Nature of Joseph Smith's First Vision

[pogi]

21 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

1. The first recorded account of the First Vision wasn't until 1832, which is 12 years after the 1820 vision supposedly occurred.

2. Moreover, there are other accounts that differ from the 1832 version, which, IMO, are not consistent with this event actually taking place in 1820 (too many discrepancies IMO). 

3. Visions were common during the early 1800s, so I see Joseph Smith's vision as a product of his own time/mind, and not a divine event (see below).

"Visions in the early 1800s were common. In modern times if someone said they had a vision it would seem extraordinary, or more likely not believable. 

4. IMO, Joseph Smith was a great story teller:

1 and 3) While visions were talked about more in Joseph's day, and more widely accepted, visions are not that uncommon today either.  I can testify to that personally.  I had two converts on my mission report visions to me, and I have personally experienced many visions of which I have recorded in detail in several prayer journals.  I hesitate to share this because people are not used to hearing about this stuff today (members are likely to view me with suspicion and non-members are likely to view me as cray cray), and I will not go into detail because of the sacredness and personal nature of the events, but I think it needs to be made aware that visions have not ceased.    Visions happen all the time, not just in our church.  I have spoken with many different individuals in meditation groups who have reported heavenly visions to me.  It is not that uncommon at all actually.   One may try to dismiss them as day-dreaming.  But it is different, and undeniably so. I know the difference.  They are divinely given with a personal message and unbelievably powerful and overcoming.

I have only shared some accounts with my wife and my parents.  The last time this occurred was around 8 years ago.  I don't find it strange at all that Joseph didn't share any recorded account until many years later.   Nobody but my wife and parents know the details of my visions 8 years later, so it is not surprising to me that Joseph didn't share this account with very many people and waited until later to make it public.  

2) The reasons as to why there might be discrepancies has already been well addressed.  I can totally understand how and why he might have shared different accounts of the same vision at different times and to different people.  Also, memory can play weird tricks as to specific details many years later - that is pretty normal.

4) Joseph was a great story teller.  That doesn't make him a liar. 

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by pogi

[Ouagadougou]

14 minutes ago, pogi said:

1 and 3) While visions were talked about more in Joseph's day, and more widely accepted, visions are not that uncommon today either.  I can testify to that personally.  I had two converts on my mission report visions to me, and I have personally experienced many visions of which I have recorded in detail in several prayer journals.  I hesitate to share this because people are not used to hearing about this stuff today, and I will not go into detail because of the sacredness and personal nature of the events, but I think it needs to be made aware that visions have not ceased.    Visions happen all the time, not just in our church.  I have spoken with many different individuals in meditation groups who have reported heavenly visions to me.  It is not that uncommon at all actually.   One may try to dismiss them as day-dreaming.  But it is different, and undeniably so. I know the difference.  They are divinely given with a personal message and unbelievably powerful and overcoming.

I have only shared some accounts with my wife and my parents.  The last time this occurred was around 8 years ago.  I don't find it strange at all that Joseph didn't share any recorded account until many years later.   Nobody but my wife and parents know the details of my visions 8 years later, so it is not surprising to me that Joseph didn't share this account with very many people and waited until later to make it public.  

2) The reasons as to why there might be discrepancies has already been well addressed.  I can totally understand how and why he might have shared different accounts of the same vision at different times and to different people.  Also, memory can play weird tricks as to specific details many years later - that is pretty normal.

4) Joseph was a great story teller.  That doesn't make him a liar. 

 

IMO, he lied about the Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates and Polygamy, so you can establish a pattern of lying.  

[clarkgoble]

53 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Curious, but why are you sad that the Maxwell Institute facilitated this exchange? 

