Support the channel and get bonus videos!!!!!! / zelphontheshelf Joseph Smith’s completely different first vision accounts: • Joseph Smith's *comple... #bookofmormon #mormonism #exmormon
One of my shelf items actually came into being when, at age fifteen, I was super into worldbuilding for my fantasy novels and realized how easy it was to invent linguistic systems and races and draw up maps. Not rocket science at all.
Christopher Paolini was 16 when he wrote Eragon. It’s a book with an entirely different map, and new languages. He had at least 3 language systems. Eragon is also about the same length as the book of mormon but way more complex, interesting, and fleshed out. And he was 16!!
Obsessed with the fact that these apologists are convinced that no one in the 1800s had the ability to make up fictional characters and build worlds around them
A "23-year-old could never!" Mary Shelley, Michael Chabon, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, Ken Kesey, Zadie Smith, Sylvia Plath, Carson McCullers, Douglas Adams, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald did pretty well for themselves in their 20s, but sure. Edit: Shit, I think we can all think of at least one 5-year-old with more compelling stories, LBR.
I feel like a lot of the debate here is being understood backwards. Like the apologists are not arguing “this book is unlike any other therefore it is divine, they are arguing “it is divine and therefore unlike any other”. It’s not self evident that the book is unlike any other, but because they start with the assumption that it is divine, that makes it so in their mind and in their conclusion, and why evidence to the contrary is often found unconvincing. Love your content, I don’t have to yell in my head because you do it for me!
As a person who tried writing a book, I can say that it is super easy to write something as shitty as the Book of Mormon. I, literally, wrote about the things around me, borrowed style from Robert Jordan's books, added elements from books and movies I read/watched before and used local geography.
My very first time in the temple endowment, I legitimately thought, "This HAS to be true because there's no way someone could just come up with stuff as crazy as this." 😂
@@mantispid5 honestly, I still wonder what kind of crazy man/men could dream up all this stuff! It's almost like something in the movies. Slightly more advanced (or maybe just more strange) than little boys using secret knocks and passwords to get into their clubhouse.
Charles Dickens had very little education and went on to write literature at a young age, works which have stood the test of time. No need to have divine revelation to create great fiction!
When I first started learning about real Mormon history and reading old Mormon books and talks and stuff like that, I remember really wanting to know what was in the original Book of Mormon. I thought with all those editions, there's gotta be some crazy shit in the original. I never got my hands on an original copy, but I did some research and it turns out, aside from switching to white and delightsome to pure and delightsome and primary to amongst, they really just took out like thousands more instances of "and it came to pass" and I honestly can't tell you how hilarious I find that.
You’ve never heard of the Jewish prophet whose family dug a tunnel to Tibet and started a new civilization of Christians? God made them look East Asian when they sinned too much.
I remember listening to some weird essay my mission companion had where this guy was praising the complexity of the BoM and in doing so compared it to Lord Of The Rings..??? So you agree, anyone can just write a complex world / storyline..
If there had been an "iron age" in the pre Columbian Americas , all of history would have been different. Holy cow, can you imagine? The Europeans would land on Plymouth Rock with dreams of conquest and Thanksgiving, and instead of pushing all Native Americas onto death and reservations, the Native Americans would have driven the Europeans succinctly back into the ocean and back to the bleak continent they slithered away from ... 😨 ehem. marcus
I was told that when missionaries leave the church soon after they come home, it's because they were on such a spiritual high that they can't get it back so they leave. Which has never made any sense to me. Wouldn't you want to stay and try to build up to it again?
took me way too long to realize that you were saying “ablest scholars” and not “ableist scholars” lol i was like??? why do we want the text reviewed by ableist scholars???
When I first read some of the Book of Mormon (as a non-Mormon) I thought immediately that it was someone who studied the Bible a lot and then made up stories to sound as much like Bible stories as possible. I thought it sounded phony. Never once did I think it was good writing.
