This argument completely falls apart if you know the history of Automatic Writing.“DCP” wrote: Many years ago, a friend who knew something about the story of the early Restoration but didn’t believe in it asked me why the plates were necessary if, as some sources seem to suggest, they weren’t required to be right at hand while Joseph Smith was dictating. I responded then, and I still believe, that they were necessary in order to force the choice between “sincere visionary” and “deceitful fraud.” I told him that they were an “absolutely indigestible lump in the throats of people like yourself,” who wish to be friendly and sympathetic but who won’t believe. Prophet or fraud. The middle ground, if any exists at all, is very, very limited.
History is easy to miswrite if you leave out the facts.