truth dancer wrote:Are you suggesting Joseph Smith actually DID find lost or hidden objects with his seer stone?
I'm not sure how one would acquire "an established reputation as a gifted seer" (as Marquardt and Walters put it) without ever having anything to show for it. Joseph stated at his 1826 trial that he had "frequently ascertained . . . where lost property was" using his seer stone. And there is at least one account of him doing just that.
"E.W. Vanderhoof remembered that his Dutch grandfather once paid young Smith 75 cents to look into his stone to locate a stolen mare. The grandfather soon 'recovered his beast, which Joe said was somewhere on the lake shore and [was] about to be run over to Canada'" (D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 2d ed., 43; Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 4:239-240).
Josiah Stowell testified that Joseph, looking in his stone, was able to describe in detail his house and outbuildings--even describing a tree with a "man's hand" painted on it--without having ever set foot on Stowell's property.
Martin Harris described Joseph using his seer stone to find a tie pin that Harris had accidentally dropped into a pile of straw and wood shavings.
As Dan Vogel observes, "these proofs separate Smith from the group of self-deluded treasure seers, for they were either true demonstrations of his seeric gift or evidence of his talent for deception" (Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, 43). Since Vogel's worldview does not admit the supernatural, he rejects the former explanation out of hand. I, however, prefer to keep an open mind :)