Case of the Missing Golden Plates

[Gohan]

This makes little sense when you consider all that Joseph said about how the plates were protected. He told stories of how people would come looking for them but somehow always fell short of their goal. These stories lead us to believe that Joseph had divine help in protecting them. If this was the case, why would Moroni take them back?

[Dale]

Basically show me Adam & Eve, and the garden of Eden, or they are possibly a myth. Adam & Eves existence is more importany than getting a copy of the plates to be looked at by scholars. Tom Murphy feels DNA evidence goes against the Bible creation account, but he has appeared in several anti-Mormon films.

Eggyptologists do not know reformed Egyptian so they could not make an judgement.

Plus the Book of Mormon decided in advance that prayer & a few witnesses not the plates were alll a person needed to believe the book. Satisfying critics need to see wasn't Gods concern. Trusting Joseph's translation as genuine, or bogus is sometimes the difference between an unsaved soul & a saved one.

[Magyar]

No Egyptologist would be able to translate them because they didn't write in Egyptian -- they wrote in reformed Egyptian, their own brand of Demotic. Maybe a real good code-cracker could take a stab at it -- I wish him luck.

But at what point would these sign-seekers be satisfied? Surely not by simply staring at gold plates under glass with an armed security guard risking his life to keep the thugs away. They would demand that a page or two be carried off for scientific analysis, risking more lives as well as the said page. Suppose the pages were scientifically determined to date to approximately 600 BC? I doubt any of the sign-seekers, again, would convert. They would simply decide that the mysterious geniuses who cooked up the book, must have dug it up during some exploration of Israel and used it as the basis for their phony scripture.

I find what is inside the book to be the most compelling evidence of its authenticity -- just as I do for the Bible, regardless of the lack of evidence for the bones of Isaiah or his writing desk.

[Dale]

I havn't seen Jesus risen body, but do I have to see it & touch it before I can believe. Do we have to present his risen body to modern scientists, and doctors before we can believe the story of his resurrection is not bogus?

[Gohan]

I personally think that this is a sign of the times, there is more skepticism surrounding religions now then ever before. Remember the issue with the displaying of the Ten Commandments a couple of years ago? People want a scientifically proved answer for everything these days. It's starting to get ridiculous.

[Hyrum Page]

Suppose the pages were scientifically determined to date to approximately 600 BC?

Well, I should hope that they would date to the late 4th or early 5th century CE!

[Jarrod]

Many of us don't believe Moroni existed, much less took anything back.  But regardless, one of the benefits of not having the plates around is that then you can't have them double checked by Egyptologists and thus no one can prove that Smith's translation is bogus.

Agreed. That's why I posted this earlier in the thread.

[Mighty Curelom]

The idea that an angel came down and took the plates to protect them just doesn't make much sense. The plates were buried in a hole in the ground for 2000 years without being disturbed. Why couldn't Joseph just do what Moroni did and re-bury them? In fact, that's what Joseph supposedly did during the translation process. The plates were buried out in the woods while he was poking his face into his hat.*

If God could protect the plates for two millenia by simply buring them in the ground, sending an angel to beam them up to heaven seems like overkill. Now that the church is a multi-billion dollar corporation, they could easily afford all sorts of security to protect the plates. So this time God wouldn't have had to protect the buried plates for thousands of years--just long enough for the church to become filthy rich.

* Of course, they weren't REALLY buried in the woods, since there were never any gold plates in the first place. Or angels, for that matter.

[mormon fool]

BYU AlterEgo,

Thanks for your challenging post! Let us go over some of your thought processes.

I wrote: Prediction and prophesy are not synomous. The former can be done entirely without any inspiration. And prophesy usually comes with an expressed condition.

You responded:

Second, the definition I used for prophesy came straight from the dictionary, hence the quotes.  So your wrong, sorry.  Prediction and prophesy, while not identical, share a great deal in common and are thus, synonmous.  Regardless, the fact that the predictions and/or prophesies were shown to be wrong is the entire point regarding the inspiration component.

