BOM Defenses

 

Tracy Armstrong

 · Jan 25

Oh bless your heart.

It’s always a source of mixed pity and amusement to me when people who know little or nothing about our church or its history assume that THEIR mighty intellect has somehow discovered some dirty little secret that no faithful member of the church in the past 200 years of weathering attacks and false accusations, has ever bothered to research.

Our ranks include world class scientists, historians, judges, Biblical scholars, educators, giants of industry - yet folks like you assume we’re a bunch of backwater, uneducated hicks who’ve never cracked a book.

It’s the opposite - we’ve researched every inch of our history, questioned every piece of doctrine, studied every verse of the Bible in an attempt to better understand the Book of Mormon (and vice-versa) because they each testify of the other (and you would know that if you’d ever researched it yourself.)

Just for fun, let me share with you exactly what Joseph Smith would have had to “pick up from dime novels” to have made up the Book of Mormon.

In fact, I challenge you (or anyone else) to write a comparable book (length, complexity, consistency). It only has to hold up to intense scrutiny for experts and scholars for…say 25 years rather than 200 and counting.

I’ll give you a whole YEAR to do it. You don’t have to memorize it and dictate it (like Joseph did.)

And you can use the internet.

Are you as smart as a 19th century farm boy with a 3rd grade education? 😂

Here’s what your creation will have to stand up to:

This was written by Dave Whittle (who actually HAS researched the Book of Mormon and church history - probably since before you were born.).

I’ve highlighted a few of my favorites.

The problem with the premise of [the] question (that Joseph Smith “wrote” The Book of Mormon) is that:

1. The original manuscript is in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery, who maintained throughout his life that Joseph Smith dictated it to him.
2. There is a monumental difference between writing a book and dictating a book. I’m an author of a book (“Cyberspace: The Human Dimension,” W.H. Freeman, New York, 1987) about the same length as The Book of Mormon but not as complex in scope and narrative nor as creative in concept and content. I would have to laugh if someone asked me to dictate a book of the size and complexity of my book in 65 days, much less one like the Book of Mormon. It took me 2 years and 9 months with a word processor, a content editor, and a copy editor.
   
   Joseph, on the other hand, dictated to a scribe the entire contents of what is now The Book of Mormon over a period of between 65 and 80 days in 1829.
   
   And I’ve found more mistakes in the first edition of my book as published than have been found and corrected in the first edition of The Book of Mormon, which has undergone umpteen orders of magnitude more scrutiny than my book will ever undergo.

But let’s go with your premise anyway, since it makes sense that if Joseph actually dictated that kind of book, especially while looking into a hat, that would have been an unprecedented miracle - a literally unbelievable and inexplicable miracle of human achievement.

So how could Joseph have “written” it? Here’s how:

• He would have had to have started when he was 14, making up stories to tell family and pastors about visions and angels and golden plates to buy himself time and begin to try to establish himself as a person of importance to accomplish his ambitions. And he would have had to have been persistent in his ambitions and imaginative story-telling in the face of pastors rejecting his stories as being of the devil. As a teenager.[1]
• He would have had to have inspired such credibility with his family members that everyone in his family (parents and 3 older and 6 younger siblings) would believe his stories even before he wrote the book, support him as he wrote it, believe it was of God after it was written, and ultimately devote their lives to following him through the thick and thin of subsequent persecutions that arose because of the book that resulted in his death and the death of two other brothers within a two-month period.
• He would have had to have been a prodigious reader and to have studied people so that by age 23, when he dictated the work, he would have had about as good an understanding of human nature and societies and cultures as Plato, Shakespeare, Dickens, or other much older writers of great literature had.
• In order to accomplish the plagiarism or at least idea-borrowing that some critics suggest he accomplished, he would have had to purchase a $2 membership in the nearest lending library five miles away, and take time from his 6-days-a-week chores and work while eking out a living, so he could study one or more of the sources that have been attributed as potential inspirations over the years, such as “Manuscript Lost,” “View of the Hebrews,” “The Golden Pot,” “The Wonders of Nature,” “The Late War,” and/or a huge number of philosophers and deep religious leaders and thinkers. Just so he could borrow a few roughly similar phrases or ideas from each. Oh - but he would have also needed prophetic anticipation of the availability of those works as sources of inspiration for the stories he told his family and others beginning in 1823 about the visits of the angel Moroni, the golden plates, and the civilizations described on the plates that he was led to. Because none of those works were in that library until 1826, and even then, few of those works were there that we know of.
• He would have had to have studied The Bible to learn it to a degree that most Biblical scholars have never approached, memorizing long passages of Isaiah and the Gospels, and then put sections of those sacred books into a creatively consistent new context with some minor modifications in wording and meaning that actually indicate improvements in consistency with the new worldview and theology that was created through the publication of the book he wrote.
• While writing the book, he would have had to have created an entirely new theology embedded in the narrative such that renowned religious scholars and devotees of a wide variety of faiths would study it for centuries to come, converting many. It would need to be of such quality and depth that at least one of the disbelieving scholars who devoted serious time to its study would be forced to conclude that Joseph was a “religious genius;” with another saying his theology should be considered, in some very important ways, “a rebirth of Judaism within the messianic structure of Christianity.”[2]
• This new religious paradigm he created when he wrote his book would need to be so compelling that millions would actually believe that Jesus Christ himself appeared to Joseph to call him as a prophet to actually accomplish “the restitution of all things” prophesied by the apostle Peter.[3]
• It would also need to harmonize all of the scriptures in the Old Testament with all of the scriptures in the New Testament such that hundreds of thousands of missionaries would not only be willing to go to all parts of the world to do what Jesus commanded his disciples to do, namely go into all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but also find inspiration about what they’re doing by reading, during daily hour-long study, his book along with the Bible and the other “revelations,” as he and others called them, he dictated to various scribes in subsequent years. He would have needed to learn how to somehow transform his appearance during at least some of those dictations in order to inspire followers to write about it using descriptions like “He looked as though a searchlight was inside his face.”[4]
• These other revelations would need to add substantially to the understanding of what would come to be called the “Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ,” deceiving millions into believing not only that over a dozen ancient American prophets (all descended from a prophet from Jerusalem named Lehi) had written the book on golden plates, including a section describing how Jesus Christ himself appeared to believers in the ancient Americas, telling them that they were those He was describing when He told his disciples in Jerusalem: “other sheep I have which are not of this fold…They too will hear my voice.”[5]
• He would have needed to find textbooks (which arguably did not exist anywhere on earth at that time) on Hebrew naming conventions, idioms, language artifacts, customs, geography, and history - so advanced that they would have included many things to include in his book NOT contained in The Bible - in order to create names, phrases, idioms, and language so consistent with the culture and language of the authors alleged by the content of the book (and inconsistent with Joseph’s American origins) that it would convince numerous experts and translators of its Semetic and Middle Eastern origins, converting many Jews while enabling them to retain their sense of being Jewish[6], and validating Latter-day Saint scholars while baffling almost everyone else.
  OR he would have had to make those things up and be so lucky as to have time prove his inventions and imaginations completely consistent with ancient languages, history, and culture.[7] [8]
• He would have had to have learned Early Modern English so well, not only from the King James version of the Bible or Shakespeare, but many other texts from the 15th through the late 17th century, that he could write his book using grammar and word usage consistent with Early Modern English, such that later linguists studying his work would be forced to conclude that the critical text of the Book of Mormon contains examples of Early Modern English grammar and word usage that were not available to Joseph Smith in his day.
• He would then need to join Oliver in the presumptuous editing of the original (critical) text of the book to make it sound better to modern ears and read better to modern sensibilities, as if he really didn’t know that what he was writing was more consistent with Early Modern English he had dictated to Oliver than it was with the colonial American English of Joseph’s day.[9]
• He would have had to have found a way to learn about people, politics, human nature, forms of apostasy, ancient American (Mayan and Olmec) cultures, and modern sophistry - all things that were only observable on a relatively limited scale in Palmyra, New York where Joseph grew up.
• He would have had to make guesses about the people inhabiting ancient America such that the timeframes in his book about when the “Jaredites” arrived in the Americas as they were led by God and how they destroyed themselves two hundred years after Lehi’s family started another group in the Americas, would coincide nearly exactly with the timeframes later attributed by scholars to the rise circa 1500 BCE and fall circa 400 BCE of the Olmec peoples.
• He would have had to create a work of incredible narrative consistency, involving a history of the record itself as well as prophecies both fulfilled, soon to be fulfilled, and yet to be fulfilled - including the treatment of Native Americans and Jews, the gathering of the Jews once again to Jerusalem, and the establishment and nature and growth and success of the Church he had not yet created.[10]
• He would have had to create numerous different writing styles - one for each of the prophets he would allege wrote the various books - such that advanced academic research in stylometry using computers 180 years later, including research done by skeptics and critics of your book, would not only be unable to refute the claim of multiple authorship, but would actually support it.[11]
• He would have had to somehow overcome his educational deficiencies or at least hide his secret educational attainments at all times except when writing or dictating The Book of Mormon. No one will argue that Joseph Smith was not a genius, but anyone who has seen his early writings in his own handwriting
  would have no trouble agreeing with his older and better educated wife, Emma - who believed Joseph was a prophet of God until the day she died - when she told her son that as a young man, Joseph “could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter.”[12]
• He would have had to have written this work before he reached the age of 20 when he began to dictate what he called a “translation,” memorized it, and then destroyed every trace of the original.
  OR since scribes say he was reading the text of the book from “seer stones” he called “Urim and Thummim”[13] while looking at the stones in a hat to keep out other light, he perhaps could have somehow smuggled the pages into the hat one at a time along with some not-yet-invented light source so he could read it with his head in the hat such that none of the scribes ever saw a trace of any such page.
  He couldn’t have conspired with Cowdery early on while some of the manuscript was being dictated to two others, since Cowdery was a respected school teacher in Palmyra who heard about Joseph’s work already in progress in Harmony, Pennsylvania, from Joseph’s family. Earlier scribes were Joseph’s wife Emma and an originally skeptical farmer, Martin Harris, who lost 116 pages of the original translation but who later mortgaged his farm to pay for the publication. Harris would later claim that he had been shown the plates by an angel while in the presence of Joseph Smith.
• He would have therefore had to then find someone to pretend to be a very articulate and convincing angel to deceive Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Mary Whitmer - all of whom said the angel Moroni appeared to them. But since the three male witnesses said the angel was “clothed in glory” — an obviously difficult (impossible?) fraud to pull off — Joseph must have actually convinced each of those individuals, whose integrity no one who knew them personally ever questioned, to join his conspiracy and fraud or at least see whatever Joseph wanted them to see. Perhaps Joseph could have taught himself to be an expert hypnotist, in addition to all of the other genius-grade traits he would have had to have possessed in order to “write” The Book of Mormon.
• He would have had to convince Martin Harris against the wishes of Mrs. Harris to mortgage his farm to pay for the publication of the first 5,000 copies.
• He would have had to recruit the earliest dozens of an army of salesman (called “missionaries”) who believed in his book enough to go out, at their own expense, and portray it as holy writ - either giving it away or selling it without taking a commission.
• He would have had to try and fail to make a profit on the book, mostly because the salesmen thought they were divinely appointed missionaries called to be part of a great work of God[14], and gave too many of the books away to be successful at their salesmanship. They could get people to be baptized and join the church Joseph and five other believers founded, but they were such lousy salesmen that they often didn’t even bother to get people to pay for the book, leaving Joseph unable to repay Martin Harris even half the cost of the publication, much less repay him as promised for the costs of its publication. And Martin was apparently OK with that, since he believed Joseph was a prophet of God.
• He would have had to figure out how to do what very few other human beings have ever been able to do or bold enough to attempt, which is to write the entire work as if it were inspired by God through multiple prophets, including a bold invitation
  to readers to pray about the work to know if it’s of God. And he would need to have such advanced knowledge of human psychology that, to this day, no one can explain how or why so many millions of believers are passionate in their willingness to testify that their sincere prayers about the truthfulness of a book written by a man have been answered such that they actually believe it to be of divine origins because they (including me) have had powerful spiritual manifestations they all describe in similar terms and attribute to the “Holy Ghost” or “Spirit of God.”
• This so-called “manifestation of the Spirit” would need to be completely consistent with what Jesus said as recorded in the Bible about being “born of …the Spirit”[15] and what John promised Jesus would do to believers when he said “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”[16] such that every generation of believers in the book Joseph wrote would join in singing a beloved hymn/anthem written by one of Joseph’s scribes titled “The Spirit of God Like A Fire Is Burning.”
• He would have had to have lived and sustained an intricate web of lies about the Book of Mormon to his family and everyone he knew throughout his life, such that the only contemporaries accusing him of lying didn’t really know him. In other words, he would have had to believably lied to every one of his family members and circle of friends, as well as thousands more who believed him and them about their shared experience.
• Joseph would also need to have persuaded someone to pose as a visiting angel pretending to be John the Baptist (mentioned below) in order to deceive Oliver Cowdery into writing:

The Lord, who is rich in mercy, and ever willing to answer the consistent prayer of the humble, after we had called upon Him in a fervent manner, aside from the abodes of men, condescended to manifest to us His will.

On a sudden, as from the midst of eternity, the voice of the Redeemer spake peace to us, while the veil was parted and the angel of God came down clothed with glory, and delivered the anxiously looked for message, and the keys of the Gospel of repentance.

What joy! what wonder! what amazement! While the world was racked and distracted—while millions were groping as the blind for the wall, and while all men were resting upon uncertainty, as a general mass, our eyes beheld, our ears heard, as in the ‘blaze of day’; yes, more—above the glitter of the May sunbeam, which then shed its brilliancy over the face of nature!

Then his voice, though mild, pierced to the center, and his words, ‘I am thy fellow-servant,’ dispelled every fear. We listened, we gazed, we admired! ’Twas the voice of an angel from glory, ’twas a message from the Most High! And as we heard we rejoiced, while His love enkindled upon our souls, and we were wrapped in the vision of the Almighty! Where was room for doubt? Nowhere; uncertainty had fled, doubt had sunk no more to rise, while fiction and deception had fled forever!

• Oliver Cowdery, 1834
• So, not only would Joseph need to somehow get Oliver to write prose like that, he would need to then, years later, have enough confidence in the book he wrote that he would not intervene when many of the initial witnesses were tried and excommunicated by Church councils for accusing Joseph of being a “fallen prophet.”
• Alternatively, he could have found a handful of devoutly religious and upright men, tapping into some unknown-to-this-day hidden motivation(s), and convinced them all to engage in a massive conspiracy of deception such that not one of those participating ever exposed it to anyone. Not even on their deathbed to their children when directly asked. What’s more, that motivation he discovered would have to be so powerful that it would get every one of those men to become such incredible actors that they would each act in exactly the same ways they would have if the fraud they conspired to perpetrate were actually true. Not one slip up ever, even when it would have been in the best interest of multiple conspirators to expose the fraud.
• He would have had to be prepared to die for the truth of the work he started with the publication of the book, since he told others that if he surrendered himself to incarceration in June of 1844, that he would be going “as a lamb to the slaughter.” Then, after surrendering with his brother and others, while in jail, in his final hours, he and his beloved brother Hyrum would actually turn to the book for comfort and assurance, as if they actually believed it to be God’s word.
• And, of course, following the writing of the book, Joseph would have needed to find a way to induce and explain the visions and revelations and miracles experienced and recorded by hundreds of others, including Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young, Parley Pratt, David Whitmer, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, Martin Harris, Lucy Mack Smith, and thousands of others, including many of my ancestors.
• And one last thing - the book he wrote needed to subsequently attract brilliant men and women of faith to believe in the worldview he created such that they were and are willing to devote their lives to their faith in the work he started. In other words, the Church Joseph founded based on this book would need to become a widely respected major new world religion, and one that uncharacteristically demonstrates a significantly high positive correlation between education and intelligence and faith and devotion.