Tanner's observation about Joseph having "workshopped" his stories about natives as a child captured the theatrical quality so often left out of descriptions of his con.
I love Brandon Sanderson! If he had written the BoM, I might still be a member and the church might be good. Side note: I've done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) three times. Writing a crappy book quickly isn't that hard, even with a full time job besides. P.S. I just realized Sanderson did write BoM (Bands of Mourning), which is a far superior book.
@@andreitian3279 not always. People with adhd thrive under pressure and are at their most creative. Sometimes consistency is the answer…but for some people cramming really works better lol at least with creative endeavors.
Hey Tanner, after I finished this I absolutely looked up John Larsen and the "how to build a transoceanic vessel" and listened to the whole thing. It was great! Thanks for the recommendation 😀
I actually remember covering like the first 20 items of this list in church one time as our YW lesson. They had each item printed on a separate page (R.I.P. our forests) and at the end, this girl asked if she could have them. I wonder what she did with them.
I took handouts home to highlight my favorite parts like a good mormon girl. But also that was just last year and now I'm here so maybe I needed the help to keep my mind from jumping ship
@@h.r.9563 Haha I was a teenager when I stopped believing and I had to fake it until I got out of the house. I was really convincing and some people thought I was a very spiritual person because I was so quiet most of the time and when I did speak, I asked really deep questions that they had never thought of. At home, I had a "Jesus wall" with "Who's your hero?" posters, the family, the YW theme, and a few handouts. I think I even had a couple Mormon ads up there.
Sincerity does not equal truth lol. If that were the case, every Islam extremist who suicide bombed had the true religion. Is there anything more sincere than being willing to DIE and kill others for your religion?
Well this is fun. You’ve mentioned some fun books in rebuttal. You are missing the big one, the whole big world with nations, wars, historical periods and heroic historic characters, creation myth and cosmology, even languages and script to go with those languages. So that would be JRR Tolkien, who started the whole history of Middle Earth while he was in his 20s recovering from war injuries. Not just the Lord of the Rings but the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Ok, revealing myself to be a true geek. But really, it’s well beyond what this guy is claiming for Book of Mormon.
The dumbest argument for the BoM being true has to be the one about the writing styles being soooo different between books. That was one of the first things that made me doubt the book of mormon and the whole reason I even picked up on it was by reading the bible. When you go from reading the bible to immediately reading the BoM the difference is night and day. The BoM is so poorly written and boring, and above all has the same narrative voice throughout the whole thing.
I appreciate you guys talking through this because when I learned that Joseph Smith didn't use the golden plates to translate the BoM it blew my mind. If he didn't do it that way, then how did he do it?? I at least feel good enough about how to explain it after listening to you guys and several Mormon Stories episodes.
It's more believable that Lord of the Rings was a record of ancient civilizations in the Americas in the Pleistocene than the Book of Mormon in Antiquity. You don't even have to resort to tapirshit as there were still horses here at the time.
Hyrum went to Dartmouth where he had access to one of the largest religious libraries in the world. One of his classes was called "The School of the Prophets"
This was honestly one of the things that kept me in the church and believing for a while, the idea that it was impossible for Joseph to write the BoM was super ingrained into me
Wow as an outsider I read it, to me I know Oliver's pastor had a similar plot book, and Insider's View of Mormon Origins, which notes the extreme similarity between revival sermons and all the sermons in the BoM
I'm a never-in, and I had heard the claim that this was a most amazing book. I listened to the My Book of Mormon podcast, and was truly amazed at how awful it was. And boring.
Not only could Joseph Smith have written the BOM, he's the only person who could have. (Makes you wonder why the Spaulding-Rigdon theory ever got much traction but that's a whole nother topic.)
I remember this growing up, getting this paper list of how no one of average intelligence could have ever written the Book of Mormon. In retry this is a list of confirmation bias loaded with strawman fallacies and other logical fallacies. Of course anyone could have written “The Book of Mormon” at best it reads like at a 6th grade level, and it’s reductive, boring, plagiarized, and simple at worst. The BoM isn’t a great piece of literature at all, “chloroform in print” anyone?