I think the Maxwell Institute has moved in a direction of being much more open to a fictional account of the Book of Mormon and LDS scripture in general. I think they could have embraced a move away from apologetics to scholarship without embracing that move away from LDS truth claims. That's not to say everyone at MI adopts a fictionalist account. Far from it. But they clearly are much, much more open to it in a fashion that I think actually undermines the Church. I know they don't see it that way of course. Further even those who rejection fictionalism might say that scholarship requires working in terms of epistemological naturalism in the scholarship. Which again is fine but it seems to me you should then be putting arguments that are faithful yet expressible within that epistemological naturalism. (Heaven knows much of the shift towards meaning of texts in a quasi-literary sense rather than a historical sense enables that)

Again, I recognize not everyone agrees. I just am more than a little sad to see BYU moving in that direction. And of course the "tensions" between the Interpreter crowd and the Maxwell Institute crowd tend to be over this issue. I think there's a middle ground and think the Interpreter group go too far the other direction. You can see that in the comments to the "review" of The Be Learned is Good. That in turn ends up in this odd engagement between key MI figures and Int. figures and lots of comments about past events and who dislikes who. Very Junior Highish unfortunately although again I think there is a key issue behind all the turmoil.

[pogi]

Just now, Ouagadougou said:

IMO, he lied about the Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates and Polygamy, so you can establish a pattern of lying.  

No, actually I can't establish a pattern of lying.  You can establish your own personal accusations of lying.  That is all.  

I don't deny that he lied about polygamy.  But that is another story for another day, and it doesn't establish a pattern. 

[Ouagadougou]

30 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

What website did you copy and paste that from?

Everything I wrote/found on my phone--and all the sources are lds.org or FAIR.

That's what the church is scared off--in less than 20 mins., you can find numerous discrepancies online (from church-approved websites) concerning various church truth claims.  

[mfbukowski]

43 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think there are multiple definitions for the word "true" and they have different applications, and I'm wondering if you see things the same way.  Tell me how you would interpret this example, starting with an assumption that aliens have never visited our earth.  If someone claims to have been abducted by an alien, and this experience has changed that person's life, how would you describe that experience in terms of "truth"?  

And lets take this example into your discussion about paradigms.   Lets assume this person claiming an alien abduction operates by way of a paradigm that assumes that aliens exist and that they frequently visit this earth and are monitoring humans and are able to largely avoid detection because of the sophistication of their advanced technology.  

For outside parties that don't view things through the alien paradigm, how should we discuss the terms of the claims that they make?  Is it fair for us to say that their claims aren't "true"?  How should outsiders who don't share their paradigm respond if people within that paradigm want to change the laws of the broader society to accommodate specific claims within the alien paradigm?  

What if the alien paradigmers have a belief that ice cream was created by the aliens for mind control purposes, and now they want the government to ban the consumption of ice cream because it is detrimental to society.  Can scientific studies be employed to research the properties of ice cream to determine if there is any scientific validity to those claims?  Or does philosophical thought tell us that we can't objectively evaluate any of the claims made by the alien paradigmers because "NOTHING about religion is objectively verifiable!!".   

While I agree with you on some things that you're saying, I think the problems are not solved as easily as you have characterized with respect to just having the correct paradigm to view things.  I would love it if you are willing to respond to my thought experiment and share your perspective on it.  

I am about out of time for today. I think if you read my previous post to Clark it will explain much of this. First of all if there was a community of hundreds or thousands or millions of alien abductee believers who believe that they have evidence I would definitely want to look at it.

if all the experiences were consistent I think we would have the beginnings of some of objective structure.

But yes if I was the only person in the world who have ever been abducted by aliens are believe that to be true that would be true for me only. Again I suggest you read Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy on the deflation area theory of Truth. I'm not sure how many times we need to do this.

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Ouagadougou]

1 minute ago, pogi said:

No, actually I can't establish a pattern of lying.  You can establish your own personal accusations of lying.  That is all.  

I don't deny that he lied about polygamy.  But that is another story for another day, and it doesn't establish a pattern. 

And he was somehow being honest about the BoA and Kinderhook plates?  

Nope...I think he was lying about that as well.  

[pogi]

Just now, Ouagadougou said:

Nope...I think he was lying about that as well.  

Exactly!  You haven't established anything. 

[clarkgoble]

28 minutes ago, cinepro said:

If I recall, Joseph never did the handshake test, so there is no way to know for sure.

