Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge

Reasons to agree

"A concept" is a belief, or conclusion. The "sum of [one's] knowledge" is all the information, statistics, facts, and arguments that we have rolling around in our head. Valid conclusions take into account real data. Invalid conclusions ignore important data. If we want to believe things that are valid we need to take in accurate data, and ensure that our conclusions don't contradict each other.

There is a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania which is suspiciously close to the name Lehi in the Book of Mormon

Reasons to agree

Reasons to disagree

There were thousands of towns and cities in America at the time of Joseph Smith. Because some of them have similar names to names in the Book of Mormon doesn't prove much. You would have to do a pretty sophisticated analysis with multiple places in order for it to prove very much statistically.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree: -1

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree with reasons to agree: 0

Total Idea Score: -1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.

The names in the Book of Mormon are suspiciously close to the names of Towns around where Joseph Smith grew up

Reasons to agree

There is a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania which is suspiciously close to the name Lehi in the Book of Mormon (-1).

Reasons to disagree

In order to determine this you would have to sit down with a list of Book of Mormon names, and an accurate list of names around Joseph Smith in his time. Some of the list on Anti-Mormon websites have names of cities that were not even settled yet in Book of Mormon times. So you would have to establish that a neutral party is examining the names, and then you would have to determine the probability that the names in the Book of Mormon were not created from towns surrounding Joseph Smith. Even if you did this, you would only generate a probability that Joseph Smith would have generated those names from actual ancient Nephite Laminite names, and it wouldn't really prove very much, but would have to be taken into consideration with other probabilities that Joseph Smith was inspired...

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -1

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to disagree with reasons to agree: -1

Total Idea Score: -1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change.

LDS Church members have inaccurate understandings of their history.

Joseph said he was visited by an angel in his room, but he couldn't have, because he shared the room with his brothers, and they would have seeing it. -2

Reasons to agree: +1

Joseph intentionally misled people about his "visit" by the angel Moroni.

Reasons to disagree: -3

If you believe Joseph had a supernatural experience, he could have had a real vision from God, but it could have been while he slept.

God has to modify you in order to be able to see spiritual things. LDS people people call this being translated. We cannot, under normal circumstances, perceive spiritual matter or things with normal vision. (D&C 131:7-8) Joseph had to be blessed to hear and see a divine messenger. Others were not so blessed, and so would hear and see nothing. If God can send an angel he can keep the audience to that which he wishes.

You don't have to assume that God actively dulled his family member's senses in order to have an Angel speak to Joseph, only that Joseph's senses were enriched.

Reasons to agree: +1

Reasons to disagree: -3

Score: -2