In 1985, I Personally Witnessed Golden Plates

[Analytics]

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Is there some reason you think that they were different?

They sound like they are describing different things. One is describing a tangible object that Joseph Smith had hidden at the Whitmer's house. The other sounds like it is describing a vision of something that was taken down from heaven by an angel.

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Is this about perceived discrepancies in the descriptions of the plates? Or is it that you assume the plates were supposed to be at some other physical location when the Three Witnesses viewed them (which I assume is the case, based on your past comments)?

Believers typically assume they were the same plates, but there is some evidence from the text itself that they weren't (i.e. they claim the angel brought the plates down from heaven, not from the Whitmer's house).

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If the latter, then that hardly seems relevant, since visions (if they exist) can apparently transcend reality or represent it in ways that are outside of our normal space-time conceptions. For example, Nephi saw a vision of Christ's life and ministry about 600 years before it happened. Obviously, he wasn't seeing something directly unfold in his own space-time setting. But that doesn't mean that what he saw wasn't an accurate representation of real events (as they would eventually unfold). 

At this point, your example is assuming facts not in evidence. If Nephi was a real historical person and really recorded this detailed account 600 years before they transpired then wow! Our normal conceptions of space and time need to be radically reconsidered. But if the story is made up, it doesn't tell us anything beyond the author's imagination. 

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Once you take seriously the statements made by the Three Witnesses, mortal assumptions about the laws of nature become pretty irrelevant. The fact that they were actually seeing an angelic being arrayed in light and hearing a voice from heaven makes the presentation of the artifacts (whether they were physically present or only present in vision) a moot point.

Assuming that what they saw was an actual angelic being is a huge, HUGE assumption that goes beyond what they could know as fact witnesses. As a fact witness they can describe what they experienced, and as a serious arbiter of facts, I'll listen and weigh what they say carefully. But assuming it was an authentic "angelic being" is something that can't be established by their testimonies alone.  

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Imagine if you were one of the witnesses and had the experience as they described it.

Given that I just can't muster the religious faith that was required to have the experience, and the fact that I just couldn't muster the "fervent prayer" that was required to have the experience in the first place, I really can't imagine having this experience.

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The logical inference would be that if the angel was showing you these items...

Again, what does this mean? Is the claim that there was a physical object there that was reflecting or radiating light waves in the visible spectrum that I could then see with my eyeballs? Or is it a vision that Joseph Smith saw, and that Joseph didn't know Martin Harris saw too until the latter exclaimed, "Tis enough! Mine eyes have beheld! Mine eyes have beheld!"

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

...and if they are the same items that you were promised and predicted to behold through Joseph Smith's revelation (D&C 17), and if they correlate to the text of the Book of Mormon, and if they validate Joseph Smith's claims about his physical retrieval of some of these items, and if you hear a voice confirming the truth of the translation from heaven, then it hardly matters at that point whether the items are physically there before you or whether you are seeing a visionary (but accurate) representation of them. 

Perhaps that is the logical inference, but I'm more interested in understanding the facts they witnessed as opposed to what they inferred from this experience. 

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

And we have dozens of accounts from first, second, and third hand sources to look at. When we apply standard historical evaluation of these sources, they overwhelmingly support Joseph Smith's claims.

I disagree. I think you are cherry-picking the evidence, and ignoring the fact that the evidence is the way it is because Joseph Smith went to herculean lengths to prevent qualified and objectively-minded people from seeing the evidence. That context matters.

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Erm, I don't think Earman has a particularly high opinion of Hume. If this is how Professor Earman writes about people he likes, then I'd hate to be his enemy:

That quote isn't about Hume; it is about Hume's essay.

Out of curiosity, do you think Earman holds low opinions of Price and Bayes, too? 

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

But that's an aside. I confess I think Pinker's handling of Hume and Earman is not good.  Earman's point about Hume's "zinger" is that it boils down to "does the testimony make the miracle more likely than not." 

The apparent power of the "zinger" lies in its rhetorical flourish, not any statement about reasoning. The meat of the argument, such as it is, is in the assertion that miracles should get a very low prior probability.

