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What was Joseph like at time of translation?


Olavarria

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Attempts at obfuscation notwithstanding, you can probably guess something of the level of education of the people in these photographs.

If you disagree, let's place a bet: I say that such people are unlikely to be law school graduates. Not even Berkeley law school graduates. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. I'm willing to put a thousand bucks on the notion that, if we go to a typical California farm field and check with the laborers on it, not even one in ten will have a bachelor's degree. And not one in a hundred will have either an MBA, a law degree, or an American-accredited doctorate. Jaybear, do you think otherwise?

What about an Associates Degree?

:P

dbs

real intelligents .

dbs

<_<

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Attempts at obfuscation notwithstanding, you can probably guess something of the level of education of the people in these photographs.

If you disagree, let's place a bet: I say that such people are unlikely to be law school graduates. Not even Berkeley law school graduates. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. I'm willing to put a thousand bucks on the notion that, if we go to a typical California farm field and check with the laborers on it, not even one in ten will have a bachelor's degree. And not one in a hundred will have either an MBA, a law degree, or an American-accredited doctorate. Jaybear, do you think otherwise?

Isn't this a photo of the Pomona 2nd Ward, some of whom are professors, lawyers, doctors, but valunteer to work one day a month on one of the LDS church's farms?

I think we are making huge assumptions here, primarily that the farm class in the 19th century was anything like todays migrant workers.

Addendum: JS was obviously an exceptional case, which cannot be understood or defined by reference to the average.

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I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone. Have we reached the point where believing members feel like the more ignorant and uneducated they can make Joseph, the more likely the Book of Mormon is to be true? And so the critics counter by arguing he was smarter than the believers make him out to be?

:P

Joseph Smith was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. Not at any age. He may not have had much formal education, but the Book of Mormon doesn't read like a thesis written by a highly educated man. It reads like something dictated with a thorough familiarity with the Bible, a good imagination, and a familiarity with Biblical and local legends. Perhaps there are some other elements thrown in. Perhaps there was something unusual about his mental state while he dictated it. Maybe God was doing the translation. And if you want to argue that the odds are 1 in ten billion that Joseph could do it without a supernatural force helping him, then I would agree with those odds. But as the saying goes, "impossible things are happening every day", and lots of things with worse odds have happened.

Regardless, it seems a little disingenuous to equate Joseph's mentality with modern stereotypes of migrant farmworkers. But if that's what you need to do to support the idea that Joseph "couldn't" have done it and try to convince people to buy into a theory of supernatural origins for the Book of Mormon, then more power to you, and I hope a lot of people fall for it. But I'm assuming it will only be convincing to those who already agree with you; I wouldn't expect those pictures to work their way into the missionary discussions any time soon.

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