He doesn't mention it but I'm not sure that means it didn't happen. As I mentioned at least one later account has God touching Joseph's eyes so he can see instead of just hearing. Likewise the other thread on the temple notes that Joseph thinks things were given him by two individuals, possibly a referral to these earlier visions and the garments to the Moroni visitation. So things may have happened whose significance only became clear later on.

I'd agree that it'd be difficult if not impossible to establish that from the texts we have though. But we should always remember that just because something isn't mentioned in the fairly brief accounts we have doesn't mean it didn't happen. 

[clarkgoble]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I am about out of time for today. I think if you read my previous post to Clark it will explain much of this. First of all if there was a community of hundreds or thousands or millions of alien abductee believers who believe that they have evidence I would definitely want to look at it.

Just a note but I think your post to me never appeared. At least I've not seen it. Although the list doesn't always pick up replies if they aren't done to the exact post with the reply buttons. So I may have missed it. I only skim a few things but in general just look at the actual replies with the bright red numbers. I don't read the whole list anymore.

That said I tend to agree with you although I'd also say that a few hundreds of people I trust have more weight than thousands I don't.

[pogi]

3 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'd also say that a few hundreds of people I trust have more weight than thousands I don't.

I don't know why you think obese people are more trustworthy.

[The Nehor]

24 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

Everything I wrote/found on my phone--and all the sources are lds.org or FAIR.

That's what the church is scared off--in less than 20 mins., you can find numerous discrepancies online (from church-approved websites) concerning various church truth claims.  

Yeah, I am still thinking someone correlated it for you.

[Ouagadougou]

49 minutes ago, pogi said:

Exactly!  You haven't established anything. 

The Kinderhook Plates were a hoax 100%, but JS lied aboit it and claimed something otherwise.  I didn't even make mention of how JS used the same magic rock to translate the BoM that was used earlier to find lost treasures. Seems pretty suspect to me...

[Ouagadougou]

28 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Yeah, I am still thinking someone correlated it for you.

Nope.  Found it and wrote it all myself in about 15 mins on my phone...

[Calm]

 

1 hour ago, pogi said:

4) Joseph was a great story teller.  That doesn't make him a liar. 

 

Especially if he got the information for his stories from his visions with Moroni over the years.  Iirc, the context of Lucy's comment places those times after Moroni starts instructing him.

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

The Kinderhook Plates were a hoax 100%, but JS lied aboit it and claimed something otherwise...

From FM:

Quote

These two oblique references to a “translation” were followed thirteen years later by a more direct published statement that until recently was wrongly thought to have been written by Joseph Smith himself. On September 3 and 10, 1856, the following paragraphs appeared in the Deseret News as part of the serialized “History of Joseph Smith”: 

“[May 1, 1843:] I insert fac similes of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook, in Pike county, Illinois, on April 23, by Mr. R. Wiley and others, while excavating a large mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth, which must have stood nine feet high. The plates were found on the breast of the skeleton, and were covered on both sides with ancient characters. 

“I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.” (Then followed a reprint of material from the Times and Seasons article.) 

Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized “History of Joseph Smith” consists largely of items from other persons’ personal journals and other sources, collected during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and continued after the Saints were in Utah, then edited and pieced together to form a history of the Prophet’s life “in his own words.” It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for biographers to put the narrative in the first person when compiling a biographical work, even though the subject of the biography did not actually say or write all the words attributed to him; thus the narrative would represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print. The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used in this way. For example, the words “I have translated a portion” originally read “President J. has translated a portion. …”

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Forgeries_related_to_Mormonism/Joseph_Smith_and_the_Kinderhook_Plates#Question:_Why_does_History_of_the_Church_say_that_Joseph_Smith_said_.22I_have_translated_a_portion_of_them....22.3F

Edited November 1, 2018 by Calm

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, pogi said:

I don't know why you think obese people are more trustworthy.

English is such a fantastically fun language.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Gray said:

If indeed a vision involves some kind of tangible connection to a God that exists in physical reality (something like a radio frequency being broadcast into the mind?), I suppose technically it would be possible to detect. But there's always the escape clause that we simply don't understand God's methods well enough to detect his influence, so in practice it amounts to the same kinds of arguments used by people with a supernatural view of God. Undetectable and unknowable either in theory or due to the limits of our science. Either way, it is taken purely on faith that the source of the vision is external to the mind.

