Saying you can only go “as far as you can without stepping on Joseph’s toes” is actually the point. Am I right to understand that the question of false invocation of God is off-limits and that Joseph can lie about that because he is exempt?
Yes, Joseph Smith is always held exempt from consequences of God's moral laws. A prophet is only a mere man and human, but he is exempt from punishment that all others are held accountable for. That is the essence of Mormonism on Joseph Smith. Sure he made little kind of sort of errors, but he is above the law and is not to be held accountable for that which anyone else in the entire world would be excommunicated for. This has consistently been MG's stance, and it stinks like smell on sh*t for its abject hypocrisy.
Read what I said. He's not exempt. Please do not put words in my mouth.
Yes, Joseph Smith is always held exempt from consequences of God's moral laws. A prophet is only a mere man and human, but he is exempt from punishment that all others are held accountable for. That is the essence of Mormonism on Joseph Smith. Sure he made little kind of sort of errors, but he is above the law and is not to be held accountable for that which anyone else in the entire world would be excommunicated for. This has consistently been MG's stance, and it stinks like smell on sh*t for its abject hypocrisy.
Read what I said. He's not exempt. Please do not put words in my mouth.
Not specifying Joseph's sins in the context of the latest part of this thread isn't about protecting Joseph, but escaping a fork.
To say Joseph Smith did everything right reveals God using crooked lines. And if God didn't use crooked lines, then Joseph Smith made some serious mistakes. Joseph Smith is getting thrown under the bus to protect the recent position taken that God doesn't author the crooked lines. And by that I don't necessarily mean sin, but complex moral tests that rise well above the simple gospel of faith and repentance.
"if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then it's probably, you got a problem." -- Lindsey Graham
question for Limnor. I wasn't in the military, but I seem to recall friends who were saying that in basic training, drill sergeants often play mind games. Give conflicting commands and leave you desperate, not knowing what you're supposed to do. The implication is there are benefits to this in terms of, I dunno, either making you stronger, weeding out the weak ones, or something. What are your thoughts?
"if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then it's probably, you got a problem." -- Lindsey Graham
question for Limnor. I wasn't in the military, but I seem to recall friends who were saying that in basic training, drill sergeants often play mind games. Give conflicting commands and leave you desperate, not knowing what you're supposed to do. The implication is there are benefits to this in terms of, I dunno, either making you stronger, weeding out the weak ones, or something. What are your thoughts?
When I went to OCS, the last two weeks were when candidate officers got a “peek behind the curtain” and were in charge when the drill instructors weren’t around.
The idea behind conflicting orders is to simulate the chaos of battle so that you will learn to maintain bearing under stressful situations. Early in training, it serves to disorient trainees so that confusion and fear serve to reduce individual thinking.
Not specifying Joseph's sins in the context of the latest part of this thread isn't about protecting Joseph, but escaping a fork.
To say Joseph Smith did everything right reveals God using crooked lines. And if God didn't use crooked lines, then Joseph Smith made some serious mistakes. Joseph Smith is getting thrown under the bus to protect the recent position taken that God doesn't author the crooked lines. And by that I don't necessarily mean sin, but complex moral tests that rise well above the simple gospel of faith and repentance.
I think you’ve accurately identified the ambiguity that keeps causing trouble here. Saying God can “write straight with crooked lines” only works if the crookedness belongs to human weakness or perception, not to God’s commands themselves.
If polygamy—including polyandry, deception, and secrecy—was Joseph’s doing, then that’s a human failure and should be owned as such. If it was commanded by God, then the crookedness is no longer just human perception or messy history—it’s attributed to God.
And a God that is self-described as “the truth” is not one which anyone should expect to lie to achieve a goal.
Which means the person that attributes a lie to God doesn’t know who God is.
Joseph Smith is getting thrown under the bus to protect the recent position taken that God doesn't author the crooked lines. And by that I don't necessarily mean sin, but complex moral tests that rise well above the simple gospel of faith and repentance.
