Yesterday, a post on The Book of Mormon went viral after it got posted on one of reddit's 'today I learned' forums.
The title said; "TIL that the Book of Mormon tells of things like cattle, donkeys, steel, silk, elephants, and wheat in Pre-Columbian America. None of them existed in America before the 1500's."
Someone posted this information on their Facebook page and got over thirteen thousand reactions.
People who commented on this post in reddit, brought up an aray of topics. From touching on people's beliefs, to piling up more facts on Mormonism. One of the comments stated; "People believe all sorts of dumb sht, mainly because they want to..."* and another, " What an amazing way to say he totally made that sht up."*
It opened up a can of worms and other interesting information were being shared about the, so-called true prophet that founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and their history. Some information that was shared included information about some other books they have claimed to be scripture, namely the 'Book of Abraham' found in the 'Pearl of Great Price.'
*"My favorite story about Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) is about the Book of Abraham.
In the 1830's Joseph Smith translated some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic papyri, and published his translation as 'The Book of Abraham' in 1842. The book was canonized by the LDS church in 1880. His translation tells "a story of Abraham's life, travels to Canaan and Egypt, and a vision he received concerning the universe, pre-mortal existence, and the creation of the world."
At the time of its publication the study and translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs was still in its infancy, Champollion having only made his pioneering study of the Rosetta Stone in 1822, so no one could definitively say whether Smith's translation was accurate or not.
However some of the papyri have survived to the modern day and our knowledge of translating hieroglyphs is now very advanced and so it is now known without much doubt that those papyri are ancient Egyptian funerary texts that don't even mention Abraham at all and that Smith's translation is totally bogus.
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_Papyri
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_appraisal_of_the_Book_of_Abraham".*
More information came forward about a war that Mormons wanted to have with the United States Government, "The Mormons have some crazy history. They were going to fight a war with the US government back in the day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War
Many people were shocked to hear of these bizarre events and teachings. Many mentioned how confused Mormons made them. While others commented that they knew nothing about Mormonism before "The Book of Mormon" musical. Like this person who went to see the show in London.
"I knew virtually nothing about Mormons until I went to see "The Book of Mormon" musical in London earlier this year. It was just about the most hilarious thing I've ever seen and I was in pain from laughing so much. I had no idea that most of what they were saying about Mormon life was absolutely accurate."
I think this is what will surprize most active Mormons today; that their history may sound fabricated, because of the bizarre things that their founding prophets did, said, and believed, but so many things from their history have been researched and scrutinized by scholars and apologists alike.
Some comments were hinted at the Mormon apologist's obscure views in their line of defence, commenting, "Don't forget the horses! Some Mormon apologists say that horses really meant /r/tapirs lol. /r/ExMormon has a lot of funny posts about it."
All in all, this little line of fact, lit a really big fire!