It's the magic rocks, folks

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_DrW
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _DrW »

Thanks for posting the letter, Grindael. It is information such as this that is slowly but surely helping to negate more than a century and a half of the half truths and outright lies that have traditionally passed for LDS Church history.

As more and more of these contemporary historical documents are dredged up, validated, and made available on the internet, the Church and its leadership continue lose credibility. This makes extracting time and money from the members more difficult and no doubt more frustrating.
David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."

DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
_grindael
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _grindael »

They are almost all in Dan Vogel's awesome set "Early Mormon Documents". I recommend the entire set of books. You can also find it at the JSP website, (Letterbook II).
Riding on a speeding train; trapped inside a revolving door;
Lost in the riddle of a quatrain; Stuck in an elevator between floors.
One focal point in a random world can change your direction:
One step where events converge may alter your perception.
_SuperDell
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _SuperDell »

As a missionary we never told anyone about magic peepstones and a hat to get the Book of Mormon. Never even heard of it - the flannel board characters were Gold Plates, Urim & Thummim(if I remember it right) and Book of Mormon. Nothing about magic peepstones at all. If that is the way it was - why were we lied to and pushed to teach lies to those we were trying to baptize?

That pisses me off more than anything else - Lies to try and convince us we had the truth. From "leaders" we put our trust in. They make Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker and the like look honest.
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.”
― Joseph Joubert
_Maksutov
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _Maksutov »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Maksutov wrote:If there's anything that just sets me in belly laugh, WTF mode, it's the magic rocks.

When I look around at everything that can come from a hoax, I truly stand all amazed. The power of magic rocks. Every Mormon has to believe in them to make it to the Celestial Kingdom. In the 21st frigging century, where we talk on the internet and send probes to the Kuiper Belt. Magic. Goddamn. Rocks.

Can I dignify this with the word 'myth'? 'Scam' keeps coming to mind.

Sorry I didn't work out all this in the great thread that Kish started. :lol: But really. Magic. Goddamn. Rocks.


You're just wrong dude. It's magic rocks with knowledge of English! Without that context, you misunderstand. Now say it outloud, magic goddamn rocks that know English. See? That makes sooooooo much more sense now.... if it had communicated in an apostate language, say Spanish instead of the inspired of God English language, THEN you could have logically detected fraud and man made shenanigans. But an English knowing/communicating rock is accurate within ancient contexts from Mesoamerica somewhere, I am just more than sure. I read it on the internet once.:biggrin: :eek:


There's no freaking bottom to it. None. :eek:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_grindael
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _grindael »

This idea that folk magic and Christianity were one and the same, and that Smith's Latter Day Saints Church sprang out of his folk magic beliefs is simply an apologist fabrication because they can't otherwise explain the overwhelming evidence that Smith was inventing it all. It would be like starting a church and claiming that the Christian God was really an alien, and that it was acceptable because many Christians believed in aliens. In fact, someone has done just that, John Polk,

Hello, my name is Reverend John Polk. I am channeling “Yahweh”, the Judeo-Christian and Islamic creator-god-alien featured in the Bible, the Hebrew Bible and in the Quran. For thousands of years, up to this present day, he has been masquerading as the real God and is pulling a collective veil over the eyes of most of the world. Ancient alien astronaut theorists comprehend this reality, but most of humanity has no idea. Yahweh tells me the time draws near for full alien disclosure, so that we primitive Earthlings can be weaned off of the Mother Universe’s figurative bosom. He wants the world to know that he is an extraterrestrial, that he is not God and that all God-figures in all cultures are ET’s, not God. However, all creator-gods and Yahweh had wanted we humans to keep worshiping those creator-gods just like always. As collective humanity adapts to this knowledge, religion, culture and tradition need not change. For now, you may pray to the alien god you have worshiped all along but now, pray to the real God as well. The real God loves everyone regardless of their religion or belief system and therefore, he is the God for everyone. https://www.amazon.com/Yahweh-Biblical- ... 1516936434

Is this any different than Joseph's "restoration" via "folk magic"? One could even say that this is the right time for this to come forth, because until the "Roswell Incident" people were just not attuned to aliens. The culture then allowed more and more people to believe in them and for it to become more acceptable. This prepared the world for the true prophet, John Polk. 
Riding on a speeding train; trapped inside a revolving door;
Lost in the riddle of a quatrain; Stuck in an elevator between floors.
One focal point in a random world can change your direction:
One step where events converge may alter your perception.
_Holy Ghost
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _Holy Ghost »

grindael wrote:What is insidious is the way that modern apologists have tried to make the claim that all of that was MAINSTREAM BEHAVIOR in the 19th century. No, it was not. It was prevalent in society, but in no way, shape or form was it MAINSTREAM.

