DiscussMormonism.com

On another thread, why me said:

why me wrote:
And yet, with so many people behind such a fraud, it would seem likely that someone would spill the beans. But....no one ever did and that is a great mystery if it is all a fraud.

What I want to know is: why would they "spill the beans"? They honestly thought what they were witnessing was real. That doesn't make it real, though; that just means they thought they saw something real.

Why would they renig later, if they never knew it was all smoke and mirrors?




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I think it comes down to this.

Harmony, you and I are both married to good men.....both of them pretty strong TBM's, correct?

I can only speak for my husband here, since I don't know your husband...but from what you have told me, I'm going to guess that most of what the rest of what I'm going to state is pretty true for your husband as well. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

My husband is very well-educated...has taught Gospel Doctrine, and held other callings for years. His family is also massively involved in the Church.

He is intelligent, and has studied all elements of the gospel. Are there some things which hold disconnects with him, such as polygamy, progression between kingdoms, exactly how final judgment works, MMM, blacks, women, and the priesthood......YES.

BUT---He simply believes that these issues that don't seem right were somehow not communicated properly, and will be explained in the next life. He believes that as long as we are faithful and keep the commandments to the best of our ability that everything else will fall into place in the next life, and that we shouldn't worry about it.

Entertaining the idea that the Church... i.e. his entire culture and way of life.....is a fraud is unthinkable. There has been too many years of investment.

Dealing with the disconnects, and just not giving them too much thought is much easier.

To be honest...I think that most of the Church leaders feel this way as well. I really don't think there is some "grand conspiracy theory" going on.

Any of this sound familiar in your neck of the woods, Harm?

My husband would likely mirror yours, except mine has never studied church history in any depth at all. His church history knowledge comes straight from Seminary. I think he took a Book of Mormon class during his year at BYU, but I don't think he's ever picked up a book about church history, preferring to assume that whatever was told to him as a child was correct.

The witnesses I thought why me was referring to as never having reniged on their witnessing were the original witnesses. And I'm wondering why they would renig, ever, if they genuinely thought what they were seeing and hearing was real. Just because they thought it was real doesn't make it real though. But I can see why they'd remain true to what they thought they saw though.

The burden of proof resides with whoever is positing the golden plates, not with the witnesses who may not have seen what they thought they saw. And since we have no golden plates, and we have no verification from uninterested parties that they ever existed... what we have is people who thought they saw something... and maybe they did see something. That doesn't make the something they saw what they said it was.

Casual dismissals of the testimony of the witnesses, in my experience, invariably come from merely casual acquaintance with the full range of the facts surrounding them.

Daniel Peterson wrote:Casual dismissals of the testimony of the witnesses, in my experience, invariably come from merely casual acquaintance with the full range of the facts surrounding them.

Or perhaps the dismissals of the witnesses comes after the full range of facts. Or maybe it's because witnesses are unreliable (see Joseph Smith and his trouble remembering the FV).

Gadianton Plumber wrote:Or perhaps the dismissals of the witnesses comes after the full range of facts.

Maybe. But, thus far, in decades of interactions with people on this topic, I've never encountered such a case.

Gadianton Plumber wrote:Or maybe it's because witnesses are unreliable (see Joseph Smith and his trouble remembering the FV).

I'm unaware of that trouble. Perhaps I haven't read enough books, journals, and articles on the topic.

I'm also unimpressed by airy (but extraordinarily selective and agenda-driven) a priori dismissals of witness testimony. I strongly suspect that, were you to clearly see somebody you recognized burgling your house or stealing your hubcaps and car radio, it wouldn't sit well with you if the police declared your eyewitness account irrelevant on the grounds that such accounts are notoriously unreliable.

harmony wrote:On another thread, why me said:

why me wrote:
And yet, with so many people behind such a fraud, it would seem likely that someone would spill the beans. But....no one ever did and that is a great mystery if it is all a fraud.

What I want to know is: why would they "spill the beans"? They honestly thought what they were witnessing was real. That doesn't make it real, though; that just means they thought they saw something real.

Why would they renig later, if they never knew it was all smoke and mirrors?

What smoke and mirrors? Here we have 11 witnesses that signed a statement as to what they saw. That is quite ironclad to be sure. And one of those witnesses was the father of Joseph Smith. He doesn't seem like a smoke and mirror kind of guy. And then we have Martin who was just a little skeptical in the beginning. Hard to smoke and mirror him too.

These witnesses believed what they saw and that is quite a feat for a fraudster to accomplish. And then of course, we have Emma who was hiding the plates with Joseph Smith. And felt the plates under the linen. Plus, she testified that Joseph Smith did not have a manuscript during the translation. Was she in on the fraud.

The witnesses are the strongest reason for the truth claims of the LDS church.

Gadianton Plumber wrote:Or perhaps the dismissals of the witnesses comes after the full range of facts. Or maybe it's because witnesses are unreliable (see Joseph Smith and his trouble remembering the FV).

Well, I don't think that these witnesses are that unreliable. They saw what they saw and signed a statement. Plus, we have Oliver also claiming a visitation when the priesthood was restored. Human nature would dictate that at least one of these witnesses would have come clean through a newspaper interview. He would be famous for sure and the Mormon church just may have tumbled down.

Now I must say that if these witnesses lied, they are much more guilty of fraud than Joseph Smith. They allowed people to believe a fraud when they knew better. And that would be dispictable.

Daniel Peterson wrote:Casual dismissals of the testimony of the witnesses, in my experience, invariably come from merely casual acquaintance with the full range of the facts surrounding them.

It is quite something that 11 witnesses plus Emma, and if sidney wrote the book, that would make 13 people in on the fraud. And then we may also include Lucy Mack since as wife to JSsr she would have known of the fraud unless of course, her husband would keep his mouth shut and not tell her the truth.

This is a wonderful article about the witnesses:

http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=21