Talk:Horses in the Book of Mormon

Tapirs

I looked up tapirs on wikipedia and the behavior patterns don't seem to be very compatible with how the "horses" of the Book of Mormon were used. It is difficult to imagine animals that wallow in mud pits and are largely nocturnal could be very useful for riding and drafting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.140.69 (talk • contribs) 04:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

This is a highly unbalanced article, with a preponderance of "evidence" from religious scholars attempting to prove the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Some of this is just plain silly. Take a look at a picture of a Tapir and a Horse and explain how these might be misconstrued. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aminzade (talk • contribs) 19:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, what would you do to balance the article? Would you remove the "offending" text? — Val42 (talk) 20:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair question. I want to be careful to balance respect for religious beliefs with a commitment to the have Wikipedia represent the views of those with no axe to grind other than an honest examination of the evidence.

For starts, let's change "alleged anachronism" to just "anachronism." Second, let's get rid of any statements that horses "...may have survived the Pleistocene–Holocene transition" . I'm not scientist, but even a cursory reading of articles like this:

http://www.well.com/user/elin/mstry.htm

this

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v426/n6963/abs/nature02098.html

this

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7090/full/nature04604.html

and this

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060505084954.htm

show that while there may be debate in paleozoological circles about why horses went extinct in North America some (climate, humans, etc) there is no controversy about the fact that they did, indeed go extinct tens of thousands of years ago.

Let's take these and other arguments that are mainly supported by religious apologists rather than working scientists and place them into a section on Church-sponsored arguments against these mainstream scientific beliefs. We could lead with something like "LDS Church members and others interested in supporting the historicity of the Book of Mormon claim to have found evidence...". That's where we can put stuff about Equus having survived into the Holocene or any of the Tapirus species being referred to as "horse" in the BOM.

Actually the closing paragraph ... "While critics see the occurrence of "horse" in the Book of Mormon as an anachronism, apologists either cite evidence of horses in the pre-Columbian Americas or argue that the word "horse" in the Book of Mormon does not refer to the species Equus caballus." is a good candidate for the first 'graph, though I'd change "critics" to "most mainstream biologists "

Don't want to get into a revert war, so I won't make these changes right away, but I'll be happy to make them if they seem reasonable to others editors. --Russell (talk) 04:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Bracketing the apologetic material in a separate section after saying that the scientific consensus is that pre-Columbian horses in the Western Hemisphere became extinct is a good idea. That way, any lack of plausibility these apologetic considerations may have can speak for itself. Since I am the creator of most of the material in the current article, I would like to make these changes. In a week or so if there are no additional comments on this talk page I'll go ahead and do it. Felix Sonderkammer (talk) 22:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree this is a sensible way to proceed. LeContexte (talk) 10:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)