Mormonism enters the world stage as a major religion by 2010

Eh. Anyone have any sources for how quickly Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and ect grew in it's first two hundred years?

I think the situation that Mormonism has had to face is different from the one Christianity had to face.

Mormonism has lived next to a strongly established religion, that is divided into several branches and is prone to have strong revival movements from time to time. During most of of the last two century, if a person within the western civilization has become a spiritual seeker, s/he has probably ended up finding his/her anwers from Christianity. And later, when people started to seek answers beyond Christianity, they usually didn't just give up it, but the whole Abrahamic monotheism.
 
And of course, the modern world is slightly more tolerant of religious freedom compared to Ancient Rome.

Maybe Mit Romney wins the presidency at some point and forces/convinces everyone to convert to Mormonism to put the US back in God's favor after losing a war against Soviet Russia? You know, God hates us because of _________, and that's why we lost. If we all join Mormonism, God will care for us and make us a world power. If the times were hard enough, it might be plausible to net you a couple million.
 

Hnau

Banned
A Mormon faith which actively recruits blacks and spouts abolitionist doctrine is going to be a very hard sell to mainstream 19th century America and will likely not get even the numbers of converts it got in the real world. Utah would probably look more like New Hampshire or Vermont due to a more liberal founding population and have more blacks who came as converts.

Well, I don't mean that abolitionist. In OTL they were against slaves, but not particularily active against it. And later they didn't give blacks the priesthood (though they did treat them well as normal members).

Making the story sound more fantastical doesn't help. And you're trying to convert by faith alone? Well, no wonder your numbers are so low. Most other forms of religion(Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, ect) find, use, and want to find more physical evidence of their faith, to show the world their form of truth(right or wrong).

If God wanted to prove He was there, why doesn't He? Because He does not, that obviously means that if there is a God, he wants us to use faith for some reason or another. Theologically, you must come to this viewpoint at some point of your spiritual viewpoint... why doesn't God just open the heavens and talk to everybody? If you believe in God, any divine being, you must believe there is a reason He hides Himself.

And the LDS Church does show enough evidence that it could be possible that its true. But it would be ludicrous to suggest He would just make Himself known everywhere.

I'm sorry, but the average person just isn't capable of producing that much blind trust. That's why you've only got 15 million members.

There's only 1 billion irreligious people in the world. There's a lot of blind trust around even in 2008 (or mere ignorance, either way you've got a believer). In the 1800s, there was even more.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
If God wanted to prove He was there, why doesn't He? Because He does not, that obviously means that if there is a God, he wants us to use faith for some reason or another. Theologically, you must come to this viewpoint at some point of your spiritual viewpoint... why doesn't God just open the heavens and talk to everybody? If you believe in God, any divine being, you must believe there is a reason He hides Himself.

And the LDS Church does show enough evidence that it could be possible that its true. But it would be ludicrous to suggest He would just make Himself known everywhere.

Erm. Not quite. Mormonism has nothing to support most of it's claims. The supposed civilizations that were descended from the israelites, the giant wooden submarine(that's what it was, right?), the tablets in and of themselves, ect.

There's a vast amount of explaining to do. Normal Christianity has the luxury of being very well documented. Well. Generally speaking. Islam has the same, Judaism, ect. There's no historical precedent for Mormonisms' statements about the history of the Americas. (And as a Native American, I find some of it particuarally insulting, but that's besides the point)



There's only 1 billion irreligious people in the world. There's a lot of blind trust around even in 2008 (or mere ignorance, either way you've got a believer). In the 1800s, there was even more.

Ehh...1000 years of history, supposed miracles, that whole Roman Empire fiasco. Not so much 'ignorance' as much as it is 'making history more interesting'.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Brass plates exactly as those described by Joseph Smith were used in the Middle East when Nephi and Lehi and his family left for the Americas... and evidence that they existed were not apparent until just recently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates#Non-LDS_plates_and_Mormon_apologetics

Civilizations descended from these people... what evidence do you have against them? There is Israeli DNA in the Americas! Presenting haplogroup X.


Um. Did you read the entirity of the articles? The plate one specifically states that nothing even nearing the length of the Mormon Texts has been discovered, or is even likely.

