Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

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Not Buying It
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Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Not Buying It » Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:53 am

If you ever had any doubts about the plausibility of the Book of Mormon, read no farther than the excerpt below from Reddit (I won't provide a link in case it would cause any problems, but a simple search on Reddit for "Joseph Bad Math" should take you there if you desire). This person has an excellent point - not only does the Book of Mormon suffer from a complete lack of external evidence and a truly appalling number of anachronisms, in many ways the internal logic of the narrative just doesn't work. I should have seen this decades ago, but like a chump I read it for years and believed it without thinking about it:
Joseph Smith was really bad at math. Math vs the Nephites.

Jacob chp 2. About 56 yrs since Lehi and company left Jerusalem. Jacob is now about 45-50.

He is upset at the white and fair Nephites and angrily chastises them. He says they are worse than their enemies the loathsome dark Lamanites.

The rich Nephites have become arrogant and proud about their wealth and they have “gold, silver, and all manner of precious ores”. Those that have more are proud and mistreat the poor and they like to wear “costly apparel”.

What does this have to do with math? We have had 2 generations born since leaving Jerusalem. The first generation are from 2 families and make up about 3 dozen people. The second generation are all cousins and they may total about 72 people by this point. They have separated into 2 groups, so if we put half in each group we have about 18 first generation Nephites, and 36 second generation Nephites. That gives me about 54 Nephites trying to survive in an untamed wilderness.

The first generation know Hebrew and Egyptian. If this story is true then they need to build a temple of great size. They need to make copies of Laban’s sword. They needed to go gold hunting and begin to accumulate it in large quantities. Some had to be more successful at this than others so they can be proud and arrogant to the poorer Nephites. Some of the ones not building temples or mining for gold need to start making clothing. They must have multiple levels of clothing so the rich can buy the nice clothes.

Creating a new civilization is hard work. The First American settlers would have all starved without help from charitable “Lamanites”. Many of them did starve to death. They had no mining, temple building, or metallurgy for making swords. (Story of 1st colonial blacksmith: http://bigelowsociety.com/rod/bsmith.htm)

The first priorities are food, water, and shelter. Growing, gathering, and hunting for food is a full-time job. Anthropologists say you need at least 72 people before you can have one person that you can spare to become a pot maker. You can’t spare anyone to look for pretty metals, that have no functional value. No one is going to be willing to trade basic survival needs like food, clothes, or shelter for abstract valuables such as gold or silver.

You would need multiple clothing makers if you are going to have multiple clothing lines of various status. They need to make the necessary tools to raise and sheer sheep, or grow and harvest cotton, or tan and make leather. If you use cotton you need to make tools to make looms, then you need to run the looms to make cloth, then you need to use the cloth to make clothing. Keep in mind you have multiple clothing lines so the rich can get the nice clothes.

Some people are finding much more gold and silver than others so you also need at least 2 mining companies so one can be rich and one poor. Each person mining or making clothes is one less hunter, gatherer, or farmer. They have no training and no experience, no tools, no fertilizers, insecticides or GMOs. The need to find or grow enough food to survive, build homes (or at least basic shelter), a huge temple, make swords, and hunt for gold that is useless except that it allows a few to become proud.

Only the first generation has any experience with gold or silver as currency or a commodity. The second generation should have no use for it in their new life and no reason to consider it valuable since they can’t spend it or trade it. Mountain climbers do not take backpacks of money up Everest, because there is nowhere to spend it. Same with gold in a new civilization. Bartering useful items or skills makes sense, Impractical metals of theoretical value do not.

Making swords is complicated technology. I doubt any of us with all of our education and knowledge could go into the wilderness and make a steel sword.

They need to find and mine ore.

They must smelt it, and to do that they must build a powerful forge to melt the metal out of the rocks.

They need tools to shape the smelted ore.

They need an understanding of how to alloy different metals to create useful tools that don’t break with mild use.

Steel that is not too brittle, and also not too soft requires a skill in metallurgy that was unknown in the Americas.

