The Book of Mormon was inspired by God, and given to his prophet Joseph Smith, who died for his belief.

It contains testimony from 11 people who saw the golden plates. Because faith, rather than proof is necessary, God chose to remove the tablets from human sight so that we would believe from faith rather than proof.

How can anyone deny the word of God, as translated from the True Word given to Joseph Smith, and subsequently given to the world. And then carried on by Brigham Young, who turned deserts into flowers!

There is absolutely no evidence that Joseph Smith "made it all up", so it must be true.

Did God speak to Joseph Smith, and if not, how do you know?

Norm

Norm, do a search on "Book of Abraham" and I think you'll find some interesting information.

Ish

[This message has been edited by Ish (edited June 11, 2001).]

Fromdownunder: Don't forget witness David Whitmer, who, even after being excommunicated from the church, continued to affirm his testimony in letters and newspaper interviews. If he knew it was a fraud, wouldn't he expose it as such after being kicked out?

Ish: I went to Dejanews/Google and did a search on the Book of Abraham and lo and behold it pulled up posts from non-Mormons claiming it's a fake and posts from Mormons claiming it's legitimate. Maybe you should take the Mormons' advice: pray to God and ask him to reveal that the BoM (and accompanying scriptures) is truly the word of God and he will. If he doesn't, it's because you were too blind to see it or don't want to believe it to begin with.

You have to weigh the evidence on the Book of Abraham, Echo. Egyptian hieroglyphics were not understood when he "translated" an Egyptian papyrus. Anyone with a little understanding of hieroglyphics and Egyptian history can figure out that his "translation" was entirely made up. As for the historical evidence for the Book of Mormon... Where is it? You may disagree with a lot of the findings, but archaeology certainly seems to bear out a lot of the Bible.

Ish

Did you post this same message on creednet?

Anyway would believe something that was supposedly "revealed" to one man or one thing that was revealed to many men and is consistent? The Bible does not rely on the revelation of one man, unlike other religions. God hasn't taken away proof either. The Bible can be tested with information from history and science- it passes. (But you will probably tell me that it doesn't)

Hey TrueThinker. (What does that make me, a false thinker?) I'm relatively new here. Just so I know from where you are coming, is the Bible inspired or merely a work of men?

And, Ish, the point is we know Smith was a fraud because he's recent and told too much about his methods. If it weren't for that goof translating hieroglyphics he couldn't destroy (since the text belonged to a museum), how would we know? I mean, for sure.

And, somehow, several million LDSers manage to get past even that. Funny thing, faith.

And here we run into problems. Is it acceptable to "weigh the evidence" for and against a purportedly "inspired" book and reach conclusions based on that evidence? If so, nontheists and members of religions not based on the bible are perfectly justified in "weighing the evidence" for and against the bible and reaching the conclusion that it is not a trustworthy collection of documents and certainly not inspired. My intention isn't to get into an argument over whether the bible and the BoM are inspired but whether we should reach our conclusions about these books solely on the basis of evidence. I'm often (very often!) told by theists that faith plays a large role in my coming to accept the bible as the true word of God. If so, the Mormons are on the same par as non-Mormon Christians because they claim that they have literally asked God to reveal the truth of the BoM to him and he has done so.
So which has more validity- archaeological evidence for/against the BoM or a person's one-on-one revelation from God that the BoM is true?

I think Echo has pretty much summed up the purpose of my post in his latest response.

I had a couple of Mormons visit me last Sunday, and they were sincerely and utterly convinced that Joseph Smith's words were inspired by God, and that it supplements the KJV as a further revelation from God.

They did not need evidence that the gold plates existed, they had faith.

Norm

Norm

Actually, the Bible fails miserably on both history and science. Unless you can prove to me that rabbits actually chew their own cud, that epilepsy is caused by demon possession, that the Babylonian king Belshazzar was actually Nebuchadnezzar's son, that the Earth is flat, and that the Earth is only 6000 years old.

Also, if the Bible is historically accurate, why are there no extrabiblical records of an earthquake at the time of Jesus's death? And if the bodies of many holy people were raised to life and preached, why are there no extrabiblical records of this? This is not even mentioned in 3 of the 4 Gospels. This is truely an amazing event; one would think that something as miraculous as this would be recorded in extrabiblical records, and at least mentioned in the other Gospels. Of course, the most probable explanation is that whoever wrote the book of Matthew made it up!

And where are the dinosaurs in the Bible?

These are but a fraction of the historical and scientific problems in the Bible. For more information on this, check out Farrell Till's "The Skeptical Review."

You have to be more informed than this James. Not all Christians are creationists. Not all creationists are young earth creationists. Many Christians have no problem with evolution. Not all Christians adhere to biblical innerrancy. Lots of the questions you ask have been discussed or are being discussed in other threads.