We do know that gold weighs about 1200 pounds per cubic foot. Given the dimensions by Smith, some have concluded that the plates could have weighed as much as 234 pounds to as little as 100 pounds. The heavier weight is based on what would probably be the total weight of a solid block of gold measuring the size of Smith’s plates ...
The possibility of the plates being too heavy for Smith to carry has not escaped the notice of LDS apologists. To credit their founder with the ability to carry such a weight while running at the top of his speed would seem to conclude that Smith had no idea how heavy gold really was, thus making it appear that he fabricated this story. Bill McKeever, board post 14th March 2007, ‘How Heavy Were Those Gold Plates?’
I was utterly surprised. I was not moved, mind you. The Book of Mormon has to be one of the most lackluster of all the great works of literature to have inspired enduring religious movements. Yet it is dull precisely because it is all about Jesus. Professor Stephen H Webb, Wabash College
Soon after the Book of Mormon was published, Joseph Smith was accused of having used an unpublished manuscript written by the Reverend Solomon Spaulding (also spelled Spalding) of Conneaut, Ohio, as the text for his book. The controversy began in 1833, when D Philastus Hurlbut, a former Mormon, attempted to expose the Mormons by showing that the leading features of the Book of Mormon were conceived by Spaulding. Rumors in northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania had it that friends and relatives of Spaulding in that area had noticed a resemblance between the Book of Mormon and Spaulding’s manuscript. Vernal Holley, Book of Mormon Authorship, introduction
According to letters from Church Historian B H Roberts to Heber J Grant and other church officials, similarities between the Ethan’s book and the Book of Mormon translated by Joseph Smith, a Vermont native, include: extensive quotation from the prophecies of Isaiah in the Old Testament; the Israelite origin of the American Indian; the future gathering of Israel and restoration of the Ten Lost Tribes; the peopling of the New World from the Old via a long journey northward which encountered ‘seas’ of ‘many waters’; a religious motive for the migration; the division of the migrants into civilized and uncivilized groups with long wars between them and the eventual destruction of the civilized by the uncivilized; the assumption that all native peoples were descended from Israelites and their languages from Hebrew; the burial of a ‘lost book’ with ‘yellow leaves’; the description of extensive military fortifications with military observatories or ‘watch towers’ overlooking them; a change from monarchy to republican forms of government; the preaching of the gospel in ancient America. Stuck, board post 5th October 2009, ‘Link to Book: Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews or Tribes of Israel in America; Thanks Holland’
Why would the Book of Mormon – also purportedly a translation of an ancient record, like the Bible – not be translated into the modern language of the translator? (i.e. the American language of 1829) Why use a form of English that had disappeared (except for the King James Bible) from daily use? True, in the 19th century it was not uncommon for translations of ancient secular works (such a Greek drama, Latin poetry, Norse epics) to use an antiquated form of English, for the purpose of emphasizing the antiquity of the original.
And that may be the reason for Joseph Smith’s use of archaic English in his translation. However, that does not explain why the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants appear in the same archaic English. They do not purport to be ancient documents, but modern. One gets the impression that Smith’s familiarity with the King James Bible led him to believe that when God speaks English, it’s got to be the English of 1611. But why? Why would God speak in that particular style of English? Richard Packham, board post 14th January 2008, ‘Linguistics Problems in Mormonism’
The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce any convincing pre-Columbian archaeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant parts of the Americas, the pre-Columbian history of the Americas shows the opposite: widely disparate racial types (almost entirely east Asian – definitely not Semitic, as proven by recent DNA studies), and many unrelated native languages, none of which are even remotely related to Hebrew or Egyptian. Richard Packham, To Those Who are Investigating Mormonism
Since the founding of the church down to the present-day ... church leaders have not hesitated to lie, to falsify documents, to rewrite or suppress history, or to do whatever is necessary to protect the image of the church. Many Mormon historians have been excommunicated from the church for publishing their findings on the truth of Mormon history. ibid.
