Apparently there is some confusion out there surrounding posts or friends disappearing on Facebook recently. Here's the thing, it is not Facebook's fault. If you experience missing posts or conversations not making sense because people seem to be responding to comments that are simply not there or people who post regular family pictures and/or status updates seem to be disappearing from your news feed, you are not alone. Millions of Facebook users are experiencing this phenomenon known as "Facebook Censorship".
Facebook Censorship could happen because of Facebook manipulations of the things that show up in your news feed because Facebook uses algorithms to define your interests and uses the history of the things you have clicked on in the past to define what to show you in your news feed. This is not really censorship, but it is annoying if people are posting things that you want to see, but that Facebook deems you would not be interested in. The way to change this over time is to seek out those friends you want to see their statuses and updates. However, even more common is the user directed Facebook Censorship that happens when people take steps to block you from seeing posts, unfriend you, delete your posts or comments (made on their wall or in response to their posts or comments). This happens more frequently than you may think. Sometimes there is no way to know that this is going on unless you are able to use a different Facebook account to see the response to your posts.
If you do not want to become a victim of this behavior you should know a few things;
1. Do not post anything related to religion or your religious views in public on Facebook.
2. Do not mention any of the following (even if you are referencing them for educational purposes);
- Cults
- Mind control
- Brainwashing
- Racism
- Polygamy
- Polyandry
- Fallibility of religious leaders
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Former abuses by religious leaders (especially past or present Mormon/LDS leaders)
- "Lying for the Lord"
- Blood atonement
- Adam-God doctrine
- Temple ceremonies
- Masonic rights
- Gay marriage or gay rights
- City Creek Mall (unless you are praising how nice it is)
- Mountain Meadows Massacre
- Kirtland Banking Society
- Misogyny
3. Do not mention any links that provide information about LDS church history besides LDS.org, Mormon.org or JosephSmith.net
By following these simple steps you can be assured that Facebook will continue to do what they do and only show you the stuff you want to see.
Happy Never Ending Scrolling!
Showing posts with label LDS History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LDS History. Show all posts
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Questions posed in the CES Letter - simple version
If you haven't heard of the CES Letter, where have you been? I heard of the CES Letter a few years ago and endeavored to read it but quickly got bored so I tried to skim the rest of the content to get the meat out of it.
I never really did get to a point where I was able to use it in any meaningful way. However, I recently encountered a great summary of the questions pointed out, and asked, in the CES Letter until a while back when I came across this blog post from a great blog called "Zelph on the Shelf":
http://zelphontheshelf.com/the-millennials-brief-guide-to-the-ces-letter/
I thought about posting something on my Facebook wall that would start out with the following quote from Russell M. Ballard:
"We have heard stories where someone asking honest questions about our history, doctrine, or practice were treated as though they were faithless. This is not the Lord’s way. As Peter said, 'Be ready always to give an answer to every man [or woman] that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' We need to do better in responding to honest questions. Although we may not be able to answer every question about the cosmos or about our history, practices, or doctrine, we can provide many answers to those who are sincere."
--Elder Russell M. Ballard.
I never did get to the point where I felt inclined to post this on my Facebook wall, but I did go through the effort of re-wording the summary to pose each as a question to my believing relatives and friends. Here is what I came up with;
To my LDS friends and family,
I have a list of questions that I am hoping you can give me your thoughts on. But before I offer up my questions, I want to share a quote from Elder Russell M. Ballard which he shared at a regional conference recently,
"We have heard stories where someone asking honest questions about our history, doctrine, or practice were treated as though they were faithless. This is not the Lord’s way. As Peter said, 'Be ready always to give an answer to every man [or woman] that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' We need to do better in responding to honest questions. Although we may not be able to answer every question about the cosmos or about our history, practices, or doctrine, we can provide many answers to those who are sincere." --Elder Russell M. Ballard.
In that spirit, here are several of my sincere questions that I hope you can patiently address for me the best you can:
1. Why is it that there are errors in the Book of Mormon that are also contained in the 1769 (circa Joseph’s family) edition of the Bible?
2. How is it that DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but from Asia?
3. Why are there things in the Book of Mormon that didn’t exist during Book of Mormon times in that area? E.G. Horses, chariots, goats, elephants, wheat, and steel?
4. How is there absolutely no archaeological evidence for the millions of Nephites and Lamanites (their steel swords etc), even though we have archaeological evidence from normaler groups of people who existed thousands of years before in the same areas?
5. Why are Book of Mormon names and places strikingly similar (or identical) to many local names and places of the region Joseph Smith lived in?
6. Why is the Book of Mormon suspiciously similar to View of the Hebrews, a book published in Joseph Smith’s area in his time? Why is It also very similar to The First Book of Napoleon (published 1809), and The Late War, a textbook written in King James style language for New York State School children in Joseph’s time?
7. Why is it that the original 1830 text of The Book of Mormon had a trinitarian view of the Godhead, and was changed over time as Joseph’s ideas about the Godhead evolved? (Over 100,000 changes have been made to the book including many changes related to the nature of the Godhead.)
8. How come there were over 4 different First Vision accounts given by Joseph at different times, at least one of which didn’t even include God or Christ?
9. Why is it that Egyptian scholars who have translated the papyri Joseph claimed the Book of Abraham was translated from found that they have nothing to do with Abraham or anything contained in the book? Why is the church now claiming that “translate” meant “get inspiration from”?
