Being a Mormon without Believing in a Historical Book of Mormon, Part 1

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Another hangup is rope. They may have needed to trade for that.

Rope wouldn't be any kind of problem. Maybe for nylon rope they needed to wait a few more thousand years, but...

 

[Teancum]

23 hours ago, Stargazer said:

There's nothing morally wrong with drinking coffee, tea, beer, whiskey, or smoking/chewing tobacco. I'm allowed to do all of that. But I don't. Why? Because I have covenanted with the Lord to refrain from consuming those things. For one thing, it's wise to refrain from consuming those things. They are all unhealthy.

Hmm, not really. Coffee and tea are actually quite healthy, especially green tea.  But I agree with you that tobacco and alcohol are simply bad for you.  Research is disputing the idea that maybe a glass of wine or two or a beer a day are good for you. But alcohol can have a proper place in a grown ups life if it is in moderation. The sad thing is many people end up abusing alcohol for a variety of reasons.  But other substances that are permitted for Latte-day Saints can be abused as well.

[Stargazer]

Just now, Teancum said:

Hmm, not really. Coffee and tea are actually quite healthy, especially green tea.  But I agree with you that tobacco and alcohol are simply bad for you.  Research is disputing the idea that maybe a glass of wine or two or a beer a day are good for you. But alcohol can have a proper place in a grown ups life if it is in moderation. The sad thing is many people end up abusing alcohol for a variety of reasons.  But other substances that are permitted for Latter-day Saints can be abused as well.

Oh, I agree completely. Coffee and tea are not harmful if used properly. Excessive consumption has obvious problems, of course (mainly ingesting too much caffeine). Before I joined the church I used to sneak wine from my parents' liquor cabinet (the rest of the offerings therein were not attractive). I wasn't fond of white wine, but burgundy was my fave. After the missionaries asked me to commit to keeping the Word of Wisdom, though, that was that. Thing is, I knew the Church was true from the beginning. But it took about a year to dunk me, for some reason. I was only 14 at the time, and I don't remember any more if it was my Dad's refusal to give permission or my dithering. But except for one time, I've stayed away from all of it. That one time was when we were living in England and I turned 18, which is the legal drinking age here. My non-member father asked me to do him the favor of letting him buy me my first and last drink. And I did. 

I believe that the key to the Word of Wisdom is "wisdom." I have seen far too many loved ones get into serious problems using alcohol and tobacco. This includes my Dad, who died at age 46 of a massive heart attack. He tried several times to quit smoking, but never could. His death can be directly traced to tobacco, and his 2-3 packs a day. As was his father's, who died at age 40 of a massive heart attack, and was also a massive smoker. My dad had an underlying heart issue, and my grandfather, too, I belive, but if they hadn't been smokers I believe they would have lived much longer. Three of my kids have been at one stage or another alcoholics. One of my sons nearly blew off his hand with an M-80 while drunk. And a few are addicted to tobacco. We taught them, but as adults they had their agency.

My attitude with all of these things is while moderation is a wonderful thing, given the harm that can result if moderation fails, it's best to kick moderation to the curb and go for abstention. It hasn't hurt me, yet. And I like attending the temple, too. So that's another plus.

[Stargazer]

This is something I thought was fascinating (especially since I've visited Cornwall where tin mining was done).

 

[OGHoosier]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

Don't forget about the sail(s)!

Pretty sure they got a pretty substantial chunk of the sail in Jerusalem. 

The tents.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, the narrator said:

Latter-day Saints quibbling over caffeine:

Still, with the huge issue of sleep deprivation*** in our culture, which can lead to pretty much any disorder, including mental, in existence it seems sometimes when I am checking the latest research plus all the accidents that happen because of not enough sleep, and caffeine being used to mask lack of sleep which then leads to more sleep issues when drunk too late as well as not using healthier sleep practices, I have long considered that as prophetic as well.

