William the Conqueror, on Jan 9 2006, 07:07 PM, said:
Dan Vogel, on Jan 9 2006, 06:49 PM, said:
Thesometimesaint,
Quote
I am familiar with the study of hallucinations. Some have auditory, some have taste, or sight, or smell, a few have touch. But to have sight, touch, sound hallucinations at the same time, from 8 different people, who are respected members of their community, borders on miraculous , if not the impossible.
True, hallucinations involving more than one sense are not typical, but not unheard of. However, you don?¢â?¬â?¢t seem to understand my theory. The plates were present but concealed in a cloth covering. Lifting the plates was real, not hallucinatory. Seeing the plates by ?¢â?¬??supernatural power?¢â?¬? was visionary, so only one sense was involved.
So Dan from what you say these eight people had a visionary experience by seeing the plates through the cloth, which apparently was not lifted in their presence.
According to Thesometimesaint, these were eight people who were very respected members of their community.
The take I get on this from Thesometimesaint is: 1. All eight people agreed and thus all eight had the visionary experience.
2. All eight were respected members of their community.
Conclusion per Thesometimesaint: It must be true because men of that caliber would not tell a lie.
My question is: Is there an example of eight or more men who are respected members of their community agreeing on something miraculous and it is found out later that they were all fraudulent in their claim?
William,
I am sorry that you have been misled about this.
Thesometimesaint is arguing that the eight saw the plates in the plain light of day, handled them, turned over the leaves and examined the engravings, without the slightest "miraculous" intervention being involved.
Dan, who AFAICT rejects anything supernatural entirely out of hand, wants to explain away the testimony of the eight witnesses with this convoluted argument:
1) When their statement says they saw the plates, they were really having a vision. Why a vision? Because he can dismiss that as mere imagination.
2) When their statement says that they handled the plates, they were really picking up a box with something heavy inside, which Joseph told them was the plates.
Thus, they never saw anything and are witnesses of nothing.
Having reached this absurd conclusion, Dan then goes looking for supporting evidence. There is none to be found in any of the statements the witnesses made first hand, so he is reduced to relying upon hearsay sources, of which there are but two:
1) His fellow apostate Stephen Burnett's hostile and manipulative misrepresentation of a statement by Martin Harris; and
2) Theodore Turley's interview with John Whitmer, into which Turley interpolates his own presuppositions of a "supernatural" element in the experience of the eight witnesses.
So the conclusion per Thesometimesaint, as well as per the eight themselves, is this: whatever miraculous or "visionary" experiences any of them might have had, whether involving the plates or not, the experience described in their joint statements was a "natural" and material one. There was no vision; no angel appeared, as to the three; they simply saw and handled the plates.
Regards,
Pahoran
(1) Honest. (2) Well-informed. (3) Denying that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been a Christian institution without interruption from the beginning of its history.
A critic may choose any two of the above three. Choose wisely.
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