You may wish to check the definition and you will see your quote does properly convey the semantic range of prophecy.. The difference in semantic range is the claim of inspiration by a propet, whereas a predicter need not make such a claim. This difference is precisely the debatable issue you need to win to prove Joseph Smith was a fraud. The words prophecy and prediction may be interchangeable in some contexts, but that doesn't allow you to get away with here when precision is neccesary to prosecute your case.

You may be comfortable with "inspiration" that is inconsistent, but I am not.

Again you are trying to prove Joseph Smith is fraud. So far you have only mustered the level of evidence that proves all weather men and those that play the stock market are frauds.

Third, I was actually taking from the Woodruff account, sorry for the lack of citation.  It wouldn't matter however, that portion is the same by both men.  Why it's an issue only you can answer.

The Woodruff account strongly implies that the words originated with Wilford Woodruff and sound like a prayer to me i.e. please bless JS and the KSS. It looks to me like William Parrish elevated a confident prayer request to the status of a revelation, something I would not put past a disallusioned apostate letting emotion cloud his recollection. But Woodruff states that Joseph Smith did not do any revelating. If you were using the Woodruff account, these points would have been obvious.

By the way, the condition of obedience was to what commandment exactly?  From what I've read we don't get that information.  Sounds like an excuse to me.

A typo on my part, the Woodruff diary reads "commands" not "command" but doesn't specify them in that entry. We can get a feel for what they were by later writing: no speculating, no gambling, no counterfeiting, no suing the pants off your fellow mormons, no making a panic run to redeem notes backed by insoluble land holdings, wise management, and probably some more about general righteousness.

Joseph Smith in the Aug. 1837 Messenger and Advocate:

"I am disposed to say a word relative to the bills of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. I hereby warn them to beware of speculators, renegades and gamblers, who are duping the unsuspecting and the unwary, by palming upon them, those bills, which are of no worth, here. I discountenance and disapprove of any and all such practices. I know them to be detrimental to the best interests of society, as well as to the principles of religion."

Warren Cowdery April. 1837 M&A

"We believe the gentleman must be mistaken if he has imbibed an idea that we consider the kingdom of heaven will be composed of real estate, houses or lands, flocks or herds. There may be, and indeed we fully believe there is, an undue attachment in some of the saints to amass wealth and heap up perishable treasure. We have only to say, we deprecate such a propensity"

Gary Dean Guthrie, "Joseph Smith As An Administrator," M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, May 1969,

"[Heber C. Kimball]'there were not twenty persons on earth that would declare that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.' Six of the apostles came out in open rebellion....Joseph first established the bank by revelation and then had to later admit that because of poor management and other internal and external conditions the project was a failure."

Also, how rediculous for you to say on the one hand, if the bank were to have been successful it would have been according to obedience to commandment, but since the bank failed, it was naive economics.  You really can't have it both ways.  Either there promises made or there were not. 

Actually I can. When multiple contributing factors like naive economics and commandment breaking like greedy speculating, using bank notes other than what they were provided for, and infighting over money; it remains possibly that if one of the contributing factors wasn't present, the other factor alone wouldn't have been sufficient to cause the bank's downfall. The promises made were economical ones that were dependent on mutual cooperation between the bank investors and the bank managers. The only revelatory component is that Joseph got the the go-ahead from God to establish the Bank, but that doesn't gaurantee the success. Some times God lets things fail so we can learn through experience and He can purge the church of fair weather fundamentalists.

fool said:

But does it [money digging] amount to fraud? The accounts, pro, con and neutral all portray Joseph Smith as a reluctant participant that could only talk the diggers out of it after they were experiencing failure. And Joseph could see hidden treasure, after all he found the Book of Mormon and found Martin Harris's pin in a haystack. Again no fraud.

