Vote On The First Vision At Sunstone

[USU78]

Try as I might, I cannot get my "care about this vote" meter to register any higher than microgiveashits.

[Dan Vogel]

To Robert F. Smith's excellent reply to this, I would add that the Joseph Smith--History account is ambiguous as to the timing of the family members joining the Presbyterian Church. It says that the family was proselyted to the Presbyterian faith and that four of them joined the church. No time frame is given. It may have been that they were proselyted beginning in 1820 or before and didn't make the ultimate decision to join until later, after Alvin's death. That would still be consistent with Joseph's telling of the story.

There is enough ambiguity here that the charge of anachronism cannot be sustained, not without a more explicit time frame.

You should also note that your explanation requires an ad hoc hypothesis to create the harmony, which is also the problem with Quinn's approach. Historians are cautious and skeptical with official histories.

[why me]

You are trying too hard to create harmony. Sort of like Christians do for the New Testament. I have no doubt that if you are highly motivated to create harmony that you can--anyone can. The point is that JS was shifting his chronology to make a point with his audience. His questions about the true church likely date to 1824-25, and both the revival and the religious division in his family happened then, not in 1820--this is in harmony with the 1832 account.

Does it matter? What matters is the first vision and whether it actually took place. Now you say no and faithful mormons say yes. So which is it?

[Dan Vogel]

And it's a good thing. The point is no one CAN determine the "reality" of visions.

Normally this would be true, but with JS we have a different situation. For example, if one concludes the BOM isn't real history, that the plates were fake, we can dismiss JS's vision of Moroni as untrue and the three witnesses as hallucination.

[Dan Vogel]

I agree that I find many of their arguments fascinating but not necessarily because I've never been taught to analyze and think things through the way they do. Many of their arguments have given me new insights and views on topics I hadn't either thought of before, or hadn't thought of from their perspective before. I can say the same thing, however, when I've read things from a variety of other LDS and non-LDS scholars. Critics such as Vogel, Metcalfe, Chris Smith, Mike Reed, and many others have given me moments of pause and re-assessment. The writings of Nibley, Peterson, Ricks, Hamblin, and Royal Skousen have also given me the same moments of "hmmm." I just finished a book about Hebrew in the Bible by Dr. Joel Hoffman, another by Dr. John Barbour about Deconversion. I also recently finished books by Dr. William Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, Dr. Alister McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion, Dr. Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin, and a book by Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Giberson entitled, The Language of Science and Fath. I'm also nearly finished with Dr. Steven Pinker's Language Instinct and Dr. Dan Ariely's Perdictably Irrational. These books have all made me go "hmmm." Typically when I read anything new by an intelligent writer I learn new ways to analyze and think things through-- in ways that I hadn't thought of before. This excitement doesn't come (at least for me) just from aethisitc point of views (although, as I note above, I almost never fail to learn something new or too look at things from a different perspective even when reading the works of critics and atheists), but comes because I'm constantly looking for new ways to examine epistemology, the human brain, scientific issues, and religion. Personally I don't think the atheists have a monopoly on critical analysis, I think this comes from all deeply intelligent people.

I think similar thoughts about the apologists because knowledge comes from a community's efforts and the more discussion from various perspectives the better.

[Dan Vogel]

Does it matter? What matters is the first vision and whether it actually took place. Now you say no and faithful mormons say yes. So which is it?

Actually, I don't deny the historicity of the vision, only the 1838 version. The difference between the 1832 and 1838 accounts is the beginning to some historical insights. Seeing it only in polemical terms is to miss this historical opportunity.

[mfbukowski]

Normally this would be true, but with JS we have a different situation. For example, if one concludes the BOM isn't real history, that the plates were fake, we can dismiss JS's vision of Moroni as untrue and the three witnesses as hallucination.

What evidence would prove this to be the case?

What evidence would prove that Jesus is not the Son of God?

You are barking up the wrong tree and do not even understand the central issue, and that is the nature of testimony. "Real history" as we have discussed before, is an illusion. If you have hundreds of witness, and in the events in Colorado, that is one thing, but judging if a spiritual was "illusion" is impossible.

But of course you do not believe that spiritual experience can be "real", and are philosophically ill equipped to discuss this, as we have seen before.

