Purpose of the Plates

[Ryan Dahle]

Here is an article, hot off the press from Evidence Central, that pushes back against the common concern--and often criticism--that the plates of the Book of Mormon were essentially useless and therefore that Joseph Smith's story about them is pretty much incoherent or nonsensical. 

https://evidencecentral.org/recency/evidence/purpose-of-the-plates

See what you think.

[CA Steve]

#11. To justify killing Laben.

[LoudmouthMormon]

#12.  Running through the woods while being pursued is ok exercise, but running through the woods while being pursued while carrying heavy plates counts as frontier Pilates.  Joseph wanted the upper body workout experience too. 

 

In all seriousness though, it's a decent article.  I've never really needed much beyond #6 and 7.  God isn't about to prove he exists any time soon, but plenty of folks aren't going to accept the message of the restored gospel on faith or reason alone.  The testimonies of 3 and 8 witnesses seem like a good compromise.

[The Nehor]

To butcher a quote:

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the gold plates are a dead giveaway, aren’t they? They could only exist if you led Joseph to them. They prove you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “ ‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.” 

[LoudmouthMormon]

Yep.  If the plates were available for scientific scrutiny today, and shown to be exactly what they say they are, that would be a pretty decent Babel fish moment in human history.  Although I've gathered firsthand statements from many folks who would still not consider such an event to be sufficient to win their faith or bend their knee. 

[blackstrap]

5 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

many folks who would still not consider such an event

IIRC there is a BoM story about two brothers and an angel that speaks to that very attitude. 

[InCognitus]

I promise this is related to the thread title, but you need to watch it all the way to the end to find out why:

 

[The Nehor]

Is that also related to the golden retriever boyfriend thing?

[mfbukowski]

Clearly the Bluetooth wouldn't work if the plates were too far from the seer stone.  The battery technology was not up to modern standards.

You guys couldn't figure that out on your own?

Science proves religion yet again 

[mfbukowski]

On 8/3/2023 at 2:46 PM, InCognitus said:

I promise this is related to the thread title, but you need to watch it all the way to the end to find out why:

 

Would you buy a used car from this guy?

Brrrrrrrrr.  Gives me the shivers! 

 

[rodheadlee]

On 8/3/2023 at 2:46 PM, InCognitus said:

I promise this is related to the thread title, but you need to watch it all the way to the end to find out why:

 

Too bad they cost $4,500 a piece.

[InCognitus]

1 minute ago, rodheadlee said:

Too bad they cost $4,500 a piece.

Yes, but think of all the gold you could retrieve if you had one!

[Dario_M]

On 8/7/2023 at 3:16 AM, rodheadlee said:

Too bad they cost $4,500 a piece.

That's a lot of money. Even if i was rich i don't think i would spend that much money on them. 

But ! This shows how precious those plates are. Allthough they aren't the real one's i guess. But I would love to have one of those plate like that for decoration in my room or so. That would be so lovely. Tyical LDS style. ⬆️✝️

Edited August 10 by Dario_M

[mfbukowski]

The purpose of the plates imo, was to provide enough evidence for the witnesses to provide their statements to a more faith oriented generation than ours.

Today, as we have seen, we see the entire event differently, or this thread would not exist.

God understands the vicissitudes of culture better than we do.

He caused this all to come forth at the precise moment it needed to, at the same time phenomenology and Pragmatism and relational thought were in their infancies, meshing well with postmodernism, the necessary elements to provide a philosophical basis for thse ideas to come forth in the "latter days".

We no longer need a plate story, perhaps.

[marineland]

25 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The purpose of the plates imo, was to provide enough evidence for the witnesses to provide their statements to a more faith oriented generation than ours.

Since they could not understand what was written on the plates, they had to solely
rely on what Joseph Smith said.  This could have been done without them seeing or
touching the plates - like they also had to believe the First Vision account since they
were not present.

Edited August 10 by marineland

[InCognitus]

17 minutes ago, marineland said:

Since they could not understand what was written on the plates, they had to solely
rely on what Joseph Smith said.  This could have been done without them seeing or
touching the plates - like they also had to believe the First Vision account since they
were not present.

The plates served as a physical representation of the validity of the process and that there was an ancient source for the record.  And they didn't need to rely solely on what Joseph Smith said, because three primary witnesses saw the plates and the angel of God, and even more saw and handled the plates and the ancient artifacts.  And even though only Joseph Smith saw the "First Vision", many others witnessed and participated in the visitation of heavenly messengers, like Oliver Cowdery with Joseph Smith at the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood (D&C 13) and later seeing the Lord standing on the breastwork of the pulpit and the visitation of Moses, Elias, and Elijah in the Kirtland temple (D&C 110), and Sidney Rigdon with Joseph Smith seeing the Savior and bearing testimony that he lives (D&C 76:20-24).  There are other examples.  So it's definitely not all based on Joseph Smith's word on this.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, marineland said:

Since they could not understand what was written on the plates, they had to solely
rely on what Joseph Smith said.  This could have been done without them seeing or
touching the plates - like they also had to believe the First Vision account since they
were not present.

Yes that is what I said in my earlier response.

But they were not yet ready to accept personal revelation, as found in Moroni 10.

They needed a little "magic" to make it believable 

Edited August 10 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Scarlett7Moore said:

https://clamentcustomleather.com/leather-jacket-women

You need to read the rules again, this is not allowed and will get you banned, and your first post was interesting.  You won’t be able to delete it till you are at 25 posts. 
 

Quote

BANNED BEHAVIORS include but are not limited to:
• Spamming or advertising products, publications, or websites

You also need to provide a link to the article at evidence central so that people can read it for more detail if interested. There appear to be 15 articles about the plates on EvidenceCentral

Edited August 14 by Calm

[Calm]

Make that 16, for some reason this didn’t appear in the search of plates, but was second most recent article:

https://evidencecentral.org/recency/evidence/purpose-of-the-plates

[Ryan Dahle]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

Make that 16, for some reason this didn’t appear in the search of plates, but was second most recent article:

https://evidencecentral.org/recency/evidence/purpose-of-the-plates

Unfortunately, the website still has a number of bugs and deficiencies (including the search engine). I have a list of things that need to be fixed, but we don't have the programmer bandwidth to do it at the moment and probably won't for quite some time. Sigh. 

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Unfortunately, the website still has a number of bugs and deficiencies (including the search engine). I have a list of things that need to be fixed, but we don't have the programmer bandwidth to do it at the moment and probably won't for quite some time. Sigh. 

I am still impressed and excited to see it in the future.  A very useful endeavor.

[tagriffy]

Who's saying the plates were useless? The article doesn't cite anyone actually saying this.

[Calm]

11 hours ago, tagriffy said:

Who's saying the plates were useless? The article doesn't cite anyone actually saying this.

Blast it.  I just came across a discussion that was somewhat new to me about the usefulness the plates and I meant to post about it and forgot to…and now I can only remember the intent and not the why.  Maybe I shall check my search history to see if I can find it, but I am about to get distracted agsin from a question I want to ask.  Need to start a new thread…