Could an atheist have written the Book of Mormon?

[_Uncle Dale]

A simple enough question. -- By "atheist" I do not mean a person who is
entirely devoid of superstitions, or of notions of guilt, conscience, truth, etc.
I merely mean a writer who did not believe in the biblical God, and therefore
feared no Divine retribution in composing a fake latter day revelation.

1. Could an atheist know enough about the biblical religion to mimic it?
2. Would an atheist care enough about that religion to spend time mimicking it?

Uncle Dale

[_The Dude]

Sure. Why not? Mark Hofmann did things like that, and he was secretly an atheist. Someone like him could have invented a Book of Mormon. He invented plenty of other stuff and he was devilishly skilled.

I wouldn't say Joseph Smith was an atheist, however. He believed in God, I think, even if he didn't believe much in the Bible except when he thought it meshed with his own conceptions.

[_Uncle Dale]

Sure. Why not? Mark Hofmann did things like that, and he was secretly an atheist. Someone like him could have invented a Book of Mormon. He invented plenty of other stuff and he was devilishly skilled.

I wouldn't say Joseph Smith was an atheist, however. He believed in God, I think, even if he didn't believe much in the Bible except when he thought it meshed with his own conceptions.

Presumably there was a time that Hoffman believed the religion he was in. If not,
then I cannot fathom his reason for having studied it so closely. Unless perhaps
it was because his family and associates had forced him to do so, in his youth.

At any rate, the seeming dilemma that was presented to me, by a TBM recently,
goes like this:

An atheist would never have learned all the
details of restorationist Christian religion in
the first place, and would have had no
motivation to promote it.

A believer, on the other hand, could have never
written latter day "scripture" unless he knew it
to be true -- because a believer would never
blaspheme by making up false sacred narratives.

At first glance, those explanations seem to rule out anything except a pious
(and true) origin for the Book of Mormon, D&C, etc.

On the other hand, there are piles of old non-canonical "scriptures," which are
so absurd, or contradictory (or both) that they cannot possibly all be "true."

Either believers compose "fake scriptures," or the non-believers are doing it,
and the seeming dilemma mentioned above would thus be a false dichotomy.

Still, it does seem a bit weird -- to think that an unbeliever (or atheist) would
have spent all the time and effort necessary to bring forth the Book of Mormon for -- what?

UD

[_huckelberry]

Book of Mormon from an atheist? I think it is a possiblity. Even if one figureed out who the author was,say Joseph Smith, there would be no way to be sure if he was an athiest or not. But your question is more general and does not demand knowing that information.

I have read a fair amount of Paul Tillich. He could be considered an atheist of a sort, at least if one limits theism to some specific concepts of God. That did not stop him from thinking deeply about what the ideas mean and how they are used. He is broadly knowledgeble about the history of Christian thought as well. Of course he was not the sort of atheist who thinks the concept of God is empty or just manipulation. For Tillich the word God represents something which is real. (though not a miracle worker or perhaps very personal)

If the author of the Book of Mormon was an atheist then it would be of the sort which sees some deeper truer meaning behind the God images. One might wonder if there is any clue in the fact the Jewish self described atheist, Harold Bloom admired Joseph Smith.(with the working assumption he was the author of the Book of Mormon and the rest of the material founding Mormonism) doesn't proove anything but then Bloom would be another example of a person deeply involved at times in understanding religious thought and stories but lacking a belief in God.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
If the author of the Book of Mormon was an atheist then it would be of the sort which
sees some deeper truer meaning behind the God images.
...

I'm trying to picture some atheist who would relentlessly pound into his
reader's head the notion that Jesus Christ was God --- and that a belief
in that statement was necessary for eternal happiness. What would be
that atheistic writer's motivation in promoting such theology?

1. Simple curiosity -- to see if he could actually start and sustain a delusion.

2. Revenge -- an intellectual need to "get back" at religionists for their acts.

3. Power -- a hope to gain status, fame, and maybe money from the delusion

4. Misguided zeal -- a hope to manipulate some good results from the hoax.


I'm also trying to frame this question in a modern day setting. I myself
have been accused of being an atheist -- so why might I want to write
and promulgate a second Koran?

