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Comment Re:Knowledge (Score 1) 1037

I'm sure you'll let me know if there is a problem with the facts there. Or maybe you're just afraid there might be bias there. Because when you're talking about a church, it's ok only to consider criticisms from outside the organisation? Would you also advocate not allowing an accused person to speak at their own trial?

Comment Re:Knowledge (Score 1) 1037

Not very reliable witnesses

That link makes two points: 1, that the witnesses had ulterior motives (they knew Smith, they had a financial stake in the success of the book), and 2, that if the witnesses believed their own testimony, then why did they leave the church. In fact, the second argument invalidates the first. If all the witnesses left the church, why did they never deny their testimony? Obviously they felt no loyalty to Smith, having left the church. Can you identify with that?

your scrutiny could use some scrutiny itself

That's an interesting point, but it addresses only one of the valid points made in the essay it refers to.

http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-abraham-issues.htm

That one is pretty weak. In fact, one of its four citations (the last) links to an article with the necessary information to debunk the whole criticism.

Comment Re:Knowledge (Score 1) 1037

all the evidence shows that Native Americans came from Asia

The last link in my previous comment demonstrates otherwise.

if you have the hard evidence

The same link also says, right in the concluding section, that the church's position is that the Book of Mormon is a spiritual document, not a historical one, and that "It is our position that secular evidence can neither prove nor disprove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon."

Comment Re:Knowledge (Score 1) 1037

How do you rationalize Smith's behaviour with the gold plates that nobody but him ever saw

They were seen by the three witnesses. To what behaviour are you referring?

and when the transcriber "lost" the translations (to see if Smith actually did have a source document from which he could reproduce the same translation) Smith then provided a different translation

Where did you get the idea that Martin Harris's motivation in losing the document was to test Joseph? I've read a bit on the subject and found nothing to support that notion. In any case, Joseph did not retranslate that portion, and the rationale for that is laid out in clear.

How he translated some Egyptian scrolls into the Book of Abraham, but the scrolls in question have nothing in common with what Joseph Smith translated

I'm not familiar with that claim or its background so I can't address it.

What about the claim that Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israelites, something proven false.

That's too big of an issue to get into here, but suffice it to say that your statement of the claim is an oversimplification (the original and current editions of the Book of Mormon state that the peoples of the Book are descended of Joseph of Egypt, and among the ancestors of Native Americans), and the 'evidence' that has been posited against is does not stand up to scrutiny.

Apropos, the answers to all of your questions and the cure to your misconceptions are readily found on the internet. Whether the internet makes some people into atheists, I do not know, but one this is for sure: knowledge, even readily available knowledge, does not by itself make one more informed. One has to know how to seek it out, filter the truth from the noise, and then judiciously apply it.

Comment Re:What have been my recent experiences? (Score 4, Insightful) 295

linux drivers suck for all 3

Don't tell Valve! You'll ruin there latest business model!

Seriously, I've used GPUs from all three manufacturers and found every Intel and nvidia hardware/driver combination I've tried to work well in Linux, and every AMD combination to be the opposite. I wish it were not so, but it is, in my experience.

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