onandagus wrote:I don't claim revelation is ruled out, only that it is entirely unnecessary to explain the reported translation content. If people then want to posit gratuitous revelation that really doesn't add anything, they will be entirely free to do so, but I hardly think this provides the basis for a good critical argument.
That is exactly what I believe ... about the Book of Mormon, endowment ceremony, Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, the Book of Abraham, and on and on. Why should the Kinderhook plates be any different?
When you think about it, it was always possible to say that the KP was translated by a "secular" method. As much as you want it to be, this was never the issue for most critics. The problem was that he claimed to be able to translate ancient documents when he clearly could not.
You apparently want to make a distinction that Joseph Smith could be trusted when he claimed to have translated something by the power of God but could not be trusted when he claimed to have translated something by secular means. But why? We don't even have to assume fraud and deception. If he could fool himself into thinking that he had made an accurate translation when he clearly had no idea what he was doing, he could fool himself into thinking that any other process he used for a translation was ordained by God even if it wasn't.
There simply is no reason to give Joseph Smith two credibility scales, one for normal claims and one for supernatural claims. If he wasn't credible, and your research clearly adds weight to the fact that he wasn't, then he wasn't credible, regardless of whether we are talking about secular matters or sacred matters.
Equality wrote:That said, I think this is a great piece of Mormon history and the history-lover in me is stoked by this whole thing.
K, I had to do a little snipping to get to just this ;), but that makes me feel really good, Equality. Solving historical puzzles like this is exciting, and love seeing other people get jazzed about it too!
Thanks,
Don
"I’ve known Don a long time and have critiqued his previous work and have to say that he does much better as a believer than a critic." - Dan Vogel, August 8, 2011
Joseph Smith could make a character match that was meaningless so he's equally likely to be fooled about whether he got a book of scripture revealed to him?
I just find this an enormous stretch.
Cheers,
Don
Last edited by Guest on Tue Aug 09, 2011 4:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
"I’ve known Don a long time and have critiqued his previous work and have to say that he does much better as a believer than a critic." - Dan Vogel, August 8, 2011
onandagus wrote:I don't claim revelation is ruled out, only that it is entirely unnecessary to explain the reported translation content. If people then want to posit gratuitous revelation that really doesn't add anything, they will be entirely free to do so, but I hardly think this provides the basis for a good critical argument.
That is exactly what I believe ... about the Book of Mormon, endowment ceremony, Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, the Book of Abraham, and on and on. Why should the Kinderhook plates be any different?
LOL! Most clever!
Don
"I’ve known Don a long time and have critiqued his previous work and have to say that he does much better as a believer than a critic." - Dan Vogel, August 8, 2011
Joseph Smith could make a character match that was meaningless so he's equally likely to be fooled about whether he got a book of scripture revealed to him?
This is just an enormous stretch.
Cheers,
Don
It's a stretch to say that someone who thinks that they can make a translation using a single character by consulting a worthless grammar might not be totally grounded in reality?
Dad of a Mormon wrote:It's a stretch to say that someone who thinks that they can make a translation using a single character by consulting a worthless grammar might not be totally grounded in reality?
People who are generally grounded in reality have done much stranger things than that. If you don't know this, you haven't been around enough!
=)
Don
"I’ve known Don a long time and have critiqued his previous work and have to say that he does much better as a believer than a critic." - Dan Vogel, August 8, 2011
Dad of a Mormon wrote:It's a stretch to say that someone who thinks that they can make a translation using a single character by consulting a worthless grammar might not be totally grounded in reality?
People who are generally grounded in reality have done much stranger things than that. If you don't know this, you haven't been around enough!
=)
Don
If only that had been the only strange thing that Joseph did. Listen, you are free to minimize it as much as you want. But his followers were under the impression that Joseph Smith had the ability to translate ancient documents when he didn't. That's a problem.
onandagus wrote: Listen, you are free to minimize it as much as you want. But his followers were under the impression that Joseph Smith had the ability to translate ancient documents when he didn't. That's a problem.
This would become a larger discussion involving all of Joseph Smith's revelatory and non-revelatory translations. It's certainly not something you can conclude from the Kinderhook plates incident alone, particularly since in that case he didn't use a revelatory method as he did with the Book of Mormon, etc.
by the way, Joseph's lessons with Professor Seixas involved reading the Bible in Hebrew, and I believe that's an ancient document. ;-)
Don
"I’ve known Don a long time and have critiqued his previous work and have to say that he does much better as a believer than a critic." - Dan Vogel, August 8, 2011