Did John Whitmer actually see the plates?

[Dan Vogel]

Rameumptom,

Anderson notes they are both from Turley. But shows that Turley misstated it as being a supernatural experience, after John Whitmer stated it was an event where he actually saw with his eyes and touched them with his hands.

IOW, Turley was making claims that Whitmer was disputing. And when we read John Whitmer's other statements, we see that he consistently stated that he felt, handled, lifted, and saw the plates.

Using one third hand account to try and make the case that the 8 witnesses were under some mass-hypnosis, does not make for good research. Although I'm sure it makes for good drama among the anti-Mormon crowd.

Thanks for the information. I

[Hyrum Page]

DP:

There is not. Would you prefer Vogelesque, perhaps? Or Vogel-style? Or analogous to the manner favored by the author legally known by some form or other of the designator "Dan Vogel"? Or, possibly, reminiscent (in a way carefully calibrated so as not to be bothersome to "Hyrum Page") of Vogel? Give it a rest, indeed.

HP:

You're pulling my leg, right?

DP:

Really? Why, then, did you use that word "only"? (See above: "Yet here we have Moses, still claiming to have spoken with God face-to-face, claimng to have seen him only with his 'spiritual eyes.'")

HP:

I guess you allowed a very restricted meaning to my use of "only." My "only" was not meant in a derogatory sense. It was meant to exclude the "natural eyes" in the same way I thought the passage was doing. I never cease to be amazed by the knee-jerk umbrage some people take on this board.

DP:

That is why I immediately thought of our friend Mr. Vogel, since he uses references to "spiritual eyes" to downgrade the experience of the Witnesses to "hallucination" rather than accepting it as an encounter with objective external reality.

HP:

Mr. Vogel is welcome to whatever approach he chooses to take. As for me, I refuse to accept the hyper-materialist view that all things spiritual must be physical in the sense that I can reach out and touch them with my bare hands. I prefer to think that one can believe in a reality of the spiritual without sacrificing the ability to have faith.

DP:

I agree that there is nothing whatever wrong with "spiritual eyes." That's why I stepped forward to deny your insinuation that there is.

HP:

I hope I am not alone here in the hope that your ill-founded assumptions about my motives do not constitute proof thereof in the eyes of the majority of readers at FAIR's message board.

[cdowis]

>If you were following this thread, you would know that this is my proposed solution to John Whitmer

[StudioD]

I

[cdowis]

The current issue of Journal of BOM Studies has an extensive article by Richard Anderson on the eight witnesses which answers some of these questions.

[Dan Vogel]

Cdowis,

>If you were following this thread, you would know that this is my proposed solution to John Whitmer

[Dan Vogel]

StudioD,

I

[Dan Vogel]

Cdowis,

the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have *seen and hefted*

By the way, both Whitmer and Harris said they saw and handled the plates, but we don

[rameumptom]

Very little is known about the 8 witnesses. Lucy Smith says in happened in her family

[Uncle Dale]

Cdowis,

the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have *seen and hefted*

By the way, both Whitmer and Harris said they saw and handled the plates, but we don

[Droopy]

The apologetic defense that "spiritual eyes" doesn't necessarily mean only "spiritual eyes" is absurdly ad hoc. Consider the following analogous phrases:

in my mind's eye

with my imagination

in a dream

in a vision

For a moment there, MC, I actually thought you were serious!

DCP:

Anybody who hasn't caught MC's clever joke should realize that defining spiritual eyes as equivalent to such words or phrases as mind's eye, dream, and imagination, and then using that stipulated equivalence to demonstrate that spiritual eyes means no more than mind's eye, dream, or imagination, is a textbook illustration of the logical fallacy known as "begging the question." It represents reasoning so perfectly circular that Copernicus might have been inspired by it to formulate his model of the solar system.

Loran:

Interesting Dr. Peterson. In looking at MC's post, I can see where you would find circular reasoning as a culprit in the lack of the argument's relavence. I would lean a little toward the fallacy of false analogy. I say this because MC has drawn an analogy between the concepts of mind's eye, imagination, dreams, and...oh, now wait one minute. What is a vision? Lumping the concept "vision" together with the other three seems to me to present some problems, not the least of which is that a vision might very well be, in religious terms, little different from seeing something with "spiritual eyes". At the very least, unless one approaches the subject with certain a priori assumptions, a vision is catagorically different, as normatively understood by those of the LDS faith (and others) than something seen in the "mind's eye", or in a dream, or imagined as an act of mental will.

MC may here be conflating the concept of "envisioning" something with that of "having" a vision or the experience of having one. The point is that throwing "vision" into the hopper with the use of imagination, dreaming, or seeing something in one's "mind's eye" (which is just a redundant way of using the term "imagining" anyway) does little to clear up the use of the term "spiritual eyes" as understood by the Witnessess and as found in the Book of Moses.