***https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2017/the-costs-of-poor-sleep-are-staggering.html#:~:text=The researchers estimated that the,mortality caused by sleep deprivation.

Quote

Troxel worked with a team of researchers from RAND Europe to show just how valuable a little more sleep can be. Their recent study demonstrated that quality sleep can predict workplace productivity—and our chronic lack of it acts as a drag on the entire economy. They also surveyed thousands of British workers to show how everyday life in our hurried, hassled, 9-to-5 world eats away at our bed time.

“When we don't sleep well, it affects every aspect of our health and our relationships.”

People struggling with financial problems, for example, got ten minutes less sleep, on average, every night. Those facing unrealistic time pressures at work lost another eight minutes. A bad commute? More than 16 minutes. And, for comparison, having children: around four minutes.

That may not sound like much, but the toll adds up fast. The researchers estimated that the United States loses between $280 billion and $411 billion every year to the absenteeism, presenteeism, and outright mortality caused by sleep deprivation. Japan, with its smaller economy, loses up to $138 billion, followed by Germany (up to $60 billion), the United Kingdom (up to $50 billion), and Canada (up to $21 billion).

And the fix doesn't require that we all unplug and check out at 8 p.m. If every worker who gets less than six hours of sleep managed to get six or seven hours instead, that would boost the American economy by around $226 billion every year.

Other benefits of avoiding caffeine summary:

https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-what-happens-when-you-give-up-caffeine

Edited August 1 by Calm

[Tacenda]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Oh, I agree completely. Coffee and tea are not harmful if used properly. Excessive consumption has obvious problems, of course (mainly ingesting too much caffeine). Before I joined the church I used to sneak wine from my parents' liquor cabinet (the rest of the offerings therein were not attractive). I wasn't fond of white wine, but burgundy was my fave. After the missionaries asked me to commit to keeping the Word of Wisdom, though, that was that. Thing is, I knew the Church was true from the beginning. But it took about a year to dunk me, for some reason. I was only 14 at the time, and I don't remember any more if it was my Dad's refusal to give permission or my dithering. But except for one time, I've stayed away from all of it. That one time was when we were living in England and I turned 18, which is the legal drinking age here. My non-member father asked me to do him the favor of letting him buy me my first and last drink. And I did. 

I believe that the key to the Word of Wisdom is "wisdom." I have seen far too many loved ones get into serious problems using alcohol and tobacco. This includes my Dad, who died at age 46 of a massive heart attack. He tried several times to quit smoking, but never could. His death can be directly traced to tobacco, and his 2-3 packs a day. As was his father's, who died at age 40 of a massive heart attack, and was also a massive smoker. My dad had an underlying heart issue, and my grandfather, too, I belive, but if they hadn't been smokers I believe they would have lived much longer. Three of my kids have been at one stage or another alcoholics. One of my sons nearly blew off his hand with an M-80 while drunk. And a few are addicted to tobacco. We taught them, but as adults they had their agency.

My attitude with all of these things is while moderation is a wonderful thing, given the harm that can result if moderation fails, it's best to kick moderation to the curb and go for abstention. It hasn't hurt me, yet. And I like attending the temple, too. So that's another plus.

What you say here, I agree 100% I'm glad you broke the streak between your dad and grand father! I'm sure you often wonder what would/could have happened had you not. I have alcoholism in my family, with my aunt, and two brothers. I'm so glad I don't have a taste for it. But I do for my diet dr. pepper and I wish I could kick my habit of that. 

[Calm]

54 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

What you say here, I agree 100% I'm glad you broke the streak between your dad and grand father! I'm sure you often wonder what would/could have happened had you not. I have alcoholism in my family, with my aunt, and two brothers. I'm so glad I don't have a taste for it. But I do for my diet dr. pepper and I wish I could kick my habit of that. 

