Hello people,
I am going to post some mormon apologetic here just to see what feedback you can give me.
Is that OK?

About me:
I have never been a mormon. I am an atheist.
My knowledge of mormonism is limited but I have seen a few documentaries about it.
Religion fascinates me and I find the techniques that people use to defend their religion to be .... I’m not sure what word would best describe it. Anyway, I can appreciate how important a religion is to a person and how willing they are to go the distance for their god or gods.
It shows to me that they have a lot of heart and faith.


Here is what the mormon in question wrote:
The plates were taken back by the angel following the translation (if you were an angel, would you trust 19th century farmers to take good care of them?). They were about 60 lbs or so. You can read the witness descriptions here (URL = https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=jbms).


What is wrong with this picture? (By picture, I mean logic).

If I should not be posting this here, let me know. What would be a better forum?

A factual correction. LDS theology says that the plates were taken after JS lost the first 116 pages. Everything he wrote thereafter--meaning everything in the BoM we have today--was written without the plates.

Alright.
Does everyone agree with what Lot's Wife said?

I am just trying to make sure I get the facts straight.

Well, I wasn't there, and I sincerely believe the entire story is made up, as in, 'it's a total crock'.

Anyway, Wikipedia says that JoJu's mom broadcast the story that after taking them away from JoJu for losing the 116 pages, the angel Moroni brought them back on the next anniversary of their original bestowal, September 22, so that JoJu could translate a different portion of the plates, which he finally accomplished the next year, 1829.

Here's probably the best place to get a fairly thorough version of the golden plates goings-on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates



Back when I was growing up in the church, it all made sense, because people I believed in told a story that made sense. But whether by intention or because it was all they knew, they left a lot of the crap parts of the story out. It was very easy for me to first lose faith in the Mormon church that I was a part of, and then to lose faith in the entire myth that surrounded its creation.

There's only one source on the return of the plates to JS, and it is Lucy Mack Smith. The other sources all talk about how JS translated the plates by looking at his stone in his hat.

I believe that is the standard history. Corrections welcome.

+Lot's Wife:
So, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
Jo Smith always had the golden plates while translating them.

After translation was complete, Smith said he returned the plates to the angel, but he did not elaborate about this experience.[131] According to accounts by several early Mormons, a group of Mormon leaders, including Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and possibly others[132] accompanied Smith and returned the plates to a cave inside the Hill Cumorah.

~~~~iceman9090

Wow, I didn't know that. I always thought the plates were taken away for Joseph Smith losing the 116 pages, then given back, and then taken away for good. At least according to faithful, believing mormons. Huh.

Wait wait wait.
Do remember that the Plates were NOT the only thing in the so called stone box.
1. So called plates, with the majority of it sealed-strapped shut - how convenient
2. Breast plate
3. Sword of Laben
4. Urmin and Thummin
5. Leohona - like a compass
6. And don't forget the stone box itself

All of these very important so called artifacts are GONE...POOF..GONE GONE..
Fact, the Plates were NEVER used to so call translate. They were never in the same room, or even the same building ..

Wait wait...We have Parchment for what Joseph Smith DID translate...oh yes...the BOA - and guess what..IT IS COMPLETE BS..NOT ONE WORD IS CORRECT. We have the exact so called Alphabet that Joseph Smith used to so called TRANSLATE and it is completely gibberish, fake, false BS.
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

Ask them to show you ANY actual of anything Mormon, laminate, nephite or Jesus in the Americas during the time of BOM.
Ask them to provide any translated document by Joseph Smith.
You will never hear from them again...

I hate that autocorrect doesn't know about Lamanites!!

"Lamanite" is a misspelling of "laminate." JS's peepstone didn't have an autocorrect tool.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I hate that autocorrect doesn't know about
> Lamanites!!


Add the word to your dictionary, problem solved.

@Oregon:
"Ask them to show you ANY actual of anything Mormon, laminate, nephite or Jesus in the Americas during the time of BOM.
Ask them to provide any translated document by Joseph Smith."

==What do you mean by anything?

"So called plates, with the majority of it sealed-strapped shut - how convenient"

==How difficult is it to get a saw or a pair of metal cuters and pop it open?

~~~~iceman9090

I think some of you missed something crucial here. He wrote (and let me remind you that he claims to have a PhD in psychology and also written a bunch of research papers, he is at the top of his class, he is the top dog):

"If you were an angel, would you trust 19th century farmers to take good care of them?"

==Let's assume that the jewish god and Jesus and a few other superfriends are real.
I am going to assume that this entire project of converting Joseph Smith, his father, brother and neighbors into mormons had to be approved by the master leader: jewish god.
They sit down at a table and argue and discuss how they are going to go about all this for months or whatever.

MY ARGUMENT IS THIS:
Would the jewish god give his 100% support to this project?
Why is the angel Moroni worried about leaving the golden plates with some farmers?
Is his worry justified?
Is it difficult to make a photocopy of every page for a god?
Is it difficult to take pictures of every page for a god?
Is it difficult to make a bunch of exact duplicates that are identical at the atomic level for a god?
Is it difficult to make it indestructible for a god?
I don’t know. Make it out of Kevlar or Tungsten or Scandium Carbide or some magical god atoms.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to submit a copy or a few copies or a thousand copies to all experts on the planet?

