Is that behavior unique to Mormons? Or to questions of faith generally? I think most people don’t know how they come to believe what they do. They just believe one way or another, be that about politics, religion, science (by the general public), medicine, aliens, etc. You’re addressing a failing of humans generally, not that of Mormons in particular.
The degree of it is relatively unique to mormons, yes - though not entirely unique, as there are various other flagrantly problematic beliefs that engender extreme levels of kneejerk denial of reality, such as belief in conspiracy theorists.
This is kind of a mote/beam thing - and my motes don’t make their beams look any less beamish.
IIRC, there are actual translation manuscripts, showing symbols from the papyrus and the paragraphs they were translated into. Larson’s book has photographs of them … again, IIRC.
Yes, it is from the Alphabet and Grammar, but you must be in denial about the significance of the correlations. From http://www.bookofabraham.com/intro.html :
What’s with the eye-rolly thingy? They most certainly did know what should go in the holes in the papyrus, since these documents were fairly common in Egyptology. We also know what the meaning of all the stuff in the picture was, and Joseph Smith described his own accounting of the drawing elements. Unfortunately for Mormon apologists, Smith got absolutely everything completely wrong.
“Denial” is not just a river in Egypt!
Personally, I am glad you are posting here ‘openly’, and in no way do I wish to attack you. I have intense curiosity on this kind of thing, and not as “y’all are nuts!”. I do admit to having a bias, but not grudging one.
Looking at the ‘horse article’, its clear it also could be of Spanish origin and says so clearly. Using that as a basis does not seem to support any conclusiveness as ‘evidence’ (imho). The article says there would be a big resort built (upon such important findings?)- was there further ‘research’ into this important discovery?
Plus, from that article -> " Radiocarbon dating of 340 years, plus or minus 40 years, puts the death of the horse sometime between 1625 and 1705, Mojado said." Around 50 years prior to recorded Spanish doings, possibly (probably?) an earlier expedition, right? You are saying this supports a ‘theory’ of horses being here 10000+ yrs ago, (per LDS doctrine)? Is that what is offered as strong evidence for ‘smart Mormons’? Please clarify if I am mistaking this at all. No snark meant, I promise - just qualifying how your terms are used, OK? I do not intend to take this thread this direction further, but it does mean a lot to me regarding ‘scrutiny’. Being relatively new here on the Dope, I wanna be ‘careful’ in my steps.
Plus, I have over two decades of medical 3D-modeling (‘post-processing’), and getting the image/data acquisition(s) themselves with NucMed, CT, X-ray(diag), MRI, and US. With degrees/Registry/etc. Smart non-Mormon (shrugging playfully) 
As you’re relatively new here, I’ll gently point out that this sort of argument isn’t likely to get much traction - he very well might be a rocket scientist himself. Also, among the mormons I know are two electrical engineers, and a rocket scientist (militiary applications), and that’s just in my immediate family. It’s a simple fact that you can be very smart, and ‘turn it off’ on certain subjects. Compartmentalization and all that.
Face it, the LDS church is unique-it differs from all sects of Christianity in many, major ways:
-ongoing revelation from God (via the chief prophet)
-the bizarre claims about the Hebrews in N. America
-the Book of Mormon which has no corroboration
-the doctrine of “preexisting souls”
Plus the secretive nature of the church-you don’t get the total story till you have joined up.
All of this makes for a certain weirdness.
I don’t know that hardly any of this is both unique and major - many people think they get prayers answered and/or think the pope does it better than others; it’s not the only religion with its own holy book (the Quran, anyone?); and for specific bizarre theological claims Scientology is easily its match. And it’s not particularly secretive either; only a small portion of its doctorine is supposed to be clandestine, as far as I know.
ETA: my point isn’t that mormonism is right. It’s just not all that notable in the respects you refer to. And there’s no reason to limit the things you’re comparing it to to Christianity - not that the rest of Christianity is particularly homogenous either.
I know that. Did you see my “(shrugging playfully)” ending? Thanks, though (sincerely). I shall make myself get my ‘quote tags’ under control ASAP as it would’ve been much clearer - my bit was responding to his BA pronouncement and ‘smart mormons’; no more, no less. I give ~Degrees little weight myself. I’ve known many old Sergeants to kick ass mentally on Lieutenants - if the analogy works
ETA: we’re on the same page here essentially. I am into the rocket science(s) myself, fwiw, LOL.
Although it may sound self-serving to you, this isn’t one of those issues where everyone has a valid viewpoint. It’s a question of historical fact, not faith. The moon landings happened; the fact that millions believe they were a hoax doesn’t mean they have a point. The events detailed in the Book of Mormon just didn’t happen for any number of historical reasons, not least being that the book was made up out of whole cloth in the early 1800s. Just because you and your smart friends want to believe this fiction for religious reasons doesn’t mean that your views have any legitimacy. They simply don’t.
This is why I didn’t bother engaging with your argument point-by-point earlier. What’s the point? You have a checklist of counter-arguments, and neither of us is open to changing our opinion at this late date.
