Josh, I appreciate what you are trying to do also in trying to have an open discussion in regards to the Book of Mormon. Regarding it’s authenticity, have you had any questions regarding the integrity of the witnesses? For example, Oliver Cowdery, one of the supposed Three witnesses was excommunicated from the church. He claimed to have seen the plates in a vision before he met Joseph. He supposedly was the primary scribe for the BOM as Joseph Translated. Later in 1829, Oliver, Joseph and David Whitmer supposedly experienced a vision in which an Angel appeared to them and showed them the Golden Plates. Let’s be clear, this is a supposed “vision” not a physical sight of the Plates. Later that same day the 3rd original witness, Martin Harris, claims to have had a similar “vision”. All three signed their names that they had seen these things. Cowdery Was Ex’d due to his disagreement regarding a couple matters, one being Joseph’s “dirty, nasty, filthy affair” with Fanny Alger, the smiths young housekeeper. David Whitmer was Ex’d also due to some Leadership struggle between himself and Joseph. Martin Harris, the third witness was also a scribe and special witness who lost 116 pages of the BOM manuscript (what a reliable person, shouldn’t joseph have known better than to lend the manuscript out?). He supported Joseph financially as he worked to supposedly translate the plates. Harris was a loose canon who had changed religions 5 times before he had met Joseph. This guy could not make up his mind and after Josephs death became a follower of various groups who he thought were leading the true church and accepted one fellow as the next new prophet, James J. Strang. People who know Martin said that he was a man known for having a knack to have visitations of Angels and ghosts. To me, these just don’t seem like rock solid witnesses. A couple of the witnesses were rebaptised but to me they don’t seem like reliable witnesses. People are supposed to take their word for their supposed visions? I mean don’t get me wrong, I have some great LDS friends and many are great people. I just don’t know why more people don’t look at some of the problems with the authenticity. I mean, a person can convince themselves of anything. I think especially being raised in the church and being surrounded by it socially, it is hard to really put into question the authenticity as that is all that some people know. They are surrounded by LDS, their families are LDS, why would they even want to challenge the authenticity, they would be an outcast in their social network and family. If you would like to know where I was looking at the information from above, I simply typed each of the 3 witnesses names into wikipedia. Which gives a good honest history of their life. Please let me know your thoughts and if you really feel that these men were reliable witnesses. Thanks.

In response:

Ironically, the three witnesses and five of the eight other witnesses became more reliable as a result of their inconsistency with and/or rejection of the LDS Church and Joseph Smith as a prophet. If all three had never wavered and had supported the LDS Church and Joseph Smith to their deaths, then the anti-Mormon line would be that they were gullible and under the influence of Joseph Smith who manipulated and tricked them, and that they were all crazy together. However, since they left the church and called Joseph Smith a fallen prophet, we must ask ourselves why they didn’t retract their statement concerning the Book of Mormon. If they were inconsistent in many other things, but rock solid in this one thing, does this not add to the strength of their statements concerning the Book of Mormon?

I agree, a person can convince themselves of anything, even that the Book of Mormon isn’t true, despite the overwhelming evidence. But perhaps in some cases that is just a result of their social network and family

By the way, if you consider Wikipedia to be a perfectly reliable source, then it appears you are a person of greater faith than I originally led to believe.

How did Joseph Smith carry home the golden plates of the Book of Mormon, and how did the witnesses lift them so easily? (They weighed about 230 lbs. Gold, with a density of 19.3 weighs 1204.7 lbs. per cubic foot. The plates were 7″ x 8″ by about 6″. See Articles of Faith, by Talmage, page 262, 34th ed.)

I’d love to give my own answer to this, but it’s already been answered by others. Here is a link to the standard LDS response about the weight of the plates, but then I stumbled onto MormonThink.com’s explanation, read the interview with the author, and now I find it more interesting to respond to that page because it brings up an entirely new question the anti-Mormons generally don’t get to because they’re intent on repeating the “they weighed 230 lbs!” bit. The question MormonThink.com brings up is “Ok, so they were 50 lbs instead of 230 lbs, could Joseph Smith have run 3 miles with 50 lbs of golden plates?” and concludes that it’s impossible.

Based on the account, I find MormonThink.com’s answer to be assuming a lot. Here is the account:

“The plates were secreted about three miles from home…Joseph, on coming to them, took them from their secret place, and wrapping them in his linen frock, placed them under his arm and started for home.”