And the Genes mention nothing of Israelites, but of Caucasians. Not Semites.

The Druze, it appears, are Persians.
 

Hnau

Banned
Um. Did you read the entirity of the articles? The plate one specifically states that nothing even nearing the length of the Mormon Texts has been discovered, or is even likely.

Wait a minute there. We just discovered these golden plates. We can't draw conclusions on just a few examples. Just wait a few years. You think they'll be the only ones discovered?

The Druze could still be related to the founding family, especially of the females that were brought from Jerusalem, of which no lineage identity is known (mDNA follows females). Its possible. I mean, what do you want, 100% Semite DNA traces? There is Middle Eastern DNA in the Americas! What will come next?

DNA studies have just begun. Just a few years ago the Clovis theory fell apart and its apparent that there were many migrations to the Americas.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Wait a minute there. We just discovered these golden plates. We can't draw conclusions on just a few examples. Just wait a few years. You think they'll be the only ones discovered?
It's obvious this technology is completely impractical. I mean really. It's a waste of the metal(something even those primitive cultures could grasp) and a waste of time to document things that could far more easily be, excuse the generalization, carved into stone.

The Druze could still be related to the founding family, especially of the females that were brought from Jerusalem, of which no lineage identity is known (mDNA follows females). Its possible. I mean, what do you want, 100% Semite DNA traces? There is Middle Eastern DNA in the Americas! What will come next?

DNA studies have just begun. Just a few years ago the Clovis theory fell apart and its apparent that there were many migrations to the Americas.
I want what your book says: Israelites in the Americas. Not Persians that could've traveled through Siberia into the continent, or proto Europeans that came across through the frozen north, I want Israelites. Semites. Hebrews. Ye with the funny noses.

And it isn't "Middle eastern DNA", it's a strand that's found in pretty low concentrations through out the Caucasian and Arabic-Persian world, with even lower amounts found in current indenginous Americans. Really, all this proves is that pre-civilization/extremely early civilization man was a little more mobile than we first gave credit.
 
And it isn't "Middle eastern DNA", it's a strand that's found in pretty low concentrations through out the Caucasian and Arabic-Persian world, with even lower amounts found in current indenginous Americans. Really, all this proves is that pre-civilization/extremely early civilization man was a little more mobile than we first gave credit.

And the very low genetic diversity of homo sapiens
 

NomadicSky

Banned
I had a conversation with someone on this topic a while back on the board. I said that polygamy helped the Mormons build their membership, but he gave me some good data that showed that polygamous relationships actually yield about the same if not less offspring than monogamous relationships. I'll have to look back in the archives to find the sources.

However, just imagine an LDS Church without polygamy, so that it doesn't face the Utah War and other persecution by the US government until 1890. And no schisms either. It could help growth out a good deal. The Mormons might just remain in Missouri/Illinois, and Joseph Smith might live longer. These are just guesses, but removing polygamy would help the Church out a great deal, just at a glance.

You almost seem ashamed the LDS practiced polygamy.

You shouldn't be. The US government just like today needed to be hands off and let people do what they wanted in their private life.

I'm not sure how far back your roots go with your family in the church, but polygamy is nothing to be ashamed of.

The descendants of those first Mormon settlers have everything to be proud of when they think about their Mormon ancestors. Just think about it setting out on a cross country journey to arrive in a hellish place and turning into a very prosperous region.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Protestantism, if you want to lump all Protestants into a single group, has way more than 200 Million adherents - I don't know the numbers, precisely, but most people in the US count, plus most of northern Europe, plus...

Yes but I don't "lump" Protestants together, because Lutheranism, Babtism and Calvinism is as different from each other as they're from Catholism, and the only reason to "lump" them together is purely political.
 
Back on Topic. To make Mormonism a major on par with Catholicism or Islam, all you need is a disaster that encompasses the major areas of Mormonism today and it's periphery. Then have the prepared and organized Mormons (all that 'store up resources for bad times' supplies). being able to spearhead a recovery. This will bring about the conversion of large numbers to the ideology that helped bring back normality.
 

