charity wrote:dartagnan wrote: Anyone who thinks above about a 4th grade level knows that straightforward doesn't mean one word.
Nor does it mean two paragraphs of apologetic fluff. A yes no question is a yes no question. Whatever "straightforward" answer you provide, one of these two words must be found therein somewhere. But you don't provide the straight truth. You can't. You have to revert to apologetic mode and obfuscate.
We know Joseph Smith lied. Historians know Joseph Smith lied.
He lied. It is a fact.
We can say it because it is truth. Are you afraid of the truth?
If not, then just say it.
You can't bring yourself to do it because your veneration of Smith is more important to you than the truth.
Just look at how you're acting here. So scared to state a basic truth.
I guess you didn't read my post. "When God had told Joseph not to tell anyone about the newly revealed doctrine, and he was backed into a corner between answering and obeying God, he chose to obey God. Which is considered a
lie by those who don't understand the requirement to obey God first."
I have to go away, Kevin. Or else I will be temped to beat up on you for not even reading my post before you comment. I guess you had that all typed up to cut and paste in, not matter what I said.
This is the closest Charity will ever come to admitting that Joseph Smith lied.
She concedes, in fact, that he did lie, but it wasn't really a lie, because God told him to lie.
This is the same God who made lying one of the 10 most serious offenses in his moral cannon.
Now, let's sit back and wait for some apologist to lecture us on how the wording "thous shalt not bear false witness" means something different than actual lying about this like this. Maybe Makelelan will honor us with a visit and explain in how ancient traditions, lying was really ok and widely practiced, and how God used it for his means, and that "bearing false witness" had a different meaning that permitted God's chosen to lie as a means of achieving their rights of conquest.
After all, "thou shalt not kill" doesn't prohibit wanton murder of innocents, so it's no far stretch to imagine that "thou shalt not bear false witness" doesn't prohibit lying.
Mark Twain had it right about the immorality of God with regards to his obedience to his own laws, as you can read his quote in my signature line.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."