Ces Letter: Specfic Issues

[Calm]

Video is hoping to have a discussion about concerns raised by his reading of the CES letter.

This thread needs to be kept tightly on subject. No personal remarks about someone's faithfulness, intelligence or other characteristic or general remarks for that matter.

Keep all criticisms and arguments focused on specfic examples...no vague claims or generalities as those rarely move a discussion of evidences ahead.

Thank you.

[readstoomuch]

Yes, I will respond and keep it on topic.  I would start just with one or two sections at a time.  I would also start with my opinion that the CES Letter comes from a secular/agnostic/atheistic look at religion, Lds particularly.  This is different than the Evangelical type of anti-Mormon arguments though they are willing to use the same types of information.  Even if most religions would have trouble answering all of the arguments that people are willing to use against the Lds.

[provoman]

Is there an option to submit issues privately? I hesitate to openly discuss rebuttal specifics, as I would not want to be, even remotely, credited with discouraging a testimony in the Gospel, the Prophetic mission of Joseph Smith, or the Church.

[cinepro]

Is there an option to submit issues privately? I hesitate to openly discuss rebuttal specifics, as I would not want to be, even remotely, credited with discouraging a testimony in the Gospel, the Prophetic mission of Joseph Smith, or the Church.

 

Hmmm....this keeping of secrets has damaged my testimony a tad.

[stemelbow]

I would love to hear Video's concerns and would love to discuss them. I'm probably the least helpful person concerning them though, as I'm likely to agree with the concerns.

ehhh...maybe not though.

[Calm]

Is there an option to submit issues privately? I hesitate to openly discuss rebuttal specifics, as I would not want to be, even remotely, credited with discouraging a testimony in the Gospel, the Prophetic mission of Joseph Smith, or the Church.

Do you mean your own issues or how you approach some of the issues likely referred to in the CES letter?

[VideoGameJunkie]

Does anyone have links of any article that debunks the claims made in the CES letter? All of it bothers me and concerns me. I have a problem with the history of the church and how the Egyptian images that Joseph Smith translated are incorrect and how the temple ceremony mirrors so much of the Masons, with some stuff taken out in 1990 from the ceremony. If the ceremony is so important, why are so many things taken out? How come so many of the witnesses of the golden plates fell away from the church and many other things from it bother me.

[Calm]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director

[VideoGameJunkie]

Thanks calm I'll give that a good read!

[Kevin Christensen]

Does anyone have links of any article that debunks the claims made in the CES letter? All of it bothers me and concerns me. I have a problem with the history of the church and how the Egyptian images that Joseph Smith translated are incorrect and how the temple ceremony mirrors so much of the Masons, with some stuff taken out in 1990 from the ceremony. If the ceremony is so important, why are so many things taken out? How come so many of the witnesses of the golden plates fell away from the church and many other things from it bother me.

Regarding the Temple, Richard Bushman has a discussion of the what the Masonic connection was and was not in Rough Stone Rolling.

And I also think it extremely import to notice that 3 Nephi 8-28 is a Temple endowment. See John W. Welch, Illuminating at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount

http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/book/illuminating-the-sermon-at-the-temple-sermon-on-the-mount/

I did respond to Runnells at length in an Interpreter essay last year. That is linked at the FAIRMormon site as well.

You might also be helped by some essays by Neal Rappleye who posts here on occasion. He is three years younger than Runnells, and providea a more contemporary look at me or Dan Peterson.

http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2014/08/an-open-letter-1-to-jeremy-runnells.html

http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2014/08/an-open-letter-2-to-jeremy-runnells.html

http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2015/04/patient-faith-and-expanding-knowledge.html

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburgh, PA

Edited September 14, 2015 by Kevin Christensen

[VideoGameJunkie]

Thanks Kevin!

[TheSkepticChristian]

All of it bothers me and concerns me. I have a problem with the history of the church and how the Egyptian images that Joseph Smith translated are incorrect 

 

The History doesn't bother me at all, and I don't care about the Book of Abraham criticisms. 

 

 

How come so many of the witnesses of the golden plates fell away from the church and many other things from it bother me.

 

That is a reason why many historians believe the witnesses were probably sincere about their testimony.  

 

The CES letter doesn't bother me at all, it makes a lot of poor assumptions. What bothers me is my failure to recognize the Spirit, and what I learned about the human brain. FairMormon has said little about confirmation bias, patternicity, and hallucinations. What also bothers me is Cryonics, especially the claim that Cryonics is a better Pascal's Wager than Theism. There is no verifiable evidence that Cryonics is going to work, but what if I have to choose between faith in God and Cryonics? When I learned about Cryonics and Transhumanism it hurt my faith because I realized that Theistic religion is not the only one that offers an afterlife. 