Hnau

Banned
I like that idea, Cythia. What it would entail exactly... hm. I was thinking Yellowstone, but that would probably just kill everybody.

@ NomadicSky - I am not ashamed of polygamy. My grandmother's mother was the daughter of a second wife. Without polygamy, I wouldn't be here. Without the Latter-day Saint movement, which brought the Jensens across the Atlantic to Zion (Utah), I wouldn't be alive. Interesting to think of, eh?

It's a waste of the metal(something even those primitive cultures could grasp) and a waste of time to document things that could far more easily be, excuse the generalization, carved into stone. It's a waste of the metal(something even those primitive cultures could grasp) and a waste of time to document things that could far more easily be, excuse the generalization, carved into stone.

In 600 BC? Carved into stone? Hmm... you know, it seems like you are really reaching for evidence against Mormonism, not as if you have a firm scientific backing that its wrong. I can name many things that people in antiquity did that was against their better judgment, so that's not exactly an argument.

And here's the deal about the brass/golden plates, it was a record, passed down generation from generation, detailing only the very important details of each prophet it was passed down to. When Lehi and his family were in Jerusalem, it was a book of ancestry. You don't carve that into stone and lug it around. You don't use papyrus because it could be torn. This was a religious document. Writing it on metal pages was a smart thing to do: it doesn't degrade, its light, you can write on it easily with a stylus.

Joseph Smith reported the plates as smallish. No more than a foot in height, with probably much less metal pages than the Book of Mormon. Now, if there were brass plates in the Middle East, even if there were only a few pages, its likely that someone could have collected say eighty of them and bound them with three rings of metal. I mean... just because we haven't found them in the last few years doesn't mean they aren't around. Its ludicrous to assume that. You are really reaching, man.

Israelites in the Americas. Not Persians that could've traveled through Siberia into the continent, or proto Europeans that came across through the frozen north, I want Israelites. Semites. Hebrews. Ye with the funny noses.

Have you read the Book of Mormon or studied it? Lehi and his family, as well as a few others, couldn't have made up more than twenty people at max that left on a single boat towards the Americas... 2600 years ago. The Church's stance was that there were many people on the two continents when they arrived and the Book of Mormon talks about these natives as well. We're talking about a small Israelite colony surrounded by many different peoples. The population of their descendents, a thousand years later, couldn't have been more than a few million.

Were they Israelites? We know that Lehi and his family were. The others... who knows? Do you think that would be recognized in the ocean of DNA, after nearly 3000 years? Haplogroup X could be evidence of their nations, it might not be. Genetic evidence continues to surface.

What I'm trying to prove is not solid evidence of their existence, that isn't possible for anything. There will always be an alternate theory no matter how much evidence accrues, and sometimes that's good... science always advanced. What I am trying to prove is that it was possible. There's no solid evidence against it having happened, especially if it happened the way it did in the Book of Mormon: genocide in 421 AD, all Nephites killed. That would mean even less of an impact.

Plus, our Church doesn't concern itself with archeological and genetic evidence. Our job is to save souls. People aren't converted to a faith-based religion based on science. Its much easier than that. Read a part of the Book of Mormon and pray to God about it, and if you truly believe you'll receive an answer, and you promise to act on it no matter what it is, God will hit you with a lightning bolt. You've gotta humble yourself before that point, in order to believe on faith. That's something that'll be impossible for any critics of Mormonism based on science. You want physical evidence? Its there, I've seen it, but the Lord isn't going to reveal it until you pass a certain trial: faith, man.

That's my position.
 
Hnau,

You need something that affects humanities civilization specifically. Disease, massive economic collapse, disastrous civil war/disturbance, etc.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
In 600 BC? Carved into stone? Hmm... you know, it seems like you are really reaching for evidence against Mormonism, not as if you have a firm scientific backing that its wrong. I can name many things that people in antiquity did that was against their better judgment, so that's not exactly an argument.

And here's the deal about the brass/golden plates, it was a record, passed down generation from generation, detailing only the very important details of each prophet it was passed down to. When Lehi and his family were in Jerusalem, it was a book of ancestry. You don't carve that into stone and lug it around. You don't use papyrus because it could be torn. This was a religious document. Writing it on metal pages was a smart thing to do: it doesn't degrade, its light, you can write on it easily with a stylus.

