Kind of cool this morning

[Nevo]

3 hours ago, rongo said:

As an aside, I am struck by all of the insistence that Joseph Smith had a reputation for finding lost things or finding treasure, but was always a ridiculous and miserable failure at doing it. Then whence the reputation? And, why is his reputation held up without fail by the very people he allegedly wronged (Josiah Stowell, etc.)? Even the conflicting Purple, Marshall, Benton, and Pearsall accounts of the 1826 trial surprisingly support that Stowell was well-satisfied with Joseph's employment when pressed on the point (some theories have his sons seeking to extricate him from Joseph's swindling).

It seems to me that Joseph really could see things in his stone, even before the Restoration began, and that people knew it. Another example is that the treasure diggers wanted their shares of the plates when it became know that he had them. They felt this fell under their compact; i.e., the expectation for success was there. 

Joseph was able to convince quite a number of people that he could see things in his stone. There is some evidence that he did occasionally locate lost property with it: "E.W. Vanderhoof remembered that his Dutch grandfather once paid young Smith 75 cents to look into his stone to locate a stolen mare. The grandfather soon 'recovered his beast, which Joe said was somewhere on the lake shore and [was] about to be run over to Canada'" (Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 2d ed., 43; see also, Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 4:239-240).

There are also accounts of Joseph Smith providing demonstrations of his ability to prospective benefactors. Josiah Stowell related in court, for example, that Joseph was able to provide detailed descriptions of his house and outbuildings—even describing a tree with a "man's hand" painted on it—before he had ever set foot on Stowell's property. Martin Harris said that after Joseph first told him of his stone, Joseph "proposed to bind it on his eyes, and run a race with me in the woods"(!) Harris also observed Joseph locate a pin that Harris had accidentally dropped into a pile of straw and wood shavings: "He took [the stone] and placed it in his hat—the old white hat—and placed his face in his hat. I watched him closely to see that he did not look one side; he reached out his hand beyond me on the right, and moved a little stick, and there I saw the pin, which he picked up and gave to me. I know he did not look out of the hat until after he had picked up the pin." Stowell related an occasion during a treasure hunt where Joseph "told by means of this stone where a Mr. Bacon had buried money." He said "it was in a certain root of a stump five feet from the surface of the earth, and with it would be found a tail feather." Stowell and Joseph "thereupon commenced digging, found a tail feather, but money was gone." There's also the famous story of Harris, during a break in translating, taking the seer stone out of the hat and replacing it with a similar-looking stone that he had found by the river. When they resume translating, Joseph is quiet for a long time, then exclaims: "Martin, what on earth is the matter, all is dark as Egypt."

As Dan Vogel notes, "these proofs separate Smith from the group of self-deluded treasure seers, for they were either true demonstrations of his seeric gift or evidence of his talent for deception" (Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, 43).

While I think it's possible that Joseph used deception at times—Martin Harris is about as easy a mark as one could hope for—his post-1826 history with the stone suggests to me that he really did believe he had a gift to "translate."

Edited March 8, 2018 by Nevo

[Michael Sudworth]

On 3/5/2018 at 11:50 PM, mfbukowski said:

Yep gotta love polygamy and the good old no priesthood for blacks.

I'm very surprised to see you employ the same techniques as lazy critics.  Just more sophistry.

You know better than anyone that Church policy is not Church doctrine. 

[Calm]

17 minutes ago, Michael Sudworth said:

I'm very surprised to see you employ the same techniques as lazy critics.  Just more sophistry.

You know better than anyone that Church policy is not Church doctrine. 

There were plenty of explanations attached to the policies that were published.  Do you see those explanations as doctrine?

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I believe a nuclear engineer from the Los Alamos Scientific Library could find buried water spigots in a field with two bent coat hangers. I seen it! He taught us neighborhood kids how to dowse for water.

If the mechanism were spiritual, however, it would require faith. I know from personal experience that one can successfully 'dowse' for water without a shred of faith.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Michael Sudworth said:

I'm very surprised to see you employ the same techniques as lazy critics.  Just more sophistry.

You know better than anyone that Church policy is not Church doctrine. 

Not really

There is no definable difference that I have yet to see- so if you have one, let's talk

I believe in orthopraxis not orthodoxy.

Since everyone is to have their own testimony of the gospel and we have no Catechism or Magesterium, I don't see how "doctrine" is relevant in Mormonism.

If you can honestly pass a temple recommend interview- you are a full- fledged True Believing Mormon as far as I can tell.

http://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2005/04/is-there-any-mormon-doctrine/

 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

If the mechanism were spiritual, however, it would require faith. I know from personal experience that one can successfully 'dowse' for water without a shred of faith.

I have seen it myself

But of course that was within 150 feet of a flowing river, and the well was a hundred feet deep.... 

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I have seen it myself

But of course that was within 150 feet of a flowing river, and the well was a hundred feet deep.... 

In my case, it was a water main that ran under the floor of the building. I had no idea where it was (or that it even existed), and I had openly and repeatedly mocked the man who handed me the rods. But they positively moved in my hands each time I walked across the same spot of floor ... right above the water main. I have no explanation, just experience. But I had zero investment in being proved wrong.

[mfbukowski]

 

12 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

In my case, it was a water main that ran under the floor of the building. I had no idea where it was (or that it even existed), and I had openly and repeatedly mocked the man who handed me the rods. But they positively moved in my hands each time I walked across the same spot of floor ... right above the water main. I have no explanation, just experience. But I had zero investment in being proved wrong.

I believe it- I did not include the fact that I tried it myself and came up with the same location the dowser had.  But I was 10 years old- so who knows what that was!

Leaks beneath concrete slaps are a plumbers nightmare.

Just knock down the building to fix the plumbing