Why are people mormon considering it is obvioulsy fabricated?

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Cute picture.

What have you read about Joseph Smith? Any serious biographical or historical material?
 
Eliza10 said:
That is interesting. Wow, I guess they just focus on what he “discovered” before he discovered it wasn’t true. Strange.
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No. Actually, Tom Ferguson wasn’t a very important figure before or after. Nobody cites him today. Most Mormons wouldn’t recognize his name.
 
Synneve said:
And what, pray, have you read about Joseph Smith?

Have you read Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling? Mark McConkie’s Remembering Joseph? Dean Jessee’s edition of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith?

My impression of the man is dramatically, fundamentally different than yours. I’ve read quite a bit about him. What have you read?
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Wow. I have no interest in reading propaganda. I have read the facts. Not a romanticized version of Smith. I am aware of that version.

I read this entire website, have you? - www.wivesofjosephsmith.org

If you can be a Smith fan after reading that, I am really confused.

…http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2375/2468549670_c49f678a62.jpg?v=0
…
 
Eliza10 said:
Wow. I have no interest in reading propaganda. I have read the facts. Not a romanticized version of Smith.
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Richard Bushman, whose biography of Joseph Smith you’ve apparently just dismissed, unread, as “romanticized propaganda,” is Gouverneur Morris Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Columbia University in New York City, a winner of the Bancroft Prize, and one of the leading historians in America. His biography was published by that notorious Mormon propaganda outlet Alfred A. Knopf, in New York.

You say you’re interested in the facts?

Dean Jessee’s anthology of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith is a collection of primary source documents. Period.

And you say you’re interested in the facts?

You read a propaganda website, refuse to read anything else, and announce that you’re only interested in the facts???

Am I on Candid Camera?
 
Synneve said:
Richard Bushman, whose biography of Joseph Smith you’ve apparently just dismissed, unread, as “romanticized propaganda,” is Gouverneur Morris Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Columbia University in New York City, a winner of the Bancroft Prize, and one of the leading historians in America. His biography was published by that notorious Mormon propaganda outlet Alfred A. Knopf, in New York.

You say you’re interested in the facts?

Dean Jessee’s anthology of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith is a collection of primary source documents. Period.

And you say you’re interested in the facts?

You read a propaganda website, refuse to read anything else, and announce that you’re only interested in the facts???

Am I on Candid Camera?
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As a Catholic, I would never give up the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, in the Eucharist for bread and water. I don’t care what anyone says about Joseph Smith, the BoM, D & C, Pearl of Great Price, etc. etc. I would not give up the truth for a lie. My bet is, a lot of Catholics on this board agree with me on this one.
 
PaulDupre said:
Most of us don’t believe that Joseph Smith wrote the BoM; in fact, from Joseph’s statements it appears he never even read it,. The best evidence
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shows that Sidney Ridgon reworked the Spalding manuscript and inserted his own Campbellite theology into it, then used Joseph Smith as the Mohammed-like illiterate bumpkin who “could not possibly have written it”.

Sidney’s main problem was that nobody liked him, and Joseph turned out to be far more charismatic and power-hungry than he had anticipated. Sidney eventually got left out in the cold as Joseph gained more and more power.

Why Me writes:

Your story is very interesting. However, when Sidney left his former faith and joined the mormons many followed him to Mormonism. He was to my understanding a popular preacher in his former faith. Also, Sidney denied that he wrote the book of mormon on his deathbed. And since he had his up and downs with Joseph Smith, he never hinted at writing the book of mormon. And we need to remember that Joseph Smith asked Sidney’s daughter to be his plural wife and she said no. And Sidney was just a little troubled by it. Now of course, when your own daughter is a member of your fraud, I do think that he would have spilled the beans or at least his daughter would have known about it.

Now I have to say that there was much luck involved in this if all were a fraud: 11 witnesses that never denied their statesments, a bumpkin like Smith. And to have it all play out without a hint that it was all a fraud. Now of course, the rumors that sidney wrote the book were circulating at that time. But it did not exactly hold sway. I would imagine that when one met sidney the impression that he wrote the book would vanish. Plus, he was discovered by two mormon missionaries and the story is well documented.
 
Religio71 said:
ok fine, i’ll be the one to ask:

what’s with the cats???

😃
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Well. It started with this this overwhelming feeling of flabbergastedness. And then by about page 38, this was the only thing I could come up with to describe where I thought I had landed:
… http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3381/3615945882_a1beb63e01.jpg

Then a sleeping kitty seemed to describe what seemed to be going on around me:
…http://www.tocque-ville.it/images/rn/sleepy_cat.jpg
And then pretty soon everything got me thinking of sleeping kitties. They seem to just say it for me. And there you go.

http://protinuss.com/wp-content/uploads/sleepy_cat_1.jpg
 
mjf001 said:
As a Catholic, I would never give up the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, in the Eucharist for bread and water. I don’t care what anyone says about Joseph Smith, the BoM, D & C, Pearl of Great Price, etc. etc. I would not give up the truth for a lie. My bet is, a lot of Catholics on this board agree with me on this one.
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That’s fine. I’m not here with any realistic hope of converting Catholics on this board to Mormonism. Likewise, I’m extraordinarily unlikely ever to surrender my beliefs in order to become a Catholic – much as I genuinely respect Catholicism and the Catholic Church.