BYU Alter Ego responds:

Fourth, telling someone you know were to find treasure and getting paid for that service when you never had the ability in the first place is indeed fraud.  How can you say Joseph was reluctant?  He got paid!  Perhaps he acted reluctant, but he still took the money.

You did not respond to the evidence I presented that Joseph Smith could find "treasure" and did have clairvoyant abilities, hence not a fraud. His success in some endeavors offsets failure in others. In order to prove fraud, you would have to rule out that he was not instead delusional, i.e. sincerely believed he could see treasure but really couldn't. You would have to explain his successes, which include him finding lost animals and describing Stowell's homestead from a distance, having a reputation for being able to find well water, diggers finding a feather like he predicted on one occasion and hitting something that seemed to slip away, finding his seer stones, being able to track where the gold plates were hid etc.

Now I am sure that you can invoke Hume's law and describe things as coincidence or salting the dig as preferrable to postulating the supernatural. But why do you think you can prove fraud when three court cases against Joseph Smith failed to do so? According to Lawyer Gordon Madsen's analysis in "Joseph Smith's 1826 trial: the legal setting "

Another relevant principle is familiar to most judges and

attorneys under the latin phrase mens rea meaning criminal state

of mind this principle is succinctly stated in The Justice Manual

also to constitute a crime against human laws there must be first

a vicious [sic] will and secondly an unlawful act consequent upon

such vicious will 44

[link]

It is hard to prove mens res given that Joseph Smith was a reluctant participant and not enthusiastic about the success of the dig.

One purported report of the 1826 trial testimony:

"he did not solicit business of this kind, and had always rather declined having anything to do with this business."

From JS-H 1:56

"He had heard something of a silver mine having been opened by the Spaniards in Harmony, Susquehanna county, State of Pennsylvania; and had, previous to my hiring to him, been digging, in order, if possible, to discover the mine. After I went to live with him, he took me, with the rest of his hands, to dig for the silver mine, at which I continued to work for nearly a month, without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentleman to cease digging after it. Hence arose the very prevalent story of my having been a money-digger.

One gets a clear picture that Joseph Smith had no intent to defraud anyone and was being recruited by Stowell and possibly pushed into it by Joseph Smith Sr. because of the Smith family poverty.

I posted more analysis on the trial in an earlier post as did some other FAIR history buffs. See

here and here.

For the most part Joseph Smith wasn't about the money, as he would enter into agreement with fellow treasure diggers to split whatever they found.

Porter Rockwell, a childhood friend of Joseph Smith explains his participation this way:

[Getauft1962]

(Looks like I'm going to need to create a new login ID after this post!)

No not really. <snip> Do you have anything constructive to say based on the thread?

Naw...the thread is silly and I just like poking you guys with a stick. After you've tried to reason with people who believe in magic you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

But it IS fun to see the pretentious claims of religiosity and the funny "proofs" by supposedly intellectual people. It's one thing to be born into and indoctrinated from childhood but at some point you've got to ask how long you will continue to allow yourself to be deluded by outlandish claims and phony science.

You get to decide, of course, but we can't help sitting by trying to gently mock you back to reality.

[Gohan]

*jaw drops at length of Mormon fool's post*

Uhhh.....yeah, I don't think I could ever post something like that. Nice job, very well thought out, and as far as I can tell, you didn't insult anyone. *claps*

So this time God wouldn't have had to protect the buried plates for thousands of years--just long enough for the church to become filthy rich.

Okay, first off, nothing to do with the topic at hand. Second, yes, the church has large monetary resources at it's disposal. But what do we do with it? The church has no paid ministry, so we know none of the General Authorities are benefiting from it. I think a bunch of it goes to things like: helping the needy (members AND non-members), education, the building of church facilities, missionary work, disaster aid; you know little trivial things like that.

