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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 7/5/2006 5:17:49 AM | They are on a honor code not to read any non-church newspapers, non-church magazines and no tv except for church
This is classic, textbook cult technique. I have no interest whatsoever in adding reinforcement material. my only interest in Mormonism is the frightening gullibility of the American public.
These people are the prime example of what it takes to create a "following".....
Just SAY you have the answer..that's all.....build a ridiculous cosmology and the faithful will do the rest.
Public works and helping out the poor is the classic technique for crime bosses, charlatans and
crooks of every stripe.
the interesting part is the joiners of Mormon apparently WANT to live in such a restricted spiritual vise.............. Hare krishna
Reverend Sun-Moon
Jim Jones
David koresh
Rajneesh (now Osho)
Pat robertson
jimmy Swaggart
Robert Tilton
Benny Hinn
Maheesh Maharishi yogi
Smith
what do these crooks have in common? Empty, lost people. willing to abdicate their own spiritual growth and being to kow-tow under the weight of someone who is certifiably insane
but protected from reality by his(or her) faithful flocks. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 7/5/2006 1:06:38 PM | Magic, you can call it what you want. I'm still hoping to get some references from you for the statements you made in the last post.
"...adding reinforcement material?" Were did that come from?
If they are a cult as you and others call it, it is one of the most outstnding moral guiding cults in existance. I'll back 'em any day! Lets see, they teach their kids to be healthy, to stay away from drugs of any type (doctor given medications excluded), to refrain from sexual immorality (that the rest of society treats like a toy to be played with), to respect others, especially adults, to be involved in social and civic functions, to volunteer their time to different causes, to be of good work ethics, hmmmm, your right Magic, any type of religion that teaches their kids how to do the right things in life instead of being guided by their own selfish endevors ought to be tarred, feathered, or run out of town!
I am curious Magic, what is not a "restricted spiritual vice" to you? Of those you listed, Jim Jones and David Koresh were brain washers and used physical force upon followers. For the other groups, you can go or come as you want. I described what the life style was like for the missionaries, male/female for their time out as being on one in a "full time" stance. Whats wrong, don't you think you could live a life style like that? It doesn't take brain washing to live that 2 year life style. It takes a real want and a strength very few become aquainted with. It is a fact that living without the tv is a good thing. Living without reading all the garbage printed in magazines and newspapers does not hurt you either. I've did it for over a year and have no regrets. I have a tv but we don't use it a lot. When I want to know whats happening out there I'll watch my local news with the kids, they like the news or I look on my msn page.
I do agree they do have a following. I have always found it quite humerous that other people seem to run around with a stick up their butt about how other people are deciding to live their lives! It is down right funny actually. Why do people spend so much time trying to prove the way other people live, believe and think is so wrong, evil and uncorrect? If someone is living their life in a way that is not breaking laws, hurting others, etc., and they like their life style, why not just accept that fact and pay attention to your own life?
And your statement about "public works" and who does them, that was really shallow of you in your own thinking. Doing "public works" builds character in so many ways. I will admit many do it to get gain in some selfish form. But I will admit many do it because they enjoying helping others. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 8/3/2007 2:33:24 PM | wasn't Joseph Smith basically a hustler, con artist, fraudster who claimed to have "visions"..becasue he thought the quickest/easiest way to wealth was to form a new religion?
--sort of like L. Ron Hubbard did when he said that, then started Scientology | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 8/3/2007 3:52:29 PM | Alaska speaking of references can you give me one credible source for all these Egyption, Western European and Jewish artifacts and remains that are precolumbian? Not even BYU would make these claims. They have been looking for evidence of the claims in the Book of Mormon for years. Yes there were Viking in the new world their settlements have been discovered and documented. back up your claims from a credible source.
Joseph Smith did a lot of treasure digging he also conned people with his treasur digging and that was againest the law . Getting money from poor famers in order to find lost treasure on their Land. this is documented and I will find my source.
the Mormon chruch is very good at sanitizing the history of the Chruch.