Mormon apologists know that there is zero evidence for the Book of Mormon. That’s why they don’t even bother trying to make their case to the legions non-Mormon archeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and historians studying pre-Columbian North and South America. The sole purpose of Mormon apologetics is carve out a space of ambiguity wherein church members can tell themselves “I guess it COULD be true.” No objective third-parties find these arguments compelling or even worth responding to as they are transparently devotional in nature.
I will respond to your horse argument as I feel it’s indicative of the Mormon approach to scientific evidence. I would encourage you to read your own cite, as I don’t think it says what you think it does. They found two horses and a burro that they think date from 1625-1705 in California. This is puzzling because the Spanish hadn’t yet reached California and the animals hadn’t been shod in the Spanish way. If you’re a Mormon, you simply file this tidbit away in your “Joseph Smith Was Right” notebook, and feel confident that there were plenty of horses in pre-Columbian America and the Book of Mormon has been vindicated! Unfortunately, that’s not quite what the article says. Were there horses before the Spanish? Probably not. This is one tiny piece of discordant evidence that may or may not change what scientists know. There may be better explanations for the presence of these three animals (like they came from Spanish settlements far from CA) than that they survived the American horse extinction in 10,000 BC. The point is that scientists will approach this question not having already determined the answer, unlike Mormons. I am open to horses in America, if that’s what the evidence shows. I would even chalk it up on your side of the ledger. I only wish that people would approach things this way, instead of sifting through mountains of data unfavorable to their positions and cherry-picking the odd result.
Haven’t you ever wondered that while thousands of people study their way out of the Mormon church, no one ever studies their way in? Religious claims are best kept completely separate from testable factual claims. As thousands of Mormons learn each year.
Unfortunately, the edit window expired, but I wanted to clarify above that by “studying their way in” to the Mormon church, I mean scholarly independent research. Anything with a modicum of objectivity or third-party sources.
I do not consider taking the discussions with the missionaries (which contain almost no historical information about Mormonism) to count as “studying” without doing untoward violence to the meaning of the word.
I’ve taken discussions with mormon missionaries before, didn’t hear anything compelling enough to convince me to convert but they were nice enough guys however I was also doing some independent research of my own and the reading through the Book of Mormon seemed to me like a re-hash of the new testament with a few other things thrown in (like voyages, steel swords, etc).
Mildy funny story though. I was attending the the local lds church and taking new member classes while I was deciding if I wanted to join, in the “LDS For New Members” book or whatever the title was there was a section on drinks. According to Joseph Smith drinking hard liquor was bad but a barley derived drink was good. As soon as I said that he obviously meant beer the class leaders had a panic attack and started talking about boiling barley for tea.
That being said there are some very attractive ladies, like wow. unfortunately none of them live where I do.
Seems to me the pope acts in a very similar manner.
I haven’t found any evidence for the veracity of the Exodus story in the Bible either.
The Bible has very little to no corroboration either.
Yet the idea of 3 entities that are separate, yet also the same entity, makes sense to you?
Given Christians’ propensity to mercilessly attack Mormons’ beliefs, I can’t say I blame them for begin secretive.
I got this message in the sense it was intended. I put forth my own description to show I wasn’t a dummy, yet was LDS. He put his out to show he’s not a dummy, and isn’t LDS.
I think it’s true that the main difference between Mormonism and other religions with wacky elements, such as Christianity, is that it’s newer. Mormonism’s basic tenets aren’t really that much more “out there” than any other mainstream religion, and are arguably less out there than, say, Scientology.
But that newness: that’s not trivial. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism (for examples) are all were founded before the printing press, before the development of the Scientific Method, and before there was really a pervasive notion that history should be recorded as literally and accurately as possible, without supernatural embellishment.
Mormonism came after all those things were well established, and thus its silliness has been open to scrutiny from its inception. That’s important. However, I’m not going to say that ancient mysteriousness mitigates the intellectually inexcusable components of any religion, no matter how old.
All religions deserve to be scrutinized with a robust and impassive skepticism.
It’s simple. I think people in a religion don’t worry about whether or not everything in it can be proved 100% true. Right or wrong, that’s just the nature of religion.
People in a religion don’t seem to care about it being proven 1% true if you ask me.
I think that the answer to the OP is:
Regardless of the state of science and technology in a society, a segment of that society will always turn to something deeply rooted in human nature that favors anecdotes, wishful thinking, and superstition, over skepticism and rational thinking.
How recently the wacko religion in question was founded is really beside the point.
The difference is there is real history on the nut jobs that started Mormonism and Scientology. They are recent enough where we know what craziness they were involved in. We have seen the aggressive nature of the followers. We can read about the goofy beliefs, that suddenly have not been handed down by god after all. We used to believe blacks were lower class and had no standing in the church, and we believed it. Now we don’t so it does not count any more. We used to keep women held back as second class citizens. Now we say we don’t believe that any more any more. So it does not count .
If it is a religion ,handed down by god ,directly to Joe Smith, how we change those beliefs? If we do, are we not rejecting the religion itself? Seems pretty convenient to me.
I would have more respect if they dug their heels in and said, too bad, about women and blacks, but that is what god said. Who are we to question it?
All of them. Everywhere. Throughout history. Seriously.
Enjoy,
Steven