Peterson the historical skeptic

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MG 2.0
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:34 am

I’m not so sure that crafting a book of supposed ancient scripture is necessarily the hardest route one could take in making a living during that day, especially if doing so convinces a small population of individuals to believe that story, then consider the author as a prophet (because the book said so, right?), and then work on providing that prophet with some amount of protection and support.

You could say - if done correctly - that this could be a pretty sweet deal. Certainly easier than working the fields day in and day out, yes?
It is interesting that Joseph was this ‘outlier’ that accomplished this massive production we call the Book of Mormon. The foresight that he had at the age of seventeen to see the possibilities and be willing to put the WORK into this book so as to hoodwink others into joining his church. And to BELIEVE he was doing the work of God at the same time. 😉🧐

Amazing. No one else did what he did at such a young age and under so much duress and in so little time.

Talk about being goal driven. Again, at seventeen. Simply amazing.

I suppose we can agree on this fact. Joseph was an amazing young man to accomplish what he did. A religious genius.

Or he was called of God. Secularists/agnostics/atheists of course don’t want to go there. They are heavily invested in their own worldview.

Regards,
MG
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:14 am
MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:04 am
And for Joseph to leave Emma after a miscarriage to go check on Martin and the manuscript knowing that he was leaving a wife that was not completely well yet. Why would he do that unless he REALLY believed that he was truly accountable to God?

Not meaning to be disrespectful, but this argument can just as easily support the idea that he ‘REALLY believed’ that he was not accountable to God.
Go back and read the history…then flesh this out a bit more, would you? Contextualize your comments into the time and place/history of Joseph and his family…and all that was going on.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Regards,
MG
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by canpakes »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:20 am
canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:34 am
I’m not so sure that crafting a book of supposed ancient scripture is necessarily the hardest route one could take in making a living during that day, especially if doing so convinces a small population of individuals to believe that story, then consider the author as a prophet (because the book said so, right?), and then work on providing that prophet with some amount of protection and support.

You could say - if done correctly - that this could be a pretty sweet deal. Certainly easier than working the fields day in and day out, yes?
It is interesting that Joseph was this ‘outlier’ that accomplished this massive production we call the Book of Mormon. The foresight that he had at the age of seventeen to see the possibilities and be willing to put the WORK into this book so as to hoodwink others into joining his church. And to BELIEVE he was doing the work of God at the same time. 😉🧐
There need be no assumption that Smith planned to start a church. He could just have easily envisioned capitalizing off of the book more simply. Suddenly being seen by some as the mouthpiece of God would just be a bonus development, with additional rewards.

Am I misinterpreting D&C 124?

Amazing. No one else did what he did at such a young age and under so much duress and in so little time.

Talk about being goal driven. Again, at seventeen. Simply amazing.
This is a bit of a red herring; regardless, I’m not figuring that being goal driven at 17 years of age in the early 1800’s was as impossible a feat as you imply, or that Smith (in particular) was incapable of being goal driven in any capacity.

I suppose we can agree on this fact. Joseph was an amazing young man to accomplish what he did. A religious genius.
I think that it’s entirely reasonable to characterize the development of Mormonism and Smith’s pivotal role within it as ‘amazing’. But that doesn’t mean that the story that he built that accomplishment on is true.

Or he was called of God. Secularists/agnostics/atheists of course don’t want to go there. They are heavily invested in their own worldview.
You are free to speculate that. Speculation may be your only choice; there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that can replace speculation at this point.

Go back and read the history…then flesh this out a bit more, would you? Contextualize your comments into the time and place/history of Joseph and his family…and all that was going on.
There’s not much to flesh out, given the simplicity of the action. Smith was protecting his investment.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by Chap »

Rivendale wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:12 pm
MG 2.0 wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:50 pm

No. But it does sound ‘other worldly’, doesn’t it?

Looks like there were purported witnesses. Do you believe these witnesses in this instance? If so, why? Was there any evidence of any sort left behind?

