The Lamanites were probably the most in need of a savior, as they had turned from God, and having Christ appear to them would turn their flinty hearts back to the True Religion so fast it would make your head spin, because it seems to me that the line between good and bad was much more obvious in Lehi's decendants than any geo-political-religious differences in around the Middle East.

But what does God do? Does he move up the timeline to send his One and Only Begotten Son to save the Lamanites? After all, they were part of the group that arrived in a land reserved for them by God Himself (well, along with 2 or 3 other groups that arrived before Lehi arrived in a promised that was "kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations").

No, he goes "sort of" Old Testament on the Lamanites and screws them over because of their wickedness and unbelief with a "skin of blackness". If He went REAL OT on them he would have killed them off, right?

And then later on God lets the Lamanites wipe out the Nephites because of *their* wickedness!


Pretty much everyone turned out to be an a-hole in the BoM.

I think THAT may be the biggest problem in the BoM.

If it's true.

Which it ain't.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus

And this:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Dawkins was talking about the OT but his comments, with few changes, apply also to BoM, in my opinion

Big red flag


On my waste of 2 yrs mission a guy told me that GOD broke 3 commandments in the first Chapters of the BOM

Covet ... labans plates
Steal .... Labans plates
Kill .... remove Labans Head

That Always stuck with me

3 Nephi 9

I always found this to be a bit disturbing...maybe not a blunder, per se. Christ shows up, wipes out a dozen or so cities without warning for their unspecified wickedness, and basically says to those lucky few he didn't smite, "See, don't let that happen to you. I'm really a pretty good guy once you get with the program."

Ah, yes, the famous LDS painting where JC is standing amidst the ruins and saying: "All right, c'mon--ya want some more of that shit...!?"

Don't he look kick-ass?

http://media.ldscdn.org/images/media-library/gospel-art/book-of-mormon/christ-teaching-nephites-39665-print.jpg

I love Machu Picchu in the center of the background

You're right, I'd never noticed!

Also, JC must be about 7 feet tall if you compare him with the others.

Mountain peaks look Machu Picchu, but the pyramid is definite
Toltec-Maya from around 1000 years after Jesus.

Caption: "Don't shoot! Can't you see I'm unarmed. Even though I fucked up your cities, drowned a bunch of people, burnt to death a bunch of others . . . But hey, wasn't that some entrance!"

"Jesus, sir, before you leave again would you please put all this heavy stone stuff that you knocked down back to the way it was?"

"Are-you-SATISFIED?"-ly yrs,
S

Lehi and Nephi had very 19th-century ideas about Native Americans.

The author.

(The poor 11 "witnesses" were pawns)
Why would a book need witnesses? Because the author knew it was unbelievable, as was he.

"And when I am far on the road to conviction and eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen the plates too, and not only seen those plates, but hefted them, I am convinced. I couldn't feel more satisfied and at rest if then entire Whitmer family had testified."

-Mark Twain

http://www.salamandersociety.com/marktwain/

I think the part as mishie telling investigators about the whitewashed story about JS using his special tool [U&T] to translate the BoM. And here is the biggest blunder.

"Excuse me Elders. What happened to the gold plates? Does your church keep them in a special place for viewing? Can we see them for ourselves?"

No. They are no longer on Earth. God took them back.

Ugh! I still can't believe that I told people such nonsense.

"God took them back."


Oooh, I harp on that a lot: God never had the plates in the first place, so why take 'em *back*?

That angel ripped off Joe Smith.

I have to say that the 'God took them back" story was a terribly fatal flaw,for me. The worst thing, I thought, was the basic idea that the Indians were Jewish. Next was the horribly poor, desperately faked-sounding language of the book.

Then, "God took the only evidence back." My first and only thoughts were, "How can anyone fall for that tired old ploy? Can people really be so gullible that this doesn't make them instantly realize that this is a scam?"

Between page 1, and the end?

ALMA 7:10.

How can Christians of all stripes reconcile with that?????

Finding "blunders" in the BOM is like finding something that doesn't make sense in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. It's all fictional, except Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings is more believable.