I was recently reading a thesis about all this called "Behold an Angel of the Lord Came and Stood Before Me: A Cultural Examination of Joseph Smith's 1823 Visions of Moroni" by Adam Price Hock, and it is full of the same apologist nonsense that has been spouted since the time of Hugh Nibley. What is insidious is how he tries to interweave Evangelical Visions and Dreams, with treasure hunting and how this was all normal to the time period. One only has to go to the Smith family, to see how off they were, in relation to the Christians of the time they lived in. Here is what the brother of Joseph Smith Sr. wrote to Hyrum in 1829,

Once as I thot my promising Nephew, You wrote to my Father long ago, that after struggling thro various scenes of adversity, you and your family, you had at last taught the very solutary lesson that the God that made the heavens and the earth w[o]uld at onc[e] give success to your endeavours, this if true, is very well, exactly as it should be—but alas what is man when left to his own way, he makes his own gods, if a golden calf, he falls down and worships before it, and says this is my god which brought me out of the land of Vermont—if it be a gold book discovered by the necromancy of infidelity, & dug from the mines of atheism, he writes that the angel of the Lord has revealed to him the hidden treasures of wisdom & knowledge, even divine revelation, which has lain in the bowels of the earth for thousands of years [and] is at last made known to him, he says he has eyes to see things that art not, and then has the audacity to say they are; and the angel of the Lord (Devil it should be) has put me in possession of great wealth, gold & silver and precious stones so that I shall have the dominion in all the land of Palmyra.

In a subsequent letter you write that you learn from your Grandfather’s letter that uncle Jesse [Smith] thinks you are carrying on a work of deception, in this he and you are right, Uncle Jesse did, and still does think the whole pretended discovery, not a very deep, but a very clear and foolish deception, a very great wickedness, unpardonable, unless you are shielded by your ignorance. Again you say, if you are decieved God is your deciever, Blasphemous wretch— how dare you utter such a sentence, how dare you harbor such a thot— aye, you never did think so, but being hardened in iniquity, you made use of the holy name of Jehovah! for what, why to cover your nefarious designs & impose on the credulity of your Grandfather, one of the oldest men on the earth, Blackness of darkness!

You say you have God for a witness— to prove the truth of what you write miserable creature, not to say perjured villain, how dare you thus trifle, in taking the name of God in vain, nay far worse than vain— that God with whom you thus trifle, is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity he cannot look on sin with any degree of approbation or complacency it is true he passeth by iniquity transgression and sin in his redeemed ones, he sees their shield, and for his sake recieves them to favour, but to such as make lead books, and declare to the world that they are of the most fine gold, calling on the great & dreadful name of the most High to witness the truth of their assertions, He says “depart from me ye that work iniquity,” and again “these shall go away into everlasting punishment, they shall be cast into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” these are the angels that tell where to find gold books.——

Your Grandfather is sorely disappointed he would not have listened a moment to your foolery, had he been forty years younger, he would have discovered barefaced falsehood in every line of your statement, nor would he as it is, but they say there must be one fool in the play, your good, pious & methodistical uncle Asahel [Smith] induced his father to give credit to your tale of nonsense, your abominable wickedness.— but now the poor old man just dropping into the grave is in tears day and night as David, mourning as did David over Absolam, who fell in rebellion against God & man, my poor old father is in deep mourning, not for his younger son, he sleeps in the dust, his ashes are not disturbed by your horrible deeds, he was taken from this evil, he mourns for <​Joe &​> his numerous family, not because wild beasts have torn him in pieces, but because he has destroyed himself & associated so much with thieves and robbers murderers etc etc

Your father would not be implicated in this place, but for the message he sent by the hands of a fool to my brother Saml [Smith] this fellow says that you and your father are in this business very deep the fellow also believes all to be a fact, this to be sure, for no one unless predisposed to believe a lie would have heard a syllable from either of you on the subject, he says your father has a wand or rod like Jannes & Jambres who withstood Moses in Egypt— that he can tell the distance from India to Ethiopia or another fool story, many other things alike ridiculous.
You state your Father cannot write by reason of a nervous affection this is a poor excuse, worse than none, he can dictate to others and they can write, he can If he knows not what to write, he can get your Brother’s spectacles he would then be as able to write dictate a letter, as Joe is to decypher hieroglyphics, if more should be wanting he can employ the same scoundrel of a scribe, and then not only the matter but manner and style would be correct.

My compliments to your Father and Mother, tell them I wish them to review through years <​that are​> past, and say if they have done well in not writing to me these many years, tell them the time has been when they were glad to see me, but I am suspicious that the length of time since we last parted, has in some measure obliterated me from their memory, so that they would not now be pleased to recieve a visit from me, If they will write me that I may know their affairs and how they do, I will give them a history of the family concern &c

I write this at the request of my Father not for your sake you have not written to me, the story is that the gold book proved to be never wrote lead, that the Authority have taken it & Joe is under bonds to appear before his betters, so let it be.

Jesse Smith.
Mr Hiram Smith.
Palmyra N.Y.
Wayne County..

That is flabbergasting. Do you have a list of materials that you've found in the Joseph Smith Papers that show Joseph Smith was up to no good?
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
_Fence Sitter
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _Fence Sitter »

I have a question wrote:I'm beginning to think Rusty is the first President in ages to make institutional decisions on the basis that a rock told him to do it...

Can we a least be somewhat respectful here? Dallin Oaks has a name you know.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
_Holy Ghost
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Re: It's the magic rocks, folks

Post by _Holy Ghost »

Fence Sitter wrote:
I have a question wrote:I'm beginning to think Rusty is the first President in ages to make institutional decisions on the basis that a rock told him to do it...

Can we a least be somewhat respectful here? Dallin Oaks has a name you know.

So does Wendy
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
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