How has Mormonism survived modern scrutiny?

Great Debates
221

Lots of requests here for information, emarkp. You have a great opportunity to fight our ignorance. Please locate some “sources that argue against this claim” that Joseph Smith was convicted of fraud in 1826 for pretending to locate buried treasure by peering into a magic rock.

This isn’t about the Tanners, or whether they are liars. Fawn Brodie (anti-Mormon biographer) made the same claim long before the Tanners, and it was good enough to convince Richard Bushman (Mormon apologist biographer). If the claim is false, then surely the LDS Church or an apologetic website will make the refutation available.

222

This is the way I understand the mechanism of the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy.

**1) Person A makes claim X.

  1. Person B asserts that A’s actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.

  2. Therefore X is false.**

So…

Tanners makes claim “State of New York vs. Joseph Smith”.
emarkp asserts that Tanner’s actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim “State of New York vs. Joseph Smith”.
Therefore “State of New York vs. Joseph Smith” is false.

I didn’t ask about about the Tanners reputation; I asked about the cites with respect to their allegations–show me a link that refutes those sources, otherwise, my tu quoque accusation stands.

OTOH, if I misapplied the tu quoque, please be specific on where and why. I’m looking to learn from my mistakes…really.

223

Not my argument. My argument is that because the Tanners have been shown to be liars in the past, their claims cannot be accepted as true without confirmation from other sources. This is different than saying that “because it’s from the Tanners, it must be false” which is what you’re accusing me of saying.

Here’s the conclusion to the discussion I had about the Tanners. Feel free to read the whole 4-page thread (though please don’t resurrect a 7-year-old thread).

As for a response about the 1826 court event, here you go. It wasn’t a trial, it was an examination. Thus no verdict, and no fraud, etc. And it’s a shame that well-known anti-Mormon Wes Walters stole the Neely bill from the courthouse, thus destroying its provenance.
With pathetic criticisms such as these, is it any wonder the LDS church has “survived” modern scrutiny?

224

Unless you are alledging that the entire incident was faked, your (dare-I-say-)pathetic rebuttals are tangential to the point that critics would expect to give people pause, which is that based on the accumulated available evidence, Joe Smith certainly appears to be a less than angelic character.

225

Yes, it is possible that the 1926 trial never happened. Your FAIRLDS cite seems to hypothesize that it never happened and then assume that it did happen. And I am not concerned with whether it was a trial, pretrial, or examination. FAIRLDS states that it was not an actual trial but then continues to call it a trial.

Oliver Cowdery described the event, falsely claiming that Joseph was aquitted. But the LDS are fond of pointing out that Oliver is not trustworthy as a witness (ahh, I love irony). If I am not mistaken, the event occurred before Joseph and Oliver were supposed to have met, so Oliver is likely reporting what Joseph told him later.

The FAIRLDS article is full of contradictions. For example, to be a “disorderly person” one has to be unemployed while practicing crystal-ball gazing. But Joseph wasn’t unemployed! During the off-season months for migrant farm hands, he was employed by Stowell as a crystal-ball gazer! That’s like saying that an unemployed man running a con isn’t guilty of the con, because he is receiving a salary from his mark.

Yes, there were others in that part of the country at that time who practiced divining and glass-looking. No one is claiming that Smith invented the concept. In fact, it’s clear that the practice was common enough that it had become a nuisance and a law was passed against it. The simple truth seems to be that before he became a religious prophet, Joseph Smith spent some time practising magic, as was common among farm workers in winter. Some people believed in magic, some did not, some were willing to pay Smith a salary despite no results, and some were annoyed that their father or uncle was throwing his money away.

Shortly after Smith was fined for pretending to teach people how to locate buried treasure using magic rocks and satisfy the demands of the spirits guarding the treasure, Smith was visited by a spirit who guards a buried treasure (including some magic rocks), and after five attempts during four years, he was able to satisfy the demands of the guarding spirit and obtain the treasure. Unfortunately, no one else ever saw the treasure. Well, there were 3 + 8 witnesses, but they actually describe envisioning the gold plates with “spiritual eyes” or hefting a heavy object under a sheet, and that doesn’t matter anyway because Smith says they are all liars. So at least for the purpose of this discussion, we can assume that no one saw the treasure before the guarding spirit Moroni carried them up to heaven.

