The Book of Mormon gets reviewed at Amazon

[Warpy]

“Hello wardies!” one member of the Provo Young Single Adults 9th Ward group wrote. “Many people against the Church have, sadly, written negative comments about the Book. … The challenge for us is to go to the amazon website and write a positive rating and review. … I personally found that my love and testimony for the Book of Mormon has increased tremendously as I wrote down my testimony as a review, and I know it will be the case for you as well.” The post helpfully provided instructions for creating an Amazon account (and recommended that students just borrow their parents’ accounts if they didn’t want to start their own.) And it established a deadline: “Please accomplish this challenge by the end of the week (3/6). Thank you for serving the Lord!”

And lo! The glowing critical appraisals poured in. One five-star review currently on display raves: “This book is true. It has the ability to help you find peace and happiness in this life. It is another testament of Jesus Christ.” Another said: “Best thing that ever happened to me was when I first read this book. I felt like everything in my life finally made sense.”

But when news of the church’s missionary work reached Reddit, a great anger rose in the hearts of the people. And they scattered single stars on the page of the budding lit-world darling. They wrote:

A trite, misogynistic, racist collection of demonstrably false stories written by a convicted con artist and peddled as Gospel truth by a masonic country club of ancient white men who gleefully scam their ovine followers out of time, money, and critical thinking skills while infusing the Utah State Government and Congressional Delegation with hyper-religious special interest puppets whose utter lack of spiritual value might be forgivable were it not for its complete dearth of literary merit.

More at http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/03/21/byu_campus_leaders_asked_students_to_write_glowing_amazon_reviews_for_the.html

and of course at http://www.amazon.com/Book-Mormon-Another-Testament-Christ/dp/0385519478/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458576480&sr=1-4&keywords=book+of+mormon

File this one under "be careful what you ask for."

[nil desperandum]

1. Couldn't happen to a more appropriate group of turds....NT

[Cartoonist]

2. That's an excellent one sentence review

Here is part of Mark Twain's review:

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few, except the elect have seen it or at least taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me. It is such a pretentious affair and yet so slow, so sleepy, such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.
If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle. Keeping awake while he did it, was at any rate. If he, according to tradtion, merely translated it from certain ancient and myteriously engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out of the way locality, the work of translating it was equally a miracle for the same reason.
The book seems to be merely a prosey detail of imaginary history with the Old Testament for a model followed by a tedious plegiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint old fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the scriptures. The result is a mongrel, half modern glibbness and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained, the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladeled in a few such scriptural phrases as, "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc. and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass," was his pet. If he had left that out, his bible would have been only a pamphlet.

The Full review can be read here:

http://www.salamandersociety.com/marktwain

[drm604]

3. Gotta love Mark Twain.

One of the giants.

[AlbertCat]

4. The Book of Mormon

I thought it was a rollicking good time! Even tho' it's kinda like a alternate universe version of a South Park episode, the musical numbers were great and the choreography really fit and looked almost spontaneous. The sets and costumes were....

oh...wait....


never mind.