Since this was voted on by "the public," I have a suspicion that the ballot boxes were stuffed... What are the chances mormons were told to go vote for the BoM once it was on the list of nominees?
There are way too many restrictions on this survey to make it something valid. It is strictly American literature which would eliminate a number of influential religious works like the Bible or the Koran. I find it interesting that the other works mentioned in the article are (also) all fiction - "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "To Kill a Mockingbird", and "Slaughterhouse-Five". Only "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" could be considered as anything close to being non-fiction of the selections mentioned.
I have to admit it was the most influential book in my early life. It was forced on me, and I hated it. It brought me no end of trouble with my father. No other book achieved that much.
Leaving Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Influential does not mean positive or negative.
Yep. No matter what mormons say, you know what the most amazing thing about the BoM actually is?
That it has influenced millions of otherwise sane people to join a money-grubbing cult and blindly obey idiotic leaders -- and most of them have done so without even reading the book! Now *that* is amazing.
I could see how it might influence young fiction writers, but they would certainly want to improve upon it. It could also influence con artists (like L. Ron, for example) to cook up new money-making schemes.
"[Sen. Orrin] Hatch noted that while the Book of Mormon may be considered part of the American literature collection, more than 15 million members worldwide believe that the book dates back to the origin of man."
WTF? Dates back to the origin of man? The man needs to get back on his meds and out of public view.
Online polls are taylor made for groups like Mormons to overwhelm. I never heard of this poll and I'm sure most Americans hadn't either. But it's just the thing that Mormons would use a "forward this email to everyone on your list" to get Mormons to skew the results.
REAL polling is very difficult. The main thing you need to get an accurate result is a random sample. This means that everyone in the sample space is equally likely to be part of the sample. This is almost impossible to do in reality. Polling organizations have to settle for "pseudo-random" samples.
There is also a misconception that a poll with a very large sample is more accurate than a poll with a smaller sample. This is not true. It is the RANDOMNESS of the sample that is important, not the size. A very large, non-random sample can be much further off than a small, carefully chosen random sample. Online polls are not even close to a random sample.