Friday, October 06, 2006

I'm reading about Mormonism now, and found these videos to be instructive, interesting, or humerous.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Seminary video -- an overview of the Book of Mormon

(video removed by author)
This shows the approximate timeline and concordance of events and peoples in the Book of Mormon.
Do you know your Mulekite from your Lamanite? How about your Jeredite from your Nephite? Or when Lehi sailed the ocean blue? If not, check out this color-coded three-dimensional chronological bookmark! It's the BoM in a nutshell.

Sadly, this is currently no longer available. It was a fine way of introducing people to BoM's complex story line. For a printable version of this bookmark, go here (a PDF file). Update: As that link is dead too, I found it archived and put it here.

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South Park- All About Mormons



Condensed version of South Park's parody on Mormonism's Lost 116 Pages. See: Lost 116 Pages on Wikipedia.
The gold plates in this parody are shown as 4 seperate plates, when they were actually claimed to be a stack bound with 3 gold rings. Also, the gold plates were always covered or in a box. Some, as in the "Three Witnesses," claimed to see them in "vision" only. (The experience of the "Eight Witnesses" was "visionary" as well. Furthermore, all of the Eight were members of either the family of Joseph Smith Jr., including his father, or the family of one of the Three Witnesses' father, David Whitmer.) Others claimed to handle them while covered, indicating that Joseph had something rectangular on display, that if uncovered, would expose his charlatanism. In reality, there never were any real gold plates. This parody also has the townsfolk in 1820 talking of Joseph's "First Vision" of seeing the Heavenly Father and Jesus. However, this is anachronistic since no one in 1820 knew of it like that, as it was first dictated by Joseph in 1838, and no published source mentions it until 1842. See: New Light on Joseph Smith's First Vision.

It's gone now. Go here instead to see still frames of it.

UPDATE: See the entire episode here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e12-all-about-the-mormons


After the parody of the Lost 116 Pages is an interesting exchange. Here is the transcript starting at 7:20:

Stan: Wait, Mormons actually know this story and they still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet?

Mormon: Well sure, the story proves it, doesn’t it?

Stan: No, it proves he did make it all up! Are you blind?

Mormon: Well Stan, it’s all a matter of faith.

Stan: No, it’s a matter of logic. If you’re gunna say things that have been proven wrong like the first man and woman lived in Missouri and that Native Americans came from Jerusalem, then you better have something to back it up. All you’ve got are a bunch of stories about some a$$wipe who read plates nobody ever saw out of a hat and then couldn’t do it again when the translations were hidden!

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History the LDS Church Does Not Want You to Know


This is the history of the Mormon church that most Mormons don't know about. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormon Church) has a rather shocking history that has been "tampered with" and significantly altered over the past 170+ years.
(None of this text is mine.)

Link updated!

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