"Rock In A Hat," Or "How Everyone Gets It Wrong"
Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:50 pm
I had the opportunity recently to listen to Bill Reel and RFM critique the jaw-droppingly moronic, dishonest, and vulgar "This Is The Show," starring COVID-catastrophe on two legs, Kwaku El. It was an enjoyable maiden voyage for Bill and RFM's live show, and most of what they had to say hit the mark. Bill and RFM are two very sharp guys. I am especially a fan of RFM, who has to be one of the most logical, lucid, and eloquent critics of Mormonism around, period.
But, of course, nothing is perfect, and I did find a nit to pick. Not so much a nit to pick with Bill and RFM, but definitely a nit to pick with both Jeremy Runnells, whom the MD duo was defending, and the T.I.T.S. ensemble, whom they were critiquing. Now, don't get me wrong. I feel a lot more critical of Kwaku and pals than I do Jeremy Runnells. I feel genuinely sympathetic toward Jeremy. The T.I.T.S. folks I hold to be shameless, ambitious opportunists who are using Mopologetics for their own advancement.
What's my beef, you ask? It has to do with the snippet about the "ouija board." The T.I.T.S. folks criticized Jeremy for saying that Smith translated the Book of Mormon with a "ouija board," when in fact he used a seer stone to translate. In this they misrepresented Jeremy. What he actually did was compare Smith's translation with a seer stone to using a "ouija board," which is quite a different thing. Dirty pool, Kwaku.
However, what Jeremy wrote was offensive in multiple ways, at least if you are an LDS person who really believes or seeks to shore up faltering belief. Now, although the functional comparison of a ouija board and the seer stone is not bad--after all, both methods of divination produce words--the ouija board has long been condemned in Christian circles for being a conduit through which people come into contact with evil spirits. This kind of terminology, in fact, plays right into the hands of anti-cult ministry types like the Tanners, who sincerely believe that all "magic" or "occult" methods are "of the devil."
Whether Jeremy recognized it or not at the time, it was a really poor choice of terms for that reason.
His other description, however, was only marginally better. Jeremy said that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with "a rock in a hat." Now, many of you will no doubt respond, "Well, that's what he did, isn't it?" Perhaps from your perspective, it is. But is was not so from Joseph Smith's perspective and others like him who engaged in these kinds of activities. For them, a seer stone was a special stone that allowed its possessor, sometimes thought to be the person for whom the stone was most effective or especially prepared for, to see hidden things, including the unknown past and future. Joseph Smith, Sr. referred to it as Joseph, Jr.'s "All Seeing Eye," a description with esoteric and masonic associations.
Like other elements of Christian folk magic, the seer stone was understood in a Biblical framework. It was "the white stone" given to the righteous in Revelation. Such stones would remain an integral part of the Mormon faith, if only on a kind of folk level, until the 20th century and beyond. It was only in the 20th century that LDS leaders started to discourage members from seeking and using such devices. Brigham Young taught that all righteous saints were entitled to have and use a seer stone. We are not talking about something that was unknown and bizarre to earlier Latter-day Saints.
What happened? The anti-esotericism and anti-ritualism of the dominant Protestant culture in North America, which contributed to the anti-cult ministries springing from the same culture. Popularly, the "occult" and the "esoteric" were equated with the devil and demons. What Christianity had done to other religions in the past, it continued to do within its own ranks with a vengeance, weeding out anything that might smack of the old enemy of paganism. Christians destroyed the temples, shrines, statues, and altars of the old religions. They murdered their practitioners. All on the theory that anything but the Christian God as they understood and worshiped Him was Satanic or demonic.
Today's secular antipathy for spirituality is the deliciously ironic, logical extension of this attitude to its absurd conclusion: the only thing left to take away to make things truly acceptable is the Christian cast of supernatural characters, including and especially God.
This is right where many disaffected Latter-day Saints land: in the secular mindset. I see nothing wrong with it. I don't really agree with it, although I think there is a lot to be said for viewing the world largely through secular as opposed to partisan, doctrinaire religious eyes. The mistake, of course, is to think that the secular lens is truly transparent and accurate in every way and to be unaware of its historically contingent nature, which it shares with any other human mythological/theological system.
Thanks to the influence of Protestant culture and secularism, most people view things like seer stones as being kooky and bizarre. Who would translate the Book of Mormon with a "rock" in a hat? Once you get a person to approach the scenario with that perspective, the work of parting them from their belief in the Restoration is already mostly done. The demystification of the modern world, stemming from the paucity of symbolic imagination and the fashionable hyper-rationalism, on the one hand, and the illiterate ignorance of the vast majority of religionists, on the other, sets up a situation where it is extremely easy to topple the belief of a Latter-day Saint who suddenly encounters information like the use of the seer stone in the Book of Mormon translation.