Edited July 20, 2012 by mfbukowski

[why me]

Normally this would be true, but with JS we have a different situation. For example, if one concludes the BOM isn't real history, that the plates were fake, we can dismiss JS's vision of Moroni as untrue and the three witnesses as hallucination.

It is not just the plates that would need to be fake but the account of the 3 witnesses would need to be fake too. 3 people saw something that they claimed was supernatural. And 8 actually handled the plates. This was quite a con job and a very convincing con job since the 11 people never denied their experience and most gave deathbed testimonies about it. And then we need to account for the priesthood authority blessings. No easy task.

[why me]

Actually, I don't deny the historicity of the vision, only the 1838 version. The difference between the 1832 and 1838 accounts is the beginning to some historical insights. Seeing it only in polemical terms is to miss this historical opportunity.

Not when we consider audience. In this case audience becomes important. The official account is for the general audience. The 1832 account has a much more limited audience. I clear cut two separate being approach may just be over the top for the 1832 audience.

[Dan Vogel]

What evidence would prove this to be the case?

What evidence would prove that Jesus is not the Son of God?

You are barking up the wrong tree and do not even understand the central issue, and that is the nature of testimony. "Real history" as we have discussed before, is an illusion. If you have hundreds of witness, and in the events in Colorado, that is one thing, but judging if a spiritual was "illusion" is impossible.

But of course you do not believe that spiritual experience can be "real", and are philosophically ill equipped to discuss this, as we have seen before.

I think you are the one not following my argument here. You keep trying to construe it as real vision vs. illusion. I’m tying this issue to the historical issue, which can be decided. I’m only speaking theoretically when I say one can conclude the BOM’s not real history. The BOM is testable unlike typical religious claims. So, if one concludes the BOM is not real history and there were no Nephites, then there were also no plates and no angel. In this way religious claims that normally can’t be tested can be by implication.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Dan Vogel

[Dan Vogel]

It is not just the plates that would need to be fake but the account of the 3 witnesses would need to be fake too. 3 people saw something that they claimed was supernatural. And 8 actually handled the plates. This was quite a con job and a very convincing con job since the 11 people never denied their experience and most gave deathbed testimonies about it. And then we need to account for the priesthood authority blessings. No easy task.

You, too, are not following my argument. If the BOM is determined to be non-historical, then there were no Nephites, no plates, no angel Moroni, which means that the three witnesses could not have had a real vision—no matter how difficult you find that to be. Actually, you are assuming all three had the same vision, which is not true and impossible to test. Harris saw the plates separately and Cowdery left no independent statement. The experience of the eight witnesses is more complicated but can be explained in a way consistent with a non-historical BOM. Regardless, I would argue that you don’t determine the historicity of the BOM based on subjective experiences, the historicity of which are debatable and problematic in themselves, but rather the BOM’s historicity is determined on its own merits and the other claims adjusted to that. You stick with what can be tested.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Dan Vogel

[Dan Vogel]

Not when we consider audience. In this case audience becomes important. The official account is for the general audience. The 1832 account has a much more limited audience. I clear cut two separate being approach may just be over the top for the 1832 audience.

In what way does a change of audience account for the differences between them? You can’t just say the audience had something to do with it; you have to demonstrate it—or else you are just trying to be polemical and not historical. Who is the 1832 audience?

[mfbukowski]

I think you are the one not following my argument here. You keep trying to construe it as real vision vs. illusion. I’m tying this issue to the historical issue, which can be decided. I’m only speaking theoretically when I say one can conclude the BOM’s not real history. The BOM is testable unlike typical religious claims. So, if one concludes the BOM is not real history and there were no Nephites, then there were also no plates and no angel. In this way religious claims that normally can’t be tested can be by implication.

In fact I am doing nothing of the kind. I make no distinction whatsoever between "real vision" and "illusion". A second or third party could never distinguish between whether another person was having a "real vision" or hallucinating.

And one cannot prove there were no Nephites. We have been through this before. If the Nephites lived among the Maya for example, as believed by Mark Wright and others, they would leave virtually no trace.

If Jesus did not exist, we have a similar problem with all of Christianity.

Unfortunately one can neither prove nor disprove the historical existence of either Jesus or Nephites living as a subculture with the Maya.

