Tobin wrote:Equality wrote:You seem to think that your arguments get stronger merely by repeating accusations without facts and evidence to support them. You did the same thing in the thread on the Jaredite barges. You keep asserting that William Law's testimony should not be viewed as credible, yet you offer nothing other than "he was an apostate!" as support for your assertion, which is to say, no support at all. The historical record appears to lend far more support to Law's credibility than to Smith's. Have you read Lyndon Cook's article (Lyndon W. Cook, "William Law, Nauvoo Dissenter," BYU Studies 22 (Winter 1982))? Have you listened to the Mormon Expressions podcast where they go through the Nauvoo Expositor line by line and examine the claims made therein? Do you have anything other than heated rhetoric to bring to the debate?
by the way, no one has said William Law was an "objective witness." Witnesses who provide testimony about their interactions with others are, of course, reporting their subjective experiences. Law is no different. The question for historians in assessing things that witnesses report is how much credibility to give to their accounts, or in other words, how much to rely on their reports in establishing what may have happened. A witness's bias is certainly worth looking into when examining the witness's credibility. But identifying a bias, alone, will not end the inquiry. With respect to Law, his most damaging allegations against Smith are corroborated by other sources, sometimes multiple sources both friendly and unfriendly. When put under the microscope, his reports hold up very well. He appears to have been a very credible source. If he were not, it would not be hard for you to identify with specificity that which ought to cause people to doubt his testimony.
Well, since you immediately started of lobbing insults in here instead of making a coherent argument, I'm not surprised you take the position you do about the Jaredite barges thread. You must have learned how to make arguments from DrW where if that doesn't work, you just start calling the opposing side names.
As far as stating William Law is not credible, I have given mutlipe reasons and citations as to why he is not. If you would care to address why William Law is credible after his bitter journal entries, his assocation with dissenters (which was exposed), his formation of a new church (to compete with the Mormon church), or his publication of a newspaper critical of Joseph Smith and its subsequent destruction which was the cause of Joseph Smith's arrest and death, then I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, I think it is clear that William Law is not credible. In fact, it is clear William Law was actively working against Joseph Smith with a grudge to get even no matter the cost.
I didn't call you any names. As for your several "reasons" Darth J. addressed each quite ably above. Your argument is this:
1. William Law left the church;
2. He was "bitter";
3. Therefore, he was not credible.
That's all you've got. Anyone who disagreed with Joseph Smith and left the church is, per se, not credible. I disagree. To attack his credibility, you need to do more than simply assert that the fact that he left the church and said bad things about Joseph Smith renders him not credible.
A "bitter" journal entry has no bearing on credibility, though it may, obviously, be indicative of bias. Let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose I am standing in line at the bank and a guy comes in with a gun, pushes an old lady down, bashes the security guard with the butt of his gun, fires a few shots in the air, robs the bank, and runs away. I get a good look at his face and I record the event shortly after it happens. As I record the event I say some really negative, critical things about the bank robber. One might even characterize my words as bitter. Is my report of the event not credible because of the enmity I feel toward the bank robber? Certainly, I am biased against my subject, based on the subject's behavior I have personally witnessed. But my feelings toward the bank robber do not bear on my credibility, do they?