Opposite Experiment

[_bluedream]

In another thread entitled "I threw myself heart and soul into Mormonism", user Spaulding presents himself as a curious LDS prospect seeking information to help with his decision in joining or not joining the church.

The thread proceeds to generate messages from LDS and non-LDS alike advising Spaulding to understand both sides in order to get the complete story.

This raised a question in my mind; how well do critics & apologists, defenders & attackers really understand both sides? So let's see.

In this thread, I want all contributors to assume their opposite role in the Mormon faith. Critics apologize, attackers defend, apostates become TBM, etc. and vice versa.
The rules are simple: Realize your role, and take your role seriously.

I'll try to get the ball rolling with a fictional scenario:
Greetings all. My name's Blue. I'm a 22 year old born and raised Latter Day Saint recently returned missionary. On my mission, I had been presented by one former member with a bit of information that I found disturbing. Now that I'm finally home, I want answers.
I was told that there was a number of First Vision accounts before the one we know and teach today. Is this true? Surely Joseph Smith didn't forget details so important, and suddenly recall them later on?

[_bluedream]

For fun's sake, don't be afraid.

[_beefcalf]

Blue!

Whatever you do, run away from these lies as fast and as far as you can!

Satan wants to control you and is not above forcing people to tell lies about our beloved prophet!

Since Brother Joseph never did anything really wrong (other than hanging around jovial people and laughing a bit too much in his youth) all the terrible things you may read about this great man are absolute and total lies.

If you know someone who speaks evil of the Lord's anointed, cease to associate with them, lest you catch the disease germs President Packer has warned us about.

Don't read any books not approved by the Church. Don't watch any television shows other than conference and BYU TV. And above all, do NOT try to think your way through these issues. Just listen to the living Prophet and heed his council. No other way is safe.

[_just me]

(I am answering how I would have before I began studying the history more indepth.)

I have never heard of multiple accounts of the First Vision. The account we have is in our scriptures. Any other stories you may have heard are probably wrong or twisted interpretations.

Stick with the scriptures and pray about it. Talk to your bishop if you need more spiritual support.

[_Polygamy-Porter]

Lets assume the following:

You love the gospel.

You love your family.

You love going to church and regularly attending the temple.

You love to follow the prophet.

If it was found that Joseph Smith feasted on the bodies of dead aborted fetuses, it has little impact on you and how you feel about the church does it not?

Joseph restored the only true gospel on earth. What he did outside of that really does not matter.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I've always found the First Vision differences to be one of the least compelling criticisms. I suppose I can understand people's shock at learning that there are disparities between the different accounts of a sacred, canonical story. But the disparities aren't really that radical, and the story wasn't canonized in Joseph's lifetime. He didn't have the same interest in perfect, scientific accuracy that we have come to expect of the story due to its importance in the later tradition.

I think the differences in the story are readily explainable as a product of Joseph's evolving understanding of an ineffable experience. Memory is a funny thing. Psychologists have found that people don't record memories of their experiences like a camcorder. Instead, we reconstruct our memories every single time we recall them. This reconstruction is based on the meanings we attach to the memory-- our interpretation of it, and the way we have connected it to other memories and ideas that are important to us. As a result, our memories change over the course of our lifetimes as the meanings we attach to them also change. Some of these changes are changes of emphasis, but some are also changes of substance. Such changes don't mean the experience never happened. They only mean that it meant different things to Joseph at different times.

This is even more obvious when you take into account the visionary quality of the experience. It's hard enough to hold onto memories of things that happened in the physical world. How much moreso something that something that happened in a vision or an altered state of consciousness?

[_EAllusion]

Chris -

I think the critical argument concerning the changing first vision accounts is not in the mere fact that the accounts change over time, but rather that highly substantive details change over time in a way that maps onto how Joseph Smith's changing theological views evolve over time. Indeed, because memories tend to become less reliable and more fuzzy over time, it's highly unusual for more more detailed, specific references to show up in later accounts. It makes it look like someone who is post hoc rewriting the past to comport with the present, which is damning if true.

I also don't think it is fair to describe the experience as ineffable. If that were the case, no one would've heard about it. I do think it is fair to say that it was portrayed as a literal visionary experience - rather than something like an impression - to add credence to it. I think you presume something less spectacular for your argument which itself cuts into the Church presentation.

[_thews]

In this thread, I want all contributors to assume their opposite role in the Mormon faith. Critics apologize, attackers defend, apostates become TBM, etc. and vice versa.
The rules are simple: Realize your role, and take your role seriously.

