If plates then God

[tagriffy]

On the one hand there is the large disparity between the Book of Mormon history and the historical information we have about the New World. There is the dense 19th century American quality of the book. These significantly suggest the book is a fictional creation. If so the plates are a theatrical creation.

On the other hand MG points out Emma believes the story. she rustled the plates under the cloth and her husband was uneducated so could not do the dictating from his own brain.

Of course, the big question is what to make of this.

[Res Ipsa]

Wow. You should notify the thousands of judges around the world that are admitting testimony into evidence in court cases that they're doing it wrong.

Testimony is evidence, at least of some things. It depends on the testimony. Evidence is a relationship between two things -- not a single thing in isolation. First, you have to ask what what the testimony is claimed to be evidence of. Second, you have to ask whether the testimony's existence makes the fact or conclusion more or less likely.

What I think you're really trying to get out is the reliability or the weight that we should give specific testimony.

I am not a lawyer but isn't the least credible evidence eyewitness testimony?

In general, yes. But "least credible evidence" is not the same as "not evidence." You have to look at the specifics of each individual claim and what is being testified about. Evidence other than testimony can be faked or misleading and eyewitness testimony can be very accurate. As a general rule, when eyewitness testimony contradicts other reliable evidence (like, say, bank records, etc.), I'd put my money on the other evidence.

[I Have Questions]

On the other hand MG points out Emma believes the story. she rustled the plates under the cloth and her husband was uneducated so could not do the dictating from his own brain.

Emma is not an impartial party. She has a vested interest in promoting her husbands religious enterprise and wouldn’t undermine him by telling a differing story. Emma says she believes the story, says she rustled plates, and claims her husband was uneducated and couldn’t narrate the tale under his own steam. But we know Joseph was well very well educated on the Bible and was a skilled story teller, specifically about the native Americans - a group of people he was highly interested in with regards to their backstory.

[MG 2.0]

On the other hand MG points out Emma believes the story. she rustled the plates under the cloth and her husband was uneducated so could not do the dictating from his own brain.

Emma is not an impartial party. She has a vested interest in promoting her husbands religious enterprise and wouldn’t undermine him by telling a differing story. Emma says she believes the story, says she rustled plates, and claims her husband was uneducated and couldn’t narrate the tale under his own steam. But we know Joseph was well very well educated on the Bible and was a skilled story teller, specifically about the native Americans - a group of people he was highly interested in with regards to their backstory.

So you’re saying she was part of a long con from the get go? Does all the evidence seem to support that?

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

On the one hand there is the large disparity between the Book of Mormon history and the historical information we have about the New World. There is the dense 19th century American quality of the book. These significantly suggest the book is a fictional creation. If so the plates are a theatrical creation.

On the other hand MG points out Emma believes the story. she rustled the plates under the cloth and her husband was uneducated so could not do the dictating from his own brain.

Of course, the big question is what to make of this.

There is the possibility they were telling the truth.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

On the other hand MG points out Emma believes the story. she rustled the plates under the cloth and her husband was uneducated so could not do the dictating from his own brain.

Emma is not an impartial party. She has a vested interest in promoting her husbands religious enterprise and wouldn’t undermine him by telling a differing story. Emma says she believes the story, says she rustled plates, and claims her husband was uneducated and couldn’t narrate the tale under his own steam. But we know Joseph was well very well educated on the Bible and was a skilled story teller, specifically about the native Americans - a group of people he was highly interested in with regards to their backstory.

Mg didn't seem to read your comment.

[MG 2.0]

Luckily there is a nice, simple solution to that--produce the plates!

For reasons I’ve been spending a good portion of my time on this thread pointing to I don’t see this as an option.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Emma is not an impartial party. She has a vested interest in promoting her husbands religious enterprise and wouldn’t undermine him by telling a differing story. Emma says she believes the story, says she rustled plates, and claims her husband was uneducated and couldn’t narrate the tale under his own steam. But we know Joseph was well very well educated on the Bible and was a skilled story teller, specifically about the native Americans - a group of people he was highly interested in with regards to their backstory.

Mg didn't seem to read your comment.

I did. I would rather hear from him, not you. I’d like to have him address my specific question.

Regards,
MG

[Res Ipsa]

There are so many excellent thoughtful comments in this thread.

Well, thanks!