Joseph Smith reported the plates as smallish. No more than a foot in height, with probably much less metal pages than the Book of Mormon. Now, if there were brass plates in the Middle East, even if there were only a few pages, its likely that someone could have collected say eighty of them and bound them with three rings of metal. I mean... just because we haven't found them in the last few years doesn't mean they aren't around. Its ludicrous to assume that. You are really reaching, man.
A foot of gold? He wouldn't be able to lift it unless he was the Hulk. This is gold we're talking about. A rare, valuable metal that is also the exact opposite of "sturdy". That's the reason you find gold in computers. It is light, but it's also extremely maluable, to the point of being useless in anything worthwhile. For all the Aztec, Inca's, and Mayan's goldwork, we have found not a single "book of gold". Or even a metal book. Why? Even if the Nephites were ethnically clensed from the Americas, their technology would've had to have been passed on by a few.

Have you read the Book of Mormon or studied it? Lehi and his family, as well as a few others, couldn't have made up more than twenty people at max that left on a single boat towards the Americas... 2600 years ago. The Church's stance was that there were many people on the two continents when they arrived and the Book of Mormon talks about these natives as well. We're talking about a small Israelite colony surrounded by many different peoples. The population of their descendents, a thousand years later, couldn't have been more than a few million.

Were they Israelites? We know that Lehi and his family were. The others... who knows? Do you think that would be recognized in the ocean of DNA, after nearly 3000 years? Haplogroup X could be evidence of their nations, it might not be. Genetic evidence continues to surface.

What I'm trying to prove is not solid evidence of their existence, that isn't possible for anything. There will always be an alternate theory no matter how much evidence accrues, and sometimes that's good... science always advanced. What I am trying to prove is that it was possible. There's no solid evidence against it having happened, especially if it happened the way it did in the Book of Mormon: genocide in 421 AD, all Nephites killed. That would mean even less of an impact.

Plus, our Church doesn't concern itself with archeological and genetic evidence. Our job is to save souls. People aren't converted to a faith-based religion based on science. Its much easier than that. Read a part of the Book of Mormon and pray to God about it, and if you truly believe you'll receive an answer, and you promise to act on it no matter what it is, God will hit you with a lightning bolt. You've gotta humble yourself before that point, in order to believe on faith. That's something that'll be impossible for any critics of Mormonism based on science. You want physical evidence? Its there, I've seen it, but the Lord isn't going to reveal it until you pass a certain trial: faith, man.

That's my position.

There is quite a bit of solid evidence that a bunch of Arabs(arabs including Persians, Israelites, and such) from 600BCE, could not of built a boat(or submarine..) of wood to sail around Africa, across the Atlantic, and land in Northern South America. It just isn't feasible. It would litterally require an act of god.

And I don't seek faith. I don't need it. I'm quite assured of higher powers, but I doubt they're anywhere near as benevolent as the god of Abraham, Isaac and Moses.
 

Hnau

Banned
It is scientifically implausible that our reality doesn't contain Gods, I have to agree with you there. The universe is too big and has been around too long for there not to be Gods. The possibility that we are living in a simulation is so likely that to doubt it would be foolishness... unless we discover technology can't get any more advanced after a certain point, there are Gods out there.

A foot of gold? He wouldn't be able to lift it unless he was the Hulk.

They were brass plates, actually. And it wouldn't be a foot of gold... the plates couldn't possibly have been completely flat, with the technology the Nephites were working with... so there would be a lot of empty air in that 'foot-high book'.

Who says that the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans were part of the Book of Mormon episode. I myself find the Great Lakes theory to be much more accurate. That's where haplogroup X is. It is also likely that the Nephites might have lost the finer technologies they had in the Old World, over time and cultural intermixing with the natives.

And, there are people who have made modern-day journeys from the Old World to the Americas using only materials and tools found in 600 BCE, just to prove it was possible. Also, it was an act of God, if you are to believe the Book of Mormon is true. Furthermore, Lehi and his family had a divine instrument, the Liahona, to guide their way to America.
 
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