Question for bomgeography about the flood

[_Fence Sitter]

Seriously, the story of how the Book of Mormon was produced is exactly what we would expect to see made up in a 19th century environment.

Vogel has made probably the strongest arguments along this line of anyone. I'm obviously not persuaded since I'm still a believing Mormon. I think for the naturalistic critic in the sense of not postulating any phenomena not already reasonably sustained by science that Vogel's work is the best. I think he does a bit too much psychologizing of Joseph but given his thesis of explaining Joseph as a fraud, that makes some sense. I'll confess I like Dan and have enjoyed the discussions I've had with him.

All that said though the biggest places I find this thesis implausible is how someone in the abject poverty he was in had the resources to construct the fraud and why on earth he'd persist with the fraud given the extensive and extremely violent opposition. (Read up on what was going on during the period when he had the plates -- it's not pleasant and I don't understand why he'd stick with it) Especially after it became clear he wasn't going to make money with the book. What's the point of the fraud at that point. If we instead think Joseph is simply delusional rather than a conscious fraud then that seems to raise even more questions. Not the least of which those who are that mentally ill rarely keep to a single story and usually aren't that functional. The biggest problem with the delusional view is explaining the plates. It's even harder to make sense of that if he wasn't conscious about making them.

The longer I analyze his life the more I am convinced he was aware the he was a fraud and that it just snowballed, if you will. I do not dismiss mental illness totally, especially given that his youngest son's condition, but I do not think that was a large factor, if any in Joseph Smith's work.

I often hear the apologetic question of why would anyone continue with a fraud the way Joseph Smith did in the face of what he suffered? I think the answer is simple. He did not know anything else. What was he going to do, at any point in his life, if he stopped? He tried stopping for a while after marrying Emma but quickly returned to it. As a youth, he and his family were in abject poverty with a father who did not support them and the loss of the eldest son, much of the responsibility for supporting the Smith fell to Joseph Smith and where did he find success in making money? They had already failed at farming or investing and were reduced to peddling and hiring out as labors. So where could Joseph Smith find a better way to earn money? In convincing people he had supernatural powers.
I recently finished an excellent book on 19th century counterfeiting by Stephen Mihm called A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States which traced the lives of several men and their families who were involved in counterfeiting. Often they were jailed or even executed for such participation yet time and time again they and or their families returned to the trade? Why? Well for the same reasons Joseph Smith stayed with his behavior, they simply did not know a better way to earn a living. There is no deep reasoning required here, Joseph Smith stayed with what he knew and what brought him the most success.

The other issues to my eyes is that as persuasive as Dan is for certain features of early American myths and legends about mound builders and so forth to explain both early Mormon views and more particularly elements of the Book of Mormon the text itself seems at odd with many elements. Now it's been too long since I last read Dan's books and I have them in storage right now so I can't grab them for argument. However when I read them and when I'd discussed them in the past there simply were a lot of elements in the text that seem odd if we're going for a combination of mound building, masonry, View of the Hebrews as the source for the text.

I don't think anyone doubts Joseph Smith genius of combining elements from his environment into something new. Without examples of what you find lacking, I have no way to analyze those components you find problematic within a 19th century environment, but it is clear that as time goes on and we discover more and more about that environment, there are less and less item that do not fit and at the same time continue discovering that the contemporary anti-Mormon sources are where we find the most accurate descriptions of what really went on. As Michael Quinn said "Once again, a Mormon source verifies the accuracy of an anti-Mormon memory of what he heard early Mormon say."

I recognize that's not going to convince anyone here since the alternative is the bigger leaps from non-evidence of the divine. However I think we should recognize there are big, big questions for both the fraudulent and delusional models. Especially given the only time Joseph really was moderately successful was Nauvoo. Explaining the 1830's and 1820's just seems very difficult to my eyes. To me (and I recognize many here won't agree) these problems are the equivalent of horses or metal swords for the critics.

It isn't just horses and swords - it is the entire Nephite/Lamanite nation that we are unable to find anywhere in the America's. There isn't a single physical artifact one can point to that can be linked directly to the Book of Mormon. Not one. The comparison between the difficulty in explaining how the book was produced against the total lack of evidence for it as well the extensive evidence against, is not a level playing field, it is an overwhelming imbalance to anyone outside of faith.

By the way, I hear people bring up Sorenson's work as evidence of Nephites. In my opinion Sorenson is guilty of doing with the Book of Mormon what Biblical archeologist like William F. Albright did for most of the last century, that is, taking the Bible and seeing where it fit in ancient Israel. Of course we know how that has turned out.

