Going item by item -
To someone who is LDS, what he asked is
incredibly rude. He may have thought he was being cute, but in reality he was just being a douchebag. This likely set the tone for the entire conversation here.
In short, he's accusing anyone who is religious of being mentally incompetent.
And he wonders why people might be inclined to go ape on him.
I bet he doesn't have the first clue of how many famous academics, scientists, businessmen, entertainers, and artists have been openly religious and in such a fashion that their religion never interfered with their line of work.
For example, Dr. Philo T. Farnsworth, the man who gave us the basic theory behind the television set, was not only an active member of the church but also a key supporter for the Boy Scouts of America.
Likewise - and something that may well break Ironbite's mind - two of the people who worked on the Transformers franchise in the 1980s (voice actor Ken Sansom and writer Leo D. Paur) are actively LDS. The former would go on to voice Rabbit in all of the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons since '87 before lending his voice to a series of documentaries relating to the church, while the latter became involved with Feature Films For Families, writing and producing the sleeper hit "Rigoletto." And speaking of Transformers, Buzz Dixon - one of Sunbow's top people - is an Evangelical Christian; 1985's "The God Gambit" was his way of discussing religion in a kids' cartoon.
Or there's Sandy Peterson, a top programmer for ID Software; you can thank him for roughly 1/3rd of the levels in Doom and DOOM II. In fact, he had a hand in
literally every last episode of "Inferno" and was personally responsible for updating two of the Wolfenstein levels for inclusion in Doom II as the bonus levels.
Likewise, the Marriott family is Mormon (BYU's B-school is actually known as the Marriott Center).
Legendary animator Don Bluth is Mormon.
Killer Kane from the New York Dolls converted in '89.
Gladys Knight converted about 10 years ago.
Dieter Uchtdorf was formerly an executive with Lufthansa before entering the leadership of the church.
Henry Eyring (father of Henry B. Eyring) was a prominent physicist.
Gail Halvorsen, the legendary "Candy Bomber" of the Berlin Airlift, is an active member to this day.
Rick Schroeder converted.
Guitarist and inventor Alvino Rey was a lifelong member.
Et cetra.
I wonder what the author would do if he knew that.
Need I say more?
If he honestly believes that, then he needs to bone up on his archeology. (pun intended)
Over the past few decades, discoveries have been made that have rendered individual aspects of the BoM
plausible.
For example, once upon a time critics of the church pointed to the fact that the BoM mentions the use of "swords" in Central America. Then the world rediscovered the
macuahuitl, a type of sword made by affixing pieces of sharpened obsidian to a large wooden handle. Thus, that argument has been rendered moot.
Likewise, those critics who question the existence of the word "steel" in the BoM have since been countered by the word's existence in the KJV rendering of the Old Testament; that other English translations use "brass" or "bronze" instead suggest that in both instances the word "steel" may have been used to describe an indigenous alloy.
That's another point wherein he's wrong: he's apparently forgetting about mammoths.
I'll have to dig it out (it's under a pile of other books), but I've got an apologetics book which references works that suggest isolated mammoths may have indeed survived up until the time of the Jaredites, which was shortly after the Tower of Babel took place.
There's actually some discussion in LDS apologetic circles as to whether or not the word "horse" is to be taken at face value or if the term was applied to an indigenous animal that was used as a mount. For him to reject this matter out of hand thus shows he's not up on the current discussions.
Bullshit.
How, exactly, were they "threatening" his wife?
Were they simply asking if they could come back when he wasn't around to be an asshole?
Convenient that the link doesn't work, eh?
While not the most appropriate way to start off a note like this, given some of the comments he made above it's rather understandable.
Plus, just because a person may have book smarts doesn't mean they actually have intelligence. As I've mentioned earlier, he's apparently behind the times in regards to some of the stuff he was arguing.
**
In short?
Something tells me that the person who wrote this piece might not exactly be telling the whole truth.
At best, he was damned rude to the missionaries he dealt with and completely over-reacted to the prospect of them returning at a later time, thus prompting a little nastygram from the same people who he nearly got arrested over what might have been nothing.
At the worst, he's making shit up.
