Are cureloms imaginary?

[hagoth7]

3 hours ago, USU78 said:

Which brings up an interesting question:  if a joke is not accompanied by a smiley/emoji,is it still a joke?

Dunno, but in such a case, it doesn't make a sound.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F72%2Ff6%2F3a%2F72f63aeb09d10eae86f86b9f679ee5cd.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F443886106998843840%2F&docid=opv_iDLsJ8lJNM&tbnid=nK3tk_KhXzXdqM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjRtOafp-7UAhVU52MKHdPiD2EQMwj1ASgKMAo..i&w=1920&h=1200&client=tablet-android-verizon&bih=601&biw=962&q=tree fallen&ved=0ahUKEwjRtOafp-7UAhVU52MKHdPiD2EQMwj1ASgKMAo&iact=mrc&uact=8

(rimshot)

[hagoth7]

2 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Are cureloms imaginary?  Simple Answer...YES

So, you're sayin' that when they took the young Nephite scouts on a campout,

they told them to get out their pillow slips because they were goin' curelom hunting? 

[hagoth7]

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

He deleted what he had. I won't tell you what it was, because it was top secret!

I was actually hoping you did see it before I pulled it. 

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Belief fascinates me.  How y'all can believe that Cureloms were an actual animal that once existed or still exists by some other name in some yet undiscovered location in the America's based solely on the claim of a book is fascinating to me.  Belief is such an interesting human phenomenon.  Belief is real it exist and yet it can exist on things that have no evidence to support the belief...and perhaps this is why it is so fascinating to me....how is it possible for humans to hold to a belief without there being something real to support those beliefs... 

You regularly miss the point, Johnnie, as is your wont.  I don't believe in cureloms (whatever they are) just because they are in a book, any more than I believe in jabberwocks just because they are in a book.  The book must first be evaluated by an appeal to hard evidence across a broad range.  When the evidence is weighed and found wanting, then it is time to deny the existence of things like jabberwocks, but not until then.  Your apriori thinking marks you as intemperate and deeply prejudiced.  Please don't serve on any juries, where evidence actually counts for something.

[Pete Ahlstrom]

7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You regularly miss the point, Johnnie, as is your wont.  I don't believe in cureloms (whatever they are) just because they are in a book, any more than I believe in jabberwocks just because they are in a book.  The book must first be evaluated by an appeal to hard evidence across a broad range.  When the evidence is weighed and found wanting, then it is time to deny the existence of things like jabberwocks, but not until then.  Your apriori thinking marks you as intemperate and deeply prejudiced.  Please don't serve on any juries, where evidence actually counts for something.

I don't think Johnny misses the point at all. The "evidence" for book of mormon historicity is pretty flimsy. So, I think he is pretty safe in saying cureloms are imaginary. Surely you can see this? It seems pretty obvious the book of mormon historicity rests on faith and not fact. In any event, calling Johnny intemperate or deeply prejudiced just because he doesn't equate possibility with probability serves no purpose and I would rather have him on my jury than you.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Pete Ahlstrom

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

I don't think Johnny misses the point at all. The "evidence" for book of mormon historicity is pretty flimsy. So, I think he is pretty safe in saying cureloms are imaginary. Surely you can see this? It seems pretty obvious the book of mormon historicity rests on faith and not fact. In any event, calling Johnny intemperate or deeply prejudiced just because he doesn't equate possibility with probability serves no purpose and I would rather have him on my jury than you.

I would have a lot more respect for such assertions if they were backed by substantive discussion of hard evidence.  You share with Johnnie his penchant for making confident statements, with no backing of any kind.  That is a sure sign of intemperance and deep prejudice.  Taking sides on the BofM question typically takes the form of "my daddy can whip your daddy," instead of dispassionate discussion of facts.  Doesn't that trouble you at all?  And since when do my discussions fit your own ridiculous statement that it is "pretty obvious the book of mormon historicity rests on faith and not fact"?  Upon what do you rest that all-encompassing claim?  Faith, most likely.

[Honorentheos]

I sincerely doubt Johnny Cake arrived at the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is not a historical record a priori. People who came to that conclusion a priori probably don't waste their time on Mormon message boards.

