Oh, crap. PLEASE don't refer people to that stupid South Park video! There are a few things wronf with it. One very big one is that there are ar least 14 other people who saw the plate, 11 of whom gave solemn witness to that fact which can be read in the pages before the Book of Mormon. 3 of them saw it, 8 of them touched it and saw it. Another thing is the whole translating out of a hat thing. I've never heard of that before. I thought that there was a sheet between Joseph and the scribes who wrote down what he dictated? I'll have to look that up. And as for the Martin Harris thing, they're trying to make Mormons look like idiots for believing that. What they believe is that God told Joseph 3 times not to give the manuscripts to Harris, but he did anyway. And then Martin lost the manuscripts. We know that there was an insane amount of persecution going on at the time. Smith kept having to relocate because people would attempt to steal the plates and manuscripts, torture Smith, etc. Since it was likely that some enemy of Smith's had their hands on the pages, it would have been stupid to translate them again in exactly the same way. Someone could have changed the manuscript and then shown how it was different from the new translation, thus proving Smith a false prophet. I know it seems unlikely to us, but it isn't as if Mormons have never thought about it. They aren't "dumb".

Thanks for the comment, by the way. I find this part of your wording a little confusing, though:

>> ^theaceofclubz:
The only thing they didn't really bring up was the teaching (not worshiping or preaching) of the early church history from Joe in IL to Brigham in Missouri and out to Utah. Its not that there is any practice of praying to Joe or anything that occurs (people praying to saints always seemed really weird to me) but is definitely emphasized, especially the persecution and suffering of early worshipers. They sort of gloss over the fact that http://www.videosift.com/video/History-of-Mormonism-by-South-Park actually is an accurate account of what founded the religion (if anything its even fishier), past polygamy practices, and racism (mark of Cain, no longer church doctrine).


Were you trying to say that they should have addressed the early church in the video? I can understand them not bringing up Polygamy, given that it is controversial, no longer practiced, and not as widespread among church members as one might think. I think only 1% or something like that ever practiced it. And, yes, they do talk about Joseph Smith a good amount in church. After all, faith that he was a prophet is essential for members to have.

I need to read some more about the whole Native American thing, which is probably yet another doctrine oversimplified by most people. I can't really give an accurate defense for that at this point. Although, I do have some ideas.

what a great question for Sift Talk. It's been interesting seeing such a diverse collection for users. A few brought memories while many sound interesting. Thanks for the quality question Rougy.

currently I'm re-reading

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart Erhman

From Booklist
The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Though himself schooled in evangelical literalism, Ehrman has come to regard his earlier faith in the inerrant inspiration of the Bible as misguided, given that the original texts have disappeared and that the extant texts available do not agree with one another. Most of the textual discrepancies, Ehrman acknowledges, matter little, but some do profoundly affect religious doctrine. To assess how ignorant or theologically manipulative scribes may have changed the biblical text, modern scholars have developed procedures for comparing diverging texts. And in language accessible to nonspecialists, Ehrman explains these procedures and their results. He further explains why textual criticism has frequently sparked intense controversy, especially among scripture-alone Protestants. In discounting not only the authenticity of existing manuscripts but also the inspiration of the original writers, Ehrman will deeply divide his readers. Although he addresses a popular audience, he undercuts the very religious attitudes that have made the Bible a popular book. Still, this is a useful overview for biblical history collections.

and I just finished, THE FLUORIDE DECPTION, by Christopher Bryson

From Publishers Weekly
Concerns over fluoridated drinking water have long been derided as the obsession of McCarthyite cranks. But this muckraking j’accuse asserts that fluoride is indeed a dire threat to public health, one foisted upon the nation by a vast conspiracy—not of Communist agents, but of our very own military-industrial complex. Investigative reporter Bryson revisits the decades-long controversy, drawing on mountains of scientific studies, some unearthed from secret archives of government and corporate laboratories, to question the effects of fluoride and the motives of its leading advocates. The efficacy of fluoridated drinking water in preventing tooth decay, he contends, is dubious. Fluoride in its many forms may be one of the most toxic of industrial pollutants, and Bryson cites scientific analyses linking fluoridated drinking water to bone deformities, hyperactivity and a host of other complaints. The post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water, he claims, was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program. Legendary spin doctors like Edward Bernays exploited the tenuous link between dental hygiene and fluoridation to create markets to stimulate fluoride production and to prove the innocuousness of fluoride compounds, thereby heading off lawsuits by factory workers and others poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.

