What is your best evidence for Joseph Smith sleeping with his wives?

[_Runtu]

This type of argument is precisely why I think that a lot of arguments about God existing, because if not, where would we get morality from, are completely laughable. The LDS, if they believe like you, don't believe in an absolutely Right and Wrong at all. What LDS believe is Right and Wrong boils down to, essentially, whatever the current Prophet says is right, or wrong. You guys on the one hand will claim that there is an absolute source of ethics and morality, God, and on the other hand, that source is really, when it comes down to it, a man. You belong to one of those religions where the top dog, the President, the head honcho, has become your arbiter of right and wrong.

I tell you what, Will. If your God actually exists, and actually commanded Joseph Smith to proposition married women behind his own wife's back, and behind the backs of these other men, and to hold secret, illegitimate (in the eyes of the law of the land), farcical marriage ceremonies with them, and to have sex with them, and to lie about having done so publicly, and privately, even to Emma and/or these other men who were the legal husbands, then your God is an asshole, and I don't want to be associated with him anyhow.

Really now, the best your God can do is to publicly teach righteousness and chastity and fidelity within marriage, while privately commanding his Prophet on earth to violate these very principles and to have sex with the wives of other men, behind his own wife's back? Really? You honestly believe that? You honestly believe that God was OK with Joseph Smith lying about having "married" and slept with other women, not only to Emma, but to the public, and the rest of the church, when in fact he really had done it?

If you really, honestly believe that, then all I can say you've really swallowed the lie and the deceit hook, line, and sinker, and so long as you willfully hold to this kind of belief system, there's really no hope for you. You've surrendered your mind to a fraud, an infamous fraud at that, and I can only shake my head and feel sorry for you.

What irritates me to no end is that people reduce our objection to this totally amoral system to a puritanical inability to handle sex with multiple partners. And I completely agree with you. When whatever the leader says is right, you've forfeited your own moral compass to someone else. And to make it worse, you've surrendered your conscience to a lie.

To quote Sin City:

Power don't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big, and gettin' the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you've got e'm by the balls.

[Guest]

If God wants to take certain of his sons and have them mate with certain of his daughters, it’s up to him to command them. Otherwise they are obligated to stay with their lawfully-wedded spouse. But I’m not about to tell God that his system is flawed for occasionally sanctioning exceptions to his standard rules of chastity. My sense of rectitude is not so constricted as to be rigid in all circumstances.

Apparently you don’t feel the same way. And that’s fine, too.

This type of explanation coming from a TBM would scare the crap out of my wife, and most Mormon women I know. They are much more comfortable with the "polygamy was caused by the mobs killing off Mormon men leaving a surplus of widows" argument. Once you start getting outside that little box and consider polygamy under Brigham Young and Joseph Smith was pretty much just like polygamy under Warren Jeffs (priesthood leaders simply marrying multiple women) LDS women get very uncomfortable.

Of course, my wife also believes the wine that the "good guys" drank in the scriptures was non-alcoholic. She is a master at hurdling those stumbling blocks to faith.

[_karl61]

I would think that growing up in a community where your father was banging all the local women would be a drag. Can you imagine having a crush on ten different girls at school and all of them being off limits because they are a half sister or cousin.

[_beastie]

I would think that growing up in a community where your father was banging all the local women would be a drag. Can you imagine having a crush on ten different girls at school and all of them being off limits because they are a half sister or cousin.

Hmmm, I doubt that would make them off limits.

[_moksha]

I would think that growing up in a community where your father was banging all the local women would be a drag. Can you imagine having a crush on ten different girls at school and all of them being off limits because they are a half sister or cousin.

Hmmm, I doubt that would make them off limits.

In Colorado City, that would make them your Uncle's intendeds. Their daughters would be for you.

[_beastie]

In Colorado City, that would make them your Uncle's intendeds. Their daughters would be for you.

Gotta keep that royal blood pure.

[_Sethbag]

I would think that growing up in a community where your father was banging all the local women would be a drag. Can you imagine having a crush on ten different girls at school and all of them being off limits because they are a half sister or cousin.

Or worse yet, they're off limits because your dad already screwed them.

[_asbestosman]

We know that the probability of two things happening is the product of the probabilities of either thing happening, ie: a 50% chance for each of two things happening yields a 25% chance of both things happening.

That only holds under certain conditions. It is not generally true of probability. It assumes that the events in question are probabilistically independent (or at least uncorrelated). That's a huge assumption especially in this case.

[_Nephi]

I would think that growing up in a community where your father was banging all the local women would be a drag. Can you imagine having a crush on ten different girls at school and all of them being off limits because they are a half sister or cousin.

In Kentucky, we call these women potential wives... My family tree is a trunk.

[_karl61]

Is there an early code of law in Utah that prohibits marriage to to a sibling or close relative. Since the Church and the State were the same, I am sure that the Church a.k.a. the State wrote these rules into code and provided sanctions to those who violated them.