Edited September 14, 2015 by TheSkepticChristian

[RevTestament]

Does anyone have links of any article that debunks the claims made in the CES letter? All of it bothers me and concerns me. I have a problem with the history of the church and how the Egyptian images that Joseph Smith translated are incorrect and how the temple ceremony mirrors so much of the Masons, with some stuff taken out in 1990 from the ceremony. If the ceremony is so important, why are so many things taken out? How come so many of the witnesses of the golden plates fell away from the church and many other things from it bother me.

This letter seems like a summation of just about every anti-LDS website I've ever read....

A lot of it is inaccurate & seems misleading, so then one has to wonder about the author's willingness to accept things and present things that aren't true.

For instance on just the Book of Mormon itself, I found several errors.

In comparing it to a View of the Hebrews, he strongly leads one to believe the first Book of Mormon was printed in Sharon, Vermont on p 12. He is either simply mistaken or is offering facts from an alternative undisclosed source or is being purposefully misleading. Even the non-LDS publisher, Grandin, in Palmyra, NY admits to publishing the BoM. Joseph Smith was born in the area of Sharon, Vermont but moved from there while quite young.

His accusation that the View of the Hebrews was the source of the Book of Mormon is not new. I am used to the usual accusation that it was written based on Spalding's manuscript which is just not too believable when applying modern hand-writing analysis, etc. The whole story smells of a contrivance gone awry, so it seems new critics have switched over to a View of the Hebrews. But the author of a View of the Hebrews does give some interesting presentation which tends to support that some of the Indians of the area had Hebrew roots.

That was actually a somewhat common speculation of the time, and similar opinions appeared in periodicals and newspapers. And what if it is true like the BoM says? Is it unreasonable for others to have noticed it, and for Hebrew words to actually show up in official excavations, like on the Bat Creek Stone?

The author of CES, Jeremy, then says DNA evidence does not support the BoM or a connection with the Indians and the Hebrews - "DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but rather from Asia."

This is not true either. That is old studies. New evidence has turned up substantial haplogroup X mtDNA and haplogroup R DNA in the Indians of the Great Lakes Area of the Algonquin language group which types are from the Middle East and Europe rather than Asia, and R is found in Levite Hebrews.

He also talks about "anachronisms" such as elephants, goats, swine, etc in the Americas. Well more recent excavations have turned up elephants in the Americas in Clovis sites dated as late as 4500 BC. There is also a 4 tusked beast of equal or greater size which could be the mysterious "cureloms." I don't know why no one seems to recognize the native mountain goats as sheep or goats for that matter. Who said they had to be domesticated to qualify? How about the native boar? They've been rooting around the Appalachian mountains since time immemorial. They were included in native American stories and prophecies.

Jeremy claims there is no archaeological evidence to support the BoM. The so called Hopewell Indian culture not only turns up some seemingly consistent DNA evidence, but also was a mound building culture which built earthen walled cities, and made breast plates, and apparently a type of helmet of copper which enabled it to wrap onto the head. They have been laying around in museums. I've seen some myself. They have even found a type of sword.

Different accounts of First Vision - Jeremy makes a big deal of this. However, when any story is attested to over the years, it is natural for different points to come out at different times. This is a well known phenomena in the law. Eye witness testimony is historicaly unreliable. Every story of Paul's vision in Acts is also different with different seemingly conflicting facts. The accounts of the tomb scene of Jesus' resurrection are also different.

 

Well, he goes on, and I'm not going to address every point, but I hope the reader can see that he is not extremely accurate.

[Rivers]

The most challenging thing about the CES letter is the sheer number of accusations being made. For someone who is unfamiliar with most or all do the issues in the letter there is an overload of things to digest.

[canard78]

Does anyone have links of any article that debunks the claims made in the CES letter? All of it bothers me and concerns me. I have a problem with the history of the church and how the Egyptian images that Joseph Smith translated are incorrect and how the temple ceremony mirrors so much of the Masons, with some stuff taken out in 1990 from the ceremony. If the ceremony is so important, why are so many things taken out? How come so many of the witnesses of the golden plates fell away from the church and many other things from it bother me.

 

Is it possible to discuss this range of issues in one thread? I'm happy to try to help work through them one by one. Or is a new thread for each needed as they're big and varied. From this comment, although VGJ you say 'all of them', you've specifically mentioned: 

 

1. The facsimiles being mistranslated
2. Temple ceremony matching much of Masonry and also the ceremony changes
3. The 11 witness to the plates and why they fell away

If we can work through those three and then maybe come back to the "other things" afterwards?

