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| + | #REDIRECT [[Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink]] |
| − | {{Resource Title|Mockery, hyperbole and nonsense statements from MormonThink.com}}
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| − | |title=[[../|MormonThink]]
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| − | |author=Anonymous
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| − | |section=Mockery and hyperbole
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| − | {{MormonThinkIndexClaimQuote
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| − | |claim=There's an episode of the cartoon South Park called "All About the Mormons". In the episode, a faithful LDS family tells the story of the Lost 116 pages to a neighbor boy they are trying to convert. They tell this story as proof that Joseph Smith was telling the truth and Mormonism is true. Perhaps the most telling comment we've ever heard about the Lost 116 pages debacle comes from the neighborhood boy, who, after hearing the story of the Lost 116 pages, exclaims ""Wait, Mormons actually know this story and they still believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet?"<ref>Editor's Comments, "The Lost 116 Page of the Book of Mormon," ''MormonThink.com''</ref>
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| − | |response=Why yes, ''of course'' we should give credence to a satirical cartoon as providing valuable insight when determining what our most life-altering and sacred religious beliefs entail.
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| − | {{MormonThinkIndexClaimQuote
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| − | |claim=The Nephites and Lamanites were primitive peoples. Joseph Smith would have been considered a scholar compared to any Indians that lived 2,000 years ago. Yet we don't question that the ancient Indians wrote the original Book of Mormon, but we totally reject the idea that a 19th century man couldn't have done the same thing. That makes reason stare.
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| − | |response=The authors seem to naively equate "ancient" with "primitive," and they actually insult both present day Native Americans and "ancient Indians" with their statements. There was nothing "primitive" about the Nephites and the Lamanites: they had sophisticated societies and the ability to keep records. It is one thing to write a history of one's own time and place that one experiences with such matters as angelic visitations, theophanies, revelations, and the appearance of the resurrected Christ. It is quite another to ''concoct'' a fictional account of such things, complete with the complex and internally consistent geography, theology, cultural behaviors, and other matters that are counter-intuitive for the modern author/translator.
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| − | Furthermore, Joseph Smith was the first to admit that he was no scholar. In his 1832 history, he started by explaining, "we were deprived of the bennifit of an education suffice it to say I was mearly instructid in reading <del>and</del> writing and the ground <ins>rules</ins> of Arithmatic which constuted my whole literary acquirements." Joseph Smith, at the age at which he dictated the Book of Mormon, was no scholar.
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| − | {{MormonThinkIndexClaimQuote
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| − | |claim=Very few objective people would disagree that the Book of Mormon pales in comparison to such literary masterpieces as A Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace or any the works of William Shakespeare. Many books are far more complex and difficult to write than the BOM. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings fiction series, not only are multiple interacting civilizations created, but also their own languages. If William Shakespeare had said that an angel gave him a set of gold plates in which he translated the Book of Mormon, no one would have believed him because everyone knows that Mr. Shakespeare was certainly capable of writing a book like the BOM based on the other impressive works he wrote.
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| − | So we think it's pretty certain that the Book of Mormon is not so spectacular of a book that no one on the planet could have possibly written it without divine intervention.
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| − | |response=The claim that Latter-day Saints believe that the Book of Mormon is "so spectacular of a book that no one on the planet could have possibly written it without divine intervention" is pure hyperbole on the part of the MormonThink author. We believe that the book could not have been produced by Joseph Smith, given his educational background and under the circumstances that it was, without divine intervention.
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| − | Similarly, Latter-day Saints also do not claim that the Book of Mormon is a "literary masterpiece" comparable to the works of Shakespeare or Dickens. Again, this is hyperbole on the part of the MormonThink author. Latter-day Saints believe that the Book of Mormon is a book of scripture, comparable to the Bible, that contains spiritual truths. <ref>"Could Joseph Smith have written the Book of Mormon," MormonThink.com</ref>
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