10. Why is it that Joseph penciled in some parts of the papyri and those things do not seem to be in harmony with what scholars say should be in those missing parts?
11. Why did Joseph marry 34+ women, many without Emma’s consent (as forbidden in D&C 132) and 11 who were already married (some without their husbands knowing)?
12. Why is it that 10 of Joseph’s wives were teenagers, some as young as 14, several of whom he married while in his late 30's? This was shocking even by 19th century standards.
13. Why did President Hinckley publicly say polygamy isn’t doctrinal when numerous early church leaders, including Brigham Young, taught that it was essential for exaltation?
14. If the only scriptural justification for polygamy is “to multiply and replenish the earth” when The Lord commands it, either Joseph was sleeping with his 14-year-old wives, or he wasn’t adhering to scriptural laws.
15. Why did Joseph marry Fanny Alger years before he had the sealing power?
16. Why did Joseph marry some of his foster daughters?
17. Why did Brigham Young teach Adam-God theory, which is now disavowed by the church, at general conference and as part of the temple endowment ceremony?
18. Why is it that Brigham Young taught blood atonement, if it is now also disavowed?
19. Why is it that black people weren’t allowed to hold the priesthood until the 70s? Even though Joseph gave it to a few black people, but from Brigham to Spencer they were deemed unworthy to hold it?
20. Why is it that In the 1980s, the church paid around $900,000 to suppress bizarre and embarrassing church history documents? These documents were later proven to be fake. Mark Hofmann, the conman, turned out to be a murderer. Why is it that before the documents were known to be forgeries, church leaders gave talks offering explanations for them?
21. Why did Joseph Smith falsely translate fake plates called the Kinderhook Plates? Why did he claim they were historical?
22. Why do all of the spin-offs of the LDS church also have members say that they “know” their church is the true church? Why do other religions, such as Islam, say they “know through the power of God”, including the Heaven’s Gate cult, that their churches/beliefs are true?
23. Why did Joseph send Oliver and Hiram to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in Canada, saying he received a revelation to do it if they failed? In addition, why did Joseph not know that treasure would not be available to them as they heard according to D&C 111?
24. Why do church leaders teach that you should bear your testimony in order to gain one, when this is a classic psychological manipulation tactic?
25. Why is that you can feel the spirit doing a multitude of things that have nothing to do with the gospel, like watching Saving Private Ryan?
26. Why is it that Joseph and Oliver receiving “the priesthood” is very suspicious, since they didn’t tell people until years later and changed earlier revelations to match their new accounts?
27. Why did Joseph use the seer stone he used to translate the Book of Mormon to find people “buried treasure”, for which he was taken to court on charges of fraud?
28. Is it true that people at Joseph’s time had a “magical worldview”, which included seeing things “with spiritual eyes” (like the gold plates)?
29. Is it true that Martin Harris was known as a gullible man? He was deeply financially invested in the Book of Mormon as he mortgaged his farm to finance it. Why is that after becoming Mormon, he was a witness to self-proclaimed prophet, James Strang, for whom he went on a mission? Strang also said he had gold plates and used a Urim and Thummin to translate them. His witnesses also never denied that Strang’s scripture was true.
Martin Harris testified and witnessed for several other religions, and also said that he had as much evidence for a Shaker book as he had The Book of Mormon. (He also said he saw Christ in the form of a deer and talked with him…so there’s that.)
30. Why did David Whitmer say he saw the angel with his spiritual eyes, and said his impressions were just like those of a Methodist having happy feelings?
31. Is it not true that people in Joseph’s time believe in “second sight” (imagination) and that it was no different to seeing something with your physical eyes?
32. Why did the witnesses to the gold plates not sign their own signatures or write their own accounts (except Oliver, who was the scribe)?
33. Why were all of the Book of Mormon witnesses, except for Martin Harris, were related by blood or marriage to the Smiths or the Whitmers?
34. Why did Joseph have many people sign an affidavit saying he wasn’t practicing polygamy when he was? Why is it that some of those who signed it were also practicing polygamy?
35. Why is it that Joseph didn’t even use the would-have-weighed-around-200 pounds plates to translate the Book of Mormon? Why could he also not retranslate the missing 116 pages, “lost” by Martin Harris’ wife to test Joseph’s validity as a translator and know through his seer stone how the manuscript would have been altered?
36. Why is that Joseph started the LDS temple endowment just 7 weeks after his Masonic initiation? Why is the endowment ceremony nearly identical to the Masonic ceremony in numerous ways?
37. Why do we say that the Masonic temple ceremony has roots going back to the temple of Solomon when it doesn't?
38. If the temple ceremony is supposed to be eternal (like God and presumably unchanging), why were blood oaths and other disturbing elements removed after a survey in the 80s revealed that church members were uncomfortable with them?
39. If Adam and Eve are the first humans, how do we explain the 14 other Hominin species who lived and died 35,000 – 250,000 years before Adam?
40. How is it that science can prove that there was no worldwide flood 4,500 years ago?
41. In addition simple mathematics and the logic of animal food consumption shows that there was insufficient room on the ark to house all the animal species found on the planet, let alone the food required to feed all of them.
42. Why is it that we claim to believe in things that science also discredits; such as the idea of the Tower of Babel, 600-year-old humans, Jonah and the Whale, people turning into salt, and carrying honey bees across the ocean?