Are we reading the same paper? Earman sees "triviality" in the zinger. That's why he says, "Hume's maxim is the correct but unhelpful principle that no testimony is sufficient to establish the credibility of a miracle unless the testimony makes the miracle more likely than not." Thinking that a statement is trivial rather than profound isn't thinking that the statement is wrong.

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

This has to be established but Pinker just says it. Earman himself disbelieves in miracles but the reasoning he offers for it is as follows:

In layman's terms - since God's revelations always allow for uncertainty, the possibility of "washing out priors" is impossible. Therefore, the assessment of probability is subjective, and Earman disbelieves in miracles as a matter of taste. In other words, we're right back where we started. "Extraordinary" is in the eye of the beholder.

I disagree with your layman's interpretations. You pulled out of nowhere the concept that "God's revelations always allow for uncertainty." You might believe that, but that would be your opinion, not Earman's. A lot of Earman's point is pretty technical and I'll admit I don't understand it (e.g. I will say that the truth of the matter as regards H vs H' is strongly underdetermined by the empirical iff H and H' have the same empirical content in that there is a one-one map I:MH MH' such that for all mE MN the corresponding empirical submodels moEM~ and I(m)oE.MZ' are isomorphic.) My best guess is that he is saying in technical jargon that people can't agree on what the evidence is or what it implies, so you can look at the same thing and come to different conclusions and never come to an agreement.

But he goes on to say, "a characteristic feature of religious doctrines is that, even on the most liberal construal of 'the empirical', they are subject to strong empirical underdetermination..."

Saying that religion is "subject to strong empirical underdetermination" is a polite way of saying that the evidence supporting religion just isn't there. 

I suppose I need to find a more detailed and dumbed-down version of this to understand all of the nuances. Earman readily agrees with Pinker regarding the primacy of Bayesian reasoning. However, they might disagree about how practical this is in the real world, given that determining what the evidence is and how it ought to be interpreted is allegedly subjective. That's my take.

[OGHoosier]

I don't think it'd be very fruitful at this point to get into the weeds of the alleged primacy of Bayesian reasoning. There are alternatives besides frequentism but they aren't as well known and I personally don't know them very well, though I think I'll take a look now that I mention it. Seems to me that Bayesianism doesn't escape the problem of subjective priors, or really even try to, and so we end up where we began vis a vis ECREE.

[Analytics]

So what do I make of the stories of the eleven formal witnesses, plus the informal witnesses? Ultimately, I find the evidence inconclusive and I don’t know. Admitting I don't know isn't being apathetic, @smac97. It is being honest. But, here is what I think is most likely.

First, I’d like to stipulate something: The witnesses were basically good, honest, and smart people. They were neither conmen nor dupes. So however you respond to this, don’t say I’m calling them conmen or dupes. I am not.

Facts

1. The witnesses of the physical plates described plates being something like 6 or 7 inches wide by 8 inches tall, and that the total stack was 5 or 6 inches high. 2 or 3 inches of that was the unsealed section, and 3 or 4 inches was the sealed portion.
2. Multiple witnesses said each plate was the same thickness as common tin. They also said fine engravings were cut into the plates on both sides. Some witnesses claim that they were considerably thinner, but if they were thinner than tin they wouldn’t have been thick enough to engrave characters on both sides. So I conclude that they must have been as thick as tin.
3. Look at any attempt to model the plates and you immediately see the problem—given that they were made of metal and were thick enough to engrave carvings on both sides, there could only be at most a few dozen plates in the unsealed portion. There is absolutely no way that provides enough area of writing surface to contain the entire Book of Mormon.
4. Regardless of what the physical artifact actually was, it could not have been the real-world source of the Book of Mormon text.
5. Joseph Smith and the witnesses subscribed to the ethical system described in Moroni 7:6-19 which says that if something persuades people to believe in Christ and to have faith, then it must be of God and cannot be of the devil. 
6. The experience of the three witnesses came as a result of “much” faith and “fervent” prayer, and actually sounds like it was pretty dramatic, with Martin Harris running away from the group because the vision wasn't coming as he expected, and it made him feel insecure. Joseph Smith was there both times the “vision was opened,” and Martin Harris needed to tell Joseph Smith that he saw it. The language “Tis enough! Tis enough!” sounds like their fervent prayers were taxing on him.
7. Mormons believe in spiritual things as well as physical things. If you “see” something, it could be seeing physical things with your natural eyes, or it could be seeing spiritual things with your spiritual eyes.
8. Joseph Smith was a persuasive religious leader and was capable of getting people to make extremely serious promises to him, including promises to lie and deceive for the greater good (e.g. the way he instructed his “wives” to lie about being married to him).  