Ethan Smith was a Minister in Poultney, Vermont, who published View of the Hebrews, which expounds upon a commonly held notion of the time of the numerous and distinct American Indian tribes having originated from Hebrew stock. View of the Hebrews enjoyed wide circulation in New England and New York, running through two editions in 1823 and 1825. While scholars agree that Ethan’s work reads nothing like the Book of Mormon, the framework and storyline of both books are remarkably similar. View of the Hebrews begins with the destruction of Jerusalem while suggesting that the Ten Tribes came to America before dividing into two disparate groups: one barbarous, the other civilized. Ethan elaborates on robust military fortifications, forms of government, a hidden book that becomes revealed, prophets among ancient Americans, and ancient Indians as highly civilized people, while offering numerous quotes from the King James Bible version of Isaiah. Like many other theologians of various denominations, Ethan Smith suggested that it was America’s mission to gather the remnants of the House of Israel, reiterating the legend that the stick of Joseph and Ephraim would one day be united. His book describes copper breastplates taken from the mounds, with two white buckhorn buttons fastened to the outside of each plate in resemblance to an Urim & Thummim. His book describes a prophet atop a wall in Jerusalem exhorting while the wicked unsuccessfully assail him with arrows. Few Mormons today have heard of Ethan’s work, or how perfectly it fits into the nineteenth-century worldview that informed Joseph Smith. Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith’s third cousin and primary scribe on the Book of Mormon, was undoubtedly aware of View of the Hebrews, as he lived in Poultney for twenty-six years and his family attended Ethan’s congregation. In 1761, Solomon Spaulding was born in Ashford, Conn., and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1785. Later in life he lived in New'Salem and Conneaut, Ohio. There he wrote a manuscript which he called "The Manuscript Found." He read it to numerous of his relatives and friends. Its leading characters bore such names as Mormon, Moroni, Lamanite and Nephi. It divided the population of this continent into two classes, the righteous and the idolatrous, and told an imaginary story of the discovery of their history as recorded on a manuscript that was centuries ago concealed in the earth. It was full of wars and rumors of wars and presented a record of the preaching of Christianity in America during the first century after Christ. Mr. Spaulding being a minister and familiar with Bible history, made his romance correspond closely to the biblical records as their sequel. In 1812 he moved to Pittsburgh. Robert Patterson had a printing establish- ment here; his foreman was Silas Engles. Spaulding desired Patterson to publish his work, but was unable to guarantee the expenses if the book should prove a failure. Patterson testified that he saw said manuscript and told Engles to print it if Spaulding furnished security for expenses He farther testified that Spaulding was unable to do so and that he supposed that Engles returned the manuscript to its author. As a matter of fact, Spaulding moved to Amity, Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1814 and died there in 1816. Joseph Miller, of Amity, was an intimate friend of Spaulding; he heard him read much of his manuscript and testified (see Pittsburgh Tele- graph in 1879) to Spaulding's telling him that while he was writing a preface for the book the manuscript was spirited away, that a Sidney Rigdon was suspected of taking it. Miller also said that when he read the Book of Mormon he at once recognized Spaulding's story. Redick McKee, of Washington County, bears the same testimony and says that Rigdon was employed in Patterson's office. Some of Rigdon's friends deny that he was employed there, but Mrs. R. J. Eichbaum, who died in Pittsburg in 1882, was clerk in the Pittsburgh postoffice from 181 1 to 1816, her father being postmaster. She gave testimony to the intimacy between Rigdon and Lamdin, their coming to the office together, and Engles' telling her that "Rigdon was always hanging about the printing office." It is also a matter of fact that Lamdin became Patterson's business partner in 1818. Spaulding's widow testified that Rigdon was connected with the office in some way. It seems evident that Rigdon was about the office, to say the least. Six years later he returned to Pittsburgh as the pastor of the Baptist church. Patterson had died in 1814; Lamdin