I heard an interesting story by a Rabbi about an experiment he took part in in the 60s. A bunch of students were made to listen to pink noise, played pretty loudly on a speaker. The Rabbi, as a student, started to hear very clearly a classical guitar piece in the midst of the noise. He was surprised to discover afterwords that he was the only one who heard it. His mind created the guitar performance in the midst of the rushing noise. He compared that to the nature of what revelation is.

I had said

Quote

Normative theologians attribute some of that to the supernatural, and this is true of mainstream Judeo-Christian-Muslim theology generally. It is, by its very nature, impossible to evaluate in a scientific manner.  Natural systems, on the other hand, are always amenable to scientific inquiry. You are mistaken to claim that "Whether there is anything external to the mind going on in any particular vision is unknowable."  Natural systems are always subject to hard, forensic examination.

I guess you missed the point.  The scientific method does not apply to what you are describing above, and I did not describe a "Ghostbusters" approach to forensic evidence.  You need to disabuse yourself of non-scientific evaluation of visionary claims, which is what you keep harping on.  No progress can be made with your approach -- which is indistinguishable from supernaturalism on the one hand, and psychological delusion on the other.  One can only describe and classify such phenomena.  However, neither explanation can be examined by hard science.  Once you have accepted that set of limitations, it is then possible to begin considering the circumstantial evidence presented by actual artifacts, e.g., books, claims, systems, etc., for forgery or authenticity, just the way we do in a standard crime lab.

[Calm]

O, The last link went to a blank page btw.

Here is a link to the whole page which includes some relevant info:

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Joseph_Smith/"Amusing_recitals"_of_ancient_American_inhabitants

Quote

The quote from Lucy Mack Smith is used by critics of the Church to show how Joseph Smith told "yarns" about Native Americans "long before any golden plates had been found." The chronology found in Lucy Mack Smith's history, however, tells just the opposite story, and puts this quotation in its proper context. Lucy says that the angel Moroni told her son (during his first appearance) about the existence of the plates and informed him where they were buried (see Lavina F. Anderson, ed., Lucy's Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith's Family Memoir [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001], 335-36). Lucy then states that Joseph (the evening after he had seen the Nephite record in their place of deposit) told his family all about "the plates" (ibid., 343).

Lucy Mack Smith's account of her son telling "amusing recitals" about the ancient inhabitants of the American continent occurred during the years that Joseph was being prepared to receive the plates. The stories that he was telling related to information that he was receiving from the angel Moroni: These were not "tall tales" that he fabricated for his family's amusement.

From Lucy's 1845 manuscript, we read:

Now said he[,] Father and Mother the angel of the Lord says that we must be careful not to proclaim these things or to mention them abroad For we do not any of us know the wickedness of the world which is so sinful that when we get the plates they will want to kill us for the sake of the gold if they know we had <have> them...by sunset [we] were ready to be seated and give our atten undivided attention to Josephs recitals...From this time forth Joseph continued to receive instructions from time to time and every evening we gathered our children togather [together]...In the course of our evening conversations Joseph would give us some of the most ammusing [amusing] recitals which could be immagined [imagined]. he would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent their dress their man[n]er of traveling the animals which they rode The cities that were built by them the structure of their buildings with every particular of their mode of warfare their religious worship as particularly as though he had spent his life with them...The angel informed him at one time that he might make an effort to obtain the plates <on> the <22nd of the> ensueing september....[2]

Clearly, Joseph Smith told his stories after he learned about, and saw, the golden plates. Indeed, it is known that Moroni showed Joseph visions and gave him information regarding the people whose stories were found on the Nephite record (see Times and Seasons, vol. 3, no. 9, 1 March 1842, 707-708), so the young man undoubtedly had quite a few stories to tell. Lucy Mack Smith simply said in her autobiography that her son told the family about information connected with the angel and the Book of Mormon plates.[3] Lucy told the same information to Wandle Mace about seven years prior to producing her 1845 autobiography and clarified that this information was connected with the Book of Mormon "Nephites" and was shown to her son by vision.

