Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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dan vogel
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

Post by dan vogel »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:25 pm
Shulem wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 3:46 pm
And the crucial answer is that Joseph Smith stole everything and anything he ever got! That's how he operated. He was a liar and a thief. He borrowed ideas from all manner of sources and historical stories and references. But the bottom line, he was a thief. And he would turn on a dime when things didn't go right and learned to reverse his position when it suited him to do so.

Yep, Dirty-Joe stole the Masons and put them in his Book of Mormon. You can be sure of that. He did the same damn thing with Delmarva. It's all in there. Yep. All you have to do is recognize it for what it is. Or not. Ur choice.

:P
The choice to be reductive or not is probably a personality-driven preference.
There's nothing reductive about following the evidence. Nuance is not a substitute for evidence.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

Post by Kishkumen »

dan vogel wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:17 pm
There's nothing reductive about following the evidence. Nuance is not a substitute for evidence.
I am responding to Shulem and his two-dimensional caricatures of Mormonism.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

Post by dan vogel »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 9:48 pm
Masonry provided the basic ritual lexicon for numerous initiation rites in dozens of esoteric communities. Only a polemicist would call this “stealing” from the Masons.
I don't follow the logic of that. Since others stole from the Masons, Joseph Smith didn't steal from them? Is it the word "steal" that bothers you? Perhaps Shulem should use "appropriated"?
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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dan vogel wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:22 pm
I don't follow the logic of that. Since others stole from the Masons, Joseph Smith didn't steal from them? Is it the word "steal" that bothers you? Perhaps Shulem should use "appropriated"?
I don’t see what is so complicated about it. Nobody says that Vergil “stole” from Homer. It really oversimplifies what is going on when artists adapt elements from earlier works of art.

Moreover, Shulem’s purpose is obviously polemical, not about understanding or illuminating. Polemics drive his work.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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Kishkumen,

I was preoccupied by other matters that kept me from getting back to your long response on 1 Dec.

I think it all comes down to the question of does the Book of Mormon talk about a double strand of pure and spurious Masonry like Oliver and other Masonic writers invented? Or does it describe one line (though sometimes broken and restored) coming from Cain, which was responsible for the destruction of both the Jaredite and Nephite nations and was just then threatening to destroy Jacksonian America? I think the answer is obvious because the Book of Mormon associates the secret signs, words, and oaths with the feared organization. How could Joseph Smith secretly be pro-Mason? He wasn’t really pro-Mason in Nauvoo either. In the Book of Mormon, there is only one line from Cain because that’s how some anti-Masons viewed it.
I am not trying to get you to assume that Smith read Oliver in order to disprove it. Rather, it seems to me that there is evidence enough to suppose that Joseph Smith's familiarity with Freemasonry was sufficient by the time he wrote the Book of Mormon that he was able to engage with Masonic themes in both a positive and negative way. Oliver is representative of a branch or stream of Freemasonic thought that is congenial to Smith's point of view, one in which the legends are read through a more Christian theological lens than they would be among, say, Masonic Deists.
What do you mean “congenial to Smith's point of view”? This is the circular part of your argument. How do you know Joseph Smith’s point of view in 1829 except from the Book of Mormon? And the Book of Mormon is anti-Masonic according to all accounts. Masonry was the secret combination in the last days murdering the prophets and seeking to overthrow the freedom of all lands.
It would really help me if you could provide some explanation beyond highlighting things of why you think a certain passage is illuminating. I thought you were quoting Town to show that Masons in the early 19th century did not think the Masonry really existed before Solomon and Abiff. That was baffling to me because Oliver says so much that would lead one to the opposite conclusion.
I’m saying that if you read these guys carefully, they weren’t saying Freemasonry as formed at Solomon’s temple went back to Adam. They were using a highly specialized definition of Masonry and then couching their wild speculations in exaggerated language, which others scoffed at in their scathing reviews of Oliver. Oliver wasn’t relating Masonic lore, he and others were inventing it.
I am interested in knowing why Smith makes Cain responsible for secret combinations while Oliver calls him an apostate from Masonry. Is that just a serendipitous coincidence, or was one author influenced by the other, or were both authors influenced by the beliefs of other Masons and/or anti-Masons? That seems to me to be a reasonable question.
The Book of Mormon knows only anti-Masonic rhetoric. Most anti-Masons regarded Masonry a modern invention, but some as a matter of rhetoric assigned origin to Satan and Cain. Peter Sanborn, explaining Masonry’s “real origin,” argued that
“the truth may be, that the first grand arch mason, was Satan; the first secret lodge, in Eden, between him and Eve. ... Cain, like Nimrod, rebelled against the priesthood and government of Adam; he, with Tubal Cain, no doubt, were masons.”