So the point of discussing the 1826 event isn’t really to villify Joseph Smith, but to show how his background as false gold-digging magician segued into his later claims of finding the Gold Plates that became the Book of Mormon.

Or really, the point of the discussion is “How has Mormonism survived modern scrutiny,” to which I would reply that most Mormons are blissfully unaware that there is anything needing scrutiny. Those few who know the history arbitrarily dismiss anti-Mormon claims as “pathetic criticisms” because the Holy Ghost tells them that the LDS Church is true and nothing else matters.

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Mormons make very few converts in countries with high levels of education. Western Europe and Japan are considered to be dead zones for them.

227

This is not really true. The various religions base their authority on miracles that happened so long ago in the past that they cannot be proven or disproved. One cannot prove or disprove that Jesus rose from the dead, or that the Angel Gabriel dictated the Koran to Mohammed.

Joseph Smith made assertions that are independently verifiable. He claimed that The Book of Mormon is a detailed history of pre Columbian America from about 500 BC to about 300 AD. If this is true, there should be archaeological evidence of the events told in The Book of Mormon. As it happens, there is no evidence. On the other hand, there is much evidence that the events did not happen. The Book of Mormon makes reference to animals and technology that did not exist in the New World until the coming of the Europeans.

228

I was proselytized by two Mormon missionaries when I was nineteen. I wanted to become a Mormon. However, I learned about The Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith acquired an ancient Egyptian manuscript, and claimed to be able to translate it. He claimed that it was a first person account by Abraham of his travels in Egypt.

The manuscript was believed to have been destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. However, it was discovered in the Main Public Library of New York in 1967. It has been translated by authentic Egyptian scholars. The real translation bears no resemblance to what Smith wrote in The Book of Abraham.

Mormons do some fancy foot work to explain that, but their explanations are only convincing to one who desperately wants to believe.

The truth about The Book of Abraham exposes the lies of Joseph Smith.

229

Thanks emarkp. That looks like quite an interesting thread.

230

Duly noted.

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So, how are things almost two years on? Particularly, emarkp - are you still a mormon? Have you checked out these facts properly yet?

And Rhodes, how are your extended family doing?

Everyone else who posted in this thread - have you changed your views since?

And of course - anyone else have anything to say?

232

This was an interesting thread that I’d completely forgotten about. Thanks for resurrecting it.

My wife and I resigned from the LDS church a few months after this thread. I discussed it here in a thread titled “Resignation from Mormonism”. (I’m typing this on my phone, so it’d be too much hassle for me to link it.)

We’ve mostly moved on. I still hang out at a post-Mormon support website, and I read every discussion on the SDMB that relates to Mormonism. So I still have an (unhealthy??) obsession. But I’ve learned to never debate Mormonism with Mormons IRL. And eventually they’ve learned to avoid the topic too. Today the wife talked to her grandparents, and for the first time ever there was no guiltmongering. On Sunday we visited my wife’s uncle and his family in San Antonio. Much of the conversation centered on who spoke at church and what everyone’s callings are. But they were friendly toward us and also steered clear of the guiltmongering. Looks like next month’s trip to Utah might be argument-free.

ETA: Oh, and the wife’s brother and his family are considering bunking in our living room for a few months while they move to TX. The fact that they’re comfortable living in the same city, even the same house, as the black sheep says a lot.

233

Most Mormons are lifers. They aren’t going to change (ruin?) their entire lives and belief system based on an argument on a message board. The belief is ingrained from birth and reinforced a hundred times a day. Not to mention often their closest family (spouse, children, parents), i.e. the ones they love the most in the whole world, can be hostages (figuratively). There’s no faster way to lose the respect of your family and peers than to become an “apostate.”

234

There’s a shiny new Mormon temple not far from where I live that argues otherwise.

http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/helsinki/

They call it the Helsinki Finland Temple even though it’s not in Helsinki but in the city of Espoo, which is a bit strange.

235

Building a temple doesn’t mean they are converting anyone. Read the link you posted: “Church membership number[s] only 4,500 in this Lutheran nation after 59 years of proselyting.” That’s pretty damning, to me.

So yeah, it is a dead zone.

236

I thought the only reason it is the fastest growing religion was because they systematically rebaptize, the dead of other faiths, to be Mormons? Especially the dead Jews from WWII, they have a ‘special project’.