died in 1825; Engles in 1827. Rigdon's pastorate was while both were yet alive and he was intimate with both. Rev. John Winter, M. D., known to many in western Pennsylvania, testified that he was in Rigdon's study in Pittsburg in the winter of 1822-3, that Rigdon took from his desk a large manuscript and said in substance : "A Presbyterian minister, Mr. Spaulding, whose health failed, brought this to the printer to see if it would pay to publish it. It is a romance of the Bible." Rev. A. J. Bonsall, pastor of the Baptist church in Rochester, Pa., tells me that Dr. Winter, who was his stepfather, often referred to this incident, saying that the manuscript purported to be a history of the American Indian, and that Rigdon said he got it from the printers. Mrs. Mary W. Irvine, of Sharon, Pa., Dr. Winter's daughter, says : "I have frequently heard my father speak of Rigdon's having Spaulding's manuscript, that he said he got it from the printer to read as a curiosity. As such he showed it to my father and then seemed to have no intention of using it as he evidently afterward did. Father always said that Rigdon helped Smith in his scheme by revising and transforming this manuscript into the Mormon Bible." As late as 1879 a Mrs. Amos Dunlap, of Warren, Ohio, wrote of having visited the Rigdons when she was young and of his taking a manuscript from his trunk and becoming greatly absorbed in it. His wife threatened to burn it, but he said, "No, indeed, you will not ; this will be a great thing some day.” In 1820 the Widow Spaulding married Mr. Davidson, of Hartwick, Otsego County, New York; in May, 1839, the Boston Recorder published a statement from her made to and recorded by Rev. D. R. Austin, of Monson, Mass., to the effect that a Mormon preacher took a copy of the Mormon Bible to New Salem, Ohio, where her husband had lived and written much of his manuscript, and read from it at a public meeting. She said that many of the older people immediately recognized it as her husband's romance and that his brother, John Spaulding, arose then and there and protested against such a use of his late brother's writings. Rigdon wrote to the Boston Recorder an emphatic and coarse denial of this fact and said that he had never heard of such a man as Spaulding. The reader may judge, after what has been said, whether he ever had. In August, 1880, Scribner's Monthly published some testimony from Solomon Spaulding's daughter, Mrs. M. S. McKinstry, of Washington, D. C. She certifies to the same facts and bears testimony to the parallelism between the Book of Mormon and her father's romance. Mrs. President Garfield's father, Mr. Z. Rudolph, knew Rigdon well and says that "during the winter previous to the appearance of the Mormon Bible Rigdon spent weeks away from home, gone no one knew where; when he returned he seemed very much preoccupied, talked in a dreamy, imaginative way, and puzzled his listeners. His joining the Mormons so quickly made his neighbors sure that he was in the secret of the authorship of the Book of Mormon." The book was printed in the office of the Wayne Sentinel, Palmyra, N. Y. The editor was Pomeroy Tucker. In 1867 he printed a book, "Origin and Progress of Mormonism." In it he says that during the summer of 1827 (the "Leaves of Gold" were found in September, 1827) a stranger made several mysterious visits at Smith's home. He was afterward recognized as Rigdon, who afterward preached the first Mormon sermon in Palmyra. This statement is corroborated by Mrs. Dr. Horace Eaton, who lived in Palmyra for more than thirty years. Not to weary patience, let me say that testimony has been secured from many others. As early as 1835 Mr. E. D. Howe, of Painesville, Ohio, printed the full testimony of eight reliable witnesses, such persons as John Spaulding and wife, Martha; Henry Lake, a former business associate of Solomon Spaulding; Oliver Smith, Aaron Wright, and Nahum Howard, all of Conneaut, Ohio, all of whom certified that the Book of Mormon and Spaulding's romance were in substance identical. Finally, Rigdon's brother-in-law, Rev. Adam Bently, and Alexander Campbell both testify ("The Millennial Harbinger/' 1844) that as much as two years before the Mormon Bible made its appearance Rigdon told them that "such a book was coming out, the manuscript of which had been found engraved on gold plates." In spite of this Rigdon claimed that he first heard of the Book of Mormon from Parley P. Pratt in August, 1830. In the light of this evidence, the Book of Mormon did not “come fourth” from any devine authority, rather it is a fortold counterfeit with Satan’s fingerprints.
