You mean the guy who made the video?

So do you still believe in god?

So someone needs to be able to pronounce a word correctly in order to debunk it? If the viewer isn't intelligent enough to realize that some people attain knowledge through reading, where pronounciations aren't heard, then we're not likely going to help them anyway.

The real issue here isn't the pronounciation of a word but the vailidity of those "facts" and in this case I think the video does a fine job in showing Christians just how delusional they are. It's time for them to overcome their delusions, humanity knows better now.

Oh jeez, so true, I didn't even think of that. LOL

Yes that it’s the correct pronunciation and the religion refers to Joe as Joseph Smith.

Also it states that there is no evidence of the great civilizations that the Book of Mormon speaks of but from my understanding most of the book takes place in central, and S. America. And we've all seen the massive Aztec, and other various cultures cities.

Good. Thanks. That's how I've been saying it. I have two friends who are/were mormons, but they are so nice that if I said it wrong, they might not correct me.

Yes. Of course, there's no reason to hold that these Indian groups were Jews, but there is 'some' possible evidence for the claim for the reason you've given here.

It would be better to say that there's no artifacts that appear to represent the claims in the book of mormonism... what we see is better explained as the artifact of Indians, not ancient jews.

Todangst,

I agree with your criticisms.

Like I was saying about a president who shall remain nameless, there's a double standard, and like it or not, we (atheists) get the short end of the double standard stick.

If a Christian makes an error, it just shows how much they need God's love, and if they say something completely stupid, they get praised for having the courage to stand up for Jesus. People look at them and say, "Isn't that adorable that Jesus loves even the dumb-dumbs!"

If an atheist slightly misstates something, or uses a word with a not-quite-precise meaning, he immediately gets labeled an idiot unworthy of our attention, and his error is used as a proof that atheism is wrong.

Sad but true -- we are held to very high standards, and we should always choose our words carefully.

Oddly enough, the Southpark episode with Richard Dawkins falling in love with Ms. Garrison seems to be going toward the point that eliminating religion from the world wouldn't solve all of man's problems. We'll see next week. What I'm afraid is that their point is going to be that with or without religion, people will still kill each other. As we all know, this misses the obvious point that while things would not be perfect without religion, there's a damn good chance they would be better.

We'll see.

I'm not ready with it yet, but I've been working on an essay for a couple of weeks now dealing with exactly what you're talking about. In it, I ask quite a few questions, and answer some of them... For instance:

1) Is logic a useful tool in de-converting theists?
2) Why do people stay in religions despite every logical reason to leave?
3) What kinds of tools do atheists have to counteract the mechanisms that hold theists to their beliefs?
4) What do churches have the atheists don't?
5) How far should atheists go to try to spread atheism?

Some of these are matters of opinion, but questions 1, 2, and 4, specifically, have real answers, and I'm doing my best to find some of them.

These questions might belong in their own post, but I would welcome any answers other atheists might have, especially if they pertain to 1,2, or 4, and have some science to back them up. (And if anybody snips at me about sociology not being science, I'm going to let my angry kitty cat start shooting his machine gun!)

I have a family member that for about a decade was sucked in by an offshoot of the RLDS church, complete with red-eyed devils and prophets with which God conversed directly. It was headed by a guy that was so bad that the RLDS church kicked him out. (long story)

When the family member was all fired up about the whole thing, I spent an afternoon hearing all the babble about Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni.

Pronounced more-OWN-eye

Trust me on this. I heard it over and over and over.....

It turns out that it was also the video on prayer, not Christians being delusional. Details still in the above thread.

Here is the video on prayer:

Sorry I didn't venture into this thread sooner, but perhaps I can help here.

It is true that many mormons would probably have a knee-jerk response to the pronunciation, even though it is unimportant. The problem is more to do with the thinking of others than with the significance of the word, really.

Actually, the Aztecs refers to a set of civilizations and tribes that fell under the jurisdiction of a mediating, loose governmental body. When you hear the word "Aztecs" it is in reference to people whose tribe or city paid dues into a central government which oversaw all of your allies and resolved inter-group conflicts. The cities were not as large as is depicted in the Book of Mormon.

Also, when the Book of Mormon came to be, it was taught that the Natives in the US were the tribes mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but as time passed, it was evident that this could not be possible due to the lack of armor, swords, cimitars, the lack of the animals described in the Book of Mormon, and due to many other differences in culture, society, and evidences available. So, as time passed, they began to teach that it was south america that it must refer to, but all that does is pose the same problem, just in another place and the people being told this don't suspect a problem because they don't realize that central american cultures weren't that big, didn't have the kinds of armor mentioned, and were operated under extremely different norms than what is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Now there is some people who claim that it is the Samoans that the book refers to ... but ... the same problem is there ... The fact is, there isn't an ancient western culture, nor is there evidence of there ever being one that fits the descriptions in the Book of Mormon.

Also, recent DNA research done on Natives in the continental US shows that the Native Americans are not from the middle east, but are genetically closer to people from the Orient.

I think that the point was that things won't change without religion. This is actually something I am not sure if we can really know at this point. However, in relation to what todangst said, it is more dogmatic thought that creates many of the issues that we talk about - but sence we associate dogmatic thought more with religion, we often overlook where it appears elsewhere. Dogmatic thought plays a role in people having delusions. People don't generally claim to have seen without believing in ghosts at the time that they experience it or retell the story. The same goes for alien abductions and other related events. Such things may seem trivial to you and I as compared to religions, but that doesn't mean there isn't some adverse effect that it causes. People with medical conditions, for example, may fail to seek adequate treatment because they think some ailment that they have is due to aliens. For that matter, people who practise certain forms of "naturalistic" medical care or "holistic" medicines and convince someone to dogmatically believe that they are a practitioner that is as good as a doctor may end up treating someone who has a fatal condition and who could die because they weren't seeing an adequate physician.

I once saw a thread in a naturalist forum where someone had gone into the forum to seek advice for particular (very detailed) physical symptoms. The people in the forum gave their advice to help "cure" the condition and even gave their own opinions on what it could be. The person came back after a few days and stated that they were actually from a critical thinking forum and that they only posted the above to see what advice would be given. They stated that the symptoms they mentioned were the exact description of symptoms from a condition that would cause an individual to die within 2-3 days if not treated by a medical doctor. They pointed out that had this been a real person with that real condition, the individual would have died if they had not sought further treatment. The owners of the forum promptly banned the person and ranted about how absurd it was for them to play a trick on them like that.

Atheists aren't "created" to be kind

BTW, I love the nick. It is really difficult to be around my older brother (who's as fundamentalist mormon as they come - returned missionary, temple married) without making a "Milk his dick" joke.