Today’s post is by Joseph Antley. One of the most controversial aspects of Joseph Smith’s early life—and one not especially well known among most Mormons—is his adventures as a treasure-seeker. Joseph’s father was likely a treasure-seeker before the family moved to New York from Vermont, where divining rods were the common medium in the search. Sometime in the early 1820s, Joseph was introduced to seer-stones, a common scrying device in western New York, and he quickly developed a reputation as a talented seer and was known to peer into his stone to direct fellow treasure-seekers in their hunts. When Joseph was gaining notoriety as the Book of Mormon was being prepared for publication, local antagonists in Palmyra were quick to ridicule his treasure-seeking activity. A local newspaper editor, Abner Cole, referred to treasure-seers as clear “impostures” in an article on Mormonism and wrote a piece of satire that mocked the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s treasure-seeking. The first major anti-Mormon book, Eber D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed [sic] (1834), produced numerous affidavits—known as the Hurlbut affidavits—from neighbors in Palmyra who attested to and ridiculed the Smith family’s search for treasure. Joseph later acknowledged the popular criticism of himself as a “money-digger”—and carefully refrained from denying it.
In the earliest years of Joseph’s prophethood, from Abner Cole to Eber D. Howe, critics of the Mormon prophet have pointed to his being a treasure-seer as direct evidence that Joseph was a fraud. For modern readers, it can be difficult to imagine how anyone could honestly look into a stone and claim to see buried gold and silver. In the twentieth century, ex-Mormon Fawn Brodie repeated that credulousness in her landmark biography No Man Knows My History—which considerably shaped the understanding of Joseph Smith for several decades—where she stated conclusively that Joseph Smith was a clear impostor as a treasure-seer and that his prophetic identity evolved as the natural next step. Continue reading…
I’ve been thinking lately about the differences between the LDS Church we participate in today compared to what attracted and retained early members in the days of Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith was a religious mystic, recognized as a founding “prophet” of our modern church. The core of the story of Joseph and the restoration is a number of intense, other-worldly, divine encounters. He seemed to be ever concerned with bringing the Church into the presence of God. This took a worldly form in the cause of gathering to Zion, a utopian society perhaps like the City of Enoch. It also took the form of promoting the expression of visions, dreams, speaking in tongues, and prophecies. Continue reading…
In my past posts I discussed the impossibility of knowing what really happened in history as well as the problem that, believe or disbelieve, we all have much riding on how Mormon history is interpreted. Either way, it’s your personal religion at stake.
The problem with me saying that is that, well, we all know it’s true — for other people. But due to the narrative fallacy, we think we’re the exception not the rule.
To prove that, at times, we’re all the rule, I am forced to start with a fake example because it is the only way to not derail the conversation immediately. Continue reading…
“History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what’s inside the box, how the mechanisms work. …the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. You are very likely to be fooled about their intentions.” (The Black Swan, P. 8 )
In a previous post I discussed the realities of The Black Swan, those improbable events that rule our lives but we pretend don’t and can’t happen. I also discussed how in actuality “randomness” is really just incomplete information. And finally I discussed how we feel the need to reverse engineer explanation for historical events — even though it’s impossible — and how, once we do, we have a really hard time realizing that there is more than one viable explanation for the same event. [1]
Which brings me to how this all directly relates to the LDS Church and specifically to the intolerance we show each other on the Bloggernacle at times. It is all directly related to two facts:
- History is a collection of facts demanding interpretation before we can process them.
- Thus all history is mostly narrative fallacy.
Continue reading…
In the year 2035, how will Mormon beliefs compare to previous generations?
If “progressive” Mormons have their way, Mormon beliefs in 2035 will more closely resemble Mormon beliefs of a century earlier.
Continue reading…
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