My Proposed Pious Semi-Fraud Theory
I propose that Joseph Smith believed in a “real” set of golden plates, but didn’t actually have access to these real plates physically. This "real" set of plates is the set of plates he convinced the three witnesses to see with their spiritual eyes. They were as “real” as all other spiritual things are real. This spiritual set of plates is what he claimed to be translating.

I propose that he had a second set of plates which were physical. These plates weren’t nearly as impressive as one would imagine, but how unimpressive they were is unknown. They were as thick as common tin because they were made out of common tin, or maybe copper. A large section of them were “sealed” because “sealing them” was easier than making the tedious engravings. Their unimpressive nature is the main reason they were kept hidden. I propose the eight witnesses knew these were a prop, and were slightly exaggerating what they saw because doing so brought people to Christ, increased, faith, and thus was of God. I propose the purpose of these plates was to generate interest in his publication and also, perhaps, to help motivate him to finish the project. They were thought of as a real-world representation of the real plates that existed in the spirit realm.

I propose all the witnesses were generally telling the truth about their spiritual and physical experiences, but may they may have exaggerated, embellished, or left details out because that is what they promised Joseph they would do. This is also what God wanted them to do, because it helped bring people to Christ and therefore was of God.

Other Questions
This theory doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain where the physical plates came from. And it doesn’t explain how Joseph Smith wrote the book. But just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we don’t know some things. What we do know is that there is absolutely no way the text Book of Mormon could have been engraved on a small set of metal plates—there just isn’t enough surface area there. So the text had to have come from somewhere else.

But where did the plates that weren't the source of the Book of Mormon come from? It’s unlikely that anybody in the 1800’s made such a thing. However, it is much less likely that somebody in antiquity made them. So applying proper Bayesian reasoning, we choose the unlikely explanation that is the least unlikely. That leads us to the conclusion that whatever it was that Joseph Smith kept hidden and showed to the eight witnesses, it was of modern origin.
 

[Benjamin Seeker]

12 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Other Questions
This theory doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain where the physical plates came from. And it doesn’t explain how Joseph Smith wrote the book. But just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we don’t know some things. What we do know is that there is absolutely no way the text Book of Mormon could have been engraved on a small set of metal plates—there just isn’t enough surface area there. So the text had to have come from somewhere else.

But where did the plates that weren't the source of the Book of Mormon come from? It’s unlikely that anybody in the 1800’s made such a thing. However, it is much less likely that somebody in antiquity made them. So applying proper Bayesian reasoning, we choose the unlikely explanation that is the least unlikely. That leads us to the conclusion that whatever it was that Joseph Smith kept hidden and showed to the eight witnesses, it was of modern origin.
 

As an academically-bent exmo, I love your hypothesis. Builds off Vogel and Taves and firmly rooted in all the evidence we have.

On the plates not offering enough surface area, JS subscribed to the idea, just a few year later, that one symbol could represent a bunch of text. This idea was probably already floating around in his head. The BoM specifically says their writing system prioritizes space. It’s a stretch, but who knows.

[Stormin' Mormon]

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

What we do know is that there is absolutely no way the text Book of Mormon could have been engraved on a small set of metal plates—there just isn’t enough surface area there.
 

Brant Gardner addresses this on page 29 of Second Witness, Volume 1.  He cites a Janne Sjodahl who wrote:

Quote

On a space seven by eight inches, my friend, Brother Henry Miller, a Hebrew by birth, has written with pen and ink fourteen pages of the Book of Mormon text, translated into Hebrew, using the square letters in wihch the Hebrew Bibles are now printed.  That is to say, the entire Book of Mormon, fourteen pages of the American text to each page of Hebrew, could be written on 40 3/7 pages--21 plates in all.  

Gardner also cites John Gee who double-checked the experiment against the larger lettering found in other Hebrew inscriptions.