You know what would be amazing, a ex mormon bar or call it the Forman? Have all the drinks named after apostles or Mormon, weird shit. Like, if you live in Utah why not open this bar up.
As always, it’s such a pleasure to watch your videos! It makes the boring task of doing the dishes actually enjoyable. Sam, I can’t find your song on RU-vid music! Will it be released to that platform?
Was that a creepy recipe, a challenge, or apologetics? You two have still got it. Your love and support for one anther through all this is inspirational for anyone desiring healthy friendships. Thanks for bravely living out loud. Cheers 💚💚💚
A few years ago The Book of Jeraneck ( an ancient History of God's dealings with the inhabitants of the British Isles) was published. It's very much like the B.O.M.
Meet my bishop to resign, cool. I did that too last Sunday. You have this thing you know you want but put off but then one day, something just clicks and you meet your bishop the very next day.
How about our favorite BOM phrase; "Now it came to pass...", "and it came to pass", ... ha, pass the gass. In the Palmyra Edition (its easy for me to remember, because its my birthday) has the phrase 1123 times! One Thousand eleven hundred and twenty-three fucking times ! OMG 😱 How could anyone not inspired write such a thing?? WTF? "Chloroform in Print" --Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) marcus
Someone already did it. A Course in Miracles is 1333 pages, which is much longer than BOM. Helen Schucman, an atheist psychologist, was the "scribe" and said God wrote it. She didn't seek wealth, fame and to manipulate and abuse others with the book, though.
You kidding, i can write a million words on the realistic parameters. And there would be no contradictions, scientific absurdities, or glorification of atrocities. And English was my worst subject in school. Only problem would be getting started with an idea.
To find out more about Native American history, read the book “1491” by Charles Mann. It’s about what we’ve learned about the Americas before the Europeans bumped into it. Until I read it I thought all this history has been lost. Actually, there is more left than was once realized. Fascinating.
The appendix of professor Charles Anton's book has a system of coinage that is identical to the one found in the Book of Mormon. Too bad no Nephite coins are in any museums, unlike coins from real societies like ancient Rome, Greece, Lydia, Phoenicia, Persia, China, etc.
It's funny how many of these arguments resemble those that claim that some common schmoe from Stratford-upon-Avon couldn't possibly have written the plays of Shakespeare.
Hey! Can you link your friend's insta in the discription so I know i'm seeing the right one? Can't seem to find it and I NEED the paddington print you dont understand
I don't know why people mock the book of Mormon. What do they expect it to be? Let's see the people that say this. Take each person in the book of Mormon and try. People want to find everything wrong with Joseph Smith
Because the book is obviously Witten by Joseph Smith. It sounds just like sermons written and preached before the BoM with a plot ripped from Oliver's pastor's book A View of the Hebrews. Plus all the wrong technology and plants and animals. Wrong place and wrong time for each of them.
All research has been done when you read Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman. I’m half way through with an overloaded shelf. Remember to read the footnotes as you will then be amazed by the amount of research.
read that one. richard bushman is hardly what you’d call a traditional believer. even he admitted the book of mormon is pseudographia, his word not mine.
Wow. Once again, comparing what’s in the Book of Mormon to real Native American history it’s hilarious. At this point we have the history of the founding of the Inca Empire, the Aztec empire, and a surprising amount about the Mayan world. We’ve also begun to find out more and more about North American people, including the Algonquian culture, Cahokia and quite a bit more. And of course, none of it lines up to anything in Joseph Smith’s fantasy.
