ldsfaqs wrote:1. Nephi's group as per the information presented in the Book of Mormon a small group that placed itself into a larger group.
(chuckle)
No small irony that a person who goes by the handle "ldsfaqs" has never even bothered to read the Book of Mormon a single time. You should get on that...
Dan Vogel wrote:Motive isn’t important if one only wants to prove Joseph Smith a fraud. Writing a biography requires more. Historians should want to explain Joseph Smith, not simply judge or dismiss him.
Hi, Dan, it’s good to see you. It’s been a while. You are correct that I am not a historian, and I appreciate your work regarding Joseph Smith. As I said, I can’t judge his motivations, and it’s entirely possible he was a pious fraud. He strikes me as a complex character with changing and often contradictory motives. No one will ever really know his history. What I was responding to was the notion that the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction, in which case I don’t think Joseph’s motives are relevant.
Right. I often say that scholars can’t decide if the Book of Mormon is “inspired”; a better question to answer is: did Joseph Smith think the Book of Mormon was inspired? I have said, yes. I based it on the definition of inspired in Moroni 7:13: whatever is good or entices to do good is inspired of God.
I do not want you to think that I am very righteous, for I am not. Joseph Smith (History of the Church 5:401)
The question of whether Joseph Smith was sincere seems like the question of whether L. Ron Hubbard was sincere.
The thing about Hubbard is that the most basic notion in his Scientology is that "Big Beings" can define reality by getting others to agree with their "postulates". So Hubbard could have been totally sincere AND ALSO consciously manipulating people by getting them to believe stuff that he just made up. The particular doctrine that Hubbard proclaimed was convenient that way. It made sincerity and deliberate fraud entirely compatible.
It seems to me that Smith's teaching was similar, because the most basic Mormon teaching seems to have been just that Smith was a prophet. In other words, things would pop into his head somehow, and people would be supposed to believe them. If you sincerely believe that, then you can make things up and get people to believe them. Sincerity and conscious fraud are compatible.
In general I think sincerity is worth something and should be respected. It's at least an extenuating circumstance, when someone does something bad, if they sincerely believed it was the right thing to do. Beliefs like those of Hubbard and Smith, though, are exceptions for me. Sincerely believing that other people are supposed to believe your ideas just because they're your ideas is not like other kinds of sincere belief. It deserves no respect and it is not an excuse.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Jun 17, 2018 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If you are having trouble viewing the small print, open the online PDF.
Gee, who is this "small group" which looks for trans Atlantic visitors to have contributed to ancient Native American dna? What ancient American natives have they derived dna from, and how? Modern Native Americans might have European dna, and having lived out West for a long period of time, anybody can deduce that by just looking at some Indians. However, the "small group" of those hoping for some kind of Middle Eastern dna are all Mormons i'M SURE.
Servant wrote: Gee, who is this "small group" which looks for trans Atlantic visitors to have contributed to ancient Native American dna? What ancient American natives have they derived dna from, and how? Modern Native Americans might have European dna, and having lived out West for a long period of time, anybody can deduce that by just looking at some Indians. However, the "small group" of those hoping for some kind of Middle Eastern dna are all Mormons i'M SURE.
Well, not surprisingly, bonafide DNA researchers are aware that post European settlement DNA would reflect that. They like to use DNA collected from the remains of Native Americans before that time. It's quite possible to do that now. Here's an example from a reliable source: