Qcmbr: There has to be a point where you recognise a charismatic con man when you see him.
The same was said of Christ. In fact, in all of my studying of anti-Mormon literature, I have found the vast majority to be false, followed by other areas that are misunderstood or intentionally made to look foolish (“magic underwear”).
Joseph has sex with his adopted daughter (16 years old)
Who said? The only 16-year old I know of was Helen Mar Kimball, and it was a political marriage only done at the request of Joseph’s lifelong friend, Heber C. Kimball. Since the Latter-day Saints believe that marriages contracted here carry on into the next estate, Heber very much wanted to unite his family with Joseph’s. At first, Helen wasn’t for this marriage, but she remained a faithful member of the church and died an old lady in Salt Lake City. When she wrote her memoirs, she had very much changed her mind and she never indicated anywhere that her relationship with Joseph was any more than political in nature. She lived right over the print shop, and the residents of that area never recall seeing Joseph visit her. You can believe what you wish, but have you any proof?
Joseph has sex with married women
Such as? Please provide names and evidence.
Joseph drinks alcohol, owns businesses involved in alcohol production and sale all after his factually incorrect Word of Wisdom revelation
When the “Word of Wisdom” revelation was given, it explicitly states that it was not given “by commandment or restrain,” but as a word of wisdom. Mormons, including Joseph, continued to drink in moderation until the days of Brigham Young, who put the issue up to the Latter-day Saints for a vote to make it a commandment and binding. This was done on our own initiative and, in my view, it has served the church very well. What you mean by “factually incorrect” is beyond me.
Joseph makes up tall tales regularly (for example claiming a stone structure was actually Adam’s altar but forgetting what a flood would do).
This is hardly a major issue to base an objection on, especially since we have nothing directly from Joseph Smith. Nevertheless, we know that Adam lived in the general area, and the people who visited the “altar” said it was not in one piece. The following is by Benjamin H. Johnson, who said he visited the area. If the Book of Mormon is true, and if Joseph was a prophet (which I’m convinced he was), then I would say that if he said it was the altar of Adam, that it most likely was what he said it was. The answer depends on his prophetic calling.
With all the written scriptures he produced; with everything he left us, if you have to go dancing around the gray areas of Mormonism to find fault, one wonders why the Book of Mormon can’t be debunked once and for all, decisively? It claims to be an ancient record dating back to 600 B.C. And while little was known about that period of history at the time the Book of Mormon appeared (1830). We know considerably more about it now. Yet Nephi’s account, far from being debunked, is completely consistent with what we know of the region and time period. If Joseph Smith was a true prophet, then I’d think the Book of Mormon would be quickly proven a fraud. Yet it’s holding up fine. How is that possible?
Joseph caught pretending to translate (kinder hook, Greek psalter and in our day Book of Abraham)
The Book of Abraham is a book I’ll stand by to the end. Our critics act as though the issue has been completely settled and that Joseph Smith was proven a fraud. This is most certainly not true. As of now, an intellectual battle is raging, and I come down on the side of the Book of Abraham. The Greek Psalter incident is ridiculous and I can’t believe you’re even brining it up. What evidence do you have that it took place? The story was invented by an anti-Mormon professor who, in his account, quotes Joseph Smith as uncouth, unlearned and ignorant. Joseph never used the language that Caswall reported and we have his writing samples from the time to prove it. This is one of the things you should have known about. It takes my time to answer the charge, when you should have known better. You’re reading nothing but anti-Mormon literature and most of it is crap. As for the Kinderhook Plates, we have no indication whatsoever that Joseph had the least interest in it. After a historical analysis, our historians have concluded:
“The best argument against Joseph’s attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates is most likely that no one said anything about it at the time. A trap was laid for Joseph, but he did not step into it. Decades later, with Joseph safely dead, the conspirators came forward and announced they had ‘tricked’ the prophet. But, if they wanted to show Joseph up, why wait for decades to do it? Why didn’t they crow their success from the rooftops in Nauvoo and Illinois? Quite simply, Joseph didn’t fall for their trap, and so there was nothing to announce.”
The only two accounts of the plates contradicted each other in numerous areas. Smith never showed enough interest in them to write anything in his journal, as he did concerning the Book of Abraham. BTW, anyone interested in the Book of Abraham should check out the numerous listings by FairLDS lectures on YouTube.