In Joseph Smith's own official history he confirmed that he learned this information through the power of visions[4] and Oliver Cowdery made note of the same thing.[5] Thus, the origin of the stories mentioned by Joseph's mother in her autobiography was a heavenly one—she was not even remotely implying that her son was a teller of tall tales.

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Ouagadougou said:

And he was somehow being honest about the BoA....

Other possible options to lying...

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Book_of_Abraham/By_his_own_hand#Question:_Why_does_the_Book_of_Abraham_state_that_it_was_written_by_Abraham.27s_.22own_hand_upon_papyrus.22_if_the_papyri_date_to_after_the_Abrahamic_period.3F

Edited November 1, 2018 by Calm

[Gray]

14 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I had said

I guess you missed the point.  The scientific method does not apply to what you are describing above, and I did not describe a "Ghostbusters" approach to forensic evidence.  You need to disabuse yourself of non-scientific evaluation of visionary claims, which is what you keep harping on.  No progress can be made with your approach -- which is indistinguishable from supernaturalism on the one hand, and psychological delusion on the other.  One can only describe and classify such phenomena.  However, neither explanation can be examined by hard science.  Once you have accepted that set of limitations, it is then possible to begin considering the circumstantial evidence presented by actual artifacts, e.g., books, claims, systems, etc., for forgery or authenticity, just the way we do in a standard crime lab.

Maybe I'm missing your point. Are you proposing some specific scientific way of distinguishing between an internally generated visionary experience and one generated by a third party? The fact that people hallucinate has been established scientifically. "Authentic" (not self-generated) visions have not. I concede that would be theoretically possible to distinguish them, if indeed the latter kind exist.

I do find that Mormon naturalism is only a kind of technical naturalism that has more in common with supernaturalism in actual practice. When I say that, I mean primarily in the types of experiences described and also generally distancing itself from scientific inquiry that most naturalists seem to welcome. It's still significant that Mormonism embraces a kind of naturalism, but on the other hand it's like having a form of naturalism but denying the power thereof, if you'll forgive the scriptural turn of phrase.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I think the Maxwell Institute has moved in a direction of being much more open to a fictional account of the Book of Mormon and LDS scripture in general. I think they could have embraced a move away from apologetics to scholarship without embracing that move away from LDS truth claims. That's not to say everyone at MI adopts a fictionalist account. Far from it. But they clearly are much, much more open to it in a fashion that I think actually undermines the Church. I know they don't see it that way of course. Further even those who rejection fictionalism might say that scholarship requires working in terms of epistemological naturalism in the scholarship. Which again is fine but it seems to me you should then be putting arguments that are faithful yet expressible within that epistemological naturalism. (Heaven knows much of the shift towards meaning of texts in a quasi-literary sense rather than a historical sense enables that)

Again, I recognize not everyone agrees. I just am more than a little sad to see BYU moving in that direction. And of course the "tensions" between the Interpreter crowd and the Maxwell Institute crowd tend to be over this issue. I think there's a middle ground and think the Interpreter group go too far the other direction. You can see that in the comments to the "review" of The Be Learned is Good. That in turn ends up in this odd engagement between key MI figures and Int. figures and lots of comments about past events and who dislikes who. Very Junior Highish unfortunately although again I think there is a key issue behind all the turmoil.

Thanks for sharing.  I personally am thrilled with what the Maxwell institute is doing and I think they are producing content in that middle ground very well right now.  I also think from a reputable scholarship perspective they are getting engagement from thoughtful non-Mormon scholars that they wouldn't get if they move further on the spectrum towards apologetics.  

