Gadianton wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 12:12 am
You brought up the left
Actually, I think you brought up leftist posters here several times and so I was responding to that.
aas he wanted to endorse the family unit and respect for fathers and strongly endorses traditional marriage in his Zarathustra
Well, he did live in the 1800s.
I have not moved further left politically but more moderate or in the middle with a slightly more conservative view due to reading Nietzsche himself which is ironic I know given his reputation as a famous atheist
As you point out, he wasn't a typical atheist; ...
... An extreme example for the sake of illustration would be with the Book of Mormon and "cursed with a dark skin".
....
Dr. Shades recently asked me in a recent thread my take on the issue of "skin" in the Book of Mormon. The response below is basically what I commented to him. I have approached that subject on and off for many years, mostly as an exmormon taking the position that Joseph Smith was a racist and the Book of Mormon is racist and must be tossed out as racist nonsense. However, about two years ago I decided to reinvestigate the subject. And it was actually a never-Mormon's book,
Make Yourselves Gods by Peter Coviello, that tackles the issue of race in the Book of Mormon as a non-biased academic, that led me to reassess my position on the subject of race in the Book of Mormon. I'm currently writing a document to formulate my thoughts and opinions on the matter, that I do not intend to publish to make money or anything, but which I put together for myself, but I'm not confident with the manuscript to publish a link to to share yet but here is my working abstract summary:
Abstract (Brief Summary):
After studying the issue on and off for years now, I truly think that when Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon to his scribes, either naturally or through supernatural inspiration (or a combination of both, as LDS scholar Blake Ostler believes), he did not mean those words that mention "dark skin" to be racist; but that he was actually trying to counteract the racism of his day. It was a never-Mormon named Peter Coviello who led me to this conclusion. Coviello's book Make Yourselves Gods, led me to rethink things.
This document presents two plausible views.
In Part One, I will argue that the language of "skins" in the Book of Mormon is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with skin color or pigmentation. In other words, every time "skin" is mentioned it has nothing to do with race or skin color. I will argue this point forcefully in Part One and believe it is a plausible theory, and a view held by many LDS scholars.
In Part Two, I will discuss the various views among scholars, that some of the characters in the Book of Mormon might be conveying racist points of view. The benefits of addressing this theory is that it is the interpretation of most non-Mormons who approach the text and it's the initial surface reading interpretation by most readers during a first reading of the text. Thus by dealing with the idea that the characters in the book are conveying racial stereotypes head on, one appears more serious about truly revealing the true meaning and intention of the text rather than being an "apologetic" Defender of the Faith in a biased attempt to be faith-promoting at any cost.
So I will incorporate these theories and provide what I currently think is the most likely view, which is that Joseph Smith used "racist sounding" language in the Book of Mormon but it was meant to echo or mirror the common views of racist white Protestants in his day, in order to actually criticize and condemn the racism of his day. This view is complex and I explore it in greater detail in the Second Part of this document. But for the sake of brevity, here is a snapshot summary of Part Two:
It has become very clear to me that while someone can certainly assign various motives to Joseph Smith throughout his career, which everyone from Fawn Brody to Dan Vogel have done, in the end the consensus among objective scholars is that especially in the beginning of his career as a prophet, Joseph Smith had noble intentions. Setting aside Dan Vogel's theory for Joseph's justification for his writing pseudepigraphy and midrash because anything that promotes Christ he considered good, what I see consistently in his Scriptures he produced is a criticism of injustice/unfairness and un-equity. His vision of the good society (Zion) is a society of the "pure in heart," where this no more rich or poor and class divisions, as presented in the Book of Moses chapter 7. So I cannot read hundreds of pages of Joseph Smith writing about equity and justice and having compassion for others, and him repeatedly criticizing the rich and greedy and those who want to feel superior to others, and then just readily assume all of the passages on "skin" in the Book of Mormon are Joseph Smith acting like a rabid racist. I just can't read through all the scriptures and revelations that consistently condemns attitudes of supremacy and classism and all are equal as children of God, and nonchalantly consider it as a possibility that Joseph intended to produce a racist text with a racist message.
Even when I was a disgruntled ex-Mormon atheist I did not believe that, even though many or most exmormons jump to that conclusion. For it just came off to me as a non sequitur, in other words it just does not follow after objectively absorbing the mountains of evidence in Joseph Smith's only own scriptural productions.
When you combine the Mormon scriptural record with Joseph Smith's personal life, one sees a clear trajectory of Joseph Smith being either anti-racist and moving more and more away from the racist ideas of his day and time; which is the exact opposite of what we later see with Brigham Young.
So in Part Two, we will see that Joseph Smith was likely writing a kind of pseudepigrapha and/or midrash, and he felt inspired to synthesize several ideas. I think he had a kind of photographic memory and knew the New Testament like the back of his hand. I think what he could have been doing was taking the racism of his day in the 1820s, when many or most Protestants believed that Native Americans were savage "red skin" people (othering them as "Other"), and turning their racism against them.
