Joseph Lied: Why The Afore's Joseph Smith Trilemma Is A Logical Dead End

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The three basic options for explaining Joseph Smith seem to be, using the appropriate technical terminology, as follows:

He was lying.
He was nuts.
He was telling the truth.

But option 1 appears to be incompatible with the historical evidence and option 2 has no real evidence to support it. Now what?

In the Afore's latest offering, he presents the classic religious trilemma and applies it to Joseph Smith. According to the Afore, Joseph Smith was either 1) lying, 2) nuts, or 3) telling the truth. The Afore asserts that the first two options lack evidence and then attempts to force a Prophet of God conclusion by default. However, a deeper, more honest look at the historical record suggests that the Afore's trilemma is a false one.

1. Was Joseph a Liar? (The Evidence for Deception)
The Afore's claim that lying is incompatible with the historical evidence, is extremely difficult to maintain when confronted with several documented instances of objective untruths/lies. Let's take a look at just a few.

Public Denials of Polygamy: In May 1844, Joseph Smith stood before a crowd and publicly declared he had only one wife. In reality, historical records and current LDS Church essays acknowledge Joseph had been married to over 30 women at that time. To any objective observer, Joseph's public denials are clear and unambiguous lies.

The Kirtland Safety Society: In 1837, Smith founded a bank (and I use that term loosely) in Ohio, claiming a revelation from God and confidently proclaimed to the Saints that it would "swallow up all other banks." When the bank completely collapsed shortly thereafter, it left thousands of his followers in financial ruin. To an objective observer, Joseph used the revelation from God claim to mislead followers into investing their life savings into a doomed and fraudulent venture.

The "Glass Looking" Trial: Court documents from 1826 show Smith was charged and convicted as a disorderly person for treasure-seeking via glass looking. To an objective observer, since no treasure was ever found, Joseph appears to have deliberately deceived his employers.

The Book of Abraham: Smith claimed to translate Egyptian papyri written by Abraham’s own hand. Modern Egyptology has since identified these as common funerary texts (the Breathing Permit of Hôr) from a period centuries after Abraham. To an objective observer, Joseph dishonestly claimed linguistic abilities he simply did not possess.

2. Was Joseph "Nuts"? (The Evidence for Pathology)
The Afore's assertion that there is no evidence for mental pathology ignores several recognized psychological frameworks that explain Smith's behavior:

Grandiosity and Narcissism: Smith’s behavior aligns very well with patterns of narcissism and grandiosity. Joseph had himself ordained as King over the Earth, established a shadow government (the Council of Fifty), ran for president and formed a massive private militia.

The Power of Sincerity/Pious Fraud: The evidence for a pious fraud argument suggests that Smith could have truly believed he was seeing God (biological or psychological origins) without those visions being an objective reality. This would help explain the many different versions of the First Vision and his numerous false revelations.

The Afore’s argument ends with a "Now what?", implying that once options one and two are dismissed, we are logically forced to accept Joseph Smith's divine claims. However, because the historical evidence does support numerous instances of deception (Option 1) and the psychological record does suggest evidence of potential pathology (Option 2), the Afore's trilema fails. We aren't forced into Option 3. Instead, the Afore's silly trilemma collapses under the weight of the Afore's own many historical omissions.

Now what, Afore? You claimed there was no evidence, but I’ve provided it. So, where does that leave your trilemma? The logic is broken, and the historical record is clear. Game, set, match and the ball is in your court.

[drumdude]

the three basic options for explaining Joseph Smith seem to be, using the appropriate technical terminology, as follows:

He was lying.
He was nuts.
He was telling the truth.

But option 1 appears to be incompatible with the historical evidence and option 2 has no real evidence to support it. Now what?

LOL

[I Have Questions]

Was Peterson in a rush? Trying to portray as either a liar, nuts, or truthful, is an effort to force Joseph Smith into a tiny one-dimensional character box. Joseph, could quite easily be seen as telling the truth on occasion. He was also seen to be a bit whacky at times, and also there are examples of him being dishonest. However, it is irrefutable that he lied in some key moments. When he hid his plural marriages from his first wife, Emma, he was lying (per the Church’s definition of honesty). When he stood up in court and stated he had only one wife, he was lying -to the court, or to the women who thought they were in a plural marriage with Joseph.

Joseph lied about The Book of Mormon. It’s an indisputable fact. Joseph stated at every turn that The Book of Mormon was 100% a translation of ancient plates. The Book of Mormon contains KJV Bible content, verbatim, which was not on ancient plates. It was copied from a KJV Bible that he had access to. Fact.

I’d like Peterson to explain what he classes as “nuts”. Is he talking about mental health issues, personality disorders, intelligence levels…what?

His cheap attempt to close debate about Joseph down by offering his readers an either/or of just 3 ring-fenced options is the exact “crime” that the articles he links to are criticising people for making. Shoddy stuff. Does he write these blog posts whilst fidgeting in line at Chick-fil-a?

