Does he?

[JonboySquarepants]

Dale, has the lds church come out publicly stating that a certain artifact or place is evidence for the book of mormon? i know the church believes that the garden of eden was in missouri, but there is no proof of that. what does the church say officially is evidence for the book of mormon? based on the book of mormon, the church can't even create an acurate map that fits anywhere in the americas. there is the limited geography theory and the theory of two cumorahs. what evidence has the church come out with?

[AnthonyB]

Jonboy,

Unfortunately this new site does not give the faith tradition of a poster in the post, although I have PM'd Heather to see if it can be changed.

Dale is RLDS or Community of Christ not LDS, so he could only answer what his tradition would say.

[JonboySquarepants]

anthony, sorry. i do now recall him mentioning that a few times. i guess i just skimmed over it and thus it did not store in my mind. are you lds? if you are, do you know of any archealogical(sp?) evidences that the church has come out with and formally claimed as true evidence of the book of mormon?

Jonboy:

You should note that it is extremely interesting that most biblical archaeologist, linguists and scientists are secular researchers and non-religious for the most part. They spend years digging about and they write books about what they have found, creating in the process theories that almost inevitably die a long and painful death a decade later in the arms of yet another more novel theory. Now, the three largest religion on the earth believe in Moses and the biblical account of the exodus. However, not one artifact has come out of the desert even though 1 million people trifled for 40 years in a well documented route.

So, we research because of our thirst for knowledge and desire to understand history and people. There is more evidence contained within the pages of the Book of Mormon than any other religious book in history. I do not believe the Church has an official position on a particular relic or site and believe me there are many. They are not necessary to support the claim to antiquity of the BoM.

On a side note; after nearly a decade rummaging around the jungles in Central and South America while in the military I can tell you stories about things and places that I have seen that will surely cause you a mind meltdown. One day it will be available for the world to see. But I tell you, it was the voice of Alma in the pages of the Book of Mormon that converted me, not what I found inteh jungle.

[JonboySquarepants]

what evidences? we know the places where the stuff in the bible actually happened. do we know where the stuff in the book of mormon happened? i don't understand, and i know it's not all about me , how there could be these huge civilizations and wars and battles and have no evidences for them, and not even know where they happened. the bible has maps in the back of it that show biblical places. do you think the book of mormon will soon have a map in the back of it that shows book of mormonical(?) places?

[Dale]

The LDS and Community of Christ does not point to artifacts of places. Both churche's stay out of pointing to such thing's. I know of no artifact's to point to. Most of the evidences for the book focus on it's internal reliability. LDS scholar's have pointed to place's in the book's they contribute essay's to share this research with the reader.

With Bible place's it's unlike Meso-American place's the name's of Meso-American cities during Book of Mormon time's has been lost. No critic of the Book of Mormon can point to an ancient map and say that city was not Zarahemla. Would the Bible be less true if we didn't know the name's? Scripture is true with or without a map.

Read Brant Gardner's review of Bible verses the Book of Mormon. It deal's with the problem of finding artifacts from large battle's. LDS FAIR Apologetics Homepage Proof's of large battle's do not alway's exist.

The evidence against the New York Cumorah being the Book of Mormon Cumorah seem's convincing to me. FAIR Wiki has an article on that topic i do believe.