Can I ask you what these personal religious experiences are?
Sure, but it's hard to give an answer beyond "it was a spiritual experience."
I see. But no records of said Moroni exist.
Except for the Book of Mormon itself . . . granted, that doesn't prove much, but saying that no historically verifiable records of a person who lived around 1600 years ago in a not-well-understood part of the world doesn't prove all that much either.
I find it somewhat incredible that anyone can have a vision of someone of which nobody knows what they actually looked like. For instance, Joan of Arc wouldn't be able to recognize Mary if she saw her. You can't recognize someone you've never seen. (Which is not to say Joan of Arc did not have a vision.)
Presumably, Mary would have bothered to identify herself to Joan of Arc, and to the people at Lourde, Fatima, and Guadalupe. I mean, there are a lot of people I don't recognize by sight, but if they told me their name I would know who they are.
Well, since physical things don't mysteriously materialize, then afterwards dematerialize (this would be a physical impossibility), the most obvious conclusion would be that there never were any 'golden plates'. Also, what mystifies me, why golden plates?
If you are making a written record that has to last for thousands of years, and has to be written on, thin gold sheets seem to be practical. It's no more mystifying than someone making up the idea of a book made of gold.
And they wouldn't have materialized and then dematerialized; they were buried in a hillside, then used for translation, then handed back over to the possession of an angel. No aspect of that seems less possible to me than the existence of an angel in the first place, so why focus on that part of it?
OK. Does that mean these 'ancient prophets' (which to me suggest people from antiquity) were of the same quality as this Moroni? I.e. with no records of their existence?
They would be in the same situation as Moroni, yes - see what I said above; they were hardly taking censuses in 90 BCE.
I'm not sure why I would try to convince you of anything. In my experience it's very hard to convince people of religious beliefs of something which they don't believe. And I'm not a Jehovah's witness. I simply don't quite understand the basis of Mormonism. Hence my questions.
Well, I am not sure exactly WHAT you are doing. I am trying to explain what Mormons believe, and why they believe it, and you keep saying that such a story has specific elements in it that are impossible to believe. I mean, I get that you don't believe Joseph Smith's account of the origin of the Book of Mormon; most people who aren't Mormon, don't. But you need to understand, you haven't really given a good reason for me to find the story unbelievable, in the sense that it couldn't be believed. So I will keep explaining what we believe and why we believe it, and there's not much more I can do to respond to you.
I am not sure what Jehovah's Witnesses have to do with anything; I don't recall mentioning them.
How likely is it that another religion is going to spring out of Mormonism?
Christianity started when a Jew started some crap and we got a new book (The new testament), Mormonism started when a Christian found some golden plates and we got a new book (The book of Mormon)..
How likely is it that we're going to get a startup religion at some point that follows the old testament, the books mentioned above, AND some sort of a new book? How long until the cycle repeats itself?
I realize this is purely hypothetical, but I'm sure our resident Mormons might actually know of a couple offshoot religions that didn't go anywhere.. or maybe some that did?
There are several branches of Mormonism; although the mainstream LDS Church accounts for like 95% of the total membership of all of them, there are some that are significant, like the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has several thousand members; then there is the FLDS, one of several groups that still practices polygamy. Most of those religions don't see themselves as spinoffs, of course. They claim to be the true successors to the church that Joseph Smith founded, just as we do. I suppose from a historical basis we have the strongest claim, but in matters of faith history only goes so far.
What do you think of the United Order and its collectivist efforts?
I think the sort of communal economy that the church practiced - or tried to practice - in its early days is a fine idea, but it's not a huge shock that it didn't work.
I have said that "you can't spell utopian socialism without 'optional'." In other words, I am all for communal economies people join, and can leave, voluntarily. This is getting a bit farther into my own political views, but in general, within Mormonism, we view it as unfortunate that the whole deal didn't work, and try to help each other out in a less extensive sense.
