The Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith

ISBN-10:‎ 0143105531

ISBN-13:‎ 978-0143105534

Publisher: Penguin

TL;DR: Unsubstantiated, unoriginal claims just like any other holy book. Doesn’t align with history and doesn’t even align with its source material, The Bible.

• The intro by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp was insightful, because all I really knew about Joseph Smith was that he was a fraud, and “translated” some magical golden plates from the fake language called “Reformed Egyptian” into English. Also some other nonsense about not drinking coffee. (Funny story, my coworker used to be Mormon and she had no idea what instant coffee was when I was preparing some at work one day).
• Starts out whatever. In the flavor of the New Testament, there’s inconsistent Jew-hate. Those darn Jews not listening to the voice of God!!
• “I, Nephi” gets into shenanigans. His older brothers don’t like him or their father.
• Racism against blacks in the Second Book of Nephi, Chapter IV. “…wherefore, as they were white, and exceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God, I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities. And cursed be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed…”
• Several more instances of white skin specifically being used as a standard of beauty.
• Book of Omni is named after a character, but also features the point of view of several other characters. Yeah…”omni.”
• The characters keep asserting that there’s not a lot of space to write on the plates, but the entire Book of Mormon is over 500 pages.
• While at no point does The Bible ever condemn the main characters for having multiple wives and concubines, the Book of Mormon makes it abundantly clear that it believes having more than one lover is unacceptable.
• The Book of Alma through the Book of Ether is just the Book of Mormon’s version of Judges and Kings/Chronicles.
• The Amlicites are “marked red” as a curse. Yay, more racism. Though I’m not sure if this means their skin turned “red” like Native Americans, because it says that the Amlicites would mark their foreheads in a fashion like Indians (from India LOL). It doesn’t explain.
• For as much as The Book of Mormon condemns acquiring riches, Mormon leaders sure do love hoarding wealth and their followers keep stupidly handing over tithe money. They continuously exploit poor people from around the world.
• God can’t even inspire his followers to keep believing in him. Eventually, over and over again, they stray from him. Why does he even bother? Get a new hobby.
• In Chapter X of the Book of Alma, God doesn’t stop an angry mob from burning people (children, too) alive because he wants to judge the mob when they die one day.
• Unbelievers are always quickly convinced because they’re not actually unbelievers, but just reject God. Sometimes people are easily convinced without any legitimate evidence, sometimes there’s some supernatural feat that convinces them, and other times nothing convinces them at all. Does God want people convinced or not? What’s with the inconsistencies?
• Ammon cuts off a bunch of people’s arms and then brings them to the king LMFAOOO at least they weren’t foreskins!
• God removes the curse from the Lamanites who changed their name to the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, which I guess means they’re now white people??? It doesn’t explain.
• God lets more of his followers die, so the Lamanites can feel bad and decide to worship him.
• Korihor, the Anti-Christ, is promoting rational thinking, but we can’t have that. Also he says, “Ye say that this people is a guilty and a fallen people, because of the transgression of a parent. Behold, I say that a child is not guilty because of its parents.” I guess this is supposed to make him look bad, but, uh…The Bible actually says this in several places (Deut 24:16, Jeremiah 31:29-30) while of course contradicting it in others. Nice cherry-picking, Joseph Smith.
• Ugh, Alma’s all like, “God is real!! Look at the trees, bro!! Why don’t you believe all the stories people have!?!?” Lots of people having testimonies isn’t reliable evidence. Your ignorance as to how the universe works isn’t reliable evidence. Of course, the Book of Mormon is set in fairy tale land where God actually does shit, but these arguments are nonsensical in real life and I’ve had them thrown at me many times by people of all different religions.
• Okay, so there are numerous characters like Korihor throughout this book. In the end they always confess to the power of God, but he seems to pick and choose who gets to live. Some of them die, and others become loving believers. Are you going to show mercy or aren’t you? Alma (Senior and Junior) did the same thing as Korihor, but Korihor got to die, while Alma lived! Why??
• Alma gives some bullshit talk about how the Zoramites don’t need evidence only faith. He says they have to plant the seed and see if it’s good. Can’t you use that for any belief? And isn’t that evidence by your standards anyways? Didn’t you tell Korihor that all creation and everyone’s testimonies were evidence? Did you forget about that, Joseph? Also, something feeling good has no bearing on whether or not it’s a fact. The only “fact” there would be that it feels good to you.
• In Chapter XVII of the book of Alma, Alma keeps saying, “Yea,” and it reminds me of T.D. Jakes going “HA!!” all the time in his sermons. Take a shot every time Alma says, “Yea.”
• Alma says that God informed people about Jesus before his return because everyone has a right to know, but, uh, that doesn’t even line up with The Bible. Jesus isn’t mentioned until the NT (no, he’s not being talked about in Isaiah; go away). Nobody in the Old Testament knew anything about Jesus. Not only that, but in real life, nobody knew about Jesus until Jesus happened. People all around the world before his existence didn’t know about him. Many didn’t even know who YHWH was, especially before Judaism came into being because he didn’t exist as a character yet.
• Alma says that renouncing the faith after being filled with the Holy Spirit in an unforgivable sin. Is God unable to forgive it? I thought all sins could be forgiven by Jesus? But then Alma tells his son to repent. So is it forgivable or not? What happens if you repent? Is there some punishment you must then endure forever, like…do you just go to purgatory, or what? Is Alma mistaken? He’s never corrected, so…