Video idea: read and comment on the Q&A section of Donny Osmond's website. I grew up loving Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat DVD. Now that I've been to his website, I'm not sure I can separate the art from the artist. His greatest hits include, "women should only work if they have to supplement their husband's income...women working so they can have a 'luxurious lifestyle' is immoral," "I love my gay friends....as long as they're celibate," and "yeah, it was rough working with scantily-clad women in Joseph*." Footnote* he's shirtless for much of the first act, showing far more skin than most of his colleagues (of all genders).
In regard to your subject, have you seen the relatively recent thing called “the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon”? It’s LONG, even more boring than the bom, and utterly ridiculous.
Isn't it fascinating humans went from the stone age to building *real* transoceanic ships? And from there the technology only gets more grand! Same with airplanes.
Flippancy isn’t a rebuttal. They just laughed at all the points without actually engaging. All the times they said “what are you talking about?” only goes to show that they didn’t even understand the arguments being made, yet they were able to refute those arguments? This just looks like bulverism to me.
@@ZelphOntheShelf okay, in that case I suppose it doesn’t matter so much. It’s just easy for mormons to wave it away as mean spirited, and stop listening if we don’t have our facts and sources ready to back us up. The mormons are getting smarter though. This came up recently while on the subject of reformed Egyptian, and I didn’t know how to argue against it: m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XQX4idWORQs.html How should we respond to this?
I live the library of Congress. It is full of millions of books. Books created by every demographic of author that Joseph Smith diuies in, young, make, uneducated,...
Satan hates The Book of Mormon because it instills in the sincere reader a deeper faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It brings peace, hope, joy and will cause the sincere reader a deeper desire to seek Christ’s grace in changing their lives to be more like Christ. It is a wonderful second witness of The Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder satan attacks it every chance he gets! He hates anything that brings peace, hope faith or builds testimony in Jesus Christ.
It also teaches that God cursed the lamanites with dark skin to make them ugly to white people. even the church’s top scholars like richard bushman say that the book of mormon is a product of the 19th century. you don’t need satan to attack it. it falls apart with the most basic critical thinking.
That document you are reading is bogus. I agree with you; it makes some flimsy arguments. However, there are still some important points to bring up: I don't believe in the way that the Book of Mormon came forth, but I can accept it as an inspired commentary on the Bible, but not a literal history. The King James English used in the Book of Mormon is terrible. It's not that great in the Bible, either. According to an article I read it Dialog a couple of years ago, JS had a better education than people today give him credit for. As for a 23-year-old writing a book, somebody pointed out in the comments that there were many brilliant young authors. There are many Hebraisms (words, sentence structure, principles) that people are just now discovering. Some of the names are actual Hebrew words. I don't think people realize this. I don't know how Joseph or anybody close to The Book of Mormon borrows a lot from the Bible, but many of the changes are significant and teach us something. I believe Joseph Smith had help from Oliver and Emma. They were more educated than Joseph. Also, back on those days, it was easy to have correspondence with other preachers and authors.
Could i plagiarize 20% of the bible WORD FOR WORD then use thousands of other phrases (the tanners did this work) that are also from The Bible while stealing some of its stories (Alma the younger), while its Opus is just "jesus also came here and gave the sermon on the mount word for word" Uhh, yeah, I could do that.
I hope that my husband will see me later. I am just hoping 🙏 🙂 😌 that I don't have to wait until we get to Norway before I am going back to Valhalla. Which is currently a cemetery near the Burbank Airport. I hope that I get to burn the green fig leaf 🍃 and I 🇳🇴 🙏 to Odin 🇸🇪 Sweden so I can only hope to get married again in 🇳🇴 Norway 🇳🇴. I served my mission there. I just want to know if Anne Olsen still even cares about the last thing I did for her even matters. But I have to ✋️ ✋️ and 🇳🇴 Norway whether either way that I get to tour both temples In Norway. 🛕 But I can only hope now that I can at least pick up a sword before we get to Vallhalla. The one in Scandinavia.
