Kevin Graham wrote:I'm not sure you appreciate just what kind of corner they've painted themselves into. They do it out of necessity. It is sad to see it, and I almost feel sorry for them. They need the source for the Book of Abraham to me missing or destroyed. It has to be. For them it is God's way of keeping people faithful, otherwise if they were available then they woudl prove the Church true, and nobody would need faith (just saying that makes me want to throw up, but that is exactly how Mormons think, and I should know).
It seems to me, though, that the catalyst argument has the advantage of being consistent with their treatment of the seer stone. I mean, obviously one could imagine the stone to be purely unnecessary, but Joseph Smith seems to have thought it was necessary, or at least, a putatively sincere Smith might be supposed to think this way. Similarly, the other 'artifacts' might be argued to have become the inspiration for Smith's unique revelations. Whatever his faults, Smith seems to have tapped into the use of interest in the ancient world as a springboard for what he was doing, whether it was buried treasure, Hebrew Indians, or mummies.
As to the rest of your post, I do understand what you are saying. I presented the very same excuses for polygamy to investigators when I was a missionary all those decades ago. I felt betrayed when I found out what a load of hokum these explanations were. I remember being chewed out by a ward mission leader when I suggested to an investigator that the Biblical material in the Book of Mormon had often been copied over because there was no point for Smith to retranslate what had already been done elsewhere. Heck, I was making up my own baloney apologetics on the fly. That one got me an earful of chastisement, though.
It just seems to me to be fundamentally unfair to the people who give so much to the LDS cause that they have these bogus arguments and misrepresentations thrust upon them. I know I felt that way when I discovered the misleading explanations, and it seems like you felt that way in spades.