This start from scratch civilization is mathematically too low on manpower to be doing these kinds of Gilligan’s island things.

Talks by modern apostles like Elder Holland teach that the Americas were not inhabited. The Book of Mormon also claims that the Book of Mormon lands were kept free of other people as an inheritance for the Nephites (See footnote).

Without people to trade with, or to help them, the projects claimed to have been accomplished defy math. It is silly to claim that a second-generation society of less than 100 people has rich and poor, mines gold and silver and iron, makes swords and other tools, builds temples, and has clothing nice enough that some people are arrogant about their nice clothes and horde of gold.

Footnote: 2nd Nephi 1:8 that says that God kept the promised land a secret so it would not be overrun by other groups. It is also inconsistent with pre-DNA teachings such as those by Jeffrey Holland, “Holy scripture records that “after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof.” (Ether 13:2.) Such a special place needed now to be kept apart from other regions, free from the indiscriminate traveler as well as the soldier of fortune. To guarantee such sanctity the very surface of the earth was rent. In response to God’s decree, the great continents separated and the ocean rushed in to surround them. The promised place was set apart. Without habitation it waited for the fulfillment of God’s special purposes.”

“With care and selectivity, the Lord began almost at once to re-people the promised land. The Jaredites came first, with stories of the great flood fresh in their memories and the Lord’s solemn declaration ringing in their ears: “Whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.” (Ether 2:8.)
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by wtfluff » Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:05 am

There are so many examples in mormonism where the math doesn't add up. The mentions on the reddit thread are just the tip of the iceberg.

After thinking about it for .000001 seconds, the first couple to come to mind:
  • Polygamy: Both here and in the "afterlife", it just doesn't add up in more than one way.
  • 16 million strong: Yeah right! Show us the real statistic...
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Red Ryder » Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:18 am

That's why the people of the Book of Mormon were AMONG the principle ancestors of the Native Americans.

It's equivalent to a Jewish family with strange beliefs moving from Israel to New York City in 1929 and being surrounded by New Yorkers.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Reuben » Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:39 am

Red Ryder wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:18 am
That's why the people of the Book of Mormon were AMONG the principle ancestors of the Native Americans.

It's equivalent to a Jewish family with strange beliefs moving from Israel to New York City in 1929 and being surrounded by New Yorkers.
And saying nothing about all the New Yorkers that were already there. And a member of the Jewish family continually holds the position of mayor from the moment they land. And they basically claim credit for the entire civilization.

I used to read these invisible New Yorkers into the narrative without considering how likely this scenario was.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Hagoth » Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:46 pm

Red Ryder wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:18 am
That's why the people of the Book of Mormon were AMONG the principle ancestors of the Native Americans.

It's equivalent to a Jewish family with strange beliefs moving from Israel to New York City in 1929 and being surrounded by New Yorkers.
The DNA problem has forced the church to abandon its entire narrative about the history of the Americas. Now we have to give credit for everything to the "others" who were already here and add the Nephites as some little pocket of advantage takers among an already densely populated land. That's the only way to save the BoM but it requires not believing what the book actually says about itself. Rock and a hard place.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by jfro18 » Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:19 pm

This reminds me of the Mormon Expressions podcast on building a transoceanic vessel. What the Book of Mormon says about how this was accomplished is so incredibly impossible and just ignorant that is impossible to take the book seriously as some sort of historical document.

If you've never heard that podcast, it's amazing. You can listen to it at http://johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive/M ... ion276.mp3

The church spent 140+ years claiming the Book of Mormon was this literal, historical document until DNA testing, Egyptian scholars, and an increase of understanding about history have just destroyed that narrative over the last ~30 years. Combine that with an internet age of information and they have to completely reinvent the narrative in order to accommodate all of the massive flaws in Joseph Smith's works.

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Red Ryder » Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:44 pm

Is it possible the church will drift from the historical "real people" narrative to an allegory "metaphorical" narrative?

It would be easy to do.

