Defenders: Why didn't Joseph show Isaac Hale the plates?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Instead of choosing members of the Smith and Whitmer families, why didn't Joseph select random people on the street who had nothing to gain or lose either way to whom to show the plates? Better yet, why didn't he select the most skeptical people around--like Isaac Hale--to whom to show the plates? It seems to me that former skeptics-turned-believers would make for the most convincing testimonies.

I don't know. Perhaps for reasons rather like those that led Jesus to choose his apostles, on the whole, from lower-class Galileans, some of whom were interelated, instead of from among the upper crust Sadducees or the Pharisaic intellectual class.

I don't see this as a "smoking gun," though. The more I've studied the lives and characters and testimonies of the Witnesses, the more impressed I've been with them.

Rather than just printing their testimonies in Books of Mormon, why not also have them signed and sworn in front of a judge?

I don't think that there is any legitimate reason to doubt that the printed testimonies of the Witnesses accurately represent their claims. There are scores of corroborating interviews on record with David Whitmer alone, to say nothing of the testimonials from the others that have been independently preserved in dozens of places.

Continuing with the above, I'm aware of no informal original document containing the testimonies of the witnesses and their corresponding signatures; you know, the original from which all other testimonies are reprinted. Does it exist, and if so, where?

It doesn't appear to be extant. The most likely author of the witness testimonies was Oliver Cowdery, by the way.

I'm sincerely wondering how a believer in the Book of Mormon can overcome those concerns, since, to me, they seem somewhat akin to "smoking guns."

They don't, candidly, seem to me to be particularly potent objections, considering the other salient evidence on this topic that is readily available.

Should you choose to respond to this, thanks in advance for taking the time.

No problem.

[_TAK]

TAK

I will consider that a No. You can not offer any proof that the relic in this story was the same shown the so-called Book of Mormon Witnesses.

DCP

I probably can't.

TAK
That was not so hard, was it?
DCP

I probably also couldn't prove beyond all merely conceivable doubt that the Lincoln who delivered the Gettysburg Address was the same Lincoln who debated Stephen Douglas, or that the Titanic that went down in the North Atlantic was the same Titanic that was launched from the Southhampton shipyards, or that the Parthenon that stands in modern Athens is made of the same stones that built the Parthenon back in the days of classical Greece, or that the Gutenberg Bible on display at the Huntington Library was actually printed on Gutenberg's press.

TAK
And yet none of those events are in dispute so it is really not relative to the discussion.
DCP

If the standards of "preponderance of the evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" are jettisoned in favor of unrealistic standards that can never really be met, and if any merely conceivable quibble or objection is enough to undermine common sense assumptions without any regard for Ockham's Razor and without any need for supporting evidence, then no, virtually nothing in history can be proven.

TAK
Nonsense. If signed affidavits are proof of anything then we have proof of aliens from other planets, Elvis lives and a whole litany other wise ridiculous assertions.
DCP

Perhaps Joseph and/or his invisible cabal of co-conspirators made multiple sets of fake plates, which probably didn't exist anyway, in their invisible metal foundry on the outskirts of Palmyra (or somewhere on the planet) and amused themselves by switching them around for the heck of it. Or something like that. Or something unlike that. Or something.

TAK
Perhaps.. but on appearances, the relic Joseph Smith was playing OJ with all the while dodging enemies having a object comparable to a car battery tucked under his arm is laughable and suggestive that more than one relic was used to convince followers.

edit for format..

[_moksha]

...explain to me how someone can wrap a metallic object that weighs anywhere from 40-200 lbs in a linen frock under his arm, traverse 'x' amount of woodland terrain, fend off 3 attackers who laid blows to him... And some how be able to hold onto them?

Shifting the argument a bit: What if the person involved was the combined duo of McCain-Palin? Surely you would argue that they could pull it off.

[_antishock8]

You and I both know there's only one prophet on this earth, ever, that could pull something like that off...

[_Calculus Crusader]

Forget Isaac Hale, why didn't Joe show them to Isaac Hayes? Joe could have won him over to his own fraud instead of Elrond Hubbard's (Granted, Mormonism is only marginally preferable to Scientology, but still.)