The "Official" Witnesses Trailer Drops

[honorentheos]

In one sense I agree, but then it occurs to me that very few books of scripture were actually penned by the supposed source of divine inspiration suggesting that authority is often secondhand. So even with ancient scripture there is a certain handwaving away the middleman to allow the reader to believe they are receiving divine inspired thought directly from the source.

Mohammed? He recited but the recorded word occured with the first caliphate. His influence as a spiritual and military leader while alive had to evolve to transcend his death and be a source for claiming power.

Confucius, Lao Tzu, Moses, Jesus, Siddhattha Gotama - their teaching was oral and put to paper by others typically after they were gone...well, Lao Tzu possibly being the exception before disappearing. But even in his case the Tao claims authority by being from him through legend rather than confirmed authorship.

This raises the question of if this is a prerequisite for a religion to transition to a modern religion? If most religions including the original Western traditions (meaning the Greek, Celtic, Norse and other so called pagan beliefs) were oral and not transmitted with a claim of direct divine influence and also failed to gain a hold in the modern world in a meaningful way, what then? Do most world religions claim that status due to the miracle of the written word, and tangentially to the transcription of the founders words into scripture whose authority comes from the claim they are their words?

The physicality of the plates seems like a device to establish antiquity and through that authority. But it also does so by being familiar to Christian readers. Establishing ancient origin while striking a western Christian as consistent with what they believe at least in a general sense is probably critical to the recipe for scripture to sneak into the western canon like the Book of Mormon has.

[honorentheos]

That old thread from the old board was a trip. I can't help myself from copying over a post:

Some years ago there was a Radiolab titled Black Box that explored instances where it was observable what went into something, what came out, but the processes inside the black box were opaque. The three examples explored included the mechanism of anesthesia, a 1950s era radio broadcast that attracted millions of listeners based on telephathy, and metamorphosis of caterpillars into moths/butterflies.

The middle episode regarding telephathy and a popular 1950s BBC radio broadcast centered around a couple whose grandson was exploring their legacy and the fact the grandmother who was the surviving member and half of the act maintained the catchphrase from the show, "You be the judge" whenever asked to explain the trick. She never did, and maintained it wasn't something she could convey.

The hosts end the piece by interviewing Penn Jillette who laughed about the supposed mystery. One of his comments that I think applies here was this -

ROBERT: You know, I don't think it's actually time for us to end this, because I didn't tell you this. We were so interested in trying to figure out how they did that trick, that -- that Soren and I, because we just wanted to find out, like, did somebody know how they did it? So we called this guy.

PENN JILLETTE: [laughs]

ROBERT: Who ruined everything. This is Penn Jillette, who you probably know from Penn & Teller. Famous for doing magic tricks and then telling you how they're done. Now, I don't really know what I was expecting when we called him. I guess I was thinking he would know what they did, but he wouldn't choose to tell us. I didn't know. But when we called him and we played him the story, as soon as he heard it he said ...

PENN JILLETTE: Oh, it's a book test, right? It's a book test. It's an envelope switch.

JAD: A what?

PENN JILLETTE: And there are, you know, three or four ways to do them.

JAD: What did he say?

ROBERT: He said basically, "I can tell you how they did it."

PENN JILLETTE: Yeah.

ROBERT: Or how they might have done it, but you are not going to like it.

PENN JILLETTE: There -- there you go. The only secret in magic -- there's only one, and that is that the secret must be ugly. You cannot have a beautiful secret.

ROBERT: A beautiful secret's the kind of thing that's short and sweet. Like, he folded the hat twice. Or ...

PENN JILLETTE: There's mirrors under that table.

ROBERT: When you hear it, it's like, "Oh! Of course, that's what they would do." And you love finding it out.

PENN JILLETTE: Then you will whisper it to the person next to you. So in magic, what you want is an idea that is not beautiful.

ROBERT: So what he told us is a magic trick that stays secret is one that's so boring to tell you don't want to tell it, and you don't even want to hear it.

PENN JILLETTE: If I have to say, "He's lying about this and there's gaffers tape over behind there, and they're -- they're not actually telling you the exact truth here," and -- and it gets so -- you don't get an a-ha. One of the strongest feelings you can get in life, one of the most rewarding feelings is the feeling of an a-ha, I finally understand. If you don't have a wonderful a-ha, people won't figure it out. So I'm -- I can tell you easily how they did that trick, but you will not get an a-ha.

ROBERT: Basically, he said the true answer to this one is gonna kill your joy.

PENN JILLETTE: Yeah, it's ugly.

JAD: So did he -- did he tell you what they did?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Well, what did he say?

ROBERT: Well, I'll tell you -- I'll tell you in just a second. He went into excruciating detail about how he thinks they did it.

PENN JILLETTE: Now a book test, we actually do one in our show.

ROBERT: But the more important thing, he was so right. Once we heard the explanation and the details and all, we were -- we were both like, "Oh, all right. Well, [bleep]."

ROBERT: This is like a kiss with a poisoned dart in it.

