Themis wrote:Actually the God being an idiot was not serious if you want God to also be the creator, ets. All you are left with is Joseph made it up. Now he could be knowing he made it all up, or he believed all the made up stuff, or he knew he was making up some and believed some. The evidence just does not support divine assistance.
You are convinced that Joseph Smith (at least some of the time) knew he was defrauding his believers. How about a solid CFR for that?
...We already know the Book of Mormon is fiction, so he had to know he was making it up with his gold plates and such. Even the identifications of the papyri don't point to him believing it unless he was a moron.
No, we don't KNOW the Book of Mormon is fiction. The evidence points to it being fiction more than a historical record. But that's only if you insist on a full hemispheric model. (I believe that that is what was in Joseph Smith's head as he dictated the text; later, with the Mesoamerican explorations beginning to arrive in printed reports, he started to change his mind to a LGT model, which caused problems with earlier statements others said that he had made vis-a-vis Book of Mormon geography.)
You know of course that Joseph Smith was creating an "Egyptian grammar" to aid in translating. He was sincerely trying to expand his understanding. At the time Egyptian was a virtually unknown language, so Joseph Smith was legitimately confident in his growing abilities. He appears to have been 95%+ mistaken, however. Calling him a moron because he had no knowledge above and beyond the Egyptologists of the day is hardly fair. When he was "in a vision" his whole manner changed, according to witnesses. Trouble was, it came and went without his say-so. In between times, he was on his own in the "translating" thing, which appears to have been vexatious to him, made him impatient, and he forged ahead on his own, like any hobby or compulsive interest. It got him in trouble.
But we have the texts of his "visions", or his writings under that influence. That they do not match up to what paltry artifacts we have is hardly a destruction of the texts themselves, for the reasons I have earlier advanced: "God" uses mediums of transmission entirely outside the ken of physical artifacts.
...I don;t think you understand what evidence means. The criticism already takes into account he may have believed some of his made up.stuff, just not all of it.
What parts of his assertions did he not believe himself?
...Religious charlatans can vary quite a bit. It also doesn't take into account a pious fraud. Joesph loved to be the center of attention, and loved people to think he was a great man, prophet, seer, etc.
Yes, everybody who studies Joseph Smith more than just a little knows of his infamous moments when he bragged in front of crowds. Bragging, loving attention, has not the slightest impact on whether or not a person knows s/he is a fraud. What exactly did Joseph Smith believe was fraudulent that he asserted about himself?
Interesting you provide evidence against your assertion about how charlatans would act. Joseph fell for the Greek Psalter even though he should have been more cautious of exposing himself. He loved to do it. Think Zelph the white Lamanite.
He was making an Egyptian grammar. He was learning Greek and German and Hebrew. He took a hubristic stab at the Psalter. How, in the lifetime of his generation, was the story of Zelph debunked? Has it been thoroughly debunked even now? Or is it just too specific to be anything more than funny? I think that "Zelph" falls into one of those remembrances of Joseph Smith that add color and no content. At the time, he might have been spinning a yarn to keep the hardships of Zion's Camp from unmanning his friends, and later those he yarned took it too seriously. That would be a weakness in Joseph Smith, and he had as many or more as other men.
The texts don't stand up where we can test them. This shows it is really so unlikely he is getting any divine help, and almost certainly making this up. Some of it he would have knows is made up. Now one can like some of it if they think it is good advice, but that is all it really end up being.
How do you "test" texts that come metaphysically to someone? What parts did he know were made up? The "wisdom literature" is the most beneficial, useful part of the Old Testament, imho. The stories convey readily to the story-loving mind. But the factual assertions, the historicity, of any scriptures, are not shown by physical evidence, except in the most tenuous or even misapplied selective use of that growing body of evidence.
This is just more make it up as you go with what ever you like. You ignore the evidence and and make unreasonable arguments that since we cannot know anything absolutely all things are on equal footing. I really hope you don't do this kind of thinking with things like money.
That's the beauty of religious faith: ditto for faith in unbelief. There will never arrive a point in time where we actually KNOW of a certain about anything. That's because we are finite, with all the limitations that finiteness implies. "God" will always be infinitely beyond us. Our world is crammed with mysteries that we will forever be uncovering or having revealed to us. Joseph Smith's religion needs evolving, not discarding. It was revealed to mid 19th century seekers. Most of it still works today, but changing pov necessarily alters the understanding we have of early Mormons and their religious world view. I'm not "making it up as I go". I am pointing out that to fall for a rigid rejection, based on nothing but desire and opinion, is the very same thing as falling for a rigid belief: both points of view are guilty of bias. Believers have their criteria for faith. Disbelievers have faith in what they think they know alternatively. I would like some hard proof that Joseph Smith knew he was a fraud. If he was merely a gifted "moron" then most of the world's humans are not even that smart....