The April 2005 National Geographic provides at least two facts of interest to students of the LDS scriptures. Look at their Web page for the April 2005 issue. Notice especially the opening and closing sentences. Do you see the relevance? (he then quotes the following from the NG article)

andnbsp;"King Aha, "The Fighter," was not killed while unifying the Nile's two warringandnbsp;andnbsp;andnbsp; kingdoms...blablablabla..."

Did you notice? Aha! There it is, a Book of Mormon name in ancient Egypt. It's a name that is not found in the Bible (though critics have claimed he plagiarized it from phrases like "Ah!") or in any of the sources that Joseph theoretically had access to, as far as I know (even if Joseph had managed to secretly acquire the vast frontier library that his critics seem to imagine he had).

For the Egyptians, Aha was the name of a great king, also called "the Fighter." In the Book of Mormon, Aha was the name of another fighter, a Nephite military officer, son of the chief captain over the Nephite armies.

So there you have it.andnbsp; Aha proves the BoM.andnbsp;

All this word coincidence shit proves nothing.andnbsp; Like someone else posted here before,andnbsp;many babies sayandnbsp;said "Dada" before theyandnbsp;can walk.andnbsp; This is impressive evidence for reincarnation, asandnbsp;we can hardly expect a 6 month old baby to know about the art movement of the 1920s.andnbsp;

I hope for Jeff's sake his employers never stumble on this stuff.andnbsp;

But he doesn't stop there.andnbsp; Oh no.andnbsp;

He goes on to argue that Pharaoh Aha's tomb also had evidence of human sacrifice.andnbsp; So what you say?andnbsp; Well:

Did you notice the other thing relevant to LDS scriptures?

As mentioned in the National Geographic summary, there is growing evidence that the Egyptians practiced human sacrifice, supporting the allegedly incredible claim in the Book of Abraham that a priest of the Egyptian religion had sacrificed children and attempted to sacrifice Abraham.

Add this to a large body of evidence from other ancient texts that there was an attempt to sacrifice Abraham for his refusal to worship idols, and we have an interesting case for the authenticity of the story reported in the Book of Abraham.

Far from being the weak underbelly of Mormon scripture, it is an increasingly impressive witness of the reality of Joseph Smith's divine calling as a prophet. The critics are unable to explain how Joseph could have made up so many details in the text that have recently become credible in light of other ancient accounts.

Maybe we don't waste out time trying to explain because we don't have to.andnbsp;

The intellectual weakness of the standard anti-Mormon position has been pointed out by a number of non-LDS writers. In one interesting example, two evangelical critics of the Church, Carl Mosser and Paul Owen, presented a paper at the 1997 Evangelical Theological Society Far West Annual Meeting, April 25, 1997 that warned the evangelical community about the impressive efforts of LDS scholars and criticized the blind approach of typical anti-Mormon literature.

A third conclusion we have come to is that currently there are, as far as we are aware, no books from an evangelical perspective that responsibility interact with contemporary LDS scholarly and apologetic writings. In a survey of twenty recent evangelical books criticizing Mormonism we found that none interact with this growing body of literature. Only a handful demonstrate any awareness of pertinent works. Many of the authors promote criticisms that have long been refuted; some are sensationalistic while others are simply ridiculous. A number of these books claim to be "the definitive" book on the matter. That they make no attempt to interact with contemporary LDS scholarship is a stain upon the authors' integrity and causes one to wonder about their credibility. "Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?" (later published in Trinity Journal, Fall 1998, pp. 179-205)

Even for those who do not outright falsify their degrees or relationship to the Church, dressing up one's credentials is still fairly common among anti-Mormons. Most recently, Grant Palmer has palmed himself off as a high-placed "insider" in the Church, making much of his experience as a former "director" of the institutes of religion in the Church Educational System, which sounds impressive to those who don't know it just means an instructor in the Church's seminary program. Seminary teachers are hardly "insiders"--no more so than any other active member, in my opinion. He also boasts of having been a High Priest group instructor, which also sounds impressive to those who don't know that most adult males, when they get old enough, tend to end up in the local High Priests group, and that many of them will have a turn at being the instructor.

Anti-Mormons are typically completely ignorant of Hugh Nibley's work. When forced to confront his writings, they rapidly dismiss him as irresponsible, biased, sloppy, deceitful, etc.