After proceeding a short distance, he thought it would be more safe to leave the road and go through the woods. Traveling some distance after he left the road, he came to a large windfall, and as he was jumping over a log, a man sprang up from behind it, and gave him a heavy blow with a gun. Joseph turned around and knocked him down, then ran at the top of his speed. About half a mile further he was attacked again in the same manner as before; he knocked this man down in like manner as the former, and ran on again; and before he reached home he was assaulted the third time. In striking the last one he dislocated his thumb, which, however, he did not notice until he came within sight of the house, when he threw himself down in the corner of the fence in order to recover his breath. As soon as he was able, he arose and came to the house.” (Lucy Mack Smith, mother of Joseph Smith, in Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1853, pp. 104-105; Comp. reprinted edition by Bookcraft Publishers in 1956 under the title History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, pp. 107- 108)

MormonThink.com then asks “How could any man, especially a man that had a slight limp run with a 50 pound weight and avoid capture by three assailants?”

That question doesn’t give me too much pause. Perhaps they weren’t very good runners. Perhaps they also had limps. Perhaps Joseph didn’t have to run full-out for three miles, but was able to stop and rest periodically. Perhaps they couldn’t see well in the dark. Perhaps they were drunk. Perhaps the Lord aided Joseph. The point is, it’s not hard to come up with several reasonable explanations of how Joseph could have avoided capture by these three assailants, despite his own physical limitations and the weight of the plates. Unlikely? Perhaps, but impossible? Hardly.

MormonThink.com’s conclusion seems to be based on the idea that Joseph was running from three men at once, all three of whom were in full possession of their faculties, in broad daylight, through open terrain. Even in those most unfavorable of circumstances you can just say “Well, the Lord must have helped him” and the argument ends right there. Although Joseph makes no such claim, he could have been assisted without even knowing it.

Still, MormonThink at least takes the question a step further than most. I’ll have to peruse his site a bit more when I have a moment.

But hey, give it your best shot. If you don’t believe Joseph Smith was a prophet who translated the Book of Mormon from ancient plates with God’s help, where do you think the book came from?

Claim: The Book of Mormon talks of honey bees, but honey bees were introduced to the Americans by the Spanish. Therefore the Book of Mormon is false and you should not hire Mormons for any of your pollination needs.

Reference: Ether 2:3 – “And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees…”

Explanation: There’s no two ways about it–this claim is simply false. The fact is, there is plain evidence of honey bees in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus. In 1519 Hernán Cortés reported beekeeping by the natives of Mexico, and not of European honey bees, but of another species entirely, namely domesticated Melipona bees. There is archaeological evidence that bees have been in Central America for thousands of years.

Claim: Alma 7:10 contradicts the Bible in Matt. 2:1, therefore the Book of Mormon is false and Mormons are sneaky monkeys.

References:

Alma 7:10 – “And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers…”

Matthew 2:1 – “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea…”

Explanation: This one’s pretty simple. There is “the city of Jerusalem” and “the land of Jerusalem” which encompasses many cities. For example, I was born in a hospital in Pasadena, CA although my parents lived in Arcadia at the time, and it’s all in Los Angeles county. So where do I tell people I was born? If someone is from outside California I’ll tell them I’m from Los Angeles. If they know a little about California I’ll tell them Pasadena, which sometimes they’re familiar with and sometimes they aren’t, although they’ll generally know Pasadena before Arcadia. If they’re from the Los Angeles area then they’ve generally heard of Arcadia so I’ll tell them Arcadia. Am I lying in any of the three answers? No, because I’m not trying to mislead anyone, I’m trying to give them an accurate description of where I was born and where I’m from. How far is it from Bethlehem to Jerusalem? 6 miles. For a people used to walking as a mean of transportation that wouldn’t be far at all.

