Joseph Smith’s brilliance

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Zeezrom
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Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Zeezrom » Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:49 pm

Sorry for the essay folks but today I was pondering what made me believe so strongly in Mormonism and why it was hard to wrap my head around it being false. The Book of Mormon is a very convincing document to those who read with a predisposed belief in its authenticity for sure, but the key to unravelling Mormonism for me was found not in the B of M itself but in the Bible.

The Book of Mormon is a brilliant theological explanation of the Bible, particularly to the 19th century Bible thumping American that was his audience. It solves pretty well most of the theological questions people at the time had. Making a hidden scripture out of it coming directly from the mouth of God lended it an authority that someone like Adam Clarke et al didn’t have as mere humans interpreting.

The Doctrine and Covenants and his continued “revelations” went even further to fill most of the other Biblical holes he found. Let me share a primary example:

According to the Bible, Jesus said NO ONE can enter Heaven unless they were “born again of water and the spirit” i.e. “Baptized”. Now if you believe that this was really said by the actual Son of God (which most christians did at the time) this presents a HUGE problem and makes God look like a Supreme Asshole!! The Roman Catholic Church (give them credit) gave it a good try. Let’s baptize every infant we can get hold of because back in Medieval times not too many survived from infancy to adulthood. At least their solution gave the greatest number of people a fighting chance to fulfill the requirement. Joseph Smith comes up with the age of accountability argument in the end of the Book of Mormon to undo the natural fallacy in the infant baptism doctrine by giving all small children a free pass from Christ’s injunction till 8. Then Smith comes up with Baptism of the Dead as an ever better answer for how to give EVERYONE a chance at heaven. I LOVED that idea because it made Mormons the only ones who believed in a fair God who gives everyone a chance at heaven. The internal logic is perfect!! Who else but the one true church would give a damn about everyone??? Even those who were long dead and paid no tithes!!!!

This is just one (albeit good) example of how Mormonism was set up to be the most believable and truest Christian sect out there. So for me to leave Mormonism it wasn’t good enough to simply deconstruct Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the D and C, or the Church in general….because I was always faced with that damn question that if not Mormonism then who else had covered all the theological bases??

So for me the real question of my disbelief was “Could the Bible be taken literally as the word of God?”. Because if the Bible was fundamentally flawed then there was literally no purpose or reason to invent new scripture or a new religion to solve the problems created by the Bible. For me the aha moment came when I was able to dig into history and find proof that the Earth had been continually inhabited by modern humans in various continents uninterrupted for much longer than 6,000 years. No universal flood, no Garden of Eden, no Fall, no nothing!!

So that was it. I had pulled Mormonism out of my soul from the very root instead of pulling at the plant above ground. James E. Talmage taught me very eloquently in “The Great Apostasy” that if the Mother (RC Church) was corrupt then so were it’s offspring (Protestant churches). I ended up doing the same thing to Mormonism. If the Bible is corrupt then so are it’s offspring the LDS Scriptures.

So my answer now to the dilemma of baptism to enter heaven? There was no literal Son of God named Jesus who said those things. If there really was one roaming the Earth 2,000 years ago then he would have recorded his own sayings and not left it to be written decades after dying by people who had second or third hand knowledge at best.

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deacon blues
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by deacon blues » Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:08 am

I agree. Joseph was not a dodo- he was brilliant. His world view was designed to appeal to 19th century prescientific revolution beliefs. Those same views today are essentially fundamentalist. They still appeal to the fundamentalist, but pseudo-intellectual mind today. If Joseph had been born in the 20th or 21st century he likely would have adapted his ideas to fit our era. Concepts like baptism, Adam and Eve, astronomy, race genetics (Cain/Ham/Egyptus, etc., perhaps even priesthood, would look a lot different.
The Church has been trying to conflate Joseph's 19th century views with modern science ever since. It's a perpetual game of "catch-up."
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

stuck
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by stuck » Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:59 am

Zeezrom wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:49 pm

So for me the real question of my disbelief was “Could the Bible be taken literally as the word of God?”. Because if the Bible was fundamentally flawed then there was literally no purpose or reason to invent new scripture or a new religion to solve the problems created by the Bible. For me the aha moment came when I was able to dig into history and find proof that the Earth had been continually inhabited by modern humans in various continents uninterrupted for much longer than 6,000 years. No universal flood, no Garden of Eden, no Fall, no nothing!!

So that was it. I had pulled Mormonism out of my soul from the very root instead of pulling at the plant above ground. James E. Talmage taught me very eloquently in “The Great Apostasy” that if the Mother (RC Church) was corrupt then so were it’s offspring (Protestant churches). I ended up doing the same thing to Mormonism. If the Bible is corrupt then so are it’s offspring the LDS Scriptures.