OK, enough speculation. Back to reality. And that reality is that Joseph Smith did not “write” the Book of Mormon. Ancient prophets of God wrote it, and Joseph translated it by the “gift and power of God.”

So in summary, it’s just impossible for anyone well-informed in history to come up with a good conspiracy theory about how Joseph (or any man or group of men) could have “written” the Book of Mormon, since one then must not only explain Joseph Smith and his life and writings, but also then be reconciled with the life and writings of Oliver Cowdery, a man universally respected by those who knew him, even those who knew nothing about his role in the origins of the Book of Mormon. That so many try to attribute the authorship of the Book of Mormon to Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Sidney Sperry, or even Parley Pratt - all of whom had more advanced education than Joseph Smith, speaks volumes about just what a miracle the very existence a book like the Book of Mormon represents.

In fact, because the original printers manuscript of the Book of Mormon, which we have today, is almost entirely in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery, if any man or group of men had written the Book of Mormon, it stands to reason that Oliver would have made such a thing known when, during his high council trial, he was asked to make the case and defend his position that Joseph Smith was the “fallen prophet” Oliver later contended that he was.

Instead, Oliver made no such case and left the Church for many years while practicing law as a respected member of his community. Inexplicably for conspiracy theorists who allege that Cowdery played a role in writing the Book of Mormon, Cowdery asked Brigham Young, after Joseph was dead, if he could be re-baptized into the Church. Why would he have done that if he knew the Book of Mormon to be a fraud or anything other than what he and Joseph Smith said it was? Oliver’s best interest in that case would have been to secretly expose or threaten to expose the truth of the fraud/conspiracy to Brigham Young and work a deal giving Oliver an important position in the Church. Instead, all Oliver asked for was to be rebaptized and re-admitted into the Church then led by Brigham Young.

In fact, Oliver’s last words were to urge his friend, David Whitmer, one of the other of the Three Witnesses[17] [18]who had started his own church because he also believed, like Oliver, that Joseph had fallen from God’s grace as a prophet, to never deny their testimony as recorded in the Book of Mormon.

To this day, Oliver stands as a critically important second witness that the Book of Mormon was not written by Joseph Smith or any other man or group of men. That there are so many other witnesses all substantiating the same narrative about the origins of the Book of Mormon is a historical fact that has never been explained in a way that scholars can agree on, since the implications of the Book of Mormon actually being what the history says it is are so explosive and fraught with religious ramifications.

By Occam’s Razor, I’d prefer to believe the stories, consistent in every detail and never successfully impeached, told by Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Emma Smith, Joseph’s family, David Whitmer, Mary Whitmer and her sons, and many others who were part of those early days. All of them who were part of the coming forth of The Book of Mormon said that Joseph “translated” the golden plates “by the gift and power of God.”

That certainly seems to me, and millions of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”) over the years, to be the best and most reasonable explanation for the work Joseph created, not to mention the subsequent revelations and translations we believe are inspired revelation from God.

Think about it - if Joseph was the kind of person who could accomplish the achievements listed above in order to “write” a book, do you really think he would try his entire life to give all of the credit for it to God, and then die for the deception and godless cause he had created, much less inspire others to die for it too?

Has there ever been a conspiracy of so many who covered their tracks so well and for so long? No, even those who believe it was a con are either forced to conclude that it was a con perpetrated by Joseph Smith acting alone or leave unexplained the actions and motives of so many others who played important roles in the origins of the Book of Mormon and the Restored Church of Jesus Christ.

So ask yourself: is it reasonable to believe he could have persuaded everyone around him to see visions and testify of seeing the plates and angels, with not one of those he approached ever refusing to go along and exposing Joseph’s invitation to join the conspiracy, if the truth was that Joseph was simply perpetrating some elaborate fraud on his family, friends, and those who were drawn to him by the workings of what they called the Spirit of God? Wouldn’t that violate what Jesus said about discerning a prophet by his fruit, whether it be sweet or bitter?[19]

Would Joseph have added a promise near the end that if you ask God, with a sincere heart and real intent, if the book is true, He will manifest its truth to you by the power of the Holy Ghost?[20] Did Joseph really understand human psychology and the religious experience so well as to be able to induce delusionary behaviors and perceptions not only in his inner circle, but in millions yet to come for hundreds of years?

And would millions (including me) subsequently be able to testify that they were given that manifestation such that they know the book is true, and testify of not just one or two but ongoing miraculous experiences?

And if this book were born of fraud, could it really produce the sweet fruit (“love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” - See Galatians 5:22-23) that so many millions of Latter-day Saints (formerly known as “Mormons,” which has been recently deprecated because we are disciples of Jesus and do not want to self-identify as being followers of Mormon) enjoy in their lives, causing them to revere Joseph Smith as a prophet of God?

Not according to Jesus. When telling us how to tell a false prophet from a true prophet, he says that we can tell them apart according to their fruit, and that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit.

