Truly Extraordinary Accomplishments by an Early Age

One commonly used argument by Mormon apologists is that Joseph Smith must have been divinely inspired to write The Book of Mormon because how could a 24 year old farm boy ever write that book at such a tender age. Well, it's really not that good of a book in many, many respects. But that's neither here nor there. I think the truly insane claim is that nobody could accomplish anything extraordinary at such a young age. But that shows the blatant disregard of historical facts that you'd probably expect from hardcore Mormons.

Mozart wrote his first compositions at the age of 5. Bernini sculpted this at the age of 10.

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises when he was in early 20s, and that is superior in every way to The Book of Mormon.

In more recent memory, the Beatles "conquered the world"-- before John Lennon and Ringo Starr (the two oldest members) were 24 (That is, Beatlemania had swept through the United States and the Beatles had performed on The Ed Sullivan Show). By the time Paul McCartney was 24 (1966), The Beatles were the biggest band in the world with dozens of #1 hits, two successful films, and he had already penned classics like Yesterday.

With regard to songwriting and precocity (is that a word?) when I was a teenager I encountered a couple of say 12 and 13 yr olds out of a not huge sample of my contemporaries who could write decent pop songs. I think once you're old enough to have "desires" and the vocabulary to describe those feelings that some kids can write a song as good as any adult's work. What tended to happen and seems to happen a lot with early bloomers is that they don't keep at it because either a) they haven't been rewarded for it, no recognition or whatever, or b) they discover drinking, partying and women/men when they're a bit older and such things fall a bit by the wayside. I've known kids of 16 who could play any piece they hear on electric guitar. If you look on youtube, there are innumerable wildly talented kids of that age and younger who can play complex pieces.

How's about John Keats? Not only was most of his work done before he was 24, he died at age 25. Ode to a Grecian Urn was published in 1819, when he was 23.

For that matter, Percy Bysshe Shelley didn't get much older himself, dying at age 29. Ozymandias was published in 1818 when he was 26, and was far from his first famous or successful poem.

Then there's Anne Frank - I grant her diary achieved much of its notoriety due to the dramatic circumstances surrounding the story - but it remains a powerful work in its own right.

Erich Maria Remarque was a relative oldster, 29, when he published All Quiet on the Western Front, but in my opinion the difference in maturity between 24 and 29 is pretty small.

ETA: What is remarkable to me about creating such works at a relatively young age is not the talent shown, nor the calibre of the inspiration. Rather it's simply that the perspiration to fulfill that inspiration is more normally a condition associated with more mature people.

Truman Capote was already a successful and critically well received writer by the time he was 20 and won an O. Henry Award at the age of 24.

Isaac Asimov sold his first story at 18 to Astounding editor John W. Campbell. In 1941, he published his 32nd story, "Nightfall". He was only 21. Nightfall is generally considered one of the great Science Fiction short stories. It is still well regarded today nearly 70 years later.

I am trying to verify the age, but I believe Theodore Roosevelt was 24 or less when he published the definitive book on "History of the Naval War of 1812."

Britney peaked at sixteen. :cool: