Transcript

The following is adapted from arguments I made in my recent debate on The Book of Mormon.

In 1986, the Mormon President Ezra Taft Benson said the following, Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the church stand or fall with the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon.

So here's five reasons to reject The Book of Mormon, which, as a result, become five reasons to reject the religion of Mormonism.

Number one, the evidence for The Book of Mormon is not impressive.

I'm not Mormon for the same reason Mormons aren't Muslim.

Many Muslims say the Quran must be divinely inspired because an illiterate shepherd like Muhammad could not have composed something so beautiful and complex.

If Mormons reject that argument for Islam, then they should understand why I reject similar arguments that claim Joseph Smith could not have dictated The Book of Mormon to a scribe over a 70-day period.

Milman Parry, one of the pioneers in studying oral traditions, showed that indigenous oral storytellers could recite epic poems of over 300,000 words in length in just a few weeks.

So the Book of Mormon being recited in a few months is not impossible by human standards.

Smith recited about 4,000 words per day to scribes who wrote at a speed of about 10 words per minute.

That's plenty of time to give a recitation, and The Book of Mormon is filled with stock phrases like behold or and it came to pass, as well as recycled story structures that help an oral presenter recite it.

Joseph Smith was also a member of a juvenile debate society, and schoolchildren at the time could memorize things like the entire Gospel of Matthew in just a few weeks, or they could give impromptu sermons that lasted for hours.

Moreover, unlike Christ or the apostles, Joseph Smith and Muhammad performed no verifiable miracles to authenticate their status as prophets.

All we have is a book that apparently no human being could create.

The only thing that seems supernatural in the case of Mormonism are the Three Witnesses claiming to have seen an angel with Joseph Smith.

Now, this could have been a demonic encounter.

Saint Paul even warns in Galatians 1 to reject angels who preach false gospels.

But it could also be the product of excitable people prone to see visions around every corner.

Consider the three witnesses of this alleged event.

First, there's David Whitmer, who said the angel had no appearance or shape, that it was an impression he felt.

He later left the Mormon Church, saying, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to separate myself from among the Latter-day Saints.

Second, there's Oliver Cowdery, who also left the church before briefly rejoining for a few months before his death.

Cowdery claimed to see visions before he met Joseph Smith.

He knew Smith for years before he became one of Smith's scribes, and Cowdery believed that dowsing rods could speak to him.

Third, there's Martin Harris, who mortgaged his farm to fund the publishing of The Book of Mormon, which means Harris had a huge financial motivation to convince people of the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon.

And multiple sources describe Harris as someone who was easily spooked, like seeing the devil in candlelight flickers.

In 1842, John Clark said of him, Harris was ready to be duped by anything.

No matter where he went, he saw visions and supernatural appearances around him.

Once while traveling, quote, He met the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked by the side of him in the shape of a deer for two or three miles, talking with him as familiarly as one man talks with another.

Harris also admitted that he saw the golden plates from which The Book of Mormon was allegedly translated with spiritual eyes, causing some people to leave the Mormon Church as a result.

Harris also left Mormonism, calling them Latter-day Devils.

Finally, there's no conclusive record of all three men seeing an angel at once.

This is not a case of a group hallucination.

It's a case of a group of people being brought into the wilderness, primed by Joseph Smith to see an angel, and after praying ecstatically for hours, they finally saw it in their own mind's eye.

And the alleged golden plates themselves could have been natural artifacts or simply frauds.

In 1843, brass plates were unearthed in Kinderhook, Illinois, and Joseph Smith claimed they referred to an Egyptian descendant of Ham, but the plates were created by a blacksmith as a hoax.

In 1845, James Strang, an early LDS dissenter, claimed to have translated metal plates describing ancient peoples, but unlike Joseph Smith's golden plates, non-Mormons confirmed the existence of the Strang Plates.

Martin Harris, one of the original Book of Mormon witnesses, even became one of Strang's followers for a brief period.

Mormons don't believe in James Strang's plates or the Kinderhook plates, and I don't believe in Joseph Smith's plates.

Number two, Book of Mormon geography is abysmal.

Many Bibles contain maps that describe where Biblical events took place.

If you get Jewish, Christian, and atheistic scholars together in a room, they would agree on these maps, even though they disagree about what exactly happened at the sites in the maps.

But you cannot do that for The Book of Mormon.

In spite of all its geographical references, Mormons only know the events in The Book of Mormon took place somewhere in North and South America.

Some Mormons say they took place in Central America.

Others say as far away as the Great Lakes or the American heartland.

That would be like Christians disagreeing on whether Jesus was crucified in Judea or England.

And the silence in the archaeological record is deafening.

For example, one of the largest cities in ancient America, Caiocia, had about 20,000 people spread out over 100 earthwork settlements, but Zarahemla, a city in The Book of Mormon that had at least 100,000 people in it, has never been found.