 

Working through those, there are some things that I probably won't be much help with (certainly not #1) and others perhaps I can. Although I've got considerable doubts about Mormonism (I now describe myself as a universalise with Mormon origins) I still try to be balanced when discussing and evaluating historical/doctrinal issues.

 

Let me address 1 & 2 first:

 

1. The facsimiles. I agree. I think they are problematic. They are the only 'original sources' we can evaluate with absolute certainty. There's no available sources for the Book of Mormon (we can't look at the plates) and we can't say with absolute certainty that the fragments of the Book of Abraham papyri are the ones used to translate the main text of the Book of Mormon. It's possible that what we have is not the ones that Joseph used. So that means that if we're interested in a direct evaluation of whether Joseph could translate ancient texts, Facsimiles 1,2 & 3 are the only available options.

 

On the evidence of the translation we have, Joseph couldn't translate. I'm more than happy to accept a catalyst theory and that's probably the best available faithful explanation. The catalyst theory says that the original ancient text isn't important. Instead, it's merely there as an inspiration. Joseph didn't translate anything. Instead he used the facsimiles (along with other things) to be inspired to reveal important truths. The translation he offers for the facsimiles is not a correct translation. But perhaps that doesn't matter. If the images inspired him to reveal things that are valuable then the method isn't important.

 

Personally I find that quite inconclusive and unsatisfying... but it's the best I can offer.

 

2. This is different and we need to change our expectations. The temple endowment has been compared in the past (President Packer for one) to Jesus' parables. A parable is intentionally symbolic so that layers of meaning can be offered. The more we study it, the more it gives us. Parables are beautiful because people can take what they need from it. A parable uses imagery and symbols that are relevant to the audience. They are built from the cultural references around them. Jesus used farming, fishing, local politics and other cultural issues to teach his messages. We, in the 21st Century, can better understand them by learning about the culture of his day. Today, we adapt those parables. We retell them but with a modern twist. We also create new parables. President Uchtdorf tells parables about aviation. They only make sense to us because we understand planes and navigation etc. In 2000, if the earth is still here and people are studying the words of President Uchtdorf (while flying around in very different machines), they will have to study the planes of the 20th Century to understand his parables.

 

The same applies to the endowment. It is an interactive parable. We're learning through symbols. Some of them would have been taken from the cultural environment of the day. The 19th C saints were farmers, builders and... yes... some were Masons. Symbols associated with planning new buildings would have made much more sense to the 19thC saint than to us (for example). So on the one hand, having references in the ceremony that connect with local culture shouldn't be a surprise. It should be an expectation. The ceremony needed to reference things that the saints (of the day) could understand. If we want a better understanding of the endowment we need to develop a better understanding of the culture they lived in.

 

So why change the ceremony? Perhaps because we change. Or because we're not willing to spend the time learning the culture of Joseph's day. If Mohammed won't come to the Mountain then bring the Mountain... etc. If we won't spend time learning 19thC culture then the temple ceremony needs to move towards us by taking some of the 19thC out of the ceremony.

 

The changes that have been made are cosmetic. The changes have modernised the experience slightly. It has made it more culturally relevant to us today. The recently updated videos reflect the more modern attitudes to the role of women in the church and in a marriage relationship for example. Eve becomes more appealing to us because she behaves in a way that is closer to the way we expect women to behave today.

 

I, personally, would welcome and celebrate more changes in the Endowment. It would be more evidence of it being what it really is: an organically developed, culturally relevant, personal discovered living parable that teaches us beautiful lessons about life and our relationship with God.

Edited September 15, 2015 by canard78

[canard78]

This letter seems like a summation of just about every anti-LDS website I've ever read....

A lot of it is inaccurate & seems misleading, so then one has to wonder about the author's willingness to accept things and present things that aren't true.

Can we please have a few more paragraph spaces?

For instance on just the Book of Mormon itself, I found several errors.

In comparing it to a View of the Hebrews, he strongly leads one to believe the first Book of Mormon was printed in Sharon, Vermont on p 12. He is either simply mistaken or is offering facts from an alternative undisclosed source or is being purposefully misleading. Even the non-LDS publisher, Grandin, in Palmyra, NY admits to publishing the BoM. Joseph Smith was born in the area of Sharon, Vermont but moved from there while quite young.

His accusation that the View of the Hebrews was the source of the Book of Mormon is not new. I am used to the usual accusation that it was written based on Spalding's manuscript which is just not too believable when applying modern hand-writing analysis, etc. The whole story smells of a contrivance gone awry, so it seems new critics have switched over to a View of the Hebrews. But the author of a View of the Hebrews does give some interesting presentation which tends to support that some of the Indians of the area had Hebrew roots.

