Atlantis - more plausable?

When I realized the Book of Mormon contained so many historical, logical, and factual anacronisms I spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours to work through the issues. I was able to put the first few issues like KJV translation, Deutero Isaiah, and masonry on my mental shelf.

The whole process for me started with looking for a reasonable explanation for these problems. I natually assumed that since I already "knew" the church was true the problem was my misunderstanding not a real issue. Well I soon found that when I went to the best minds in the church that good answers are not available. What is available are explanations that to the believing mind are possible but far from plausable or reasonable. They require quite a bit of congnitative dissonace but when you already know the true you can pick and choose the facts to fit it.

Well my mental shelf collapsed from the weight of reality. I realized that I could either accept hundreds of mental tricks, unplausable guesses, logical lapses and outright contradictions or I could see that one simple answer explained them all. The simple answer is of course that the Book of Mormon is not a translation of gold plates, from a magical stone, written in a lost language, by a great but hidden culture, whose history doesn't match real history, that left the world without a trace. However if I look at the Book of Mormon as a piece of 19th century religious writing that reflects the philosophy, knowledge, and speculation of the times it all falls into place.

It was only recently when I was reading Plato's description of the Lost City of Atlantis that I realized that even the wild speculation mythological city has more evidence than the entire Book of Mormon, it's people, and it's history. It's sad but true.


Jake