The chruch has thousands of documents locked away ones that they hope the public never sees. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 8/3/2007 11:43:31 PM | | Last summer I accepted an invitation to chat, read the litterature, and visit the church since I realized I used to make fun of them and had no real knowledge of what they do or believe. I started by reading the passages they wrote down then did my own reading starting at the beginning of the book of Mormon. One of the first chapters describes arriving in south america and that God showed them the evil people by marking them with dark skin. (WTF?) There was no explanation given when I questioned this it was just talked around and explained with quotes from the book. I concluded they were talking about the natives whose land they had just arrived on. I tried discussing spiritual theories with them which were not their own and they became nervous, uncomfortable, refused to talk about it. I asked them if they are so confident in their beliefs, why seem fearful when those beliefs are questioned. If God is so strong and protecting them as they claim, why do they fear a discussion, will not God speak through them and defend their view. Again nervous chatter to talk around my question and answered with more quotes. I could not get any one of the 3 elders, or 1 woman to give me a straight, in their own words response. Every thing was recited from quotes (1 quick way to lose my attention). They started to irritate me by calling many times a day, stopping by numerous times a day, and the final straw was acting rudely and suspiciously towards my sister when they dropped in one day and she was there. After a week I ended up telling them politely thank you for all the info my beliefs are different bye. It took 3 times as long to get through to them that I wasn't interested and to not call me again. Now I have no further interest in the Cult - err- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, I found out about as much as I'd ever care to know. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/4/2008 7:42:28 PM |
They do believe in the Holy Trinity, that is one of the first things that you learn about, it blows me away how many times I have seen that...omg.
we do not believe in the holy trinity. THAT is one of the first things you learn about.
The "holy trinity" teaches that god, Jesus Christ, and the holy spirit are but one being. The Mormon faith teaches exactly the opposite; That they are 3 seperate beings. -That Jesus Christ is the literal son of God the father. -And we as well are children of god as Jesus was
... just to clarify. Might want to brush up on your facts :)
thanks,
-Dan | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/4/2008 9:36:13 PM |
Ok...now I may not be a practising member anymore and do not believe a lot of there beliefs anymore but OMG some of the things I have seen in here about the Mormon religion are ABSOLUTELY REDICULOUS...and ...lemme clarify, it is called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints
I was curious as to the WHERE some of you are getting your information from and what you might "think" you know. For those that
to me, this is a useless opening post. Vague, zero examples, nothing cited, just some complaints about some mysterious ambiguous comments that may or may not have been written. Had you given examples perhaps we could meaningfully respond.
"I NeHi, being born of goodly parents..."
I read the Book of Mormon years ago at the request of a Mormon friend.That's all I remember.Must not've been impressed.
I find that hard to believe. Surely if anyone read the Book of Mormon and only remembered one line it would be...
...and it came to pass
...and it came to pass
...and it came to pass
...and it came to pass | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/5/2008 2:21:07 AM | Two Hawks takes the Talking Stick:
I have a deep respect for Mormons. I've read their history and it was ugly the way they were treated when they first got started. Most, if not all of this ugly treatment came from....you guessed it! Christians. They were persecuted, beaten, shamed and robbed of personal items. Some were tortured after being beaten and some died from that. I don't blame them one damned bit for striking out for Utah! The interesting part about that was.....they had no maps, or guides. They were traveling through hostile Indian Teritory. They were, in essense, all alone in their quest for freedom. Facing what they were facing took a lot of guts! A great many of them pushed their worldy possessions on two wheeled hand carts....clear across the country and NOT on pavement. There are a couple of these carts at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake.
Moving right along.......
I have heard the Christians refer to the Mormons as a "cult". Now when you look up the word "cult" in a dictionary it is described as: Any group of people dedicated to a religion. So...the Christians are a "cult" within themselves.
As I said.....I have a deep respect for Mormons.
Two Hawks passes the Talking Stick. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/5/2008 11:35:34 AM |
I have a deep respect for Mormons. I've read their history and it was ugly the way they were treated when they first got started. Most, if not all of this ugly treatment came from....you guessed it! Christians. They were persecuted, beaten, shamed and robbed of personal items. Some were tortured after being beaten and some died from that. I don't blame them one damned bit for striking out for Utah! The interesting part about that was.....they had no maps, or guides. They were traveling through hostile Indian Teritory. They were, in essense, all alone in their quest for freedom. Facing what they were facing took a lot of guts! A great many of them pushed their worldy possessions on two wheeled hand carts....clear across the country and NOT on pavement. There are a couple of these carts at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake.
