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Post by skyfire on Mar 27, 2009 14:48:13 GMT -5
No, I'm saying that you've quite clearly missed the last 20+ years of apologetic research and debate.No one, other than you, is saying that the church is wrong.[/color] Rather, most of your more recent apologists are simply scaling things back. Hence such things as the limited geography theory. Or it could simply be that you've set your standards a tad too high.[/quote] Okay, skyfire, I'm officially calling Poe on your ass. There is no way, no fucking way, you actually believe the statement I have highlighted above. To say JonE is the only one saying the church is wrong is the height of absurdity. Everyone, other than Mormon apologists, is saying the LDS is wrong on the topic of the indigenous peoples of this continent. Archaeological evidence does not in anyway whatsoever support your (LDS) view. With the above statement, you have rendered yourself utterly irrelevant to any discourse on this or any other topic.[/quote] "No one" as in "not one single apologist." Jon's argument is that any shift in POV must somehow render the BoM utterly fictitious, when in reality apologists have been debating back and forth over the issue for a few decades now.
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Post by m52nickerson on Mar 27, 2009 14:53:44 GMT -5
Which ones? Which ones have been debating this. Links please!
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Post by skyfire on Mar 27, 2009 15:07:46 GMT -5
Which ones? Which ones have been debating this. Links please! No links per se; this is something I periodically run into whenever I hit different places with large Mormon populaces, and so is more casual discussion and the odd work or two than anything else. However, it still stands that for all of Jon's "research" he should have made at least some effort to keep abreast of what the apologists are saying and doing. Jon appears to be at least 20 years out of date in regards to present research and thinking (quite bad even when a person considers most critics are usually 5 - 10 out of date), which is why I'm getting on to him.
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Post by m52nickerson on Mar 27, 2009 15:11:31 GMT -5
No links per se; this is something I periodically run into whenever I hit different places with large Mormon populaces, and so is more casual discussion and the odd work or two than anything else. However, it still stands that for all of Jon's "research" he should have made at least some effort to keep abreast of what the apologists are saying and doing. Jon appears to be at least 20 years out of date in regards to present research and thinking (quite bad even when a person considers most critics are usually 5 - 10 out of date), which is why I'm getting on to him. How can you even say that. You can't post any links and it is something you just run into in conversations with other mormons, but Jon is 20 years out of date? There are not links or sites that discuss this issue because there is not issue, no debate.
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Post by mnstrm on Mar 27, 2009 15:12:50 GMT -5
I don't think that's why you're getting on him. I think it's that he hasn't hit his limit of patience with you yet, and is still willing to dialogue with you - and is making points while doing so.
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Post by Star Cluster on Mar 27, 2009 15:20:01 GMT -5
Okay, skyfire, I'm officially calling Poe on your ass. There is no way, no fucking way, you actually believe the statement I have highlighted above. To say JonE is the only one saying the church is wrong is the height of absurdity. Everyone, other than Mormon apologists, is saying the LDS is wrong on the topic of the indigenous peoples of this continent. Archaeological evidence does not in anyway whatsoever support your (LDS) view. With the above statement, you have rendered yourself utterly irrelevant to any discourse on this or any other topic. "No one" as in "not one single apologist." Jon's argument is that any shift in POV must somehow render the BoM utterly fictitious, when in reality apologists have been debating back and forth over the issue for a few decades now. Well, no shit. I wouldn't expect a Mormon apologist to disagree with it. In fact, I'd be surprised if one did, especially if they're all like you. And "debate" amongst apologists isn't going to change the fact that there is no shred of evidence to support the notion that the early inhabitants of this continent were transplanted Jews or any of the other wild-ass beliefs of the LDS. But see, if you're not a Poe, that's your biggest problem. You have your head so far up Mormonisms metaphorical ass all you can see is shit. You seriously need to unplug yourself and breath fresh air for a change.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Mar 27, 2009 16:14:44 GMT -5
Which ones? Which ones have been debating this. Links please! No links per se; this is something I periodically run into whenever I hit different places with large Mormon populaces, and so is more casual discussion and the odd work or two than anything else. However, it still stands that for all of Jon's "research" he should have made at least some effort to keep abreast of what the apologists are saying and doing. Jon appears to be at least 20 years out of date in regards to present research and thinking (quite bad even when a person considers most critics are usually 5 - 10 out of date), which is why I'm getting on to him. That tends to mean that LDS people are speculating and the official body who decides policy finds it's better not to clarify (because then they're on the hook for the changes) but to continue to let them speculate; see JWs circa 1975 debacle. It also means that you cannot use that speculation to "debunk" what JonE has said, which he has fully sourced; you cannot source rumors and unbacked speculation and then claim that he is the one who doesn't have his thinking straight. He is going by official doctrine. And if newer material were available, you'd be able to cite it. Right?