Quote

When Gee examined inscriptions that approximated engraving found on seals, bullae, and stone weights, the writing compared favorably with Miller's renderings, making the experiment a reasonable approximation.

In our modern age, we are so used to line spacing, punctuation, and even vowels, that we can overestimate how much space ancient writing actually needed.

Edited March 1, 2024 by Stormin' Mormon

[GoCeltics]

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

Mormons believe in spiritual things as well as physical things. If you “see” something, it could be seeing physical things with your natural eyes, or it could be seeing spiritual things with your spiritual eyes.

If an angel appears to you, how do you know if you are seeing him or her with spiritual eyes or
physical eyes?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

Just now, GoCeltics said:

If an angel appears to you, how do you know if you are seeing him or her with spiritual eyes or
physical eyes?

Exactly. It would be nice to know what exactly Harris meant by spiritual eyes. Clearly the phrase had some meaning to him that we can only guess at. 

[CV75]

44 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Exactly. It would be nice to know what exactly Harris meant by spiritual eyes. Clearly the phrase had some meaning to him that we can only guess at. 

I'm pretty sure he meant he saw them primarily with spiritual power (faith, the Holy Ghost, transfiguration, etc.), to whatever other degree that power may have "quickened" his physical eyes, brain, mind, etc. to also see them naturally.

But even if he were to nail it down to "a spiritual eye", "spiritual eyes" or "eyes of faith" alone, his testimony is no different than those that people write in a copy of the Book of Mormon to encourage and invite others to read the book. It makes sense to me that each of the three witnesses had individually distinctive experiences that they could personally describe as various degrees of spiritual / supernatural and physical / natural involvement while collectively agreeing to sign the statement as an accurate description of their shared experience.

I originally read these witnesses fully appreciating how a skeptic might take them, and that there may have been ulterior motives in signing them, and questioning their value. That says more about me than about them, since as you point out, we can on only guess on exactly what was going on, which is reflective of our bias no matter how we strive to rationalize/justify our conclusions about other people. A personal witness of the Book of Mormon helps me appreciate theirs, however faultily expressed, and appreciate mine even if theirs may turn out to have been manufactured or false in the first place.

I must say I have gained a great deal more by studying the Book of Mormon than by critiquing their witness about it, and I empathize with their willingness to put themselves on the line even if it was for something they believed in that turned out to be true.

Edited March 1, 2024 by CV75

[Benjamin Seeker]

29 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Exactly. It would be nice to know what exactly Harris meant by spiritual eyes. Clearly the phrase had some meaning to him that we can only guess at. 

We have at least one possible answer from a letter written by Stephen Burnett in 1838.  The letter is the infamous one that summarizes the meeting where Martin Harris admitted that no one saw the plates physically, except under a cloth etc., and that all of the witnesses had visionary experiences of some sort. This was in the wake of Kirtland Safety Society failing and a huge loss of faith in JS across the board, which was the impetus for a more critical approach to JS and others’ claims. 
 

In the letter, while Stephen is writing about the plates he says, “if they only saw them spiritually or in vision with their eyes shut…” and then goes on to conclude that they weren’t ever physical. 

Obviously, Burnett is not Martin Harris, but he is a contemporary, a baptized and believing member since the early 1830s (served missions etc.). He’s not an “insider” by JS’ standards, but he’s got a lot more insight than any of us have. So, what does seeing something with spiritual eyes mean? Possibly, seeing it with your eyes shut! 👀

link to the letter: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letterbook-2/70

[Benjamin Seeker]

11 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I'm pretty sure he meant he saw them primarily with spiritual power (faith, the Holy Ghost, transfiguration, etc.), to whatever other degree that power may have "quickened" his physical eyes, brain, mind, etc. to also see them naturally.

But even if he were to nail it down to "a spiritual eye", "spiritual eyes" or "eyes of faith" alone, his testimony is no different than those that people write in a copy of the Book of Mormon to encourage and invite others to read the book. It makes sense to me that each of the three witnesses had individually distinctive experiences that they could personally describe as various degrees of spiritual / supernatural and physical / natural involvement while collectively agreeing to sign the statement as an accurate description of their shared experience.