I do more then just read their history, I study it. Most of the ugly treatment they received was a result of... their own behaviour.
The character and attitude of Mormonism was so different from the modern that it makes it hard for people today to see the fuller story of early Mormon history. They were antagonistic, arrogant, and self-righteous.
Where ever large numbers of them concentrated they would begin to take control of local institutions by sheer volume.
Joseph Smith fled Ohio because he was wanted on charges of Bank fraud.
The Mormons were 'persecuted' in Missouri because they came into the region in huge numbers, antagonized the old settlers; and would commonly be heard saying that it did not matter of the old settlers sold them their lands now, they would get them in the end anyway: God told them so.
By the time we get into the really dirty 'persecution' it was FAR from a one way street, the Mormons were just as violent. They organized into their own militia's and and terrorized their nieghbours as much as they themselves were terrorized. The Mormon War in Missouri and it's resulting extermination order was precipitated by a Mormon posse attacking a unit of the State militia.
In Nauvoo, Smith controlled private army half the size of the standing US Army. The city charter give it such powers that it was practically and autonomous city-state. Dissenters and anyone unfriendly would be driven out of town or dragged out of their homes in the night and covered in human waste. People who were openly hostile towards the religion would have their homes broken into and robbed.
The Mormon's are fond of telling the story of the Whistling and Whittling Brigade from Nauvoo. They have a romantic story of young deacons and teachers following 'trouble makers' while whistling a jaunty tune and whittling. Because TODAY these offices are held by young men aged 12-16, Mormon's completely miss the point.
At the time there was no age standard for members of their Aaronic Priesthood, in fact the youngest was in his late teens. A more accurate picture is of a group of twenty year olds following you around with bowie knives and whisting ominously. They weren't annoying, they were terrifying!
Joseph Smith's downfall was his own doing too. He violated the freedom of the press by destroying the Nauvoo Expositor for printing ACCURATE information that Smith did not want made public about his own practices. He ordered his private army to prevent his arrest, committing treason against the State of Illinois (while still being wanted in Missouri for treason their as well). While in Jail he sent orders to that same army to COME AND FREE HIM, which the commander ignored. During this time Mormon marauders would ride through the countryside antagonizing and attacking non-Mormons.
You are damn right the Mormons would choose to leave a region they themselves made hostile.
When on the route west, it is incorrect to say that they had no guides or maps. They sent out advance parties to scout a path ahead while for the most part traveling along the northern route of the Oregon Trail. They were not the only ones to travel across the country through hostile territory, thousands were already doing so.
If you only hear the Mormon's own sanitized version of their history, it is easy to feel bad for them. But in doing so you ignore the rest of the story, which shows that the Mormon's were not mere victims. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/5/2008 12:33:32 PM | Two Hawks takes the Talking Stick:
I didn't say the Mormons were perfect, nor did I say I felt bad for them. I pointed out that they were persecuted because they were a new religion. I am also familiar with their history and I know what they did. Would you not stand up and fight back if you were attacked?
One interesting thing I found out about the Mormons is they can't drink coffee, or Coke or anything with caffeine in it. They consider that a "drug"...which, in reality it is. But...there is a bush growing in Utah, the name of which I don't remember, that the Mormons make a tea from the leaves. This tea has more caffeine in it than coffee!
Go figure on that one!
I rafted the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon twice. On the second trip our boatman was a Mormon and he told us a lot about his religion...and...he didn't paint a rosey picture about it either.
So I know about the Mormons and I respect them.
Two Hawks passes the Talking Stick. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/5/2008 3:28:31 PM | Without having read all of the posts here the thing that sticks with me after being raised mormon, having lived in Rexburg and attending BYUI (called Ricks at the time I went) is what an absolutly supressive religion that doesn't allow for free thought or questioning and changes with the politics of the day. To OP, its ok, you can stop being scared.