That was actually a somewhat common speculation of the time, and similar opinions appeared in periodicals and newspapers. And what if it is true like the BoM says? Is it unreasonable for others to have noticed it, and for Hebrew words to actually show up in official excavations, like on the Bat Creek Stone?

Why do you bring up Spalding? It's not mentioned anywhere in CES Letter. Talk about a stray man.

This attitude to VotH is an interesting take. On the one hand you're saying it's silly to propose VotH as a possible sources of inspiration for the Book of Mormon's content but in the same paragraph you suggest that the existence of VotH is good for the Book of Mormon because it provides an additional source of evidence that Indians of the area had Hebrew roots.

Bat Creek? Really? It's fairly conclusively seen as a fraud.

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

The author of CES, Jeremy, then says DNA evidence does not support the BoM or a connection with the Indians and the Hebrews - "DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but rather from Asia."

This is not true either. That is old studies. New evidence has turned up substantial haplogroup X mtDNA and haplogroup R DNA in the Indians of the Great Lakes Area of the Algonquin language group which types are from the Middle East and Europe rather than Asia, and R is found in Levite Hebrews.

I'm guessing you're a Heartlander? This is only useful if you can also propose a viable model and location for the actual events of the BoM in that area... which you can't. The Book of Mormon doesn't fit into the Heartlands with any credibility, so cherry-picking DNA evidence from the Great Lakes doesn't help either.

He also talks about "anachronisms" such as elephants, goats, swine, etc in the Americas. Well more recent excavations have turned up elephants in the Americas in Clovis sites dated as late as 4500 BC. There is also a 4 tusked beast of equal or greater size which could be the mysterious "cureloms." I don't know why no one seems to recognize the native mountain goats as sheep or goats for that matter. Who said they had to be domesticated to qualify? How about the native boar? They've been rooting around the Appalachian mountains since time immemorial. They were included in native American stories and prophecies.

4500 BC? About 2000 years out... but never mind.

Jeremy claims there is no archaeological evidence to support the BoM. The so called Hopewell Indian culture not only turns up some seemingly consistent DNA evidence, but also was a mound building culture which built earthen walled cities, and made breast plates, and apparently a type of helmet of copper which enabled it to wrap onto the head. They have been laying around in museums. I've seen some myself. They have even found a type of sword.

Wrong place, wrong time. They found a sword? Wow...

Different accounts of First Vision - Jeremy makes a big deal of this. However, when any story is attested to over the years, it is natural for different points to come out at different times. This is a well known phenomena in the law. Eye witness testimony is historicaly unreliable. Every story of Paul's vision in Acts is also different with different seemingly conflicting facts. The accounts of the tomb scene of Jesus' resurrection are also different.

The tomb story is told by different people so not surprising. I think there are reasonable explanations for the differences. Having said that, wouldn't the earliest version be likely to be the closest to what happens. The canonised version has evidence of being a significant evolution from the original and, according to Bushman, likely influenced by Rigdon in the retelling of it.

It doesn't mean the vision didn't happen... it just means the version we've canonised is probably not the closest to the original experience.

Well, he goes on, and I'm not going to address every point, but I hope the reader can see that he is not extremely accurate.

There's a tinge of irony to this sentence after your Bat Creek etc.

[RevTestament]

The most challenging thing about the CES letter is the sheer number of accusations being made. For someone who is unfamiliar with most or all do the issues in the letter there is an overload of things to digest.

For those without a strong testimony in the church, it is probably a challenge, but I have familiarized myself with these issues over many years, so if you have any questions, this is a good place to start. There are a number of informed people here.

I disagree with most of his points on polygamy. He seems to talk about Joseph's wives as if they were all temporal wives, so calls it polyandry. But it seems that Joseph was sealed for eternity with some wives, while with others it was also for earthly time and eternity. For those who aren't familiar with this it means some wives, those married to other men, were sealed to him so that the marriage only took effect after death, and weren't consummated. But it seems Joseph may have been misleading about his plural marriages - probably because polygamy was illegal in Illinois - a fact some might find hard to swallow. I just see it as part of his imperfections. In the long run it is probably better this way than painting him as the perfect pious soul who never made a mistake - after all the Lord did rebuke him no less than 3 times in D & C. He wasn't always right. He had his opinions, and sometimes was wrong. He thought the Lord was soon to return and said something like "even 56 years should wind up the scene." If he understood his own D & C revelations, he would have known that he was in the sixth seal, and the Lord said he would not return until events in the seventh seal ie 9th chap of Revelation, had come to pass. D & C 77.

