Are Mormons weirdo's?

[Jazz Spazz]

For those that don't know what that means, Mormons believe that Native Americans are descendents from a bad guy named "Laman." And that he was such a bad guy that god cursed him and his descendants to have dark skin.

Maybe I need to backup more for those that don't know. Mormons believe a group of Israelites/Jews sailed from somewhere in the middle-east (someone will have to help me on where the first promised land is speculated to be) to Central (or South) America and were the first people to settle the continents. Eventually all of the good guys were wiped out for their unrighteousness, but all of the bad guys that descended from the bad Laman survived and went on to populate two continents (to the tune of several million people) in the span of about 2,000 years. Which means that all Native Americans are just dark jews, genetic evidence notwithstanding.

I read your response as two parts "this is what I believe" (which doesn't apply to what the general LDS population believe or - in my case - were taught) and one part revisionist 'history'*. Obviously I touched a nerve there, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten a neg rep. But to each their own.

The strongest point of your post is in bold.

* Pardon the tone that can be gathered, but it seems fair to say that you would deem some things history that I would not. And the "revisionist" part is what you just said in your last paragraph.

The strongest part of your posts are in bold.

I'm with Colton on this.

About the dark skin, I think it's pretty basic. Anybody who runs around almost naked all day, every day, will be "cursed" with "dark" skin... and it will be self inflicted. How many people today go out tanning to get dark skin? In the scriptures a curse from God is more a natural consequence of not listening to him, rather than him throwing a lightning bolt, or "dark skin" at someone from the sky.

Just my 2 cents

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

Colton Wrote:

By the way, your implications that Mormons ignore science are just plain stupid, especially given the large numbers of Mormon scientists in the world -- of which I am one. And it's clear that LDS church leadership take science seriously as well. For example, in the not too distant past (1 year? 3 years?) they changed the official Introduction to the BoM to read "After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians" instead of "they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians" as it used to say, I'm sure to better reflect what science has taught us.

If a book was translated by a Prophet of God, and we are to assume the words that he translates are god's words directly, why the need to change passages in the attempt "to better reflect what science has taught us"? Was God not up to speed scientifically speaking when he passed these words onto Joseph?

I'm sure that question sounds like I'm directly attack the LDS faith, which I'm not. We've seen modern day changes in many religious doctrines by many different denominations. My problem with it is, as Christian, I've been taught that God is all-knowing. He always has been, he always will be. Should his word not stand the test of time without nearly constant manipulation and changing?

 

[CONAN]

LOL! Haters gotta hate I guess.

 

[Archie Moses]

Colton Wrote:



If a book was translated by a Prophet of God, and we are to assume the words that he translates are god's words directly, why the need to change passages in the attempt "to better reflect what science has taught us"? Was God not up to speed scientifically speaking when he passed these words onto Joseph?

I'm sure that question sounds like I'm directly attack the LDS faith, which I'm not. We've seen modern day changes in many religious doctrines by many different denominations. My problem with it is, as Christian, I've been taught that God is all-knowing. He always has been, he always will be. Should his word not stand the test of time without nearly constant manipulation and changing?

What do you think about changing the Mosaic Law, guy? What do you think about the Bible having prophets and apostles and having them now?

 

[PearlWatson]

They prefer "peculiar" for some reason.

 

[colton]

If a book was translated by a Prophet of God, and we are to assume the words that he translates are god's words directly, why the need to change passages in the attempt "to better reflect what science has taught us"? Was God not up to speed scientifically speaking when he passed these words onto Joseph?

The changes I was talking about are changes to the "Introduction". That's not part of what was translated by Joseph Smith. The Introduction was written by church leaders (presumably mainly Bruce R. McConkie, also author of the book Mormon Doctrine) sometime around 1980, I believe, to give readers a better starting point as to what the book was about. Sort of like a press release, almost. You can read it here: https://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng. The change I mentioned is in the second paragraph.

For what it's worth, the Book of Mormon itself has changed very minimally since Joseph Smith's day. Spelling, punctuation, some typos, that type of thing.

 

[babe]

OK. I'll bite, too.

The term "weirdo" is the special language of imbeciles and other substandard thinkers who are encountering something that ought to provoke actual new thinking, but feel uncomfortable about it, and just wanna diss it all outta hand.

It describes the person wielding the label and usually bears no intelligence about the folks so labelled.

I am impressed with some of the new apologetics Mormons are coming up with, but I think their haste to seize the 'Science' is unwise. Of course Joseph Smith would have been correctly apprised of the facts by the Angel Moroni who said the book was about ancient people in America who came here with Lehi. Of course everything we know to say about it all now, scientifically-speaking, will be looking pretty wrong in another two hundred years.

Here's a tease on what the problems with the science might be: Migrations of humans thousands of years ago are probably not conclusively known. Might not ever be. The migration of an individual into a population of millions can either go without propagation or for some trait or marker can become the dominant marker in that gene pool. Let's face it. Statistics are hard to follow, but the mRNA work limits the entire human species to descendants of only seven "mothers" living a hundred thousand years ago, and in a few ten thousands of years or so, these will all be lost as putative common ancestors. There is a discrete, real rate of "extinction" as well as a discrete real rate of origination of all genetic markers. While one must look for millions or billions of "ancestors" living only one or two thousand years ago, our ability to prove descent from any one grows statistically impossible over the same short time span.

Take a look at the marker used to prove the consistency of the cohens, Levites living among the Jews but reckoned by male descent instead of matriarchal descent like most Jews figure it. Judah and Levi were brothers, but the marker showing descent from Levi is virtually excluded from the Jewish men today. By the same standard, any marker existing in European Jews could just as well disappear from those living in the Americas for a few thousand years.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

The changes I was talking about are changes to the "Introduction". That's not part of what was translated by Joseph Smith. The Introduction was written by church leaders (presumably mainly Bruce R. McConkie, also author of the book Mormon Doctrine) sometime around 1980, I believe, to give readers a better starting point as to what the book was about. Sort of like a press release, almost. You can read it here: https://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng. The change I mentioned is in the second paragraph.

For what it's worth, the Book of Mormon itself has changed very minimally since Joseph Smith's day. Spelling, punctuation, some typos, that type of thing.

Thanks for clarifying that with an actual response instead of the typical rhetoric I'm seeing from other board members.