I would think that you would be up on these arguments. Archaeological evidence cannot prove or disprove religion. You are still not getting this.

I do not believe the Book of Mormon is "inspired fiction" but the CoC does, and they still have followers. Much of the Bible is clearly inspired fiction and that really doesn't matter to most Bible believers. You are just not getting this obviously because you do not want to. After all there are books to be sold and money to be made.

But it is all based on a mistaken notion of what can and cannot be known through science and history.

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Dan Vogel]

In fact I am doing nothing of the kind. I make no distinction whatsoever between "real vision" and "illusion". A second or third party could never distinguish between whether another person was having a "real vision" or hallucinating.

And one cannot prove there were no Nephites. We have been through this before. If the Nephites lived among the Maya for example, as believed by Mark Wright and others, they would leave virtually no trace.

If Jesus did not exist, we have a similar problem with all of Christianity.

Unfortunately one can neither prove nor disprove the historical existence of either Jesus or Nephites living as a subculture with the Maya.

I would think that you would be up on these arguments. Archaeological evidence cannot prove or disprove religion. You are still not getting this.

I do not believe the Book of Mormon is "inspired fiction" but the CoC does, and they still have followers. Much of the Bible is clearly inspired fiction and that really doesn't matter to most Bible believers. You are just not getting this obviously because you do not want to. After all there are books to be sold and money to be made.

But it is all based on a mistaken notion of what can and cannot be known through science and history.

I didn’t say you were making a distinction between true vision and illusion; you were saying I was, and that was simply not the case. I don’t think you are following this conversation well.

And, of course, no one can prove there were no Nephites, but they can conclude that there weren’t any based on the lack of evidence, literary and historical anachronisms in the BOM, and its unrealistic hemispheric geography and no mention of the Maya. Now, of course, you have a barrage of apologetic you can unload on anyone questioning BOM historicity, but that’s not the point. The point is that BOM historicity can be reasonably rejected and the apologists have no real evidence to connect the BOM to ancient America. The limited geography is a farce and the notion that the Nephites lived among the Maya is only a wish.

I never said archaeological evidence can disprove a religion, only disprove the historicity of a book. And it’s you who is having difficulty separating these issues.

Then you get even worse in your befuddlement and resort to ad hominem about selling books.

Finally, you can’t escape problems with BOM historicity because such things can’t be know with certainty. We are talking about reasonable doubt and the paucity of evidence. Not certitude. That is the realm of the religious.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Dan Vogel

[mfbukowski]

You keep trying to construe it as real vision vs. illusion.

I didn’t say you were making a distinction between true vision and illusion; ...

[mfbukowski]

And, of course, no one can prove there were no Nephites, but they can conclude that there weren’t any based on the lack of evidence, literary and historical anachronisms in the BOM, and its unrealistic hemispheric geography and no mention of the Maya.

Thanks for agreeing that no one can prove there were no Nephites.

Anyone can conclude anything they want to. It is all in the interpretation. All that is important is that no one can prove there were no Nephites.

I never said archaeological evidence can disprove a religion, only disprove the historicity of a book.

Thank you for finally agreeing that archaeological evidence cannot disprove a religion. That is really pretty much all I wanted to show.

But of course the "historicity of a book" of religious doctrine is quite different than a book just about history. Your argument applies just as well to Biblical historicity.

There is so much wrong with this I hardly know where to begin. As you have conceded, historicity has nothing to do with religious truths.

If in fact the name "Maya" describes in modern archaeology the same people as the term "Lamanite" does in BOM religious parlance, the implication is that we have known about the "Lamanites" under another name, for a very long time and indeed there is much evidence indeed of their existence.

But we have another point, and that is that as I have mentioned and you have not addressed, there is an entire church called the Church of Christ to whom Book of Mormon historicity is totally irrelevant- they accept it as scripture if if it is, as they believe, a fictitious history. They recognize as you have conceded, that their religious beliefs do not hinge on the historicity of the BOM.

So you concede that religious truth is not relevant to historical truth- which means that the bottom line is that your line of argument is largely irrelevant even if you are right.