You may note that Jeremy concludes by questioning even Biblical principles like the creation story. So he might just throw himself out of God's grace all together.... I hope not. The thing with the creation story is that I don't know that anyone fully understands it, except it's author. But within the church the first 6 days of creation are called creative periods which seems congruous with Gen 2:4-5 which calls them generations or histories. The biblical chronology starts with Adam who was the first seal or first horn or eye of the lamb of Revelation 5. We are told these are the 7 spirits of God. Daniel teaches us that horns are ruling offices. So it appears Adam was the first to speak the word of God on the earth. From him we learn about the tree of life and tree of knowledge of good and evil. Well, I don't believe these are literal trees. The story is presented as a spiritual teaching of some pretty heavy import with a lot said in a few words. Most of it just can't be understood without the revelation of Christ to us. Well, I don't want to ramble on, but just thought I'd leave a few more thoughts.

Cheers to everyone

[Stargazer]

The History doesn't bother me at all, and I don't care about the Book of Abraham criticisms. 

 

 

 

That is a reason why many historians believe the witnesses were probably sincere about their testimony.  

 

The CES letter doesn't bother me at all, it makes a lot of poor assumptions. What bothers me is my failure to recognize the Spirit, and what I learned about the human brain. FairMormon has said little about confirmation bias, patternicity, and hallucinations. What also bothers me is Cryonics, especially the claim that Cryonics is a better Pascal's Wager than Theism. There is no verifiable evidence that Cryonics is going to work, but what if I have to choose between faith in God and Cryonics? When I learned about Cryonics and Transhumanism it hurt my faith because I realized that Theistic religion is not the only one that offers an afterlife.

These people who are cryo-frozen and revived are still mortal. They may be said to have "died" from a technical standpoint, but upon revival they are no more immortal than anyone else. They have not entered into an afterlife, any more than a person who was asleep or in a coma has done so upon awakening.

One of my favorite science fiction authors is Lois McMaster Bujold. In her series of novels called The Vorkosigan Saga, there is a technology in semi-common use which uses the same idea of Cryonics. She calls it "Cryofreeze". A person who has just died, or who may be in perfect health for that matter, has all of his blood replaced by perfusion with "cryofluid" while being rapidly cooled to below the freezing temperature of water. The cryofuid prevents ice crystals from forming and destroying cells, especially brain and nerve cells. In her novels a body so cryofrozen can last centuries before being revived by a reverse process in which the body is warmed back up, including a blood substitute replacing the cryofluid. Under ideal circumstances, in this technology, the revived person usually does not suffer any adverse effects (unless the cryopreparation was botched, or the injuries or sickness that necessitated the cryofreezing caused problems).

Another technology in the Vorkosigan series is the process of cloning a person, and when the clone is old enough, its brain is removed and replaced by the brain of the person from whom the clone was created. Whoever the clone might have been is immaterial, as the clone's brain is treated as medical waste.

Theistic afterlife is a complete regeneration of a body which is long dead, and the new body is immortal and perfect. A cryonic revived body is not immortal and while it may be healthy, it is not perfect.

[Thinking]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director

 

While skimming down the page and looking at the links, I decided to read FAIR's response to the connection between freemasonry and the temple endowment.

 

In an attempt to downplay the similarities between the endowment and freemasonry

Logical Fallacy: False Cause

The author assumes that a real or perceived relationship between two events means that one caused the other."

 

Any good logician knows that association does not prove causation.

 

However, later in the response, Joseph's use of Masonic elements is justified.

It is in the ritual presentation of the endowment teachings and covenants that the similarities between the LDS temple worship and Freemasonry are the most apparent. The question is, why would this be the case?

Joseph's challenge was to find a method of presenting the endowment that would be effective

It is the opinion of some people that in developing the endowment Joseph Smith faced a problem. He wished to communicate, in a clear and effective manner, some different (and, in some cases, complex) religious ideas. These included such abstract concepts as

• the nature of creation (matter being organized and not created out of nothing)
• humanity's relationship to God and to each other
• eternal marriage and exaltation in the afterlife

The theory is that Joseph needed to communicate these ideas to a diverse population; some with limited educational attainments, many of whom were immigrants; several with only modest understanding of the English language; all of whom possessed different levels of intellectual and spiritual maturity—but who needed to be instructed through the same ceremony.

