DrW wrote:
Given the subject matter for the commentary he was making, I thought Maher used remarkable restraint...
Maher’s opinion of Mormonism’s stupidity notwithstanding, nothing Maher says in his short clip about Joseph Smith is really factually inaccurate.
Maher is right is in that not a single place discovered, researched, or logged by modern archeology can be positively identified with the Book of Mormon narrative, characters, etc. Nobody in the Church should be shocked by this, yet we know there are many (the John Lund Tour of the Holy Land customer-types) who sincerely believe that Tulum is the city of Bountiful and that the Mayan stelae found at Palenque can only be a representation of Lehi’s Dream.
Maher is right that Joseph Smith was arrested for hiring himself out as a treasure seeker using his seer stones that he found as a youth. What Maher probably doesn’t yet know is that Joseph Smith had plenty of other criminal charges throughout his life. Recent research by the now-deceased Truman Madsen puts the total of civil suits and criminal suits during Joseph’s life at well over 100.
If Maher had known about the Nauvoo Expositor, which even some apologists have said was one of the biggest boners of Joseph Smith’s life – and that’s taking into account Fanny Alger and the others – he would’ve mentioned that.
I think Maher lets us Mormons off easy during his diatribes. We should be thankful he doesn’t know more.