Russell M. Nelson could pull another magical general conference surprise and pull out some really dirty old looking papers and make the following statement:

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

It's with great excitement that I must share some wonderful new documents that have been found while cleaning out the Nauvoo Blacksmith's shop last summer. We've found some wonderful papers written in the prophets own hand that appear to be a lost chapter of the Book of Mormon; lost during the translation process. This last chapter states that The Book of Mormon was merely a handwritten tale by Moroni who was merely a poor farm boy in upstate New York in 1799. During the winter months when farming was impossible, he bode his time by writing this fantasy we all intimately know as the Book of Mormon.

Given this evidence, we must declare that all theories previously declared in the past have been declared heresy. This explains why no evidence has been found. We are thankful for this clarification from The Lord and thank the Janitors who cleaned out the old Blacksmith shop! We also thank them for finding (and keeping) the lost 116 weekly volumes of Playboy Nauvoo: The Teenager Next Door that Joseph Smith clearly only read and kept for the articles.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by jfro18 » Tue Jul 17, 2018 4:33 pm

Red Ryder wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:44 pm
Is it possible the church will drift from the historical "real people" narrative to an allegory "metaphorical" narrative?

It would be easy to do.
The funny this is that this is exactly why they've been so boxed in that it would be so difficult to shift away from the historical narrative. I don't think they'll *ever* do that, but I do think they will continue to diminish the historical narrative in talks and lessons and continue to hammer home that the real significance is in the spiritual nature of the BoM.

It's their same problems that they have with the LGBTQ community. They will likely soften their stance in the coming years, but they can't ever do a full embrace of them because of how far they are dug in now barring some insane revelation moves unseen since Joseph Smith.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall during some of the meetings that must take place there.

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Hagoth » Tue Jul 17, 2018 6:09 pm

jfro18 wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:19 pm
This reminds me of the Mormon Expressions podcast on building a transoceanic vessel. What the Book of Mormon says about how this was accomplished is so incredibly impossible and just ignorant that is impossible to take the book seriously as some sort of historical document.

If you've never heard that podcast, it's amazing. You can listen to it at http://johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive/M ... ion276.mp3
I guess I was less impressed by this episode that most people. The whole concept was based on what it takes to build a large European style keel ship. Many of the points were dead-on, especially concerning logistics, but I wish they had at least tipped a hat to other types of boat building, like the sewn plank hulls were actually built anciently in Oman and didn't require nails, and Polynesian ocean-crossing canoes that are lashed together with far less tooling and have woven plant fiber sails. The BoM makes a point of saying that Nephi was instructed in specific construction techniques that were unlike conventional boat building. Even as a TBM I assumed that his ship would have looked more like this:

Image
These vessels are perfectly capable of crossing oceans and require much less material and technology than the style of construction described in the podcast. All I'm saying is that by digging so deeply into a specific narrow set of expectations this kind of arguement gives apologists an easy dance-around.

But still...
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Palerider » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:16 am

Red Ryder wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:44 pm

Russell M. Nelson could pull another magical general conference surprise and pull out some really dirty old looking papers and make the following statement:

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

It's with great excitement that I must share some wonderful new documents that have been found while cleaning out the Nauvoo Blacksmith's shop last summer. We've found some wonderful papers written in the prophets own hand that appear to be a lost chapter of the Book of Mormon; lost during the translation process. This last chapter states that The Book of Mormon was merely a handwritten tale by Moroni who was merely a poor farm boy in upstate New York in 1799. During the winter months when farming was impossible, he bode his time by writing this fantasy we all intimately know as the Book of Mormon.

Given this evidence, we must declare that all theories previously declared in the past have been declared heresy.

At this point Elder Holland would have one of those "hair on fire" moments where he jumps up and runs screaming from the stage.

Later he would return more composed and do a Bruce R. McConkie where he says:

"Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world."

Wait a minute......isn't it "the world" that supposedly has the limited light and knowledge and you guys are the ones claiming to have the inside track, the mouth of God, the direct revelation, the superior light?

And for THIS we pay you 10% of our income?