Ritual and repetition are important teaching tools

Joseph Smith's very brief experience with Freemasonry before the introduction of the full LDS endowment may have reminded him of the power of instruction through ritual and repetition. Some people believe that Joseph may have seized upon Masonic tools as teaching devices for the endowment's doctrines and covenants during the Nauvoo era.

Huh?

 

After appealing to a logical fallacy to refute any real connection between the endowment and freemasonry, FAIR essentially admits that Joseph used elements of freemasonry rituals to create the presentation of the endowment.

 

I also note that one of the evidences FAIR used against any connection was that

Joseph Smith claimed direct revelation from God regarding the Nauvoo-era endowment.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Thinking

[RevTestament]

Why do you bring up Spalding? It's not mentioned anywhere in CES Letter. Talk about a stray man.

 

 

Because I'm actually kind of surprised the dude left it out, and I like to point at it to show how these false stories get perpetuated. Now that the story which was perpetuated by critics for so long can be shown for the outright fabrication that it is, they stop using it, but switch to the back up plan: View of the Hebrews.

 

 

This attitude to VotH is an interesting take. On the one hand you're saying it's silly to propose VotH as a possible sources of inspiration for the Book of Mormon's content but in the same paragraph you suggest that the existence of VotH is good for the Book of Mormon because it provides an additional source of evidence that Indians of the area had Hebrew roots.

 

I didn't really say it is silly to propose the VofH as a possible source of inspiration, although I don't really believe that it was. I am just pointing out that there were a number of these types of things in that day, and I'm sure that Joseph Smith heard these types of speculations about the Indians since they weren't uncommon. I have to admit, I have never actually sat down and read the View of the Hebrews,  but from a cursory read, it does seem to make a genuine effort to show how some Indian chants and words were very much Hebrew-like, etc. Is that a bad thing? I say no. Although the book seems short on sources, it tries to be factual and scholarly. I'm going to take a closer look at it. Spalding's work was pure fiction and imho nothing like the BoM. The whole story with affadavits etc just doesn't stand up to a scholarly analysis, but reveals a concerted effort to perpetuate a hoax about a connection with the BoM on the reader.

 

Bat Creek? Really? It's fairly conclusively seen as a fraud.

 

Of course it is seen as a fraud. Every single thing found in the Americas which could possibly link the Indians to the Hebrews or to Europe or the Middle East is seen as a fraud since that would interfere with white man's "manifest destiny" to chase them off the land. Any carvings of elephants is likewise dismissed, well because we all "know" there were never any elephants in the Americas - that is until recently.

 

The Wikilink on the Bat Creek stone says: "McCarter remarked that if Emmert forged the inscription in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Thomas by presenting him with a Cherokee inscription, his choice of a paleo-Hebrew model "was ironically inept.'' They state that Emmert was trying to prove his theory that the mounds were built by Cherokee.

So to perpetuate this "fraud" they say he must have gone to a Masonic book and copied a Hebrew inscription about holiness to YHWH.

Because the alternative is just too much to swallow...that a genuine Hebrew phrase was actually found on a supervised authorized excavation. That's the gist of their argument.... It must be a fraud. Scientific evidence for their claim? no.

what evidence? well a similar phrase in a Masonic book.

However, one letter on the Bat Creek stone is a noticeably different form, and the inscription is also missing a whole letter as presented in the book, while it also has other markings.

So not only would it be a totally inept "copy" of the words from the book, but it would also be a totally inept presentation of Hebrew letters as a Cherokee language. Indeed when it was presented Thomas apparently just dismissed it as Cherokee scribling, and it got tossed into the bottom of a box, and sat in the basement of the Smithsonian until a Hebrew scholar many years later recognized it had been photographed upside down and realized it was a Phoenetic script,,, so not really a copy of Hebrew out of a Masonic book after all.

 

I'm guessing you're a Heartlander? This is only useful if you can also propose a viable model and location for the actual events of the BoM in that area... which you can't. The Book of Mormon doesn't fit into the Heartlands with any credibility, so cherry-picking DNA evidence from the Great Lakes doesn't help either.

 

 

Let me guess Meso-American theorist or just a plain critic? I don't know that I'm going to use a bunch of time to try to convince you, but sure the Great Lakes area fits. It's got the narrow neck of land of 20 flat and easy miles for 1.5 days of travel. The 4 seas. The Hill Cumorah. The actual defensive mounds described in the later BoM. The river Sidon - a river flowing north big enough to carry all those bodies away. And now it's got the DNA evidence too. Plus actual supporting revelation from D & C and from Joseph Smith's own mouth about Zelph.

What does the Meso-American model have? A bunch of confusion and members who can't support the BoM.

