Jaybear wrote:bcspace wrote:No. But it makes it highly unlikely that he did plural marriages/sealings for prurient purpose as well as unlikely he did have sex with any number of them.
I don't follow your reasoning.
Smith married 30+ women, with no identifiable children from those unions.
One could therefore conclude that either the marriages were purely ceremonial, or that Smith took efforts to avoid pregnancies.
But we know they were not purely ceremonial, from (1)testimony of some of these women; (2) Emma's disdain for the practice; (3) Smith's great efforts to conceal the practice from the public.
So then we should reasonable conclude that Smith had sex with these women for recreational and not procreational reasons.
So then how does the fact that Smith engaged in recreational sex with all these other women lead you to conclude that his interests were not prurient.
+10
Gurus and charismatic cult leaders having sex with female members under some religious pretext is a disturbingly common occurrence. Hiding it at first is also common. They just can't seem to resist and there is likely a sociological/evolutionary reason for such behavior.
You will always see the cult members claiming that the motives of
their cult leader were/are pure while accusing those of us who call a spade a spade of being the ones with the dirty minds. They try to turn the tables on you in order to avoid the obvious.
You will also see the cult members having the ability to to see this pattern and recognize its significance in other cults (like FLDS) but they have internal special pleadings for their
own cult (and early Mormonism was indeed a cult).
The other thing cultists do when you point out the general pattern is to accuse you of assigning guilt by association. (Pahoran?)
One way or another they will disparage you for calling a spade a spade.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo