why me wrote:Darth J wrote:
Why Me, tell me about Charles Ponzi's relationship with his wife, Rose.
As I understand it, Ponzi was found guilty of fraud and it was proven in court.
Charles Ponzi was acquitted in state court. He was convicted in federal court. And that's not relevant to what I asked, anyway. Whether or not Joseph Smith was a con man is a separate issue from whether he was criminally guilty. The main problem, but by no means the only problem, with your assumption is that unlike Charles Ponzi's mail fraud charges, a charge that the religion itself is a fraud would not be cognizable in an American court. That's not because a religion cannot be fraudulent. It's because under American concepts of freedom of religion, a court cannot adjudicate the truth value of religious claims. In other words, a judge could not decide Joseph Smith's church was a fraud, but he couldn't have decided that the church was "true," either.
Notwithstanding your irrelevant sidetrack, your assertion was that Joseph Smith must not have been a con man because he wrote some nice letters to his wife. If appearing to dote on your wife shows that you are not a con man, then you would agree that Charles Ponzi was not a con man, because he doted on his wife (and unlike Joseph the Seer, did not cheat on her).
But since you raised the issue, irrelevant it may be, how could a jury have convicted Ponzi of mail fraud when he sometimes was nice to his wife, Why Me? Con men don't say nice things to their wives, right?
Joseph was facing the death sentence and not prison.
The above statement is so divorced from reality that the fabric of the universe should have torn itself apart by now.
