Dan Peterson’s lunch

[drumdude]

If you want a great laugh, I highly recommend the first ten minutes of Mormonism Live on the topic of running with 70lb gold plates.

https://www.youtube.com/live/d4DXaXhXBFo

Dan Vogel - bravo. I literally laughed out loud!

[Rivendale]

Tapir alamode?

[hauslern]

Are we implying Dan Peterson is obese? If so, I can assure you obesity is not good. My blood sugar is fine now; I had to buy new jeans after my plan to lose weight worked. I have seen friends who have not taken advice about their obesity and now are having to insert insulin regularly.

[yellowstone123]

If you want a great laugh, I highly recommend the first ten minutes of Mormonism Live on the topic of running with 70lb gold plates.

https://www.youtube.com/live/d4DXaXhXBFo

Dan Vogel - bravo. I literally laughed out loud!

I remember a job I had at age 18 which was to unload trailers of all kinds of stuff. There was a major chain department store that had just been built and they were bringing in the goods. Not Sears, but sort of. One time I saw a small box and tried to pick it up. I almost hurt myself. When I took a look inside it was 8 ten pound weights you put on an exercise bar. Picking it up and even moving it twenty feet almost caused a pulled muscle. I can just imagine 70 lb plates. Go to the gym, grab a 50 lb dumbbell and start running around with it. Watch what happens. Imagine running through the forest the same way. It's not likely going to happen unless Moroni appears and carries you through the air under his arm like Superman and Lois Lane.

[drumdude]

Fair Mormon has this in response:

The producer and associate producer of a film about Joseph and the Book of Mormon witnesses described their actor repeatedly doing what Joseph did:

Filming “Joseph Smith” with the plates, and running from and interacting with the attackers, took a considerable amount of time.

Knowing that filming the scene of Joseph running with the plates would require several hours, Paul Wuthrich was presented with the option of going with something lighter as a prop. He opted to use the two prop sets of plates that metallurgist Dave Baird had created, based on Baird’s careful research. Somewhat amusingly, one set came to be called the “non-hero set.” They weighed somewhere between thirty (30) and thirty-five (35) pounds. We’re more certain of the weight of the other set — unsurprisingly labeled the “hero set” — because Russell Richins weighed them himself. They came in at forty-five (45) pounds. In other words, at roughly the weight of the historical plates themselves.

During the relevant filming day, the two sets were switched out at various times. Sometimes the secondary or “non-hero” prop was used, and sometimes the “hero set.” “At all times,” comments Russell Richins, “when you see Paul Wuthrich running or using the plates in the scenes, he is using one of these two sets. Bottom line, Paul was in very similar circumstances that Joseph Smith faced except for this one exception – – Paul Wuthrich did it over and over and over again throughout the day. Yes, he was exhausted, but he did it. A whole crew witnessed it.”

Those who have not been involved with filming of this sort would, I think, be astonished at how many takes and re-takes need to be done for even relatively simple indoor scenes.

Paul Wuthrich ran down the hill repeatedly, carrying the plates, jumping over rocks and logs, trying to avoid low branches. He did it many times, for different takes, so that filming could be done from a variety of angles. He had to run down the hill with the plates, then climb up the hill once more with the plates, then run down the hill, then climb up the hill again.

I like Russell Richins’s summary statement:

Whether they want to accept it or not, people are going to have to face the fact that Joseph Smith, used to day labor and a very fit individual known for his strength, was fighting for his and the plates’ safety, perhaps even his life. Additionally, this claim would have been quite achievable for many young men of his time.

Even Martin Harris lifted the plates, as did eight other rural Americans. People must remember that Martin Harris was older, but a farmer used to working physically. This was very common.

Another interesting tidbit is that Annie Passman, about 16 years of age and playing Joseph Smith’s sister Katherine, lifted the hero, 45 pound, set of plates from the floor to the table throughout the entire day as we ran that scene many, many times while filming. Was it tiring? Yes. Was it doable? I think we have proven that clearly, in both cases.

And we’re not even invoking supernatural or divine aid.[4]

Those who question the ability of Joseph to run carrying a 60 pound object say more about their own relatively limited physical abilities and perspective than they do about Joseph's or others' in the early 19th century.

In one fell swoop the apologists mange to call critics weak, and threaten to make the whole matter moot by appealing to divine aid.

It's a very succinct example of apologists swinging between branches, desperately grabbing on to whatever argument they get forced into when the facts don't add up.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

OMG!! I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. It's hilarious watching Bill, RFM and Dan Vogel laugh as they watch this man "run" downhill with the plates. Dan Vogel for the win with the Dan Peterson lunch joke. Watch this clip for about 20 seconds and try not to laugh:

https://youtu.be/d4DXaXhXBFo?t=382

[drumdude]

OMG!! I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. It's hilarious watching Bill, RFM and Dan Vogel laugh as they watch this man "run" downhill with the plates. Dan Vogel for the win with the Dan Peterson lunch joke. Watch this clip for about 20 seconds and try not to laugh:

https://youtu.be/d4DXaXhXBFo?t=382

I would have sworn it was a parody, apparently it's a faithful apologist film!

[Doctor Steuss]

I'm not entirely sure it's all that unfeasible. I mean, beyond the obvious hurdle of an angelic Jewish expat that believes in American frontier Protestantism passing them off to a kid with a history of engaging in fraud.

I've watched a 70 year old rancher walk long distances with 80+ pound hay bales, like they were nothing. I've worked alongside someone who tosses them over their shoulder with ease (it takes me two hands, and a good hip nudge to get them distanced from the trailer as we roll... and I lift weights regularly).

When your everyday life involves clearing rocks, moving logs, and otherwise lifting heavy things -- heavy things stop being... well... heavy.

[Fence Sitter]

I hauled hay on a dairy farm when I was 16. And, while picking up a bale from the ground in the field and jogging with it to catch up to the truck we were loading, was done dozens of times a load, these were short burst of effort interspaced over the day. I don't think that is comparable to the claim of running 1-2 miles with 50 pounds± of plates and 3 men chasing that you had to physically fight. Smith made crap up and then he and everyone around him embellished the original, so while some elements of the story might have happened, whatever really happened is long lost to history and revisionism.

By the way, the three men chasing him were pretty stupid. Why would they attack him one at a time? Sounds a lot like a movie fight scene where the hero is surrounded by multiple assailants who take turns trying to attack him only to be fought off by the "superior fighting skills" of the hero.

[Marcus]

Did Smith ever say, himself, in a statement, exactly how heavy or what shape and size the plates were? Not a remembrance by someone else long after the fact, but at the time? Specifically by him?

(I apologize for not knowing my apologetics better, here's where I know our angel grindael would write me a book answering the question, may he rest in peace!!! )