43. Why does God seem really mean and radically different in the Old Testament?
44. Why has the church made efforts to whitewash its history and been dishonest on numerous occasions - only recently coming out with essays that address the issues that have been covered up or denied for so long?
45. Why is it that Zina Diantha Huntington Young, who became the General Relief Society President, was already married and 6 months pregnant when Joseph married her because his life was allegedly in danger from the angel with a flaming sword? Why is it that after Joseph died, she married Brigham? Why does her biographical page on LDS.org not state that she was married to Joseph, though it shows up on FamilySearch.org?
46. Why is the church not transparent about its finances anymore?
47. Why is it that the church spent 1.5 billion dollars on City Creek Mall, which is more than it spent on humanitarian aid in almost 20 years? As the ribbon was cut at the opening ceremony, Thomas S. Monson said “Let’s go shopping!”.
48. Why did the earlier church teach that tithing was 10% of your surplus; but the church now teaches that it is 10% of your income, even if you can’t afford to pay your bills because of it?
49. Why has the church’s name changed a few times?
50. Why have church leaders, such as Boyd K. Packer, warned historians about not telling too much of the truth if it isn’t faith-promoting?
51. Why does the church teach that the prophet can’t lead you astray, though this is a.) pretty obviously not true, and b.) not in line with things Joseph and other early leaders said?
52. Why did Dallin H. Oaks say you shouldn’t criticize church leaders, even if the criticism is true?
53. Why in 1993, were 6 scholars excommunicated/disfellowshipped for publishing their scholarly research on Mormonism and its leaders? In addition, why are people being excommunicated recently for alleged apostasy when they are simply asking questions like the above (including the author of these questions written out in a letter to a CES Director, Jeremy Runnells) ?
You can read the original CES Letter here: http://cesletter.com/
I never really did get to a point where I was able to use it in any meaningful way. However, I recently encountered a great summary of the questions pointed out, and asked, in the CES Letter until a while back when I came across this blog post from a great blog called "Zelph on the Shelf":
http://zelphontheshelf.com/the-millennials-brief-guide-to-the-ces-letter/
I thought about posting something on my Facebook wall that would start out with the following quote from Russell M. Ballard:
"We have heard stories where someone asking honest questions about our history, doctrine, or practice were treated as though they were faithless. This is not the Lord’s way. As Peter said, 'Be ready always to give an answer to every man [or woman] that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' We need to do better in responding to honest questions. Although we may not be able to answer every question about the cosmos or about our history, practices, or doctrine, we can provide many answers to those who are sincere."
--Elder Russell M. Ballard.
I never did get to the point where I felt inclined to post this on my Facebook wall, but I did go through the effort of re-wording the summary to pose each as a question to my believing relatives and friends. Here is what I came up with;
To my LDS friends and family,
I have a list of questions that I am hoping you can give me your thoughts on. But before I offer up my questions, I want to share a quote from Elder Russell M. Ballard which he shared at a regional conference recently,
"We have heard stories where someone asking honest questions about our history, doctrine, or practice were treated as though they were faithless. This is not the Lord’s way. As Peter said, 'Be ready always to give an answer to every man [or woman] that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' We need to do better in responding to honest questions. Although we may not be able to answer every question about the cosmos or about our history, practices, or doctrine, we can provide many answers to those who are sincere." --Elder Russell M. Ballard.
In that spirit, here are several of my sincere questions that I hope you can patiently address for me the best you can:
1. Why is it that there are errors in the Book of Mormon that are also contained in the 1769 (circa Joseph’s family) edition of the Bible?
2. How is it that DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but from Asia?
3. Why are there things in the Book of Mormon that didn’t exist during Book of Mormon times in that area? E.G. Horses, chariots, goats, elephants, wheat, and steel?
4. How is there absolutely no archaeological evidence for the millions of Nephites and Lamanites (their steel swords etc), even though we have archaeological evidence from normaler groups of people who existed thousands of years before in the same areas?
5. Why are Book of Mormon names and places strikingly similar (or identical) to many local names and places of the region Joseph Smith lived in?
6. Why is the Book of Mormon suspiciously similar to View of the Hebrews, a book published in Joseph Smith’s area in his time? Why is It also very similar to The First Book of Napoleon (published 1809), and The Late War, a textbook written in King James style language for New York State School children in Joseph’s time?
7. Why is it that the original 1830 text of The Book of Mormon had a trinitarian view of the Godhead, and was changed over time as Joseph’s ideas about the Godhead evolved? (Over 100,000 changes have been made to the book including many changes related to the nature of the Godhead.)
8. How come there were over 4 different First Vision accounts given by Joseph at different times, at least one of which didn’t even include God or Christ?
9. Why is it that Egyptian scholars who have translated the papyri Joseph claimed the Book of Abraham was translated from found that they have nothing to do with Abraham or anything contained in the book? Why is the church now claiming that “translate” meant “get inspiration from”?
10. Why is it that Joseph penciled in some parts of the papyri and those things do not seem to be in harmony with what scholars say should be in those missing parts?
11. Why did Joseph marry 34+ women, many without Emma’s consent (as forbidden in D&C 132) and 11 who were already married (some without their husbands knowing)?
12. Why is it that 10 of Joseph’s wives were teenagers, some as young as 14, several of whom he married while in his late 30's? This was shocking even by 19th century standards.
13. Why did President Hinckley publicly say polygamy isn’t doctrinal when numerous early church leaders, including Brigham Young, taught that it was essential for exaltation?