The filmmakers must have got ahold of a pre-release copy of the manuscript!

hey dood, I'm trying to send you a reply to one of your comments, but VS is having trouble posting it. my email is randalltmoore@sbcglobal.net

In reply to your comment:
“how the messages were translated into other langauges and then edited and how they've changed the meaning through subsequent editions, langauges and versions.

Quite the contrary, one of the few strong points of the current bible, particularly the New Testament gospels and letters, is that it is approximately 98% identical in meaning to the earliest available greek manuscripts which date to the late 1st century.

Whether the scripture is true or not is another question, but at least the translation of the material and the =meaning= of the words has remained nearly 100% true to the earliest texts.”

how the messages were translated into other langauges and then edited and how they've changed the meaning through subsequent editions, langauges and versions.

Quite the contrary, one of the few strong points of the current bible, particularly the New Testament gospels and letters, is that it is approximately 98% identical in meaning to the earliest available greek manuscripts which date to the late 1st century.

Whether the scripture is true or not is another question, but at least the translation of the material and the =meaning= of the words has remained nearly 100% true to the earliest texts.

Here's is the first paragraph from a Wikipedia article on "Absurdism":

"Absurdism is a philosophy stating that the efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity. The word Absurd in this context does not mean "logically impossible", but rather "humanly impossible".[1] Absurdism is related to Existentialism, though should not be confused with it. Absurdism as a concept has its roots in the 19th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Absurdism as a belief system was born of the Existentialist movement when the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus broke from that philosophical line of thought and published his manuscript The Myth of Sisyphus. The aftermath of World War II provided the social environment that stimulated absurdist views and allowed for their popular development, especially in the devastated country of France."

1. ^Silentio, Johannes de. Fear and Trembling. Penguin Classics, p. 17


The rest is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism


Since it is a philosophy, I remembered a discussion about a Philosophy Collective. And guess who suggested that previously?

http://www.videosift.com/talk/Philosophy-collective-Do-we-have-one-Is-it-active


I'm amused that this has become circular.


It's been twenty-five years since I studied the Theater of the Absurd in a Playwrights and Poets course in high school. We read "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead."

Prior to his death, Foucault had destroyed most of his manuscripts and kept the publication of his works sacred in his will......good! You got no friends at Berkeley here....the philosophers curse, the deleuezional's salvation.....France can have them both......a grand accompaniment to their grand economy, and impeccable manners....

This is Google Tech talk describing the extraordinary restoration, imaging and deciphering effort of the Archimedes Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a manuscript which has been re-used by scraping off the original text and writing over the top).

(The following is quoted from http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8211813884612792878)

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 10th Century medieval manuscript that is the subject of an ongoing technical, scientific and conservation effort at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1999, the multidisciplinary team has been disbinding, conserving, imaging, analyzing, transcribing and studying the 174 parchment folios – yielding approximately 400Gb of data to date.

The Palimpsest, which the team affectionately calls “Archie,” includes at least seven treatises by Archimedes: The only copies of two of his Treatises, The Method and Stomachion; the only copy in Greek of On Floating Bodies; and copies of the Equilibrium of Planes, Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the Circle, and Sphere and Cylinder.

It also contains 10 pages of text by the 4th century B.C. Attic Greek orator Hyperides; six folios from a Neo-Platonic philosophical text that has yet to be identified, but may be commentaries on Aristotle; four folios from a liturgical book; and twelve pages from two different books, the text of which has yet to be deciphered.