Joseph Lied: Why The Afore's Joseph Smith Trilemma Is A Logical Dead End

[I Have Questions]

We definitely are not forced to believe this person's claim about the sky just because, apart from the yellow sky thing itself, there is no evidence that this person is a liar or mad. No, it is not fallacious at all, but rather perfectly reasonable, to say that this person is clearly deluded or lying, because they say the sky's yellow, when in fact it is not. And, in the same way, there is no question-begging fallacy at all involved in saying that Joseph Smith was a liar because he lied about the Book of Mormon.

This is a perfectly reasonable and consistent resolution of the trilemma. It leaves the Mormon apologists with the same old problem that they always had, regardless of the trilemma, of somehow showing that the Book of Mormon really is what Smith claimed it to be. The trilemma does not let apologists escape from that burden. Any impression that it does is an illusion stemming from careless reasoning.

The plagiarised KJV Bible content within the Book of Mormon is a problem for the credibility of Joseph Smith, and the current Church. Smith’s claims about the Book of Mormon’s origins rest on the assertion that it was produced by supernatural translation, not by borrowing from existing English texts. The KJV Bible material undermines that claim because it ties the Book of Mormon’s language and content to a specific historical Bible edition Smith demonstrably possessed. This creates a serious credibility problem - either God chose to reveal an ancient record through the linguistic framework, and even the mistakes, of a 17th-century English translation...or the Book of Mormon reflects modern authorship shaped by Smith’s religious environment. The latter explanation is far more plausible. The current SLC LDS Church continues to promote a 100% literal, ancient origin for the Book of Mormon whilst ignoring the KJV Bible elephant in the room. Although some official and apologetic materials acknowledge the "similarities", they present them as faith-affirming or incidental rather than as evidence of modern composition - Festinger found that... “When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” The Church wilfully ignoring the elephant in the room leaves members and prospective converts unaware of the full scholarly and textual implications, allowing foundational claims to persist without transparent engagement with the evidence. For critics, this ongoing presentation amounts to institutional misrepresentation, sustaining belief by withholding or minimizing information that seriously challenges the church’s truth claims. It's dishonest. So we have Joseph Smith being dishonest, the SLC LDS Church being dishonest, and the apologists being dishonest. (I'm using the Church's definition of dishonesty).

Somebody in the early 1800's copied, verbatim, KJV Bible content into the Book of Mormon manuscript (without giving credit to the source i.e. plagiarism) and called it ancient. The Church has been calling that content ancient ever since. But it isn't ancient. It's from the 1600's. Not from 1,000 years earlier. On that basis the whole foundation of Mormonism, its very existence as a religious tradition, is built on a deceit. A deceit that is still being propagated today.

[Kishkumen]

A claim to be a prophet is one of those claims as well. If Smith had professed a revelation that wasn't so largely about making him very important, then his sincerity might have been worth discussing, but with his actual claims, his sincerity is a completely moot point.

Yes, sincere about what or in what sense--all these are good questions that must be explored. The Unibomber was sincere. Sincerity is, as you essentially argue above, a not negligible but certainly not decisive factor. I tend not to place much stock in it, since it is eminently possible for people to be sincere in their errors. It is one of the most common phenomena there is. See politics.

[Kishkumen]

Somebody in the early 1800's copied, verbatim, KJV Bible content into the Book of Mormon manuscript (without giving credit to the source i.e. plagiarism) and called it ancient. The Church has been calling that content ancient ever since. But it isn't ancient. It's from the 1600's. Not from 1,000 years earlier. On that basis the whole foundation of Mormonism, its very existence as a religious tradition, is built on a deceit. A deceit that is still being propagated today.

Ghost committee!

[Gadianton]

If so, in my case it fails. I do not feel pressured by the trilemma to choose one item on the list. It is the idea that there is a trilemma that does not work for me. Or, to put it in another, milder way, I have no use for it.

Well I think it must be, here is what CS Lewis originally said:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say.

Dan is waiting for you to be agreeable but fall short of accepting Joseph Smith as the founder of the only true church on the face of the earth.

Actually, with my memory refreshed about the quote, it's even a stronger claim than I remembered as "Son of God" seems as if it would also do.

The trilemma shouldn't work on you and seems prone to backfire on critics in general as critics often accept the terms. I reject the terms because first, it's a foolish rhetorical trap, although one interesting enough to discuss in the context of rhetoric. I feel like it is often used as a model beyond the consideration of Jesus. But it's also flawed logic.

[Kishkumen]

I reject the terms because first, it's a foolish rhetorical trap, although one interesting enough to discuss in the context of rhetoric. I feel like it is often used as a model beyond the consideration of Jesus. But it's also flawed logic.

