Post
by slavereeno » Tue Feb 26, 2019 7:54 pm
My Digest pt 2
Its not fair for Bennett to say that his spiritual experiences are real, but that spiritual experiences in other religions are not. I have seen the YouTube videos of others who's testimony experience is indistinguishable from the Mormon experience.
Bennett is hyper-focused on the CES Letter, as though it was the last word on the non-believing side. This discussion is bigger than the CES Letter, the further I get along in my disaffection the less meaningful the CES Letter is, because there is so much more out there.
Bennett's dismissal of the 19th century material as a side effect of translation is very sophomoric to me. First of all, wasn't God himself putting the words on the stone? Was the process "divine", was it "Revealed" or not? Aplogists want it both ways, It was done by the power of God when the plates are no where to be found, and then its as if Joseph was some normal guy translating when all the 19th century crap shows up. Second he is trying to dismiss entire doctrine, Bible plagiarism and significant anachronisms as artifacts of translation. And yet plain old ordinary dudes that speak more than one language can make much better translations from language to language of significant works that don't introduce these huge issues. GOD himself (or Joseph Smith depending on which side of the mouth the apologist is speaking from) can't do better than that for the "Most correct book, evar". Complete baloney. (Reel does push back on this)
Bennett suggest that JS had to borrow from things he knew, because "he couldn't just come up with it out of the ether." But then why does that suggest he is a prophet? and why does this seem to happen with almost everything he says? What's revelatory about regurgitating or restating someone else's ideas?
"Translation" does not equal Translation. This is getting really old really fast.
If I lower my expectations of Joseph Smith LOW ENOUGH - I too can be a believing Mormon! Sounds like if I only expect prophets to copy stuff someone else came up with, screw up translations, start a ponzi scheme, hide past cons, get almost everything wrong about entire races of humans, marry and screw some of the congregants including married ones and teens, lie about it, have delusions of grandeur, burn printing presses, brag about being able to translate anything, etc. etc. then Joseph Smith is totally a profit! I get it now!
Bennett just said he sees the unbelievers point of view as valid, I'll add one to his score sheet.
It sounds like one has to make a ton of excuses for God to stay believing. So God architects an environment where Joseph Smith can restore some of Sidney Rigdon's stuff, did he not also then place the racial bigotry in the same environment? Again they want to have their cake and eat it too.
A lot of Bennett's arguments assume that God's one true church was the ancient Israelite people, which I do not.
Was anybody else taught that the prophet could never lead the church astray? So is that now officially false doctrine? Reel's push back about this was good.
When Bennett is defending the BoM witnesses, he dismisses the "spiritual eyes" comments because they are third hand accounts, then says there are "multiple eyewitness accounts" of the long scroll. Reel points out that its even shakier testimony than the Martin Harris stuff for the Long Scroll stuff.
Last edited by
slavereeno on Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.