I originally read these witnesses fully appreciating how a skeptic might take them, and that there may have been ulterior motives in signing them, and questioning their value. That says more about me than about them, since as you point out, we can on only guess on exactly what was going on, which is reflective of our bias no matter how we strive to rationalize/justify our conclusions about other people. A personal witness of the Book of Mormon helps me appreciate theirs, however faultily expressed, and appreciate mine even if theirs may turn out to have been manufactured or false in the first place.

I must say I have gained a great deal more by studying the Book of Mormon than by critiquing their witness about it, and I empathize with their willingness to put themselves on the line even if it was for something they believed in that turned out to be true.

See my last post for a historically-informed guess. 

[Analytics]

11 hours ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Brant Gardner addresses this on page 29 of Second Witness, Volume 1.  He cites a Janne Sjodahl who wrote:

Gardner also cites John Gee who double-checked the experiment against the larger lettering found in other Hebrew inscriptions.

First off, thank you for addressing my points. I'm now imagining if a skilled craftsman was going edge-to-edge on the plates and minimizing spaces and vowels, and was writing in the same tiny font that, say, "in God we trust" is written on a dime, maybe the whole thing could have fit on the plates. Have any of the witnesses described the size of the characters and the amount of white space on the plates?

It's really interesting to think about somebody translating 14 pages of the Book of Mormon into Hebrew to see if they could fit it onto the plates. For purposes of my own amusement, I hope Mormon Chapter 9 was part of what he translated and wrote. That is where we read:

And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.

11 hours ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

In our modern age, we are so used to line spacing, punctuation, and even vowels, that we can overestimate how much space ancient writing actually needed.

Touche. 

Edited March 1, 2024 by Analytics

[SeekingUnderstanding]

14 minutes ago, CV75 said:

'm pretty sure he meant

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take your word for it. 

[CV75]

14 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

As an academically-bent exmo, I love your hypothesis. Builds off Vogel and Taves and firmly rooted in all the evidence we have.

On the plates not offering enough surface area, JS subscribed to the idea, just a few year later, that one symbol could represent a bunch of text. This idea was probably already floating around in his head. The BoM specifically says their writing system prioritizes space. It’s a stretch, but who knows.

Engravings within engravings? Semordnilap (a palindrome)-like sentences and word puzzle-like arrangements that provide different narratives from different directions? Complex but not impossible, unless only simplicity as the most likely explanation is permitted for multiplying what can be conveyed by a limited number of characters on a limited amount of space.

[CV75]

10 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

See my last post for a historically-informed guess. 

Thank you, and this works for those who "can only guess at" what Martin Harris meant on available documentation.

[Benjamin Seeker]

5 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Engravings within engravings? Semordnilap (a palindrome)-like sentences and word puzzle-like arrangements that provide different narratives from different directions? Complex but not impossible, unless only simplicity as the most likely explanation is permitted for multiplying what can be conveyed by a limited number of characters on a limited amount of space.

I just meant where one symbol can convey lots of meaning. You can see what I mean looking at the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language document. The document gives different levels of meaning, and by the time you get to the last level it’s a lot of text, like a couple of sentences, for a single symbol.

Edited March 1, 2024 by Benjamin Seeker

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

I just meant where one symbol can convey lots of meaning. You can see what I mean looking at the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language document. The document gives different levels of meaning, and by the time you get to the last level it’s a lot of text, like a couple of sentences, for a single symbol.

I see your point. Apparently, Joseph Smith didn't think Hebrew could fit onto the plates he had (see Mormon 9:33), despite Henry Miller proving he was wrong about that a couple centuries later. But as you said,  the Book of Abraham translation, including the  Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, demonstrates that Joseph Smith thought in Egyptian, you could cram multiple sentences into one symbol.

[Ryan Dahle]

22 hours ago, Analytics said:

What we do know is that there is absolutely no way the text Book of Mormon could have been engraved on a small set of metal plates—there just isn’t enough surface area there. So the text had to have come from somewhere else.

Rather than being something you absolutely "know," it seems your is conclusion is based on untested assumptions. Here are some recent treatments of this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAgzJ8MYrcw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSEPCvN5yc0

 

Edited March 2, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

22 hours ago, Analytics said:

This theory doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain where the physical plates came from. And it doesn’t explain how Joseph Smith wrote the book. But just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we don’t know some things. What we do know is that there is absolutely no way the text Book of Mormon could have been engraved on a small set of metal plates—there just isn’t enough surface area there. So the text had to have come from somewhere else.