So my answer now to the dilemma of baptism to enter heaven? There was no literal Son of God named Jesus who said those things. If there really was one roaming the Earth 2,000 years ago then he would have recorded his own sayings and not left it to be written decades after dying by people who had second or third hand knowledge at best.
Very well put. I saw something not long ago about how Constantine may have made Christianity in his image and perhaps mixed in some beliefs about the sun god Apollo. That may be why there are in some artist's depictions of Jesus having the aura around his head like a sun. Apollo also had the likeness of the sun above his head. And then how Bart Ehrman describes how Jesus became god in the bible.

As a believer, I used to imagine the fall as perhaps a literal falling of our planet earth away from where god lived perhaps by kolob to where we are now and then when the earth would become paradisical again we would be moved closer to where god was again. But this makes no scientific sense. It's against natural laws.

Zeezrom
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Zeezrom » Fri Jul 30, 2021 12:32 pm

I believe your right about the “Fall” being a fall from the orbit of Kolob. I know it was taught in Institute Manuals etc.. but it’s been a few years and the sources of some of these obscure doctrines eludes my memory.

For sure Smith designed Mormonism to be a religion with an answer for everything which is why it appealed to early intellectually curious leaders like Sidney Rigdon and Orson Pratt. Part of my struggle with intellectually stepping out of Mormonism was to acknowledge a great deal of ignorance on my part as to the mysteries of the universe and why we are here as sentient beings surrounded by lower life forms and a lot of galactic “nothingness”.

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jfro18
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by jfro18 » Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:35 pm

When I first started down the rabbit hole it was 100% based on exclusive Mormon stuff - Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, etc.

But when I came across a podcast from Infants on Thrones on the Christmas stories in the gospels it started to click, and then I heard a short interview with Anthony Miller when he spent like 5 minutes going over the problems that biblical literalism presents for the Book of Mormon and it was mind blowing just because I simply hadn't even thought about the Bible that way yet.

So yes - Joseph Smith was a creative genius who was able to take surrounding ideas and reshape them into something that appealed to a lot of people around him, but in no possible way is any of it "true" or ancient.

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Hagoth
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Hagoth » Sat Jul 31, 2021 6:52 pm

Zeezrom wrote:
Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:49 pm
There was no literal Son of God named Jesus who said those things. If there really was one roaming the Earth 2,000 years ago then he would have recorded his own sayings and not left it to be written decades after dying by people who had second or third hand knowledge at best.
Even if there was a guy named Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God that doesn't mean he really was. Hell, I've met people who claim to be the Son of God.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Not Buying It
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Not Buying It » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:24 am

I agree that Joseph was a creative genius, but I do not believe he was a brilliant theologian. These is a distinct lack in consistency in his "revelations" over time - he was good at making up creative things that stimulated his follower's interest in the short term, but he was hopelessly inept in constructing a long-term religious framework with any kind of consistency or internal logic. Much of what we perceive as internal logic in Mormonism is either the result of brainwashing to make members think it is logical, or it is consistency that was imposed in the years after his death by subtly changing his teachings, or ignoring aspects that he taught while alive that don't align with subsequent cultural development in the Church.

"Families are Forever" is the perfect example. Joseph never used the phrase, and in fact seems to have been wholly uninterested in sealing his own family to him, in that he was sealed to at least two dozen women before Emma, and so far as I know was never sealed to his children. It was a doctrine he pulled out of his butt to get booty. Over time the Church retconned it into some "plain and precious truth" that was somehow lost from the Bible (and was somehow never mentioned once in the Book of Mormon), but the framework that has been imposed on it since Joseph introduced it is very different from what he taught it to be at the time. In the short term, yes, it was a creative solution to the problem of making sure Joseph had plenty of women to sleep with. But it was not consistent with much of anything in the Bible, it was not consistent with much of anything Joseph taught prior to it, since his death the Church has just kind of shoehorned it into the theological mess that is Mormonism.

Personally, I don't think Joseph Smith was a long term thinker - he just made crap up as he went along as the need arose, and he wasn't too worried about meshing it with what came before or anything that would come after. That's why he didn't really build a coherent theology - he wasn't a big picture kind of guy. And he wasn't really about filling in doctrinal gaps in the Bible as much as he was about making up answers to theological questions people had at the time as a way of sucking them in. The "answers" he came up with are suspiciously relevant to things people talked about in his own time period without addressing any that came up later.

So creative? Yes. Brilliant conman? Absolutely. Consistent theologian? Not even close.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph

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nibbler
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by nibbler » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:56 am

JS addressed some plot holes in the Bible. I try not to take the plot holes or their filler too seriously. After all, it's just stories about a story. Like people endlessly arguing about things that happened in Star Wars.

