Blixa wrote:ldsfaqs wrote:
Just because I don't feel like taking the time HOURS to step by step prove my opinion doesn't mean my opinion isn't based on what I know and don't know.
We've all seen the ungrammatical double negative, but this resets the bar. All I can get out of it is, "My opinion is based on what I don't know."
Dan Vogel wrote:Regardless, my theory does not deny that the eight men accompanied Joseph Smith into a grove near the Smith cabin where they saw and handled the plates. Only the exact method Joseph Smith employed and the precise nature of the eight witnesses’ experience on that day and how the published Testimony relates to it are at issue. Similarly, the Testimony of Three Witnesses makes it sound like a single event, whereas subsequent statements revealed that Harris had a separate vision of the angel and plates.
Dan Vogel wrote:...and my theory, which combines the physical “hefting” of fake plates concealed in a box or cloth covering with visionary sight.
Equality wrote:
You do realize that Whitmer believed Smith was a fallen prophet, right? Was he right about the Book of Mormon but wrong about Smith? Why would you give more weight to his dying feelings about the Book of Mormon than his dying feelings about Smith, Brigham Young, and the church Young led west?
Equality wrote:
CFR.
why me wrote:You would have needed to be a catholic to understand this. The most hardened criminals, fraudsters, murderers etc confess their sins to the priest on their deathbeds to make it right before god. One of the witnesses would have fessed up if they knew it was all a fraud.
RayAgostini wrote:Assuming "fake plates" (the proof of which is yet to come) is to assume a total fraud, not just a "pious fraud". Don't bend over backwards to defend Joseph, Dan, with "fake plates" and "good intentions". You're suggesting that Joseph Smith created this whole imaginary scenario, even creating "fake plates" to, what, "bolster faith"? Or maybe to "get rich"? He supposedly went to all this trouble, for what? To be killed at 38? To die for "fake plates"? Your scenario dictates that, one day, Joseph decided he could become rich and famous by foisting a deliberate hoax on the American people, "for their own good", and everything after that would be pure invention, "for the greater good". He devised this scheme with, supposedly, fake revelations, every one and all of them, from start to finish, and God himself, in reality, was no where near his "scheme".
Doctor Scratch wrote:To argue simply that it is either inspired, supernatural truth OR "totaly fraud" is a false dichotomy.
no one saw the plates uncovered in a non-visionary situation
Because the plates were covered, the statements of Smith’s family and friends are only evidence of their trust. Nothing more. They concluded Joseph was telling the truth because they could feel the plates and rings through the cloth and could hear a metallic sound when they ruffled the pages. But that is where their testimony ends. While their testimonies can be used to dismiss specific speculations—that the box contained sand or the cloth concealed a brick tile, for instance—they cannot be used to eliminate speculation altogether because they are themselves speculations.
Bushman’s attempt to straitjacket historians with a one-sided narrative that serves the believer’s agenda should be rejected. It is one thing to narrate the story from the believers’ point of view, as Bushman does, but quite another to proscribe other historians from exploring other aspects of the story. The fact is that Smith, by concealing the plates as he did, invited speculation. It is a part of the story that cannot be ignored.