[Gohan]

Naw...the thread is silly and I just like poking you guys with a stick. After you've tried to reason with people who believe in magic you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

But it IS fun to see the pretentious claims of religiosity and the funny "proofs" by supposedly intellectual people. It's one thing to be born into and indoctrinated from childhood but at some point you've got to ask how long you will continue to allow yourself to be deluded by outlandish claims and phony science.

You get to decide, of course, but we can't help sitting by trying to gently mock you back to reality.

Uhhh....dude, that's not cool. If you have nothing at all constructive to say, and your only purpose here is to attempt to humiliate and degrade fellow posters, then I ask you to look at the post I made on this thread earlier concerning such things.

[Getauft1962]

Second, yes, the church has large monetary resources at it's disposal. But what do we do with it? The church has no paid ministry, so we know none of the General Authorities are benefiting from it.

This is the problem, Gohan. You don't know the truth. The GA's are paid and so the church HAS a paid ministry...but they don't broadcast it. What you don't know won't hurt you, so they think.

[Pahoran]

(Looks like I'm going to need to create a new login ID after this post!)

No not really. <snip> Do you have anything constructive to say based on the thread?

Naw...the thread is silly and I just like poking you guys with a stick. After you've tried to reason with people who believe in magic you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

Y'know, I was just thinking almost the same thing. I was thinking that after you've tried to reason with people who think your beliefs have something to do with "magic" you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

But it IS fun to see the pretentious claims of religiosity and the funny "proofs" by supposedly intellectual people. It's one thing to be born into and indoctrinated from childhood but at some point you've got to ask how long you will continue to allow yourself to be deluded by outlandish claims and phony science.

And it IS fun to see the pretentious claims of intelligence and the funny "proofs" by supposedly intellectual people. It's one thing to be born into and indoctrinated with prevailing lowest-common-denominator opinions from childhood, but at some point you've got to ask how long you will continue to allow yourself to be deluded by outlandish claims and phony science.

You get to decide, of course, but we can't help sitting by trying to gently mock you back to reality.

Despite the fact that mockery is not persuasive to those who have character.

But then, perhaps mockery was persuasive to you, so you suppose it will work with us as well.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Gohan]

Okay I'm going to break my own rule here for a second, just for you Getauft1962.

Ponder this quote, take it to heart, it may come in handy for you.

"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and prove it."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and repent for that.

[Pahoran]

Second, yes, the church has large monetary resources at it's disposal. But what do we do with it? The church has no paid ministry, so we know none of the General Authorities are benefiting from it.

This is the problem, Gohan. You don't know the truth. The GA's are paid and so the church HAS a paid ministry...but they don't broadcast it. What you don't know won't hurt you, so they think.

That's the problem, Getauft. You assume everyone else is as ignorant as you are. The fact that the GA's are minimally compensated for the income they lost when they gave up their careers is well known in the Church, and doesn't negate the fact that it has an unpaid ministry, in which those selfsame GA's served for many years before they were called to their present positions. But what we already know won't hurt you, so you think.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Sput]

Second, yes, the church has large monetary resources at it's disposal. But what do we do with it? The church has no paid ministry, so we know none of the General Authorities are benefiting from it.

This is the problem, Gohan. You don't know the truth. The GA's are paid and so the church HAS a paid ministry...but they don't broadcast it. What you don't know won't hurt you, so they think.

They live the law of consecration. Which means they dedicate their lives to the church. They have to live some how. Ppl got to eat, have shelter, and so on. And if you think they havent told us UMMMM you are mistaken and dont know the truth. President Hinkley expressed it in General Conference. Now the way critics word it of course ppl havent heard about it.

[Gohan]

Kids these days, no respect.....

[The Dude]

I see two speices of answers in this thread.

#1 God took the plates so we would have to have faith. Anyone who wants to know why God interfered is seeking after a sign.

