If plates then God

[I Have Questions]

You seem to be saying that there is no joy and happiness in living the gospel and abiding by its precepts in the here and now. That if people (such as yourself?) choose to live a telestial law that is preferable to living a higher law.

Believe it or not, there are folks that are willing and desirous to live a higher law in the here and now and find that preferable to living some version of the telestial law.

There are many folks that are also willing to pay an honest tithe knowing they are helping build up the kingdom of God. Calling them schmucks says more about you than it does about them.

Regards,
MG

No, you are missing the point.

He’s not missing the point. He’s refusing to address it and is trying to drag the conversation away from it. Again.

[Marcus]

No, you are missing the point.

He’s not missing the point. He’s refusing to address it and is trying to drag the conversation away from it. Again.

Yes. He tries, but...there is much resilience here.

Post, or post not. There is no drag.

[MG 2.0]

No, you are missing the point.

He’s not missing the point. He’s refusing to address it and is trying to drag the conversation away from it. Again.

Conversations are continually dragged from one thing/place to another. It’s not like one person is the controller in chief.

It does seem that this thread has FINALLY run its course.

Let us all join in shouting HALLELUJAH!!!

And Amen!!!

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

Back to the topic:

A certain blogger weighed in last month. After posting a list of papers and interviews (all generated within his religion, by believers in his religion, published in venues controlled by his religion, dated 1991, 1999, 2001 and refreshingly, a 2023 interview), he states this

The assertion in such writing that real, tangible plates existed isn’t a mere profession of faith or an appeal to circular reason. It appeals, rather, to eyewitness testimony and other external evidence. The stuff, in other words, of which ordinary, conventional historiography is made and upon which most historical scholarship is based. Simply that. To claim othewise is either ignorant or, I think, a willfully disingenuous pretense.

Which of course, is why "ordinary, conventional historiography," "upon which most historical scholarship is based" says things like this:

According to Latter Day Saint belief, the golden plates (also called the gold plates or in some 19th-century literature, the golden Bible)[1] are the source from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates

(For a little more weight, any of Professor Jenkin's statements about the Book of Mormon as a non-historical document will do, but the above captures the world's opinion about this fairy tale quite well.)

'According to belief' acknowledges that the assertion that plates existed is 'a profession of faith,' nothing more. Similar to the weight given to eyewitness testimony of bigfoot, little grey aliens, Ufo probings, yeti, leprechauns, fairies, Santa Claus, the three nephites, BYU's cold fusion fiasco, lamanites who 'blossom as roses', psychics, high spy's earthquake coincidences, NDEs, DCP's dowsing experiences, Ouija board spellings, etc.

Seriously, this is a recently retired professor from BYU. It's hard to imagine who would send their children to a school with professors who openly argue that such nonsense passes a legitimate threshold for academic research the way he does. Keeping your weird little hobbies off to the side is one thing, openly arguing for such academically nonsensical approaches is quite another.

[canpakes]

I would welcome you to count the number of posts I’ve made vs. those of others.

No ego attached. Just stating what I believe to be the facts.

And the fact of the matter that I have gleaned from the last number of pages is that you folks have absolutely nothing to offer in regards to hope and faith.

Only death and extinction.

Do I hear an AMEN!!

Regards,
MG

99% of every living thing has gone extinct. Maybe you should accept this fact and make this world a little better place for those who come after you instead of treating it like a door matt . A place to wipe your feet until the real fun begins.

This is the thing. I have a hard time entertaining the idea that our mortal lives absent a proposed afterlife are rendered meaningless, with nothing but ‘death and extinction’ as the end result, when the obvious reality is that we can have profound effect on the lives of other people around us.

Anyone can help to shape the future of life through their relationships or progeny, based on interactions today. A person’s life never truly ‘ends’ or is ‘meaningless’, just for that reason alone.

I’ve always been puzzled by the LDS insistence that mortality was too important an experience to not subject eternal spirits to, but that it’s also so trivial an experience when compared to the supposed immortality to follow … along with the idea that achieving perfection within that system involves more of the same triviality in recreating more mortal beings.