The economic situation of the Smith families was so desperate at this time that Joseph tried to sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon. Hiram Page wrote with bitterness years later that the prophet heard he could sell the copyright of any useful book in Canada and that he then received a revelation that ‘this would be a good opportunity to get a handsome sum’. Page explained that once expenses were met the profits were to be ‘for the exclusive benefit of the Smith family and was to be at the disposal of Joseph’. Page indicated that they hoped to get $8,000 for the copyright and that they traveled to Canada covertly to prevent Martin Harris from sharing in the dividend. Smith evidently believed that Harris was well enough off while his own family was destitute. When Page, Cowdery, and Knight arrived at Kingston, Ontario, they found no buyer. Martin Harris apparently learned of what was done, and Joseph guaranteed him in writing that he would share in any profits made from the subsequent sales of the book. In the spring of 1830 Harris walked the streets of Palmyra, trying to sell as many copies of the new scripture as he could. Shortly after Joseph Smith and Jesse Knight saw him in the road with books in his hand, he told them ‘the books will not sell for nobody wants them’. Marvin S Hill, Quest for Refuge pp.20-21
Brother Page and me, so unwisely, to Toronto, with a prediction from the Lord by Urim and Thummim that we would there find a man anxious to buy the First Elder’s copyright. I well remember we did not find him, and had to return surprised and disappointed. But so great was my faith, that in going to Toronto, nothing but calmness pervaded my soul, every doubt was banished, and I as much expected that Brother Page and I would fulfil the revelation as that we should live. And you may believe, without asking me to relate the particulars that it would be no easy task to describe our desolation and grief. Brother Page and I did not think that god would have deceived us through Urim and Thummin exactly as came the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery, original witness, Defense p229
I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state. Martin Harris, original witness
I did not see them as I do that pencil-case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith; I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me – though at the time they were covered with a cloth. Martin Harris
Since God destroyed whole cities, certainly small children were killed too. This means that God shed ‘innocent blood’ through his own violence. The shedding of innocent blood is a sin described as ‘unpardonable’ in Mormon doctrine. If God has sinned against the Holy Ghost, then he has ceased to be God, and can no longer exist as God. Since God has ‘offended these little ones’ by drowning, crushing, burning and burying them alive, as described in these verses, would it be better for your god if a millstone were placed around his neck, then tossed in the sea, as Jesus counseled?
If Mormons say that the ‘wicked’ destroyed by God in 3 Nephi 9 brought their own deaths upon themselves, how does this square with Christ’s pleadings on behalf of his own executioners in Jerusalem: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’? Why were Christ’s executioners granted such mercy, and the small children – not to mention the adults – in the sixteen cities in the Book of Mormon slaughtered en masse?
What does God blaming his children for his own violence say about God setting an example for being accountable for one’s own actions? It is Mormonism’s God who chose to kill probably tens of thousands of people, and yet, he blames those he killed for his actions. Is this the model for personal responsibility to which you would have me subscribe?
Has God ever repented for these killings? Does Christ’s atonement cover God’s murders of his children? Can God atone for the suffering he himself inflicted on his children?
If this is the kind of being you worship, then certainly you want to follow his example and model your own life after his. Under what circumstances would you kill your own children? Would you feel the spirit while you did it?
When it boils right down to it, the best reason to repent and follow the Mormon god is that if you don’t, he will kill you. Truman, board post 29th April 2008, ‘A Moral Case Against God Using the Book of Mormon’
We don’t find the use of metals like gold, copper, in metallurgic terms that you find in the Book of Mormon ... Where are these steel swords that led to the massacre of millions? Where are the bodies, the remains, the skeletons of millions of people? Where’s the evidence of this ancient catastrophe? We don’t find it. We don’t find it in Central America. We don’t find it at Cumorah, New York. It simply didn’t happen. Dr Thomas W Murphy