I imagine talking biblical plot holes can be an excellent source of entertainment when tales of slippery treasures and pirate captains get old. I also recognize that necessity is the mother of invention. Nephi wrote his journal after the 116 pages were lost. Lots of Mormon theology feels like that, getting out of corners you find yourself painted into.

In that sense, brilliance is like running away from a bear. You don't have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the next guy over.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
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Palerider
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Palerider » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:34 pm

Not Buying It wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:24 am
I agree that Joseph was a creative genius, but I do not believe he was a brilliant theologian. These is a distinct lack in consistency in his "revelations" over time - he was good at making up creative things that stimulated his follower's interest in the short term, but he was hopelessly inept in constructing a long-term religious framework with any kind of consistency or internal logic. Much of what we perceive as internal logic in Mormonism is either the result of brainwashing to make members think it is logical, or it is consistency that was imposed in the years after his death by subtly changing his teachings, or ignoring aspects that he taught while alive that don't align with subsequent cultural development in the Church.

"Families are Forever" is the perfect example. Joseph never used the phrase, and in fact seems to have been wholly uninterested in sealing his own family to him, in that he was sealed to at least two dozen women before Emma, and so far as I know was never sealed to his children. It was a doctrine he pulled out of his butt to get booty. Over time the Church retconned it into some "plain and precious truth" that was somehow lost from the Bible (and was somehow never mentioned once in the Book of Mormon), but the framework that has been imposed on it since Joseph introduced it is very different from what he taught it to be at the time. In the short term, yes, it was a creative solution to the problem of making sure Joseph had plenty of women to sleep with. But it was not consistent with much of anything in the Bible, it was not consistent with much of anything Joseph taught prior to it, since his death the Church has just kind of shoehorned it into the theological mess that is Mormonism.

Personally, I don't think Joseph Smith was a long term thinker - he just made crap up as he went along as the need arose, and he wasn't too worried about meshing it with what came before or anything that would come after. That's why he didn't really build a coherent theology - he wasn't a big picture kind of guy. And he wasn't really about filling in doctrinal gaps in the Bible as much as he was about making up answers to theological questions people had at the time as a way of sucking them in. The "answers" he came up with are suspiciously relevant to things people talked about in his own time period without addressing any that came up later.

So creative? Yes. Brilliant conman? Absolutely. Consistent theologian? Not even close.

Yup. ;)
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."

"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."

George Washington

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Palerider
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Palerider » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:51 pm

stuck wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:59 am


As a believer, I used to imagine the fall as perhaps a literal falling of our planet earth away from where god lived perhaps by kolob to where we are now and then when the earth would become paradisical again we would be moved closer to where god was again. But this makes no scientific sense. It's against natural laws.
The problem Joseph had in developing this doctrine is that he didn't take into account the nature of a temporal existence versus an Eternal existence.

We live in a temporal sphere. We are temporal beings. The Eternal realm isn't available to our temporal senses. Therefore if you can "see" it, whether it be through a telescope/microscope or whatever.....it's in the temporal sphere. Time effects every thing that we can scientifically observe. Perhaps at different rates but still it has it's effect. The Eternal realm isn't subject to time. Therefore we cannot observe or study it. No matter how good your telescope is you won't be able to see "Kolob" (Even if it was actually there somewhere in the universe, instead of being a made up fantasy.)

The fact that this doctrine infers that God exists somewhere in THIS universe is precisely what tells me it's false. It's a temporal universe. God isn't here.
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."

"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."

George Washington

Zeezrom
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Zeezrom » Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:34 pm

Love reading all these comments!! You guys are all smarter theologians than any LDS Clergy I’ve heard speak no matter how eloquent and “inspired” they sound.

Palerider is absolutely right that it makes no sense when JS made up random names for stars and planets like Kolob and claimed Abraham taught astronomy to the Ancient Egyptians—-Lol. If there is a God outside of temporal time then we won’t find his “planet” with a telescope. But then Joseph was around in the 1800s when no one could really call him out on crazy astronomy.

Not Buying It—-you are dead right!!! Joseph was not that smart a theologian when you deconstruct it. I think like most TBMs I conflated the historical Joseph Smith with the revisionist Joseph the Prophet that LDS Inc shoe-horned into its branding for the masses.

Love the great comments!