Besides, everybody knows Christ was born in the city of Bethlehem. Do you really think Joseph Smith could be smart enough to write the entire Book of Mormon, which gets 100 things right for every thing the anti-Mormons say it gets wrong, and yet make such an obvious mistake? Or as BYU professor Daniel C. Peterson pointed out in more elegant terms:

To suggest that Joseph Smith knew the precise location of Jesus’ baptism by John (“in Bethabara, beyond Jordan” (1 Ne. 10:9) but hadn’t a clue about the famous town of Christ’s birth is so improbable as to be ludicrous. Do the skeptics seriously mean to suggest that the Book of Mormon’s Bible-drenched author (or authors) missed one of the most obvious facts about the most popular story in the Bible — something known to every child and Christmas caroler? Do they intend to say that a clever fraud who could write a book displaying so wide an array of subtly authentic Near Eastern and biblical cultural and literary traits as the Book of Mormon does was nonetheless so stupid as to claim, before a Bible-reading public, that Jesus was born in the city of Jerusalem? As one anti-Mormon author has pointed out, “Every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows Christ was born in Bethlehem.” [Langfield, 53.] Exactly! It is virtually certain, therefore, that Alma 7:10 was foreign to Joseph Smith’s preconceptions. “The land of Jerusalem” is not the sort of thing the Prophet would likely have invented, precisely for the same reason it bothers uninformed critics of the Book of Mormon.

As fairmormon.org states, “This is consistent with the usage of the ancient Middle East. El Amarna letter #287 reports that ‘a town of the land of Jerusalem, Bit-Lahmi [Bethlehem] by name, a town belonging to the king, has gone over to the side of the people of Keilah.’”

But more importantly, think of it from the writer’s perspective. Alma was in the America’s, on the other side of the world from the Middle East. For 500 years his people had talked about the land they came from, and what was this land? The land of Jerusalem. For them, there was the land where they lived, in the America’s, and across the sea was “the land of Jerusalem” which for them, at a minimum, would likely have incorporated everything within the general area of modern-day Israel and then some.

1. Church organization
2. Plurality of Gods
3. Plurality of wives doctrine
4. Word of Wisdom
5. God is an exalted man
6. Celestial marriage
7. Men may become Gods
8. Three degrees of glory
9. Baptism for the dead
10. Eternal progression
11. The Aaronic Priesthood
12. Temple works of washings, anointing, endowments, sealing.

The founder of Mormonism said the Book of Mormon was the most correct book of any book, including the Bible (History of the Church, Vol. 4, page 461), and that a man could get closer to God by following it than any other book. Yet, essential Mormon doctrines aren’t even found in it.

This is because the Book of Mormon is nothing more than a fictional account made up by Joseph Smith. It wasn’t until after the book had been printed that the additional heretical doctrines of Mormonism started to develop. That is why the Book of Mormon sounds so Christian — at first.

A: First, when Joseph Smith said the Book of Mormon was “the most correct book of any book” he wasn’t referring to grammar or punctuation, he wasn’t referring to whether it had been printed correctly, and he didn’t mean that the historical accounts in the book were more accurate than historical accounts in other books. What he meant was that the Book of Mormon contained more clear and pure truths of God than any other book, and that those truths are easier to understand as they are written in the Book of Mormon than in any other book. If you want the evidence, just read the Bible and the Book of Mormon and tell me which is easier to understand. The truth in the Book of Mormon isn’t any more true than the truth in the Bible, but because of the way it’s written it might be easier to understand in the Book of Mormon, and a person will get nearer to God by reading something they understand than something they don’t understand.

For example, have you ever read Isaiah? Not too easy to understand, right? And there isn’t too much in the Bible that helps you understand Isaiah. But in the Book of Mormon it quotes Isaiah and also has other prophets explaining what Isaiah meant by certain things. So by reading those parts of the Book of Mormon you come to better understand the Bible and the Book of Mormon confirms that the Bible is true.

In other words, it helps to understand what Joseph Smith meant when he was “the most correct”.

Second, it helps to understand God’s purposes with the Book of Mormon. His intent wasn’t to communicate 100% of his truth and doctrine, it was to “show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations”. God included what needed to be included to accomplish that mission, and apparently those doctrines didn’t need to be in the Book of Mormon for it to do what it is intended to do.

Third, you might ask “But wouldn’t some of those doctrines just naturally occur in the Book of Mormon if they are that important?” Maybe, but maybe not. The Book of Mormon is an abridgment of many other books, potentially hundreds of other books. It’s a Cliff Notes version of 1,000 years of history. Obviously not everything could be included and Mormon, the prophet/abridger of the Book of Mormon, had to be very picky about what to include.