Yet critics of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would have us believe that the “tree of life” restored through Joseph Smith is corrupt because Joseph Smith was a fraud while acknowledging the goodness of the undeniably sweet fruit enjoyed in the lives of members faithful to that “tree,” namely The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So are we to believe that The Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith? Are we to believe that all the beautiful truths and good that has come from the lives of faithful adherents is rooted in lies and fraud?

Nope. It just doesn’t make sense, however desperate many faithless antagonists and disbelievers are to grasp at straws in their attempts to believe that The Book of Mormon is not the compelling evidence that most non-believers say would get them to believe IF any such compelling evidence were presented to them.

Well, I’ve presented a small portion of the mountain of evidence that exists in favor of the divine origins and nature of the Book of Mormon above.

Why would any sincere seeker of truth not decide it’s time to read and study The Book of Mormon for themselves?

And one final word to the wise: Don’t forget to pray."

==============

Paul Brian

 · Jan 25

You poor believers, so wrong, never right. I know more about your beliefs and history than you could ever know as a Mormon. Why? Because I’m willing to change my mind if given compelling evidence to do so. That means I’m willing to explore information other than (gasp!) church approved.

Nice gish gallop btw, no one’s reading that. Hope you didn’t waste time typing it by hand.

As for your challenge - Michael Crichton writes twice as fast as smith and would have written the BoM in half the time ~ 30 days.

Further, he would have researched his topic and included details that were 100% true in real life, not some amateur fool who thinks there were horse drawn chariots, wheels, metal refining and mining and smelting going on when none of that was even possible.

He’d also get his population numbers right, make his battles realistic with weapons appropriate for the time, and he wouldn’t be caught with untold anachronisms jumping out for everyone to criticize.

But most of all, he would do all that without having to plagiarize at least 1/3rd of those 530 pages.

Now that I’ve reached and breeched your challenge, how bout you consider mine:

Please cite a single time that god would want his chosen prophet to lie to his wife about his other wives?

And if you find one, please explain why you would worship such a foul diety?

Tracy Armstrong

 · Jan 26

LOL!

Your definition of “reached and breeched” my challenge is to suggest (without any facts or data to back up your preposterous claims) that a dead writer would be able to do something better and faster than Joseph Smith did it? THAT’S your idea of taking up a challenge? A ridiculous straw man argument based on nothing?

By the way, just for fun, I did a little actual research on Creighton. According to his own words, from start to finish, “The Great Train Robbery” took him THREE YEARS to write. “Sphere” (my personal favorite of his books) took him TWENTY YEARS to write. “Jurassic Park” took him EIGHT YEARS, and “Disclosure” took him FIVE YEARS. (See http://Michaelcreighton.com)

AND he had modern references, computers, research assistants, the money and freedom to travel to different sites to gather research, an office and staff to handle his correspondence, his travel arrangements, etc. and a Harvard education - (and no one was trying to kill him or throw him in prison every other week) - just to name a few advantages. And no one picked his work apart looking for mistakes because he never pretended that they were anything but fiction.

Meanwhile, he was paid millions, celebrated, feted, admired (while Joseph was being persecuted, tortured, imprisoned, and in constant fear for his life).

Also, with all those advantages wealth, glamour and celebrity, he couldn’t hold a marriage together - in fact he couldn’t hold FIVE marriages together. He was what my husband calls a “serial polygamist.”

Meanwhile, despite poverty, persecution, and trials beyond imagining, Joseph Smith’s wife was faithful, adoring and supportive of him until the day he died. SHE knew him far better than you ever will and SHE believed him. His brothers knew him from birth - and they believed him to the point that they were willing to DIE rather than refute his prophetic calling.

Furthermore, even Oliver Cowdrey who was excommunicated, accused Joseph of being a “fallen prophet” (because he didn’t like some of the things Joseph said), and was very bitter against Joseph - NEVER denied that Joseph had been called of God or that the Book of Mormon was true. He even later asked to be rebaptized (as did Martin Harris).

All those people who actually knew the prophet very well indeed never once questioned his claim to have seen God or the divine source of The Book of Mormon.

Your “evidence” that the Book of Mormon contains flaws and anachronisms are all based on ABSENCE of evidence - which is no proof of anything.

To wit - “… the absence of evidence fallacy occurs when someone uses a lack of evidence to try to “prove” something. Of course, the problem with this line of reasoning is that a lack of evidence is just that: a lack. You can’t use it to conclude anything; you could only conclude that we still don’t know about that thing.”

So much for what you “know” about…well anything.

So you didn’t even bother to read the very well written and detailed essay I included in my answer? You, who claim to be willing to look at compelling evidence and change your mind if given reason - couldn’t be bothered to read or speak to any of the compelling evidence I provided. Let alone the document at the center of the question.

What hypocrisy.

Lastly, NO ONE has ever said that God “wanted his chosen prophet to lie to his wife.” (Another of your ridiculous straw men).

Joseph hid the polygamy from his wife out of fear of hurting her or losing her (because he was crazy in love with her), but there is never any suggestion that the Lord approved of his deception. In fact, Joseph was so loathe to proceed with introducing the concept of plural marriage to the Saints that the Lord went so far as to threaten to take Joseph’s life if he didn’t get on with it.