14. If the only scriptural justification for polygamy is “to multiply and replenish the earth” when The Lord commands it, either Joseph was sleeping with his 14-year-old wives, or he wasn’t adhering to scriptural laws.
15. Why did Joseph marry Fanny Alger years before he had the sealing power?
16. Why did Joseph marry some of his foster daughters?
17. Why did Brigham Young teach Adam-God theory, which is now disavowed by the church, at general conference and as part of the temple endowment ceremony?
18. Why is it that Brigham Young taught blood atonement, if it is now also disavowed?
19. Why is it that black people weren’t allowed to hold the priesthood until the 70s? Even though Joseph gave it to a few black people, but from Brigham to Spencer they were deemed unworthy to hold it?
20. Why is it that In the 1980s, the church paid around $900,000 to suppress bizarre and embarrassing church history documents? These documents were later proven to be fake. Mark Hofmann, the conman, turned out to be a murderer. Why is it that before the documents were known to be forgeries, church leaders gave talks offering explanations for them?
21. Why did Joseph Smith falsely translate fake plates called the Kinderhook Plates? Why did he claim they were historical?
22. Why do all of the spin-offs of the LDS church also have members say that they “know” their church is the true church? Why do other religions, such as Islam, say they “know through the power of God”, including the Heaven’s Gate cult, that their churches/beliefs are true?
23. Why did Joseph send Oliver and Hiram to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in Canada, saying he received a revelation to do it if they failed? In addition, why did Joseph not know that treasure would not be available to them as they heard according to D&C 111?
24. Why do church leaders teach that you should bear your testimony in order to gain one, when this is a classic psychological manipulation tactic?
25. Why is that you can feel the spirit doing a multitude of things that have nothing to do with the gospel, like watching Saving Private Ryan?
26. Why is it that Joseph and Oliver receiving “the priesthood” is very suspicious, since they didn’t tell people until years later and changed earlier revelations to match their new accounts?
27. Why did Joseph use the seer stone he used to translate the Book of Mormon to find people “buried treasure”, for which he was taken to court on charges of fraud?
28. Is it true that people at Joseph’s time had a “magical worldview”, which included seeing things “with spiritual eyes” (like the gold plates)?
29. Is it true that Martin Harris was known as a gullible man? He was deeply financially invested in the Book of Mormon as he mortgaged his farm to finance it. Why is that after becoming Mormon, he was a witness to self-proclaimed prophet, James Strang, for whom he went on a mission? Strang also said he had gold plates and used a Urim and Thummin to translate them. His witnesses also never denied that Strang’s scripture was true.
Martin Harris testified and witnessed for several other religions, and also said that he had as much evidence for a Shaker book as he had The Book of Mormon. (He also said he saw Christ in the form of a deer and talked with him…so there’s that.)
30. Why did David Whitmer say he saw the angel with his spiritual eyes, and said his impressions were just like those of a Methodist having happy feelings?
31. Is it not true that people in Joseph’s time believe in “second sight” (imagination) and that it was no different to seeing something with your physical eyes?
32. Why did the witnesses to the gold plates not sign their own signatures or write their own accounts (except Oliver, who was the scribe)?
33. Why were all of the Book of Mormon witnesses, except for Martin Harris, were related by blood or marriage to the Smiths or the Whitmers?
34. Why did Joseph have many people sign an affidavit saying he wasn’t practicing polygamy when he was? Why is it that some of those who signed it were also practicing polygamy?
35. Why is it that Joseph didn’t even use the would-have-weighed-around-200 pounds plates to translate the Book of Mormon? Why could he also not retranslate the missing 116 pages, “lost” by Martin Harris’ wife to test Joseph’s validity as a translator and know through his seer stone how the manuscript would have been altered?
36. Why is that Joseph started the LDS temple endowment just 7 weeks after his Masonic initiation? Why is the endowment ceremony nearly identical to the Masonic ceremony in numerous ways?
37. Why do we say that the Masonic temple ceremony has roots going back to the temple of Solomon when it doesn't?
38. If the temple ceremony is supposed to be eternal (like God and presumably unchanging), why were blood oaths and other disturbing elements removed after a survey in the 80s revealed that church members were uncomfortable with them?
39. If Adam and Eve are the first humans, how do we explain the 14 other Hominin species who lived and died 35,000 – 250,000 years before Adam?
40. How is it that science can prove that there was no worldwide flood 4,500 years ago?
41. In addition simple mathematics and the logic of animal food consumption shows that there was insufficient room on the ark to house all the animal species found on the planet, let alone the food required to feed all of them.
42. Why is it that we claim to believe in things that science also discredits; such as the idea of the Tower of Babel, 600-year-old humans, Jonah and the Whale, people turning into salt, and carrying honey bees across the ocean?
43. Why does God seem really mean and radically different in the Old Testament?
44. Why has the church made efforts to whitewash its history and been dishonest on numerous occasions - only recently coming out with essays that address the issues that have been covered up or denied for so long?
45. Why is it that Zina Diantha Huntington Young, who became the General Relief Society President, was already married and 6 months pregnant when Joseph married her because his life was allegedly in danger from the angel with a flaming sword? Why is it that after Joseph died, she married Brigham? Why does her biographical page on LDS.org not state that she was married to Joseph, though it shows up on FamilySearch.org?
46. Why is the church not transparent about its finances anymore?
47. Why is it that the church spent 1.5 billion dollars on City Creek Mall, which is more than it spent on humanitarian aid in almost 20 years? As the ribbon was cut at the opening ceremony, Thomas S. Monson said “Let’s go shopping!”.
48. Why did the earlier church teach that tithing was 10% of your surplus; but the church now teaches that it is 10% of your income, even if you can’t afford to pay your bills because of it?
49. Why has the church’s name changed a few times?
50. Why have church leaders, such as Boyd K. Packer, warned historians about not telling too much of the truth if it isn’t faith-promoting?
51. Why does the church teach that the prophet can’t lead you astray, though this is a.) pretty obviously not true, and b.) not in line with things Joseph and other early leaders said?
52. Why did Dallin H. Oaks say you shouldn’t criticize church leaders, even if the criticism is true?
53. Why in 1993, were 6 scholars excommunicated/disfellowshipped for publishing their scholarly research on Mormonism and its leaders? In addition, why are people being excommunicated recently for alleged apostasy when they are simply asking questions like the above (including the author of these questions written out in a letter to a CES Director, Jeremy Runnells) ?
You can read the original CES Letter here: http://cesletter.com/
Friday, July 1, 2011
The enigma of Joseph Smith
I read with interest a recent article by Dan Peterson entitled, "The Prophet Joseph Smith was no double-dealing cynic"
In all honesty the beginning of the article quite surprised me. Dan starts out with this unbelievable idea, he says,
"For a critic wanting to reject Joseph's own account, there are, broadly speaking, only two logical alternatives for explaining him: Either he was a false prophet but thought he was a real one, or he was a false prophet and knew that he was a false prophet. That is to say, again in general terms, that he must have been either dishonest or delusional, or some hybrid of the two."
Honestly, he is right. Of course, at the end of his piece he brings up the third possibility (which, his article is entirely devoted to trying to prove, apparently) that Joseph was a true prophet and, apparently, believed that he was as well.
In the process of outlining his argument, Dan selects a few quotes from Joseph Smith's journal entries to try to persuade readers that Joseph was sincere and cared for others. I have no problem with the idea that Joseph was possibly a very sincere, thoughtful and kind person. He grew up in poverty and in a household that was very spiritual and superstitious. I believe he was a product of his environment and maybe had a desire to do something great. In my study of Joseph I find that there is no shortage of good things that are attributed to him. He was really a spiritual revolutionary of his time. He taught many things that were foreign to so many in his day. He is quoted as saying things like;
"It is the duty of a husband to love, cherish, and nourish his wife, and cleave unto her and none else; he ought to honor her as himself, and he ought to regard her feelings with tenderness, for she is his flesh, and his bone, designed to be an help unto him, both in temporal, and spiritual things; one into whose bosom he can pour all his complaints without reserve..."
However, notwithstanding all the good things attributed to Joseph Smith, there are a few problems. One of the problems is actually somewhat brought to light by Dan in his article although he doesn't bother to mention it at all. The problem is that there is actually very little that we have in the way of writings in Joseph's own handwriting. I had a chance to thumb through one of the installments of the Joseph Smith papers and was surprised to learn a couple of things 1. How little we actually have recorded by Joseph in his own hand and 2. How little of a correlation exists between Joseph's own words and the words we attribute to him in revelations and other volumes of teachings.
Of course there are certainly plenty of explanations for these things. The response to the first issue would be simply that either Joseph didn't like to write or he couldn't do so very easily (or well) and so he took advantage of scribes wherever possible. I actually believe that this was the case, so having so little in the way of writings by Joseph himself is really not that troubling. However, in light of that fact, we are forced to rely on the testimonies and writings of others who were with Joseph to try to piece together more about the character of this man.
As for the second issue, this is where I kind of struggle. When I read that Joseph wrote in his own hand the following;
"Oh Lord keep us and my Family safe untill I can return to them again Oh my God have mercy on my Bretheren in Zion for Christ Sake Amen."
And then I am expected to believe that the following articulate prayer came from the same person (from the first few verses of D&C 76),
"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, and rejoice ye inhabitants thereof, for the Lord is God, and beside him there is no Savior. Great is his wisdom, marvelous are his ways, and the extent of his doings none can find out. His purposes fail not, neither are there any who can stay his hand. From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail."
They just don't seem to be from the same person. The first quote seems to be from someone who could barely compose a coherent sentence, let alone a complex piece of writing, and the second from a master of religious language. The common explanation for this is that Joseph was a semi-literate farm boy who seemed to stumble through his words when writing on his own (not being one who was 'mighty' in writing), but when dictating the voice of the Lord from heaven through a scribe, was mighty, speaking with the authority of heaven. In response to this my question would be, Doesn't God speak to us in the same language that we commonly use ourselves? Of course, Joseph could have been an exception to this, granted. The troubling aspect, however, comes in when one realizes that relying so heavily on dictation for conveying teachings and ideas might allow another person's writings to be substituted for those of the dictator. Of course, I don't have any real evidence of this happening, but let me introduce the points from Joseph's history that Dan conveniently omitted from his article.
There are actually many, many troubling things from the history of the church that an interested person can easily uncover with a few simple clicks in a web browser on the internet. Allow me to highlight just a few things from Joseph's history that call into question his legitimacy as a true prophet of God.
