Re: Billy Shears owns the apologists on Joseph Smith
Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:06 pm
I don't follow Mormon history threads terribly closely but from what i've seen it's really hard to figure out what any apologist actually believes about Joseph Smith in the first place. So how they justify would depend on what they really believe, not just what they deflect with in an apologetic. Take the witnesses thread at SeN. A new poster there brought up Dan Vogel and Kiwi57 responded to the key word with utter contempt; it's a bunch of anti-Mormon lies etc. Surprisingly, the primary staff writer contradicted Kiwi and explained that Vogel's perspective was taken into account. Kiwi then scrambled to up-vote that comment. Kiwi must have realised what a bunch of loud-mouthed hacks the interpreter would come across as if the project leader absolutely dismissed every and any criticism of smith as a load of lies and rubbish on its face. So in this case, the senior staff writer actually rose to the occasion.
If I had to put money on it, my guess would be for all of them, the way they justify the bad things is the way most people justify the bad deeds of powerful people they admire. You can justify the badness in proportionality to the importance of what the person has accomplished. For instance, the CEO of a publicly traded company might furnish his office with 50k of company money, but justify it by the important deal in the works that only he would have been able to swing. Given Joseph Smith delivered all the information we need to get saved ourselves, we should cut him some slack. Now it's easy to say that since I made it unfalsifiable, as I said above it's really difficult to determine what is actually believed.
One interesting avenue i haven't seen but somebody has to have thought of it, is blood atonement. Yes, Joseph Smith really screwed up, and he payed the price for it at Carthage according to the principle of blood atonement that BY taught.
If I had to put money on it, my guess would be for all of them, the way they justify the bad things is the way most people justify the bad deeds of powerful people they admire. You can justify the badness in proportionality to the importance of what the person has accomplished. For instance, the CEO of a publicly traded company might furnish his office with 50k of company money, but justify it by the important deal in the works that only he would have been able to swing. Given Joseph Smith delivered all the information we need to get saved ourselves, we should cut him some slack. Now it's easy to say that since I made it unfalsifiable, as I said above it's really difficult to determine what is actually believed.
One interesting avenue i haven't seen but somebody has to have thought of it, is blood atonement. Yes, Joseph Smith really screwed up, and he payed the price for it at Carthage according to the principle of blood atonement that BY taught.