The topic of whether or not the BoM is historical is overwhelming. I've seen pages and pages of threads on the most minute of subtopics under that category. It seems a bad faith argument to say that one must refute the BoM to assert cureloms, an animal only attested in the BoM and no where else, are the product of Joseph Smith's imagination.

Here's the thing. If we had a geographical and chronological context for the BoM that believers could actually agree on, we could limit the discussion to look for non-BoM sources that support the existence of cureloms. But you guys can't even agree on where or when most of the BoM took place. But supposing you did agree and we had that, where is the corresponding attestations? An ancient near eastern language containing roots that have meanings related to functions that the hypothetical animal the curelom may or may not have performed given the 19th c. text we have doesn't really specify what they were even used for? Uh, ok.

Cureloms are imaginary. Right now, they only exist in people's minds. If there is a historic analog it is yet to be proven and supported. If there is a modern descendent it is yet to be identified and confirmed.

Unless, of course, one wishes a priori to assign some truth value to their existence absent evidence excluding the BoM...  

[thesometimesaint]

19 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Naw, not feeling in a "Play Nice Mood" so I'm just gonna shoot straight and tell it like it is...I'm pretty sure Cureloms is just a made up animal

The first time the Greeks saw a River Horse they called it a Hippopotamus.

[thesometimesaint]

36 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

I

Unless, of course, one wishes a priori to assign some truth value to their existence absent evidence excluding the BoM...  

Please tell us about a River Horse, what we call a Hippopotamus.

[RevTestament]

36 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

I sincerely doubt Johnny Cake arrived at the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is not a historical record a priori. People who came to that conclusion a priori probably don't waste their time on Mormon message boards.

The topic of whether or not the BoM is historical is overwhelming. I've seen pages and pages of threads on the most minute of subtopics under that category. It seems a bad faith argument to say that one must refute the BoM to assert cureloms, an animal only attested in the BoM and no where else, are the product of Joseph Smith's imagination.

Here's the thing. If we had a geographical and chronological context for the BoM that believers could actually agree on, we could limit the discussion to look for non-BoM sources that support the existence of cureloms. But you guys can't even agree on where or when most of the BoM took place. But supposing you did agree and we had that, where is the corresponding attestations? An ancient near eastern language containing roots that have meanings related to functions that the hypothetical animal the curelom may or may not have performed given the 19th c. text we have doesn't really specify what they were even used for? Uh, ok.

Cureloms are imaginary. Right now, they only exist in people's minds. If there is a historic analog it is yet to be proven and supported. If there is a modern descendent it is yet to be identified and confirmed.

Unless, of course, one wishes a priori to assign some truth value to their existence absent evidence excluding the BoM...  

There are words in the Bible for which there is no known meaning. A good number of them. They have simply been passed down from generation to generation, and the meaning lost, if it was ever known. My discussion about El Shaddai is an excellent example of this. However, no sholars contend that El Shaddai is just a made up word stuck in the Torah.

In actuality all words are just made up. I gave an example on another thread about the Syriac representation of YHWH found in the Peshitta. The Syrians made up a word, Marya, which is used in the Peshitta to refer specifically to YHWH. No one knows the etymology for sure. It seems to be a contraction of the Syriac "mar" or lord/master, and a common short form of JHWH or Yah. In other words it was lord Ya or Marya. All our words are made up. We invent them. Curelom would have been an ancient Mesopotamian form probably invented to describe some new, unfamiliar creature. Why should we expect to find it exactly represented in Mesopotamia some 4000+ years ago? That would simply be a stroke of luck. I doubt Mesopotamia had mountain goats, buffalo, llamas or mammoths for instance.

[Physics Guy]

Whether evidence is "hard" or "flimsy" is not an intrinsic property of the evidence itself. It depends on what conclusions the evidence is supposed to support.

Suppose a knife was found at a crime scene. Lab analysis finds traces of blood on it that match that of the victim. That's hard evidence that the knife was used in the crime. The only link between the knife and the accused, however, is a vague statement by a witness who had no clear view of either. A prosecutor who is personally sure that the knife belonged to the accused may well pound the table about how her case is firmly built on hard evidence. The defense can still insist that her client never touched the knife in question, and call the case very flimsy.

For my money the defense would be right. A chain of empirical reasoning is only as strong as its weakest link, and just because a few links are hard, in themselves, doesn't mean that the chain as a whole, as a line from one end to the other, isn't flimsy.

