Judicial Proceedings from SeN

[Moksha]

I notice that the Afore is erupting with indignation over the use of the term "ghost" to describe events related to the Witnesses, but he has no problem using the term "apparition" to describe Catholic-themed supernatural occurrences.

I can understand why Dr. Peterson thinks the term angel is more respectable than ghost. I think that is why Professor Tolkien preferred Ents to Tree People. The problem with Dr. Peterson's assertion lies with the Mormon preference to use the Holy Ghost rather than the Holy Spirit. As Dr. Peterson would say, "I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts, as long as they don't affect the Interpreter donor list or drive people out of showings for Six Days in August."

Can you imagine the beleaguered SeN Ditto Squad having to strap photon packs to their back and risk crossing the streams?

[Moksha]

JA: "Why would any of these witnesses want to later publicly recant their testimony and admit they were part of a massive fraud perpetuated on tens of thousands?"

Because it would have spared them considerable persecution and probably made them wealthy.

JA: "How do you think the public or the police chief would react??"

And the "police chief," by this point, was either dead (Joseph Smith) or thousands of miles and many weeks of grueling travel away (Brigham Young).

And, when David Whitmer died in 1888, still bearing witness and in fact having his testimony of the Book of Mormon engraved on his tombstone, Brigham Young had been dead for eleven years.

JA: "These witnesses were highly motivated not to recant due to massive civil legal liability for their fraudulent scheme and many other reasons."

I'm sorry, but that is laughable and ridiculous. No American court would have held them liable -- especially in the vastly less litigious nineteenth century -- for coming clean about the alleged fraud of Mormonism.

You're inventing things, and risible hypotheticals don't carry much weight as historical evidence.

There is a substantial body of serious historical work on the Book of Mormon witnesses. It's worth reading.

Can you folks spot any errors in reasoning or logic on Dr. Peterson's part?

[Gadianton]

I'll try to put this in another way, although many others have made the point. Dan seems to think that eye witness testimony, and customer testimonials are the same thing.

In the ideal case, an eye witness has no personal vesting in what they witnessed. When I was in the bank, did I see that guy who I'd never seen before that day, pull out a gun or was it a cucumber? That's a totally different kind of "witness" than, did I witness my socks become whiter than when they were new, after I tried that new laundry detergent, which I then ended up selling for a long time?

If the Lord wanted to have eye-witness testimony of the plates with all its flaws, he could have had Joseph Smith show the plates to unconnected neutral parties who had no horse in the race. The fact that you have to debate how the psychology of a fevered convert would or wouldn't have embellished what the convert claim to have seen shows you're working with the absolute worst case scenario of an "eye witness".

[I Have Questions]

After Smith's death, James Strang, claiming to be Smith's chosen successor, also produced buried plates and the testimony of eleven witnesses to their authenticity. All living witnesses to the Book of Mormon (except possibly Cowdery)—three of the Whitmers, Martin Harris, and Hiram Page—accepted at least briefly Strang's "leadership, angelic call, metal plates, and his translation of these plates as authentic."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of ... _witnesses

So presumably the apologists accept the Strang plates and their translation?

[I Have Questions]

It’s worth remembering where the 3 & 8 witnesses fit into the chronology.
- Joseph supposedly received the plates in September 1827
- The first part of the translation was sent for authentication to Charles Anthon in February 1828. It wasn’t authenticated, in part because Anthon didn’t believe the miraculous angel part of the story.
- June 1828 Mrs Harris chucks the first 116 pages away, or so it seems.
- In February 1829 Oliver Cowdrey supposedly sees the plates in a vision. And is acting as scribe.
- Towards the end of 1829 a few things happen in quick succession. Firstly, the 3 & 8 witnesses fit into”see” the plates. Then Martin Harris mortgages his farm to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon. After which an attempt is made to try and sell the copyright.

Given this chronology it is easy to see the 3 & 8 witnesses as an integral part of the plan to make money from selling the copyright. After the Anthon rejection Joseph needed something to enhance the credibility of the Book of Mormon in order to sell it. Getting some handily placed stooges was the best he could do. I wonder what share of the proceeds he promised each of them?

The other thing this chronology does is make a laughing stock out of the “written in 30 days, how could a rural farm boy do that” narrative. Joseph started writing it in late 1827, it was finished in March 1830. That’s a bit more than 30 days. And that doesn’t include the years he spent verbalising his fictional tales about the origins of the Native Americans. Joseph was working on the idea of a Book of Mormon manuscript for nigh on a decade.