If your life gets so messed up you have to go back and read all that JS crap, take a deep breath and remember he plagiarized most of it and made the rest of it up as he went.

I, myself, consider Stan Lee a more entertaining author than that manipulative POS Smith.

If the BoM was the work of the imaginations of JS in an attempt to inflate his ego and make a name for himself, everything in it that he fabricated and plagiarized (and then twisted) is all a blunder when you add the 10% tithing, temple ordinances and rituals, and the time, talents, property, and abilities of its members to the LDS church.

Somewhere in the BOM is the statement ,,he had a mighty steel bow. First there was no steel in those times. Second , you can not make a bow of steel. They haven't to this day.

Steel appears to be first invented around 1800 BC in Turkey but did not start becoming widespread until about the same time as Lehi left the Jerusalem, but it was not known in that region. Steel bows were invented in India a couple of hundred years later. It's very possible to make a powerful bow from steel. Look up Spring Steel Bows on youtube for some funny examples.

There is an absolutely hilarious defense of the Fine Steel Bow passage in the Book of Morons by dear Bill Hamblin from BYU Fine steel bows are also referred to in an anachronistic manner in the King James Bible. Bill claims fine steel bow is a mistranslation and it actually refers to a recurved bow, of which there were many examples in the old world, but didn't really appear until after about 500AD with the plains indians in the Americas, and these were made from mountain sheep horns.

Thanks. Very interesting.

As mentioned, there are numerable problems, most of which can be grasped fairly quickly. But also handwaved via faith and such without too much consideration. You have to overcome that faith hurdle.

I think the most strongest blunder then is the long ending of Mark 16 included in Mormon 9.

Quick summary:
Mark 16:18
New Testament
They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.


Mormon 9:24
Book of Mormon
And these signs shall follow them that believe—in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover;

And of course, most mormons, or Christians will have no idea what the long ending of Mark is. This is a very useful entry into the discussion in the case of Mormons. Mormons are primed to believe the Bible is flawed because of the first Article of Faith.

The Long Ending of Mark is a fairly well attested as a late addition to the book of Mark. Though hints occur for possible earlier versions, there are very late discussions that are striking for not acknowledging the longer ending. So if it existed, it was poorly distributed and not canonical until much later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16#Significance_of_ending_at_verse_8

Since the long ending is a fabrication of later men, how can including it in the concluding words of Mormon be authentic?

Simply, Joseph Smith was plagiarizing and didn't the know his New Testament source was a fake.

Another excellent point. Without getting into who actually wrote the Gospel of Mark, the original ending has the women meeting a "young man" at the tomb who tells them Jesus isn't there because he has risen, and they freak and go running off like they're in a Benny Hill sketch.

Some scholars think there may be a lostend section, but I don't think many/any say the whole "serpents...and poison...and laying on of hands" stuff is real.

There are a lot of blunders, and if I remember right, some or one of the later "prophets" summarized a few things that had occurred with earlier prophets in the BofM from several hundred years before. These last few prophets made themselves sound like they had traveled back in time, and were on-the-scene reporters.I may be wrong, but it seemed like that. Then there's all the tedious "it came to pass" novelties.

It insists upon itself. What other book tries to "prove" itself with witnesses? Unknown people testify to the truthiness of it before the opening murder scene.

I thought the overall biggest blunder is the entire theme of Native Americans being descendants of old world sea voyages. And, that they started out as white-skinned and genteel, and were explicitly turned into dark-skinned wild aborigines for rejecting the pre-Columbian advent of Jesus to the Americas. This theme is overtly racist.

But lately I've gotten even more basic.

Now I think the book's premise as a necessary second testimony to prop up the bible is just transparently contrived. It establishes a circular-dependence of the BoM on the bible. If the bible is bullshit then the BoM is too. The bible is, in fact, bull shit...so the BoM falls right there.

I don't think there are many errors you can point to. The one glaring error is only the white pages between the blue covers.

and quoting the New Testament about 600 years too soon.

Not having any "Mormon" doctrine in it.

Moroni's promise (Moroni 10:4) was always a problem for me because it tells us to ask if it's NOT true.