We haven't even found a single example of Hebrew or Egyptian script that should be in the New World if The Book of Mormon is correct that Native Americans are the ancestors of Jews who emigrated in the 7th century BC from Israel to America.

In fact, Mormons can't even agree on which rivers or mountains are described in The Book of Mormon.

Fletcher B. Hammond, in his book, Geography of the Book of Mormon- actually claimed that God changed the world's topography after the Book of Mormon events took place so that faith would be required to believe in the Book of Mormon.

How convenient.

Plus, the Book of Mormon contains things we know did not exist in ancient America.

For example, it describes horses and chariots, even though there were no chariots and horses were introduced after Columbus arrived in the new world.

Now, some Mormons say the word horses refers to tapirs, which are kinda like big, weird-looking pigs, and chariots were actually litters carried by other humans.

But then why are the horses in the Book of Mormon always mentioned with these chariots as if they pulled them?

But they couldn't have because who would want an overgrown pig pulling these kinds of chariots?

Or why would you want them around human litters in the first place?

It's no wonder the National Geographic Society has said archeologists and other scholars have long probed the hemisphere's past and the society does not know of anything found so far that has substantiated the Book of Mormon.

And while not every biblical event has archeological confirmation, this is far different than an alleged entire ancient history having zero archeological evidence for it.

Number three, Joseph Smith was a false prophet.

The Book of Deuteronomy says a false prophet leads people away from the true God and fails to predict the future.

Joseph Smith was guilty on both of these counts, so we should not believe that God used a false prophet like him to transmit inspired revelation.

In his History of the Church, Joseph Smith prophesied that Jesus Christ would return sometime in the 19th century and that the government of the United States would be overthrown, both of which, of course, didn't happen.

Mormons like to say Joseph Smith predicted the Civil War 30 years before it happened, but anyone at the time knew there were troubles between the North and the South.

Smith also predicted that, quote, War will be poured out upon all nations beginning at this place, but no other nations fought in the American Civil War, which shows this was a false prophecy.

And Smith definitely led people away to believe in false gods.

At the funeral for Elder King Follett, Joseph Smith said, God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.

According to the Book of Abraham, which Smith also allegedly translated, God is a super-powered man who rules near a star or planet named Kolob.

If Mormons are faithful enough, they too can become gods and rule over their own universes alongside the spouses they married in this life.

But this contradicts the central truth about God.

The creator is not and never has been a creature.

The omnipotent God can become man or assume a human nature along with His divine nature, but man cannot become God.

The fact that Smith taught the contrary means he is a false prophet.

And speaking of the Book of Abraham, Smith claimed he translated an ancient papyrus written in Abraham's own hand that talks about the gods creating the world.

But even Mormon Egyptologists agree that the papyrus was simply a collection of second-century Egyptian funerary texts, and they say nothing about Abraham, and they certainly weren't written by him.

Now, some Mormon apologists say Joseph Smith was just using the papyri to help him write down visions he had, but in his own diary, Joseph Smith claimed to have translated that document.

He even wrote in Egyptian alphabet and grammar to help him translate, even though he wasn't actually doing that now that we've checked the original papyrus.

But it's not only the Book of Abraham that reveals Joseph Smith was a false prophet.

This is a model of the golden plates, two-thirds of which were sealed and allegedly couldn't be opened.

That means there were at most 40 plates, each six by eight inches, that were supposed to have contained information present in the 270,000 English words of the Book of Mormon.

In order to contain that information, every character on one of these plates would have to represent 80 words, but ancient hieroglyphics don't work like that.

Actual ancient metal plates, like the Plates of Darius, only contain about 200 words per page.

Smith's claim that the reformed Egyptian writing on these golden plates were simply part of his own imagination.

In 1828, Martin Harris offered to assist Smith in the translation of the plates, but Harris lost 116 pages of the translated manuscript that Smith gave him.

Smith claimed that God was angry at the loss of the pages and would only allow Smith to translate from another set of plates.

These plates told the same story as the original manuscripts, but from a slightly different perspective.

Of course, if Smith were just dictating the story from memory and not actually translating it, it would have been nearly impossible for him to reproduce what he originally dictated to Harris and prove he was not a prophet.

Smith even describes in his book, Doctrine and Covenants, how his critics would have used the loss of the pages to try and prove that he was not miraculously translating the golden plates and so he was not a prophet.

Finally, Smith did what many false prophets have done throughout history, he used his status to acquire power, such as by becoming a town mayor, running for President of the United States, and acquiring multiple wives for himself, some as young as 14 years old.

Smith lied to his wife about two of them, sisters Emily and Eliza Partridge.

And one Mormon apologist admits, It is certainly true that Joseph did not disclose all of his plural marriages precisely when they happened.

That's one way to put it.

Smith also ordered a printing press to be destroyed for publishing works that were critical of him.

He was later arrested in connection to this act and died in a shootout using a gun smuggled into the jail where he was being held.