PENN JILLETTE: I love how much I bummed your ____.

I think this is attempting to make an ugly truth into a beautiful trick. While I think what matters most is the fact the Book of Mormon doesn't describe ancient America but is very much a product of the 19th century, racist foundation and all, I do have an opinion on the way it came to be. And that is Smith and Cowdery talked about it openly when it was only the Whitmers and Emma around. Most of what we have today is from a three month period where Cowdery and Smith made writing the Book of Mormon their job and the Whitmers supported them. All the showmanship was originally part of what produced the 116 pages but who knows how crappy that was to read, how obviously bad it was, how many verilys and came to passes per page there were. Yeah, they used the hat trick later when being observed, but it's believing in magic Ina different way to ignore the obvious ugly reality there probably wasn't a trick in the end that resulted in the actual work of production.

The modem magician is fine with the audience knowing he isn't really magic as long as they imagine the trick is something magnificent in itself. They don't want you to know how many people were in on the trick to make it work, how mundane the reality is, that the audience was played and manipulated rather than dazzled by some act of singular wonder if still explainable without resorting to the supernatural. The attempt to figure out how it was produced is a deception that keeps up the charade that gives the production more credit than it deserves. It's a lie, a fake, and the most obvious answer is there were a core group of people who were behind it, intended to benefit from it, worked it for all it was worth, had a falling out and took the con in different directions, and today there's a multi-billion dollar corporation as the result. All because people want to believe there's more to this than there really is. And that's the real trick - that people keep chasing the big reveal, the a-ha moment when they see behind the curtain. There's no curtain. Just some fakes making up a fake story.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

And that is Smith and Cowdery talked about it openly when it was only the Whitmers and Emma around. Most of what we have today is from a three month period where Cowdery and Smith made writing the Book of Mormon their job and the Whitmers supported them. All the showmanship was originally part of what produced the 116 pages but who knows how crappy that was to read, how obviously bad it was, how many verilys and came to passes per page there were. Yeah, they used the hat trick later when being observed, but it's believing in magic Ina different way to ignore the obvious ugly reality there probably wasn't a trick in the end that resulted in the actual work of production.

... Just some fakes making up a fake story.

Boy, ain't that the truth. I think all the mythology around the production of the Book of Mormon, whether it's an angel or a face in the hat is just made up BS. They literally and openly had a collaborative project to write a novel. The rest of it just morphed over time as they figured out how to monetize the book with a church.

The true miracle is that the church itself endured, despite the founders' venality.

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

It's true that the provenance of most Scriptures is hard to establish, and the real connection to their traditional writers is dubious. I think this only reinforces my point, though.

It is not the case that everyone already firmly believed that Muhammed or Laozi was this awesome person whose every word was divinely inspired, and then the Quran or the Tao Te Ching got accepted as Scripture by convincing people that they had come from those awesome dudes. It was the other way round: people had the Scriptures themselves, and thought they were awesome, and they built up those legendary ancient dudes by attributing the awesome Scriptures to them.

And that's why there was never any need to say that Muhammed or Laozi or whoever had produced the Scriptures by any miraculous means. Nobody is trying to pimp up the Scriptures by giving them a fancy origin story. Instead it's the prophets who are getting pimped up by associating them with the Scriptures. And it makes them look better to have them produce the Scriptures by ordinary means, just reciting or writing. Laozi could just write the Tao Te Ching the way I'd write a letter, because that's how awesome Laozi was.

The more I think about it, the more weird and unusual it seems that the Mormon Scriptures have this elaborate and miraculous origin story. It seems to be backwards compared to the way most religions handle their Scriptures.

[honorentheos]

I'm filtering much of this through my understanding of the life of Muhammad where his authority was probably tied to his successes in politics and military exploits. His recitations are intertwined with this in ways that perhaps overlap the D&C better than the Book of Mormon.

The perpetuation of his authority was challenged and split through competing claims and it seems to recording of the Qu'ran in written form was an act of politics as much as religion.

It's in this sense I think the claim needs examined since we are speaking of individuals whose influence managed a leap from local to regional to now global influence. There are many prophets of esteem whose influence went to the grave with them, and many whose followers likely built it up. The oral traditions and legends of the Semitic peoples attributed to Moses and recodified into an identity that fit the needs of the Israelite nations in a time of weakness surrounded by greater powers is an example.

Point being I don't think the scripture we know is as closely associated with the individuals of ancient origin to whom they are attributed as to be so easily classified as different from the Book of Mormon based on the lack of a historic Nephi or Mormon. If one steps back to examine what it takes for a religion to go global, the founder seems to be more valuable as legend than as historic reality. That, and the ability of their followers to transfer their teachings into a format that suits different needs than those the founder was likely engaging with more pragmatic and immediately.