(passes the stick) | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/7/2008 12:41:03 PM | Well, I don't know much about the Mormon religion, other than the general basic beliefs.
I never met a real, life Mormon until I went into the Army. The first one was a 2LT, whom I had absolutely no respect. I disliked him and had nothing but contempt for him.
Me and my 1SG were pretty good friends and we both were members of the Masonic lodge.
When push came to shove, he defended his 2LT Mormon buddy and took sides with him - to a certain extent.
Then there is a female Doctor in Birmingham, AL who is of the Mormon faith. I have nothing but love, respect and admiration for her. She is an gifted Angel, to say the least.
I've played the piano in several different Protestant churches to include the "Holy roller" type churches. The Holy roller/Pentecostal type churches had no problems getting in someones face, to pressure them to go to the alter to be saved.
The Mormons have always be above and beyond reproach. They have always conducted themselves in a very respectful manner, as far as I could see.
Incidentally, the Holy Roller Preacher at one of the churches where I played piano and trombone left his wife of 40 years to live with a 22 year old girl who attended his church.
To top it off, the were distant kin.
Talk about integrity...........! Ole Jimbo Swaggart ain't got nuttin on them. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/8/2008 9:23:54 AM | Hey Artz - While I hate to lend ANY credibility to the Mormon trip there is the Bat Creek Stone which was an archeological dig which found a stone writting in ancient hebrew which said "For Judea only". It was a dig done by the Smithsonian. Google it.
To me it really doesn't give credibility to the Mormon trip as much as it does to any idea that Columbus wasn't the first to get over here.
and as far as Alaska's comments about how great Mormons are I don't care if they are all do gooders, as what good is the value of doing something good without free will behind it. IMO the basic goal of the Mormon church is to take away free will and replace it with group think, interestingly and according to their theology, the plan of Lucifer... | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/8/2008 7:27:43 PM |
Hey Artz - While I hate to lend ANY credibility to the Mormon trip there is the Bat Creek Stone which was an archeological dig which found a stone writting in ancient hebrew which said "For Judea only". It was a dig done by the Smithsonian. Google it.
Except for the fact that it is a hoax. I know that there are scholars who try to say that it is a genuine artifact, but they are a tiny minority.
Just reading the info on that particular piece threw up red flags for me when they keep saying that the item was radio-carbon dated to 32-769 A.D.
The SITE is dated with artifacts from that range, but the item itself CANNOT be carbon dated as it is made out of STONE. Even if they were to find enough organic matter in the stones patina to date it, 32-769 A.D is an absurd date because carbon-14 dating has an accuracy of +- 30 years.
No wonder BYU loves to get their hands on it, they really want to prove Mormonism right.
But in the end, it is no more authentic then the kinderhook plates or joseph smith's supposed "translation" of the Book of Abraham from an egyptian funerary scroll. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 12:39:06 AM | The Bat Creek Stone is a hoax to those, that wish not to believe, without the hardest of factual evidence, that anyone from Israel and or the countries around it did not have the intelligence to make a boat and sail the seas and come to this content and or leave evidence of their being here or having left an influence of one sort or another upon the natives here.
I went to the first site that came up on this stone. It is a piece written by a professor....
J. Huston McCulloch
Professor of Economics and Finance
The Ohio State University
He wrote his article in Dec. 2005. Below are some of his findings and opinions. He does not state that the stone is authentic or not authentic. His principle reason for his article was to debate the writing differences insinuated as a hoax to what was actually written on the stone that has been compared to other near east ancient writings of the same time period.
The Bat Creek Stone was professionally excavated in 1889 from an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian's Mound Survey project. The director of the project, Cyrus Thomas, initially declared that the curious inscription on the stone were "beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet." (Thomas 1894: 391:4)
In the 1960s, Henriette Mertz and Corey Ayoob both noticed that the inscription, when inverted from Thomas's orientation to that of the above photograph, instead appeared to be ancient Semitic. The late Semitic languages scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971) confirmed that it is Semitic, and specifically Paleo-Hebrew of approximately the first or second century A.D. According to him, the five letters to the left of the comma-shaped word divider read, from right to left, LYHWD, or "for Judea." He noted that the broken letter on the far left is consistent with mem, in which case this word would instead read LYHWD[M], or "for the Judeans."