The last number of posts seem to bypass the factual testimony of Emma Smith.

https://rsc.BYU.edu/sites/default/files ... 0smith.pdf

After everything that Emma had been through, we still have this testimony from her later life.

It’s interesting that besides the three and the eight witnesses the only other witnesses that claimed to have actually seen the plates were women. Mary Whitmer, etc.

This isn’t unusual as one peruses the scriptures. It seems as though God may trust women more than men at certain times and under certain conditions.

One might ask the question why?

But that’s another discussion.

Was Emma a ‘one off’ and can comfortably be ignored while moving on…such has been done for the last couple of pages or so?

You suggested through your link earlier that the ‘plates’ may have been a tile brick. You seemed to have ignored Emma’s testimony.

Why?

And then others moved on after showing your link to be untrustworthy and yet, essentially, are making arguments that the plates weren’t real or that they were ‘materializations’.

Emma’s testimony doesn’t seem to allow for that.

Anyway, I agree, this has been an interesting thread with many interesting comments. Res Ipsa’s commentary on why Joseph would have gone to so much trouble to protect the plates doesn’t quite do it for me.

Gosh, the persecution became so intense he and Emma had to hide the plates in a barrel of beans and move to a different location where they were less likely to undergo constant surveillance.

Some of these ‘evidences’ seem to be overlooked and/or reinterpreted to steer away from the possibility that they might indeed be based in truth.

If the plates were real that opens up some possibilities that some folks would rather not entertain.

Regards,
MG

The fact that MG 2.0 talks about "possibilities" demonstrates that, whatever he's doing, he's not attempting to make a serious evaluation of evidence. He's simply playing the same old apologetic game we've seen time after time: claim a "possible" interpretation with the aid of a God whose nature is whatever he wants it to be for whatever point he wants to argue at a specific time. Then he claims that someone who doesn't accept his "possibility" as what really happened is closed minded or biased. If it's possible that an angel from God gave him plates that contained a true history, it's also just as possible that an evil entity appeared as an angel from God and gave Smith plates that had Green Eggs and Ham written in Klingon on them and that God is going to throw MG 2.0 in hell for being deceived by the devil. Once you make "possible" the issue, all bets are off. One supernatural story is as good as another -- unless you've already decided which supernatural story is "true."

Emma's interview conducted by her son is simply not persuasive evidence of the facts that occurred at the time. She has a vested interest in the plates being real because, otherwise, she's either wasted her life or been complicit in some kind of fraud. If she had doubts or suspicions at the time, she's had decades of motivation to forget or rationalize those away. Recall again how quickly Rusty Nelson's airplane story changed from an emergency landing at an airport to a dramatic, near death experience. Brains are motivated in how they recall events, and to ignore Emma's motivation to remember the plates as real and their translation as a miracle would be beyond foolish.

It's a friendly interview conducted 50 years after the fact by her son. There is no attempt to test the accuracy of her recollection or engage at all in what we would call cross examination. Most of it is conclusory in nature, with little to no questioning about factual underpinnings. And there is an important indication of serious rationalization of what actually occurred:

The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a
small linen table cloth....

The fact that she doesn't even recognize the concealment (wrapped in a cloth) as concealment is a pretty clear example of self-deception or rationalization.

I'm not claiming she lied in the interview. I think she probably believed what she said at the time. That doesn't change the fact that she is a witness with a strong bias being asked about 50-year old events. It also doesn't change the fact that, by the time of the interview, Smith's life had been mythologized to a certain extent, and there is no reliable way to separate the myths from the facts in her recollection.

I wouldn't say that her interview is not evidence that there were real plates, but it is very weak at best. She confirms that, when they were in her presence, they were hidden by a cloth. She felt them through a cloth. That type of concealment is completely consistent with fake plates, so it doesn't really help us differentiate between "real plates" and "fake plates."

I don't expect MG 2.0 to accept the possibility that a fraudster would go to great lengths to fool the marks. He simply refuses to believe that about Smith -- all kinds of things are possible except that. But that would ignore the great lengths to which lots of people have gone to cover up some dishonest act they committed. To the extent all the tale about Smith hiding the plates are accurate, I think they fall well within the range of unsurprising human conduct.

[Res Ipsa]

Of course, the big question is what to make of this.

There is the possibility they were telling the truth.

Regards,
MG

There is a possibility they weren't. So?