How could it be that a simpleton such as myself can think of solutions and propose them while the mind of a PhD psychologist is frozen.

DID ANY OF THESE solutions occur to any of you here?
Sorry if I sound angry but the thought of a frozen unthinking so-called PhD psychologist’s brain pisses me off.
I can forgive you guys.
I imagine you guys are simpletons like myself.
Can you guys please pass these ideas to your fellow mormons so that we can eliminate this frozen brain phenomenon.
Brains are cute little creatures! Please rescue one per week at least.

VERY IMPORTANT: Give me feedback on your thoughts.

~~~~iceman9090 <----yeah, I guess it is ironic that I call myself iceman

>> "If you were an angel, would you trust 19th century farmers to take good care of them?"

Better question is.....if you are an educated 21st century human, would you believe in stories about angels, 19th century farmers, and gold plates being taken back to heaven?

Hey Roy. You better define "educated" cuz there are plenty of BYU grads with even Masters and Doctorate degrees that are helping keep the Mormon bank account healthy as they dress in silly clothes and go to the clubhouse.

Like turth, some educations are not very useful?

Even my turth/truth typo seems appropriate somehow.

I think it would have been perfect as

"Like turth, some edumacations are not very useful..."

Does this mean the whole Book of Mormon story is a fabrication?

'Hello, 'lizabeth', he says holding his hand on his chest...

"THIS IS THE BIG ONE!"

This is where you are the most apologetic way beyond the angel and plates thing:

" . . . go the distance for their god or gods.
It shows to me that they have a lot of heart and faith."

Mormons are not showing heart. They are going the distance for themselves even as they distance themselves from any close family who may be non believers. They are going the distance because they consider themselves to be God's elite and the are going to be the big winners in the end and be big players in the Celestial Kingdom even as the rest of us are left with the scraps.

How much heart is in the $100 Billion in savings? How much heart is in the parents who toss out their gay kids? How much heart to divorce a spouse who is anon believer and try ruin their relationship with their own children?

Perhaps looking up what it really means to have heart would give same perspective.



An angel took the plates back = My dog ate my homework.

@Done & Done:
“Mormons are not showing heart. They are going the distance for themselves even as they distance themselves from any close family who may be non believers. They are going the distance because they consider themselves to be God's elite and the are going to be the big winners in the end and be big players in the Celestial Kingdom even as the rest of us are left with the scraps.”

==I see the point that you are making.
Yes, ultimately, this is all related to our instincts of survival, which all animals possess.
But I can see how important their salvation is to themselves. They don’t want to go into eternal darkness or eternal hell and they put a tremendous amount of time and money to pay for research to convince themselves and others that their religion is the one true religion.

I try to put myself in their shoes and try to understand them.

“How much heart is in the $100 Billion in savings?”

==I agree. That is pretty scummy.

“How much heart is in the parents who toss out their gay kids? How much heart to divorce a spouse who is anon believer and try ruin their relationship with their own children?”

==That’s scummy but look on the bright side: it helps some people wake up and dump the religion of their ancestors. Now that you are free, you can choose for yourself what is more appropriate for yourself.
Also, I am available if any of these kids need to talk.

You are much more Pollyanna than me.

I will say, having been immersed up past the eyeballs one sees things no one else ever will.

@Done & Done:
"You are much more Pollyanna than me."

==What does Pollyanna mean?

~~~~iceman9090

Google is your friend

@Brother Of Jerry:
"Google is your friend"

==Source:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Pollyanna

pollyanna =
a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything.

Source:
A person’s name in a book, Pollyanna, heroine of the novel Pollyanna (1913) by Eleanor Porter, 1920 American fiction writer.
First Known Use of Pollyanna as in the meaning “a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything” was in 1921.