1. The Kinderhook plates incident. On April 16, 1843 a man by the name of Robert Wiley started digging in a mound. He quit when it started raining, but came back a week later (with a group of men) and began digging again. Ultimately a set of 6, bell shaped, brass plates were found connected by a rusty iron ring. On these plates were inscribed characters as follows:
It wasn't long before someone had the idea of taking the plates to Joseph Smith for a translation. Needless to say, this was a very exciting discovery of the day as it seemed the plates not only certainly contained more about the history of the Indian mound builders, but it also seemed to validate Joseph's story about obtaining plates of gold to be able to translate the Book of Mormon. After all, the Book of Mormon mentioned plates of brass so speculation abounded about what these plates, discovered in Kinderhook, Illinois, might contain.
Soon, it was published in the Times and Seasons that the plates were discovered and everyone looked forward to Joseph's translation. Unfortunately, Joseph was killed before any translation could be officially announced. We do know, however, that he was at least seriously contemplating their translation. William Clayton (Joseph's scribe) wrote the following;
"I have seen 6 brass plates...covered with ancient characters of language containing from 30 to 40 on each side of the plates. Prest J. [Joseph Smith] has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth."
William also recorded, "...that upon receiving the plates, Smith sent for his "Hebrew Bible & Lexicon," This seems to suggest that Joseph was going to attempt to translate the plates by conventional means, rather than by use of a seer stone or direct revelation. Regardless of how it was going to be accomplished, the records seem to show that Joseph believed the plates to be authentic and was intending to perform a translation of them.
The problem is, the plates turned out to be a hoax. Years later it came out that a few men had planted the plates with the specific hope and intention of receiving a translation of the plates from Joseph Smith, which they then could use to prove him a fraud. When an official translation never came forth, the ruse had lost its potential to discredit Joseph and his translation abilities. Unfortunately, many questions remain unanswered. For example, if Joseph was a prophet, why wasn't he able to sniff out the deception and call the fraudulent parties out when he saw the plates? One also is left wondering if Joseph had not been killed, would there have been a translation made at some point? Questions like these call into question Joseph's legitimacy as one called or inspired of God in his work.
2. The Book of Abraham. In order to gain further insight on this issue, I would highly recommend Charles Larson's book, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri. This book can actually be obtained by current LDS members for $5 (Free with $5 S&H) through an outreach program at IRR here. The book is very nice as it contains a full color foldout scan of the original papyrus pieces. Anyway, this is what started me on my path. I sat in church one Sunday and thought I would look at the facsimiles contained in the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price and see if I could better understand the events depicted in them (I now realize that the name of my blog was a subconscious statement of this, because I didn't realize it at the time but, facsimilogos could be interpreted as "making sense of facsimiles") besides, I was looking for pictures in the scriptures and this is one of the few places you can find them (I know, sometimes church is boring and I was jealous of my kids picture books, so I wanted to look at the pictures actually contained in the scriptures).
As I studied the pictures there, I had a simple question. I wondered if there were any scholars who had been able to actually translate these scenes and wondered what they had to say about them. I was pretty sure that Egyptologists, if they were, in fact, able to even begin to translate Egyptian, would completely vindicate Joseph's translation of the fragments. That simple question led me to discover a great video on the subject found here. The video was very informative. In fact, it was much more informative than any video I have ever seen put out by the church. This video actually provided a historical context that made sense and was easily verifiable. Now that I think about it, most videos I have seen during my time in the church were mostly about tugging at my heart strings in some fashion, but never contained much in the way of substance. I was amazed to find something long on substance that wasn't designed to get me all worked up emotionally. However, this video placed a very solid question mark in my mind concerning Joseph's abilities to translate ancient languages where only a period used to exist. This of course lead me down a path of wanting to know more. If the church hadn't given me this thorough of an explanation of the history surrounding the origin of the Book of Abraham, what else was out there that I was unaware of? A lot. The final nail in the coffin for me surrounding Joseph's prophetic call and abilities occurred when I researched my last bullet point.
3. The testimony of the 11 witnesses to the Book of Mormon. As a lifelong member of the church I was very familiar with the testimony of the 3 and 8 witnesses to the plates of the Book of Mormon. I often referred to their testimony in response to any accusation that the gold plates were not real. Sure, maybe Joseph alone might not be 100% trustworthy, but there were witnesses! Others saw and handled these plates which Joseph claimed to have in his possession, so they must have been real, right?
Well, not exactly. You see, according to a statement made by Martin Harris, he seems to indicate that the manifestation of the plates was more of a spiritual witness than a physical one. David Whitmer has indicated this as well. I was always told that none of the witnesses had ever denied their testimony of seeing the plates of the Book of Mormon, however, I was never told that the witnesses said that these were just "spiritual" visions and not physical ones.
What about the 8 witnesses? They saw and handled the real plates, though, right? Maybe. Maybe not. The reason I say this is because most of the 8 witnesses came from one family. John Whitmer said, "I now say, I handled those plates; there were fine engravings on both sides. ...they were shown to me by a supernatural power" (History of the Church, Vol. 3, p. 307)
So why was a supernatural power needed for a physical witness of some plates? The other question is, How could these witnesses be expected to know that the plates presented to them were the same one's that contained the Book of Mormon (as opposed to a fabrication)?
It is interesting to note that several of the 8 witnesses later went on to testify that they saw the voree plates which James Strang (potential successor to Joseph Smith to lead the church) claimed contained "The book of the law of the Lord". He also claimed to have the Plates of Laban spoken of in the Book of Mormon. So, even though the witnesses never denied their testimonies as contained in the preface to the Book of Mormon, they never denied seeing anything supernatural! So the credibility of the witnesses is called into question when one learns that they never denied seeing the gold plates, never denied that James Strang was Joseph's successor and said that the presentation of the plates was a supernatural event.