No one thinks it was right that Joseph wasn’t honest with Emma about it in the beginning. Everyone knows it was wrong and something he had to repent of.

But we all understand the fear he must have felt, we all can relate to being weak in our trust in God’s plan from time to time - and we all remember that Peter lied and denied even knowing Christ (out of fear,) Jonah tried to run away from God himself (out of fear,) and that most of the other prophets and apostles did things that were sinful or wrong and required correction and repentance.

But those acts of weakness and/or disobedience didn’t negate their legitimacy or greatness as prophets of God.

Joseph was very young, under incredible stress and he was afraid. He, like great prophets and apostles before him, showed weakness and was disobedient for a short time. He like great prophets before him, required stern correction by the Lord, humble repentance, and the courage and faith to carry on.

We also remember that most of the great biblical prophets had multiple wives - with no hint that God was displeased with them for it. And strangely, no critics of the church can explain why it was not sinful of them but it was of Joseph or Brigham.

Dear Paul, your self esteem is wildly out of proportion with your knowledge or ability to think critically. You really should stop weighing in on things you know so little about.

=================

Lynn Anderson

 · Jan 27

uh huh, oh and im sure he didnt copy the masons either huh? About the bible, if he didnt copy the bible why are the bible errors in the book of mormon?

“Why would Joseph plagiarize from the Bible - knowing that anyone who read the Book of Mormon would have had ready access to and probably strong familiarity with the Bible - and so any plagiarism would have been instantly exposed?”

Why would Joseph make up the golden plates that no one saw (only under a cloth) then translate via magic glowing rock in a hat?

Also why was the most correct book (BofM) edited with over 5000 changes? So was it the most correct book before of after the changes?

Have you seen all the changes in the temple ordinances? Um God hahaha took out husband and wife…. Why is that? Is it to usher in the gays getting the priesthood?

Tracy Armstrong

 · Jan 28

You seem to have a lot of anger in you with regard to the church. So much derision speaks to a personal agenda, not unbiased curiosity. But I’ll take your points one by one.

If, as the Masons claim, their ceremonies have their roots in the authentic temple rites of Biblical times, then it would make sense that a few superficial similarities might exist between a corrupted version of temple ordinances and the true ones that were restored by the Lord through Joseph Smith. It’s completely logical.

Translating the Book of Mormon was slow and arduous work. If entire chapters of Isaiah were to be inserted in a few places in the Book of Mormon (and identified as such - and so NOT plagiarized) , it seems more than logical to me that the Lord would simply allow Joseph to copy those passages straight from the Bible so as to speed up the work and to give Joseph some relief from the more painstaking task. If there are errors, they must not be egregious enough to be of great concern to the Lord - after all, he’s let those errors stand in his Holy Bible for centuries, right?

By the way, in the New Testament, Christ himself quotes the prophet Isaiah (is it your position that Christ was a plagiarist?) - so it’s hardly a stretch to think that a prophet in Book of Mormon might also quote him when teaching the gospel to others.

You have no reason for saying that Joseph “made up the Golden plates that no one saw”. At least ELEVEN people of good reputation testified that they had seen the plates (not under a cloth as you erroneously noted) - some said they had held them in their hands. All eleven said the experience included the appearance or voice of a divine being.

Several of these individuals later broke with Joseph and the church - because they disagreed with how Joseph was leading the church. But even those who were excommunicated and held very bitter feelings toward Joseph NEVER recanted their testimonies of seeing the plates, being visited by an angel, that the Book of Mormon was of divine origin and translated by Joseph through the power of God. Several of them repented and rejoined the church.

I suspect you know that, but it bears retelling. Even those who would have loved to see Joseph brought down and removed from leadership, even those who could have made a fortune by exposing Joseph as a clever con artist, even those who left the church - NEVER DENIED the divine origin of the Book of Mormon.

As I said elsewhere, can you imagine ANY court case being decided against the eyewitness testimony of ELEVEN upstanding citizens? Any attorney would be jumping through hoops to have that much evidence! But critics just brush it off as if it were nothing. Or, like you, they misrepresent the facts to the point of utterly contradicting the truth.

Even on their deathbeds - when asked - not one witness failed to confirm their testimony of the gold plates and the Book of Mormon.

So much for that bit of nonsense.

How many changes do you think the Bible has undergone? Find an actual Bible scholar and ask. Forget the two thousand years of political shenanigans involving the church and the dearth of those who were capable of reading the Bible - instead relying on verbal recitations and a lot of usually well meaning priests who may or may not have made thousands of personal mistakes or changes as they copied the Bible over and over.

Forget the Nicene Council - which decided for political reasons which ancient records could be included in the collection and which should be left out.

Imagine deciding which parts of the gospel of Jesus Christ were to be canonized by means COMPROMISE AND VOTE!

Forget all those historical issues and think of how many different ENGLISH translations of the Bible there are in use today! Last time I looked, it was around 50 different versions.

Fifty versions of the Bible. Some contain books that the others exclude. Some have very different translations of words and phrases than any of the others. Which one is correct - do you know?

The Book of Mormon has only been translated once. By one man. Yes, since he was dictating the text word by word - he didn’t stop to say, “put a comma here, or capitalize that.” He simply said the words that were shown to him and his scribe wrote them down. When it was done, they went back and added punctuation, etc. And when it was published, they worked to separate it into individual verses and distinct books according to the authors of the different records.