[Physics Guy]

Yeah, the trilemma itself is reasonable enough. Barring tedious wrangling over edge cases, those three options seem to cover the possible options.

Dismissing the "crazy" option because there is no evidence to support it is bizarre, though. Even if there were indeed no such evidence, the whole point of the logical exercise of exhaustively enumerating possible cases is that if you can rule out all the other cases then the last option must be true, even if there is no direct evidence for it whatever. If you have somehow rejected the possibility that Smith was lying, then you're left with choosing between madman and prophet. Even those who believe in prophets don't consider them more common than about one in ten billion humans, while the incidence of mental illness is many millions of times higher. So, if lying were somehow off the table, the remaining dilemma would point very definitely to Smith being crazy, even if there were no direct evidence for that at all.

It's also bizarre to rule out lying, which is the obviously most likely option by far, with a breezy declaration that lying is inconsistent with historical evidence. First of all, lying is inherently difficult to dismiss with historical evidence. The usual standards of historical reasoning presume that people don't deliberately mislead, but that's just what con artists do. Saying that historical evidence is incompatible with fraud is like saying that the stage magician must really have created a rabbit from nothing because we have signed statements from spectators saying that they didn't see anything in the hat. D'uh: it was a trick. The best that one could conclude from historical evidence would be that if a thing was a fraud then it was a good one. Good frauds have occurred many more times in world history than prophets, so again the choice between liar and prophet would obviously be for the liar, even if nothing in the available historical evidence offered any suggestion of fraud.

But then Joseph Smith's case is far from that best case in which a historical fraud by a narcissist has left no obvious tells. On the contrary, there are so many red flags in the behaviour of Smith and his associates that a neutral observer would vote for fraud every time, even if the alternative were something much less unlikely than prophethood.

So the whole trilemma concept is just window dressing, and Peterson's argument reduces to the familiar apologetic attempt to argue away the red flags. It's understandable that a Mormon apologist would want to take a breather from that hopeless struggle and step back to survey the range of logical options. It's like a bruised and battered fighter who has been knocked down many times without ever landing a punch on the other guy, calling time out from the match to explain that there are three possibilities: either he'll lose, or it'll be a draw, or he'll win. Yeah, champ, those are indeed the three possible outcomes. I hope you enjoy this chance to list them as if they were equally likely, because up in the ring, they are not.

[I Have Questions]

It’s actually only two choices, with two sub options in each. Joseph lied, or Joseph didn’t lie. And then it was either deliberate or unwitting. But first Peterson needs to identify the topic at hand with which to assess Joseph’s behaviour.

The Book of Mormon? Plural marriage? The First Vision? What? What aspect or claim or behaviour or action within Joseph’s life are we looking at in order to decide if Joseph was lying or telling the truth?

Joseph didn’t lie about everything. Joseph didn’t tell the truth about everything. Despite Peterson trying to coerce his readers into picking one position. I’m sorry Dan, but your classifications are silly and arbitrary. If you want a grown up conversation about an aspect of Joseph’s life or behaviour then post something where you treat your readership as grown ups.

[Kishkumen]

The reason I don't think this works is because people lie. Period. And we know Joseph Smith lied to Emma about polygamy. So, he lied. And yet, that does not mean that he lied about everything. Everyone tells lies. Good heavens.

[drumdude]

The reason I don't think this works is because people lie. Period. And we know Joseph Smith lied to Emma about polygamy. So, he lied. And yet, that does not mean that he lied about everything. Everyone tells lies. Good heavens.

Exactly! We already have plenty of evidence that he lied when it was personally expedient

[Doctor Scratch]

Quite lame. Yet another tired old rehash from the President of the Recyclepretaor--er, Interpreter. Is he really bereft of new ideas? Well, I'll toss him a bone: Why not pen a blog entry exploring the reason why none of the "Great Men" he admires so much have ever been convinced by the claims of Mormonism? Plenty of these blog entries involve him rubbing shoulders with Milton Friedman, or George Will, or whoever else, and yet...Why haven't any of these guys converted to Mormonism? Why not Margaret Barker?

If the case he lays out re: Joseph Smith is so simple and persuasive, then why haven't any of these folks bought into it?

[sock puppet]

Peterson knows that Mormonism does not stand up to rigorous intellectual scrutiny, and he will not persuade those individuals to join. That is not his purpose with the trilemma. Rather it is help members to 'doubt their doubts' until their faith is assailed yet again by new facts. He's trying to add a bit of relief to a heavy, near breaking shelf of a member.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

People to lie. Joseph Smith lied. He lied about some very key foundational concepts of the Mormon faith. Plural Marriage, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Kinderhook plates, etc, etc. The LDS Apologists are not fully truthful. Peterson lies. He knows this straw man argument is disingenuous to say the least. If DCP and his apologist friends are so confident in their "truth" claims, then let them try to publish in real peer-reviewed journals. Good luck with that.