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Post by JonathanE on Mar 27, 2009 18:28:54 GMT -5
Which ones? Which ones have been debating this. Links please! No links per se; this is something I periodically run into whenever I hit different places with large Mormon populaces, and so is more casual discussion and the odd work or two than anything else. However, it still stands that for all of Jon's "research" he should have made at least some effort to keep abreast of what the apologists are saying and doing. Jon appears to be at least 20 years out of date in regards to present research and thinking (quite bad even when a person considers most critics are usually 5 - 10 out of date), which is why I'm getting on to him. Apologist "research", like your logic, is laughable. When reality doesn't suit the teachings, change the teachings. I asked you for any research that was peer reviewed to support the BoM hypothesis. I knew you'd smokescreen that fucker, because, there ISN"T ANY! BYU spent boatloads of money digging holes all over Central America, LOOKING HARD for any evidence to support the crazy that is the BoM. They gave up. Literally. I understand your "limited POV" argument, but the BoM was and is still sold as the history of Americas, the story of where the "indians" came from, and never once have I read a church sanctioned document that says otherwise. The church equates all "indians" with Lamanites. Anyway, when you have some archeological evidence to support the BoM, post it, otherwise, shut the fuck up. There are apologists for scientology, for flat earthers, for any batshit belief you can name. They all count for shit in the real world, where data and evidence supporting an hypothesis is required to make extraordinary claims, which, of course, is what the BoM is. One extraordinary claim, totally baseless, though, without a single shred of archeological evidence to support it. 1500 years is a short time in liguistic and cultural history, especially Jewish history. You never addressed that, did you?
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Post by skyfire on Mar 27, 2009 18:31:34 GMT -5
No links per se; this is something I periodically run into whenever I hit different places with large Mormon populaces, and so is more casual discussion and the odd work or two than anything else. However, it still stands that for all of Jon's "research" he should have made at least some effort to keep abreast of what the apologists are saying and doing. Jon appears to be at least 20 years out of date in regards to present research and thinking (quite bad even when a person considers most critics are usually 5 - 10 out of date), which is why I'm getting on to him. That tends to mean that LDS people are speculating and the official body who decides policy finds it's better not to clarify (because then they're on the hook for the changes) but to continue to let them speculate; see JWs circa 1975 debacle. It also means that you cannot use that speculation to "debunk" what JonE has said, which he has fully sourced; you cannot source rumors and unbacked speculation and then claim that he is the one who doesn't have his thinking straight. He is going by official doctrine. And if newer material were available, you'd be able to cite it. Right? The point is that Jon's basing his arguments on the assumption that every last member of the church is in lockstep with what was the official theology and policies when he himself was a member, meaning that even one dissenter throws the whole thing into chaos. Instead, the membership as a whole is evolving, such that the church - as you've stated - is now allowing the membership to speculate; the membership, in turn, is finding its own bearing in a slow, peaceable fashion. For much of the issue at hand, what we have is apologists turning up information that lends plausibility to some of the accounts within the BoM, which - in turn - is also causing people to re-think elements like the locations and how wide the geographic scope was. Even something as simple as cruising a board with a fair to large LDS population should have revealed the shift in thinking. As far as his research itself goes, don't forget that research can also be out of date. For example, let's take another look at the supposed "fine" showing that JS was found guilty of fraud. Any critical source written after 2004 has to try and explain away the fact that a paper released that year demonstrates that the "fine" has so many irregularities compared to the 1820s procedure and law that if it is a fine it's completely abnormal, something raising the possibility of the "fine" not even being a fine in the first place but rather a simple bill for the proceedings.
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Post by skyfire on Mar 27, 2009 18:36:18 GMT -5
Apologist "research", like your logic, is laughable. When reality doesn't suit the teachings, change the teachings. I asked you for any research that was peer reviewed to support the BoM hypothesis. I knew you'd smokescreen that fucker, because, there ISN"T ANY! Mind your manners, please. "They?" Surely, you can name names, then. The introduction of the BoM was recently changed to state that the Lamanites were among the principal ancestors of the modern Native Americans, leaving it open for the reader to interpret from there. Welcome to 2008. I've asked you to back a few things up, but I've gotten nothing there. Should I have the right to start cussing like a biker? I did - there was, by the BoM - a large-scale genocide in which those people who would have had some sort of Hebrew as their primary language were wiped out, leaving a populace who had largely abandoned their heritage to begin with and so most likely were well on their way to adapting to whatever was around them.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Mar 27, 2009 18:42:03 GMT -5
No, he isn't. Mormons visited me a couple of months ago, and when we talked about it, they were still spouting party line in terms of the Central America stuff. But let's not pussyfoot around with whether or not things are "officially evolving"--I know how that works. They didn't tell me anything about discussion, different POV, etc. Because that is not what they are supposed to do. They even trotted along another older elder, because I guess they thought I was going to give them trouble. They passed all the hard questions to him, and he gave official doctrine all the way down the line. This replicates other times I've had Mormons visit me and discuss the same issues. The core teachings have not changed. They did not tell me what they speculated about--and they're not supposed to (the milk before meat, remember?). They are not "evolving", because official doctrine has not yet "evolved"--and they could get in big trouble for passing off their speculation as official LDS doctrine. Let's not kid ourselves on this one. You can't claim the church has evolved until its leadership demonstrates that official doctrine has changed. You know that as well as anyone else would. What you are describing at the end of your post is not research, it's spin. It's attempting to distort a historical record so that it still falls in line with church doctrine. Seriously, LDS needs to look into the "light gets brighter" excuse. It stalls people longer.