Making such changes did not alter what was written, only how accessible and easy to read it was.

No one ever claimed that the Book was perfect - only the MOST correct - because it hadn’t suffered two thousand years of political and personal mischief making. We accept the Bible to be the word of God - as far as it is translated correctly.

If you suspect the temple ordinances are false, can you tell me who is practicing the TRUE temple ordinances? Christ did not stop temple work. Only the sacrifice of animals that foreshadowed his coming. But it’s clear in the Bible that temple ceremonies were part of his church - before, during and after his mortal life. We have no record of him instructing us to stop performing the saving ordinances that he commanded be conducted - and only within the walls of his holy temples and only by those with the proper priesthood authority.

So if the priesthood ordinances performed in the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are not the ones authorized by the Lord, where are the true ones?

Most of what goes on in the temple is mere instruction. A retelling of the story of the creation, the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden, etc.

The fact that the way the information is presented has changed over time has no effect on the information itself.

Kids still learn to read in elementary school, but “See Dick and Jane” books and “Run, Spot, Run” aren’t used anymore (although they are still perfectly reasonable and valid tools from which to teach reading).

Patrons of the temple used to have to move from room to room to symbolize being in the garden and then being forced to leave. When film became a viable medium, we used that to tell the biblical stories. It was more uniform and as the church grew and more and more people were coming to the temple, using films instead of having people recite those lessons cut the time a session took way down - allowing for more sessions per day.

Phrases and examples that would have meant something or carried greater impact to people in the 19th century were adjusted for a modern population. But the lessons taught and the covenants made remain the same.

Now I believe I’ve answered each of your questions in detail - using perfectly sound reasoning for each - and with as much grace as I could muster, given the snotty attitude with which you asked them.

If you’re only on this site as an anti-church troll to give yourself some sort of justification for turning your back on the restored gospel of Jesus Christ - might I suggest you find more productive and ways to spend your time?

=====================

Derek Bergquist

 · Jan 18

The simple answer is because he didn’t know where the lost pages were he could not risk an attempted retranslating. The differences would be glaringly obvious and his story was sketchy enough as is.

He didn’t try and “retranslate” anything. The book of Abraham facsimiles and the kinderhook plates shows that he was not capable of translating anything. He just made stuff up. His mother made several statements about him using his young creative mind to create stories from his younger years. He certainly continues that trend when he made up stories about buried treasure and how for a fee his magic rock would locate it. Fees were paid. Treasure was never found.

Tracy Armstrong

 · Mar 16

That’s quite a few straw men you’ve built there.

Exactly what “false claims” are you asserting that Joseph made and for which we are “apologizing?” And where is your evidence that his claims were false - your personal disbelief is not evidence. If you mean unfulfilled prophecies, I would remind you that the prophesied second coming of Christ has not yet been fulfilled - doesn’t mean the prophets who foretold it were false prophets. There is still time for prophecies to come to pass.

So what false claims can you substantiate? And can you explain away the many claims Joseph made that HAVE been borne out? (How did he know about ancient records on gold plates and pinpoint the time and place such plates were made? How did he know the ancient place names that had not been discovered in his day? How did he write chiasmus that were virtually unknown until after I was born? How did he know EXACTLY how and where the civil war would start and who would side with which factions?) The list is long - explain please.

You say that the church’s numbers are declining. That is manifestly false. Our rate of growth has slowed - as has the growth of all Christian religions everywhere. It’s the last days. Satan is marshaling his forces and we can see the effects everywhere we look in the debauched and wicked culture that is growing around us.

But even if our numbers WERE declining - what would that prove? Popularity is not the measure of truth. Relatively few people accepted Christ as the Messiah during his lifetime. His message was extremely unpopular with the majority of his own people. That didn’t make it false.

Consensus is not relevant to truth. Not in science. Not in faith. Consensus changes. Truth doesn’t.

Lastly, you say that Joseph Smith was tested. You have no foundation for such a claim. It was God that was being tested. Martin and his wife asked for a miracle - he hoping to prove Joseph was a prophet; she hoping to prove he wasn’t.

The taking of those pages and requesting they be dictated again was nothing more than an attempt to expose Joseph as a false prophet.

Should God have dignified their perfidy with a miracle? The Lord will not be mocked and certainly wasn’t going to be held hostage to such venal attempts at trickery.

We KNOW he does not respond to such treachery because there is scriptural precedent for exposing exactly what happened there. We can find it in the Gospel of Matthew 12:38–39.

• 38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
• 39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas

And here is an excellent explanation from a non-LDS site- Online Bible Commentary | BibleRef.com:

“Jesus is reacting to a request from some Pharisees and Sadducees; they have demanded a miraculous sign to validate the claims that Jesus is the long-promised Messiah of Israel (Matthew 16:1–3). They are asking this, apparently, to trip Him up, to test Him, to catch Him doing something they can use to discredit Him and stop His ministry (Matthew 12:9–10).

Rather than agree, Jesus points out they have missed all the "signs of the times" which already played in front of their eyes. In prior verses, Jesus made a comparison to signs of weather: clear and obvious things which could easily be understood. Ignoring the miracles of Jesus means these critics have seen the signs and refused to believe (John 5:39–40). The one who heals the lame and gives sight to the blind, Jesus, has been fulfilling prophecies (Isaiah 35:5–6; 61:1–2), and they ought to know as much. The truth is, they have not missed the truth, but ignored it.