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

It says JS was at this time in his fifteenth year and the next sentence says his family became Presbyterians. How much clearer do you want it? Besides the same satement is made in the Messenger and Advocate for Dec. 1834 when JS helped Oliver Cowdery write his history--the revival, Rev. George Lane, Lucy and her children joining the Presbyterian Church--only this precedes the 1823 vision of Moroni.

You are trying too hard to create harmony. Sort of like Christians do for the New Testament. I have no doubt that if you are highly motivated to create harmony that you can--anyone can. The point is that JS was shifting his chronology to make a point with his audience. His questions about the true church likely date to 1824-25, and both the revival and the religious division in his family happened then, not in 1820--this is in harmony with the 1832 account.

Anyone can create harmony? Out of whole cloth? Is everything that malleable and relative? Can a coherent history of anything be written under that condition? Or are you overstating the historiographical reality?

The problem, Dan, is that any good professional historian is going to very leery of drawing conclusions in the absence of broadly based documentary evidence, which you seem to be doing in ignoring the evidence assembled by Mike Quinn. Indeed, you said earlier in this thread that your panel would give serious attention to Quinn's piece on this subject. Well, your summary here sounds more like giving short-shrift to Quinn in order to confirm your a priori bias. Is it possible that both sides in a debate can attempt to harmonize the selectively chosen data? Is the only way to obtain a fair assessment of this issue to have a disinterested third party historian mediate? Pretty sad that we have come to that state.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

You should also note that your explanation requires an ad hoc hypothesis to create the harmony, which is also the problem with Quinn's approach. Historians are cautious and skeptical with official histories.

I should have thought that you'd be very interested in the contemporary documents, like newspapers, which Quinn employed.

[Robert F. Smith]

Vogel said:

Normally this would be true, but with JS we have a different situation. For example, if one concludes the BOM isn't real history, that the plates were fake, we can dismiss JS's vision of Moroni as untrue and the three witnesses as hallucination.

I think similar thoughts about the apologists because knowledge comes from a community's efforts and the more discussion from various perspectives the better.

I agree with both of your propositions here, Dan,

Even though I see no reason to think that you have given a fair evaluation to the Book of Mormon. Where have you ever taken into account the myriad of elements of hard evidence which simply cannot obtain if the BofM is a fraud? Have you taken into real account the evidence assembled by various Book of Mormon scholars demonstrating its connection to the ancient world which it claims as its home? If the BofM were a fraud this would be quite impossible, or at least improbable, but, in order to do that, you'd have to come to grips with serious BofM research in the fashion recommended by Owen & Mosser (the two evangelical scholars who took the measure of Mormon scholarship, and were quite impressed, and at the same time quite unimpressed by the shallow attacks on Mormonism by their own community). You should have taken that as a cautionary tale, But you didn't.

[why me]

I didn’t say you were making a distinction between true vision and illusion; you were saying I was, and that was simply not the case. I don’t think you are following this conversation well.

And, of course, no one can prove there were no Nephites, but they can conclude that there weren’t any based on the lack of evidence, literary and historical anachronisms in the BOM, and its unrealistic hemispheric geography and no mention of the Maya.

The idea of lack of evidence is usually what the critic's bring up when it comes to the book of mormon. Now I must admit that I would love to have evidence that the book is true. I then, can change some of my lifestyles and go more with the bible. Also, I would no longer need to live by faith because I would know that there is a god and that the mormons seem to have the answer.

And lets face it, if scientific evidence is discovered that the book is true, would you join the lds church or would you remain outside? I think that you would join but for all the wrong reasons. Now of course we have 11 people. Are these people evidence enough that they experienced a supernatural experience from god? They all seemed to think so since they took the experience with them throughout their lives, giving testimony of its truth even on their deathbeds. Is this evidence enough? For the critics, it is a resounding no because their faith is based on scientific evidence or a sign. At least this is what many claim.

Edited July 21, 2012 by why me

[why me]

I agree with both of your propositions here, Dan,

Even though I see no reason to think that you have given a fair evaluation to the Book of Mormon. Where have you ever taken into account the myriad of elements of hard evidence which simply cannot obtain if the BofM is a fraud? Have you taken into real account the evidence assembled by various Book of Mormon scholars demonstrating its connection to the ancient world which it claims as its home? If the BofM were a fraud this would be quite impossible, or at least improbable, but, in order to do that, you'd have to come to grips with serious BofM research in the fashion recommended by Owen & Mosser (the two evangelical scholars who took the measure of Mormon scholarship, and were quite impressed, and at the same time quite unimpressed by the shallow attacks on Mormonism by their own community). You should have taken that as a cautionary tale, But you didn't.

