It is hard to pay attention all the way through but I did try.
It basically came down to the church is true because there is no way Joseph Smith could have known what he knew. How did Joseph Smith know what he knew?, because he said so.
I didn't watch the video, but the last thing the Church wants to do is have Joseph Smith closely examined. The more they say stuff on the record (an actual GA giving a talk as opposed to just a mopologist bloviating) the more they set themselves up as targets for refutation.
The "how could Joseph Smith have known" arguments were popular long ago. They are now falling back on the "even a prophet is a human being and not perfect."
That said the way to treat "how could Joseph Smith have known" arguments is as follows:
(1) Is it something that Joseph Smith definitely KNEW or is it something in the BOM or BOA etc. which bears some similarity to something Joseph Smith probably didn't know and which has been massaged into a false positive? This is the kind of stuff John Edwards and other cold readers do. Say lots of stuff, and if any of it is similar to something in the mark's life claim you knew all about it.
Psychic: "I'm getting a sensation of cold temperatures."
Member of audience: "OMG, yes my uncle who died last September lived in Alaska (or Minnesota, or Maine, or Canada etc.)."
Psychic: "Yes, and your uncle has a message for you that . . ."
(2) Could it actually be something that Joseph Smith COULD have known without too much trouble? The argument is made by Mopologists that a passage in Isaiah that is duplicated in the Book of Mormon but with a twist. The Book of Mormon used the phrase "Ships of the sea and Ships of Tarshish" where Isaiah uses only "Ships of Tarshish." It happens that the Septuagint, a translation of Hebrew Scriptures into Greek that was done in the second century B.C.E., says "Ships of the Sea."
Now the apologists say there must have been an original that said both "ships of the Sea" and "ships of Tarshish" and by the time of the Septuagint, Tarshish phrase was lost. How, they say, could Joseph Smith have known what was in the Septuagint? Did he somehow, in upper New York run across a copy of the Septuagint and then learn Greek so he could read it (straw man alert)?
Leaving aside that "ships of the sea" is an easy misread of the original "ships of Tarshish," (go up to 100 people on the street and say "finish this sentence, 'ships of the ________.' See if a lot don't say 'sea.'") the passage from the Septuagint was quoted IN ENGLISH in more than one popular Bible commentary of Joseph Smith's day. In other words, the very kind of book someone interested in the Bible would be attracted to.
(3) Could it be just a coincidence? Given a lot of stuff that Joseph Smith said, and a lot of stuff that exists in recorded history there are bound to be gazillions of opportunities to find parallels. Mopologists point to an ancient Babylonian practice of cutting off the arms of the enemies and presenting them to the King as "proof" of Ammon cutting off the arms of his attackers in the Book of Mormon.
Ancient Babylon? Really? I thought Lehi was from JERUSALEM and left BEFORE the Babylonian captivity. Besides the reason for cutting off the arms of the attackers in the story of Ammon was that they had raised their arms to smite and kill him.
That there is something in all of ancient history (thousands of years covering millions of square miles) that is in some way similar to something in the BOM (531 pages) is to be expected.
(4) Is it something real? That JS made up some doctrines which can't be proven true or false, doesn't mean he knew anything. It just means he had a good imagination.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2014 12:02PM by baura.