Is it the drink or the caffeine you like?  You could switch to water, flavored if preferred, use the same type of container annd a straw if that is typical and then take a caffeine pill on the side to get that kick when you feel the craving.  Make sure it’s not more than what you get in the drink as sometimes they are stronger.  Then start cutting the pill up, take 3/4 for a week, then 1/2, and then 1/4 and by the end of three or four weeks you are now taking just water….hopefully.

Edited August 2 by Calm

[Zosimus]

12 hours ago, Calm said:

Using what sounds like half mystical, half scientific words that, honestly, could mean so many different things leads me to really wonder if Hickman saw this as more than an internal self-induced happening.  Iow, there was something there influencing Joseph, perhaps the spirit of an ancient inhabitant, an actual treasure guardian.

I struggle to wrap my brain around Hickman's stuff, but one explanation I heard helped me. He's approaching the translation of the Book of Mormon by defining translation in the "twinkling of an eye" "City of Enoch" sense of the word.

Tanner Davidson McAlister breaks it down like this: Hickman points out that when variations of the word ‘translate’ appear in the King James Bible it never refers to a linguistic translation. Instead its in the sense of Enoch being twinkled. Also, four out of the five definitions that Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary gives for the word are along the lines of transporting something from one place to another. "With this notion of translation in mind, Hickman argues that Smith’s “[bringing] forth” ancient voices “as if [they] had cried from the dust” can plausibly be seen not as a conversion of the language of the gold plates into English, but as Smith’s transferring ancient voices across time and space."

So Joseph was not necessarily translating the reformed Egyptian into English so much as he was twinkling the voices of ancient prophets from one space to another. It does come across as half mystical but there's an well-documented tradition of treasure finders unearthing cached spiritual texts encrypted in coded scripts in the terma/terton tradition. McAlister lays this out in his dissertation, and Bushman goes into some detail in his latest book on the gold plates.

[Nevo]

6 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Pretty sure they got a pretty substantial chunk of the sail in Jerusalem. 

The tents.

Maybe, maybe not. You're assuming that the tents were made of cloth. But S. Kent Brown thinks they were probably Bedouin-style tents, with each tent weighing several hundred pounds. Traditionally, such tents were made from goat or camel hair. Not ideal sail material for traversing over 15,000 miles of "the roughest water on earth," as Potter and Wellington describe it, for "many months, if not years."

Nephi says that the first thing the group did when they arrived in the Promised Land was "pitch our tents" (1 Ne. 18:23)—so the tents evidently weren't all used for sails. 

On the issue of rope, Potter and Wellington write: "Historically, the planks of ships built in Oman were sewn together with rope. It took the husks of 50,000 coconuts to make the 400 miles of rope [Tim] Severin needed to build his sewn ship, the Sohar. Even if Nephi used nails, rope would be required for riggings and anchor lines. Coconuts are not native to Dhofar, and so if Nephi made ropes from coconuts, they also had to be imported."

So far, then, the tally seems to be that Nephi needed imported timber, probably needed imported cloth ("for several sets of sails"), and probably needed imported rope (potentially several hundred miles worth if he wasn't making or importing nails). Given that the ship had to carry 40–70 people, Potter and Wellington estimate that it could have weighed as much as 100 tons. Therefore, it also would have needed to be built on wooden rollers above the tide line and then rolled down into the water since "launching a ship weighing as much as 100 tons (and having no means of power or control) from a shallow beach into breaking surf with strong currents is physically impossible and would only result in a shipwreck." Potter and Wellington also argue that the ship would have needed sea trials and that Nephi and crew would have needed time to learn how to sail ("Nephi could not have merely guessed how to sail the Pacific Ocean or have succeeded unless both he and his crew knew what they were doing").

Interesting stuff.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Nephi could not have merely guessed how to sail the Pacific Ocean or have succeeded unless both he and his crew knew what they were doing

Wouldn’t he have learned to sail in the same he learned to build the boat?  By the power and gift of God?  Though unless the ship was quite different (certainly possible given how Nephi described it) they would need the ti e for Nephi to teach the others to help even if he understood through the Spirit.

