Radio Free Mormon: Magic and the Book of Mormon (We Need Dan Vogel's Help!)

[Guest]

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Radio Free Mormon just dropped a bomb on the Book of Mormon! A BOMB!! Nothing will ever be the same after this. Everything has changed!

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em!

RFM, It never occurred to me that Joseph Smith fooled Oliver Cowdery by using a parlor trick. Not in my wildest imagination did it occur to me that Oliver really thought that Smith mysteriously through a miraculous gift of God translated the Book of Mormon while his head was in a hat. You, RFM, so it appears, have unlocked the SECRET trick and exposed Joseph's sleight of hand. The hat was the trick! The stone was the distraction.

This is a momentous podcast, earth shattering! Congratulations for cementing your place in history in exposing the Mormon Illusion -- Smith's translation trick. This podcast is going to get you noticed like never before. You've just stepped up big-time, baby. The game has now changed.The apologists are going to tremble with fear and concern when they take into consideration all the problems associated with the Book of Mormon and realize the translation was a trick. This is the bomb!

Radio Free Mormon: 161: Magic and the Book of Mormon

People, if you haven't made a donation (contribution) to Radio Free Mormon -- you will after listening to this podcast. For what you are about to receive is to be received with a grateful heart. Folks, Mormonism has just taken a death blow!

[_Shulem]

Thank you, Radio Free Mormon!



Things will never be the same for Mormonism

[Guest]

Radio Free Mormon has won the game!



The Book of Mormon lost!


Here is a checklist of Radio Free Mormon podcast links that touch on various subjects involving the Book of Mormon:

[ ] New Evidence for The Book of Mormon
[ ] The Case for the Book of Mormon? Part 1
[ ] The Case for the Book of Mormon? Part 2
[ ] The Book of Mormon on Trial
[ ] Magic and the Book of Mormon
[ ] Magic and the Book of Mormon Part 2
[ ] Born Again Book of Mormon
[ ] Born Again Book of Mormon Part 2
[ ] DNA and the Book of Mormon

Please consider making a donation to Radio Free Mormon

[_Fence Sitter]

Interesting observations RFM. But it raises a tough question. This would imply that there was an existing text for the Book of Mormon off of which Joseph Smith was reading. Now to me, that makes more sense than words magically appearing on a stone, but for believers they are going to demand some evidence that such a ur text actually existed. Given the text of the original dictation, this text would have to have been composed by Joseph Smith. What evidence do we have such a text existed? How would Joseph Smith have written such a text without anyone seeing it happen?

[Guest]

Interesting observations RFM. But it raises a tough question. This would imply that there was an existing text for the Book of Mormon off of which Joseph Smith was reading. Now to me, that makes more sense than words magically appearing on a stone, but for believers they are going to demand some evidence that such a ur text actually existed. Given the text of the original dictation, this text would have to have been composed by Joseph Smith. What evidence do we have such a text existed? How would Joseph Smith have written such a text without anyone seeing it happen?

That of course is the million dollar question. With some thought and imagination coupled with research, I think evidence can be compiled and arranged to show that Smith was working off pre-written script that he loaded into his HAT for dictation. Looking at the whole matter from this new vantage point may help in revealing more about Smith's translation.

It's a whole new game now!

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Practice makes perfect.

Bro. Oliver will be knocking on the door soon.

[_Dr Moore]

An instant classic.

The misdirection wouldn’t have required a full text to read from, merely notes as signposts, if any notes were used at all.

The hat - not the stone - as key element in the magic trick, could also have served the very simple role of hiding Joseph’s eyes from the scribe. Both freeing Joseph’s ocular senses from distraction, and hiding suspicious eye movements from the scribe. It has long been known that what people do with their eyes can betray deception or creativity in real time.

[_Analytics]

This was a fascinating podcast. Quick question. How do we know the hat was white?

I'd always gone with a fairly simple (and perhaps lazy) theory that Joseph Smith simply had the unique talents to produce the Book of Mormon, and felt no need to think there was anything more to it than that. But now, RFM has me reconsidering if that's all there was to it. What was up with the hat?

RFM's insights into the magic show aspects of this reminds me of "The Lucy Code" by Dave Trebas. Trebas speculates that what's most likely is that the mastermind behind the Book of Mormon was really Lucy Mack Smith, with Hyrum Smith being the main brains of the operation. According to Trebas, what most likely happened is that Lucy, Hyrum, and Joseph Smith Sr. are the ones who actually wrote it, and in order to impress their audience, they pretended that the charismatic yet uneducated Joseph Smith Jr. wrote it. According to Trebas, what really happened was that Joseph Smith would memorize a couple of pages, and would then stick his head into the hat and recite what he had memorized. He'd then take a break, memorize the next few pages, and repeat.

A weakness of Trebas's theory was the relative implausibility of memorizing the pages and then going through the weird ritual with the hat. However, if the hat was actually translucent and it was possible to read something in the hat while your head was in it, this bolster's the rest of Trebas's theory.

If you are interested, here is a video of Trebas's theory. I heard a book would eventually come out, but who knows if it will happen.

Most of this video is about the circumstantial arguments that Joseph Smith Sr, Lucy, and Hyrum are the main authors, and an alternative history about what their original objectives were, and then how those objectives evolved. Joseph Smith Jr is just the front man.

You can fast forward to 52:15 for how Trebas imagines the actual translation magic trick went down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3MluItWQE

[_Dr Exiled]

You had me at the rock in the hat show, Joseph Smith. Of course you performed a magic act for the already wanting to believe audience. Who else would have fallen for the disappearing plates act you did as an encore? Bravo Joseph Smith, bravo!

And more importantly, BRAVO to RFM/Consiglieri for his wonderful podcasts!!!

[_Dantana]

I've always just kinda figured that O. Cowdery was in on it. I mean, he did claim that P B & J (Peter James and John) appeared to him, right. Obviously that didn't happen so, anything coming from him is tainted. Hard to tell where the actual manuscript came from but, I think the rock in the hat show was just for the stray visitor with Joe spouting gibberish. How could they know if that gibberish was actually in the finished book. In this concerted conspiracy, any purported timelines are irrelevant.

[_Dr Exiled]

I've wondered if it was actually written over a period of time from just before composition of the lost 116 up and until the printing of the first addition was finished. There is a lot of time between when the magic show ended in the summer of 1829 and when the first addition was completed in March, 1830. A lot of composition and revision could have occurred in that time. Maybe the lack of punctuation could have been contrived to make it look old worldly for the printer to see so he would then tell the world about the curious work. Then, it was always a work in progress with subsequent revisions.

Dantana makes a good point that the rock 'n hat show could have been merely a diversion to make the composition a fantastical, "religious" miracle. I think that is the safe view and more than likely what happened. Perhaps Oliver Cowdery participated in the manufacture of the book. That seems like a good possibility. Hyrum seemed to be the smart one in the Smith clan and I think he participated. However, we will probably never know how it was actually composed although the 19th century is clearly where it should be placed.