Joseph writes a book full of copy errors, factual mistakes and impossibilities — in the style of a pious schoolbook from his youth — and then tries to sell it.
Of what book are you speaking? Sounds like you’re copying and pasting from somewhere.
Joseph tells people of supernatural occurrences many years after and gets his salient facts wrong many times (confusing Nephi with Moroni, giving different divine responses to different questions to different people in the same ‘First Vision’)
You mean, like the apostle Paul? Actually, the church looked into a number of those allegations and also found them to be false. First it was claimed there were no revivals in 1820 — that they came later — and that was disproven. Then they said he concocted his first vision story many years later, but then they found earlier references to it in the journals of people who talked about hearing Joseph relate the story earlier than the published accounts. Also, as a journalist and editor, myself, I know how easy it is making errors in published accounts. Which change bothers you the most?
Regarding anti-Mormon literature, some deserves serious consideration (such as the first vision accounts, whether there were revivals in the Palmyra area when Joseph claimed and, of course, the Books of Mormon and Abraham. But it’s easy to just grab mud and fling it, and then the person you’re flinging it at has to go through the time and effort of cleaning it up.
Cofty: It's intersting that you dismiss ex-Mormons in the same way that JWs dismiss ex-JWs and evangelicals do the same to ex-christians.
At first blush that may seem like a valid criticism; however, the ex-Mormon community, with but few exceptions, are not competent scholars and historians. Clearly I’m going to take the criticisms of ancient scripture scholars, anthropologists, geologists, archeologists and competent historians more serious than those of ex-Mormon rank and file members. To undermine the JWs, all one needs are past issues of their own publications. Mormonism is much more problematic.
Margaret Barker, a very respected Methodist scholar with a specialty in 600 B.C. Middle East history, theology and tradition, and specifically, on early Israelite temple worship is going to carry more weight than someone who does Internet searches in their basement and creates anti-Mormon websites.
For example, she notes:
The tree of life made one happy, according to the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 3:18), but for detailed descriptions of the tree we have to rely on noncanonical texts. Enoch described it as perfumed, with fruit like grapes (1 Enoch 32:5), and a text discovered in Egypt in 1945 described the tree as beautiful, fiery, and with fruit like white grapes. I do not know of any other source that describes the fruit as white grapes. Imagine my surprise when I read the account of Lehi’s vision of the tree whose white fruit made one happy.... [See 1 Nephi 8:10-11]
Consider as well the mysterious rod of iron in this Book of Mormon vision (1 Nephi 8:20; 11:25). In the Bible, the rod of iron is mentioned four times as the rod of the Messiah. Each mention in the King James Version says the Messiah uses the rod to “break” the nations (Psalm 2:9) or to “rule” them (Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15). The ancient Greek translation (the Septuagint) is significantly different; it understood the Hebrew word in Psalm 2:9 to mean “shepherd” and it reads, “He will shepherd them with a rod of iron.” The two Hebrew verbs for “break” and “shepherd, pasture, tend, lead” look very similar and in some forms are identical. The Greek text of the Book of Revelation actually uses the word “shepherd,” poimanei, of the Messiah and his iron rod, so the English versions here are not accurate. The hold child who was taken up to heaven (Revelation 12:5) was to “shepherd the nations with a rod of iron.” The King James Version of Micah 7:14 translates this same word as “Feed thy people with thy rod,” where “guide” would be a better translation. Psalm 78:72 has, “He fed them...he guided them,” where the parallelism of Hebrew poetry would expect the two verbs to have a similar meaning: “He led them...he guided them.” Lehi’s vision has the iron rod guiding people to the great tree--the older and probably the original understanding of the word. ("Worlds of Joseph Smith" conference at the Library of Congress in 2005)
She has written more extensively on the LDS views of the temple and traditions in non-canonical apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature. And the fact that no anti-Mormon can get past is the fact that no one living in 1830 knew enough to write the Book of Mormon and other works Joseph produced. Even in the hotly contested Book of Abraham, the work includes extensive information on the premortal council of the gods, which is now a recognized area of study based on writings that simply weren’t available in Joseph Smith’s day. Had he produced the Book of Abraham today, anti-Mormons would have a field day dragging these documents forward to show where Joseph Smith stole his material. But in his day, the greatest biblical scholars had no access to such documents. The same thing is true for research in the Mesoamerican field of Book of Mormon studies. Each year, the Book of Mormon becomes more plausible, not less.
If it’s a fraud, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