Apparently, all of this trivial mortality is important enough to use as a wedge within the afterlife, wherein family members will be divided up and unable to be with others based on their actions or faithfulness while mortal. I don’t know of any other faith system that attempts to penalize families and threatens to keep them apart for all of time eternal based on tithing and coffee consumption.

[Morley]

Since it's peripheral to Jesus, what does it matter other than being a distraction?

It’s all connected. Without the angel and the plates we…millions of individuals over time…would belong to some other flavor of Christianity or other belief system. We would, according to our beliefs and doctrines, be lacking in some important areas…nature of God, Salvation, Jesus’s atonement, Priesthood, grace and works, etc., etc.

Jesus appearing to the boy prophet is at the core of everything.

Meh. Obviously not. There weren't any plates and there was no angel. They didn't matter. Only the mythos of the plates was needed to establish the Church.

Even with the golden plates mythology, the nascent religion didn’t get a unique take on the nature of God, salvation, the atonement, the priesthood, nor, indeed, any new theology on ‘grace and works.’

We did, however, get the Kirtland banking fiasco, the imposition of polygamy as needed for Celestial glory, the horror of Mountain Meadows, the racist ban on Blacks in the Priesthood, and all the homophobic anti-LGBTQ baloney. Did we need an angel for those?

[Res Ipsa]

He’s not missing the point. He’s refusing to address it and is trying to drag the conversation away from it. Again.

Conversations are continually dragged from one thing/place to another. It’s not like one person is the controller in chief.

It does seem that this thread has FINALLY run its course.

Let us all join in shouting HALLELUJAH!!!

And Amen!!!

Regards,
MG

What is this obsession with declaring threads to be at an end? People get to talk as long as they want. The only thing you have control over is when your own participation in the thread is at an end.

[High Spy]

... I have gleaned from the last number of pages is that you folks have absolutely nothing to offer in regards to hope and faith...

"You folks." So sad. You must be in such pain.

I have not much of this thread. It just seems like the same tripe being put forth by MG we have seen for years. It's not worth the time to contest. Bottom line is: if this was a convincing argument, Mormonism would be growing. It's not. People who are aware of the claim that Joseph Smith couldn't have written the Book of Mormon are still leaving in droves, lifelong members as well as new converts. No one cares. I had some missionaries from the Jehovah's Witnesses visit my house the other day who were using the same type of "How do you explain" arguments. It was amazing how much they sounded just like MG and others. When they challenged me to read their literature, I told them I would if they would read just one book I recommended. They were unwilling to do so. No surprise there.

The Spirit has revealed many details to me about how Joseph Smith started the Church. The "angel" that brought the "gold plates" was Parley P. Pratt. The "angel" that "took the gold plates away" was Parley P. Pratt. The "angel" that "brought the gold plates back a year later" was Parley P. Pratt. Parley had a wagon route that he made every year. It went from around Palmyra to Sandusky, Ohio every year. The gold plates was a manuscript that Parley had on his wagon. The so called 116 pages was that manuscript.

Parley P. Pratt did not write the Book of Mormon but he did have it (the manuscript) in his possession more than once for an extended time and may have tinkered with the text.

Once the plates are discounted, it’s easy to see that the Book of Mormon lands are across the pond.

The deceptions continue to crumble.

Lot's of hope there =~ now we know the plates are bunk,

and where the Book of Mormon took place.

The Spirit Has Spoken.

[Physics Guy]

MG seems to be trying to defend the authenticity of Smith's claimed golden plates by demanding a position that includes hope and faith.

That doesn't follow. There might just not really be any hope of the kind MG wants. We have to face that possibility.

On the other hand I think it can be perfectly reasonable, not as a logical deduction but as a strategy for dealing with life, to decide to focus on a hopeful scenario and go on living as if it were certain, even though one knows it isn't. If you're trying to survive on a desert island or something you don't spend half of each day moping in despair because survival is realistically 50/50 and you need to give equal time to both scenarios. You think about the bad outcome as little as possible, squashing negative thoughts as fast as you can; you celebrate each bit of progress as if it were proof that you are definitely going to get through this. The negative outcome will take care of itself, if it is what's going to happen, so you may as well just ignore it, while if you're going to survive, there'll be a lot for you to do.