But where did the plates that weren't the source of the Book of Mormon come from? It’s unlikely that anybody in the 1800’s made such a thing. However, it is much less likely that somebody in antiquity made them. So applying proper Bayesian reasoning, we choose the unlikely explanation that is the least unlikely. That leads us to the conclusion that whatever it was that Joseph Smith kept hidden and showed to the eight witnesses, it was of modern origin.

I think there are a LOT more things that your theory doesn't explain (and probably can't explain) that are relevant to the authenticity of the plates and the veracity of Joseph Smith's claims involving the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. 

[california boy]

On 2/29/2024 at 8:40 PM, Stormin' Mormon said:

Brant Gardner addresses this on page 29 of Second Witness, Volume 1.  He cites a Janne Sjodahl who wrote:

Gardner also cites John Gee who double-checked the experiment against the larger lettering found in other Hebrew inscriptions.

In our modern age, we are so used to line spacing, punctuation, and even vowels, that we can overestimate how much space ancient writing actually needed.

Just curious.  I see a big difference between writing on paper with a pen and engraving with a stylist on gold plates.  Has anyone every tried to duplicate this experiment onto metal plates using a stylist that might have been used during the BoM time?  And what would that stylist possibly be made out of to press fine details of an alphabet into the metal?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

10 hours ago, california boy said:

Just curious.  I see a big difference between writing on paper with a pen and engraving with a stylist on gold plates.  Has anyone every tried to duplicate this experiment onto metal plates using a stylist that might have been used during the BoM time?  And what would that stylist possibly be made out of to press fine details of an alphabet into the metal?

Per Ryan Dahl’s link looking at ancient metal inscriptions you’d need between 400 and 57 plates. 

[Analytics]

16 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I think there are a LOT more things that your theory doesn't explain (and probably can't explain) that are relevant to the authenticity of the plates and the veracity of Joseph Smith's claims involving the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. 

Does my theory explain everything? No. But that isn’t what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to look at the totality of the evidence and based on that, decide what is most likely.

My key claim has two parts:

1- A 19th century origin for the Book of Mormon is unlikely.

2- An ancient origin for the Book of Mormon is much less likely.

Pointing out that I can’t explain everything in detail doesn’t change the fact that a nineteenth century origin is more plausible than an ancient origin.

[Teancum]

On 2/26/2024 at 3:19 PM, mfbukowski said:

All true critics need to get on with life.   Whatever you have for you, you think is  better- so get on with life.

 

Comments like this get tiresome and weary.

You assume that disaffected/former active members have not gotten on with life if they take an interest still in Mormonism and if they engage in valid criticism.

This is not the case.

I like discussing Mormonism.  I still have an interest in it and what is going on with it.

Also it dominated my entire life for most of it.

It still touches my life through friends and family. Significantly.

I am getting on with my life quite fine thank you even with spending some of it touching on Mormonism.

Why encourage us to get on with it. 

Ya never know, maybe some could come back. I have considered it here and there. Who knows? 🤷‍♂️

 

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Teancum said:

Comments like this get tiresome and weary.

You assume that disaffected/former active members have not gotten on with life if they take an interest still in Mormonism and if they engage in valid criticism.

This is not the case.

I like discussing Mormonism.  I still have an interest in it and what is going on with it.

Also it dominated my entire life for most of it.

It still touches my life through friends and family. Significantly.

I am getting on with my life quite fine thank you even with spending some of it touching on Mormonism.

Why encourage us to get on with it. 

Ya never know, maybe some could come back. I have considered it here and there. Who knows? 🤷‍♂️

 

Good point, thanks, and sorry!

[OGHoosier]

As a coda to the earlier conversation on the size of the plates, I found Jeff Lindsay's treatment of the issue via Robert Boylan:

https://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-many-metal-plates-composed-mormons.html

Here's John Gee's note on discovered artifacts from First Temple Jerusalem (bullae and stone weights) with paleo-Hebrew carvings similar in size to Henry Miller's carvings: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=jbms

The Book of Mormon may (though I don't think so) have 99 problems, but fitting on the plates ain't one.