Agreed.

[Doctor Steuss]

I actually do believe that Joseph Smith was sincere about his claims. Unfortunately, that doesn't make his behavior regarding polygamy any better in my mind. He did atrocious things in connection with polygamy. The idea that religious people are sincere when they do disturbing things is not really comforting, and that is the price the devoted have to pay for breaking the rules of society to follow their inspiration. In other words, we know that Joseph would lie to protect his aberrant practice of marrying multiple women, some teens and some of them already married to other men. That is frankly not the kind of society I want to live in. Had I lived then and known about it, I would likely have left Mormonism. I would not have been honored to be sent on a mission to have Joseph Smith move on my wife when I was gone.

When I was in high school, a pair of my friends broke into a girl’s house as a dare. One as lookout, and one to do the deed. As “proof” that they had done it, they took a family picture. It ended up blowing up, with the girl and her family suspecting my friends, and roping in more and more people to try to prove it was them that did it.

A few weeks later, while talking to them, I told them the best course would be to just come clean, and return the picture. They both said something that had stuck with me. They told me (someone they had confessed to the day after they did it) that they didn’t do it. After I called them out, and a long pause, one of them said “I think I’m starting to believe my own lies.”

Sometimes, when looking at the life of Joseph Smith, I see a version of that. While trying to convince others, he ultimately starts to convince himself. “I can totally see things in my seer stone” goes from grift, to self-inflicted sincere delusion. “God wants me to betray my wife, whom I love” goes from self-serving lie to satisfy his carnal desires, to another self-inflected sincere delusion to cope with the obvious moral failing and vile betrayal.

It's one of the things that keeps me from seeing sociopathy. Narcissist? Definitely. Sociopath? Doubtful. I think he had a conscience (as warped as it may have been), which is why he had the pathological need for dishonesty. The lies weren’t just for convincing others… they were to convince himself.

Or so go my amateur armchair pre-coffee musings for the day.

[Limnor]

Sometimes, when looking at the life of Joseph Smith, I see a version of that. While trying to convince others, he ultimately starts to convince himself. “I can totally see things in my seer stone” goes from grift, to self-inflicted sincere delusion. “God wants me to betray my wife, whom I love” goes from self-serving lie to satisfy his carnal desires, to another self-inflected sincere delusion to cope with the obvious moral failing and vile betrayal.

It's one of the things that keeps me from seeing sociopathy. Narcissist? Definitely. Sociopath? Doubtful. I think he had a conscience (as warped as it may have been), which is why he had the pathological need for dishonesty. The lies weren’t just for convincing others… they were to convince himself.

Or so go my amateur armchair pre-coffee musings for the day.

I tend to agree with this—self-deception can help explain how he lived with the lies, but it doesn’t absolve him from his responsibility for telling them.

[Gadianton]

They both said something that had stuck with me. They told me (someone they had confessed to the day after they did it) that they didn’t do it. After I called them out, and a long pause, one of them said “I think I’m starting to believe my own lies.”

You've definitely nailed how I believe a testimony and basic church loyalty works for the average member. Is this good enough to explain Joseph Smith? possibly. A decent percentage of the population could fit the bill, either way.

[Gadianton]

The Unibomber was sincere. Sincerity is, as you essentially argue above, a not negligible but certainly not decisive factor. I tend not to place much stock in it, since it is eminently possible for people to be sincere in their errors.

If I think about that guy in our ward who ran a Ponzi scheme and got busted for it, he was sincere. His actions became self-destructive and consistent with somebody who believes he was wronged.

[Kishkumen]

If I think about that guy in our ward who ran a Ponzi scheme and got busted for it, he was sincere. His actions became self-destructive and consistent with somebody who believes he was wronged.

“Hey, but he was sincere, and that’s gotta count for something!”

Sounds crazy, right?

Joseph Smith in Nauvoo is hard to rationalize away. The guy had gone way too far. He was driving his truck right into a giant stone wall at 90 mph. Someone was bound to murder him sooner or later.

And I can’t see signing up for that. I can’t see signing up to live under Brigham’s regime either. The Mormonism I grew up in became intolerable once I was enough of an adult to think for myself. I remember the off-kilter demands the bishop made of me and my family. They were nothing severe; it just struck me as oddly inappropriate to allow a virtual stranger to tell me how to be a husband and father. I did not need his help to do those things. His “help” was not going to improve our lives.

I would have had no desire to live in the Mormon society of the 19th century. Finding an escape hatch would have been a top priority.