What bothers me is how most of what makes accurate communication about the issue of the Book of Mormon's translation possible is lost in the ignorant and misleading noise of these polemical exchanges. Sure, don't believe--and that is fine. Do believe--knock yourself out. But for Pete's sake, can't people learn to approach a topic like this honestly, accurately, and from an informed perspective?
But, of course, nothing is perfect, and I did find a nit to pick. Not so much a nit to pick with Bill and RFM, but definitely a nit to pick with both Jeremy Runnells, whom the MD duo was defending, and the T.I.T.S. ensemble, whom they were critiquing. Now, don't get me wrong. I feel a lot more critical of Kwaku and pals than I do Jeremy Runnells. I feel genuinely sympathetic toward Jeremy. The T.I.T.S. folks I hold to be shameless, ambitious opportunists who are using Mopologetics for their own advancement.
What's my beef, you ask? It has to do with the snippet about the "ouija board." The T.I.T.S. folks criticized Jeremy for saying that Smith translated the Book of Mormon with a "ouija board," when in fact he used a seer stone to translate. In this they misrepresented Jeremy. What he actually did was compare Smith's translation with a seer stone to using a "ouija board," which is quite a different thing. Dirty pool, Kwaku.
However, what Jeremy wrote was offensive in multiple ways, at least if you are an LDS person who really believes or seeks to shore up faltering belief. Now, although the functional comparison of a ouija board and the seer stone is not bad--after all, both methods of divination produce words--the ouija board has long been condemned in Christian circles for being a conduit through which people come into contact with evil spirits. This kind of terminology, in fact, plays right into the hands of anti-cult ministry types like the Tanners, who sincerely believe that all "magic" or "occult" methods are "of the devil."
Whether Jeremy recognized it or not at the time, it was a really poor choice of terms for that reason.
His other description, however, was only marginally better. Jeremy said that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with "a rock in a hat." Now, many of you will no doubt respond, "Well, that's what he did, isn't it?" Perhaps from your perspective, it is. But is was not so from Joseph Smith's perspective and others like him who engaged in these kinds of activities. For them, a seer stone was a special stone that allowed its possessor, sometimes thought to be the person for whom the stone was most effective or especially prepared for, to see hidden things, including the unknown past and future. Joseph Smith, Sr. referred to it as Joseph, Jr.'s "All Seeing Eye," a description with esoteric and masonic associations.
Like other elements of Christian folk magic, the seer stone was understood in a Biblical framework. It was "the white stone" given to the righteous in Revelation. Such stones would remain an integral part of the Mormon faith, if only on a kind of folk level, until the 20th century and beyond. It was only in the 20th century that LDS leaders started to discourage members from seeking and using such devices. Brigham Young taught that all righteous saints were entitled to have and use a seer stone. We are not talking about something that was unknown and bizarre to earlier Latter-day Saints.
What happened? The anti-esotericism and anti-ritualism of the dominant Protestant culture in North America, which contributed to the anti-cult ministries springing from the same culture. Popularly, the "occult" and the "esoteric" were equated with the devil and demons. What Christianity had done to other religions in the past, it continued to do within its own ranks with a vengeance, weeding out anything that might smack of the old enemy of paganism. Christians destroyed the temples, shrines, statues, and altars of the old religions. They murdered their practitioners. All on the theory that anything but the Christian God as they understood and worshiped Him was Satanic or demonic.
Today's secular antipathy for spirituality is the deliciously ironic, logical extension of this attitude to its absurd conclusion: the only thing left to take away to make things truly acceptable is the Christian cast of supernatural characters, including and especially God.
This is right where many disaffected Latter-day Saints land: in the secular mindset. I see nothing wrong with it. I don't really agree with it, although I think there is a lot to be said for viewing the world largely through secular as opposed to partisan, doctrinaire religious eyes. The mistake, of course, is to think that the secular lens is truly transparent and accurate in every way and to be unaware of its historically contingent nature, which it shares with any other human mythological/theological system.
Thanks to the influence of Protestant culture and secularism, most people view things like seer stones as being kooky and bizarre. Who would translate the Book of Mormon with a "rock" in a hat? Once you get a person to approach the scenario with that perspective, the work of parting them from their belief in the Restoration is already mostly done. The demystification of the modern world, stemming from the paucity of symbolic imagination and the fashionable hyper-rationalism, on the one hand, and the illiterate ignorance of the vast majority of religionists, on the other, sets up a situation where it is extremely easy to topple the belief of a Latter-day Saint who suddenly encounters information like the use of the seer stone in the Book of Mormon translation.
What bothers me is how most of what makes accurate communication about the issue of the Book of Mormon's translation possible is lost in the ignorant and misleading noise of these polemical exchanges. Sure, don't believe--and that is fine. Do believe--knock yourself out. But for Pete's sake, can't people learn to approach a topic like this honestly, accurately, and from an informed perspective?