Sandra Tanner, John Dehlin, grindael Podcast

[_Kishkumen]

The same goes for the authority claims. "You say god told you to tell me? How can you be sure enough of your ability to channel god so much as to oblige me to heed your word as god's?" I understand how this happens, but I do not see a way to respect god but still accept someone as god's mouthpiece. I cannot believe anyone could properly make such a claim.

Now and again I reflect on how silly it would be to trust someone else's perception of God as a guide for one's own life. Seriously, I was just thinking about this yesterday. It tells you how adrift and desperate we all are to place our trust in some person who claims to know God's will. It is not an approach to life that I have use for any longer.

[Guest]

That's just it, Kish, the COUNTER ARGUMENTS "run into walls", which are speculation. But this is a neat way to avoid the actual evidence, (the book itself) which tells us that it is a 19th century production. Joseph purposefully avoided speaking of how he "translated" the Book of Mormon, for obvious reasons.

Indeed!

But I will never cease to be amazed by the apologists' ploy of placing the burden for disproving Mormonism's fantastic claims on others when they have not effectively demonstrated their truth in the first place.

Anyone can make extravagant claims, and it is the burden of the person making the claims to prove those claims are true. I have no responsibility to prove empty claims false.

It is such a basic point. And I think it is wildly irresponsible of the LDS community to inculcate a habit of accepting unverified wild claims. But then, unless they do that, there is no Mormonism. Mormonism with any substantive attempt to verify Mormon claims ceases to be Mormonism as soon as that responsibility is accepted and then the inevitable failure to verify follows.

[_Meadowchik]

Meadowchick,

I've done some comparisons here. https://mormonitemusings.com/tag/first-vision/#Think2

But I'm not sure there is a comprehensive timeline that has been done. I'll be doing one when I get back to work on my paper on the claimed First Vision. It is no easy task to congeal all of the apologist arguments and rebut them. But I feel it is necessary.

There is even a thing about the weather for the year 1820 and how it could have been on certain days... http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/LDS ... ision.html

There are so many things wrong with this, but these things get out there (like the Matthew Brown comparison - see the first link above) and Mormon Apologists quote it as a reference without giving any real information and when you buy the books, and finally see the evidence it's all made up BS. Time after time I run into this.

Thanks so much, again! I just finished the last segment today. I really enjoyed it.

(And I kinds wanna crowdsource fund a trip to Hawaii for Sandra Tanner. She spoke to my husband and I when we stopped by ULM last summer. )

[_Meadowchik]

Now and again I reflect on how silly it would be to trust someone else's perception of God as a guide for one's own life. Seriously, I was just thinking about this yesterday. It tells you how adrift and desperate we all are to place our trust in some person who claims to know God's will. It is not an approach to life that I have use for any longer.

I think it is the tribalism in us. It kept us alive for a long time but perhaps it isn't forever necessary.

[_Meadowchik]

That's just it, Kish, the COUNTER ARGUMENTS "run into walls", which are speculation. But this is a neat way to avoid the actual evidence, (the book itself) which tells us that it is a 19th century production. Joseph purposefully avoided speaking of how he "translated" the Book of Mormon, for obvious reasons.

Indeed!

But I will never cease to be amazed by the apologists' ploy of placing the burden for disproving Mormonism's fantastic claims on others when they have not effectively demonstrated their truth in the first place.

Anyone can make extravagant claims, and it is the burden of the person making the claims to prove those claims are true. I have no responsibility to prove empty claims false.

It is such a basic point. And I think it is wildly irresponsible of the LDS community to inculcate a habit of accepting unverified wild claims. But then, unless they do that, there is no Mormonism. Mormonism with any substantive attempt to verify Mormon claims ceases to be Mormonism as soon as that responsibility is accepted and then the inevitable failure to verify follows.

I see it as an ethical burden that is overlooked by apologists and the church in general. They are humans perpetuating cradle-to-grave impositions on other humans, based on what? Especially when this includes such tightly controlling indoctrination, the assertion that participation is voluntary is invalid in my opinion.