As with a similar request in Matthew 12:38, Jesus refuses to comply. Instead, He notes that it's a sign of a depraved culture to ignore evidence while demanding even more. In this, Christ condemns not just the men standing before Him but the people they represent: the generation of His day. He calls the people evil and adulterous for wanting more and more evidence that He is the Messiah. They are evil in their refusal to believe the obvious truth. Jesus uses the metaphor for spiritual unfaithfulness from the Old Testament, adultery, which God so often used for Israel's worship of false gods. Like them, Jesus says, His generation wants religious experiences and miraculous entertainment despite being offered the truth, which is Christ, the Son of God, Himself (John 14:6).

Jesus declares that His generation will receive no additional signs, except for one: the sign of Jonah. What is the sign of Jonah? Jesus gave more detail about it when answering the same request once before, "For just as Joe’s can was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:40). It will become clear after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection that the most powerful sign He can offer to those who are asking is to return from dead on the

third day as Jonah returned from the "dead" after three days' "burial" in the sea. If that sign cannot convince these religious leaders, nothing can (Luke 16:31).”

Martin Harris had seen angels. He’d received visions and revelations and miracles. He’d known Joseph’s character and seen his behavior for years.

After all of that, his asking for an additional sign from God could easily be seen as a “wicked and adulterous” sin.

Harris’ wife had known and presumably respected and loved him for many years. Her fecklessness and disloyalty deserved no reward.

So, Richard, nothing you said in your post even comes close to accurate or truthful - it’s just more boilerplate anti-church nonsense. It’s not even particularly clever nonsense.

Take it elsewhere.

======================

Richard

 · Mar 16

You are no doubt an LDS apologist. During the time that JS ‘prophesied’ the start of the civil war in SC, there was an open dispute between SC and the federal government. Coming to some conclusion that there would be a war between the north and south was hardly prophetic as you should know. He used the events of the time to manifest a prophecy. He gave no date. He did not mention Ft. Sumter.

Your responses are convincing to the uninitiated or ignorant. I will simply encourage people to do their own research and begin with the CES letters.

Tracy Armstrong

 · Mar 16

I love how anyone who stands up to unfair or untruthful criticism gets painted with the broad term “apologist.” You say “apology,” I say “correction.”

I asked you a specific question. You accused Joseph of making false claims - I asked you to tell me some of those claims.

Instead you just try to dismiss as coincidence a claim he made that was absolutely accurate! He made an educated guess about the Civil War and got it right? That’s your evidence that he was a fraud? Are you kidding me?

His prophecy was unequivocal - South Carolina. That’s a big chance to take knowing that if some “shot” had been fired in North Carolina or Georgia first, he’d be immediately branded as a false prophet. Why would he take such a chance? Why even bother to comment on something that would be so easily exposed if he were wrong?

And of course, if he HAD been wrong you’d have instantly used it to “prove” him a fraud. But the fact that his prophecy was exactly right carries no weight - just a lucky guess. Right. 🙄

So - you have not shown me anything that he said that in over the span of 200 years has been proven false. Two. Hundred. Years.

Also, no comment from you about your sad attempt to paint Joseph as having failed a test? No comment on your absolute falsehood regarding a declining membership? Not to mention it’s lack of relevance. No acknowledgement whatsoever that nothing of your original post was accurate or logical?

You’re the stereotypical “hit and run” critic. “Oops! Got caught in that lie - ignore and move on to a different criticism. Surely one of them will stick!”

Except they don’t. You parrot the same tired tropes that critics have tried (and failed with) for 200 years. It’s so cliche that it’s a joke.

But I’ll give you one chance.

How about the Gold Plates? Tackle that one. It’s a pretty big elephant in any room.

No one - no one - in Joseph’s day had ever heard of anything even similar to the plates Joseph described. The idea that records had been inscribed on thin sheets of gold in ancient times was mocked, ridiculed and repudiated by every historian, archeologist, scholar of Joseph’s day. There were no written accounts for him to find, no means of him making an “educated guess.”

So how did he get it exactly right? One set of plates since discovered were even found in a stone box such as Joseph described.

Is it your contention that he deliberately invented a detail that would be utterly unbelievable to those he wanted to convince - instead of telling a far more believable story of how he brought forth the Book of Mormon?

Why would he torpedo his plan that way? But more importantly, how did he manage to “guess” so accurately that ancient Middle Eastern people did IN FACT keep records exactly the way he described them - and at exactly the time in history he said?

How could he have guessed that nearly 100 years later, archeologists would validate every detail of his “ridiculous” invention?

Now, I’m not expecting that remarkable piece of evidence to change your mind. The priests of Baal watched drenched altars covered in water logged wood spontaneously blaze with fire - they found a way to explain it away. Pharaoh found ways to explain plague after plague - even the death of every firstborn in Egypt in one night - but refused to see God’s hand. The Pharisees watched Christ heal lepers and raise the DEAD - and refused to acknowledge it. Your attitude is all too familiar and predictable.

But I have YET to find a single critic of my religion explain how Joseph knew that bound sheets of gold were used in about 500 AD for keeping important records by Middle Eastern societies. Care to try?

====================