Hebrew scholar and archaeologist Robert Stieglitz (1976) confirmed Gordon's reading of the longer word, and identifed the second letter of the shorter word as a qoph. Mertz (1964) herself had first proposed that the first letter is a (reversed) resh. The main line would then read RQ , LYHWD[M], i.e. "Only for Judea," or "Only for the Judeans" if the broken letter is included.
In Paleo-Hebrew, words are required to be separated by a dot or short diagonal stroke serving as a word divider, rather than by a space as in English or modern Hebrew. The short diagonal word divider used on the Bat Creek inscription is less common than the dot, but appears both in the Siloam inscription and the Qumran Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll.
In 1988, wood fragments found with the inscription were Carbon-14 dated to somewhere between 32 A.D. and 769 A.D.(McCulloch 1988). This range is consistent with Gordon's dating of the letters.
In McCulloch (1988) I note that although a few of the letters could be taken for Cherokee in either orientation, and although several of the letters are not perfect as Paleo-Hebrew, the inscription matches Hebrew much better than Cherokee. As English, for example, the main line could be forced to read "4SENL , YP" (sic) in the Mertz/Gordon orientation, or "dh ' 7NESb" in Thomas's orientation. The match to Cherokee is no better than to English, and no one has ever proposed a Cherokee reading of the inscription.
The lone letter below the main line is problematic, but could conceivably be either an aleph or a waw, in which case it might be a numeral indicating Year 1 or 6, respectively, of some era. The two vertical strokes above the main line are test scratches made by an unknown party while the stone was at the Smithsonian, sometime between 1894 and 1971.
Surely Hebrew, but Masonic?
American archaeologists Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., and Mary L. Kwas have recently argued in American Antiquity (2004) that the inscription was copied from an illustration in an 1870 Masonic reference book, and is therefore clearly a nineteenth century forgery that must have been introduced by the Smithsonian field assistant who found it. The entry in question, an 1860s artist's impression of how the Biblical phrase QDSh LYHWH, or "Holy to Yahweh," would have looked in Paleo-Hebrew letters, is reproduced below:
Macoy (1868, p. 134)
Both inscriptions do contain two words, with the identical string LYHW- beginning the longer second word in both cases. However, the fifth letter of the second word is clearly different in the two cases. The Bat Creek word ends with a daleth, which also happens to be the second letter of the first word in the Masonic illustration, making the Bat Creek word "for Judea." The Masonic word ends with a second he, which makes it "for Yahweh" instead. The Bat Creek word also has the remnant of a sixth letter, presumably mem, that is completely absent from Macoy's illustration.
In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would both contain the string LYHW-. The common prefix L- simply forms the dative case, indicating for, to, or belonging to the word that follows. The string YHW-, or Yahu-, the first three letters of the name YHWH or Yahweh of the Hebrew God, is a common theophoric component of Hebrew names. Judah or Yehud (YHWD in the Persian era, according to Gordon) is one such "Yahwist" name. A modern example of such a name is that of Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel from 1996-1999.
The January/February 2006 Biblical Archaeology Review happens to contain a photograph of a bulla (seal impression) that was recently excavated from Jersualem's City of David under the supervision of Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar. The inscription, in Old Hebrew letters closely related to those in the Macoy illustration, begins with the Masonic string LYHW- in the word LYHWKL, or "belonging to Yehucal" (Mazar 2006: 26). The second line actually contains the tell-tale string -YHW again, in the name of Yehucal's father, ShLMYHW or Shelemiyahu. However, the presence of the string LYHW- on both the Yehucal bulla and the Masonic illustration does not prove that the Mazar assistant who supposedly found the new bulla cribbed it from Macoy's book, but merely that this is a common component of Hebrew inscriptions. Likewise, the presence of this string on Bat Creek does not require it to have been copied from Macoy.
