Meadowchik wrote:
I see it as an ethical burden that is overlooked by apologists and the church in general. They are humans perpetuating cradle-to-grave impositions on other humans, based on what? Especially when this includes such tightly controlling indoctrination, the assertion that participation is voluntary is invalid imo.
It is one thing to say "I believe" and then follow. It is another to say, "I think you should believe," and then recruit others on the basis of something that you cannot truly verify. If someone wants to believe the tradition that some of Jesus' followers saw him after his death and concluded that he had risen from the dead, well, that's one thing. But you can't say "I know about this ancient civilization that used to be here from an ancient book recovered from a box in the ground and translated by this guy I know," and then fail to verify this.
There never was any credible verification of the Book of Mormon, and that is because the Book of Mormon is not ancient, and there were no gold plates. There were no Nephites and Lamanites. There were no Jaredites. Believing Jesus rose from the dead is a little different from believing in a non-existent ancient civilization. The former is based on what was probably the honest experience of disciples of Jesus who knew him in life. The latter is based on something that is overwhelmingly likely, at some level, to be a lie or a pious fraud. I see no reason to accept the existence of plates. I do not see that the testimony of the witnesses has any value in verifying the existence of an ancient artifact on which Reformed Egyptian was inscribed with a Nephite record.
It was not anyone's job to verify this stuff but Joseph Smith's, and he failed to do so. What he did was round up family and friends to sign statements that were written for them. These family and friends had no expertise for evaluating Joseph's claims regarding the plates. I don't care if they claimed to see/touch the plates, claimed to see an angel, or what have you. Without the requisite expertise to evaluate ancient artifacts, their witness was absolutely worthless. Did any of them have sufficient expertise in archaeology, ancient history, or ancient languages to verify the authenticity of the plates or the accuracy of Joseph's translation? No.
For all we know they saw something Joseph made or paid to have made, and they saw someone dressed up like an angel. How are we to know, based on what has been passed down to us, that this theory is any less valid than Joseph's remarkable claim? The chances of my theory being correct are much higher than the chances of his phony baloney claim about ancient plates, Reformed Egyptian, angels, and ancient Hebrews in America.
Without any means of verifying Joseph Smith's claims, no scholar of Antiquity has any obligation to waste any time on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It is entirely a topic for students of modern Christianity and American history. It is tiresome to read the same hollow, idiotic verbiage about the failure of critics to invalidate made up nonsense. I might as well spend my efforts tracking down Alex Jones's bozo word diarrhea.
Which of us will waste our time investigating Pizzagate?
Heaven help us.