[Billy Shears]

The “Witnesses Argument” cannot stand up to serious scrutiny. That’s why you’ve been banned, Billy. But the reason why it continues to be a “thing” is because DCP is constitutionally incapable of backing down, making a concession, or admitting to being wrong. It is his primary character flaw and it has cost him enormously over the years. It’s also exceptionally easy to exploit.

It looks like my post is out of pending and Professor Peterson has responded to it.

To give credit where credit is due, Professor Peterson never banned me, and as far as I recall, he never threatened to. What I have experienced is that when I make longer posts there, they tend to go into a “Pending” status where I can see them on my Disqus account, but they aren’t publicly shown in the conversation. It seems that there is some algorithm that puts things into pending. I don’t know what it is, but longer, more substantial posts are much more likely to be put in a pending status.

Further, I don’t know how they are released from Pending. Presumably Professor Peterson has some sort of control panel that allows him to release posts in pending, but I don’t know how that works. An impression I get is that when I make more substantial posts, he has a tendency to leave them in a pending status until the blog post gets cold and people stop looking at the comments. He’ll then eventually release it, offer a curt reply, and then the conversation dies.

I’ve gotten a bit disinterested in posting there; the conversations get pretty repetitive.

[Doctor Scratch]

Ah, of course, the mysterious "Pending" queue! There has been lots of speculation over the years on just how, exactly, this "queue" works. What I think we can safely say is that every single critic who has ever turned up on "SeN" has found their posts going into this "queue" as some point or another.

[Gadianton]

Great points, Physics Guy. The thing is: DCP is being disingenuous. He says that it "seems to me transparently selective and self-serving," and it's like, "No, really?" It's not as if he touts the eyewitness testimony for things like UFOs or Bigfoot. And does he really care about the witnesses who testified to the authenticity of the Voree Plates? No: he openly ridicules the Strangites and even said repeatedly that he wanted "Pee-Wee Herman" to play Strang in his movie. Or how about Ellen Gould Harmon's various visions? He's openly hostile to the validity of eyewitness testimony when it suits him, and he's "transparently selective" when it comes to believing in testimony that supports his faith.

yep, witnesses only count if it's for his belief.

https://salemthoughts.com/Topics/Plates ... ToBobMoore

https://salemthoughts.com/Topics/Sealed ... ideo.shtml

anti-Mormon lit from FAIR

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/ans ... cio_Berger

[Doctor Scratch]

More hypocrisy from the Afore:

He insinuates that my use of that term Marian apparitions reveals my contempt for Catholic beliefs and religious sensibilities. (I gather that he imagines the term to be a pejorative one, suggesting that the claimed visions of Mary are merely imaginary or ghostlike.) But, of course, Marian apparitions is the term that Catholics themselves use to refer to appearances of the Virgin Mary. Out of respect and not wanting to substitute my own non-Catholic description, I borrowed the term from them. Here are just four examples, chosen at random from among very many that are readily located online:

Let’s back up a second. Is the term “ghost” perjorative? Yes or no? Sometimes? All the time? Only in Mopologetic contexts?

The reality is that the Mopologists have painted *any* and *all* terms associated with magic or the supernatural as anti-Mormon bigotry. So, I ask: if describing the angel Moroni as a “ghost” or an “apparition” is horrible bigotry from a Mormon standpoint, then how does it “magically” become okay when DCP talks about Catholics? The answer is obvious: it’s the old case where someone leans in and whispers, “We would *never* say that about ourselves. But if *they* are dumb enough to do that? Go ahead and let them!”

So, while I never actually said that the Afore was contemptuous of Catholics, he has ironically done a pretty good job of showing that he actually is.

And I understand that this is just petty lashing out because the movie isn’t going to make back his budget. Boasting about mysterious “phantom” (ghostly?) people who’ve seen it (gee, General Authorities??) impresses no one.

[Marcus]

..,Happily, there was an uptick in attendance at screenings of Six Days in August yesterday (Tuesday). I was pleased to see that, and rather caught off guard by it. A fair number of people have reported to me that they were surprised by the film, that it was better than they had anticipated, that it had exceeded their expectations. I like to think that Tuesday’s small but distinct rise in ticket sales over Monday (Family Night!) means that word-of-mouth is getting out. That would be the key to greater success. Whether that’s really what’s happening, though, and whether Tuesday’s numbers represent something significant, though, I cannot tell.

An "uptick in attendance"? or, as this quote refers to the situation a sentence or so later, a "distinct rise in ticket sales"?

not exactly the same thing.