When taking just these three incidents into consideration, I will again present Dan's original proposition; Joseph was either a false prophet but thought he was a real one, or he was a false prophet and knew that he was a false prophet...he must have been either dishonest or delusional, or some hybrid of the two. My contention is that these are the only two real possible explanations for Joseph Smith and the third explanation that he WAS a real prophet and KNEW he was a prophet, just falls flat on its face. What do you think?
In all honesty the beginning of the article quite surprised me. Dan starts out with this unbelievable idea, he says,
"For a critic wanting to reject Joseph's own account, there are, broadly speaking, only two logical alternatives for explaining him: Either he was a false prophet but thought he was a real one, or he was a false prophet and knew that he was a false prophet. That is to say, again in general terms, that he must have been either dishonest or delusional, or some hybrid of the two."
Honestly, he is right. Of course, at the end of his piece he brings up the third possibility (which, his article is entirely devoted to trying to prove, apparently) that Joseph was a true prophet and, apparently, believed that he was as well.
In the process of outlining his argument, Dan selects a few quotes from Joseph Smith's journal entries to try to persuade readers that Joseph was sincere and cared for others. I have no problem with the idea that Joseph was possibly a very sincere, thoughtful and kind person. He grew up in poverty and in a household that was very spiritual and superstitious. I believe he was a product of his environment and maybe had a desire to do something great. In my study of Joseph I find that there is no shortage of good things that are attributed to him. He was really a spiritual revolutionary of his time. He taught many things that were foreign to so many in his day. He is quoted as saying things like;
"It is the duty of a husband to love, cherish, and nourish his wife, and cleave unto her and none else; he ought to honor her as himself, and he ought to regard her feelings with tenderness, for she is his flesh, and his bone, designed to be an help unto him, both in temporal, and spiritual things; one into whose bosom he can pour all his complaints without reserve..."
However, notwithstanding all the good things attributed to Joseph Smith, there are a few problems. One of the problems is actually somewhat brought to light by Dan in his article although he doesn't bother to mention it at all. The problem is that there is actually very little that we have in the way of writings in Joseph's own handwriting. I had a chance to thumb through one of the installments of the Joseph Smith papers and was surprised to learn a couple of things 1. How little we actually have recorded by Joseph in his own hand and 2. How little of a correlation exists between Joseph's own words and the words we attribute to him in revelations and other volumes of teachings.
Of course there are certainly plenty of explanations for these things. The response to the first issue would be simply that either Joseph didn't like to write or he couldn't do so very easily (or well) and so he took advantage of scribes wherever possible. I actually believe that this was the case, so having so little in the way of writings by Joseph himself is really not that troubling. However, in light of that fact, we are forced to rely on the testimonies and writings of others who were with Joseph to try to piece together more about the character of this man.
As for the second issue, this is where I kind of struggle. When I read that Joseph wrote in his own hand the following;
"Oh Lord keep us and my Family safe untill I can return to them again Oh my God have mercy on my Bretheren in Zion for Christ Sake Amen."
And then I am expected to believe that the following articulate prayer came from the same person (from the first few verses of D&C 76),
"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, and rejoice ye inhabitants thereof, for the Lord is God, and beside him there is no Savior. Great is his wisdom, marvelous are his ways, and the extent of his doings none can find out. His purposes fail not, neither are there any who can stay his hand. From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail."
They just don't seem to be from the same person. The first quote seems to be from someone who could barely compose a coherent sentence, let alone a complex piece of writing, and the second from a master of religious language. The common explanation for this is that Joseph was a semi-literate farm boy who seemed to stumble through his words when writing on his own (not being one who was 'mighty' in writing), but when dictating the voice of the Lord from heaven through a scribe, was mighty, speaking with the authority of heaven. In response to this my question would be, Doesn't God speak to us in the same language that we commonly use ourselves? Of course, Joseph could have been an exception to this, granted. The troubling aspect, however, comes in when one realizes that relying so heavily on dictation for conveying teachings and ideas might allow another person's writings to be substituted for those of the dictator. Of course, I don't have any real evidence of this happening, but let me introduce the points from Joseph's history that Dan conveniently omitted from his article.
There are actually many, many troubling things from the history of the church that an interested person can easily uncover with a few simple clicks in a web browser on the internet. Allow me to highlight just a few things from Joseph's history that call into question his legitimacy as a true prophet of God.
1. The Kinderhook plates incident. On April 16, 1843 a man by the name of Robert Wiley started digging in a mound. He quit when it started raining, but came back a week later (with a group of men) and began digging again. Ultimately a set of 6, bell shaped, brass plates were found connected by a rusty iron ring. On these plates were inscribed characters as follows:
It wasn't long before someone had the idea of taking the plates to Joseph Smith for a translation. Needless to say, this was a very exciting discovery of the day as it seemed the plates not only certainly contained more about the history of the Indian mound builders, but it also seemed to validate Joseph's story about obtaining plates of gold to be able to translate the Book of Mormon. After all, the Book of Mormon mentioned plates of brass so speculation abounded about what these plates, discovered in Kinderhook, Illinois, might contain.
