Nephi: A can do kinda guy

[_Meadowchik]

I worry that at best, we're getting numb to watching this slow and unrelenting death from things a healthy person would shrug off. And at worst, maybe we're not baffled enough because you can only be around contagion so much before it gets on you, too. Not that you even momentarily consider this idiocy. But that you get used to it.

Earlier this year I found myself, on a flight from Denver to DC, sitting next to a talkative historian. He was a specialist in transAtlantic commodities and we talked for a good hour. I did mention the Book of Mormon and some details and he was amused. Never had it been so clear how ridiculous it is from the outset.

This is exactly why we can get stuck in the cycles of rehashing, because it's only a rare nonMormon who understands the power of indoctrination, who doesn't just dismiss the truth crisis and faith trauma experience. So we go back where we're understood.

That conversation on the airplane was very gratifying, it was a real-world expert affirmation of verifiable fact. I feel very little need to rehash the Book of Mormon. I have, however, chosen to focus on today's church and the most urgent necessary repairs it is morally obligated to make. Nephi is symbolic of the complete abdication we're asked to make in the church, of our personal moral codes. His story is still damaging and for me, that is why he is still relevant.

(How's that for a paradoxical post?)

[_Runtu]

I worry that at best, we're getting numb to watching this slow and unrelenting death from things a healthy person would shrug off. And at worst, maybe we're not baffled enough because you can only be around contagion so much before it gets on you, too. Not that you even momentarily consider this idiocy. But that you get used to it.

I think there's something to this. The other day two apologists said to me on the other board that steel/metal was one of the "last" unresolved issues or anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. I was respectful, but I don't know how anyone could say such an absurd thing with a straight face. How are you supposed to respond to that?

Sometimes I think apologetics is more about the apologist's desperate need to believe his or her faith in the Book of Mormon isn't irrational. It's driven more by fear than anything else.

[_grindael]

Darth J,

Holy slippery treasures, Batman! You said,

Imagine this kind of stupidity in any other context. ...

I can. Trumpism. It's like he's been possessed by the ghost of Jo Smith, but without all the religious baggage. I mean, men on the moon dressed like Quakers? Really? The "lost" 10 Tribes are on a broken off piece of the earth circling around and around and will someday land that huge rock and be welcomed back with their "great prophets" along with John the Revelator? Wives? Really? Wives? l look around and can see only one. Damn the Expositor to hell, it's all FAKE damned NEWS. No collusion, no collusion, no collusion... And who the hell is Stormy Daniels? I didn't pay her off... oh wait, yes I did. Brigham Young to one of his wives: "Don't be alone in a room with Smitty". Or the master groper Trump.

Do ya think Smitty could have said that he could shoot someone on Main Street in Nauvoo and it wouldn't make a tittle of difference to his followers? I can picture that. The Book of Mormon or the Art of the Deal? Both fiction. Like Smitty & ancient languages, Trump wouldn't know how to "deal" if his life depended on it. Just promise a bunch of crap and then don't pay them. Bank scandals and Tax evasion and bankruptcies.

I am baffled and incredulous that there are "Trumpites" that defend this turd. Yet, here we are. They sure mimic the Book of Mormon defenders with their continual BS and dogged loyalty to alternative facts. Imagine if Smith had lived and became President! We're seeing it now. Ship all the blacks to Mexico and close up the borders to those brown skinned cockroaches. We don't want to mingle with them, we'll lose our precious WHITE identity! They all have the curse of the black skin, so send 'em to Mexico where all colors are alike. Wanna be autocrats.

And the press. The enemy of the state. Burn it down. Lock up the reporters. The Expositor or the New York Times... all fake news and they must be destroyed. Vilify any competition... It's all THEIR fault, I'm squeaky clean and it's all a plot to destroy me because I'm so PURE.

Putin's puppet or the puppet of "Jehovah". The secular and the religious sides of the same coin. We're in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Please tell me it's all a dream.