Loran

[StudioD]

So, after the signed document, very few of the witnesses spoke about the event, no retelling of their life experience of that miraculous occasion? I would guess that something so unique in one

[Jaybear]

Rameumptom:

Turley's statement is THIRD hand. It would not hold up in a court case. OTOH, the signed statement by the 8 witnesses would stand up in a court case. Why are you pushing the weaker and more suspect articles?

Sounds like you have an agenda.

Wrong. Neither statement would stand up in court. For you to suggest otherwise, leads me to wonder if you have your own agenda.

BTW, is there a "signed" statement by the 8 wintesses? THe only one I have seen has there names printed.

[cdowis]

>Thomas Ford, governor of Illinois, reported what appears to be a garbled account of praying

Thomas Ford..........

Dan, it is obvious that you and I live on different planets.

I live on a planet which serious questions whether Ford has anything at all credible to say on the matter, and you live on a planet where you receive an award for accepting his statements.

>BTW, is there a "signed" statement by the 8 wintesses?

No there is no signed, notarized statement.

[Jaybear]

I didnt ask if there was a notorized statement. Obviously, that would be expecting too much. When you say "No...." were you answering the actual question I presented, or as modified?

[mhalcrow]

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Dan Vogel wrote:

> Any of the witnesses could say the saw and handled the plates and

> unless someone asked them specifically what happened you would

> probably make the false conclusion that there experience was totally

> natural.

We have many testimonies of many such experiences with the

supernatural, from many people, in many places, in diverse cultures.

One testimony comes from three children in a field in Fatima,

Portugal. They claim to have witnessed the Madonna in a supernatural

vision that occurred in 1917. The Prophet Muhammed claimed to have

been visited by a supernatural being who claimed to be the Angel

Gabriel in 610 while Muhammed was praying in a cave called Hira (near

Mecca). The Prophet Joseph Smith claimed to have been visited in 1820

by supernatural beings who identified themselves as Elohim and

Jehovah. The Sufi mystic Al-Hallaj claimed to have been communing with

Allah during the trance in which he uttered the now-infamous phrase,

``Ana al-Haqq.'' It is commonly held in Buddhist tradition that the

Gautama Buddha encountered a terrific supernatural army of demonic

beings while he was in meditative posture under the Bo-tree.

Who are you or I to say whether the experiences of these people are

legitimate or not? They are not my experiences or your experiences;

these experience belong exclusively to those who had them. Why should

we accept a few anecdotes for which we have no solid physical evidence

while all the while rejecting every other anecdote of the sort?

Furthermore, who are you or I to definitively interpret these

experiences? Nobody but yourself can tell you what any given

experience that you have means to you, any more than I can tell you

what the meaning of any given painting is for you. Each experience

must be interpreted in the context of one's own private psyche. I

cannot say whether anyone had any given experience, and I cannot say

what the nature of that experience was. I can only go by what my own

experiences dictate about the world of which I am a participant.

Personally, I have never in my entire life had an encounter with

anything that I would be inclined to attribute to supernatural

influence. Millions of other people are convinced that they have had

supernatural experiences. Some claim to have visually witnessed

supernatural apparitions. Others claim to have been seized or somehow

influenced by a spirit or a ghost. That is all and well, but those

were their experiences, not mine. From my own perspective, the world

is exactly how I would expect it to be if, at the bottom of it all,

there was nothing more than blind, pitiless indifference. The

Darwinistic worldview (variation and selection) is the philosophical

basis that, for me at least, provides *all* the deductive mechanisms

necessary to explain everything that we retrospectively coronate as

``order'' in the cosmos. Even our own spiritual experiences can be

satisfactorily explained (at least to my own satisfaction) without

resorting to supernatural influences. I see no need for any

``skyhooks,'' as Daniel C. Dennett would put it.

Mike

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[Dan Vogel]

Mike,

Who are you or I to say whether the experiences of these people are

legitimate or not? They are not my experiences or your experiences;

these experience belong exclusively to those who had them. Why should

we accept a few anecdotes for which we have no solid physical evidence

while all the while rejecting every other anecdote of the sort?

Furthermore, who are you or I to definitively interpret these

experiences? Nobody but yourself can tell you what any given

experience that you have means to you, any more than I can tell you

what the meaning of any given painting is for you. Each experience

must be interpreted in the context of one's own private psyche. I

cannot say whether anyone had any given experience, and I cannot say

what the nature of that experience was. I can only go by what my own

experiences dictate about the world of which I am a participant.

So, according to you, historians are wasting their time?

The discussion here has not dwelt on real vision/hallucination, but has been about determining the nature of the 8 witnesses experience. Was it purely natural, or was it part visionary? I maintain it was the latter.