P[eter]. Sanborn, Minutes of an Address Delivered Before the Anti-Masonic Convention of Reading, Mass., January 15, 1829 (Boston: Free Press, 1829), 16.
Of course, you are leaving a fair amount of the material out, as well as some important historical context. Some of his greatest opponents were actually Deist Masons. I read this as him making a case to his fellow Christians that the Craft is inherently Christian and that for this reason they should make common cause against those who want to turn Masonry into something that would be given over to "licentiousness and excess."

This does not mean that he was the first or only person to see Freemasonry through a Christian lens. He was, however, very zealous on insisting on his very Christianized version of Freemasonry, and in that way he is prescient of developments later in Mormonism, perhaps the most successful example of a Christian and Masonic synthesis.
The point of my quote was to show that Masonry was under attack in England and that Oliver was motivated to change Masonry’s image. One way was to link it with the patriarchs instead of with the heathen mystery cults; hence, his pure and spurious lines.
OK, but that does not mean that he was the first person to backdate things Masonic to antediluvian times. The whole point of the Enoch legend, it would seem to me, is to show how the spirit and symbolism of Freemasonry is to be found in an age that far predates Solomon. I am not sure that the legend of Enoch and the Temple Mount is merely a reaction to anti-Masonic criticism.
I don’t think anyone was looking at the Royal Arch degrees as evidence of antiquity. Nor was it a response to criticism. The quote was about those who associated Masonry with the heathen mystery cults. Oliver’s response was that the cults had degenerated from Masonry, not the reverse.
We know that secret combinations are trying to overthrow freedoms in the Book of Mormon. Moreover, I would note that these are secret combinations plural, and that it is their oaths (plural), etc., that mark them, not their identification with a particular organizational name. At the root of this problem is the decision to say secret combinations of the Book of Mormon=Freemasonry. I don't assume that this is the case. The text nowhere says "Freemasonry." We can say that whatever Smith calls secret combinations appear to be commentary on Masonry as seen through the lens of the anti-Masonic movement of his times. Sure. But we cannot look at the text and simply say "secret combinations" are Masonry.
The plural is not a problem since Masonry wasn’t singular at the time either.
But anti-Masonry is itself a complicated phenomenon. Not every person who opposed Freemasonry as it was organized thought that Masonic phenomena in toto were irredeemable. You use a piece of evidence in which Joseph Smith in the early 1830s, I think it was, warned someone about the Freemasons, as evidence that Joseph Smith was anti-Masonic. That is a kind of leap I would not be willing to make. In a particular set of circumstances he warns an addressee to watch out for the Freemasons. OK. So? I could warn my kids to watch out for the police. That does not mean I decry the entire institution of law enforcement.
It was an 1831 letter to Hyrum back in New York to “beware of the freemasons” who were trying to arrest him for a debt. This showed an anti-Masonic bias, but I used it as a response to Dan Peterson’s argument that the secret combinations were persecutors of the Mormons, not Masons.

The rest of your response pertains to your attempt to draw an analogy between anti-Masonry and slipper treasures in the Book of Mormon. Argument-by-analogy is not considered a good way of arguing. It’s not really relevant here.

I pointed out that the Book of Mormon isn’t anti-treasure digging as you seemed to assume, which challenged your attempt to make an argument from analogy. Your attempt to resist my observation and salvage your original argument, which wasn’t good to begin with, is not worth pursuing any further.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:21 pm
I am responding to Shulem and his two-dimensional caricatures of Mormonism.

Look, you know me. I tend to express things in a very black and white manner and simplify things in easy terms -- it's yes or no. I try to avoid the maybes because its hard to come to conclusions about anything when you have a handful of maybes.

Joseph Smith stole other men's wives. He stole them! How would you like it if he stole your wife? Would you lend your wife for him to use? He stole the thoughts and forms of Masonic rituals -- even very phrases and gestures of that secret fraternity. Smith stole those things. And today the modern LDS church continues to use and mutate stolen goods from Masonry and makes no apologies for it. Look, Joseph Smith did not see our day nor did he see 50 years into the future. He saw his day and his day only and figured Jesus's second coming was imminent and that all things would be sifted into a new world order and information would flow according to the mandates of that order.

But here we are, some 200 years later in the Internet Age. Look at all the things we are able to study and find out. It's amazing. This was not part of Joseph Smith's game plan for Mormonism.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:33 pm
Moreover, Shulem’s purpose is obviously polemical, not about understanding or illuminating. Polemics drive his work.

