If plates then God

[Res Ipsa]

I remember that ‘last letter’ to the board. It was heartbreaking. MG enjoyed hurting Grindael.

-Doc

I hope Marcus is able to find it. I'd like to read it.

[Marcus]

...But I think it does Johnny a great disservice to portray him as a poor victim of MG....

Oh no, no no. No one is doing that.

But what I am stating that MG is a vicious troll who attacks inappropriately. Yes, grindael was always the winner in their exchanges, but it exhausted grindael to have to keep fighting that battle-- no matter how successful you are, it is still overwhelmingly difficult to have a troll continually attacking.

[Gadianton]

From Marcus' quotes:

The Book of Mormon starts off as a treasure that he and other treasure seers were looking for. The translation springs out of that, and it cannot be divorced from it. He had first to convince others that he recovered the plates. Then he eventually commits to translating them himself. Knowing that this all originated in a ruse, we should instead think it would have been strange for him to do other than he did.

So, yes, the gold plates were made up. But they were tailor made for a culture of sacred and magical books that was not only informed by the Bible (and this is the dominant influence, to be sure), but also by the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, Letters from Heaven, the gold plate of Enoch, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, and the Books of Numa

These quotes also support Bushman's belief that real plates are essential to the faithful narrative. Kishkumen, however, makes "the case for why the plates were integral to the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon".

Bushman barely makes a case for why: "The plates imply God is an active agent in human affairs..."

MG has made no such case.

There is a bit of a disconnect when discussing belief now vs. the establishment of the tradition so long ago. Perhaps they meet in the relative stability of the tradition over 200 years. I don't know. Why have the plates remained so central to the restoration narrative?

I think Bushman faces a problem. He can claim plates are necessary because they make "God an active agent". But they weren't so necessary when translating the Book of Moses from a vision, now were they? Bushman's argument for "why plates" in principle is barely anything. And it's really a problem when set next to the null hypothesis: Because saying "no plates" implies the tremendous string of lies, which compromises credibility of the founder. Why there needs to be plates in principle will be next to impossible for Bushman or DCP to explain.

The absurdity of the plates make them a tremendous epistemic liability for the Church. Yet, they remain central to the narrative. why? Kishkumen reveals the foundation, but still a question is why did the tradition continue for 200 years? Sure, Bushman can't deny the plates now, but, suppose for arguments sake, the corporate church did gradually change the narrative over the years, and by the time Bushman was in primary, he was never taught about plates. Perhaps he was taught that Joseph produced the book from an ancient source, but we've lost the knowledge of how that happened. Would he have believed what his parents had taught him any less? Highly doubtful.

Bushman is sniffing in direction of the Rev's observations; it's more about something miraculous or unexplained happening in reality; something tangible. The mystery and escape of something way out there that really happened. The modern parallel to Smith I've always got a kick out of is Billy Meier's UFO photographs from the 70s, which led to communications with aliens, and stories of alien civilizations. His stories are foundational to UFO and New Age lore -- the Pleiadians etc. I used to have this as my sig line:

"...supporters of Billy Meier still point to the very clear photos of Pleiadian beam ships flying over his farm. They argue that for the photos to be fakes, we have to believe that a one-armed man who had no knowledge of Photoshop or other digital photography programs could have made such realistic photos and films..." -- D. R. Prothero

And so, it's less about why Bushman hasn't intellectualized it given its core to tradition, but rather why Mormon tradition has maintained the liability rather than evolved the miracles of the young religion into something less ridiculous that would have broader appeal.

[MG 2.0]

But I think it does Johnny a great disservice to portray him as a poor victim of MG.

I think he was just as able and willing to defend his point of view as I was. I don’t see him as a victim at all. That’s why I responded to Marcus with a degree of incredulity that she would have determined this to be the case.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

He was working hard on some in real life projects and expressed frustration about spending time here, only to get the crap trolled out of him by MG.

That’s an interesting expression. I would not use the word “trolled”, however. I would replace it with any one of a number of other words.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

From Marcus' quotes:

The Book of Mormon starts off as a treasure that he and other treasure seers were looking for. The translation springs out of that, and it cannot be divorced from it. He had first to convince others that he recovered the plates. Then he eventually commits to translating them himself. Knowing that this all originated in a ruse, we should instead think it would have been strange for him to do other than he did.

So, yes, the gold plates were made up. But they were tailor made for a culture of sacred and magical books that was not only informed by the Bible (and this is the dominant influence, to be sure), but also by the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, Letters from Heaven, the gold plate of Enoch, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, and the Books of Numa

These quotes also support Bushman's belief that real plates are essential to the faithful narrative. Kishkumen, however, makes "the case for why the plates were integral to the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon".

Bushman barely makes a case for why: "The plates imply God is an active agent in human affairs..."

MG has made no such case.

There is a bit of a disconnect when discussing belief now vs. the establishment of the tradition so long ago. Perhaps they meet in the relative stability of the tradition over 200 years. I don't know. Why have the plates remained so central to the restoration narrative?