 

 

4500 BC? About 2000 years out... but never mind.

 

So you think they went extinct from a few Clovis hunters? No, I think those Mastadons were just fine until they were overwhelmed with new comers. The reality is fossils are actually quite rare which is why no one knew about any elephants in America until the last several decades. So in the grand scheme of things 2000 years is nothing.

 

Wrong place, wrong time. They found a sword? Wow...

 

Not at all. The Hopewell culture time frame fits perfectly with the Nephites from about 600 BC to 400 AD. The Lamanites weren't mound builders at the time at least for the most part. How about those un-Nephite temples built for human sacrifice in Meso America? Completely the wrong time. After 400 AD.

 

The tomb story is told by different people so not surprising. I think there are reasonable explanations for the differences. Having said that, wouldn't the earliest version be likely to be the closest to what happens. The canonised version has evidence of being a significant evolution from the original and, according to Bushman, likely influenced by Rigdon in the retelling of it.

I don't think the first account is necessarily the closest at all. It may have been a situation which caught Joseph off guard, and he may have felt he didn't know exactly how much he was allowed to tell. You assume he had this vision, and was just completely open about it. I don't assume that at all. He was at various times instructed to do things in a particular way. So, he may not have felt free to disclose all the details about seeing the Father first off. After all, who can say that they have seen Him?

 

There's a tinge of irony to this sentence after your Bat Creek etc.

Readers are free to examine what I have said about the Bat Creek Stone for themselves.

[TheSkepticChristian]

These people who are cryo-frozen and revived are still mortal.

 

We don't know, we can only speculate. However, suspended animation for 1 hour is now successful in hospitals. Hopefully cryopreservation and cryobiology can improve in the future, but for now Cryonics is a religion or scientific fiction.

 

However, Science is progressing, scientists are testing new methods

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140224-can-we-ever-freeze-our-organs

 

This attitude to VotH is an interesting take. On the one hand you're saying it's silly to propose VotH as a possible sources of inspiration for the Book of Mormon's content but in the same paragraph you suggest that the existence of VotH is good for the Book of Mormon because it provides an additional source of evidence that Indians of the area had Hebrew roots.

 

There is no evidence that Joseph Smith used VotH as an inspiration for the Book of Mormon. Your only "evidence" is called Parallelomania.

VofH was a theory, many people believed the indians were the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

 

Bat Creek? Really? It's fairly conclusively seen as a fraud.

 

don't waste your time with that guy, he will never be wrong 

Edited September 15, 2015 by TheSkepticChristian

[canard78]

Because I'm actually kind of surprised the dude left it out, and I like to point at it to show how these false stories get perpetuated. Now that the story which was perpetuated by critics for so long can be shown for the outright fabrication that it is, they stop using it, but switch to the back up plan: View of the Hebrews.

 

I didn't really say it is silly to propose the VofH as a possible source of inspiration, although I don't really believe that it was. I am just pointing out that there were a number of these types of things in that day, and I'm sure that Joseph Smith heard these types of speculations about the Indians since they weren't uncommon. I have to admit, I have never actually sat down and read the View of the Hebrews,  but from a cursory read, it does seem to make a genuine effort to show how some Indian chants and words were very much Hebrew-like, etc. Is that a bad thing? I say no. Although the book seems short on sources, it tries to be factual and scholarly. I'm going to take a closer look at it. Spalding's work was pure fiction and imho nothing like the BoM. The whole story with affadavits etc just doesn't stand up to a scholarly analysis, but reveals a concerted effort to perpetuate a hoax about a connection with the BoM on the reader.

Of course it is seen as a fraud. Every single thing found in the Americas which could possibly link the Indians to the Hebrews or to Europe or the Middle East is seen as a fraud since that would interfere with white man's "manifest destiny" to chase them off the land. Any carvings of elephants is likewise dismissed, well because we all "know" there were never any elephants in the Americas - that is until recently.

 

The Wikilink on the Bat Creek stone says: "McCarter remarked that if Emmert forged the inscription in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Thomas by presenting him with a Cherokee inscription, his choice of a paleo-Hebrew model "was ironically inept.'' They state that Emmert was trying to prove his theory that the mounds were built by Cherokee.

So to perpetuate this "fraud" they say he must have gone to a Masonic book and copied a Hebrew inscription about holiness to YHWH.

Because the alternative is just too much to swallow...that a genuine Hebrew phrase was actually found on a supervised authorized excavation. That's the gist of their argument.... It must be a fraud. Scientific evidence for their claim? no.

what evidence? well a similar phrase in a Masonic book.

However, one letter on the Bat Creek stone is a noticeably different form, and the inscription is also missing a whole letter as presented in the book, while it also has other markings.