Generally speaking, one can

[Dan Vogel]

Rameumptom,

And just why is using the published testimony a mistake? All 8 of them signed their names to it. Why be so quick to accept Turley's statement, but reticent to accept a statement that all 8 were willing to sign? Turley's statement is THIRD hand. It would not hold up in a court case. OTOH, the signed statement by the 8 witnesses would stand up in a court case. Why are you pushing the weaker and more suspect articles?

Sounds like you have an agenda.

I don

[charity]

Dan, what I can not understand about your logic, is what I see to be a lack of it. Every bit of historical evidence you put into two piles: could have happened because it has nothing to do with the supernatural, or could not have happened because it was supernatural. This puts you in the uncomfortable position of having to eliminate facts, not based on their correctness or lack of it, but on your belief.

You state: "Generally speaking, one can

[mhalcrow]

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Dan Vogel wrote:

> So, according to you, historians are wasting their time?

Please show your work.

Mike

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[cdowis]

There is no signed statement extant. All we have is the statement which has been published in the BOM since the first day of publication.

[cdowis]

Dan, it would be very helpful if you could give us your distinction between visionary and real.

I assume, for example, that they are mutually exclusive. You cannot have a vision that is "real". Am I correct?

On my planet, it is possible to see a vision but that it does exist in reality. An well-known example is when the resurrected Christ appeared to his disciples. "A ghost has not flesh and blood as ye see me have." They felt the wounds on his haands and feet. It was a real experience.

Apparently, on your planet, if something suddenly appears, it is a vision, and does not exist in reality. The plates apparently appeared suddenly in their midst, so it did not exist in reality. They hefted the plates, turning the pages and looking at the engravings.

But nothing was actually there, even as the apostles felt nothing in reality when they felt Christ's hands and feet. It was all a "vision", is that correct?

The apostles were touching a vision, the eight witnesses were hefting a vision. Is that your view?

Again, it would be helpful if you were to clarify exactly what you mean.

[why me]

I am no learned man when it comes to scriptures but after reading 7 pages of this thread I am beginning to hallucinate.

It seems to me that in the 11 witnesses we are dealing with no dummies. To put the whole thing to a hallucination seems to belittle the witnesses. I am sure that if we all could visit that time and place and speak to these witnesses and say to them that they had one heck of a hallucintation, they would probably show us the door, pronto. The whole argument seems crazy to me.

But it is unfortunate that we need to nitpick our way through their testimony. It seems to me that there testimony of the plates stands on its own. Either we buy into it or we don't.

Of course we can all depending on our stance support this or support that but the testimony is what it is. At anytime in their lives they could have said that it was all a bunch of bunk. Lets try to imagine these men alive...being human with all the imperfections of a human being. They argued, they smiled, they cried and they laughed and all went to the toilet to do a number one or a number two. It is very difficult to keep up a farce and support something that did not happen especially since their name is in the book.

And so what is the point of all this? Okay...I am coming back to reality now and no longer hallucinating...

[Paul Osborne]

Did Oliver Cowdery really walk into a cave in the Hill Cumorah and see stacks and stacks of gold plates?  Would you scoff if someone suggested that such a thing didn't literally happen? 

Believers like to state this topic in a certain way--"What, did Joseph hypnotize the witnesses and induce a hallucination so real that none of them would ever deny it??  Where did Joseph learn how to hypnotize people?" (as if hypnotism is more absurd than angels walking around with gold plates......)

But it's really not that crazy.  Joseph effectively selected the most credulous, fantasy prone people of a credulous, fantasy prone bunch.  If you put an ad in the paper that said "I just dug up some gold plates and I need a scribe so I can translate them by use of my magic interpreter stones," what kind of people do you think would show up?  Well, you'd probably get people like David Whitmer, who before meeting Joseph claimed he'd seen the Devil in person, not to mention Jesus in the form of a deer.  And really, how hard would it be to convince someone who lived in a fantasy world of their own imagination that they'd seen some gold plates?

Modern gurus perform the same tricks with their self-selected followers.  Do some reading on cults and charismatic gurus, and you'll find the same kinds of fantastic stories.

Mighty Curelom,

You really have gone overboard this time. I sometimes like your posts because they are thought provoking, but this one really stunk. Don't ask why, I don't have time to get into that just now. You need a reality check. Try pinching yourself.

Have a nice day.

Paul O

[Dan Vogel]

Charity,

Dan, what I can not understand about your logic, is what I see to be a lack of it. Every bit of historical evidence you put into two piles: could have happened because it has nothing to do with the supernatural, or could not have happened because it was supernatural. This puts you in the uncomfortable position of having to eliminate facts, not based on their correctness or lack of it, but on your belief.

Sorry, I