Introducing .... Buckeye

[_Buckeye]

Thanks to all who welcomed me.

[_degaston]

..... I struggle with men excusing Joseph Smith's behavior as if a grown thirty-six .. year old married man, "marrying" a young girl is somehow ok if she is almost fifteen.

I think its excused for a combination of reasons.

(1) Helen apparently didn't have any children with Joseph Smith. No proof seems to exist that any of the other "spiritual" wives did either. For all we know she was still a virgin when Joseph Smith died at Carthage.

(2) Yes we know that Brigham Young and other Apostles most certainly did marry plural wives before Joseph Smith died and that in a few instances their plural wives conceived before leaving Nauvoo. And this brings us to point #3 .....

(3) Joseph Smith said (or at the very least misled the world) he wasn't a polygamist. Brigham Young emphatically said he was. At least one of them was lying and leading us astray. Anyone ever hear DCP or another apologist explain this one? Or do they all just shove this issue on the shelf and not directly answer the question?

I think that's what happens. They just spout off that part of the story that might make Joseph Smith look blameless. And they shove up on the shelf anything troubling. And as a result to everyone else they appear foolish. And they honestly don't get it how foolish they look.

I used to be an Apologist myself. The answer to all these problems was clear. Go read Moroni 10:3-5, read, ponder, pray and feel the fuzzy wuzzy feeling and you know its true. But if you don't feel the fuzzy wuzzy then go read Alma 32 and water that faith and keep repeating Moroni 10:3-5. And then one day I discovered the Lamanite/DNA issue. And then I discovered that the apologists thought that Moroni's idea about the Book of Mormon being a record of the ancestors of the Native Americans was a sham. I can understand Joseph Smith understanding it wrong. But how could Moroni screw up so badly? He's supposedly a resurrected being and prophet who was born/raised in Nephite culture and who undoubtedly had to be quite knowledgable on Nephite history thanks to all those plates/records his father left him. Very quickly the burden of proof switched for me from the critics to the apologists because they're the ones that changed the story from the one started by Moroni/Joseph to the LGT, mixing theories, etc.