This is nonsense. It isn't seeking a sign to ask why God took away the only material evidence that ever existed to support the Book of Mormon. As I said earlier to Katherine the Great: seeking a sign is asking Jesus to show you the holes in his hands (like Doubting Thomas). What's going on here is Jesus is willfully offering his hands for all to see (by way of the Book of Mormon--to convince the Jew and Gentile...), and there aren't any holes in them as one would expect (there aren't any plates), which completely undercuts the point of showing his hands (or sending the BoM to the world).

Furthermore, there seems to be an even split in the opinions of TBM and critical posters, particularly if you read between the lines. Some say that showing the plates would make everyone join the Church and eliminate the need for faith. Others say that showing the plates would make no difference to anyone, because disbelievers would still "find reasons" to disbelieve. I think this calls for a poll.

#2 God took the plates for practical reasons: enemies of the Church would melt them down, the sealed portion needed to be preserved, etc.

This is a better kind of answer, IMO, but unfortunately it is complete speculation. Nobody knows what would have happened. I can speculate just as easily that the plates would have survived in the Church's hands if God "had not" intervened.

The plates were buried in a hole in the ground for 2000 years without being disturbed.  Why couldn't Joseph just do what Moroni did and re-bury them?

If God could protect the plates for two millenia by simply buring them in the ground, sending an angel to beam them up to heaven seems like overkill.  Now that the church is a multi-billion dollar corporation, they could easily afford all sorts of security to protect the plates.  So this time God wouldn't have had to protect the buried plates for thousands of years--just long enough for the church to become filthy rich.

Knowing what we know about Joseph Smith, I expect he was even more clever than MC, and would have though of this simple solution without inspiration from heaven. Hence, at the end (?) of the thread, I don't see any good reason for God to have taken the plates off the earth.

When I was a missionary, I remember this being the first and greatest stumbling block for some of the most promising investigators: intelligent people of character, with leadership ability, education, and large families. Smart folks like most of you. I couldn't blame them for not believing this story. It's silly. God taking the plates is a red flag that the story just 'aint true.

[Gohan]

Uhhh, stupid question, what does IMO stand for? I think a poll would be good, but the same discussions that occurred here would just occur there as well.

[Sput]

Uhhh, stupid question, what does IMO stand for? I think a poll would be good, but the same discussions that occurred here would just occur there as well.

IMO = in my opinion.

If you accept the BofM as another testimony of Jesus Christ then what happened to the plates doesnt matter.

[Getauft1962]

Y'know, I was just thinking almost the same thing. I was thinking that after you've tried to reason with people who think your beliefs have something to do with "magic" you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

Wow, Pahoran! That was a PERFECT "I'm rubber and you're glue" comeback!

And the Church has a paid ministry as do other religions. It doesn't matter how "minimally" it is...the lie is complete.

[Pahoran]

Y'know, I was just thinking almost the same thing. I was thinking that after you've tried to reason with people who think your beliefs have something to do with "magic" you eventually realize the futility of the exercise.

Wow, Pahoran! That was a PERFECT "I'm rubber and you're glue" comeback!

I'm glad you liked it.

The fact is that "magic" is an incoherent concept that has no place in any civil discourse among people of different religious beliefs. It adds nothing to any discussion and merely discredits you.

I suggest you stop using it.

And the Church has a paid ministry as do other religions. It doesn't matter how "minimally" it is...the lie is complete.

I'm sorry, what "lie" is that?

The fact remains that the Church has an unpaid ministry. The fact is that the very small number of minimally compensated leaders have proved their lack of pecuniary interest by serving in that unpaid ministry for many years. If there is any "lie" in view, it would appear to be found in any attempt to deny these facts.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Getauft1962]

post deleted

Creating new screennames to get around the queue results in banning.

[Gohan]

The church has no paid ministry, however perhaps your think of people employed by CES or those that are in charge of the maintenance of church property (and I'm not even sure that they're paid). So, unless you have some hard evidence to back your claims up, I'm afraid that I'm going to ignore you since you've really done nothing but insult organized religion and those that believe in it when you post here.