However, the most telling difference between the Bat Creek and Masonic inscriptions is in the different ways the two words are separated. Macoy's illustrator, who was undoubtedly working from a newly-available dictionary chart of Jewish War coinscript letters to transcribe standard Square Hebrew into the older alphabet, erroneously assumed that the words should be separated by a space, as in English or modern Hebrew. Bat Creek instead correctly uses a word divider. There is no way this subtle detail could have been copied from Macoy's illustration, even if the copyist threw in a few random changes to disguise his or her source.
If nothing else, the Masonic illustration newly discovered by Mainfort and Kwas does show that Bat Creek has an undeniable affinity to Paleo-Hebrew, and that this affinity should have been recognized already in 1889 by any competent student of antiquities. The fact that Thomas and subsequent American archaeologists failed to see this affinity until it was pointed out by Mertz, Ayoob and Gordon demonstrates their incompetence to adequately classify and evaluate ancient material. It does not, however, reflect on the Mound Survey's data-collecting abilities per se.
Now below is a quote from the two who support the Masonic theory origin of the Bat Creek Stone....
THE BAT CREEK STONE: JUDEANS IN TENNESSEE?
Tennessee Anthropologist
Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring 1991
Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., and Mary L. Kwas
Reproduced with permission from The Tennessee Anthropologist
Below is a final quote from them of the Bat Creek Stone issue.....
Having presented certain evidence that suggests that not only contemporary archaeologists and anthropologists, but also Cyrus Thomas himself, did not consider the Bat Creek stone to be authentic, we feel compelled to address the question: "Who was the forger and what were his motives?" Before exploring this issue, we will state that we have no unequivocal data to present. That is, we are not aware of written admissions of guilt. Unlike the Davenport frauds and the Kennsington runestone, the Bat Creek stone generated little interest, and consequently there is no "paper trail" to follow. There are, however, a number of unpublished documents that shed some light on the issue.
Do note in the above that the very two who believe and insinuate the Bat Stone is a forgery admit that they have no evidence to prove their case.
And if you see a good color picture of the Bat Creek Stone you will note as will anyone that has made ceramics...it is not a 'natural stone'. It is a piece of baked clay with a glazed finish that the writings were carved into before firing. I would like to see more information on the study of the 'stone' itself. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 12:54:45 AM | Here is another opinion from an online site called Science Frontiers....
A New Look At The Bat Creek Inscription
The Bat Creek Stone. Which side is up has been a problem!
The January 1989 issue of the Tennessee Anthropologist contains a long article on the Bat Creek Stone by J.H. McCullock, of Ohio State University. We rely here upon a summary written by R. Strong.
"The Bat Creek Stone has generated so much controversy, yet it was excavated in an undisturbed burial mound in 1889 under the direction of Cyrus Thomas, Project Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology's Mound Survey, a part of the Smithsonian Institution. There could be no question of forgery because it was found under the head of one of the nine skeletons that were excavated. Pieces of wood presumed to be the remains of wooden earspools were preserved in the Smithsonian's collections as were a pair of brass C-shaped bracelets. Thomas immediately declared the nine characters on the stone to be Cherokee and the burial assumed to be post-contact - what else could the bracelets be but trade items or native copper?"
That would seem to be the end of the story, but some language students failed to see any resemblance between the Bat Creek Inscription and the written Cherokee language. Further, C. Gordon, admittedly a proponent of early Phoenician contact with the New World, declared that the Bat Creek characters were Paleo-Hebrew, a family of languages that includes Phoenician. Then, in 1987, the wood accompanying the Bat Creek Stone was radiocarbon-dated in the range 32- 769 AD - definitely not "post-contact." Modern analysis was also applied to the bracelets, leading to the discovery that they had the same proportions of lead and zinc as the brass made by the Romans between 45 BC and 200 AD. In sum, the Bat Creek Stone now seems more likely to be something inscribed by early Phoenician visitors to North America.
(Strong, Roslyn; "A New Look at the Bat Creek Inscription," NEARA Journal, 23:26, Summer/Fall 1988. NEARA = New England Antiquities Research Association.)
From Science Frontiers #63, MAY-JUN 1989. © 1989-2000 William R. Corliss
Below is also a statement from a site that sums up what I stated in the first paragraph of my first post.....
Evidence indicating early sea travel is not welcomed by those already convinced that it did not or could not have happened. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 12:44:35 PM | If people want a real balanced view of The Mormon Church, read the Book Mormon America.