[_ClarkGoble]

There is no deep reasoning required here, Joseph Smith stayed with what he knew and what brought him the most success.

Honestly not trying to be cute here, but what success?

...but it is clear that as time goes on and we discover more and more about that environment, there are less and less item that do not fit and at the same time continue discovering that the contemporary anti-Mormon sources are where we find the most accurate descriptions of what really went on.

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Could you expand a little with examples?

There isn't a single physical artifact one can point to that can be linked directly to the Book of Mormon. Not one.

I think you missed what I was saying. I'm making a distinction between positive data that would publicly confirm the Book of Mormon and things apologists have more trouble giving compelling explanations for. I think all apologists recognize there's no positive evidence and don't really expect any. After all what would possibly count as positive evidence beyond finding actual Nephite writing? Nothing else could positively identify the Nephites.

By the way, I hear people bring up Sorenson's work as evidence of Nephites.

Of course Sorenson himself doesn't make that claim. Some well meaning but perhaps not well read people attempt to use it in that fashion. But really it's much more of an argument for a particular reading of the Book of Mormon along with a plausibility argument. But a plausibility argument is far from evidence for a position. Most apologists are pretty upfront about that.

[_Themis]

A big point I have made multiple times is that no one goes there until there is a need to protect the overall belief in Joseph Smith's divine calling. That's the one thing that cannot be questioned, even though their private knowledge is not a reliable way to know this.

I think I'd agreed up to the point when you say private knowledge isn't a reliable way to know this. Although I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. But I have a post at T&S coming up on that subject so I'll not steal it's thunder.

All experiences come without interpretation. We have learned how to interpret what we experience from the 5 senses to reliably work our way through the physical world. Not close to perfect, but more then good enough. Spiritual experiences are the same thing. The difference is that people interpret them in different ways then they do the usual mundane experiences of life. The only consistency we see is people interpreting meaning from them based on their world view. An atheist having the same kind of spiritual experience as the Catholic is likely to interpret it very differently then the Catholic person. WE also don't see any good or reliable objective knowledge coming from those interpretations. While these experiences are great, we shouldn't trust we are getting the right interpretation from them. One big problem is their source. How do we filter out what can potentially be produced by the body and natural environment from what is believed to be a supernatural source?

[_Physics Guy]

When it was working well for Smith, as I understand it, he lived in a building called "the Mansion House" that was later a hotel. So it seems that he did have worldly success.

People whose lives greatly change for the better can often get used to the change after a while, until what was once a barely thinkable dream becomes the expected norm. The instincts learned in the harder times of early life, though, may never really vanish. When later generations look back on the life of such a person, the assumption of good times as the norm for this person becomes much stronger, because whenever you know how the story ends, you tend to assume that it was bound to end that way.

To people who think of Joseph Smith as a respected church leader, the default assumption is that he was bound to make a respectable living in some respectable way, because of course he was a respectable guy. So why would he pursue a religious scam? For religious scams in 1830's New England, the normal upside is probably a dozen or two derelict followers who can't even pay much, and the likely downside is getting run out of town. For a respectable middle class person to turn to that line of work would be kind of like a doctor becoming a squeegee guy. It's hard to see the attraction.

But it seems instead to me that Smith grew up as a hustler with few other prospects. A religious scam would have been risky, but it was far and away his best shot at having any life better than hungry subsistence. That's why most criminals pursue crime, after all. By middle class standards, crime doesn't usually pay—but criminals aren't going by middle class standards.

[_Fence Sitter]

Honestly not trying to be cute here, but what success?

I don't think you are trying to be cute and I wish I were capable of creating the tone you write with in my writing. It is refreshing to have someone here who is able to discuss Mormonism without getting angry or offended. More so someone with your capabilities.

The success he had is to be measured against what he had been doing and what other options he and his family had. Throughout his life he was incredibly successful in convincing large groups of other people that he had supernatural powers or divine guidance. Time and time again he was successful at having these same people support him in one way or another. So on one hand he could go back to tenant dwelling, hard scrabble farming, peddling, coopering and day laboring, all very labor intensive, or he could continue to make people think he had the power to find buried treasure (early life) or that God spoke through him (later in life). In my opinion it is very evident that Joseph Smith enjoyed the limelight, something we can see from early on, be it an exhorter at a camp meeting or as the focal point of a contracted treasure hunting group, and at its full blown narcissistic worst in Nauvoo, where he simultaneously was mayor, chief of police, head of the town council, postmaster general, lieutenant general and prophet.