Thank you Brother Of Jerry,
You complete me.

~~~~iceman9090

Pollyanna was a movie--probably Hayley Mills first who was a big star when I was a kid. About a young orphan girl who is unrelentingly positive no matter who is grumpy or cantankerous that she is around.

"As Pollyanna remains cheerful, she wins everyone over to her positive ways. For example, she teaches Nancy how to play the "Glad Game" to try and find something to be glad about in regards to anything and everything. (Even when Pollyanna was once given crutches instead of a doll, she was "glad" that she had no need of the crutches.) "

I find the rose colored glasses rather saccharine.

I prefer to see the whole picture. The good, the bad, the ugly, the deliriously delightful and especially the stuff people don't want you to see. Mormons have a big treasure trove of that last one and thus the famous Mormon facade--collective and individual.



Plus, when you get people talking about when the Angel took the plates, you are weaving in the assumption that there were plates in the first place. Although had there been, the Angel would have had a devil of a time wrestling them out of Joe's greedy hands, haha. Although perhaps Moroni used a fifteen year old girl as a distraction?

@Done & Done:
@Done & Done:
“Plus, when you get people talking about when the Angel took the plates, you are weaving in the assumption that there were plates in the first place. Although had there been, the Angel would have had a devil of a time wrestling them out of Joe's greedy hands, haha. Although perhaps Moroni used a fifteen year old girl as a distraction?”

==If I straight up say there was no angel, then it kills the conversation. I don’t know where that would go then. I guess the apologist would ask “but Joseph Smith could not create such as fanciful book all by himself. Linguists have demonstrated that multiple people have written it.“
How about the 11 witnesses. They all took the golden plates, flipped through the book and can confirm it weight 60 pounds.


If I go along with the assumption, it opens a door of possibilities.
Of course, eventually, we will hit the classical christian wall “I don’t know but I’m sure god has a special plan why he did it that way.”.

“Mormons have a big treasure trove of that last one and thus the famous Mormon facade--collective and individual.”

==and I want to poke at it. I will poke them with questions that might be behind somewhere in their subconscious or perhaps things that they have not considered, which is the subject of this thread. In both cases, it tells me that their brain is frozen.

We could of course talk about why people believed in angels. I don’t mean the people of the 21 century. The people of this century have been told to believe it. Who is the originator of this idea? Why was there a need to invent angels when you already have a omnipotent god? However, all that would be speculative. I don’t have a time machine to go back 50,000 y ago to find out how religions evolved.

I added what you wrote to my files.

~~~~iceman9090

You are a wise interviewer. No leading questions. No inserting your own point of view. Hats off to you.

Cat plays with mouse. haha.

Any port in a storm.

As a youth in the fifties and sixties we were promised non-stop from the pulpit that we could become gods and have our own planet as part of "Eternal Progression" if we endured to the end.

The Mormons have distanced themselves from that conceit since Prophet Hinckley denied it on national TV, but the Mormons still plan on being the ONLY ones to be God's chosen and reign with him in the eternities in their heavenly mansions. The more baseless their religion is shown to be, the more vital that they look down on everyone else as a way to boost their own arrogant self esteem.



Any ridiculous apologetic notion will do when your very celestial glory is facing a gale of facts that rip your religious beliefs to shreds and all you can do is grab at the straws like the angel/plates thing the tornado is whirling past you.

I just did a bit of research and am confident that the BoM, as published, was the work not of the plates and the U&T but of the seer stone in a hat. Thus. . .

Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 1978, pp. 171-172, quoting Emma Smith: "Now the first that my husband translated, was translated by use of the Urim and Thummim, and that was the part that Martin Harris lost, after that he [my husband] used a small stone, not exactly black, but was rather a dark color."

Ibid. David Whitmer explained that as a punishment for losing the 116 pages, Moroni never returned to Smith the original Urim and Thummim found with the plates. Instead, the angel allowed him to translate with the brown stone he already possessed. LDS historian B. H. Roberts wrote that the "seer stone referred to here was a chocolate-colored, somewhat egg-shaped stone which the Prophet found while digging a well in company with his brother Hyrum, for a Mr. Clark Chase, near Palmyra, N.Y.

That is the standard history. Lucy Mack Smith is the exception. The others all said that the U&T were taken from JS after the 116 pages were lost and that the BOM that we have was done exclusively through the rock-in-hat method.

There are also numerous accounts of JS translating without the plates and without the U&T.

Someone knows this, I'm sure, but in the early 1990s Jeffrey Holland penned an article in one of the church magazines (Ensign?) in which he wrote that JS used his seer stone to translate the BOM. I did a cursory search but cannot find the article, probably because the church has buried it. But someone else here will have seen that article too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2020 05:14PM by Lot's Wife.

I think you're referring to "A Treasured Testament" by some bozo named Russell M. Nelson in the July 1993 Ensign. He approvingly quotes David Whitmer's "An Address to All Believers in Christ" which mentions the seerstone.

Why didn't the angel take the seer stone ?

Because then JS wouldn't have been able to translate the Book of Mormon, you silly!

Not to mention that that would have been stealing!

After all, JoJu stole it first, from the person actually doing the digging of the well, while JoJu watched from comfy nearby perch.

It would have made Moroni a receiver of stolen goods!

This Is The Place (to post it).

Like Mormonism itself, their documentaries AREN'T TRUE, accurate, or honest.

They are feel-good pieces so Mormons feel good about doing nothing.

They baptise DEAD PEOPLE (people who don't care, have no control, or no longer exist... or in some cases, never did), for God's sake.

Mormonism says one thing to it's members and another to non-members/ non-believers/ the public.

They say fool finds fool's gold bowls (in his dreams) - and calls them plates - and hopes to eat off them for the rest of his life...

What really happened? It was all made up. Mormons need a lot of makeup. You can't make this stuff up!

I would think that if God is a straight-up person, he would come right to the point with no need for convolution.
He could delegate one of His angels and send him to JS with either one of these methods:
"Hi Joe! My name is Moroni. You need to listen up and write down some important history. Your lovely quill pen will do just fine.
Ready? Here we go".
Or..JS could have just been presented with a fine, printed, edited, nicely bound Book of Mormon. It would have saved him the trouble of trying to sell the copyright in Canada.