• God says that the Nephites shouldn’t let themselves be killed by their enemies but many of his followers are killed. And an entire group of his followers allowed themselves to be killed by the Lamanites earlier. Is this a commandment? Are you punished if you end up dying? If you get killed, you go to heaven as we’ve seen previously, I guess, so like, why does it matter?
• God: Do your best!! toots horn
• Okay, so God also says that if his followers keep his commandments, he’ll let them prosper in the land, but this is a lie, because they keep getting attacked by the Lamanites and some of them die every battle. Or dissenters end up attacking the believers. So only some of his followers get to prosper. Why doesn’t God just prevent the Lamanites from attacking? That’s what he said at the very beginning of their separation; that the Lamanites would attack if they dissented. They’re not dissenting right now, so why is God allowing them to be attacked?
• Why are they sad that their loved ones are going to heaven? I thought heaven was a wonderful place. Shouldn’t you be happy for them even if they died prematurely? Isn’t it selfish to mourn their deaths if you know they’re in heaven for being obedient? Do you not know if they were obedient? Were they pulling a Pascal’s Wager of faking it till they make it? Is this why you were getting attacked by the Lamanites?? This is a problem I have with all religions that profess of some blissful afterlife. Mourning becomes a selfish and pointless thing. You didn’t actually lose your loved ones…they’re still alive in heaven and apparently that’s a place better than anything YOU could have offered. And if they’re actually still alive in spirit form and in a wonderful place with God, like, why can’t they keep interacting with you? Are they not allowed to? Why? Will you ruin their perfect peace? How is heaven perfect if they’re not allowed to interact with loved ones? Wouldn’t that upset them? Or are they completely incapable of being upset because heaven is perfect? God’s a loved one and they can supposedly interact with him and other people who are now in heaven. So many plot holes with this thing.
• In chapter XXI of Alma, there’s a part where Joseph Smith keeps using “behold,” and it’s driving me nuts.
• You can tell the Book of Mormon was written by an American trying to appeal to Americans because it keeps bringing up how the Nephites were fighting for freedom and the people. How are you free if you must obey God or perish (or in many cases, perish for God cuz he needs that glory).
• So the Nephites are warring and whatnot and they’re surprised that God allowed 200 of their men to heal and live while “a thousand” had died. Helaman says it’s because they put their trust in God continuously. So did the thousand who died not have continuous trust? Sucks to be them! Or not, they’re probably in heaven or whatever. I dunno.
• LMAO Moroni says that God let their soldiers die because of the wickedness of the people on the rear. Thanks, God! That’s really what we need right now during a time of war! Wait, but then he says, “The Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities, to destroy his righteous people.” I thought God was allowing the soldiers to die. If he doesn’t want them to die, then stop letting them die??
• The characters’ names are repetitive and it becomes hard to keep track of who is who when the events of the whole book are monotonous. Characters are named after their fathers or an ancestor, but like, would it kill these motherfuckers to add a suffix or something?
• God randomly decides that he wants more Lamanites to convert, so he sends Nephi and Lehi into a prison. They are surrounded by fire and God nicely tells the Lamanites and Nephites to repent and some angels come down or whatever and they convert. If this is all it takes, why didn’t you–oh wait, they start dissenting like a page later, never mind.
• Why would the graves need to open up at all if dead people already go to heaven or hell? Just to be spooky?
• The people keep rejecting God because of Satan but instead of just doing something about Satan so that the people stop dissenting, God keeps getting mad at the people to the point where he’ll murder them. What is up with this continuous circle of cruelty? Just bring back Jesus already so that people stop having to suffer. For fuck’s sake why did you make Satan in the first place? Absurd.
• The Lamanites who join the Nephites have their curse removed. “…their skin became white…and their young men and their daughters became exceeding fair…” This racist-ass book.
• Jesus makes the end times happen or some shit. He destroys a bunch of cities all over the place and kills a bunch of people. Then he tells the people still alive to repent. He says that he has died for everyone’s sins and that they can have forgiveness if they follow him, but that he won’t give them forgiveness if they’ve got beef with anybody so they need to apologize first.
• Jesus says that “…he that hath the spirit of contention, is not of me, but is of the devil…” but in The Bible he says, “…I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother…” (Matthew 10:35). Which one is it? LMAO
• Jesus says he still has to minister to some other tribes. Holy shit, what have you been doing all this time? You mean more people have to inevitably die because Satan keeps tricking them or whatever? This is such a waste of time.
• Jesus explains what he means by Moses’ Laws being fulfilled but his explanation makes no sense.
• Three of Jesus’ disciples become immortal, and they won’t “die” until Judgement day. Also Satan has no power over them. Lucky them.
• God tells some of his followers to build several ark-like vessels so he can send them to a new land. Somehow the people and animals survive the impact of dastardly waves. I guess they had pretty good seat belts. No idea why God had to make the ride so bumpy.
• Moroni says, “…do not judge that which is evil to be of God…” but The Bible says, “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” (Lam 3:38) and “I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).
• Moroni says, “…search diligently in the light of Christ, that ye may know good from evil,” but when Adam and Eve wanted to understand good and evil, God freaked the fuck out, said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Gen 3:22), and cursed all of mankind LMAO.
• shots fired Joseph Smith talks smack about Catholics by having Mormon say that baptizing children is wrong and people who baptize children are going to burn in hell.
• Smoke a blunt cuz the Book of Mormon ends 420 years after Christ’s appearance to the Nephites and things are just as bad as they started. Man, this sucks!!