Peterson the historical skeptic

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drumdude
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by drumdude »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:02 pm
By compelling, I mean definitive.
This is why there is the idea of a null hypothesis. You don't have compelling information on the man selling you a timeshare, but your default hypothesis should be that you don't want one. The man selling you a timeshare is going to take advantage of people who are credulous. Joseph did the same thing.

Plenty of Joseph Smith's contemporaries knew he was a con man, without having to read CES letter. Con men like Joseph were a dime a dozen, and so were their marks.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

drumdude wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:30 pm
MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:02 pm
By compelling, I mean definitive.
This is why there is the idea of a null hypothesis. You don't have compelling information on the man selling you a timeshare, but your default hypothesis should be that you don't want one. The man selling you a timeshare is going to take advantage of people who are credulous. Joseph did the same thing.

Plenty of Joseph Smith's contemporaries knew he was a con man, without having to read CES letter. Con men like Joseph were a dime a dozen, and so were their marks.
Rather obvious which stack you’re focused on. 😉

Regards,
MG
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canpakes
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by canpakes »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:02 pm
The evidence shows that in Joseph’s early life he was sincerely concerned about his standing towards God.

MG, do you consider it impossible that someone who outwardly appears to be concerned with their standing with God, would also be capable of making things up, for benign reasons or otherwise?
drumdude
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by drumdude »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:37 pm
drumdude wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:30 pm


This is why there is the idea of a null hypothesis. You don't have compelling information on the man selling you a timeshare, but your default hypothesis should be that you don't want one. The man selling you a timeshare is going to take advantage of people who are credulous. Joseph did the same thing.

Plenty of Joseph Smith's contemporaries knew he was a con man, without having to read CES letter. Con men like Joseph were a dime a dozen, and so were their marks.
Rather obvious which stack you’re focused on. 😉

Regards,
MG
You and I are on the same side with regard to all con men except one. I'm just asking you to be consistent. Or conversely, you should be a believer in L Ron Hubbard as well.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:25 pm
malkie wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:26 pm
Since you seem hung up on the "not to avoid farmwork" idea, let me ask you: what station do you think that Joseph would have reached in life if he had simply pursued farm labouring? Anything remotely resembling revered community leader, military leader, US presidential candidate, 36+ "wives"? People do all sorts of things (including what in retrospect seem like unnecessary or counterproductive effort) to avoid work.
Not a bad trade-off for writing a book.

Life was pretty tough back in the mid-1800’s. The payoff that Smith garnered from assembling the Book was remarkable, and certainly no riskier than what any frontier settler had to contend with when living their own lives.

Using that example from D&C 124 again, Smith - within his sequel to the first book - plugged in a command for his followers to build him a house. That’s a whole lot easier than building one yourself.

He followed that up with a method to have multiple wives.

Clever guy. ; )
You asked earlier about why I brought Emma into the picture of Book of Mormon translation. I thought that was interesting. Why? Because she played an integral part in all that was going on. If Joseph was doing the long con, then so was she. Joseph starting out the long game by false witnessing to the woman he loved? That’s a stretch.

Anyway, here we have Emma at the end of her life saying:

My belief is that the Book of Mormon is of divine authenticity – I have not the slightest doubt of it. I am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writing of the manuscripts unless he was inspired; for, when acting as his scribe, your father would dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions, he could at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to do. It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible.

https://www.deilataylor.com/last-testim ... mma-smith/
Emma (read Joseph’s letters to her) was the love of Joseph’s life. To think as you and others would like to that Joseph would do the ‘long con’ on Emma, bring her into a fraudulent translation process, etc., is, like I said, a real stretch. But if you need to go there to keep things together, then whatever.

Earlier I mentioned ‘savant’ in connection with Joseph. Emma seems to contradict this. Genius? Same.

So then you’re back to…how did he do it?

That’s where imagination kicks in.

Regards,
MG
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

drumdude wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:47 pm
I'm just asking you to be consistent.
In the context of our conversation, is that a reasonable request/expectation? I don’t think so.

I mean, where are you going to draw the line? Seems as though you aren’t able to view the world in such a way in which there are shades of gray or varying degrees of logic/reason.

You’re smarter than that.😉

Regards,
MG
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:02 pm
… Doc, yourself and others would have had Joseph use either the stone or spectacles to locate the lost 116 pages. I can’t argue that this would have been the preferred method rather than what we observe in the historical record …
i can't aRgUe iT wOuLdVe bEeN bEtTeR … :roll:
Let me guess, a mentally incapacitated Mormon will just larp out some excuse once he thinks about it for two seconds.
A thousand different religions with a thousand different “prophets” with a thousand different revelations and scriptures, but this absolute oaf-tier jackass throws in with an absurd con man who scried, defrauded investors, had adulterous sex with kids and other men’s wives, and spawned a racist desert sex cult turned hundred billion dollar conglomerate that he pays tithing to.