I think I see where you are going. Yes, Joseph could claim that God gave him conflicting guidance as a moral test. But once God is invoked to require deception, it stops being guidance and becomes false representation. The simpler explanation is that Joseph used God to cover his indiscretions.
Joseph Smith is getting thrown under the bus to protect the recent position taken that God doesn't author the crooked lines. And by that I don't necessarily mean sin, but complex moral tests that rise well above the simple gospel of faith and repentance.
I think I see where you are going. Yes, Joseph could claim that God gave him conflicting guidance as a moral test. But once God is invoked to require deception, it stops being guidance and becomes false representation. The simpler explanation is that Joseph used God to cover his indiscretions.
It appears to me that either God authorizes deception as a moral test, or Joseph knowingly fabricated divine sanction. But there is a third category that MG consistently refuses to engage with: human beings can sincerely believe they are acting under divine guidance while still being mistaken, self-deceived, or rationalizing under pressure. Acknowledging that category doesn’t excuse wrongdoing, but it does avoid turning every error into either divine immorality or conscious fraud. That middle space matters if we’re trying to describe how real people actually behave under claimed religious experience.
Not specifying Joseph's sins in the context of the latest part of this thread isn't about protecting Joseph, but escaping a fork.
To say Joseph Smith did everything right reveals God using crooked lines. And if God didn't use crooked lines, then Joseph Smith made some serious mistakes. Joseph Smith is getting thrown under the bus to protect the recent position taken that God doesn't author the crooked lines. And by that I don't necessarily mean sin, but complex moral tests that rise well above the simple gospel of faith and repentance.
I think you’ve accurately identified the ambiguity that keeps causing trouble here. Saying God can “write straight with crooked lines” only works if the crookedness belongs to human weakness or perception, not to God’s commands themselves.
If polygamy—including polyandry, deception, and secrecy—was Joseph’s doing, then that’s a human failure and should be owned as such. If it was commanded by God, then the crookedness is no longer just human perception or messy history—it’s attributed to God.
And a God that is self-described as “the truth” is not one which anyone should expect to lie to achieve a goal.
Which means the person that attributes a lie to God doesn’t know who God is.
It’s imperative to minimise Joseph’s actions with regards to things like polygamy. Because if it’s admitted it casts strong suspicion on his other claims of divine involvement in things like gold plates, angelic visions etc. once it’s accepted that Joseph was a convincing liar we can clearly see the con man nature that was within him. We know objectively that he conned people throughout his life - People who hired him to seek treasure, his own wife, the judicial system, the Kinderhook plates thing, the Egyptian mummy thing, etc etc etc. His life is sprinkled throughout with known con man activity.
Last edited by I Have Questions on Fri Jan 16, 2026 8:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.
I did officer training in Canada under a reserve scheme where it took place in summers over a few years, with some part-time duty in reserve units in between. After the first summer everyone was proud to be part of this super-competent military organisation, but then part-way through the second summer we couldn't believe how badly things had fallen apart and gone downhill within barely a year.
The truth that we eventually recognised was that only our perspective had changed. Once we knew more, we noticed the screw-ups that had always been there, but we'd been in too much awe to notice at first. In the first summer we bought excuses for screw-ups and believed that they were all part of a perfect plan to train us, but by year two we knew how much nonsense that was.
Other people's mileage may vary, but my guess is that things like issuing conflicting orders to teach the trainees some lesson are really just excuses for dumb mistakes. Military operations are full of mistakes, not because military leaders are dumb but because their job is incredibly hard, managing lots of people in complex tasks that are never the same, on absurdly short timelines.
Once everyone has more experience, everyone sees the mistakes, and nobody buys the excuses any more, so they're pointless, and people don't even try them—at least, not so much. The early training phase with naïve recruits, however, is this blissful period in which every sergeant gets to be infallible if they can just maintain the pose. So a lot of them do try to maintain it.
I imagine that some of this may indeed be relevant to Mormon leaders, who are supposed to be divinely selected and guided, even if not quite infallible. What I wonder is how many Mormons ever make it out of boot camp, so to speak, and learn to see through the pose.