One could almost think we were being conned.... :oops:
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by jfro18 » Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:55 am

Hagoth wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 6:09 pm
I guess I was less impressed by this episode that most people. The whole concept was based on what it takes to build a large European style keel ship. Many of the points were dead-on, especially concerning logistics, but I wish they had at least tipped a hat to other types of boat building, like the sewn plank hulls were actually built anciently in Oman and didn't require nails, and Polynesian ocean-crossing canoes that are lashed together with far less tooling and have woven plant fiber sails. The BoM makes a point of saying that Nephi was instructed in specific construction techniques that were unlike conventional boat building. Even as a TBM I assumed that his ship would have looked more like this:

Image
These vessels are perfectly capable of crossing oceans and require much less material and technology than the style of construction described in the podcast. All I'm saying is that by digging so deeply into a specific narrow set of expectations this kind of arguement gives apologists an easy dance-around.

But still...
That's a good point and one I never really thought about when listening to that podcast. It still leaves a ton of logistical issues (food, disposing of waste, dealing with the animals, etc) as outlined pretty nicely in Letter For My Wife (http://www.letterformywife.com/letter/#the_jaredites), but you're absolutely right that the podcast isn't a comparison that is going to be very usable in a discussion with any type of TBM/apologist.

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Hagoth » Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:05 am

jfro18 wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:55 am
but you're absolutely right that the podcast isn't a comparison that is going to be very usable in a discussion with any type of TBM/apologist.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by jfro18 » Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:09 am

Hagoth wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:05 am
jfro18 wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 7:55 am
but you're absolutely right that the podcast isn't a comparison that is going to be very usable in a discussion with any type of TBM/apologist.
"If Noah could build the ark with God's help, then Nephi certainly could have built a much smaller ship. 'Cause God."
Well yeah... and "we don't know what kind of help God gave them to get clean water and food as they traveled." I've heard that a few times, which is absurd but you can't disprove something that never happened, right?

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Archimedes » Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:33 am

Thor Heyerdahl did it a couple of times. Google "Ra" and "Kon Tiki". I don't remember if he had God's help or not...
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by græy » Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:19 am

wtfluff wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:05 am
There are so many examples in mormonism where the math doesn't add up. The mentions on the reddit thread are just the tip of the iceberg.

After thinking about it for .000001 seconds, the first couple to come to mind:
  • Polygamy: Both here and in the "afterlife", it just doesn't add up in more than one way.
  • 16 million strong: Yeah right! Show us the real statistic...
Not Buying It wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:53 am
If you ever had any doubts about the plausibility of the Book of Mormon, read no farther than the excerpt below from Reddit (I won't provide a link in case it would cause any problems, but a simple search on Reddit for "Joseph Bad Math" should take you there if you desire). This person has an excellent point - not only does the Book of Mormon suffer from a complete lack of external evidence and a truly appalling number of anachronisms, in many ways the internal logic of the narrative just doesn't work. I should have seen this decades ago, but like a chump I read it for years and believed it without thinking about it:
These mathematical "errors" have given me pause my whole life, and yet somehow I've always been able to sort of... dismiss them and assume that I was missing some "further light and knowledge" (C)(TM) that would make it all make sense. It wasn't until I started accepting that obvious truth even when it contradicts church teachings is still obvious truth that I could really see these points for what they meant.

In the same way, I have had frank and detailed discussions with my wife about Joseph's treasure digging con and its similarities to his Moroni story, about the contracting first vision accounts, about the negative impacts of polygamy. While she accepts the facts of these things, that they happened, she does not accept the implications of what they really mean.

Joseph was a con-man continuing his game. We don't know shit about the nature of God. Does he have a physical body? Is the spirit a separate individual? Are Christ/God/Spirit the same person? Was polygamy an ill-conceived attempt for Joseph to get some side action after he realized that eloping with Emma was a hasty decision, which has resulted in suffering and poverty for tens/hundreds of thousands in multiple generations?
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by Not Buying It » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:45 am

Hagoth wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 6:09 pm
jfro18 wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:19 pm
This reminds me of the Mormon Expressions podcast on building a transoceanic vessel. What the Book of Mormon says about how this was accomplished is so incredibly impossible and just ignorant that is impossible to take the book seriously as some sort of historical document.