The latest theory on this subject from an LDS scholar, as of 2023, is the following: Understanding the Lamanite Mark by Clifford P. Jones (Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 56 (2023): 171-258) at
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... nite-mark/
A short summary of Clifford Jones' article by Kyler Rasmussen can be read here:
https://interpreterfoundation.org/inter ... dark-mark/
Based on Clifford Jones' scholarship, Smith also may have been thinking in terms of their tattoos that often covered their whole bodies so that they appeared to have a "skin of blackness," on their face included. See these links:
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/ne ... popup=true
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/ne ... popup=true
https://www.larskrutak.com/blog-post-1/
https://misterroadtripper.files.wordpre ... ree-23.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_u63pVkkok
At least one white woman also had a tribal tattoo as well:
https://octaviasvintage.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/1773/
Note, I am not 100% committed to the theory that the "skins of blackness" was tattoos, but reading Jone's article leads me to think it is a plausible theory. But whether or not the tattoo theory is correct, does not change my thesis in this document.
Despite what some exmormons think, Joseph Smith was clearly a true Christian, as even the exmormon historian Dan Vogel argues. As a genuine Christians I think Joseph really believed that Protestants shouldn't treat Native Americans as savages. I think he either truly believed that they (Native Americans) were actually Israelites, or he believed that giving them this noble identity would reverse the racism he was seeing among Protestants. As Dan Vogel argues, Joseph Smith would create a dramatic story for the greater good of promoting "Christ," which was thus always good in his mind. Joseph was all about equity and "esteeming your neighbor/brother as yourself," a theme he repeats all throughout his revelations and scriptural productions.
I think that when Joseph Smith had read New Testament passages like by their fruits you shall know them, and let your light shine, that these verses inspired him to create a story about a tree that produces bright shining "white"-lighted fruit and the fruit's skins/peeling had an aura/ambience of purity/holiness. This shining fruit tree metaphor, early on in the Book of Mormon, became the basis for discussing the "skins" of others throughout the rest of the book.
I think Joseph Smith intended the words skin(s) to be thought of synonymously with fruit peeling and inner spiritual transformation. When a Christian had the "baptism of fire," Joseph reasoned that their inner nature becomes molded into a pure bright white-lighted spirit-body, which Paul talks about but in terms of eventually fully putting on/wearing a new spiritual body (pneumatic body) in the resurrection (see 1 Cor. 15). However, prior to the resurrection Paul taught that the Christian has received God's divine "seed," via the pneuma (or Holy Spirit) that is forming a new pure/holy pneumatic-body within their body of fallible flesh. This process of inner implanting of the seed/Word is often described in the Gospels as a holy being shining bright like a light and thus glowingly "white" in appearance. Joseph read these Pauline passages on a glorified body within the converted Christian, and the Gospel metaphors of a Vine, fruit, and shining disciples, and spoke instead in terms of skin(s) becoming holy/pure/white and one's countenance metaphorically shines bright like this shining "white"-lighted fruit in the Book of Mormon. This is why Jesus' countenance shines upon his disciples and he appears as bright white-light (signifying his purity and holiness), in the Book of Mormon. This is why I think Joseph Smith changed the word "white" to purity in a later edition of the Book of Mormon. I think he did that because he realized other Mormons, who most often converted from Protestantism, were not getting the message.
As a religious genius, as Harold Bloom considered Joseph Smith, I think he combined these metaphors and used the Protestant's racist language against them by using ambiguous language like "skins," to get them to stop thinking in terms of literal skin and to move toward thinking of skins as a metaphor for one's countenance either being like a ripe and "alive" peeling, full of Life (see John 10:10), or dwindling in unbelief causing a withering effect in the language of scales of darkness/blindness or being like "chaff" (outer skin of corn or grain) mentioned in the Book of Mormon (see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff).
So the Book of Mormon was Joseph Smith trying to use these New Testament metaphors to unconsciously change the mind of white Protestants so that what they saw as "red skin" ("non-white" skin) among the Native Americans (or plausibly black ink tattoos that covered their bodies giving them the appearance of a "skin of blackness"), would be thought of as a result of their past wicked traditions (breaking the Law of Moses as Israelites), and that ultimately, even though these racist ideas were deeply ingrained in their consciousness, that they should move beyond it and not judge the Native Americans if they are true Christians.
I think the stories about the Lamanites' "skin" becoming "white" was likely intended to have an ambiguous dual meaning in order to "work upon the hearts" of white Protestants (compare D&C 19: 6-12), as Joseph was dealing with their racism that caused white Protestants to exclude Native Americans from the Christian fold. So just as the language of a permanent eternal hell in the Book of Mormon is not meant to be taken literally as D&C 19 explains, the language of skins on a surface reading is a message to white Protestants who are basically being played by the Nephites: who at certain points judge the Lamanites based on the appearance of their skins. Joseph is then intending to "work upon the hearts" of the reader and convince the white Protestants to no longer think in terms of "red skins," and they as perceived "whites" are more pure and holy as "white people," by having the Protestant reader unconsciously identify with the seemingly "righteous" Nephites who themselves are scolded for their judgment of the appearance of the Lamanites; and the Nephites' pride, un-equity, and racism ultimately gets them annihilated, thus it's a cautionary tale.