It gives the good the bad and the ugly.
The Book sites court records and other documentation on the Founding and the history of The LDS Church.
The LDS Church has done a great job of "spinning " Church history. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 4:07:53 PM | The problem here is that there is not enough evidence either direction to say whether or not it is a hoax. But the BURDEN OF PROOF lies with those that claim it is a product of a SPECULATIVE trans-oceanic voyage.
I am in no way saying that it was not possible for people to have traveled from the old to new worlds. What I am saying is that you need a hell of a lot more evidence to make such a claim.
The biggest trouble here is that any attempt to concretely date the stone is conspicuously absent. Stone CANNOT be dated by carbon-14, any of the radiocarbon dating given concerning the stone is just from artifacts found in the same mound, which means that it is fully possible for the stone to have been placed there as a hoax.
And if you see a good color picture of the Bat Creek Stone you will note as will anyone that has made ceramics...it is not a 'natural stone'. It is a piece of baked clay with a glazed finish that the writings were carved into before firing.
No, it is a stone, not ceramic. Why on earth would all the literature call it a piece of stone if it was ceramics? It is absurd. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 7:40:30 PM | | I agree the stone is a stone. I found a link that examined the stone itself and it does from the top view have all the appearences of baked and glazed clay. They said it was a stone and with a microscope they examined the writing and the indentures of the writing and in comparing the marks made on the stone after it was found to the letter markings themselves they deducted the experimental made marks were not of the same chemical composition as the letter marks showing the letters that were scratched into the stone before the experimental scratch marks were made. They also commented that the growing chemical composition in the writings could not of formed in a short period of time but over the course of hundreds or more years. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 8:29:55 PM |
I am in no way saying that it was not possible for people to have traveled from the old to new worlds. What I am saying is that you need a hell of a lot more evidence to make such a claim.
I don't get it Paul. We are here aren't we? Does that not go a long way to support the idea that trans-oceanic voyage is possible? Hasn't there been other excavations along the atlantic coast which have shown that Europeans were here before Columbus? Lewis and Clark also talked about finding what they thought were some kind of coin from some European culture among the Mandans and Hidatsas who have very white skinned and blond people among them and have stories of whites coming up the Missouri way before Lewis and Clark showed up.
and then there is always Thor....http://www.kon-tiki.no/Ny/Dok_eng/E-Heyerdahl.html
now if the stone is a fake, that is another question.....but it is a very interesting story. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/9/2008 11:30:26 PM | One has to wonder, why would the Masons want to manufacture a hoax that would lend credibility to the Mormon trip especially since they were pretty pissed of at Joe for teaching the secret handshakes and all? I mean isn't that who you think did him in finally?
Man have we jacked this thread.....sorry... | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/10/2008 11:44:35 AM |
I don't get it Paul. We are here aren't we? Does that not go a long way to support the idea that trans-oceanic voyage is possible? Hasn't there been other excavations along the atlantic coast which have shown that Europeans were here before Columbus?
Come on, you know what I meant.
Prior to Columbus, the only contacts we can be reasonably certain of are the basque fishermen and the Vikings.
As for the Lewis and Clark thing, you must remember that there had been European contact in the new world for 3oo years prior to their expedition.
What excavations along the Atlantic coast? If you are referring to the moundbuilders then you are talking about late 18th-early 19th century speculation that has long since been disproven.
So I have to say again, I do not say that it was impossible for old and new world contacts prior to Columbus. What I AM saying is that possibility does not mean actuality. You need a lot of evidence.
And to bring it back to the topic at hand, such evidence certainly would not mean that Mormon claims are true as a result. The established Mormon mythology is just too specific , they would have to find evidence that backs up their SPECIFIC stories in their entirety. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/10/2008 11:52:48 AM | | sorry to chip in to your very intelligent discussion, but can i just say about mythology and evidence etc, the bible has a lot of stories in and we have no evidence of all those things happening either but why do we have to question it all of the time? Noahs ark is pretty far fetched but sometimes a bit of faith doesnt hurt anyone does it? and how about santa? iv never seen him come down my chimney but i know he does cos of the presents i get on christmas day. lol | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/10/2008 1:25:48 PM | I was just being clear Paul. You are one of the more informed ex's I know of and value your opinons and clear thinking. That being said, I look at everything with a critical eye simply because of how we were raised thus my questioning as to why a Mason would do something to give the Mormons any credibility.
