Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

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_cwald
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _cwald »

I care.
"Jesus gave us the gospel, but Satan invented church. It takes serious evil to formalize faith into something tedious and then pile guilt on anyone who doesn’t participate enthusiastically." - Robert Kirby

Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer. -- Henry Lawson
_Maksutov
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Maksutov »

Shulem wrote:
I have a question wrote:
FTR, I care what you think.
I no longer care what zerinus thinks, because he doesn't deserve my attention.


Your statement proves that zerinus is wrong.

PS. zerinus, your church is spelled:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That's with a capital "T". (And don't you ever forget that)


I don't know. I think Z is a follower of the church of Joseph Smith. That's what he worships, along with himself. He hasn't figured out yet that his mirror is not a window and his feelings aren't any more special than anyone else's. He still remains in the childish egocentricity of fundamentalist religion. I suppose that's where he belongs because he fears to venture beyond it. Another poor lost boy who won't grow up but stays in the irrational cocoon of JosephSmithism. :wink:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Shulem
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Shulem »

Maksutov wrote:the irrational cocoon of JosephSmithism. :wink:


"Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph"

Hence that's really what this thread is supposed to be, Philo's book report on how modern day apologists have collided into Joseph Smith's ridiculous claims about the papyrus he pretended to translate. And make no mistake about it, the Facsimile No. 3 is the ultimate nightmare for any LDS apologist. It's the monster under the bed. It's the one they hate to discuss because the existing evidence doesn't produce a logical apologetic to vindicate Joseph Smith. All they can say is, "what if", "it could be", and "we don't know", etc.

The missing papyrus theory doesn't work either because they can't use that excuse for Facsimile No. 3. In effect, Joseph Smith was caught red handed with his pants down (no pun intended). The dude couldn't read Egyptian and was clueless about what the papyrus said. The spirit of Mormon god was also clueless and probably just made things worse. The holy ghost of Mormonism really is a dumb spirit -- a complete idiot.
_Shulem
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Shulem »

Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph


let's take it from the top. No need to refer to any of the evidence pertaining to the above assertion. Let's just ask ourselves one question:

Is it possible that Joseph Smith actually believed through his Holy Ghost that the papyrus he used to translate the Book of Abraham was a literal 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph? Is it POSSIBLE?

[ ] Yes
[ ] No

The true answer is either yes or no. Both the critic and the apologist must answer the question. Then, and only then, can one proceed to a logical and reasonable conclusion through means of the evidence and the use of Bayes Theorem.
_SteelHead
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _SteelHead »

Document has been dated to 1 ad.

Not possible that Abraham signed it.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.

Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality.
~Bill Hamblin
_Shulem
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Shulem »

SteelHead wrote:Document has been dated to 1 ad.

Not possible that Abraham signed it.


BUT,

Is it possible that Joseph Smith actually believed through his Holy Ghost that the papyrus he used to translate the Book of Abraham was a literal 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph? Is it POSSIBLE?

[ ] Yes
[ ] No
_Maksutov
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Maksutov »

When I try to pick a path through the prophet puzzle of Smith, I find contradictions and ambiguities everywhere, consistently. There is no final conclusion to come to about sincerity and fraud, self-deception, delusion, etc.

But I also find that in the careers of other cult founders, right up to the present. They inspire and exploit, they shamelessly fabricate and brilliantly innovate, they steal and reveal. Their moral complexities are often touted as a sign of their divine connection. But we all have moral complexities; it's just that we don't all have the charisma and ambition to project them into the world into the form of living mythology.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_ClarkGoble
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _ClarkGoble »



Just a tip, but your formatting is really hard to read. At a minimum I'd put space between paragraphs. For long text serif rather than sans-serif fonts is more readable.
_Shulem
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _Shulem »

The probability that Joseph Smith believed he had the literal writings of Abraham is almost certain, at least an astonishingly high probability that he thought so. When we look at how his followers taught, as well as how his enemies reacted to his teachings, this probability is only reinforced.

All of the literalness, however, is precisely the kind of evidence we would expect to see which conforms to Joseph Smith’s belief that he was also literal about having Abraham’s own handwriting from thousands of years ago. It would be quite a rare thing if for this one mere item, among thousands of literal other ones in the Prophet’s life, that Joseph Smith didn’t mean something literal about a biblical personality, many of which (well over a dozen at minimum, from both the Old and New world anciently) he claimed he actually knew because they appeared to him and talked, shared, and interacted literally with him.[17] Those claims are far more difficult to believe than this mere autograph claim, and yet many LDS scholars are so squeamish about it. I


Joseph Smith was not sheepish in making literal claims about fantastic things -- angelic visitations and ancient Egyptian papyri that God allowed to fall into his chosen hands -- more particularly autographs of the patriarchs Joseph and Abraham. The evidence and probabilities do show that Smith's bombastic claims regarding the age and content of the papyri belonged to none other than the patriarchs who wrote them. Only later, when science was able to weigh in, apologists started to offer another explanation other than the one Smith originally tendered.
_ClarkGoble
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Re: Joseph Smith & a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph

Post by _ClarkGoble »

Shulem wrote:The evidence and probabilities do show that Smith's bombastic claims regarding the age and content of the papyri belonged to none other than the patriarchs who wrote them. Only later, when science was able to weigh in, apologists started to offer another explanation other than the one Smith originally tendered.


Well part of that was because modern apologetics where there's a presumption to scientific facts is relatively recent. Yes you have the start of such things at the time of Widstoe, Roberts and Talmage. But I think it was a minority. It's really not until the 1980's, relatively recently, that an apologetic informed primarily by science occurs. (Nibley's approach was largely the old structuralist project within which he was trained - so I don't count that) There's still a mix in apologetics. While I think apologetics often gets a bum rap, there's no doubt that there's also a lot of crap.
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