To me the present case is an example. I acknowledge that etymology in itself is hard evidence, inasmuch as paleolinguistics is a serious discipline. As evidence for the reality of cureloms, however, I find speculations about ancient Semitic words very flimsy. Flip through the lexicon long enough, and among all the possible permutations of imprecisely transliterated consonants that might conceivably fit with some kind of useful animal, you're eventually bound to find some candidate root words for "curelom". The connection between the hypothetical etymology and the text is the link that is weak, no matter how strong and hard the language analysis itself may be.

If I skim only briefly through your etymology, and still dismiss your case for cureloms as flimsy, I am not guilty of ignoring hard evidence. I'm simply noticing that no matter how hard your evidence may be in itself, it has done nothing to strengthen the weak link in the chain, which is elsewhere.

[RevTestament]

11 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

Whether evidence is "hard" or "flimsy" is not an intrinsic property of the evidence itself. It depends on what conclusions the evidence is supposed to support.

Suppose a knife was found at a crime scene. Lab analysis finds traces of blood on it that match that of the victim. That's hard evidence that the knife was used in the crime. The only link between the knife and the accused, however, is a vague statement by a witness who had no clear view of either. A prosecutor who is personally sure that the knife belonged to the accused may well pound the table about how her case is firmly built on hard evidence. The defense can still insist that her client never touched the knife in question, and call the case very flimsy.

For my money the defense would be right. A chain of empirical reasoning is only as strong as its weakest link, and just because a few links are hard, in themselves, doesn't mean that the chain as a whole, as a line from one end to the other, isn't flimsy.

To me the present case is an example. I acknowledge that etymology in itself is hard evidence, inasmuch as paleolinguistics is a serious discipline. As evidence for the reality of cureloms, however, I find speculations about ancient Semitic words very flimsy. Flip through the lexicon long enough, and among all the possible permutations of imprecisely transliterated consonants that might conceivably fit with some kind of useful animal, you're eventually bound to find some candidate root words for "curelom". The connection between the hypothetical etymology and the text is the link that is weak, no matter how strong and hard the language analysis itself may be.

If I skim only briefly through your etymology, and still dismiss your case for cureloms as flimsy, I am not guilty of ignoring hard evidence. I'm simply noticing that no matter how hard your evidence may be in itself, it has done nothing to strengthen the weak link in the chain, which is elsewhere.

i agree that the etymology is weak, hence, no one knows for sure what creature it could be referring to. However, there does seem to be some plausible etymology available. The same is true for the names of some of their crops. However, we do know something about ancient Sumerian, Akkadian and Hebrew, and in a lot of ways their words were invented the same way, so I think it reasonable that we can make some educated guesses.  In a lot of ways that's all scholarship is - educated guesses. That is what we are doing with the Hebrew title El Shaddai or even the name of YHWH. However, we have the advantage of the use or context of those titles to help. Nonetheless, this doesn't mean they aren't real Hebrew words which had a meaning to the people at one time.

[Honorentheos]

1 hour ago, thesometimesaint said:

Please tell us about a River Horse, what we call a Hippopotamus.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

So...curelom?

[Honorentheos]

Part of what makes the whole thing feel so imaginary, besides all of the issues with the BoM itself, is the phrase "cureloms and commons". The alliteration of the two words has the feel of someone making something up. That's my contribution to the etymology question. Too many similar sounds in two words without obvious external analogs is evidence for ad libbing.

[Jeanne]

This whole thread cracks me up.  Now...the tooth fairy...I believe in her!!

[Honorentheos]

1 hour ago, RevTestament said:

i agree that the etymology is weak, hence, no one knows for sure what creature it could be referring to. However, there does seem to be some plausible etymology available. The same is true for the names of some of their crops. However, we do know something about ancient Sumerian, Akkadian and Hebrew, and in a lot of ways their words were invented the same way, so I think it reasonable that we can make some educated guesses.  In a lot of ways that's all scholarship is - educated guesses. That is what we are doing with the Hebrew title El Shaddai or even the name of YHWH. However, we have the advantage of the use or context of those titles to help. Nonetheless, this doesn't mean they aren't real Hebrew words which had a meaning to the people at one time.