Imagine you were writing a history of the United States over the past 100 years, and you were limited to 500 pages. What would you include? What would be most important to you. You’d probably talk about Presidents, wars, economic troubles, economic booms, technology, etc. It wouldn’t be hard to fill up 500 pages with just those few things, and in fact you’d probably have to leave a lot of important things out. There’s a good chance you wouldn’t mention fast food. It wouldn’t seem important to you. And yet fast food has had an enormous impact on American society in terms of economics, health, and lifestyle. But would it be reasonable for someone reading your history to say “Hey, you didn’t include anything about fast food, so how do I know the rest of this is true?”

Fourth, it’s important to understand the principle of continuing revelation. If you believe the Bible is the final word of God and contains all his truth, then it might be tempting to apply that mindset to the Book of Mormon and assume that it must contain all the truths the Mormons believe in. But for Mormons, we don’t believe the heavens are closed. We believe God still speaks to man today through his prophets, just as he did in ancient times. There’s no need for God to pack everything into one book, because he can talk to his prophets and reveal to them whatever it is they need to know. That’s where these other doctrines came from, and they came in God’s own time and according to his plan.

Critics of Joseph Smith, Mormonism, and the Book of Mormon use this to set up a false scenario, saying at least implying that Mormons are disparaging the Bible. This has led to people thinking that Mormons don’t even use or believe in the Bible. This is simply not true. Mormons revere the Bible every bit as much as they do the Book of Mormon. What Mormons believe is that the Bible, having passed through who knows how many hands of how many translators and writers over the past 2,000 years, inevitably has been changed, modified, mistranslated, and therefore isn’t exactly what was written down by the prophets and apostles. Mormons aren’t saying the Bible’s a pack of lies, we’re saying that it contains a some errors and there are a few things missing. A primary purpose of the Book of Mormon is to corroborate the Bible as a second witness and clarify things that may be confusing. Mormons use the Bible and Book of Mormon together. They’re even printed by the LDS Church as a single book with all sorts of cross-references. The LDS Church has official curriculum to accompany the Bible that every member studies. It would be hard to say that Mormons don’t use the Bible or revere it every bit as much as members of any other Christian religion.

So why did Joseph Smith say the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion and not the Bible? Because the Book of Mormon is the primary means of proving the LDS Church is true. Every other Christian church already has the Bible, and proving the Bible is true doesn’t help you decide whether to join the Catholic church or the Baptist church. But if you can find out for yourself that the Book of Mormon is true, then there’s only one option.

Want a free Book of Mormon? Or you can read the Book of Mormon online.

A: The Book of Mormon is an abridgment or summary of many other books, possibly hundreds of other books. Mormon was the prophet who did the abridging and more than once he said he wasn’t writing anything close to 1% of what was going on.

Critical claim: Mormons claim that all or most native Americans are descendants of the people in the Book of Mormon. The people in the BofM came from Jerusalem. The DNA of modern-day inhabitants of Jerusalem doesn’t match modern-day descendants of native Americans, therefore the BofM is false and Mormons are a bunch of liars.

There’s quite a few scientific problems with this premise.

1. The LDS Church doesn’t claim that all or most native Americans are descendants of the people described in the BofM. It is true that the BofM used to say that the BofM people were the “principal” ancestors of the “American Indians” but the word “principal” was recently removed. As for why the word “principal” was included in the first place, it was the widely held opinion in the LDS Church that this was fact, but it was never a point of doctrine or something Mormons rested all their other beliefs on. It’s the type of thing that, once new evidence came along, was quickly dropped and Mormons said “Oh, you mean that perhaps 99% of the native Americans around today aren’t direct descendants of the BofM people? Oh, ok, that’s different than what I thought, but no biggie.”
2. The LDS Church has never claimed that there weren’t any other people who came to the Americas other than those described in the BofM.

3. What’s the chance of finding a DNA sample from a living person that can be verified as being the same as DNA from someone who lived in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago?

4. How do know that the DNA of everybody who lived in Jersusalem 2,600 was the same?

5. How pure is the DNA from someone in Central America today? How do we know we’ve got someone who would have the DNA of a Nephite, rather than some other native American group?

Critics who use DNA as evidence of the falseness of the BofM are making some wild assumptions regarding the science behind this DNA testing.

Ok, so that’s a bit of a big nutshell, but if you want a lot of details, check out the LDS Church’s official news release on DNA and the Book of Mormon, and Jeff Lindsay’s take.