So many things laughable about this response but my favorite thing about this post are the comments by other fellow deluded old guard apologists like this one:This has to be one of the most banal arguments ever made. This was posted by Danielle Black. But I actually heard this argument from a person with a Ph.D who once taught at BYU who left the church in part because of it!
"Remember when these so-called “prophets” laid hands on forged documents and believed they were true? Then they hid them because they were unflattering to the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They would go on to lie about being in possession of them until a journalist exposed them and the so-called "church" finally admitted it.
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The problem with this argument? First, unless one can read minds based on a mere photo, there is no indication that they had any belief about the Salamander letter. Moreover, they never hid the Salamander letter because it was made public within a week (as the photo shows!). Her argument assumes that prophets are necessarily omniscient (know everything) and are infallible (cannot possibly be wrong). To expect a prophet to immediately detect a forgery after 5 minutes is nonsense. After all, Isaac thought that he was giving his birthright to Esau when it was really Jacob. He didn't detect Rebekah's deception. If a prophet didn't know his own son, it is clear that prophets are neither omniscient nor infallible as Danielle Black assumes. So the assumption that prophets are omniscient and infallible expectation is both contra-scriptural and just plain nuts.
Laugh out loud stuff in my opinionI thought exactly the same, if the Church were trying to hide it, why was the photo released? Second, Im sure when the leaders first encountered the supposed artifact, they had no way of knowing whether it was real. Their first inclination would be to secure it and then figure out if it could possibly be real. Im sure they were beyond skeptical, but needed to investigate before making determinative statement about it. That is what critics call "hiding" I guess.
Finally, I know for myself, if I had seen it and was told it was proven real, it wouldn't effect my testimony of the Prophet one iota. I understand Prophets are not perfect people, and my experience with anti Mormon" historical facts", always without fail are far more complex and nuanced then they pretend when they make the attack. So I would simply reserve judgement until I had all the facts and evidence. Of course, it didn't take long for the evidence to come out that yet another desperate anti mo was up to no good yet again.
And of course, the mindless critics turn the whole affair into an attack on the Church who was the actual victim in all of it. For me, yet more proof that if that the nutty anti mos actually had a solid case to be made, they wouldn't need to resort to any of this nonsense.