We also have the advantage of being pretty sure the biblical sources are ancient in origin. The BoM? 19th c. manuscript texts claiming to be ancient that are contradicted by, well, where to begin?

Saying there are words in the Bible that we don't know their exact correspondence to some "thing" is categorically different from saying we can't find correspondence between an animal name in the BoM and known animal species.

That's a bad argument.

[bcuzbcuz]

16 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

  When the evidence is weighed and found wanting, then it is time to deny the existence of things like jabberwocks, but not until then.  Please don't serve on any juries, where evidence actually counts for something.

I would love to weigh the evidence. I agree, evidence counts. I can't prove the non-existence of cureloms or cumelons, or cumons. But if there is evidence out there, let's hear it.

In ancient egyptian the hieroglyph for hippopotamus was an actual drawing of a hippo, pronounced "db". The Greeks, well, they chose a word that English has passed along as water horse, but a water horse somehow misses the mark. Modern photos do, however, demonstrate what a hippo looks like.

If and when you can provide evidence of what a curelom looks like and which animal it corresponds to in English, I'm all ears. Until such time, no evidence is exactly that, no evidence.

[hagoth7]

18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You regularly miss the point, Johnnie....Please don't serve on any juries, where evidence actually counts for something.

Johnnie, or better yet, please welcome/allow a change of heart.

Who knows, I might even follow suit.

[hagoth7]

11 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

I don't think Johnny misses the point at all. The "evidence" for book of mormon historicity is pretty flimsy. So, I think he is pretty safe in saying cureloms are imaginary. Surely you can see this? It seems pretty obvious the book of mormon historicity rests on faith and not fact. In any event, calling Johnny intemperate or deeply prejudiced just because he doesn't equate possibility with probability serves no purpose and I would rather have him on my jury than you.

Pete,

While much of what you say resonates,  we each have a choice.

To choose to believe (or exercise hope to believe) in a worthwhlle/beneficial thing.

Doing so opens up doors to learn/see/experience things we otherwise wouldn't.

 

 That said, I don't expect my tipping point for choosing to believe in any such thing to be the same as yours or Johnny's.  (A mountain of evidence might not be enough for some to believe. A mustard seed is enough for others) But there is much more evidence for historicity than most realize.

Choosing to believe is generally empowering. The sooner the choice is made, the sooner we arrive at the next empowering step/choice.

Edited July 4, 2017 by hagoth7

[hagoth7]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

And since when do my discussions fit your own...statement that it is "pretty obvious the book of mormon historicity rests on faith and not fact"?

What I drew from Peter's statement was the assertion that accepting the Book of Mormon as a true record is a matter of faith/choice. (Something that holds true regardless of how much secular evidence is stacked up in support of its historicity.)

[strappinglad]

Lets get the spelling correct. Cureloms and cumoms .

 A favorite game to play with people for whom English is a second language ... please pronounce the following words , notice the similar spelling. rough, bough, through, though.

I don't suggest using a hippo as a beast of burden. It is one of the most dangerous animals around. One can speculate about what the ' useful ' animals in Ether were. There were , in North America, at least 3 species of Mammoth which might have been considered elephants. Then again , like the Inuit have several name for ' snow ' depending on shape and characteristics, the Jaredites may have given different names to the 3 mammoth types.

[Honorentheos]

25 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

Lets get the spelling correct. Cureloms and cumoms .

Does the fact my phone refuses to leave "cumom" and replaces it with "common" count as evidence?

[strappinglad]

4 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

Does the fact my phone refuses to leave "cumom" and replaces it with "common" count as evidence?

don't you just love autocorrect?

[clarkgoble]

I confess this whole thread has me rather confused. Before one can say whether cureloms are imaginary don't you first have to establish what the reference is? Given that there is no description of what a curelom is, that is impossible to do. So all we have are battling conjectures that come out of ones preconceptions. People who already think the Book of Mormon is fiction think cureloms are too. Those who think the Book of Mormon is in some sense historical think cureloms are too. Yet nothing about cureloms moves that discussion at all. It seems at best an issue for Mormons trying to figure out what the text means but completely irrelevant for critics. 

Am I missing something?

[Rivers]

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

So...curelom?

I want a curelom for Christmas.