ClarkGoble wrote:That is the fact there were real plates people saw changes the way the book functions in a conversion process.
Does the fact that there was a real spreadsheet showing investment returns that people you don't know saw and vouched for, convert you to give ten percent of your income to Bernie Madoff? Probably not.
My view: The Book of Mormon is the thing people use to justify what they already want to believe in. The book itself converts nobody. People convert themselves to church attendance and use the book to justify it.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
Again though my big problem is where, when in abject poverty, did he get the resources to make convincing plates and why, when he was suffering violence, did he persist? I've just not found anyone making a convincing case for that.
I have a question wrote:Does the fact that there was a real spreadsheet showing investment returns that people you don't know saw and vouched for, convert you to give ten percent of your income to Bernie Madoff?
I can't speak to Madoff, but on my mission there were definitely many people converted because of the book and not the church. Often before they'd even been to church.
We might debate how rational they were being or the nature of their purported spiritual experiences but it seemed to impress many of them. At least going by what they said.
ClarkGoble wrote:Again though my big problem is where, when in abject poverty, did he get the resources to make convincing plates and why, when he was suffering violence, did he persist? I've just not found anyone making a convincing case for that.
Where in his abject poverty did he get the resources to have the Book of Mormon printed?
ClarkGoble wrote:Again though my big problem is where, when in abject poverty, did he get the resources to make convincing plates and why, when he was suffering violence, did he persist? I've just not found anyone making a convincing case for that.
Clark,
He convinced multiple people to spend thousands of dollars digging multiple enormous holes in the ground over long periods of time looking for treasure that was not there, and you are struggling to understand how he could have manufactured a prop that fooled people?
I don't know how he made a convincing prop or even if he did, but that is such a minor detail in the overall case that I find your objection puzzling.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
ClarkGoble wrote:Again though my big problem is where, when in abject poverty, did he get the resources to make convincing plates and why, when he was suffering violence, did he persist? I've just not found anyone making a convincing case for that.
Where in his abject poverty did he get the resources to have the Book of Mormon printed?
He convinced other people to pay for it. Martin Harris mortgaged his farm. Are you saying something similar happened to make the plates? Effectively what you are saying is that he wasn't abject poor at the time despite the evidence. If he convinced someone to make him plates wouldn't that have come up?
ClarkGoble wrote:He convinced other people to pay for it. Martin Harris mortgaged his farm. Are you saying something similar happened to make the plates? Effectively what you are saying is that he wasn't abject poor at the time despite the evidence. If he convinced someone to make him plates wouldn't that have come up?
He convinced someone to put up a lot of money for printing didn't he, and how convincing were the plates. Unlike the kinderhook plates, the gold plates were hidden from everyone except in a couple of occasions where he hand picked believers to view them under controlled conditions. Some have suggested they may have been covered with a see-through cloth. There is an awful lot we don't know going on here, so I don't see why he couldn't have been able to create a fake prop. I think you, like myself as a believer, are highly influenced by a church history that makes Joseph looks really good with things like being really poor. He was much more successful then the church suggests. His main problem may have been his many failures hurting his successes. BY did quite well with a good portion of Joseph's following.
It's not clear how hard it would have been to make fake plates, because it's not clear how far inside the scheme the various witnesses were, when they made their various claims to have observed the plates. So it's not clear how elaborate a fake was really needed.
With just a few minutes of googling I was recently able to find out that lead shingles were a common roofing material in Smith's day, and that fifty pounds of lead sheets might only have set Smith back by something like the cost of a couple of bottles of whisky. There are uncertainties in my price estimates, depending on differences between wholesale and retail costs, and on price differences between large and small towns. So maybe it would have been a few bottles of whisky. It clearly wasn't a fortune. So Smith might have been able to buy some lead plates.
Treasure hunting is the kind of occupation in which a person is likely to be dirt poor on average, but enjoy occasional scores when some rube forks over cash. To parlay a little score into the big time, by investing in better props to make the next scam bigger, is the grifter's basic dream.
The modest value of lead also means that a stack of lead plates is something Smith might even just have found lying forgotten in a shed and picked up. It would have been a stroke of luck but not an incredible fluke.
We're not going to find any smoking-gun proof that Smith faked the Book of Mormon. And I'm not going to claim that the Mormon beliefs about Smith and the Book don't hang together satisfactorily from a Mormon viewpoint. If you seriously take a skeptical viewpoint, though, there really aren't any disturbing inconsistencies that seem hard to argue away. It all just fits like a glove. The things in the skeptical theory that seem to Mormons as though they should be disturbing are really just holdovers from Mormon assumptions about Smith and his life.
The issue at hand: Does the Book of Mormon enlighten the Bible epic; is it an attempt to gain power, prestige, and notoriety by a few individuals; or is a way to try to discredit the sovereignty of the Bible by saying--------------- We, have THIS OTHER revelation which can call into question the validity of the Bible story. I realize that Satan wants to confound, confuse, and divide. It would seem likely that such a being would use anything and everything (including distorted scientific data) to undermine the simplistic Good News of the Bible.
LittleNipper wrote:The issue at hand: Does the Book of Mormon enlighten the Bible epic; is it an attempt to gain power, prestige, and notoriety by a few individuals; or is a way to try to discredit the sovereignty of the Bible by saying--------------- We, have THIS OTHER revelation which can call into question the validity of the Bible story. I realize that Satan wants to confound, confuse, and divide. It would seem likely that such a being would use anything and everything (including distorted scientific data) to undermine the simplistic Good News of the Bible.
An imaginary being can probably do whatever you imagine, Nipper. Knock yourself out.
But the "distorted scientific data" has allowed the creation of the internet and the computer you're typing on. So you're back to your old dishonest hypocrite shtick. You still can't deal with all of the Christians who practice science and laugh at your "simplistic" fantasies dreamed up by the Morris and Hovind cults. They aren't Christian, Nipper. They're creationist cults of Christianity.