Along the lines of which you were speaking, the book does give very specific descriptions about the ships used to come here which are not like anything else I've ever heard of and which sound as if they would be terrible sea fareing vessels.
sienna - there is nothing wrong with faith except what you choose to put your faith in. Blind faith is never good nor is faith in something which tells you what to have fiath in IMO. | |
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| What is it with the Mormon thing
Posted: 2/10/2008 4:01:26 PM | Let's understand one fact of the Bat Stone....by theory/circumstantial reasoning it is debunked and called a forgery. But by factual evidence there are no factual evidences that prove it is a hoax/forgery.
The stone was found in a recorded 'UNDISTURBED' mound, one of at least three that were being excavated by a Smithsonian team led by Cyrus Thomas. The stone was actually recorded as being found by a field assistant named John W. Emmert in 1889.
Now there are a few things that those who want to call/prove this stone a hoax will not address let alone discuss. Like that none of the mounds being explored and dug up by this team were ever noted to have been 'disturbed' in any fashion by quakes or storms or grave looters. They won't address that the team doing this mound had noted the earth was hard and undisturbed. They won't address the fact that these teams from the Smithsonian were not there with a previously thought out agenda or to seek proof for inter-continental sailing possibilities between the old world and the new world. They were there to dig up, in a scientific manner the mounds that seemed to be man made that actually covered an expanse of several states in the east from Illonise to New York to Florida. The term "Mound Builders" had been named by people predating Joseph Smith. People had been digging into these mounds for a long time. Early Europeans of America migrating west were the first to observe these strange mounds. The Smithsonian just decided to do it scientifically with professionals and their assistants to see if they could get some answers as to who built them.
The mounds have been dated as far back as 1000 B.C. Many of these mounds had been built upon over a period of a few to several hundred years with the specific use being for burying the dead in them.
The following is about the famous 'Monk's Mound' of Illinois.
" The latter is famous for Monk’s Mound, located in Collinsville, Illinois. Monk’s Mound covers fourteen acres and rises to a height of one hundred feet. It is part of a Cahokia site that is considered to have supported a population of up to 20 thousand people in a very sophisticated social structure ruled by a chief and a strong shamanistic religious body.
The Cahokia site is also well known for its sun calendars, named Woodhenges because they were built of logs. Excavations also indicate the site was surrounded by two miles of wood stockade, an indication, perhaps, that defence remained a need, despite the size of the settlement. "
In Smith's time it was not believed by any American scientific community that people sailed here from other continents or that the natives of this continent had the ability to organize massive civilizations extending beyond a few hundred at most. If your thinking of the Spanish and the Aztecs remember that there was not any then written and or published American/European literature within the scientific communities that would have taught them their views were flawed and wrong. The information that was written of the Spanish/Aztecs era was recorded by monks and priests who had went with the Spanish army and their reports afterwards sat in church librarys in Spain. The scientific community at large of Europe and America did not learn via-written works, like books and scientific papers those communities passed around that the natives of the Americas actually did know how to make great civiliations, especially in Central and South America. It was in fact scientists coming along long after the Spanish/Aztec conquest that were exploring those areas that made those discoveries by first hand exploration and not by written materials. Things had been heard of but nothing had ever been proven to that point in time which came after the BOM.
I am not saying the Bat stone or anything else proves the BOM true. THEY DON'T PROVE ANYTHING VIA THE BOM. But more and more recent discoveries and re-examinations of past finds are lending more and more 'circumstantial evidence' to things that Smith did write of in an era when none of these things he wrote of were proved as existing by the then scientific community or even held in theory as existing or were even believed in by them. And those scientists that read or glanced at what Smith had wrote scoffed and laughed at his 'great story'.
Over a hundred years later things that Smith spoke of are actually being proved to of existed and happening like sailing from the old world to the new world predating Columbus and his era. | |
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