Daniel dodges a dilemma by substituting his own

[Kishkumen]

The irruption of the divine is, at its heart, the triggering of people’s perception of divine presence. Joseph Smith did this kind of thing repeatedly.

Nicely observed. Bushman talks about this in his essay, "Joseph Smith and the Creation of the Sacred." He argues that one major reason for Joseph's lasting influence was that he "met a human need for the sacred": "He offered new sites for encountering the sacred, and it was the growing potency of these distinctive loci that set Mormonism apart from the rest of the Christian world." Bushman focuses on two: sacred words and sacred places.

In raw, untutored form, Joseph Smith gave his followers both words from heaven and spaces in which to pledge themselves to God. . . . We may devise our own explanations for Smith's influence in antebellum America. But if we asked the early converts, they most likely would have said they heard God in their prophet's words and found God in their holy city and in their sacred temple. We can look behind and beneath their explanations for one that satisfies us, but in the end we cannot lightly dismiss their own accounts of how the sacred entered their lives.

I like Bushman's essay because it also fits my own experience. I've had what I consider to be encounters with the divine a few times in my life, and they have all occurred in a Mormon context: while reading the Book of Mormon, while attending the temple, while participating in priesthood blessings, etc. I don't just mean a feeling of spiritual connection, but the feeling of the presence of a real, divine Other.

If Joseph Smith was a con man, the religious world he helped create has nevertheless been a great blessing in my life. I know others here don't feel that way, but it has been my experience.

Thank you, Nevo. I think you and I are on the same page here. In my view, this is the very best reason one can have for continuing fellowship in the LDS Church. If this is where you feel/felt the divine presence, and you are committed to that path, I don't see why you can't continue to benefit from your membership in that organization. I fully support those who take this approach, which I very much see Don Bradley and Maxine Hanks doing, and that is wonderful. I am happy for them. For you guys, all the rest of this stuff is just noise. It should take a lot more than the weaknesses of human beings and human organizations to chase you off from what is nourishing your soul in this way.

[Res Ipsa]

The proprietor’s point, as he himself pointed out, is that the plates leave no room for Joseph being sincerely deluded by his own imagination or mental illness. If the plates never existed, then he (Joseph) was being purposefully deceitful when he said they did. . . No room for being a “pious” fraud.

Why does “plates never existed” rule out Joseph being deluded and thinking they did exist due to imagination or mental illness?

I don't know. The human mind does all sorts of odd things. I've never been able to come to any strong conclusions about what Smith was thinking over time.

[Physics Guy]

I don't see much room for Smith not being a conscious fraud at some level. He doesn't have to have been a snickering, moustache-twirling kind of fraudster, though. He could have been the kind of narcissist who was convinced that he really was a great prophet, and that God Almighty was totally backing him up—and that he was therefore justified in any amount of chicanery as a workaround for everyone else's perverse failure to recognize his divine authority.

I have the same sort of theory about the sincerity of L. Ron Hubbard. It wouldn't have been hard for Hubbard to be sincere in what he was preaching, because what he was preaching was that he was a great being whose wishes could determine reality. With that particular kind of belief, he could be consciously making it all up and simultaneously be completely sincere. What that means to me is that Hubbard doesn't get any credit for being sincere, if he was. That kind of sincerity is worth nothing because it's just an even deeper form of egotism.

In the same way, sincere and deeply held religious belief is less impressive to me when it's an important part of your religious belief that you alone are a Prophet.

[Gadianton]

In the same way, sincere and deeply held religious belief is less impressive to me when it's an important part of your religious belief that you alone are a Prophet.

Isn't it nearly as bad when an important part of your belief is that "your guy" is the lone prophet? Isn't this just a way of patting yourself on the back as you are in his circle?

[Gadianton]

I have to have a chuckle at folks like Dan, laying down the ultimatum on their friends.

According to the Mopologists, Mormon history is a story of great persecution and prejudice towards Mormons. But just as society cools off and tries to be accepting, the hardliners pull out the old "you're either with us or against us" logic.

Five-year-olds know the same trick. "If you don't buy me a pony right now it means you hate me!"

That ploy only works on mom and dad, or at least, people incredibly sympathetic to the child. This is the thanks a Mopologist's friends get for trying to be nice. They get told they aren't allowed to accept Joseph Smith as a good man, but as either a diabolical fraud or a prophet, and boy, it sure would be anti-Mormon to say he's a diabolical fraud!

[drumdude]

I have to have a chuckle at folks like Dan, laying down the ultimatum on their friends.

According to the Mopologists, Mormon history is a story of great persecution and prejudice towards Mormons. But just as society cools off and tries to be accepting, the hardliners pull out the old "you're either with us or against us" logic.

Five-year-olds know the same trick. "If you don't buy me a pony right now it means you hate me!"

That ploy only works on mom and dad, or at least, people incredibly sympathetic to the child. This is the thanks a Mopologist's friends get for trying to be nice. They get told they aren't allowed to accept Joseph Smith as a good man, but as either a diabolical fraud or a prophet, and boy, it sure would be anti-Mormon to say he's a diabolical fraud!

Bingo.

[Dr. Shades]

The proprietor’s point, as he himself pointed out, is that the plates leave no room for Joseph being sincerely deluded by his own imagination or mental illness. If the plates never existed, then he (Joseph) was being purposefully deceitful when he said they did. . . No room for being a “pious” fraud.

Why does “plates never existed” rule out Joseph being deluded and thinking they did exist due to imagination or mental illness?

I guess it doesn't rule it out completely, but it's my understanding that people who are so deluded that they think things exist that actually don't, have the proclivity to try to show off these imaginary things to anyone who shows interest, not keep them secret or make excuses as to why they can't be revealed to everyone.

[Nevo]

He could have been the kind of narcissist who was convinced that he really was a great prophet, and that God Almighty was totally backing him up

But aren't all prophets "narcissists" to some degree?

In the essay I quoted yesterday, Richard Bushman also wrote: "Prophets are immensely confident, egotistical, bold historical figures who confront kings and attack whole societies . . . . And yet at the same time, these prophets present themselves as passive instruments in God's hands, saying only what they are told and doing only what God instructs" ("Joseph Smith and the Creation of the Sacred," in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, ed. Reid L. Neilson and Terryl L. Givens [New York: Oxford University Press, 2009], 101).

I can't think of any biblical prophetic figures who weren't convinced of their own divine authority: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, etc.

On the basis of personality traits alone, I think it would be hard to distinguish a "true" prophet from a "false" one. They tend to behave in similar ways (see, e.g., Len Oakes, Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities).

[Gadianton]

But aren't all prophets "narcissists" to some degree?

absolutely. prophet = entrepreneur.

If you're going to invest in an entrepreneur it's nerve rattling because on the one hand, you feel like you can't trust anything you're being told but on the other, it's eternal optimism and endless energy, and you know that's the occupational hazard and it will take someone just like that to pull it off.

[canpakes]

I agree with you that having actual plates doesn’t change much of anything unless you can actually get ahold of them and actually confirm that Joseph’s translation was at least somewhere in the ballpark of correct.

Or that there was anything written on the plates at all.