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deacon blues
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by deacon blues » Fri Aug 06, 2021 7:37 am

Joseph used the metaphor of a ring to describe eternity in at least two of his talks that I can recall. He said anything with a beginning must have an ending, but a ring has no beginning or ending- hence it is eternal. The ring metaphor can't however, represent eternal increase, which was another one of Joseph's later ideas. The ring merely cycles back to where it was. Logic would indicates that physical, mortal bodies have an end; but then so must eternal glorified bodies- both have a beginning and must therefore have an end. I wish someone like Orson Pratt, who was also brilliant, would have pointed this out to Joseph. :o However, he was likely too much in awe/fear of Joseph to go there- to point out logical inconsistencies in Joseph's co :shock: ncept of eternity. :shock:
I'm reminded of "Saturday's Warrior" which suggested that soul mates were always sealed, before and after mortality. ;)
There's a fictional book called The Worm Ouroborosthat also explores this idea.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Ghost
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Ghost » Fri Aug 06, 2021 9:39 am

Another of Joseph Smith's solutions that I always found compelling is the idea of premortal life, and that we all have existed as individuals in one form or another. This avoids the problem of God creating us from scratch and therefore being ultimately responsible for any "sin" we commit due to it being part of our programming by a creator with perfect foreknowledge of what we'd end up doing.

I think an interesting exercise is to consider which of the teachings I no longer have any confidence in but might still wish to be true.

Some sort of afterlife would be nice, I think.

Zeezrom
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Zeezrom » Sat Aug 07, 2021 1:05 pm

To follow up on Ghost’s comment about teachings that would be nice if they were true. I still like the idea of the Telestial Kingdom. Think about it, a glory that surpasses human understanding where you get to live forever and not be bound by church business like those in the Celestial Kingdom. And you don’t have to be a lackey to the celestial gods doing ministering like the Terrestrial. You get to sit back with your glorified young healthy body and say screw you to any assignments as you’re only bound by living the telestial law with all the other baddies and partiers. You might find yourself in dangerous company sometimes with all the evil dictators and such but hey you can’t hurt a resurrected body anyway. Lol

hmb
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by hmb » Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:27 am

Palerider wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:51 pm


The fact that this doctrine infers that God exists somewhere in THIS universe is precisely what tells me it's false. It's a temporal universe. God isn't here.
A "loving" God is supposed to be here, speaking through living prophets, for the world. For a church who claims to have this "magical" power, there is no statistic to show that LDS people are healthier, wiser, or happier than the rest of the population. When political battles happen, they don't provide consistent, sound guidance for all the world. Stake by stake, they are all over the place. Wouldn't you expect some degree of evidence that following the prophet would lead to better living? But that makes me a sign seeker, shutting down that argument. How convenient.

J. Smith was a good story teller. Reminds me of Jimmy in Better Call Saul. A likable scammer. Maybe he even means well, but a scammer just the same.

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Palerider
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by Palerider » Sun Aug 08, 2021 3:08 pm

hmb wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:27 am

A "loving" God is supposed to be here, speaking through living prophets, for the world. For a church who claims to have this "magical" power, there is no statistic to show that LDS people are healthier, wiser, or happier than the rest of the population. When political battles happen, they don't provide consistent, sound guidance for all the world.

J. Smith was a good story teller. A likable scammer. Maybe he even means well, but a scammer just the same.
Don't get me wrong, I believe God is loving and does help us from where He actually resides, through the means laid out in Biblical scripture. But you're absolutely right that the "Brethren" in Salt Lake have no better access to God than you or I do. I can get advice just as good by reading the writings of Ben Franklin than listening to general conference.

Furthermore, you're only a "sign seeker" if you seek a sign to consume it as a thrill (upon your lusts). To sincerely look for evidence of truth is a godly quality. All propositions (especially spiritual ones) should have a certain amount of empirical adequacy.

Otherwise we open ourselves to being taken advantage of by every shyster who comes along.
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."

"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."

George Washington

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deacon blues
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Re: Joseph Smith’s brilliance

Post by deacon blues » Thu Aug 12, 2021 2:31 pm

Zeezrom wrote: Sorry for the essay folks but today I was pondering what made me believe so strongly in Mormonism and why it was hard to wrap my head around it being false. The Book of Mormon is a very convincing document to those who read with a predisposed belief in its authenticity for sure, but the key to unravelling Mormonism for me was found not in the B of M itself but in the Bible.

Deacon wrote: The key to unravelling Mormonism for me was history- Real archaeology, real anthropology, real study of ancient cultures, etc.
I won't say there is no evidence for the Mormon world view in world history. I will say is any evidence for a 7,000 year dispensationalist, Adam/Eve/Noah originating, Jaredite/Lehite American history, etc. is so minimal, and requires such twisted pretzel logic to believe that I can't live pretending it is true. If new evidence came out to support it I could change my mind. The bible is considered history- THE history by many people. But when I read the bible I think, "Some of this might really have happened, but it is so mixed up with hearsay, legend, and myth that it should be treated as such. It is the wisdom literature of ancient near-eastern people. And parts of it are insightful and helpful.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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