Regards,
MG
Let me state the question you should have asked. Why is the method indestiguishable from a fraud? He was fond of showing off the mummies and the papyri , even after his death they gave tours (at a cost however) to see them. He was ok showing the seer stone. But those plates couldn't be looked at. The stone box is missing. The breastplate and urim and thummim is missing. The book of Abraham and the GAEL was a complete disaster for future historians to look back and interpret. The moment someone has to obfuscate simple details is the moment you enter fantasy land. The Book of Mormon parallels aspects of Joseph's character and family dynamics. Why is that? What are the chances an ancient civilization mirrors a frontier family? And I haven't even mentioned polygamy, bank scandals, attempted murder, murders and a failed trip to Salem to find treasure. I haven't mentioned inappropriate influence on minors. Inappropriate influence on other people's marriages. All of this could have been avoided to lessen the path from hard to easy. Why did he do that?
That's about the way I see it. Smith worked hard and took risks. To a major extent he succeeded. If he had not had that printing press destroyed, he might have lived to a ripe old age, enjoying the fruits of his success - as did Brigham Young, who may be said to have reaped what Smith had sown.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by Physics Guy »

canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:38 am
“Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.”

Why would the author tell the reader of his text what language he was reading?
It's not inconceivable that a real writer would discuss their choice of language. I sometimes write e-mails in English that begin with an explanation of why I'm not writing in German, or the other way around. I don't just announce in English that I'm writing in English, though, and leave it at that.

So I reckon Nephi's "language of my father" is a tell, all right. Joseph Smith wanted to let his readers know that this was originally in a lost ancient language, but he made the mistake of having Nephi tell the readers this for him. First-person narration is full of tricky pitfalls like that; it's easy to forget that your narrating voice is also a character.

The point, again, is not just that the Book of Mormon gives itself away as not being authentic. It gives itself away as trying to seem authentic and failing. Even if it had been generated innocently by an AI that was just following its algorithm with no malicious intent, the literary form of the text would be fraud.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by malkie »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:20 am
canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:34 am

I’m not so sure that crafting a book of supposed ancient scripture is necessarily the hardest route one could take in making a living during that day, especially if doing so convinces a small population of individuals to believe that story, then consider the author as a prophet (because the book said so, right?), and then work on providing that prophet with some amount of protection and support.

You could say - if done correctly - that this could be a pretty sweet deal. Certainly easier than working the fields day in and day out, yes?
It is interesting that Joseph was this ‘outlier’ that accomplished this massive production we call the Book of Mormon. The foresight that he had at the age of seventeen to see the possibilities and be willing to put the WORK into this book so as to hoodwink others into joining his church. And to BELIEVE he was doing the work of God at the same time. 😉🧐

Amazing. No one else did what he did at such a young age and under so much duress and in so little time.

Talk about being goal driven. Again, at seventeen. Simply amazing.

I suppose we can agree on this fact. Joseph was an amazing young man to accomplish what he did. A religious genius.
OK - all of that is quite possible. Geniuses and remarkable people appear all through history. I'm sure that many also appear and disappear without their genius being recognised.
MG 2.0 wrote: Or he was called of God. Secularists/agnostics/atheists of course don’t want to go there. They are heavily invested in their own worldview.

Regards,
MG
There is no need to invoke a god, because all of the rest can occur without any divine intervention. You demonstrate this by your unwillingness to accept all other religions as equally valid and true. I assume that you realise that the adherents of these other religions generally as heavily invested in their own worldview as you are in yours.

But, please, can you be a bit more accurate in your second-last sentence: Secularists/agnostics/atheists of course don’t want to go there with any religion, not just yours, without compelling evidence.

Interestingly, you don't seem to complain that secularists/agnostics/atheists reject all of the religions that you don't adhere to. Perhaps they simply don't see yours as any more remarkable or true than that of anyone else. And in the case of yours, there is plenty of contrary evidence that is readily available and well known to many of the former believers on this board.