Joseph Smith was not a true prophet who died a martyr's death.

He was a false prophet who met the ignoble end of so many other false prophets throughout history.

Number four, the Book of Mormon's very human elements.

The Book of Mormon is good and original.

However, the good parts aren't original, and the original parts aren't good.

When it comes to the actual original parts of the Book of Mormon, they lack a divine quality.

While many non-Christians are familiar with eloquent biblical stories like the Parable of the Prodigal Son or the Sermon on the Mount, non-Mormons are unaware if anything is eloquent in the Book of Mormon.Far from being divinely inspired, the book is barely inspired by human standards.

For example, Mark Twain thought the Bible was false, but he also admitted the Bible had noble poetry in it and some clever fables.

When it comes to the Book of Mormon, Mark Twain said the following: It is chloroform in print.

If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle, keeping awake while he did.

Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladled in a few such scriptural phrases as 'exceeding sore' and 'it came to pass,' which was his pet phrase.

If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

Indeed, the entire Book of Mormon feels like a mediocre novel delivered by a sermon that's gone on far too long, as can be seen in over 1,500 uses of the phrase and it came to pass, which help break up the narrative for someone orally presenting it.

Smith's presentation was also aided by ripping off hundreds of New Testament themes and imagery that he repackaged for characters in the story.

Or in one out of seven verses, he simply outright copied the King James Bible, including its grammatical errors.

There are entire chapters of the Book of Isaiah in the text, though that could be explained by the ancient authors of the Book of Mormon regurgitating their alleged Israelite history.

But that does not explain copies of the New Testament in the Book of Mormon they would not have known about.

For example, Moroni chapter 10 in the Book of Mormon directly copies First Corinthian chapter 12's list of spiritual gifts, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, and discernment of spirits, all in that order.

But Moroni, allegedly living in the 4th century America, would have only known the Old Testament of his alleged ancestors.

He could not have known about the first letter to the Corinthians.

That's why, in his defense of the Book of Mormon, Robert Bennett says that Joseph Smith, quote, Inadvertently slipped into language with which he was familiar, which we'd expect from a good storyteller.

In fact, Joseph Smith's own mother said the following about him: During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined.

He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode, their cities, their buildings, with every particular, their mode of warfare, and also their religious worship.

This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.

Finally, there's the troubling fact that the basic story of the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans were the descendants of Jews who emigrated to America in 600 BC. That view had already been published a few years earlier in a book called View of the Hebrews, written by Ethan Smith.

Fawn Brodie, the author of the first scholarly biography of Joseph Smith, said, The striking parallelisms between the two books hardly leave a case for mere coincidence.

Indeed, this idea about Native Americans being the descendants of Jews was a common one in the 19th century, so it fits within the claim that a human author concocted the story of the Book of Mormon, especially since the science of genetics proves Native Americans are not descendants of Jewish migrants, which disproves Joseph Smith's claim that, quote, Our Western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph which was sold into Egypt.

Some Mormon apologists claim that the people in the Book of Mormon went extinct and did not leave a DNA record, or didn't leave enough of it, because there were already people living in the New World that swamped their DNA references.

But the Book of Mormon never mentions other people living in the New World besides the book's Nephites and Lamanites, the latter of which le- went on to become Native Americans.

These apologists just say that other peoples must have existed at that time because of the, quote, unbelievably high population growth rate in the Book of Mormon narrative.

But this can be more easily explained by the Book of Mormon being a fictional narrative.

Number five, Catholicism is true, so the Book of Mormon is false.

The Second Vatican Council taught that the Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Mormons and Catholics agree that Jesus established a hierarchical, visible church, led by successors of the apostles who possess the priesthood.

We just disagree with the Mormon claim that this church left the Earth for 1,700 years until Joseph Smith allegedly restored it in the 19th century.

After all, Jesus said the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.

Moreover, this church gave us sure knowledge of the very canon of scripture found in the King James Bible that Mormons rely on as a sacred text.

But the church that gave us the Bible authoritatively teaches that there has been no new public revelation since the time of the apostles, which includes the Book of Mormon.

Therefore, one can make this argument: If Catholicism is true, the Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired.

Catholicism is true, therefore the Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired.

But even if you aren't Catholic, the fact that Mormons cannot agree on where the events in the Book of Mormon allegedly took place, Joseph Smith was in error when he tried to divinely translate or prophesy, meaning he was a false prophet, and the Book of Mormon contains obvious plagiarisms and anachronisms, things that shouldn't belong in the book because they were written elsewhere, or things that shouldn't belong in it because they weren't a part of the ancient history the Book of Mormon purports to describe, all of these show the Book of Mormon was merely the product of human beings, and is not a divinely inspired text.

Thank you all so much for watching.

If you want to go deeper on this subject, be sure to check out the debate that I recently had, as well as my booklet, 20 Answers: Mormonism.