Edited August 2 by Calm

[Stargazer]

10 hours ago, Tacenda said:

What you say here, I agree 100% I'm glad you broke the streak between your dad and grand father! I'm sure you often wonder what would/could have happened had you not. I have alcoholism in my family, with my aunt, and two brothers. I'm so glad I don't have a taste for it. But I do for my diet dr. pepper and I wish I could kick my habit of that. 

Ah, my wife got me hooked on Pepsi Max. It's a UK-only diet drink, most similar to Pepsi Free, I think. Its taste is far superior to Pepsi regular. I could give it up, no problem, but haven't felt like it. That's like what my sister said about her smoking, she could give it up any time she felt like it. Except that it took her 40 years to feel like it!  

[OGHoosier]

@Nevo

I'm on my phone right now because every now and again the site does a weird thing where I get a "banned" screen on the laptop, even though my phone can access it just fine. As highlighting and responding on the phone is a pain, I will post this as something of a down-payment on a more thorough response.

I'm actually not expecting the tents to be made out of canvas or another variety of cloth. The Magan-boats used goat-hair sails. The one that recently sailed had a sail weighing something a little north of 200 pounds iirc. If S. Kent Brown is right about a single tent weighing more than that, then sailcloth would not be a problem for the Lehites. 

As for rope, I refer again to the recent Magan-boat experiment. The papers on the recent successful test have yet to be released, but there was another done in 2003 that sank after only a short while (attributed to insufficient bitumen coverage iirc - they stopped the bitumen too low on the hull. It was about 40 feet long and 10 or so wide (working from memory, will find the J-stor article later) so a little under half the size of the Lehite ship according to one of Potter's books. It needed about 15 km of rope total iirc. There are fibers suitable for it in Dhofar (though with reeds in high demand for the hull we might be stretching, I honestly don't know). One thing to note about the Severin experiment is that he was working with a reconstruction of a dhow from the medieval era, which likely had a more advanced sail plan and more rigging. Also, they could have brought some rope with them from Jerusalem.

Furthermore, though coconuts are not original to Dhofar we don't know when they got there and the most thorough paper on it I read through specifically urged that the hypothesis of natural arrival via currents prior to human activity not be discounted. IDK.

My tally is 

- local wood would be suitable for the structural elements and has historically been used for such.

- sailcloth is accounted for.

- rope could be locally manufactured but it would likely compete with the main hull material (local Phragmites reeds) so supplementation via trade activity could be necessary.

Will happily CFR when I can access the site from my computer again.

My finding thus far: improbable but not fantastical. Given multiple years on site, it could be done. We don't know the upper limits of durability on Magan boats because they usually stayed to the Indus or perhaps South Asia, but that's not to say they couldn't make it further.

Edited August 2 by OGHoosier

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

Is it the drink or the caffeine you like?  You could switch to water, flavored if preferred, use the same type of container annd a straw if that is typical and then take a caffeine pill on the side to get that kick when you feel the craving.  Make sure it’s not more than what you get in the drink as sometimes they are stronger.  Then start cutting the pill up, take 3/4 for a week, then 1/2, and then 1/4 and by the end of three or four weeks you are now taking just water….hopefully.

Interesting theory! 

As for me, I am not sure if it's the caffeine or the taste. It is probably both. The thing about caffeine is that it is one of the known self-medicating agents used by people with ADD and ADHD (like me). It seems to help with distraction. As a software developer, I was most efficient and effective if I drank plenty of caffeinated soft drinks while listening via headphones to electronic music such as Trance, and House  music. The caffeine raised focus, while the music nullified outside distractions. I could focus for hours and hours on task using these things.

On one important project where I had to get a particular program finished on deadline I was able to sustain a programming sprint for 18 hours, from noon one day to 6 am the next. With occasional restroom breaks, of course. 

