Had a thought today. Has anyone done any documented recreation surrounding Gold Plate/First Vision activities? (i.e. Moroni Vision events (JS being in small room with brothers), Joseph Smith hefting the plates while running through the woods, etc.). This could help illustrate how insane some of these events really were.

Case in point: I am a real trial junkie and I'm ashamed to admit that I was a heavy follower of the OJ Simpson murder case. I decided one day to recreate the night of the crime (i.e driving from OJ's house to Nicole's house, envision the crime occurring, get back in the car and make the trip back to OJ's house) in the timeline provided. It gave me great insight whether the events could have possibly happened.

If someone could go through JS documented history and pull out the pertinent facts (i.e. approximate route JS took carrying the plates through the woods, distance traveled, simulated weight of plates, etc.) and film a documentary of the event simulations, this could be very powerful and could go along way to point out how insane and improbable some of these JS related events really were.


Any documentary video buffs out there? Of course, LDS security probably would shut that one down if done on Church owned property :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2014 07:26PM by zenmaster.

This would be a great project for some young law students to tackle.

Why even run? Just uncover them, show them to his assailants and they would immediately drop dead. Right??

Hold Your Tapirs Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why even run? Just uncover them, show them to his
> assailants and they would immediately drop dead.
> Right??


good one!

doh

Bingo. Why go to all the effort of hiding them (like the bean barrel story) if his enemies would immediately drop dead upon seeing them?

http://media.ldscdn.org/images/media-library/gospel-art/church-history/gold-plates-39682-wallpaper.jpg

The density of gold is about twenty times that of water and water weighs sixty-four pounds per cubic foot. If the plates really existed (and they never did) they would weigh around two hundred pounds if they were made of twenty-four carat gold and bit over a hundred pounds if they were made of a gold/silver/copper alloy like orichalcum (tumbaga).

Yep...but a picture is worth a thousand words...It could really illustrate how ridiculous the claim really is. You'd need some 300 muscle bound dude on steroids to make it semi feasable :)

I'm big into visual aids when I present to clients in my line of work...as to make my points hit home much easier.

http://goldprice.org/bob/uploaded_images/1-kilogram-gold-bars-768075.png

At current prices ($44.5K / Kg), 200 lbs. (91 Kg) of gold is around $4,049,500.00.

You'll also need funds to pay a foundry to melt down the gold and roll and cut it into 6"x8" sheets that are 3mm-4mm in thickness. Then each sheet will have to be stamped with symbols from Joseph Smith's "charactors" sheet in a random non-repeating sequence to replicate the text.

The church isn't about to let anyone use the actual Hill Cumorah for a demonstration so another drumlin with similar terrain will have to be used. It will be interesting to see how one person could lift a heavy dense stack of gold sheets out of a stone box in the ground let alone run with them.

All of this doesn't matter of course. The Mormons will just say of course it's impossible for someone to do it without divine intervention.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2014 11:19PM by anybody.

...although I can't see a BYU law student doing it.

One of the aspects of Joseph's claim of eluding the bad guys in the woods and making it home safely with the plates which reveals its fraudulence is the fact that the bad guys knew where he lived. If Joseph eluded them in the woods, all they had to do was go to his house and threaten him and is family until he gave them up. Duhh, if the bad guys believed there were golden plates enough to go out at night to waylay Joseph in the woods, then they would have just gone to his house to try to get them.

The logical conclusion being that there were never any bad guys in the woods to begin with.

I could be mistaken, but he claimed to have found the plates on the side of the hill that the church doesn't currently own. It's partially wooded/cow pasture.

So what's your conclusion? Did OJ do it? There's a locked up convict that says he did it.

Interesting...

Sounds like a perfect project for a low budget local cable access channel.

Mormon Mythbusters, now on channel 116 in Salt Lake City. Check local listings for details.

:) I'll have to start my own cable channel :)

Maybe some jewelry company or such could sponsor the gold.. it could be borrowed and processed under their supervision. :)

Any metallurgists out there? I would think 24k gold would be too soft to hold any kind of writing. It would be more the consistency of cookie dough.

I believe the Tanners have a facsimile set of the golden plates, fashioned from lead, which is 10% lighter than gold, which would also make it more than fair in a Joseph-as-decathelete reenactment.

Perhaps they would loan it out to the exmo cause. Seems to me using lead instead of millions in bullion makes more sense from a security standpoint and yet would still be scientifically valid.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2014 10:45AM by Shummy.

The running with the plates thing has been recreated and clearly shows it was a tall tale. Try it yourself. Here's a youtube video demonstrating this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08wRRff8x0k&feature=channel_page

More on the running with the plates story:
http://www.mormonthink.com/runningweb.htm