The intended effect is for the reader to move from the surface reading of the word "skins," that is meant to be ambiguous, and thus at times sounds like (or unclearly echoes) the racism of the white Protestants of the day through the Nephite characters; but as the book's full narrative unfolds cover to cover the reader is supposed to move beyond their white Protestant racism. As the text "works upon their hearts'' they are meant to ideally realize that the underlying message of the book in full is that they are to reinterpret what they see as skin ("white" or "red" skin) and their judging Native Americans on their outward appearance as red skinned and savage is ultimately un-Christ-like; and they should instead interpret skins as the inner skin of the pure/holy soul indwelt by Christ. So that the white Protestant reader instead thinks of skin as skin-peeling on fruit, recalling the metaphor of the white-lighted shining fruit tree in the beginning of The Book of Mormon. From this perspective, they would start focusing on the inner soul and spiritual skin (fruit-like "peeling"/ambience) of a Native American and not their superficial outward appearance.
In the end the Book of Mormon message is anti-racism, with their being ideally no "manner of -ites," and neither "white nor black," a verse Marvin Perkins argues persuasively means neither "pure/holy nor wicked." So that Joseph is imbedding an unconscious anti-racist narrative: intended to cause the white Protestant reader to stop thinking of skin color ("red skins" or blackened skin from tattoos) as a permanent sign of un-Christian "wicked" traditions, and they as Protestants are more pure (holy/set-apart), but to instead focus on one's inner capacity for transformation through the "baptism of fire," and undergoing a process of inner purification and transformation toward growing into a peeling that resembles God's image/personage. As it says in Alma 5:19:
"I say unto you, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?"
Note that the original doctrine published in 1835, in the fifth Lecture on Faith, basically explains that the Son (Jesus) as a personage of tabernacle, is the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father. This emphasis on appearance and likeness could further support the interpretation of the Book of Mormon talk of skins and countenance as meaning developing this inner spiritual transformation and having the Mind/Spirit (or Pneuma) of the Father, as a way of developing the shining star-like Pauline pneumatic-body within, so that you appear in the same likeness as the personage/image of the Father and Son as as an equally bright image-bearer; as if you have an outer fruit peeling of glowing white/pure light emanating from the your soul illuminated by Light of Christ (see D&C 88), which is metaphorically illuminating the bright white-lighted fruit tree in the Book of Mormon; and thus Christians on the true vine are to equally shine "white"/bright like pure light as if fruit-peelings of holiness while bearing fruit.
So skins is ultimately meant as a metaphor for an outward skin/peeling: that is either dwindling/rotting toward a dark and gloomy countenance as if having scales/chaff of spiritual blindness, or having a bright white-lighted fruit-like peeling/countenance of healthy ripe life, purity, and goodness.
The end message is that of not judging superficial appearances (dark and gloomy countenances) caused by wicked traditions passed on from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters causing "negative generational contagion," but that what really matters is that anyone can instantly become pure/holy through Christ, and one can instantly reverse the generational trajectory by planting the fruit-like seed of Christ (the Logos/Word) and sprout "positive generational contagion" and skin-peelings/countenances like the bright "white"-lighted fruit tree at the beginning of the Book of Mormon.
In short, stop judging and start thinking of one's skins/peeling as either Christ-infused brightness having the immortal-Life-giving nature of Christ, as one "partakes of the divine nature," or think of skins as dwindling/degenerating in unbelief and having chaff/scales of rotting spiritual blindness, as if a "skin of blackness" like on rotting fruit peelings: as the "Life" of the fruit slips away and the fruit skin becomes blackened as it's lifeforce slips away.
So the underlying message of the Book of Mormon regarding "skins" is that like the metaphors in the New Testament of the immortal-Life-giving True Vine and the branches (Christians) bearing "fruit," no matter one's outward appearance, what matters is that everyone is a child of God; and anyone and can come unto Christ and receive His Life-giving Spirit and by following Chris they too can have a shining bright countenance and a demeanor or skin/peeling of goodness.
So I think Joseph is basically "riffing" on the New Testament ideas of Christians being branches on a Vine and bearing fruit, and visions of heavenly beings appearing and glowing "white" signifying holiness and purity; as he transformed these New Testament passages into a message about Native Americans being capable of becoming just as Christian and bright and fruitful as the Protestants of his area.
This is why the Book of Mormon has a message of not judging the outward appearance of others because the true "white skins" is a skin of purity/holiness, an implanted inner white-lighted/glorious personage/image within that has been seeded and formed in the likeness and image of the personages of the Godhead (see Lecture 5 and 7), thus having God's image/personage engraven on your countenance like the outer appearance of ripe and healthy fruit appearing full of "Life." As your inwardly implanted spiritual/pneumatic skin/body (from the seed of Christ) shines through your countenance and good deeds and glorifies "the Father of Lights" (Lecture 2:2).
This is a super short summary of how I see it. This document goes into more detail. By the way there are never-Mormon scholars who have also come to this, or a similar, conclusion.