1. I know a great deal about Arab history and wish to participate in it.

2. I wish to reform Islam into a more benign social movement.

3. I hope to gain power and wealth from my "new" Koran.

4. _________________________ (fill in the blank)


I'm still a bit mystified about this matter. Although I promote the S/R
theory of Book of Mormon origins, I do not think Sidney Rigdon was an atheist.
Solomon Spalding became an atheist (or at least a Deist) -- but had
no known reason for wanting people to accept Jesus as their God.

???

UD

[_huckelberry]

Dale, I can see the idea that the Book of Mormon is trying to teach Jesus as Christ. However it may be possible that that idea is enough of a cultural given that all the effort there is for another perhaps not unrelated purpose. There is enough cultural utopianism in the book to suggest some interest in that direction. The early Mormon leaders thought in terms of developing and new and utopian society. That idealist purpose has some possible connection with a less idealistic matter of extension of person power and influence.

[_Roger]

UD:

I'm trying to picture some atheist who would relentlessly pound into his reader's head the notion that Jesus Christ was God --- and that a belief in that statement was necessary for eternal happiness. What would be that atheistic writer's motivation in promoting such theology?

I think the term "atheist" has a different connotation today than in the early 1800's. Very few people then fell into the category of what we think of as an "atheist" today--rejecting the idea of God as one might reject the idea of the tooth fairy, or even someone who views religion as evil. I doubt that Spalding was inwardly hostile to religion but rather very probably acknowledged its virtues whether or not he accepted the existence of the Biblical God at the end of his life.

So even if Spalding had deistic leanings toward the end of his life, I would imagine he was still much closer to what we think of as a theist rather than what we think of as an atheist.

Of course the answer is relatively simple if Spalding supplied the majority of the civil content & battle descriptions while Rigdon supplied the theology. This seems to be what the witnesses claim happened.

1. Simple curiosity -- to see if he could actually start and sustain a delusion.

2. Revenge -- an intellectual need to "get back" at religionists for their acts.

3. Power -- a hope to gain status, fame, and maybe money from the delusion

4. Misguided zeal -- a hope to manipulate some good results from the hoax.

If Spalding supplied the Christian content (or even some of it), again, I suggest he was not hostile to Christianity. Ambivalent, perhaps, but I doubt if he was hostile to it. If that is true, then he very likely understood the religious climate he was attempting to market to and played to it. I doubt that Spalding supplied the overtly Christian material, however.

If Smith produced the Book of Mormon then one has to wonder what his state of mind really was. Do we go with Peter Ingersol's perspective that Smith was just seeing how gullible the damned fools were (in which case he seems not to believe any of it) or was it more like the perspective of David Whitmer where Smith was something of a pious, fallen prophet.

If one is to believe the claims J. C. Bennett makes in his History of the Saints about Smith's treatment of women, his desire for power, and his methods for protecting himself from exposure, one is then inclined to side with Peter Ingersol. But was Smith an atheist? I still doubt that.

I'm also trying to frame this question in a modern day setting. I myself
have been accused of being an atheist -- so why might I want to write and promulgate a second Koran?

1. I know a great deal about Arab history and wish to participate in it.

2. I wish to reform Islam into a more benign social movement.

3. I hope to gain power and wealth from my "new" Koran.

4. _________________________ (fill in the blank)

Aren't any of the above possible? It's pretty difficult to look back in history and jump inside someone's mind to understand their motivations, but it's not very difficult to look back and see the result.

I'm still a bit mystified about this matter. Although I promote the S/R theory of Book of Mormon origins, I do not think Sidney Rigdon was an atheist. Solomon Spalding became an atheist (or at least a Deist) -- but had no known reason for wanting people to accept Jesus as their God.

Works out nicely if Spalding supplies the secular context (but not entirely devoid of religion, virtues or morals) and maybe a little anti-Masonry, while Rigdon supplies the blatantly Christian doctrine, and Smith throws in a few self-fulfilling prophecies and dreams from his father.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
Works out nicely if Spalding supplies the secular context (but not entirely devoid
of religion, virtues or morals) and maybe a little anti-Masonry, while Rigdon supplies
the blatantly Christian doctrine, and Smith throws in a few self-fulfilling prophecies
and dreams from his father.

