Reason #172: Packham’s Logic about LDS Book of Mormon Apologists
My atheist friend, Richard Packham, has an excellent online article that shows the shallowness of LDS arguments to support the Book of Mormon. Below, mostly in Packham’s words, are some of the arguments he makes in his article: Most Mormon defenses of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon suffer from several severe logical flaws. The authors of Mormon apologetics are inadequately informed about ancient history and science. Or, perhaps they are informed about it, but dismiss it or ignore it. Mormon apologists frequently must distort what the Book of Mormon plainly says (disregarding, apparently, that their own scriptures contain God’s assertion that its words are “true” (D&C 17:6)). They gloss over the wide...
Reason #129: Because the writing of some biblical texts in other languages does not support “reformed Egyptian”
Paul Davidson, on the Recovery from Mormonism discussion board, says a Mormon apologist defending the concept of the LDS teachings about the Book of Mormon being written in “reformed Egyptian” told him: “By the ninth to sixth centuries before Christ, Israelites used Egyptian numerals mingled with Hebrew text. The Papyrus Amherst 63 contains a text of Psalms 20:2-6 written in Aramaic (the language of Jesus) using Egyptian characters. This text was originally dated to the second century B.C., but this has since been extended to the 4th century B.C. For further examples you can see the Byblos Syllabic texts, the Cretan hieroglyphics, Meroitic, Psalm 20 in demotic Egyptian (seen above), and Proto-Sinaitic and the alphabet.” In response, Richard...
Reason #110: Oahspe
While Mormons may claim that the Book of Mormon is unique, consider the case of a book called Oahspe: A New Bible. This very long book (twice as long as the Book of Mormon) was written by a single individual in a year’s time. According to ex-Mormon Richard Packham, this book was: . . .written miraculously by an angel using the hands and typewriter of a devout dentist named John Newbrough (1828-1891). He claimed that an angel had appeared to him and told him that he had been chosen to bring forth a new scripture. He was to spend the next few years as a period of testing and probation. At the end of the probationary period, the angel told him to buy a typewriter (at that time a fairly new invention) and a quantity of paper. Newbrough objected that he did not...
