why me wrote:Darth J wrote:
Yeah, I can't see how that implies anything about what Joseph Smith was doing.
But then I also see no connection between L. Ron Hubbard's career as a science fiction writer and the inception of Scientology.
The point is simple: The Stowells found him to be an upright guy. They did not see him as you assume he was. And they had business with him. Now of course, any idiot can then attempt a comparison with an individual with bad connotations as you did. This is something that critics often do.
Ho, he thought Joseph was a great guy? Well, many thought Koresh was a great guy too! mentality. How about....well, many were attracted to Ronald Reagan....many were attracted to Hitler too.It doesn't quite work.
Well, you know what they say: a gift horse in the mouth is worth two in the bush.
I am not assuming anything. You do not dispute that Joseph Smith led people to believe that he could find buried treasure with his magic rock, and one of those people was Josiah Stowell. This undisputed fact necessarily means:
1. Joseph Smith was a fraud, because he knew he could not find buried treasure with a magic rock.
2. Joseph Smith was delusional, because he thought that he really could find buried treasure with a magic rock.
Or
3. You believe Joseph Smith was telling the truth, which means you are asserting that he really could find buried treasure with a magic rock.
None of those three possibilities bodes well for Mormonism's foundational claims.
Josiah Stowell's favorable opinion of Joseph Smith only means that Stowell was completely taken in by the scam. It does not prove that Joseph Smith was telling the truth---that he really could find buried treasure with a magic rock. The ad hominem fallacy applies to both positive and negative character evidence. Neither a favorable opinion of Joseph Smith's personal character nor a negative one is relevant to determining whether magic rocks really work, and whether Joseph Smith had one.
And that's why critically thinking, rational adults---a part of the Venn diagram you are not in---summarily reject arguments like yours that because some rube thinks that the perpetraor of a scam is a wonderful person, that must mean that the scam is legitimate. The misguided mentality is not in observing that many dishonest, unethical, or crazy people had admirers. The misguided mentality is in your desire to cobble together logical rules that only apply to Joseph Smith.
"Josiah Stowell admired Joseph Smith, so that proves that Joseph Smith was an honest person, because if someone has admirers, that means that the subject of the admiration is a good person. Unless it's someone who I have predetermined to be a bad person, like David Koresh. Then I reject opinions of their good character, because I already know they were bad people. So because I already decided Joseph Smith was a good person, favorable opinions of him impress me, but because I already decided David Koresh was a bad person, favorable opinions of him do not impress me. In other words, I am not critically thinking about evidence at all, but nakedly engaging in confirmation bias."
But hey, Why Me, all's fair that ends well.