Joseph Smith claimed that in 1820 he had his vision and told everybody about it and nobody believed him and that he was widely ridiculed and persecuted for claiming such vision.

But....

In the Hurlbut affidavits, not one single Smith acquaintance mentions Joseph ever having talked about a first vision!

So, not only did he not have the vision, he also never claimed to have had one at the time!!

Didn't he change the story quite a few times as well?

Oh yes! Once he started telling it, told many versions.

But what is most stunning to me is the fact that He Did Not Claim It At The Time! This is a big big problem for the mormons. The foundation of the whole church crumbles.

And people bought it. Humans truly are gullible.

Yeah, it wasn't until well after the BoM publishing in 1830 that Smith began to talk about a "vision" with anyone other than the "angel" that gave him the gold plates (who was variously called Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni in early tellings of the story).

It seems that a "first vision" with god, god & jesus, jesus, angels, whatever was useful for turning his book scam (which didn't pay off like he'd hoped) into a church scam. So he concocted one. And as others mentioned, the concoction took several forms before being mostly settled on around 1840 or so.

If you can't trust a man who talked with God, who can you trust?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2017 03:05PM by GregS.

He also tried to join a Methodist group in 1828. Would you really do that if God came down and told you all these groups were an "abomination"?

And this nails it:

http://mit.irr.org/new-light-on-joseph-smiths-first-vision

the church admits to four different versions and claims that, like the new testament gospels, each version brings a slightly different view of the 'events# and this goes to prove the authenticity of each of the stories as they emphasised different points to different audiences.

They omit to mention the glaringly obvious reason this is completely the wrong comparison to make: the new testament gospels were allegedly written by different people, not four versions of the same story written or dictated by the same guy; joey boy.

Good liars remember the stories they tell and try to tell everyone the same lie to keep it easy to remember. It seems horny joe wasn't even very good at that.

He kept changing his story to try to keep up with what he was teaching about God.

Here is a comprehensive timeline on the topic that includes most of the relevant contradictions.

https://twitter.com/LDSFacsimile3/status/524916349370253312


Note: You will need to download the image and zoom for readability.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2017 05:48PM by Facsimile 3.

Why do people who talk to god always have their conversations with him/her/it alone?

Wouldn't it be better for god to appear to all of us all at once to clear up any confusion?

He had a good example: The Gospels too were written years after the "fact"...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2017 05:57PM by iflewover.

He didn't come up with the first vision story at first due to the BoM as a work of fiction that he tried to sell.

When that didn't work out, he changed it from fiction to non-fiction, and had to fill in the back story... and started his own religion.