You don't have to lecture me about research being out of date--that would be the BoM itself, wouldn't it?
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Post by JonathanE on Mar 27, 2009 18:44:22 GMT -5
Look, Joseph Smith, the fucking translator, sold it as THE history of the American Indians. He wrote the fucking thing. You apologist claptrap, changing times, or whatever other horseshit you throw out there is just that, apologist claptrap horsehit.
I will not argue minutae regarding church doctrine. You know it as well as I do, and you know that the book was a bill of goods.
Show me any archeological evidence that backs up the claims of the BoM.
You can't, because there isn't any. You know and everyone who's studied MesoAmerican anthropology and archeology knows it. To quote some one else, either put up the evidence, or move to another thread.
Sky fire, show the evidence that supports the BoM.
My manners, language, tone, what the fuckever have nothing to do with this thread.
Produce evidence to show the truth of the BoM, or leave, simple, no?
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Post by dantesvirgil on Mar 27, 2009 18:48:20 GMT -5
A basic cultural anthroplogy class would deal with the entire thing. It goes over the archaeological record of North and Central America in fully documented detail.
And by the way, what's wrong with bikers? **Polishes ride**
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Post by JonathanE on Mar 27, 2009 19:15:10 GMT -5
Also, think about this. If "Old World" people colonized Mesoamerica, why were there large-scale infections amongst the natives, brought by the Spaniards. If the antescedents of N.American natives were indeed, at least in part, "Lamanites", who would have been immune to Old World diseases, as well as carriers. Why is there no archeological evidence of widespread disease prior to the Spaniards. The Great Plague killed 10% of Europe. The plagues of smallpox, influenza, syphillis and so on, were unknown in Mesoamerica, indeed, throughout the pre-Columbian Americas. It has been estimated that up to 90% of the native population died out in many areas, and the average death rate as high as 50%. There is no pre-Columbian evidence of mass death by epidemic. There is evidence for death by starvation, but none for epidemic. This is a strange paradox, actually, considering that if there were inhabitants in the Americas, they would have been decimated or worse by old world disease epidemics, had Old World colonizers arrived. Conversely, there were massive epidemics, rampant amonst the N. American natives, often preceding the actual first contact by decades. What I mean by that statement, because it is clear, but a little foggy, is that the epidemics that proceeded from the first contact points along the Atlantic coast, proceeded inland without further need of infection from actual contact with Old World people.
There is no evidence of this in the archeological record.
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Post by skyfire on Mar 27, 2009 19:19:35 GMT -5
No, he isn't. Mormons visited me a couple of months ago, and when we talked about it, they were still spouting party line in terms of the Central America stuff. But let's not pussyfoot around with whether or not things are "officially evolving"--I know how that works. They didn't tell me anything about discussion, different POV, etc. Because that is not what they are supposed to do. They even trotted along another older elder, because I guess they thought I was going to give them trouble. They passed all the hard questions to him, and he gave official doctrine all the way down the line. This replicates other times I've had Mormons visit me and discuss the same issues. The core teachings have not changed. They did not tell me what they speculated about--and they're not supposed to (the milk before meat, remember?). They are not "evolving", because official doctrine has not yet "evolved"--and they could get in big trouble for passing off their speculation as official LDS doctrine. Let's not kid ourselves on this one. You can't claim the church has evolved until its leadership demonstrates that official doctrine has changed. You know that as well as anyone else would. What you are describing at the end of your post is not research, it's spin. It's attempting to distort a historical record so that it still falls in line with church doctrine. Seriously, LDS needs to look into the "light gets brighter" excuse. It stalls people longer. You don't have to lecture me about research being out of date--that would be the BoM itself, wouldn't it? OTOH, I enjoy watching missionaries get the "deer-in-the-headlight" look when I go right into such speculative matters whenever investigators ask about them. It would appear, then, that there are differences among the members and congregations then. ...something which does, in a way, still show that the members aren't always what the stereotypes say.
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