Sure, my work is polemical and for the purpose of understanding and illuminating matters which I digest. Take for example Anubis's missing nose in the printing plate of Facsimile No. 3. I approach it in a polemical way and then digest it to explain why he did it. THAT provides understanding and illumination in a manner never seen before.

So, there ya have it. Thanks to Shulem. :P
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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dan vogel wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:05 pm
I think it all comes down to the question of does the Book of Mormon talk about a double strand of pure and spurious Masonry like Oliver and other Masonic writers invented? Or does it describe one line (though sometimes broken and restored) coming from Cain, which was responsible for the destruction of both the Jaredite and Nephite nations and was just then threatening to destroy Jacksonian America? I think the answer is obvious because the Book of Mormon associates the secret signs, words, and oaths with the feared organization. How could Joseph Smith secretly be pro-Mason? He wasn’t really pro-Mason in Nauvoo either. In the Book of Mormon, there is only one line from Cain because that’s how some anti-Masons viewed it.
Yes. How one frames a question is absolutely crucial. If you limit your interpretation of the Book of Mormon only to what seems most explicit in the book itself, then it is difficult to see how Smith could have had a positive view of Masonry, or of treasure digging, for that matter. How could Joseph Smith be secretly pro-Mason? This is the kind of binary that looks incredibly attractive from one perspective, but which also leeches all of the complexity out of the issue of Masonry in upstate New York in the early 19th century. I could grant, for the sake of argument, that the Book of Mormon is an uncomplicated anti-Masonic document, and that would still not convince me that Joseph Smith himself was simply a thorough-going anti-Mason.

Here's the thing: I don't really grant either. Joseph Smith's engagement with magic, treasure-digging, and Freemasonry, in my view, were more complicated than simply pro or anti. He could use anti-Masonic rhetoric for particular reasons, but that may not mean that he was totally against all Masonry in all its forms.
What do you mean “congenial to Smith's point of view”? This is the circular part of your argument. How do you know Joseph Smith’s point of view in 1829 except from the Book of Mormon? And the Book of Mormon is anti-Masonic according to all accounts. Masonry was the secret combination in the last days murdering the prophets and seeking to overthrow the freedom of all lands.
Why would you say that the only things we know of Joseph Smith's views in 1829 are contained in the Book of Mormon alone?
I’m saying that if you read these guys carefully, they weren’t saying Freemasonry as formed at Solomon’s temple went back to Adam. They were using a highly specialized definition of Masonry and then couching their wild speculations in exaggerated language, which others scoffed at in their scathing reviews of Oliver. Oliver wasn’t relating Masonic lore, he and others were inventing it.
Again, I think that is too cut and dried. Masonry is very complex. And the question is not "what exactly was Oliver's argument", but rather, "what could creative minds make of the arguments of Oliver and others like him, as well as Masonic lore that did, as a matter of fact, concern matters far predating Solomon." I mean, really, what are you saying Masonic lore is? Only what certain authors claim it to be? What is lore except a bunch of stories that people claim to have inherited from a bygone era? By definition any story that is set in a certain kind of past that is plausible to the reader could be called "lore."

Masonry is an incredibly creative subculture, and it did spin off a lot of odd fraternal societies and esoteric organizations with their own take on things. I would place Mormonism in the bucket of organizations that would not exist were it not for Masonry, and I think that is true from the very beginning. You can even think of that in a negative way if you like, i.e. the Book of Mormon is, simply put, "anti-Masonic," but there is no Mormonism without it.
The Book of Mormon knows only anti-Masonic rhetoric. Most anti-Masons regarded Masonry a modern invention, but some as a matter of rhetoric assigned origin to Satan and Cain. Peter Sanborn, explaining Masonry’s “real origin,” argued that
“the truth may be, that the first grand arch mason, was Satan; the first secret lodge, in Eden, between him and Eve. ... Cain, like Nimrod, rebelled against the priesthood and government of Adam; he, with Tubal Cain, no doubt, were masons.”

P[eter]. Sanborn, Minutes of an Address Delivered Before the Anti-Masonic Convention of Reading, Mass., January 15, 1829 (Boston: Free Press, 1829), 16.
So we can say that Joseph Smith was keying into anti-Masonic views of 1829 that dated Masonry to the Garden of Eden, but we can't imagine Joseph Smith possibly seeing an apostate Masonry coming from Cain based on the views of an author in 1823.