He was supposed to give that up and go back to what? Similar to my example of counterfeiters in the same era, he did not have any other options. Granted he was not always successful and frequently found himself on the wrongs side of the law or an angry mob of local citizens, but just like the others who lived on the fringes of society in that era, he did not have other options and given what he was able to accomplish, I'd say he was tremendously successful.

...but it is clear that as time goes on and we discover more and more about that environment, there are less and less item that do not fit and at the same time continue discovering that the contemporary anti-Mormon sources are where we find the most accurate descriptions of what really went on.

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Could you expand a little with examples?

See Bordie, Quinn and Vogel. I am not trying to avoid an answer here, I just prefer not to get drug down a hole trying to validate individual statements as having been anti-Mormon and now are recognized as correct. Brodie's work alone stands as a testament to historical claims that were once considered anti-mormon (treasure hunting, polygamy, peep stones, and so on.

As Bushman put it:

The response of Mormon historians in the 1970s was to deny almost everything. Beyond the Josiah Stowell incident, they argued, all the money-digging stories were fabrications of Joseph Smith’s enemies. They claimed that the sources for the stories were corrupted and therefore not to be trusted

Richard Lyman Bushman, "Joseph Smith and Money Digging," in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History, ed. Laura Harris Hales (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), Kindle locations 130–155

There isn't a single physical artifact one can point to that can be linked directly to the Book of Mormon. Not one.

I think you missed what I was saying. I'm making a distinction between positive data that would publicly confirm the Book of Mormon and things apologists have more trouble giving compelling explanations for. I think all apologists recognize there's no positive evidence and don't really expect any. After all what would possibly count as positive evidence beyond finding actual Nephite writing? Nothing else could positively identify the Nephites.

I thought you were trying to compare the problems with "the fraudulent and delusional models" as being "the equivalent of horses or metal swords for the critics". Maybe I misunderstood.

By the way, I hear people bring up Sorenson's work as evidence of Nephites.

Of course Sorenson himself doesn't make that claim. Some well meaning but perhaps not well read people attempt to use it in that fashion. But really it's much more of an argument for a particular reading of the Book of Mormon along with a plausibility argument. But a plausibility argument is far from evidence for a position. Most apologists are pretty upfront about that.

My understanding of Sorenson is he is trying to find the Book of Mormon is a Central and South American setting, is that incorrect?

[_Fence Sitter]

To add a little more along the line why Joseph Smith simply didn't stop his treasure hunting activities there is this interesting quote from Emma's brother, Alva Hale.

Joe Smith never handled one shovel of earth in those diggings. All that Smith did was to peep with stone in hat, and give directions where and how to dig, and when and where the enchantment moved the treasure. That Smith said if he should work with his hands at digging there, he would lose the power to see with the stone.

Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon by David Persuitte pg 38.

If we take into account the numerous sworn statements and accounts by his neighbors of him and his family as lazy, or as one neighbor, Joseph Capron put it: "Their great object appeared to be, to live without work.", the answer to the question of why Joseph Smith simply did not go back to working, is obvious. It was a lot easier to get paid for not working.

[_ClarkGoble]

All experiences come without interpretation.

I don't think that's true. When I go outside and look up I experience a blue sky but part of that experience is recognizing it as blue, as a sky and related to a whole lot of other experiences and abstractions. Experience is always given as partially interpreted. There never is a 'raw' uninterpreted experience that we then interpret. Rather we take an already interpreted experience and interpret it more. But we are linguistic creatures and our experiences come partially in terms of that.

We have learned how to interpret what we experience from the 5 senses to reliably work our way through the physical world.

I know this will sound very pedantic, but I just can't agree. First off we have numerous types of senses not 5. (I recognize you're just simplifying, but this is very important to keep in mind and is tied to the earlier point about experience coming pre-interpreted - there's never raw sense data we interpret the way naïve empiricists used to think in the 17th and 18th centuries.)

It's certainly true we are able to reliably work our way around the world in the locations where we're adapted (either evolutionarily or culturally). Once you move outside of those realms our reliability starts to break down. That's why real physics and folk physics are so at odds. It's also why some evolutionary psychologists (like say Atran) argue that at least significant components of religion arise out of our cognitive behaviors. For instance he'd argue belief in spirits arises because it's more costly to have a false negative agent detection than a false positive and so forth. While I don't think that reductively explains all religion it's an important component in understanding religious experiences I think. Again though this is an other example of pre-interpreted experience. It's that very nature of pre-interpreted which can lead to mistakes especially outside of the domain it was trained for.