But that has nothing whatever to do with the fact that Eliza has been telling us that everything that she’s read about Joseph Smith reveals him to have been a self-serving fraud – and that, it turns out, Eliza hasn’t read very much, refuses to read much more, and apparently confines herself to hostile anti-Mormon propaganda.

If I were to do the same thing with regard to Catholicism and Catholic leaders (which I emphatically don’t), the Catholics here would have a legitimate basis for complaint against me.
 
mjf001 said:
As a Catholic, I would never give up the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, in the Eucharist for bread and water. I don’t care what anyone says about Joseph Smith, the BoM, D & C, Pearl of Great Price, etc. etc. I would not give up the truth for a lie. My bet is, a lot of Catholics on this board agree with me on this one.
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And I think that that is great but that still doesn’t warrant catholics writing off the cuff remarks about Joseph Smith without reading the more scholarly works such as Rough Stone Rolling by Bushman. And I have to say that that book is not exactly painting Joseph Smith is a positive light. It just puts him as a human being with all the positives and negatives that this would imply.
 
Synneve said:
Richard Bushman, whose biography of Joseph Smith you’ve apparently just dismissed, unread, as “romanticized propaganda,” is Gouverneur Morris Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Columbia University in New York City, a winner of the Bancroft Prize, and one of the leading historians in America. His biography was published by that notorious Mormon propaganda outlet Alfred A. Knopf, in New York.

You say you’re interested in the facts?

Dean Jessee’s anthology of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith is a collection of primary source documents. Period.

And you say you’re interested in the facts?

You read a propaganda website, refuse to read anything else, and announce that you’re only interested in the facts???

Am I on Candid Camera?
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I am thankful that discerning truth is not just for those with the longest degrees and honors list. In fact, it can be a real hinderance. God uses the simple to confound the wise.

If you think those books are great, thats wonderful for you. I have not read those books and I have NO interest in reading them.

If you think the website you have not read is “propaganda” before you even read it, thats your perrogative. And it’s what I expected.

But I am curious what bones you have to pick with the Bibliography of the site - a fine collection of primary sources:

WWW.FAMILYSEARCH.ORG (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)

MORMON POLYGAMY: A HISTORY (Van Wagoner, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1989)*

MORMON ENIGMA: EMMA HALE SMITH (Newell & Avery, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1994)*

IN SACRED LONELINESS: THE PLURAL WIVES OF JOSEPH SMITH (Compton, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1997)*

DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City)

…http://www.guy-sports.com/fun_pictures/cat_sleep.jpg
 
Synneve said:
And what, pray, have you read about Joseph Smith?

Have you read Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling? Mark McConkie’s Remembering Joseph? Dean Jessee’s edition of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith?

My impression of the man is dramatically, fundamentally different than yours. I’ve read quite a bit about him. What have you read?
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Well, that is the point. People who comment about Joseph Smith in a negative way should at least read that book by Bushman to engage the conversation. But…

Also, as I brought up previously from the wives of joseph smith website, we can see that the women that Smith wanted to be sealed to, first had a negative reaction but then after prayer and a strong confirmation that it was right from a heavenly source, would consent and say yes. But that is always ignored by the mormon critics on this board who claim that the mormon faith is obviously false.
 
Synneve said:
That’s fine. I’m not here with any realistic hope of converting Catholics on this board to Mormonism. Likewise, I’m extraordinarily unlikely ever to surrender my beliefs in order to become a Catholic – much as I genuinely respect Catholicism and the Catholic Church.

But that has nothing whatever to do with the fact that Eliza has been telling us that everything that she’s read about Joseph Smith reveals him to have been a self-serving fraud – and that, it turns out, Eliza hasn’t read very much, refuses to read much more, and apparently confines herself to hostile anti-Mormon propaganda.

If I were to do the same thing with regard to Catholicism and Catholic leaders (which I emphatically don’t), the Catholics here would have a legitimate basis for complaint against me.
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Find me a biography of Joseph Smith, written by a non-mormon, that comes to the same conclusions, then we’ll talk. I’ll never leave the Catholic faith, but at least I might, and I stress might, be willing to give it more credibility. A biography of Joseph Smith written by an LDS that doesn’t come to the conclusion he is a fraud is no surprise whatsoever. That is exactly the conclusion I would expect them to come up with. Sometimes educational credentials don’t mean a lot when their biases come shining through.

In Christ,
Michael
 
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