Thing is, the way they’ve escaped notice for their wackiness, is exactly what you see Mitt practice. Don’t say much. Don’t reveal anything, if possible. Defect attention in any way possible. They’ve raised this practice to an art form, I think.

Mitt’s going over to visit Israel, next week I think. You think the Israeli PM knows about the ‘special project’? I have my doubts.

237

No. And it’s the fastest growing religion in the US, not the world. Islam is second, btw.

But it’s easier to be the “fastest growing” when you’re small to begin with.

238

There is no special project. They seek to posthumously baptize everyone, not just holocaust victims. I’ve heard a boast that they’ve been dunked for-and-in-behalf-of half a billion names. That sounds like a reasonable guess. I personally had been dunked for several hundred. But their claimed membership is 14 million. They don’t list any of the baptisms for the dead among their membership.

And it’s been mentioned several times in this thread that they no longer claim to be the fastest growing religion.

There was an interesting article last week in the Salt Lake Tribune. The title was something like “920,000 Mormons Disappear in Brazil”. [edit: Here it is: “Brazil mystery: Case of the missing Mormons (913,045 of them, to be exact)”.] The official LDS count of the number of Mormons in Brazil is about 500% higher than the number who self-identify is Mormons on the census. Of the 14,000,000 million Mormons worldwide, several million of those live in South America. And most of those would probably be surprised to learn that they are technically Mormons. So really, that’s how the church grows. They baptize people who don’t know what they’re getting into, and then they don’t follow up. The people go on with their lives as if it never happened, and the church brags about its missionary success.

239

I don’t know how I missed this thread the first time around, but I have my two cents to contribute.

I was approached at high school age by a proselytizing Mormon classmate. He caught me at exactly the right time, when I was casting about for something that “felt right”, but was an improvement over my fundamentalist upbringing. I went to a few Mormon gatherings, and it didn’t seem that much different from other protestant churches.

Here’s what was omitted from my friend’s introduction:[ul][li]The magic underwear[]The golden plates[]The idea of pre-Columbian contact with America[]Polygamy[]Bigotry towards certain races.[][/ul][/li]Here’s what was emphasized and I observed:[ul][li]Mormon families seemed happy and together[]The religion wasn’t much different from what I already knew: Jesus Christ was our Saviour, we went to church on Sunday, we lived a righteous life, we helped our extended family[]Mormons were influential and respected members of the community[]We were all doing God’s work[]Mormon kids were headed to college and good jobs[]It was all good, and not that different.[/ul][/li]
So I saw no reason to object to the church. But, thankfully, even though I was bombarded by Scientology, chanting (Nom Yo Renge Kyo, Nicharen Shoshu Buddhism) and a host of other enthusiastic cult groups at about the same time, I came to the realization that they all were bullshit of the worst, but innocent, sort, and I joined none.

I only write this here because it’s entirely plausible that others was been subjected to some of the same pressures but came to a different conclusion. The magic underwear and golden plates are not the first topic of conversation from a proselytizer, and that’s why Mormonism has survived modern scrutiny (that’s the OP, right?).

240

[quote=“Musicat, post:239, topic:546841”]

Here’s what was omitted from my friend’s introduction:
[ul]
[li]The magic underwear[/li][li]The golden plates[/li][li]The idea of pre-Columbian contact with America[/li][li]Polygamy[/li][li]Bigotry towards certain races.[/li][/quote]

[/ul][bolding mine]

I’m surprised you didn’t hear about the golden plates and the Book of Mormon story of Jesus visiting the Hebrew inhabitants. That is what they refer to as the “Keystone of our religion”. As a missionary, I think it was mentioned in the first of 6 discussions, and was the focus of the third discussion. IIRC, anyway. I used to have the discussions memorized verbatim in 3 languages, but it’s been a while.

What you don’t learn about as a prospective convert is the temple ceremony (including the funny underwear), homophobia, the belief that these are the latter days and thus Jesus will be here any day now to set up his kingdom in Missouri, and just how much time you will be expected to invest in meetings and “callings”. And then they hope you will never learn about polygamy, racism, blood atonement, Adam=God doctrine, the gory parts removed from the temple ceremony, and basically anything related to the history of the church outside of their latest sanitized version.