[Lem]

And that is Smith and Cowdery talked about it openly when it was only the Whitmers and Emma around. Most of what we have today is from a three month period where Cowdery and Smith made writing the Book of Mormon their job and the Whitmers supported them. All the showmanship was originally part of what produced the 116 pages but who knows how crappy that was to read, how obviously bad it was, how many verilys and came to passes per page there were. Yeah, they used the hat trick later when being observed, but it's believing in magic Ina different way to ignore the obvious ugly reality there probably wasn't a trick in the end that resulted in the actual work of production.

... Just some fakes making up a fake story.

Boy, ain't that the truth. I think all the mythology around the production of the Book of Mormon, whether it's an angel or a face in the hat is just made up BS. They literally and openly had a collaborative project to write a novel. The rest of it just morphed over time as they figured out how to monetize the book with a church.

The true miracle is that the church itself endured, despite the founders' venality.

- Doc

Great post from Honor! What a story. I always liked Penn.

To your point Doc, in the end, maybe it was just another ugly mundanity, as a group of people found themselves uniquely isolated in the West, almost no one disagreeing with their made up origin story, for just long enough to grab land, make some money, and the weirdness to take hold.

[Lem]

[IHAQ]

Peterson is now targeting wealthy Mormons to buy out whole screenings as a means of getting this into cinemas.

At our Witnesses.com website, there are now three buttons indicating ways in which you can help us to get the film onto screens throughout and beyond the Wasatch Front:

Own a Theater? Book Witnesses Here.
Buy a Private Screening: Families, Church, Community
Bring Witnesses to Your City This Summer

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... smith.html

I realize, of course, that only a few of you may be in a position to buy a private screening. But please do consider it, for a ward or a youth group or a family gathering.

The inherent underlying desperation that leaks through in posts like that suggests he didn't get sign off on the $200,000 extra his distributer was stating would be required to get this thing showing in more than one provincial set of cinemas.

[Doctor Scratch]

on that leaks through in posts like that suggests he didn't get sign off on the $200,000 extra his distributer was stating would be required to get this thing showing in more than one provincial set of cinemas.

Well, I would withhold judgment and that particular moment for now. I think he may be admitting what the money was used for:

And you won’t want to miss this:

“Televised Interview of Actor Paul Wuthrich from Witnesses“

In fact, you might also want to listen to an interview on KSL-Radio’s Movie Show with Doug Wright with Lincoln Hoppe (“Martin Harris”) and Michael Zuccola (“young David Whitmer”). The interview starts at roughly the 28:25 mark and ends at about 43:57:

“Movie Show with Doug Wright”

Lincoln Hoppe (“Martin Harris”) also recorded this 24-minute podcast for Hi-5 Live. It begins a bit slowly, but it soon picks up:

https://www.Facebook.com/watch/live/?v= ... _permalink

And there’s this, from Mormon Life Hacker:

“Highly anticipated film tells the untold story of Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon”

Maybe you missed this, from Meridian Magazine:

“Meridian Magazine Live with Witnesses Director and Leading Cast.”

So, the media blitz is on! This is why they went and spent the "big bucks" on Purdie Distribution. Didn't you know that he is *the* guy when it comes to LDS cinema? Well, you get what you pay for, I guess! This would seem to be the cherry on the sundae:

And, coming up, the LDS Film Festival will run from 24 February to 27 February at the Scera Theater in Orem, Utah. The festival has released its schedule, and Witnesses will be its opening film. The movie will play on the evening of Wednesday, 24 February, at 7:00 PM. They are also planning on a filmmakers Q&A after the showing.

Witnesses will be its opening film??? Wow! This, you have to realize, is pretty much the LDS equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival. Can you imagine the elbows that the Mopologists will get to rub up against? Maybe DCP can get Richard Dutcher's autograph! (Later, they'd no doubt take it back to one of the Interpreter "seances" in order to chant all around it and burn it in effigy.) However you slice it, you really have to credit them with a victory for this one. Whereas last year, they basically had to beg and "shoehorn" (or "worm"?) their way into the festival, *this* time, they are strolling up first in line on the red carpet.

Perhaps my favorite part of the post, where DCP explains how--contrary to things said earlier in this thread--he's not "desperate":

Incidentally, my wife and I are just back from watching the beating of Hiram Page, one of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, by an anti-Mormon mob.

{...}

I dunno. Maybe this is what “desperation” looks like?

I'm not sure about that. I don't know that publicly attending an apparently-staged beating of somebody is how I'd typically want to spend a Friday night (especially given that there is a pandemic going on). On second thought: yes, that is pretty much exactly what "desperation" looks like. I couldn't have put it better myself, in fact.

[kairos]

Holy Moroni!
The LDS film festival has been chosen as the venue for opinions of the Witnesses film to be expressed. I cannot see that film as coming
out "alive"- if it is DOA it will go to DVD and never see another big screen!
How did the film get front and center billing?
Well Peterson/Purdie could have simply bought
in for X$$? Otherwise the film has already been graded against its competition and given first
Placement- that is way to hard to believe!
I will go with the buy in scenario! And that DCP will pretty much give away most tickets to get
a sizeabke audience. I predict disaster!
just postulation'
k