Mormon Myths

More articles from this series: Part 1 Argument: " Theories that want to explain the Book of Mormon as a 19th century book, have to somehow account for not just the contents of the book, but the manner in which it was produced. " - Stephen Smoot's summary of Richard Bushman's argument in Rough Stone Rolling. Response: It would be both fair & accurate to describe this as rhetorical sleight of hand that conflates the method of production with substantive validation of it's contents. It is fundamentally arbitrary and a clever attempt at shifting the burden of proof. When employed, this argument creates an unattainably high evidentiary standard that amounts to a form of special pleading in order to sidestep well established standards of rigorous historical scrutiny with respect to ancient texts. A far more appropriate and balanced question would be:  ' Does the text's content align with the historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence we have avail...

A little over two years ago when I started the Mormon Myths page, I was admittedly unaware of the latest wave of bizarre arguments coming from the likes of the Cavalry's admin/moderator roster. As time went on, more missionaries from that group would occasionally comment on my posts & send me messages parroting them. It eventually became clear to that these young men were getting these quips from someone/somewhere, and eventually I would pinpoint their origin with the help of one of those missionaries in particular. (Thanks Preston) Since then, I have had a lot of time to do reflection & study. Investigating whether they had any merit, and whether I was simply behind the times and needed to catch up. In this series, I'm going to seek to tackle the most frequent arguments I've heard/seen online from Cavalry members and Cavalry-adjacent Mormon apologists who use them in their discussions and respond from a historic Christian perspective with the necessary disclaim...

Last week, a follower notified me of this post in the Somewhat Civil Christian Debates FaceBook group by their Mormon moderator: In this article, we are going to explore Smith's arguments & whether or not they hold any water under scrutiny, and I shall do my best to respond point by point. First , I'd like to point out that Smith is not giving credit to his source for these allegations of false prophecies in the Bible.  The content of Smith's forthcoming arguments originates (almost verbatim) from this  FAIRMormon / LDS article  and if one takes the time to compare the two, it is rather plain to see that he is well... plagiarizing his peers arguments here. Of course, Smith is free to do as he pleases on the internet. However I cannot help but wonder, why he didn't bother to just drop the link & point people to the relevant sections to read it for themselves? But I digress.  Those of us who are not believing members of the Mormon religion, may already be famil...