:roll:

“mY mInD iS SO oPeN mY pEaBrAiN fEll OuT!”

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by Marcus »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:07 pm
Joseph starting out the long game by false witnessing to the woman he loved? That’s a stretch.
No, it's not.
Emma (read Joseph’s letters to her) was the love of Joseph’s life.
And then he married many, MANY other women, including teenagers, behind her back, and in defiance of the law. No, that's not how a man shows a woman that she is the love of his life. Your argument that fancy words outweigh his actions is gross and offensive and betrays a naïvété that is pretty silly.
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by MG 2.0 »

canpakes wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:25 pm
malkie wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:26 pm
Since you seem hung up on the "not to avoid farmwork" idea, let me ask you: what station do you think that Joseph would have reached in life if he had simply pursued farm labouring? Anything remotely resembling revered community leader, military leader, US presidential candidate, 36+ "wives"? People do all sorts of things (including what in retrospect seem like unnecessary or counterproductive effort) to avoid work.
Not a bad trade-off for writing a book.

Life was pretty tough back in the mid-1800’s. The payoff that Smith garnered from assembling the Book was remarkable, and certainly no riskier than what any frontier settler had to contend with when living their own lives.

Using that example from D&C 124 again, Smith - within his sequel to the first book - plugged in a command for his followers to build him a house. That’s a whole lot easier than building one yourself.

He followed that up with a method to have multiple wives.

Clever guy. ; )
So, Joseph was able to discipline himself to not give up the plates for worldly wealth and yet he decides to go to an extreme amount of work to create the Book of Mormon and bring others into his devious schemes, including Emma, so he can then cash in?

He should have gone with unloading the plates for a small fortune. Could have saved a heck of a lot of grief.

Wait, let’s think about this. Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a great idea. No plates? No God? Which one are you going to choose this go around? 😉

Layers upon layers of imaginative mental gymnastics for critics to get around the plain/hard truth. The creation and bringing forth of the Book of Mormon wasn’t WORTH it. THAT’S why no one else ever attempted a feat such as this at Joseph’s age and within the constraints/limitations that he lived with/under.

In a sense you could say that Joseph was a silly goose/dumb for even thinking up such an elaborate/wild scheme with so many moving parts. He was one in a ________________. (fill in large number)

Oh, that is of course, unless he was called of God and has a wee bit of help along the way. 🙂 That doesn’t require as many hoops to jump through. Except the ‘God’ hoop. 😉

Regards,
MG
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canpakes
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Re: Peterson the historical skeptic

Post by canpakes »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:07 pm
You asked earlier about why I brought Emma into the picture of Book of Mormon translation. I thought that was interesting. Why? Because she played an integral part in all that was going on. If Joseph was doing the long con, then so was she.
I see no reason to suggest that one must require the other. Nothing requires Emma to be ‘in’ on anything other than being in the service of her husband, whom she believes is engaged in a task given by God, even as she was (by her own words) never allowed to see those elusive plates.

Joseph starting out the long game by false witnessing to the woman he loved? That’s a stretch.
And yet, she was never allowed to see the plates?

Seems as if Smith respected Lucy Harris’s skepticism more so than Emma’s support, given where his efforts to convince were concentrated. Perhaps because he knew that Emma would safely accept and believe whatever he told her?

Is history devoid of examples where one partner in a marriage ‘falsely witnesses’ to the other? We even have the example of Smith not being straight with Emma as regards plural marriage and his behavior associated with it.

Anyway, here we have Emma at the end of her life saying:
My belief is that the Book of Mormon is of divine authenticity – I have not the slightest doubt of it. I am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writing of the manuscripts unless he was inspired; for, when acting as his scribe, your father would dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions, he could at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to do. It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible.

https://www.deilataylor.com/last-testim ... mma-smith/
Have you not yet perused the JSP project? It’s awesome. It’s filled with a few bazillion examples of Smith simply and easily rattling off long-winded rumination, or pronouncement, or repeating the supposed Word of God extensively for paragraph after paragraph, down to minor details about how to fold cloth napkins for Sunday dinner (OK, maybe not the last 8 words). That’s a much more extensive history to examine and consider than Emma’s comment on what he was supposedly capable of.

Emma (read Joseph’s letters to her) was the love of Joseph’s life. To think as you and others would like to that Joseph would do the ‘long con’ on Emma, bring her into a fraudulent translation process, etc., is, like I said, a real stretch.
As mentioned above - he wasn’t straight with her about his affairs within the issue of plural marriage (pun not intended).

Earlier I mentioned ‘savant’ in connection with Joseph. Emma seems to contradict this. Genius? Same.

So then you’re back to…how did he do it?

That’s where imagination kicks in.
Why are you determined to label Smith as an idiot?

Check out the JSP. Tell me how what you see there squares with your determination to cast Smith as an idiot.
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