Message from the FAIRisees

[_Cylon]

then it is your fault for not discerning the full and complete statement of David Whitmer

True enough. For example, the reason he gave for looking into a hat is never mentioned (because it would extinguish the yellow journalistic effect of the selective quote).

Are you talking about the reason of blocking out the light? First off, I've seen that mentioned plenty of times by critics, but more importantly, whether you include that reason or not has no bearing on why the stone in a hat translation process bothers so many people. Face it, Joseph Smith's story is fantastic enough whether he used a seerstone in a hat, a Urim & Thummim, or channeled the Easter Bunny in order to translate the golden plates he dug out of a hill at the behest of an angel. The method of translation doesn't really affect the validity of the truth claims very much one way or another.

What it does affect is the credibility of the church's leaders. They know the main method used in the translation was with the stone in a hat, yet with very rare exceptions, they continue to propagate the idea that he used either the Urim & Thummim or just looked at the plates and dictated. Why aren't they more forthcoming on this rather trivial detail? Presumably for PR purposes, 'cause the visualization of a guy with his head in a hat is goofier than the more scholarly depiction of him poring over the arcane characters on the plates, but who knows? Maybe the First Presidency just doesn't like hats. Whatever the reason, once you know of the actual method, it makes you wonder what else the brethren are being less honest about.

[_son of Ishmael]

Are you talking about the reason of blocking out the light? First off, I've seen that mentioned plenty of times by critics, but more importantly, whether you include that reason or not has no bearing on why the stone in a hat translation process bothers so many people. Face it, Joseph Smith's story is fantastic enough whether he used a seerstone in a hat, a Urim & Thummim, or channeled the Easter Bunny in order to translate the golden plates he dug out of a hill at the behest of an angel. The method of translation doesn't really affect the validity of the truth claims very much one way or another.

What it does affect is the credibility of the church's leaders. They know the main method used in the translation was with the stone in a hat, yet with very rare exceptions, they continue to propagate the idea that he used either the Urim & Thummim or just looked at the plates and dictated. Why aren't they more forthcoming on this rather trivial detail? Presumably for PR purposes, 'cause the visualization of a guy with his head in a hat is goofier than the more scholarly depiction of him poring over the arcane characters on the plates, but who knows? Maybe the First Presidency just doesn't like hats. Whatever the reason, once you know of the actual method, it makes you wonder what else the brethren are being less honest about.

Exactly. Urim and Thummin is no more or less "wierd" that the seerstone and hat though the urim and thummin does provide kind of a link to the Old Testament. I think at some point someone felt that the seerstone smacked too much of magic so they downplayed it.