Also, we have the early history of the lds church. We have the translation process with no manuscript, with possible head in hat for translation, emma's testimony about Joseph and the process, what the witnesses claimed about the process, the testimony of 11 witnesses etc. It is quite an early history filled with supernatural visitations.

I am surprised it succeeded at all. For a fraud, it should have fell in its first 5 years.

[Nevo]

The problem, Dan, is that any good professional historian is going to very leery of drawing conclusions in the absence of broadly based documentary evidence, which you seem to be doing in ignoring the evidence assembled by Mike Quinn. Indeed, you said earlier in this thread that your panel would give serious attention to Quinn's piece on this subject. Well, your summary here sounds more like giving short-shrift to Quinn in order to confirm your a priori bias.

I think Vogel and Quinn are in basic agreement that Joseph took liberties with the chronology in his 1838/39 account. Quinn writes, for example:

n describing his 1820 vision, Joseph Smith's official history conflated circumstances of Palmyra's solitary Methodist revival in the late spring of 1820 with the circumstances of Palmyra's extensive revivals of 1824 that resulted in his mother, his sister Sophronia, his brothers Hyrum and Samuel joining the Presbyterian Church. In fact, Joseph's 1838 history gave only one date for a cycle of revivals at Palmyra--merging the publicized ones of 1816-17,40 with the solitary camp-meeting of 1818, with the solitary one of 1820, and with the extensive revivals of 1824. Thereby, he used conflation to describe--as if one coherent event--what was actually four waves of Palmyra's revivalism, each with differing intensity and significance. . . .

For narrative flow, he combined four different kinds of religious awakening within the Smith family (his and their first encounters with Palmyra's revivalism during 1817, his uneventful soul-searching at age twelve in connection with the village's camp-meeting of 1818, his theophany in connection with the camp-meeting of 1820, and several of his family members joining a church during the revivalism of 1824-25). For overall simplicity, he dated this multiyear conflation as 1820. While this is partially inaccurate, I see it as streamlining his narrative, not as an example of fraudulent invention.

— D. Michael Quinn, "Joseph Smith's Experience of a Methodist 'Camp-Meeting' in 1820," Dialogue Paperless: E-Paper #3, Expanded Version (Definitive), December 20, 2006, 13–14.

[Scott Lloyd]

I'm amazed that you don't see it. You must be really good at creating harmony and ad hoc explanations.

If it's so amazing that I don't see it, then it ought to be easy enough to provide specific examples of contradictions between one version and another (as opposed to merely highlighting difference in emphases or silence in one version about details that are mentioned in another).

By the way, thanks for friending me on Facebook.

[Robert F. Smith]

I think Vogel and Quinn are in basic agreement that Joseph took liberties with the chronology in his 1838/39 account. Quinn writes, for example:

Yes, conflation of accounts is quite normal and expected in the loose reconstruction of events by ordinary people. All of us have examples in our own lives of a generalized concept of our personal histories. The fuzzy dating in such cases can only be tied down with precision once we have documentary evidence, say a school transcript, a contemporary letter, or the like. In my own case, 60 years ago my family went on a great vacation to Yellowstone, but I could not possibly tie that event down to a particular year without documentary evidence, and neither could anyone else in the family. Our memories were all off by a year or so, until I found a specific, dated document.

Quinn applies a well-reasoned, balanced assessment of the evidence, while Vogel allows confirmation bias to overwhelm him.

[why me]

Quinn applies a well-reasoned, balanced assessment of the evidence, while Vogel allows confirmation bias to overwhelm him.

One thing is certain: Joseph was a little sloppy in his telling of the first vision. I don't think that he considered it to be important in the beginning. Much more important was the angel revealing the book of mormon and the translation process. I do think that after giving his informal accounts he realized that he needed to give an offical version of his vision to clarify what happened and build the foundation on that vision.