The next time someone says their religious text is a literary miracle...

[ReptilianPeon]

[robvalue]

I never get it when people say that their text "has miracles in it".

Anyone can write a story which includes miracles. You can just say some event happened, and God did it, it was a miracle. As the narrator you have special powers within the confines of your story to make up whatever you want, and it becomes fact. Why people think that such a description has anything to do with reality is what confuses me.

People can make stuff up. Even when they're not making it up, they can be mistaken as to what happened and why. Just because they allegedly saw something, it doesn't team their explanation for it has any credibility.

[Edwardo Piet]

[vorlon13]

Joe Smith did it too.

The Book of Mormon, (first edition) was exuberantly described as the most perfect book of all.

The current LDS issued B of M, I note, has been changed 3000 times since that first perfect version.  Most strangely, the LDS administration considers either the current or the first edition Book of Mormon to not have any errors at all.  One might think one or the other might have 3000 mistakes, or maybe both have 1500, perhaps, but as it turns out thinking along those lines only gets a person in trouble.

When cornered (and whooped up side the head) you might get a Mormon to admit there are 3000 changes, but they were inconsequential ('then why bother?' turns out to be another one of those questions that can get someone in trouble) they hasten to add.  Mostly grammar, puncuation, stuff like that.

Looking over the 1st edition, it does indeed look like God Almighty had quite the problem with using 'is' and 'are' correctly.  He was a little confused with King Mosiah, too, as I recall.

The really funny thing about changing the Book of Mormon comes from Joe Smith's description of how the book was transmitted from God to us.  It turns out, the magic letters in the magic hat with the magic stone(s) and the magic gold plates would not work unless and until whatever Joe had just written down or dictated was in fact, written down correctly.  Joe admitted many passages were difficult to get written down correctly, but not to worry, the process automatically prevented any errors from being recorded.

This really makes it difficult to understand how any errors came to be in the Book of Mormon in the first place, don't it ??

And who had the cajones to then go an change it ??

[Wyrd of Gawd]