I don't see what the big deal is about seer stones. When Jesus Christ was alive, the golden plates remained buried in America, so he couldn't have translated them to reveal God's words, mainly because he wasn't a choice seer. A choice seer was required to translate them, and since Jesus wasn't a choice seer and didn't have seer stones, God had to wait 1800 years until Joseph Smith was born and learn the Masonic rituals. Armed with the practice and skill of using his seer stones with his father in their money-digging business, Joseph learned the skills required to translate the golden plates. God knew beforehand the Nephite spectacles would be taken back as punishment after the choice seer lost the first 116 pages, so God needed a back up plan. The punishment for losing the 116 pages enabled God to punish Joseph Smith by making it harder to see the characters, so he had to place them in a stove-pipe hat and bury his face into it, making the process much more difficult which served as punishment, as wearing the glasses would have been much easier. Makes perfect sense to me.

[_zeezrom]

Church is awesome. I love F&TM the most. My kids love primary and I'm so happy they get to learn things that don't involve the messy history of the church. I love going to the temple with my wife on date night. We get to sit on opposite sides of the room and smile at each other. I love to see her with her vale on because it reminds me of the days when she was a virgin. I love it when we get to sit in the celestial room together and wisper to each other.

I love knowing that our family will live in a huge, beautiful commune together in heaven forever. I love paying tithing because it will prevent divorce and help us learn how to manage our finances. I feel sorry for people that don't pay tithing. They are more likely to go bankrupt. Suckers! I'm looking forward to the end of days! The wicked will finally be burned along with their children. No more crime! That rapture guy is such an idiot! He didn't predict the right time for the end. I'm so glad I belong to a church that has a prophet that will get it right.

Even if I found troubling facts about Joseph Smith, it wouldn't bother me because the church is so wonderful!

[_1 Iron]

I've always found the First Vision differences to be one of the least compelling criticisms. I suppose I can understand people's shock at learning that there are disparities between the different accounts of a sacred, canonical story. But the disparities aren't really that radical, and the story wasn't canonized in Joseph's lifetime. He didn't have the same interest in perfect, scientific accuracy that we have come to expect of the story due to its importance in the later tradition.

California Kid,

I really appreciate your post. The first vision is one of the core stories of our faith, and I have to admit that in some ways it shocked me, as you said, to first read that there were other accounts and that this was true. It took some time and prayer, but I learned as Peter said to those…

Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:

Faith is most pure that has been tried in the refiner’s fire. And like you suggest, I found that the faith in Christ that sustained me through this trial also helped me to see why what the anti-mormon sources may call problems were really of no consequence.

There is a story about the native Americans who, when they first saw a ship in full sail firing it’s cannons had nothing with which they could compare this sight except to believe it was an island that moved on the waters, with white clouds over it and thundering. They believed this so thoroughly that when it dropped anchor, they set out in a canoe in the hopes of finding food on it that they could pick and eat. While we can be guilty of looking back on Joseph’s entire life and imagine him to be the great prophet of the restoration from the beginning, I found that really spending time studying the first vision accounts helped me to see that Joseph Smith, at a young age, was like these native Americans. He wasn’t going to God in the hopes of seeing Him, or of knowing how to start a new church. Like his written account of the vision reminds us, he was a young boy raised in a Christian world with a Christian understand of who God was. And his concern with praying wasn’t to ask how to start a church. It was concern for his immortal soul, and a desire to know, for sure, that the church he joined was the one that God approved of so that Joseph could have assurance that his faith would not be misplaced and that he could know that his sins were truly forgiven.

When I read Joseph Smith’s own account of the first vision, so early in his years as prophet before the trials of Kirtland, of Missiouri, or Nauvoo – I see a young man seeking a relationship with his Savior, and most miraculously finding it beyond anything that he could have imagined. I see in this early account similarities to my own first sincere, honest prayers for forgiveness. I have no doubt that the knowledge that God had, indeed, forgiven him his sins and accepted him as his disciple was the single most important message Joseph learned for himself. Can he be blamed for focusing on this in a personal letter? Can he be expected to understand this experience from the perspective of 10 years of struggle as the prophet who’s responsibilities were to usher in the gospel in it’s fullness back to the earth after centuries of silence? of always having the perspective of who God really was that he probably didn't gain until the experiences of the temple and endowment?

I see the many accounts of Joseph’s first vision as revealing the man behind the legends that have grown around him, and I love him more for it. I see him growing in understanding, line upon line, over decades of learning. Isn't this how the scriptures tell us Christ learned?

Not only do the many first vision accounts not challenge my testimony any longer, they have served me well in gaining a better appreciation of who Joseph Smith was and see him as someone more like me.

And I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.