[_grindael]

And that goes to my point that Mormon Apologists will go on and on about the different versions of the FV, and attribute it to the secular argument that Joseph was human and just couldn't remember everything. But then, they have all these wild claims of angels and God appearing and that the Holy Ghost is there to specifically HELP YOU REMEMBER THINGS, and yet, they are totally silent on that. The selective application of these wild supernatural claims is disingenuous and hypocritical.

[_Kishkumen]

I see it as an ethical burden that is overlooked by apologists and the church in general. They are humans perpetuating cradle-to-grave impositions on other humans, based on what? Especially when this includes such tightly controlling indoctrination, the assertion that participation is voluntary is invalid in my opinion.

It is one thing to say "I believe" and then follow. It is another to say, "I think you should believe," and then recruit others on the basis of something that you cannot truly verify. If someone wants to believe the tradition that some of Jesus' followers saw him after his death and concluded that he had risen from the dead, well, that's one thing. But you can't say "I know about this ancient civilization that used to be here from an ancient book recovered from a box in the ground and translated by this guy I know," and then fail to verify this.

There never was any credible verification of the Book of Mormon, and that is because the Book of Mormon is not ancient, and there were no gold plates. There were no Nephites and Lamanites. There were no Jaredites. Believing Jesus rose from the dead is a little different from believing in a non-existent ancient civilization. The former is based on what was probably the honest experience of disciples of Jesus who knew him in life. The latter is based on something that is overwhelmingly likely, at some level, to be a lie or a pious fraud. I see no reason to accept the existence of plates. I do not see that the testimony of the witnesses has any value in verifying the existence of an ancient artifact on which Reformed Egyptian was inscribed with a Nephite record.

It was not anyone's job to verify this stuff but Joseph Smith's, and he failed to do so. What he did was round up family and friends to sign statements that were written for them. These family and friends had no expertise for evaluating Joseph's claims regarding the plates. I don't care if they claimed to see/touch the plates, claimed to see an angel, or what have you. Without the requisite expertise to evaluate ancient artifacts, their witness was absolutely worthless. Did any of them have sufficient expertise in archaeology, ancient history, or ancient languages to verify the authenticity of the plates or the accuracy of Joseph's translation? No.

For all we know they saw something Joseph made or paid to have made, and they saw someone dressed up like an angel. How are we to know, based on what has been passed down to us, that this theory is any less valid than Joseph's remarkable claim? The chances of my theory being correct are much higher than the chances of his phony baloney claim about ancient plates, Reformed Egyptian, angels, and ancient Hebrews in America.

Without any means of verifying Joseph Smith's claims, no scholar of Antiquity has any obligation to waste any time on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It is entirely a topic for students of modern Christianity and American history. It is tiresome to read the same hollow, idiotic verbiage about the failure of critics to invalidate made up nonsense. I might as well spend my efforts tracking down Alex Jones's bozo word diarrhea.

Which of us will waste our time investigating Pizzagate?

Heaven help us.

[_grindael]

Now, I ask all the learned men who hear me, why the learned doctors who are preaching salvation say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. They account it blasphemy to contradict the idea. If you tell them that God made the world out of something, they will call you a fool. The reason is that they are unlearned but I am learned and know more than all the world put together—the Holy Ghost does, anyhow. If the Holy Ghost in me comprehends more than all the world, I will associate myself with it.

[_grindael]

Where was the Holy Ghost when Joseph was trying to remember what age he was when HE SAW GOD???!!!

[_Kishkumen]

And that goes to my point that Mormon Apologists will go on and on about the different versions of the FV, and attribute it to the secular argument that Joseph was human and just couldn't remember everything. But then, they have all these wild claims of angels and God appearing and that the Holy Ghost is there to specifically HELP YOU REMEMBER THINGS, and yet, they are totally silent on that. The selective application of these wild supernatural claims is disingenuous and hypocritical.

The first vision is totally worthless. Who gives a crap? Oh, so some guy says he saw God and God told him X. I really don't care. I would rather suffer and die than place myself at the mercy of some wingnut who thinks I should follow him because he believes he talks to God. To hell with such charlatans. The first vision is a total non-starter. It boggles my mind that Mormonism has staked its veracity on Joseph Smith's ever evolving narrative of his personal experience as a teenage boy. The whole thing is risible in the extreme.