I have not studied any of the others, beyond taking a Catholic catechism class, but I believe that many secularists/agnostics/atheists have, and have come to the same conclusions: for each, there is insufficient compelling evidence. They are not just being annoyingly unwilling concerning Mormonism.

Sorry, MG - your chosen belief is just not that special.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by Physics Guy »

Everybody can be somewhat invested in a viewpoint. You can get used to thinking of yourself as someone who doesn't like spinach and be reluctant to admit it when a spinach dish isn't so bad. Not every viewpoint is held strongly, however. Lots of beliefs are subject to change with only modest inducement.

So it's not enough just to point out that skeptics are attached to their positions. You have to argue that they're strongly attached. And that's hard to sustain about a position like, say, agnosticism. It's pretty painless to shift your view a little bit and decide that maybe it's a little more likely than you thought that some kind of weird stuff is out there, or something. You can even go as far as some vague flavour of theism without entailing any obligations strong enough to be big disincentives. So it's just not very plausible to say that critics of Mormonism are only refusing to accept that Joseph Smith saw an angel because they're so heavily invested in the non-existence of angels. Allowing the possible existence of angel-like beings simply isn't so hard. They showed up practically every season on Star Trek, after all.

What's more plausible, at least in a sense, is that non-Mormons are heavily invested in not being Mormons. Being a Mormon is hard. It's a demanding religion. If there is a proposition of which the acceptance implies a need to convert to Mormonism, then non-Mormons are indeed going to be reluctant to accept it.

But that's like saying that nobody is buying my thousand-dollar T-shirts because they're so invested in keeping their money. When you're trying to sell thousand-dollar shirts, you don't get to just lay them out on the table and blame the prejudiced customers for not buying them. The onus is rather on you to demonstrate that they are irresistibly attractive and also bulletproof. Instead just blaming the customers isn't a legitimate argument for thousand-dollar shirts, or even an understandable attitude. It's letting slip that you have a complete disconnect from the way ordinary sensible people think about T-shirts and money.

It's the kind of disconnect that you might well have, though, of course, if you yourself had a closet full of thousand-dollar T-shirts.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

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MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:00 am
Rivendale wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:03 pm


Why did Joseph pick the hard path?
That’s exactly what I’m asking. And can examples be given of others at that time went to the same amount of effort and sacrifice to publish a ‘book of fiction’.

On top of what I’ve already mentioned previously, we have Joseph…while Emma (I think he stayed with her a couple of weeks) and was still recuperating from a miscarriage…going on a trip ( he didn’t just hop in a car) to the Harris's to find out what had happened with Martin Harris, his wife, and the 116 lost pages. I mean, wow people, Joseph did a lot of stuff that surely wasn’t taking the easy path to get the Book of Mormon published.

You’d almost have to be intentionally blind to not see it.

Regards,
MG

That isn't all Joseph left Emma alone for.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

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canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:14 am
Not meaning to be disrespectful, but this argument can just as easily support the idea that he ‘REALLY believed’ that he was not accountable to God.
No, Smith was clearly a Bible believing Christian. It is possible Joseph Smith really believed he was doing the work of god. I think Smith was opportunistic and a pious fraud at the same time.
Last edited by doubtingthomas on Tue Jan 18, 2022 4:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by doubtingthomas »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:04 am
Why would he do that unless he REALLY believed that he was truly accountable to God?
You have a black and white thinking. Some historians believe Joseph Smith was a pious fraud. History is full of examples.

"In a groundbreaking study on the apocrypha from a Latter-day Saint point of view, Stephen E. Robinson looked at the issue of “lying for God” as a means of understanding the purpose and function of some of the intertestamental apocrypha. In that study, Robinson proposed that deception played a significant part in the production of many apocryphal texts"
https://rsc.byu.edu/how-new-testament-c ... se-gospels
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