I just recently read one of the worst LDS
apologetic books I have read (Robert D. Starling, Really Inside Mormonism: Confessions of a Mere Latter-day Saint
Christian [2015]). For instance, on pp. 231-32, in an attempt to provide
evidence for the Book of Mormon, he discusses two alleged artefacts that have
been long-known to competent LDS scholars to be frauds (Newark Ohio Stones and
similar “discoveries”). To read a refutation, from a scholarly LDS source, of
these alleged “evidences” for the Book of Mormon, see Brant A. Gardner, Too
Good to be True: Questionable Archaeology and the Book of Mormon.
Brant has done a lot of great work on the
Book of Mormon, and as the Book of Mormon is being studied in Gospel Doctrine
for 2016, I will happily “plug” his books:
There is much evidence to support the
authenticity and antiquity of the Book of Mormon, as Gardner’s volumes and
other scholarly tomes show; LDS should be very wary, however, of such questionable
artefacts and “discoveries.”