Spiritual experiences are the same thing. The difference is that people interpret them in different ways then they do the usual mundane experiences of life. The only consistency we see is people interpreting meaning from them based on their world view.

Except that of course some make the argument that because people's interpretations of religious experiences are wrong that religion is wrong without noting the exact same logical structure as saying because people's experiences of physics are wrong that physics is wrong. (I'm not saying you are making that mistake - just noting the fallacy) But in your example that follows I'd simply note that we could replace Catholic with person uneducated about physics and get a pretty similar conclusion. That ought warn us that we're making a mistake in our logic. Often the fallacy of composition or the fallacy of division.

While these experiences are great, we shouldn't trust we are getting the right interpretation from them.

That's true to a point although I'd simply note that in practice we do trust them quite often. (The cognitive processes that are pre-interpreting our experience) Now I personally think we should continue to inquire and question but there's a reason we trust them. In most phenomena they are extremely accurate. Once we move outside of our common experiences we must be more careful of course. But that then means continual testing, making predictions, seeing if predictions come true and so forth. Not everyone does that of course. It doesn't mean they don't know though it just means they could be more careful.

One big problem is their source. How do we filter out what can potentially be produced by the body and natural environment from what is believed to be a supernatural source?

Rather depends upon the nature of the experience. It's hard to say much when the class of experiences isn't narrowed sufficiently.

[_ClarkGoble]

If we take into account the numerous sworn statements and accounts by his neighbors of him and his family as lazy, or as one neighbor, Joseph Capron put it: "Their great object appeared to be, to live without work.", the answer to the question of why Joseph Smith simply did not go back to working, is obvious. It was a lot easier to get paid for not working.

Except that then argues against Joseph manufacturing the plates, wouldn't it? That would take a considerable amount of work as would the translation. So by saying he's lazy aren't you in fact undercutting the argument that he was working this complex difficult con?

[_ClarkGoble]

When it was working well for Smith, as I understand it, he lived in a building called "the Mansion House" that was later a hotel. So it seems that he did have worldly success.

That was in Nauvoo which I already mentioned. I don't think I'd say that period was without difficulty but it definitely was the one period one could say he was at least semi-successful. The problem is that the period we have to explain is the much more difficult era of his 20's and early 30's.

[_ClarkGoble]

The success he had is to be measured against what he had been doing and what other options he and his family had. Throughout his life he was incredibly successful in convincing large groups of other people that he had supernatural powers or divine guidance. Time and time again he was successful at having these same people support him in one way or another.

But again he spent most of this era in severe poverty, many of his children died and he suffered both the threat of violence and it's execution. You're trying to narrow success to this narrow area and ignore the costs he experienced elsewhere which undermine calling that success.

He was supposed to give that up and go back to what?

The obvious play if he was a fraud is just a more conventional preacher. Lots of con artists did that and made good money.

I just prefer not to get drug down a hole trying to validate individual statements as having been anti-Mormon and now are recognized as correct.

I don't think the tag of anti-Mormon has much to do with truth or falsity but more to do with aims and goals. Anti-Mormons say true things just like I think even their worst critics admit apologists do as well. But this just seems a category error. We can discuss claims independent of the goals an author is attempting to achieve with them. This is unfortunately a common problem in politics where people are labeled with some slur without engaging with the truth of the claims - sometimes of course we may wish to dismiss a critic or defender because they are unreliable or would in the big picture mislead but that says nothing about individual claims especially in more careful discussions where the participants aren't apt to be misled. In the same way a racist might say quite a few truths to make a racist point. That he may use truth to make racist claims doesn't make him any less a racist.

I thought you were trying to compare the problems with "the fraudulent and delusional models" as being "the equivalent of horses or metal swords for the critics". Maybe I misunderstood.

I was. But I'd make a distinction between a narrow claim and a broad claim. One can argue Joseph was wrong in his truth claims without claiming he's delusional or fraudulent.

My understanding of Sorenson is he is trying to find the Book of Mormon is a Central and South American setting, is that incorrect?

You know I double checked his latest book from a few years back and in the introduction to be careful and he actually makes stronger claims than he's made before. He says, "If the document in question agrees at a large number of points—as it does in this case—with what the external sources tell us, then the text must be deemed a historically valid record." (Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book Kindle Locations 292-293)

That to me is far too strong a claim and not really defensible. The weaker claim I mentioned earlier is what most apologists claim and defend.