Edited August 2 by Stargazer
fix syntax

[Stargazer]

12 hours ago, Nevo said:

Maybe, maybe not. You're assuming that the tents were made of cloth. But S. Kent Brown thinks they were probably Bedouin-style tents, with each tent weighing several hundred pounds. Traditionally, such tents were made from goat or camel hair. Not ideal sail material for traversing over 15,000 miles of "the roughest water on earth," as Potter and Wellington describe it, for "many months, if not years."

Nephi says that the first thing the group did when they arrived in the Promised Land was "pitch our tents" (1 Ne. 18:23)—so the tents evidently weren't all used for sails. 

On the issue of rope, Potter and Wellington write: "Historically, the planks of ships built in Oman were sewn together with rope. It took the husks of 50,000 coconuts to make the 400 miles of rope [Tim] Severin needed to build his sewn ship, the Sohar. Even if Nephi used nails, rope would be required for riggings and anchor lines. Coconuts are not native to Dhofar, and so if Nephi made ropes from coconuts, they also had to be imported."

So far, then, the tally seems to be that Nephi needed imported timber, probably needed imported cloth ("for several sets of sails"), and probably needed imported rope (potentially several hundred miles worth if he wasn't making or importing nails). Given that the ship had to carry 40–70 people, Potter and Wellington estimate that it could have weighed as much as 100 tons. Therefore, it also would have needed to be built on wooden rollers above the tide line and then rolled down into the water since "launching a ship weighing as much as 100 tons (and having no means of power or control) from a shallow beach into breaking surf with strong currents is physically impossible and would only result in a shipwreck." Potter and Wellington also argue that the ship would have needed sea trials and that Nephi and crew would have needed time to learn how to sail ("Nephi could not have merely guessed how to sail the Pacific Ocean or have succeeded unless both he and his crew knew what they were doing").

Interesting stuff.

It is interesting stuff indeed!

I've never so much as wondered about the process of building Nephi's boat, but this thread is providing wonderfully unexpected and thought-provoking fuel for cogitation!

The thing that I noticed very quickly this time upon re-reading Nephi's account is that he said the Lord had him build a ship unlike any other. All these years I had just glossed over it all, thinking that the Lord told him how to build a conventional and contemporary ship. Nephi reported:

1 Ne 18:2 -> Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men.

Unfortunately, Nephi says nothing about the ship's construction, shape, method of propulsion, or anything else. So, did it have sails? Oars? An Archimedes screw driven by a geared windmill device? Was it "tight like unto a dish" like the Jaredites' barges? Maybe the Lord secretly installed a compact nuclear reactor and used it to provide power for an electric motor in the stern. 

So we can quibble all we want about the lack of suitable metal, sail-making material, cordage, and so forth. We have no idea what this ship looked like or how it worked. The only thing we are told is that it was made of wood and possibly some metal hardware. Those of us who have faith are going to let the Lord handle the stuff that seems outlandishly hard, while those of us who think the thing a total work of fiction are going use every quibble in the book to say there's no possibility it ever could have happened. 

 

Edited August 2 by Stargazer
clarified a sentence

[OGHoosier]

2 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

An Archimedes screw driven by a geared windmill device?

That's...an awesome idea I hadn't even considered.

[Tacenda]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

Is it the drink or the caffeine you like?  You could switch to water, flavored if preferred, use the same type of container annd a straw if that is typical and then take a caffeine pill on the side to get that kick when you feel the craving.  Make sure it’s not more than what you get in the drink as sometimes they are stronger.  Then start cutting the pill up, take 3/4 for a week, then 1/2, and then 1/4 and by the end of three or four weeks you are now taking just water….hopefully.

I've thought of just taking caffeine pills, but it might be a combination of fizz and taste that I need to go with it. But I really dislike water that has fizz, so there's that. Thanks for the idea though!

[mbh26]

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

So do you reject the Mesoamerica model and favor the Heartland model for the BoM location?

