Revealed for the first time: the seer stone that translated the Book of Mormon

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Is this another one of your fun magic tricks, Mark?

I canā€™t find the Amazon click-throughā€¦

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ā€œIn 1827 an angel directed the Prophet Joseph Smith to a spot in New York, where he found ancient golden plates inscribed with ā€œreformed Egyptianā€ characters.ā€ Being unfamiliar with reformed Egyptian, Smith placed a ā€œseer stoneā€ (that heā€™d found when he was digging a well for his neighbor) into the bottom of hat and covered his face with the hat, which enabled him to view the words."

Freaking ridiculous.

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Dumb de dumb dumb dumb

ETA:

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For added fun:

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Thanks, but Iā€™ve already got one.

A: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred
quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us
in our quest for the Holy Grail.
S: Well, Iā€™ll ask 'im, but I donā€™t think 'eā€™ll be very keen-- ā€˜eā€™s already got
one, you see?
A: What?
Lancelot: He says theyā€™ve already got one!
A: (confused) Are you sure heā€™s got one?
S: Oh yes, itā€™s verā€™ naahs.
(to the other soldiers:) I told 'em weā€™ve already got one!
(they snicker)

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What is it made of? Kinda hard to tell from the pics. Sorta of looks like unpolished tigers eye by color, but not by texture/luster.

You know, seeing it written out all over again and knowing a lot of people in the LDS, I still canā€™t help but think that itā€™s all a made up cult from the same area that spawned the Oneida sex cult that later tossed out [Charles Guiteau].2

It was obviously a weird time.

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Paging Dr. Dee . . . paging Dr. John Dee . . . Alchemist needed at the front desk

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Itā€™s super easy to take shots at this story, but it seems like one could just as easily take the same sort of shots at nearly any organized religion. So Iā€™ll pass.
People are free to believe what theyā€™d like- Iā€™d just be happy to not have them try to convince me of their beliefs.
As my sainted mother would say, ā€œYou mind your business and Iā€™ll mind mine.ā€

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Yeah, the South Park episode on Mormons will forever be the perfect depiction of the weirdness of the religion. Itā€™s hard not wanting to bash on peopleā€™s beliefs when the origins are soā€¦ odd to put it lightly. Most mormons iā€™ve met have been very kind and most of their focus is on good community building and great family valuesā€¦ but everything else is quite strange. Iā€™m also not fond of their views on womenā€™s roles and someā€¦ interesting views on non-whites within the book of mormon.

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Thanks a lot buddy. Iā€™ll never be able to look at my silverware the same again. :neutral_face:

Institutional crazy always seems nuttier when itā€™s just a couple hundred years new.

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This stone was not at all what I expected. I thought a seer stone is the same as an elf stone. It is a stone with a hole naturally eroded in it. By looking through the hole one is enabled to see things otherwise invisibleā€“such as buried treasure.

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Oh, youā€™re saying this magical stone which allows an uneducated farmer in upstate New York to translate plates of gold (which, coincidentally, after being buried for years, had to be taken away by the angel Moroni) only looks like a rock?

Youā€™re right, that is odd.

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Plus, Reformed Egyptian is so different from Orthodox Egyptian as to practically be a separate religion. They donā€™t even do pyramids any more!

Throughout our history, we Egyptians have remained firmly rooted in Egyptian tradition, even as we have learned much from our encounters with other cultures. The great contribution of Reform Egyptian is that it has enabled the Egyptian people to introduce innovation while preserving tradition, to embrace diversity while asserting commonality, to affirm beliefs without rejecting those who doubt, and to bring faith to sacred texts without sacrificing critical scholarship. Ixnay on the Ummiesmay.

To be a Egyptian is to be the inheritor of a religious and cultural tradition. To be a practising Egyptian is to accept with love and pride the duty to maintain and transmit that tradition. To be a practising Reformed Egyptian in the 21st century is to believe that tradition should be transmitted within the framework of modern thinking and morality and flood; it is to live according to the prophetic ideal of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with the gods. P.S. Mummies nix nix.

MUMMIES ARE RIGHT OUT. ANUBIS WAITS DEEP IN THE HOUSE OF OSIRIS, WHILE SETH WALKS THE EARTH.

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Full clips to fill in all the gapsā€¦




And letā€™s not forget Scientology while weā€™re at itā€¦

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So let me get this straight. Somebody finds some writing he canā€™t translate, so he finds a hard, inanimate object that helps him translate it. He puts the object in some kind of darkened container and it translates the text to English.

My question is, what app was he using on his iRock?

Advanced science, magic.

Wait until I use my inanimate object to send my image through the air to my friend in Egypt who is in another time zone and discuss how crazy this all sounds.

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You mean, you scribble on that little rectangular block, and it ā€œtranslatesā€ for you? Pull the other one, while youā€™re at it!

Looks like banded jasper to me.

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Until now I figured that the stone had just magically vanished along with the plates. I mean, why not? I donā€™t see what they expect to gain by publishing these pictures.

This oneā€™s pretty popular:

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