The problem for me, is that I'm just now really getting into the texts (as you already
know from the Mormon Heretic blog). After years of glancing at this stuff in a sort '
of superficial way, I'm actually trying to determine what sentences in the Book of Mormon
Spalding could have written -- and which ones he couldn't have written.

In trying to understand his use of language, I've put his "Roman story" and his
c.1812 draft letter together into a single web-page, and am comparing that text
with the Book of Mormon (mostly Mosiah, Ether and the second half of Alma).

What I'm coming up with is a bit puzzling -- I think that Spalding wrote a good
deal of the "religious" part of the Book of Mormon, and that Christian Nephites were his
invention, along with the two Almas, Abinadi, kings Benjamin, Mosiah & Noah,
etc. In other words, I think that Spalding composed the basic structure of
Mosiah-Alma-Helaman, and that he wrote much of Ether.

However, in looking at his three-page lettter (as well as other references) I've
determined that in later life he was a Deist of the Tom Paine school. Possibly
a very detached Unitarian, but certainly not a Trinitarian and certainly not a
believer in the Christian Gospel as we generally understand it today.

In looking at his Roman story, I see that Spalding was not afraid to engage in
thinly-disguised satire of Christians -- and, to some extent, of Christianity itself.
He was also not afraid to speak of fictional scriptures and to go so far as to
compose excerpts from fictional ancient American scriptures.

I have the uneasy feeling that the absurd depictions of Shiz, Ammon and
the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon are essentially religious satire,
not far removed from the more overt religious spoofs we see in Spalding's
Roman story.

But I do not think that Sidney Rigdon recognized the satire -- I think he took
it all in as deadly serious (even sacred) stuff.

So, where does Spalding the satirical Deist leave off, and Rigdon the fanatical
religionist begin? In some places, the Book of Mormon text appears to be something like
a 50%-50% mixture of their two voices. And I have the string suspicion, that
without Rigdon's input, that the Spalding original would have been a barely
disguised, sardonic "mock-epic" story, meant for Deists and Unitarians to
snicker at -- and for gullible Presbyterians to swallow as "real."

I can only hope that I am wrong about all of this.

UD

[_BartBurk]

Is there any chance Spalding could have been a universalist? I've always been intrigued by the idea that Joseph Smith was a closet universalist, but I don't see those ideas reflected in the Book of Mormon. I do think a closet universalist could have written something like the Book of Mormon if he felt it would improve the religion of the day.

Of course my bias may be that even as a Mormon convert to Catholicism I lean a bit towards universalism myself. At least I hope that everyone will eventually be saved.

[_Roger]

UD:

I think that Spalding wrote a good deal of the "religious" part of the Book of Mormon, and that Christian Nephites were his invention, along with the two Almas, Abinadi, kings Benjamin, Mosiah & Noah,

How far are you willing to credit the "religious" part to Spalding? At some point you come into conflict with the witnesses who claim there was no religious content in MF. My theory is that Spadling could have written within a general religious context without his neighbors considering it "religious material" as compared to the blatantly religious sections of the final Book of Mormon. Thus Spalding may have created the idea of Christianized Nephites but Rigdon developed the idea into what we have today.

Whoever revised the Isaiah sections was willing to rework the text around the preconceived notion that it was deficient in a certain area--that it had been poorly translated--and that he, probably Rigdon, was able to restore it to its original purity. So if Rigdon was revising the KJV based on a preconceived notion of restoring a faulty text to purity, why not do the same with a faulty or incomplete Spalding text? This would seem to agree with a 50-50 Spalding/Rigdon ratio since Rigdon would have likely been revising more than just italicized words in MF.

And I have the string suspicion, that without Rigdon's input, that the Spalding original would have been a barely disguised, sardonic "mock-epic" story, meant for Deists and Unitarians to snicker at -- and for gullible Presbyterians to swallow as "real."

I think that is probably correct. It would certainly explain witness comments who seem to describe Spalding's MF as humorous in places.

You mention an "uneasy feeling" and that you can only hope you are wrong about this... why? What is it that makes you uneasy?

All the best!