the board Fortigurn has been visiting.

Fortigurn,
I feel that in our conversation we have reached a sort of dead end. We have chiseled and narrowed down the discussion to whether or not we can prove that the words in the Book of Mormon are in fact a translation of what is engraven on the gold plates. I know of no way to prove this, by nature of the circumstances. There is only one set of plates, and that set is not available for us to examine. We might enter into side-tracks about evidences for and against naturalistic approaches to the origins of the book, but that is in itself a whole other field.
I feel I have shown that all of the eye witnesses agreed that the Book of Mormon is a translation of the plates. I have shown that the plates were real. I have shown that regardless of the methods employed, the words in the BoM can plausibly be a translation from the plates.
I have not however proven that they are. That is what has been demanded, but I do not believe anyone has ever been able to prove such. That would require the plates, and most LDS know that providing the plates would destroy all necessity of faith.

Sargon

Sargon wrote:Gman,
I simply am not capable at this time of sustaining a second lengthy discussion on this board, especially within the same string. Also, I am not the best informed on the Spalding-Rigdon theories, having only artificially studied them. I suggest if you are serious about them you might want to bring it up on the board Fortigurn has been visiting.

Thanks for your honesty Sargon.. I'll give it a try sometime but after I finish the book. It is very thick...

Also on another note I hope I wasn't being too forward with you earlier. My intentions were not to belittle you but only to cut to the chase..

Take care..
G -

Well, it looks like I've been banned without notice, warning, or even explanation. I can no longer log on to the forum.

The level of hate and abuse there is quite incredible, and the draconian moderation (overwhelmingly in favour of the Mormons there), is above and beyond every other forum I've been on.

Sargon, that was an interesting and telling introduction to the LDS community for me. It taught me a lot about how you people treat non-Mormons, and the standards of speech and behaviour you consider acceptable. Truly enlightening. A good experience for anyone who wants to know what the LDS community is really like. I will recommend it to others.

Fortigurn wrote:Well, it looks like I've been banned without notice, warning, or even explanation. I can no longer log on to the forum.

The level of hate and abuse there is quite incredible, and the draconian moderation (overwhelmingly in favour of the Mormons there), is above and beyond every other forum I've been on.

Sargon, that was an interesting and telling introduction to the LDS community for me. It taught me a lot about how you people treat non-Mormons, and the standards of speech and behaviour you consider acceptable. Truly enlightening. A good experience for anyone who wants to know what the LDS community is really like. I will recommend it to others.

Well I probably won't last long there then... I'm amazed by this in some sense and in another not... I was raised in Idaho (part of Mormon country) and while most Mormons were nice on the outside it was very hard to get close to them unless you were one of them.. In other words clickish...

Fortigurn.. Not to worry you will always have a home here...

Sargon wrote:I can only suggest that they simply are not accustomed to your personality, and a sincere gesture might appear not-so-sincere in light of the level of sarcasm that is sometimes seen on the board. There are not very many sincere antagonists on that board, most of them having a chip on their shoulder. In fact, alot of the LDS have one too.

So in other words, they simply attributed evil motives to me out of sheer bias.

I personally don't like the mods all that much, but I don't find them to be very inconvenient 99% of the time, and I think most of the critics on that site would agree.

I think most of the critics on that site would disagree. They would disagree partly because in order to survive they have to qualify their arguments to the point that they are toothless, and they would disagree partly because of the obvious partiality which is shown to the Mormon posters, who are allowed to insult, heckle, and generally abuse the non-Mormon posters, as they please, without consequence.

Fortigurn,
I feel that in our conversation we have reached a sort of dead end. We have chiseled and narrowed down the discussion to whether or not we can prove that the words in the Book of Mormon are in fact a translation of what is engraven on the gold plates. I know of no way to prove this, by nature of the circumstances. There is only one set of plates, and that set is not available for us to examine. We might enter into side-tracks about evidences for and against naturalistic approaches to the origins of the book, but that is in itself a whole other field.

Yes, we've agreed that you're starting from an unverifiable position, which is not a good place to be.

I feel I have shown that all of the eye witnesses agreed that the Book of Mormon is a translation of the plates.

Yes, but you've also shown that what they described was not a process of translation.

I have shown that the plates were real.

No, you've shown me a number of people who believe they were real, even though many of those people didn't actually see them.

I have shown that regardless of the methods employed, the words in the BoM can plausibly be a translation from the plates.

No, not once have you shown what could conceivably be described as a translation process. Again and again we have seen that what is described is a process of revelation, and even some Mormon apologists have acknowledged this.

I have not however proven that they are. That is what has been demanded, but I do not believe anyone has ever been able to prove such. That would require the plates, and most LDS know that providing the plates would destroy all necessity of faith.

I haven't asked for proof, since we both agree that's impossible. I have simply asked for evidence that the Book of Mormon was a translation of the plates. Unfortunately none of the eye witnesses describe a process of translation from the plates.

This means that whatever information is in the Book of Mormon, we are not only free to look for a source other than the plates, but it is beholden on us to do so.

It doesn't help that at least one of the eye witnesses records Smith having a Bible in the same room while he was dictating, and even consulting it to ensure the accuracy of what he was dictating.