So not only would it be a totally inept "copy" of the words from the book, but it would also be a totally inept presentation of Hebrew letters as a Cherokee language. Indeed when it was presented Thomas apparently just dismissed it as Cherokee scribling, and it got tossed into the bottom of a box, and sat in the basement of the Smithsonian until a Hebrew scholar many years later recognized it had been photographed upside down and realized it was a Phoenetic script,,, so not really a copy of Hebrew out of a Masonic book after all.

 

Let me guess Meso-American theorist or just a plain critic? I don't know that I'm going to use a bunch of time to try to convince you, but sure the Great Lakes area fits. It's got the narrow neck of land of 20 flat and easy miles for 1.5 days of travel. The 4 seas. The Hill Cumorah. The actual defensive mounds described in the later BoM. The river Sidon - a river flowing north big enough to carry all those bodies away. And now it's got the DNA evidence too. Plus actual supporting revelation from D & C and from Joseph Smith's own mouth about Zelph.

What does the Meso-American model have? A bunch of confusion and members who can't support the BoM.

 

So you think they went extinct from a few Clovis hunters? No, I think those Mastadons were just fine until they were overwhelmed with new comers. The reality is fossils are actually quite rare which is why no one knew about any elephants in America until the last several decades. So in the grand scheme of things 2000 years is nothing.

 

Not at all. The Hopewell culture time frame fits perfectly with the Nephites from about 600 BC to 400 AD. The Lamanites weren't mound builders at the time at least for the most part. How about those un-Nephite temples built for human sacrifice in Meso America? Completely the wrong time. After 400 AD.

 

I don't think the first account is necessarily the closest at all. It may have been a situation which caught Joseph off guard, and he may have felt he didn't know exactly how much he was allowed to tell. You assume he had this vision, and was just completely open about it. I don't assume that at all. He was at various times instructed to do things in a particular way. So, he may not have felt free to disclose all the details about seeing the Father first off. After all, who can say that they have seen Him?

Readers are free to examine what I have said about the Bat Creek Stone for themselves.

 

In the interest of keeping this thread on topic, I'm going to resist the temptation of a huge tangent about Heartland, mound-builders and Bat Creek inscription etc. I shouldn't have bitten in the first place. To answer your question... I'm more drawn to meso-America if I had to go with one physical location. I wouldn't consider myself a critic, but I certainly don't hold any great convictions about the historicity of the Book of Mormon (in any location).

 

On the subject of the first vision account... again, it wasn't one of the issues that VGJ specifically mentioned in his earlier post as being a concern so, again, perhaps not a big topic to get sent down. VGJ, if you want to discuss the first vision accounts, feel free to say so. I'll hold off on any further discussion until then.

[VideoGameJunkie]

We can discuss the first vision accounts and how there were 4 different ones, including some not even seeing God. How could you get 4 accounts completely different on what should be the most important moment of your life? Seeing God and Jesus.

[canard78]

There is no evidence that Joseph Smith used VotH as an inspiration for the Book of Mormon. Your only "evidence" is called Parallelomania.

VofH was a theory, many people believed the indians were the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

 

 

don't waste your time with that guy, he will never be wrong

I didn't say he did use it as an inspiration for the Book of Mormon. I didn't bring it up in the first place. I was just commenting that the way RevTestament wanted to both dismiss it as evidence against while also using it as evidence in favour seemed an odd stretch.

Personally I think Joseph probably didn't use VotH as a direct source in the dictation of the BoM. Instead I think VotH is symptomatic of a much wider attitude held by many more writers than just Ethan Smith. I entertain the possibility that both the BoM and VotH are, in different ways, products of their day. They reflect attitudes and ideas that were more widely held and influence the views of both Ethan and Joseph

[cinepro]

We can discuss the first vision accounts and how there were 4 different ones, including some not even seeing God. How could you get 4 accounts completely different on what should be the most important moment of your life? Seeing God and Jesus.

 

 

To be fair, I think it's okay to say that while something happened to Joseph Smith that day in the woods (oh, I'm sorry, the "Sacred Grove"), it probably wasn't exactly as recorded in the Joseph Smith History.  The story changed over time, as most stories do, and it was used as a teaching device for the time and place in which it was told. 

 

Joseph obviously never meant for the experience to be part of the foundational narrative of the Church; that didn't happen until the early 20th Century (coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Joseph's birth).

 

So the ultimate problem with the First Vision for me isn't necessarily how it happened (or that it happened), but how the current Church may be using it as something it was never meant to be.  And that isn't Joseph's fault, and it is something that could be easily corrected.