Facsimile 3

[_just me]

However, the contention the critics (such as yourself) make, which is completely absurd, is that magically Mormon prophets are something different. For some reason, they should be something other than imperfect fallible human beings and should be God's sock puppets instead.

Actually, it seems like it is the LDS church that teaches that prophets are different and special.

[_Tobin]

However, the contention the critics (such as yourself) make, which is completely absurd, is that magically Mormon prophets are something different. For some reason, they should be something other than imperfect fallible human beings and should be God's sock puppets instead.

Actually, it seems like it is the LDS church that teaches that prophets are different and special.

And I'm pointing out that is absurd (and history shows they aren't).

[_just me]

And I'm pointing out that is absurd (and history shows they aren't).

Then why be Mormon?

[_Tobin]

And I'm pointing out that is absurd (and history shows they aren't).

Then why be Mormon?

Because God told me to. It doesn't mean I don't think for myself and have to accept the industrial garbage they create up in SLC at the CHQ.

[_just me]

Then why be Mormon?

Because God told me to. It doesn't mean I don't think for myself and have to accept the industrial garbage they create up in SLC at the CHQ.

You are a fallible man. You could be wrong and be making a mistake.

[_Tobin]

You are a fallible man. You could be wrong and be making a mistake.

Granted, but I can only do my best as God gives me the light to see it.

[_Themis]

It is very simply. Human beings are imperfect, fallible and aren't God's sock puppets. That means we aren't perfect and know all that God knows like a proper sock puppet should. Seems pretty obvious doesn't it.

However, the contention the critics (such as yourself) make, which is completely absurd, is that magically Mormon prophets are something different. For some reason, they should be something other than imperfect fallible human beings and should be God's sock puppets instead.

I see tobin is still making this classic example of a straw-man argument. No one is suggesting Joseph has to be perfect. We accept he is fallible and capable of error, but that has never been the issue. The nature of the mistakes you want to attribute to him and God is. This is why your sock puppet comments have never been relevant to anything here.

[_Equality]

Apparently he revealed it to Ed Ashment and Hugh Nibley too. You are being absurd.
Equality wrote:
You keep bringing up Nibley and Ashment. When did they come up with this "theory"about a missing original document written by Abraham that was revealed directly to Joseph Smith? Was it before or after the papyri were found and translated by Egyptologists, confirming that the text bore no resemblance to the text in the Book of Abraham?
Ed Ashment wrote his article in 1979 and Hugh Nibley responded.

Weird that God would not reveal this information to any of his prophets between the time of Joseph Smith and 1979, when Spencer W. Kimball was supposedly his Prophet on earth. Instead, God waited some 135 years or so, allowing his one true church led by his one true prophet on the face of the whole earth to misrepresent the truth about the Book of Abraham. Only after the papyrus was found and definitively proven to have no connection to the text produced by Joseph Smith did church apologists (in this case Ashment and Nibley) concoct an ad hoc theory to attempt to explain away the obvious problems. Now, 33 years later, Tobin comes along and claims for these apologists something they never claimed for themselves: revelation from God approving their theory as correct. Tobin does not and cannot explain why the Mormon God would not have ever revealed this information to any of his prophets from Joseph Smith to Tommy Monson, other than to say that to do so would have somehow made "sock puppets" out of the prophets. But why would Ashment and Nibley (and, for that matter, Tobin himself) not also be "sock puppets"? They got the information from God himself when all the Mormon prophets combined had been unable to get the information because to get the information would have made them sock puppets. And Tobin still hasn't explained why the prophets would be God's sock puppets if he corrected their misapprehensions about the facsimiles and the Book of Abraham but Joseph Smith, in receiving by revelation the original text that Abraham supposedly wrote down thousands of years ago on a now-lost-forever medium (papyrus? parchment? gold plates? stone tablet? Etch-a-Sketch?), was not acting as a sock puppet. Am I alone in assessing this argument as being completely beyond the bounds of rational discourse?

[_Tobin]

It is very simply. Human beings are imperfect, fallible and aren't God's sock puppets. That means we aren't perfect and know all that God knows like a proper sock puppet should. Seems pretty obvious doesn't it.

However, the contention the critics (such as yourself) make, which is completely absurd, is that magically Mormon prophets are something different. For some reason, they should be something other than imperfect fallible human beings and should be God's sock puppets instead.

I see tobin is still making this classic example of a straw-man argument. No one is suggesting Joseph has to be perfect. We accept he is fallible and capable of error, but that has never been the issue. The nature of the mistakes you want to attribute to him and God is. This is why your sock puppet comments have never been relevant to anything here.

And yet I see you and others here make it over and over again. I'm just going to post the Sock Puppet Theory (SPT) every time you do it now.

[_Tobin]

Apparently he revealed it to Ed Ashment and Hugh Nibley too. You are being absurd.
Equality wrote:
You keep bringing up Nibley and Ashment. When did they come up with this "theory"about a missing original document written by Abraham that was revealed directly to Joseph Smith? Was it before or after the papyri were found and translated by Egyptologists, confirming that the text bore no resemblance to the text in the Book of Abraham?
Ed Ashment wrote his article in 1979 and Hugh Nibley responded.

Weird that God would not reveal this information to any of his prophets between the time of Joseph Smith and 1979, when Spencer W. Kimball was supposedly his Prophet on earth. Instead, God waited some 135 years or so, allowing his one true church led by his one true prophet on the face of the whole earth to misrepresent the truth about the Book of Abraham. Only after the papyrus was found and definitively proven to have no connection to the text produced by Joseph Smith did church apologists (in this case Ashment and Nibley) concoct an ad hoc theory to attempt to explain away the obvious problems. Now, 33 years later, Tobin comes along and claims for these apologists something they never claimed for themselves: revelation from God approving their theory as correct. Tobin does not and cannot explain why the Mormon God would not have ever revealed this information to any of his prophets from Joseph Smith to Tommy Monson, other than to say that to do so would have somehow made "sock puppets" out of the prophets. But why would Ashment and Nibley (and, for that matter, Tobin himself) not also be "sock puppets"? They got the information from God himself when all the Mormon prophets combined had been unable to get the information because to get the information would have made them sock puppets. And Tobin still hasn't explained why the prophets would be God's sock puppets if he corrected their misapprehensions about the facsimiles and the Book of Abraham but Joseph Smith, in receiving by revelation the original text that Abraham supposedly wrote down thousands of years ago on a now-lost-forever medium (papyrus? parchment? gold plates? stone tablet? Etch-a-Sketch?), was not acting as a sock puppet. Am I alone in assessing this argument as being completely beyond the bounds of rational discourse?

SPT