I think Bushman faces a problem. He can claim plates are necessary because they make "God an active agent". But they weren't so necessary when translating the Book of Moses from a vision, now were they? Bushman's argument for "why plates" in principle is barely anything. And it's really a problem when set next to the null hypothesis: Because saying "no plates" implies the tremendous string of lies, which compromises credibility of the founder. Why there needs to be plates in principle will be next to impossible for Bushman or DCP to explain.

The absurdity of the plates make them a tremendous epistemic liability for the Church. Yet, they remain central to the narrative. why? Kishkumen reveals the foundation, but still a question is why did the tradition continue for 200 years? Sure, Bushman can't deny the plates now, but, suppose for arguments sake, the corporate church did gradually change the narrative over the years, and by the time Bushman was in primary, he was never taught about plates. Perhaps he was taught that Joseph produced the book from an ancient source, but we've lost the knowledge of how that happened. Would he have believed what his parents had taught him any less? Highly doubtful.

Bushman is sniffing in direction of the Rev's observations; it's more about something miraculous or unexplained happening in reality; something tangible. The mystery and escape of something way out there that really happened. The modern parallel to Smith I've always got a kick out of is Billy Meier's UFO photographs from the 70s, which led to communications with aliens, and stories of alien civilizations. His stories are foundational to UFO and New Age lore -- the Pleiadians etc. I used to have this as my sig line:

"...supporters of Billy Meier still point to the very clear photos of Pleiadian beam ships flying over his farm. They argue that for the photos to be fakes, we have to believe that a one-armed man who had no knowledge of Photoshop or other digital photography programs could have made such realistic photos and films..." -- D. R. Prothero

And so, it's less about why Bushman hasn't intellectualized it given its core to tradition, but rather why Mormon tradition has maintained the liability rather than evolved the miracles of the young religion into something less ridiculous that would have broader appeal.

Yes. For some reason, maintaining that liability is still the preferred position. A "less ridiculous" position doesn't seem to be in the LDS PR wheelhouse.

[MG 2.0]

From Marcus' quotes:

I think Bushman faces a problem. He can claim plates are necessary because they make "God an active agent". But they weren't so necessary when translating the Book of Moses from a vision, now were they?

Well no they weren’t. Because there was no ‘they’ in the instance of Joseph translating the book of Moses. But the account in regards to the Book of Mormon translation makes it very clear there were plates. I’m sure you’re not saying Book of Mormon=plates so it goes to say that Book of Moses=plates.

Are you?

They were independent of each other.

Why the direct correlation?

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Sure, Bushman can't deny the plates now, but, suppose for arguments sake, the corporate church did gradually change the narrative over the years, and by the time Bushman was in primary, he was never taught about plates. Perhaps he was taught that Joseph produced the book from an ancient source, but we've lost the knowledge of how that happened. Would he have believed what his parents had taught him any less? Highly doubtful.

He’s a smart guy. I’d say we ought to take him at his word. In a recent online conversation he was asked as a matter of fact if he believed the plates were real. He answered in the affirmative.

Folks can weasel word around that statement all they want, but it seems pretty clear what he was saying.

Regards,
MG

[Marcus]

..My recollection is that MG got under Grindael's skin in that thread and Grindael (justifiably, in my opinion) went off on him. He was working hard on some in real life projects and expressed frustration about spending time here, only to get the crap trolled out of him by MG. I don't recall him ever expressing the belief that MG (an anonymous nobody) was damaging or could even damage his reputation. Grindael was, in my recollection, very confident in and proud of the reputation he had built. Seeing MG as any kind of threat (as opposed to an annoyance) is so counter to who he was that I would really be surprised to see him describe MG as a threat of any kind.

My recollection is that he did take either a break or a period of reduced posting after that encounter, but he had previously warned that he might be scarce because he wanted to concentrate on his RL projects. My recollection is also that, at some point, he said that MG hadn't chased him away from the board.

After the break (or whatever), he returned to the board. MG tried the same tactics on him, and he went right at MG and repeatedly slapped him into next week. He called him "mental" (and not in a nice sense). He called him "weasel" until MG ran to Shades to get him to stop. In the last interaction between the two that I can remember, he kicked MG into next month.

Trump wishes he was half the counter-puncher that Grindael was.

That's my recollection: after what you are recalling as a farewell letter, Grindael posted hundreds more times here and dished out to MG everything MG threw at him, and then some.

I have tons of respect for Johnny. He'd forgotten more about LDS history than I've ever known. He had an amazing mind for mastering and assembling details scattered throughout records and putting them together in a compelling narrative. Memory is fallible, and I have to sort through lots of posts (did I mention he was a prolific writer?) and am fairly confident I'm remembering some pieces wrong. But I think it does Johnny a great disservice to portray him as a poor victim of MG.

I think Khan's quotation of Moby Dick gives a better sense of his interactions here with MG:

“…To the last, I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart, I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”

Although I would replace with "hate" with "contempt."

I agree with your assessment of the troll.

To clarify, in my opinion no matter how successful one is at shutting down a troll, the troll's actions need to be called out for the inexcusable behavior they are.

I was especially entertained by your definition of the troll being "slapped into next week," and "kicked into next month."

[MG 2.0]

I agree with your assessment of the troll.

Well, that’s an unexpected statement. Kinda rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?

Forked tongue.

Regards,
MG