Not to worry about offending me with your confessed “lack of tact.” It’s not lost on me that this is a Catholic site and that I post here at the pleasure of its owners, which pleasure could end at any time. As a Latter-day Saint, I know I’m “in the kitchen” here, and am aware of where I should go if I dislike the heat. So on topics that interest me, I’ll try to give as good as I get from you knuckleheads (my brother and his family are devout Catholics, so just don’t tell them I’m arguing here!
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I just tend to get focused on the subject matter and forget about how my opinions and explanations may come off to other people. At other times, I know that what I’m saying doesn’t really come from me, at all. Sometimes the Holy Spirit just takes over my thought processes and I go off on a serious tangent. I can’t even explain where else my inspiration comes from when that happens. I can only assume that He’s guiding my post, and sometimes puts many ideas into my mind. When I go back and read it, I’m a little dumbfounded, myself.
As to the plates and the witnesses who saw them, I realize that you reject their testimonies. But to say that they “never set eyes on any of those plates at all” is ludicrous.
In addition to the 11 witnesses whose written testimonies appear in every copy of the BOM, there were many informal witnesses who also saw the plates, and in some instances, the angel. For the sake of argument, discard them. Go ahead and also toss the formal, written testimony of the three witnesses (Harris, Cowdery, and D. Whitmer) because you are incredulous about the accompanying visionary manifestations. I’ll spot you that.
Reread those ‘testimonies’, especially of the 3 main witnesses. They clearly say things that imply that they did not actually see them with their physical eyes, but only in some kind of vision, which can easily just come from one’s imagination. They were out in the woods. Unless Joseph Smith carried the plates with him when they went off to pray, then they really weren’t physically there in the woods for them to look at with their bodily eyes. Sometimes, when people really want to believe in something badly enough, they can convince themselves that they actually saw something that was never there.
Another thing to consider, is that those men might not have wanted to feel ‘left out’ or ‘unworthy’ to see them, so they claimed to see whatever Joseph told them they should see. Reading about their hesitations in signing a document to swear an oath to have seen them makes that possibility even more plausible, if you really look at it objectively. In the other testimonies that I’ve read about, many claim to have ‘hefted’ the plates, but most of them that made that claim said they were always covered with a cloth, or hidden in some type of bag or box. There are so many conflicting stories that it’s difficult to know which ones might be accurate and which ones are not.
Sometimes, people will even make up the fact that they saw or did something just to try and impress other people by their stories. In the end, it all goes back to the credibility of the original ‘seer’. I find absolutely no credibility in Joseph Smith, whatsoever. He was a well known charlatan that defrauded people by using dowsing rods and a magic peepstone in his hat, which are both occult practices that the Bible clearly denounces as evil. That alone is enough to make me suspect fraud, or even delusion. Believing in any of his claims of visions or the methods of ‘translation’ that he used, is like believing in and living your whole life according to the daily horoscope in the newspaper. He was certainly good at ‘spinning a yarn’ and making up wild stories, but I don’t see anything remotely holy about him at all. That’s the first clue that God is not really working in him. Holiness is a sure sign of a saint.
But the eight witnesses simply saw the plates, handled them with their hands, turned their pages, and saw the characters written on them. They testified of nothing more. No supernatural aspects whatsoever. Their words:
“… and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings theron, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship … we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken.”
Even today, there are talented people that can create items that look like authentic antiquities that can even fool some real experts, but they’re totally fake. It wouldn’t be very difficult to fool simple country farm-folk that were basically, uneducated.
I’d say they set eyes on the plates. Of course you disagree, but you’ve done nothing to dissuade me from thinking that I have a reason to believe the accounts of the witnesses.
I certainly do disagree, but as always, you’re free to believe them if you choose to do so. However, when it comes to the state of your immortal soul, you need to be sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that what you believe is actually true.
Let me update you on the number of accounts of Joseph Smith’s first vision. The direct, primary historical sources now total ten accounts in thirteen documents – eight produced or reported in the first person by Joseph Smith himself, and five contemporary reports by others who heard him relate his experience and recorded what he said. It’s always best to sound as credible as possible when cracking on the Mormons!
How many of them are completely consistent and unchanged in any of their details? And, why is it that third party accounts are OK in regards to the ‘visions’, but not in regards to the KFD, or other sermons or prophecies given by JS or BY?
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