subgenius wrote:Darth J wrote:Your count, which went down by approximately a factor of ten (magazine sources), still is not accurate.
the tolerance for accuracy still does not diminish the fact that the church is not "hiding" anything about this issue, as is further confirmed by the amount of information available, credible or not.
The OP is asking whether the October Ensign is fraudulent or disingenuous with its failure to mention the rock in the hat method, which is how all contemporaries of Joseph Smith describe the alleged translation process.
"Disingenuous" means "lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere:
Her excuse was rather disingenuous."
The fact that the LDS Church very occasionally, over the course of several decades, mentions the rock in the hat, while almost always making it seem as if Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim, is disingenuous. It is lacking in frankness or candor. That the Church, once in a great while, acknowledges that Joseph Smith purported to translate the Book of Mormon the same way he looked for buried treasure does not absolve the Church from being disingenuous. It proves that the Church is disingenuous, since it obviously knows what is in the historical record.
why? not relevant to the OP or the issue
The very, very few times over the last several decades that the Church will admit to the rock and the hat directly addresses the question in the OP about whether the October Ensign is disingenuous. And the one who wanted to start talking about the number of times "seer" and "stone" were mentioned near each other when searching the Church's website was you.
why? not relevant to the OP or the issue - i am only addressing the statements in the OP, of which my response has been clear.
Your clear response was to vastly overstate how often and how frankly the LDS Church will admit that Joseph Smith's purported method for translating the Book of Mormon and his purported method for looking for buried treasure in his folk magic practices were the same.
?wha? your obsession with numbers is amusing
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Again, the one who brought numbers into this was you. What you mean is that you are perfectly happy to talk about numbers as long as your misleading assertions go unchallenged.
whether it be 1 or 100, there is no critical mass to the quantity that would support the notion that the church is hiding or that the Ensign is disingenuous on this topic.
A reasonable person can make a determination when looking at how often the Church talks about the translation of the Book of Mormon versus how often it talks about the rock in the hat and draw a reasonable conclusion about whether the Church is being misleading.
Though many would want to be distracted by various unfounded, unsupported, and unworthy conjecture
That would be the statements of the people who were around Joseph Smith when he was purporting to translate the Book of Mormon, including David Whitmer and Martin Harris.
- the fact remains that Book of Mormon was translated by the power of God.
That is a religious belief, not a fact.
Belief in the supernatural is necessarily absent from the vacuum of an atheist's rational existence and just further testifies to their own condition of being a simple bag of chemical without any ability for choosing otherwise.
I am not an atheist, and I have not said anything from which that could be inferred. You seem to be reverting to chat bot mode.