If you've never heard that podcast, it's amazing. You can listen to it at http://johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive/M ... ion276.mp3
I guess I was less impressed by this episode that most people. The whole concept was based on what it takes to build a large European style keel ship. Many of the points were dead-on, especially concerning logistics, but I wish they had at least tipped a hat to other types of boat building, like the sewn plank hulls were actually built anciently in Oman and didn't require nails, and Polynesian ocean-crossing canoes that are lashed together with far less tooling and have woven plant fiber sails. The BoM makes a point of saying that Nephi was instructed in specific construction techniques that were unlike conventional boat building. Even as a TBM I assumed that his ship would have looked more like this:

Image
These vessels are perfectly capable of crossing oceans and require much less material and technology than the style of construction described in the podcast. All I'm saying is that by digging so deeply into a specific narrow set of expectations this kind of arguement gives apologists an easy dance-around.

But still...
Yeah, I felt the same way about the podcast - just because Arnold Frieberg painted a Eurpoean style ship with Lehi’s family all standing on deck shouting “Land Ho!” when they first see the Americas, and just because the Living Scriptures cartoon features a European style ship, that’s no reason to assume that is what is described in the Book of Mormon itself. As you rightly pointed out, there are all kinds of Polynesian islands that somehow got populated without the benefit of European shipbuilding.

I find this argument regarding population numbers far more compelling. Even as a full-on true-believing teenager I wondered about it, and ascribed it to the mysteries of exponential population growth. But 2 Nephi 5 presents some insurmountable problems to the narrative - the making of “many” swords after the manner of the sword of Laban, construction of a temple by a people who worked in “all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores” (steel? Really?), the mention of “wars” between two groups that likely consisted of around 50 members each, never mind the “skin of blackness” the Lord God did cause to come upon the Lamanites “that they might not be enticing unto my people” (wow, how have they not found a way to take that out yet?).

2 Nephi 5 all by itself sinks the Book of Mormon. Don’t bother with the details of European ship building, you don’t need those assumptions to demonstrate the Book cannot possibly be what it claims to be.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by wtfluff » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:52 am

Hagoth wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 6:09 pm
But still...
Are the Polynesians able to build lashed submarines? (Tight, like unto a dish?!?!?!?)

;)
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:53 am

There is still the nonsense of the timeline for oceanic crossing being longer than a year.

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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by oliver_denom » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:39 am

wtfluff wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:05 am
  • Polygamy: Both here and in the "afterlife", it just doesn't add up in more than one way.
Unless you maintain the gender stereotype that women are more righteous, pure, simple, and therefore less accountable for certain sins. Then you can imagine yourself a heaven where women outnumber the men 20 to 1.
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Re: Reddit Post on Joseph's Bad Math in the Book of Mormon

Post by wtfluff » Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:05 am

oliver_denom wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:39 am
wtfluff wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 11:05 am
  • Polygamy: Both here and in the "afterlife", it just doesn't add up in more than one way.
Unless you maintain the gender stereotype that women are more righteous, pure, simple, and therefore less accountable for certain sins. Then you can imagine yourself a heaven where women outnumber the men 20 to 1.
Are you taking into account the BILLIONS of humans who died before LD$-Inc. decided that Polygamy was a thing? ALL of those folks are going to join up in the afterlife and get a ticket directly to the CK (including all the males - it won't matter how righteous they were during their "mortal" life.) Even all the BILLIONS of humans who have lived during the LD$-Inc. polygamy joke who don't know about LD$-Inc. are going to get at ticket to the CK, because it's going to be obvious in the afterlife that mormonism was "the correct religion." Birthrates over time show that slightly more males than females are born. The 20 to 1 imaginary heaven is just that: Imaginary.

Stupid math...
Last edited by wtfluff on Thu Jul 19, 2018 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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