For me, Joseph Smith revealed that Adam ondi Ahman was in Spring Hill, Missouri.  I believe that's where Zarahemla was as well.  It just seems like a better piece of land that people have always desired, even more than Florida and it's poor soil, where we heartlanders believe Lehi landed.  I don't think there's enough evidence or that much better of a theory on Book of Mormon geography that we should have ever rejected the Heartland model.  I'm not completely at odds with pictures of palm trees in the Book of Mormon because most heartlanders do believe that the North America was warmer back then than it is now.  There was such a thing as the Medeival warming period in Europe as well.  So in short I just don't think there's enough evidence teach people that Zarahemla had to be Central or South America.  

[Nevo]

2 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

My tally is 

- local wood would be suitable for the structural elements and has historically been used for such.

- sailcloth is accounted for.

- rope could be locally manufactured but it would likely compete with the main hull material (local Phragmites reeds) so supplementation via trade activity could be necessary.

I'll give you goat-hair sails, but local wood for the structural elements? I thought we agreed that there wasn't any suitable wood on hand? Unless you want to say that reeds (grass) = "timbers of curious workmanship."

[Doctor Steuss]

19 hours ago, Teancum said:

Hmm, not really. Coffee and tea are actually quite healthy, especially green tea.  But I agree with you that tobacco and alcohol are simply bad for you.  Research is disputing the idea that maybe a glass of wine or two or a beer a day are good for you. But alcohol can have a proper place in a grown ups life if it is in moderation. The sad thing is many people end up abusing alcohol for a variety of reasons.  But other substances that are permitted for Latte-day Saints can be abused as well.

For what it's worth, the wine studies have been largely revised as they initially didn't account for the key factor about what demographic tends to drink wine -- people with wealth and access to healthcare.

The vast majority of research currently is pointing to there being no safe amount of alcohol to drink a day, and alcohol being one of the two "food" items that have pretty much been definitively linked to an increased cancer risk (the other being processed meats).

That said, you can pry my deli meats from my cold dead hands.

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I've thought of just taking caffeine pills, but it might be a combination of fizz and taste that I need to go with it. But I really dislike water that has fizz, so there's that. Thanks for the idea though!

How can anyone not like fizzy water? It sounds unreal to me. LOL! To each her own, of course!

I love fizzy water, and when Pepsi Max fails, drinking carbonated water alone is very nice. As long as it's very cold.

[Stargazer]

42 minutes ago, Doctor Steuss said:

That said, you can pry my deli meats from my cold dead hands.

Amen!

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I've thought of just taking caffeine pills, but it might be a combination of fizz and taste that I need to go with it. But I really dislike water that has fizz, so there's that. Thanks for the idea though!

I love, love the fizz, but it doesn’t love me, so between that and the sugar I end up drinking a soda once every month or so.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Doctor Steuss said:

That said, you can pry my deli meats from my cold dead hands.

Just avoid the Boar’s Head for a bit or someone may be doing just that.  

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, mbh26 said:

For me, Joseph Smith revealed that Adam ondi Ahman was in Spring Hill, Missouri.  I believe that's where Zarahemla was as well.  It just seems like a better piece of land that people have always desired, even more than Florida and it's poor soil, where we heartlanders believe Lehi landed.  I don't think there's enough evidence or that much better of a theory on Book of Mormon geography that we should have ever rejected the Heartland model.  I'm not completely at odds with pictures of palm trees in the Book of Mormon because most heartlanders do believe that the North America was warmer back then than it is now.  There was such a thing as the Medeival warming period in Europe as well.  So in short I just don't think there's enough evidence teach people that Zarahemla had to be Central or South America.  

Spring Hill and Zarahemla are thousands or tens of thousands of years apart in terms of when they were inhabited (depending upon one's conception of when Adam was on the earth).  A better fit for Zarahemla in the Heartland Model (which I do not believe in, btw), is the Cahokia mounds site. Except that it is believed to have been founded around 1050 AD -- far later than Zarahemla in the Book of Mormon. But Cahokia in its heyday would have been an amazing sight!