However, I can appreciate that you hold a slightly different position on that spectrum, somewhere in between the Interpreter folks and the Maxwell Institute.  I'm somewhere in between the Maxwell Institute and Dan Vogel, but I appreciate products from both of those sides of the spectrum.  Get a little too further out towards the Interpreter and FAIR on the apologetic side or towards the ExMo crowd and I start to feel much more uncomfortable.  So I can appreciate what you're saying.  I'd think there is really good scholarship and conversations happening in that center band, and I feel pretty happy with much of what the Maxwell Institute is doing and how they are engaging with thoughtful scholars.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

I am about out of time for today. I think if you read my previous post to Clark it will explain much of this. First of all if there was a community of hundreds or thousands or millions of alien abductee believers who believe that they have evidence I would definitely want to look at it.

if all the experiences were consistent I think we would have the beginnings of some of objective structure.

But yes if I was the only person in the world who have ever been abducted by aliens are believe that to be true that would be true for me only. Again I suggest you read Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy on the deflation area theory of Truth. I'm not sure how many times we need to do this.

 

I couldn't find a reply to Clark in this thread, are you referring to a post in another thread?  

As for the # of people claiming alien abductions, I'm not sure why the # of people would then make it so their experiences can have "the beginnings of some of objective structure".  When you get time (no rush), can you elaborate on that, because it seems to contradict what I thought you were saying earlier about nothing being objectively verifiable about religion. 

Are you saying that we should use objective criteria to evaluate the veracity of alien abduction claims, but we shouldn't use objective criteria to evaluate religious claims?  It sounds to me like you are making a case for a special status for religious claims.  Can you confirm?  

[hope_for_things]

23 minutes ago, Gray said:

Maybe I'm missing your point. Are you proposing some specific scientific way of distinguishing between an internally generated visionary experience and one generated by a third party? The fact that people hallucinate has been established scientifically. "Authentic" (not self-generated) visions have not. I concede that would be theoretically possible to distinguish them, if indeed the latter kind exist.

I do find that Mormon naturalism is only a kind of technical naturalism that has more in common with supernaturalism in actual practice. When I say that, I mean primarily in the types of experiences described and also generally distancing itself from scientific inquiry that most naturalists seem to welcome. It's still significant that Mormonism embraces a kind of naturalism, but on the other hand it's like having a form of naturalism but denying the power thereof, if you'll forgive the scriptural turn of phrase.

I would like to hear Robert's answer to this as well.  I'm not aware of any scientific evidence to even evaluate, when it comes to whether a visionary experience can be identified as having been influenced by an external force.  Not even a shred of evidence has been found that I'm aware of.  When he says that we need to evaluate these experiences using science, I'm not sure what he's talking about.  

Unless he's talking about methods of evaluating history using witness accounts and primary source evaluation, but I don't consider that a scientific evaluation in a strict sense, and there isn't anything about witness accounts that tells us about the scientific mechanics of visionary experience that I can even begin to imagine.  

[Ouagadougou]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

From FM:

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Forgeries_related_to_Mormonism/Joseph_Smith_and_the_Kinderhook_Plates#Question:_Why_does_History_of_the_Church_say_that_Joseph_Smith_said_.22I_have_translated_a_portion_of_them....22.3F

I think Richard Bushman would disagree.

"Church historians continued to insist on the authenticity of the Kinderhook plates until 1980 when an examination conducted by the Chicago Historical Society, possessor of one plate, proved it was a nineteenth-century creation."

Furthermore, why does it say the following in the history of the church?

"Comment of the Prophet on the Kinderhook Plates"

This is just more of an emphasis to suggest that JS was involved and knew what Clayton was writing.  

Why did the church believe up until 1981 that the Kinderhook Plates were legitimate?

Joseph F. Smith said the following about Clayton:

"He was a friend and companion of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and it is to his pen to a very great extent that we are indebted for the history of the Church. during his acquaintance with him and the time he acted for him as his private secretary, in the days of Nauvoo."

More info about Clayton:

"Long after his death, Clayton was remembered as "the soul of punctuality"; his daughter remembering his "love for order, which he believed was the first law of heaven . he would not carry a watch that was not accurate."

George D. Smith, editor of An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (p. xvii)

By all accounts, Clayton took very detailed, copious notes and was a faithful believer until his death, so to suggest that he would embellish something in the church's history, IMO, is not accurate.