krose wrote:I don't think you get to extend the meaning of "this country" to all of North America, but rather to the USA as it existed in 1823.
I think you do.
And I think Joseph did.
He clearly thought that some of the Book of Mormon cities, at least, were outside the United States. He welcomed Stephens and Catherwood's Central American work with delight.
The Dude wrote:Daniel Peterson wrote:It always surprises me how many critics, even fairly sophisticated ones, seem to have expected infallibility from the Church and its leaders.
No, I just stopped seeing a huge difference between fallible and "just as likely to be right or wrong as anyone else."
The difference is _____?
The difference is, say, that between Einstein and the man on the street, or between Darwin and Pastor Bobby Joe Jenkins, or between an expert on the plays of Shakespeare and somebody who's never read them.
Fallible doesn't mean non-expert, or no better than anybody else. Not in common parlance, and not, in the case of Joseph Smith, from my perspective as a non-infallibilist believer.
Who Knows wrote:Daniel Peterson wrote:It always surprises me how many critics, even fairly sophisticated ones, seem to have expected infallibility from the Church and its leaders.
Come on man - the guy claimed to have ancient gold plates. He claimed to be able to 'translate' them when they weren't even in the same room as him.
So then he officially publishes an account of the origins of the church, in a publication the LDS church developed for the purposes of the leaders of the church communicating with the members (and publish revelations), and you don't expect it to be 'revealed'? You're ok with him just passing off his own personal, uninspired ideas like this?
Now that is what surprises
me.
by the way, the wentworth letter was also Joseph Smith's first publication of his first vision. Was that just his own personal, uninspired thoughts as well?
Who Knows will serve as a good example of what I had in mind when I commented that it always surprises me how many critics, even fairly sophisticated ones, seem to have expected infallibility from the Church and its leaders.
cinepro wrote:If the Wentworth Letter isn't a reliable record of what happened to Joseph and what he learned and from whom
I don't believe that it's unreliable.
But I believe that it needs to be read carefully, to see what it claims and to see what it claims on the basis of what.
cinepro wrote:then we are faced with something more worrisome than a fallible prophet: We are faced with the uncomfortable reality that our understanding of the foundational events of the Restoration is based on the recollections of an unreliable witness.
I don't see any big problems, but I've never believed that Joseph Smith was infallible.
That's never, ever, been an option for me. I've never given it a moment's serious thought, and that's been made easier by the fact that he never
claimed infallibility.
cinepro wrote:Does any LDS scholar want to take a stab at sorting out which details of the canonized and traditional origin stories of the Church are overembellished, misremembered, overly influenced by the culture of the times, or just made up?
That, I suppose, is one of the major areas of research in Mormon history. And has been, for many decades.
And, based upon my reading of Mormon historiography, my judgment is that overembellishment, misremembering, and cultural influence are relatively peripheral features of the history of Mormon doctrine, etc., and that flat out fictionalizing is virtually non-existent.
Rollo Tomasi wrote:Dwight Frye wrote:Weren't the Articles of Faith taken from the Wentworth Letter as well?
Yup. A great deal of that letter went on to become scripture, but the parts the apologists don't like are treated as the rantings of a mad man.
By whom, exactly?
I'm unaware of
anybody -- apart, of course, from the ever useful Mr. Strawman -- who behaves the way you describe.