Marg,
Regarding your comments to Glenn:
I don't care whether he's a believer or not. What I am addressing is things said on this thread and how it comes across to me. Complete reluctance to acknowledge the unreliability of the Book of Mormon witnesses and why...comes across as how a believer would talk. Be that as it may, what's more important is that his arguments indicate to me that his interpretation of historical data is unreliable. I don't buy that he's limited by standard historical methodology. If he truly is then there is something wrong with standard historical methodology. The bar would be set too high, such that a good critical evaluation of the evidence is not possible.
It’s your interpretation of historical data that’s unreliable. You have shown no sophistication, no methodology for dealing with multiple witnesses. You are so unfamiliar with historical methodology that you treat a newspaper reporter’s interview with Whitmer the same as one would his firsthand statements. When your demand for uninterested testimony is met with two examples, you invent an ad hoc speculation about a trick hat. You think religious testimony can be categorically dismissed and replaced with unfounded speculations. The bar isn’t set high for dismissing religious or interested testimony. Historiography isn’t like a court that throws out impeached testimony.
I've already been put off from reading Richard Lloyd Anderson because I believe Dan told me he's worse than he is with regards to psychoanalyzing J. Smith.
Anderson’s book is a good treatment of the lives of the witnesses and their characters. However, it is limited by his assumption that honest witnesses equate to real visions. Honest and smart people have visions, but whether visions are real or psychologically produced is a separate issue. You might want to call everyone who claims a vision a liar, but there is another explanation that requires some knowledge of psychology and the brain.
It does not help your arguments to assert that just because the witnesses believed in angels, divine visitations, etc. that they were unreliable.
Let me address this underlined part, because you are misrepresenting my position.
From Alec Fisher "Critical Thinking..An Introduction Cambridge University Press 2001
Glenn has not misrepresented you. You (and Roger) have several times misused Fisher to justify your rejection of the witnesses’ statements, and you have been corrected every time but persist in this obvious error. Fisher isn’t talking about ordinary observation of seeing Joseph Smith dictate with head in hat. It’s plausible and believable that Joseph Smith did that, even if we reject the part that includes supernatural sight. Even you have used their testimony to postulate a trick hat, which isn’t plausible. Fisher only advises caution and verification, not rejection. This is fulfilled with multiple witnesses, both friendly and unfriendly. The “greater miracle” that Hume talks of is your conspiracy theory. Remember, I have previously referred to Hume’s statement in this very context.
So Glenn when I look at the 3 witnesses in the Book of Mormon... Cowdery, Whitmer & Harris, as an example it's not simply a matter of whether or not they believe in angels or a God it's a matter of critically evaluating what they say..how credible is their claim given what we know. When they say for example " And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the word is truth." I don't accept at face value their claim. I note they have a vested interest in the start up religion. Their claim is extraordinary. Is it more likely they actually heard God or is some other more natural explanation likely, that they are using the claim they heard God in order to convince others of their claim? When I look at their claims within the context of all else that I know involved with their start up religion, I conclude they are willing to lie in order to promote this religion.
And then this evaluation extends into judging other claims they make with regards to their vested interest..the promotion of this religion.
We are not evaluating their vision of the angel and plates. It has nothing to do with seeing Joseph Smith dictate with head in hat, to which other people testified. Nevertheless, your handling of this is also stilted. Hume at least acknowledged the possibility of delusion or fraud (“deceive or be deceived”). You can’t assume they are lying about the vision, and then use that assumption to argue they were also lying about the head in hat. Why not assume they hallucinated the angel and plates under Joseph Smith’s influence? I would argue that there is documentary evidence that each of the witnesses had a propensity for hallucination prior to meeting Joseph Smith and that this aspect of their characters better explains what happened than a charge of dishonesty, which has neither evidence nor plausibility in a multiple witness situation.
Again, you can’t just assert that the witnesses are liars simply because they are believers. I don’t know where you get the witnesses have a vested interest? They are signing up for a lot of persecution and no promise of financial reward. Some might be willing to lie to promote religion, but not so many. How do they describe the same thing independently and so many decades after Joseph Smith died and happens to be supported by the earliest published accounts? Your only explanation seems to be an implausible conspiracy theory—which is motivated by a need to save your cherished Spalding theory.
The same thing with Emma's testimony which I'm not sure if it is a reliably true on or not, but if she in fact did claim that Smith would as he dictated with his head in a hat stop and inform her to correct spelling errors because the stone wouldn't proceed...and given the context of the rest of her testimony and in light of the fact that she too had a vested interest in the enterprise...it is more likely to me that she was lying as opposed to it really happened as claimed. Lying is also a more likely an explanation than Smith was able to successfully fool her time and again, and be consistently correct in guessing when she was actually making mistakes. It's more likely because of the context of everything else said. When one looks at the whole statement it's obvious it is intended propaganda ..to promote the idea that Smith was incapable of writing the Book of Mormon due to lack of knowledge and inability to even read words off the stone..that it MUST have been done by some miraculous supernatural way.
