Book of Mormon as a failed money-making scheme

[huckelberry]

Physics Guy, I agree. For me this sort of line of thought is the only way that makes sense of Joseph Smith. A person might decide that producing a theater, plates and all, to sell a truth that the person believes people need is justified. The transaction could financially and socially benefit the author making the transaction more attractive. Yes narcissism could facilitate the deal to overcome the qualms most people would have about such a transaction.

That might explain the different notions inside one's, namely Joseph Smith, Jr.'s, cranium. But what about the paradox of Jesus being involved in choosing a narcissist to carry forth the word of God? In Matthew 22:36-40, we learn that the second great commandment is to love your neighbor as thyself. One who treat his fellow mankind with love the polar opposite of a narcissist who only thinks about and loves himself. How can one be a conscious con artist and in any way, to any degree be approaching satisfying that second great commandment? Is Jesus that bi-polar that 1800 years after pronouncing that one is to love his fellow man as he loves himself, Jesus can choose as his "faithful" vessel a narcissistic con artist to restore gospel in its fullness? (It should be kept in mind that the LDS constantly claim that one must be worthy for a calling.)

sock puppet, I think seeing Joseph as producing theater intending to educate would be a difficult path for apologists to attempt. It is hard to imagine enthusiasm for LDS faith to maintain itself with that story. Well some people seem able to consider belief in Book of Mormon as fiction as a possible path for belief. A person might think Joseph was personally wrong but correct about something important. (His views on hell and second chances? That humans are fundamentally divine and need to know that?)

[BeNotDeceived]

Of course his motivation for producing the Book of Mormon was financial... what was the first thing he did after it was completed? Sent 3 men to Canada to try and sell the copyright for it. The guy was a scam artist and con-man. He used the same rock in a hat when he was involved in his money-digging scams and when that ended up getting him in trouble with the law, he resorted to the same trick to dictate a fictitious religious story. He probably saw the B of M not only as a potential money-maker itself but had likely pre-meditated using it as well to start his own religion if he couldn't sell the copyright, which of course brings in money from members. Joseph Smith was one of the greatest charlatans and con men this country has ever seen, right up there with others like L. Ron Hubbard and scientology!

[Physics Guy]

For non-Mormons, thinking that Smith believed he was chosen by God is not at all the same as thinking that he really was chosen by God. The question is whether Mormons can preserve any sense of Smith being a real prophet, while accepting that he was a possibly narcissistic pious fraud.

I think maybe, in principle. What if Charles Darwin had been an egomaniac who tried to sell evolution with a “Piltdown Man” fake? His theory would still in fact have been right and important, and he would still have been its discoverer. He would have been a weird, sketchy guy, but people could still be staunch Darwinists, knowing that. There is some evidence that Isaac Newton was a real SOB, and he might well have stooped to some duplicity in trying prove his priority over Leibniz in discovering calculus. That doesn’t stop anyone from believing in physics, or acknowledging Newton as the one who discovered it.

The problem is that physics and biology aren’t morality, but the content of Mormonism is supposed to be about righteousness. Indeed the reputation of Mormons as individual people is of being particularly scrupulous, and not just in fastidiously observing their peculiar taboos but in being reliably honest and generous. By Jesus’s doctrine of judging by fruits, this ought to imply that virtuous Mormon behaviour stems from morally sound Mormon belief, and furthermore that morally sound Mormon belief could only have come through a virtuous prophet.

How could a narcissistic con artist have produced good moral fruit? This might not seem impossible to people outside the general Christian tradition, but a lot of what Smith specifically taught seems to imply that it must be impossible. It’s as if it were an important axiom in evolution or physics that mean or dishonest people all spontaneously combust immediately. If that had been a crucial part of their theories, then it wouldn’t be possible to respect a nasty Newton or a faking Darwin after all, because their character flaws would also have meant that their theories were wrong.

It might be possible to extract out of Mormonism an amoral esoteric doctrine, and revere Smith for revealing those truths in spite of his own moral flaws, like a fake-making Darwin. The problem I see is that this would mean abandoning the heart of Mormonism. I don’t think many sincere Mormons would be willing to do that. So the moral failings of Smith are a hard problem to solve.