Coggins7 wrote:Coggins - why don't you let us know what type of evidence you'd consider?
On the other thread, Wade basically said that he would only accept evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe what he was saying/doing. In other words, even if Joseph Smith didn't actually have any gold plates, we would have to provide evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe there were gold plates.
Does the same go for you?
Loran:
Well, that would be a good place to start. One could claim that Joseph was insane; that he was delusional and actually believed he had, or had at least seen the plates, and one could then attempt to adduce evidence to this end. One could claim, as many here do, that he was a flat footed deceiver, and one would then be obliged to adduce compelling arguments to that effect, and which were to at least a reasonable degree immune from substantive counter argument. One could argue along other lines.
If I understood Wade correctly, he was asking for a debate on whether Joseph and the modern church were involved in knowing deception. As I pointed out, although these questions are connected, they are different in the sense that Joseph would have known of his deception as he was the originator of the religious system and its teachings. His later successors, especially those well detached from him in time, would be involved in deception only if they actaully believed, looking back on the religion they had received through tradition, that what they were teaching was wrong and yet taught it anyway.
We should here ignore Scratch's disingenuous hairsplitting over the definition of "lie", in which he parses the term in Clintonian fashion such as to extract tertiary colorations of the term that would impute moral weight to teachings or claims that may be wrong in actualilty, but are taught as true in strict sincerety be those to teach them.
Don't blame me for the dictionary's nailing down of the definition, Loran. This is not Stalinist Russia, wherein you get to redefine what words mean in order to suit your agenda.
This would make virtually any claim made by anyone at any time, on any subject, and which ultimately did not conform to reality tantamount to a willful lie, and the person making the claim tantatmount to a knowing liar, even though he was teaching that which he actually believed to be the case.
Yes. Unfortunately, that's what it means. Too bad for your argument. To jettison this portion of the definition would be a gross display of intellectual dishonesty.
Notice that this whole subject is independent of whether or not the church is actually true. The question Wade set out here was whether or not the church was ingenuous in its continuing to teach what Josph taught, or whether it leaders were complicit in deception of the masses. This would be like asking whether the Pope "knew" his church was a fraud but kept on promulgating its teachings in any case. We're not asking whether the Pope is or is not the Vicar of Christ but whether he believes he is and that the mother church is really the mother church.
Loran
To a certain extent, modern leaders have been deceptive. (Cf. Elder Packer's infamous "Mantle" talk for the ecclesastical sanction thereof.) You seem to want to place some qualification on this vis-a-vis Joseph Smith, but it's not clear what the terms of your qualification are. In any case, Joseph Smith has to be seen as a "liar" in at least one regard, since he was hauled into court for his "deceptive" or "misleading" moneydigging activities. You may as well get over this, and cop to the truthfulness of this. I'm sorry that you view Joseph Smith as a flawless demigod to be essentially transformed into a kind of Golden Calf, but that's really not the way things should be, my friend.