Why does Emma have to be lying? Why can’t her bias lead her to exaggeration? Lying isn’t the most “likely” explanation when one has to deal with the “greater miracle” of dealing with so many other witnesses, both friendly and unfriendly. You try to exclude the possibility that Joseph Smith fooled her by absurdly speculating that he would have to do it repeatedly—“Smith was able to successfully fool her time and again, and be consistently correct in guessing when she was actually making mistakes.” We don’t have the original MS with Emma handwriting on it, so we are unable to check on this claim. But it may have been based on Joseph Smith’s changing the spelling of proper names, and passing it off as Emma’s error. Finally, we need to consider the source. You are referencing an 1856 interview of Emma by Edmund C. Briggs that wasn’t published until 1916. The same kind of statement isn’t in her 1879 interview with Joseph Smith III. Why do you insist on reading kind of report like it was a firsthand account written by Emma’s own hand, although I explained it to you before? Doesn’t the sixty-year gap cause you pause?
... when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it, and I would pronounce it for him.
--Edmund C. Briggs, “A Visit to Nauvoo in 1856,” Journal of History 9 (January 1916): 454.
I doubt Emma claimed Joseph Smith corrected her spelling of ordinary words. It more likely had to do with proper names, of which there were many in the lost 116 pages, being the record kept by the Nephite kings. Joseph Smith may have changed the spelling of some of the proper names or changed the wording of a sentence slightly and passed it off as the scribe’s mistake. Most accounts don’t mention spelling. Rather, they make the modest claim that the Joseph Smith read the translation, and the scribe read back what was written, and the writing on the stone either was replaced by the next sentence or remain until corrected. This gave Joseph Smith a chance to ask how the proper name was spelt and change it, or perhaps change, delete or add a word.
David Whitmer reportedly said a similar thing as Emma, but less miraculous:
... the words would appear, and if he failed to spell the word right, it would stay till it was spelled right, then pass away; another come, and so on.” ...
--Eri B. Mullin to Saints’ Herald, 25 January 1880, Saints’ Herald 27 (1 March 1880): 76. (EMD 5:15)
Mullin had interviewed Whitmer in 1874, so there was a six-year gap.
... he was utterly unable to pronounce many of the names which the magic power of the Urim and Thummim revealed, and therefore spelled them out in syllables, and the more erudite scribe put them together. ...
--Chicago Times, 7 August 1875, 1. (EMD 5:21)
Nothing especially miraculous here.
Sometimes Joseph could not pronounce the words correctly, having had but little education; and if by any means a mistake was made in the copy, the luminous writing would remain until it was corrected. It sometimes took Oliver several trials to get the right letters to spell correctly some of the more difficult words, but when he had written them correctly, the characters and the interpretation would disappear, and be replaced by other characters and their interpretation.
--James H. Hart to Deseret Evening News, 18 March 1884, Deseret Evening News 17 (25 March 1884). (EMD 5:104)
Again, nothing too difficult to pull off.
Smith … was ofttimes compelled to spell the words out, not knowing the correct pronunciation …. Cowdery, however, being a school-teacher, rendered invaluable aid in pronouncing hard words and giving their proper definition. ...
Chicago Tribune, 17 December 1885, 3 (EMD 5:153-54, 155)
Here, again, nothing impossible to fake. The story is likely based on something Joseph Smith occasionally did when scribes would read back what they had written down.
I'm not sure what you are talking about. However the S/R witnesses is counter evidence but then Dan argues and an extremely poor argument I might add... that he uses the Book of Mormon witnesses e and accepts their claim to a head in the hat with no manuscript present translation process as credible and on that basis dismisses the S/R witnesses.
His use of the Book of Mormon witnesses to back each other up is circular reasoning. People in on a con are likely to back each other up. When extraordinary claims are being made..one needs extraordinary evidence. Using all the Book of Mormon witnesses has evidence for each other, when they themselves are not reliable witnesses, when they are highly motivated to lie, is not using good evidence.
You are the one using circular reasoning when you use the witnesses’ testimonies against them. What they saw convinced them Joseph Smith had a gift, but because they are believers their testimonies can’t be relied on. When I produced non-Mormon witnesses to the process, you say they were fooled by Joseph Smith’s trick hat. So you have made your position immune to evidence. The witnesses gave their testimonies independent of one another. The information they gave was once embarrassing to Joseph Smith to the point he suppressed it and replaced it with a more acceptable Urim and Thummim story. The unlikelihood of conspiracy makes the Spalding theory improbable.
I don't really care whether he is or isn't. But he uses his status as a historian to argue why his arguments should be accepted. It's on that basis that I have a problem. That is why I point out he doesn't come across to me as an objective historian...given his arguments.
I have tried to be fair, balanced, and measured in my assessment of historical sources, while you come across as desperate, unsophisticated, and unreasonable in your dismissal of Mormon witnesses.
Correct, one can be a believer and still be a very objective historian or can still argue well from an objective perspective. But as I said Dan uses his historian status in order to claim superiority in argument. It is for that reason that I point out my criticism of his reasoning and that he doesn't come across to me as an objective historian but seems to argue more from a believer's perspective. My intention is not to be derogatory.
I don’t use any kind of status to claim superiority. If anything, I use historical methodology to assess sources and encourage you to do likewise.