Okee.... :?
The point of my quote was to show that Masonry was under attack in England and that Oliver was motivated to change Masonry’s image. One way was to link it with the patriarchs instead of with the heathen mystery cults; hence, his pure and spurious lines.
OK. Thanks. Got it. So, it is possible for Masons to imagine Masonry originating before Solomon and carry it back instead to the patriarchs. Oliver is evidence of that, but, then, so too is the Enoch legend of Royal Arch Masonry. Since that possibility is not dependent on the views of one author, and it seems that Masons, former Masons, and anti-Masons were happy to carry Masonry and apostate Masonry all the way back to the earliest times, I think it is fair to say that Joseph Smith was probably capable of doing the same.
I don’t think anyone was looking at the Royal Arch degrees as evidence of antiquity. Nor was it a response to criticism. The quote was about those who associated Masonry with the heathen mystery cults. Oliver’s response was that the cults had degenerated from Masonry, not the reverse.
LOL. OK. You don't think so. Just think, though, Joseph Smith is a mythographer! Why is his creativity limited, in your mind, to what other people were doing with the material? I mean, I don't see him as simply taking from others. I see him creatively working with phenomena in his environment. This is the kind of thinking that really baffles me. I see it in apologists and in some critics. It is this way of narrowly reading the evidence and missing the forest for the trees. Joseph Smith wrote myths. He did not just copy down myths from others, and he actually, even on the occasions that he cribbed things from the Bible, reworked them. I am sorry, but you lose me at a very fundamental level in the way you read.
The plural is not a problem since Masonry wasn’t singular at the time either.
Good! That is exactly the kind of complexity you should remember at all times.
It was an 1831 letter to Hyrum back in New York to “beware of the freemasons” who were trying to arrest him for a debt. This showed an anti-Masonic bias, but I used it as a response to Dan Peterson’s argument that the secret combinations were persecutors of the Mormons, not Masons.
OK. So certain Freemasons were trying to arrest Hyrum for debt. I guess that shows that he did not trust the Masons around him at the time. I don't draw the same conclusions as you from that.
The rest of your response pertains to your attempt to draw an analogy between anti-Masonry and slipper treasures in the Book of Mormon. Argument-by-analogy is not considered a good way of arguing. It’s not really relevant here.

I pointed out that the Book of Mormon isn’t anti-treasure digging as you seemed to assume, which challenged your attempt to make an argument from analogy. Your attempt to resist my observation and salvage your original argument, which wasn’t good to begin with, is not worth pursuing any further.
OK. Well, I don't think there is any need to pursue your narrow reading of Joseph Smith's views and abilities any further. So there is that.
I pointed out that the Book of Mormon isn’t anti-treasure digging as you seemed to assume . . .
If you read more carefully, you will see that I did not assume that at all, even if it seems that way to you.
Last edited by Kishkumen on Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

Post by Kishkumen »

Shulem wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:54 pm
Look, you know me. I tend to express things in a very black and white manner and simplify things in easy terms -- it's yes or no. I try to avoid the maybes because its hard to come to conclusions about anything when you have a handful of maybes.

Joseph Smith stole other men's wives. He stole them! How would you like it if he stole your wife? Would you lend your wife for him to use? He stole the thoughts and forms of Masonic rituals -- even very phrases and gestures of that secret fraternity. Smith stole those things. And today the modern LDS church continues to use and mutate stolen goods from Masonry and makes no apologies for it. Look, Joseph Smith did not see our day nor did he see 50 years into the future. He saw his day and his day only and figured Jesus's second coming was imminent and that all things would be sifted into a new world order and information would flow according to the mandates of that order.

But here we are, some 200 years later in the Internet Age. Look at all the things we are able to study and find out. It's amazing. This was not part of Joseph Smith's game plan for Mormonism.
There is a difference between understanding something and approving or disapproving of it. People who get hung up on approval or disapproval often stop seeking to understand when they reach their goal of affirming their approval or disapproval. That's because understanding it was never the end goal. Strengthening and persuading others of the approval or disapproval was always the point for them. So, I see you, like other polemicists, definitely doing good things to the extent that you are motivated to look at the evidence in a new way and draw different conclusions. On the road to disapproval, you definitely discover interesting things, and I like that. On the other hand, you reach a certain point where you are satisfied you have proved what you came to show--that Joseph Smith is a con man--and then you stop there. You will pick up another topic to drive it to the same goal, and you will stop there.

I am not saying I would prefer you did not do the work. I am just pointing out that your conclusions are less valuable to me than the stuff you brought to light along the way.
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Re: Vogel's new video response on Book of Mormon and Masonry

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Shulem wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:06 pm
Sure, my work is polemical and for the purpose of understanding and illuminating matters which I digest. Take for example Anubis's missing nose in the printing plate of Facsimile No. 3. I approach it in a polemical way and then digest it to explain why he did it. THAT provides understanding and illumination in a manner never seen before.

So, there ya have it. Thanks to Shulem. :P
I agree.
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