That analogy is meant to illustrate a general principle, that utility is a factor along with probability in deciding what theories to entertain. Neither the island survival problem nor the principle that it's meant to illustrate necessarily supports religious faith over atheism. You could even see the island survival analogy as supporting atheism rather than faith: it's in the scenario in which you die alone on the island that you need to make the place as decent as possible for all the years that you'll spend there, while the upbeat scenario in which a boat comes to rescue you is the one that will take care of itself anyway, so you might as well ignore it.

What I really don't get, though, is how the heck MG can sustain the false dichotomy between believing in Smith's golden plates and giving in to existential despair. Literally billions of people have firm hope and faith in eternal life with all their loved ones and a loving God, but also consider Joseph Smith's claims to be obvious fraud. MG has to know this. So how on Earth can MG keep harping back to defending the reality of Smith's ancient plates by declaring that rejecting them means abandoning faith and hope?

[I Have Questions]

MG seems to be trying to defend the authenticity of Smith's claimed golden plates by demanding a position that includes hope and faith.

That doesn't follow. There might just not really be any hope of the kind MG wants. We have to face that possibility.

On the other hand I think it can be perfectly reasonable, not as a logical deduction but as a strategy for dealing with life, to decide to focus on a hopeful scenario and go on living as if it were certain, even though one knows it isn't. If you're trying to survive on a desert island or something you don't spend half of each day moping in despair because survival is realistically 50/50 and you need to give equal time to both scenarios. You think about the bad outcome as little as possible, squashing negative thoughts as fast as you can; you celebrate each bit of progress as if it were proof that you are definitely going to get through this. The negative outcome will take care of itself, if it is what's going to happen, so you may as well just ignore it, while if you're going to survive, there'll be a lot for you to do.

That analogy is meant to illustrate a general principle, that utility is a factor along with probability in deciding what theories to entertain. Neither the island survival problem nor the principle that it's meant to illustrate necessarily supports religious faith over atheism. You could even see the island survival analogy as supporting atheism rather than faith: it's in the scenario in which you die alone on the island that you need to make the place as decent as possible for all the years that you'll spend there, while the upbeat scenario in which a boat comes to rescue you is the one that will take care of itself anyway, so you might as well ignore it.

What I really don't get, though, is how the heck MG can sustain the false dichotomy between believing in Smith's golden plates and giving in to existential despair. Literally billions of people have firm hope and faith in eternal life with all their loved ones and a loving God, but also consider Joseph Smith's claims to be obvious fraud. MG has to know this. So how on Earth can MG keep harping back to defending the reality of Smith's ancient plates by declaring that rejecting them means abandoning faith and hope?

Why do people need to have a hope and a faith in something after they are dead in order for them to feel they are living a better life than others? I see people living fuller and more beneficial lives without that expectation. It's like belief in an afterlife prompts people to try less hard to fulfil their potential in this life. It's like a belief in an afterlife is an excuse to not be more involved in this life. It's also a magnet for people who want to feel themselves superior to others (as well as others who have nothing left in this life to hope for, so need the respite of hoping there's something more than what they face each and every day).

That's one thing that comes across from all MG's baseless protestations, that he sees his way of life as obviously superior to the lives of others that don't believe as he does, regardless of their good works. He holds a low opinion of people who don't believe in God, and those who have suspended belief in any God. He has a myopic view of atheists being this angry unfulfilled group of people, all because he believes in an afterlife and they don't. That's his only metric. He doesn't really believe in gold plates, if he did he'd be on a senior mission by now, so he's just trolling this board to satisfy his inherent narcissistic personality disorder. He'll say anything to scratch that superiority itch. This board is just a foil for him. Once you see his real intent (to elevate himself) you see the fakeness of his interactions, which also explains why he goes round in circles and contradicts himself. He's not putting forward a reasoned argument based on a consistent belief, evolving that position based on study and learning and new information, he's simply saying whatever comes to mind in the moment to make himself feel superior. It explains why he posts lots of sources without going to the effort of reading them.