Soon, it was published in the Times and Seasons that the plates were discovered and everyone looked forward to Joseph's translation. Unfortunately, Joseph was killed before any translation could be officially announced. We do know, however, that he was at least seriously contemplating their translation. William Clayton (Joseph's scribe) wrote the following;
"I have seen 6 brass plates...covered with ancient characters of language containing from 30 to 40 on each side of the plates. Prest J. [Joseph Smith] has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth."
William also recorded, "...that upon receiving the plates, Smith sent for his "Hebrew Bible & Lexicon," This seems to suggest that Joseph was going to attempt to translate the plates by conventional means, rather than by use of a seer stone or direct revelation. Regardless of how it was going to be accomplished, the records seem to show that Joseph believed the plates to be authentic and was intending to perform a translation of them.
The problem is, the plates turned out to be a hoax. Years later it came out that a few men had planted the plates with the specific hope and intention of receiving a translation of the plates from Joseph Smith, which they then could use to prove him a fraud. When an official translation never came forth, the ruse had lost its potential to discredit Joseph and his translation abilities. Unfortunately, many questions remain unanswered. For example, if Joseph was a prophet, why wasn't he able to sniff out the deception and call the fraudulent parties out when he saw the plates? One also is left wondering if Joseph had not been killed, would there have been a translation made at some point? Questions like these call into question Joseph's legitimacy as one called or inspired of God in his work.
2. The Book of Abraham. In order to gain further insight on this issue, I would highly recommend Charles Larson's book, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri. This book can actually be obtained by current LDS members for $5 (Free with $5 S&H) through an outreach program at IRR here. The book is very nice as it contains a full color foldout scan of the original papyrus pieces. Anyway, this is what started me on my path. I sat in church one Sunday and thought I would look at the facsimiles contained in the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price and see if I could better understand the events depicted in them (I now realize that the name of my blog was a subconscious statement of this, because I didn't realize it at the time but, facsimilogos could be interpreted as "making sense of facsimiles") besides, I was looking for pictures in the scriptures and this is one of the few places you can find them (I know, sometimes church is boring and I was jealous of my kids picture books, so I wanted to look at the pictures actually contained in the scriptures).
As I studied the pictures there, I had a simple question. I wondered if there were any scholars who had been able to actually translate these scenes and wondered what they had to say about them. I was pretty sure that Egyptologists, if they were, in fact, able to even begin to translate Egyptian, would completely vindicate Joseph's translation of the fragments. That simple question led me to discover a great video on the subject found here. The video was very informative. In fact, it was much more informative than any video I have ever seen put out by the church. This video actually provided a historical context that made sense and was easily verifiable. Now that I think about it, most videos I have seen during my time in the church were mostly about tugging at my heart strings in some fashion, but never contained much in the way of substance. I was amazed to find something long on substance that wasn't designed to get me all worked up emotionally. However, this video placed a very solid question mark in my mind concerning Joseph's abilities to translate ancient languages where only a period used to exist. This of course lead me down a path of wanting to know more. If the church hadn't given me this thorough of an explanation of the history surrounding the origin of the Book of Abraham, what else was out there that I was unaware of? A lot. The final nail in the coffin for me surrounding Joseph's prophetic call and abilities occurred when I researched my last bullet point.
3. The testimony of the 11 witnesses to the Book of Mormon. As a lifelong member of the church I was very familiar with the testimony of the 3 and 8 witnesses to the plates of the Book of Mormon. I often referred to their testimony in response to any accusation that the gold plates were not real. Sure, maybe Joseph alone might not be 100% trustworthy, but there were witnesses! Others saw and handled these plates which Joseph claimed to have in his possession, so they must have been real, right?
Well, not exactly. You see, according to a statement made by Martin Harris, he seems to indicate that the manifestation of the plates was more of a spiritual witness than a physical one. David Whitmer has indicated this as well. I was always told that none of the witnesses had ever denied their testimony of seeing the plates of the Book of Mormon, however, I was never told that the witnesses said that these were just "spiritual" visions and not physical ones.
What about the 8 witnesses? They saw and handled the real plates, though, right? Maybe. Maybe not. The reason I say this is because most of the 8 witnesses came from one family. John Whitmer said, "I now say, I handled those plates; there were fine engravings on both sides. ...they were shown to me by a supernatural power" (History of the Church, Vol. 3, p. 307)
So why was a supernatural power needed for a physical witness of some plates? The other question is, How could these witnesses be expected to know that the plates presented to them were the same one's that contained the Book of Mormon (as opposed to a fabrication)?
It is interesting to note that several of the 8 witnesses later went on to testify that they saw the voree plates which James Strang (potential successor to Joseph Smith to lead the church) claimed contained "The book of the law of the Lord". He also claimed to have the Plates of Laban spoken of in the Book of Mormon. So, even though the witnesses never denied their testimonies as contained in the preface to the Book of Mormon, they never denied seeing anything supernatural! So the credibility of the witnesses is called into question when one learns that they never denied seeing the gold plates, never denied that James Strang was Joseph's successor and said that the presentation of the plates was a supernatural event.
When taking just these three incidents into consideration, I will again present Dan's original proposition; Joseph was either a false prophet but thought he was a real one, or he was a false prophet and knew that he was a false prophet...he must have been either dishonest or delusional, or some hybrid of the two. My contention is that these are the only two real possible explanations for Joseph Smith and the third explanation that he WAS a real prophet and KNEW he was a prophet, just falls flat on its face. What do you think?
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