Episode 189: The Kinderhook Plates for Dummies

 I misstated. I meant to say copper. And the mounds weren’t ancient. The date from post Book of Mormon times.

I am feeling a bit chagrined after reading the 1981 Ensign article since it was must have been available to me at the time, though I did not subscribe to it and have no memory of it.

http://www.lds.org/ensign/1981/08/kinderhook-plates-brought-to-joseph-smith-appear-to-be-a-nineteenth-century-hoax?lang=eng

Perhaps I should cut myself some slack. Chances are I would have not been intellectually or emotionally prepared to see it for what it is.  And I probably would not have been inclined to go digging for the other side of the story, which would taxed my research skills.  I was still hoping for better faith days at the time – questioning would have felt low down and mean.  

Today the apologetic moves in this piece are quite evident.  Here are a few – there are probably more to catalogue

1. Appealing to the absence of evidence to support the faithful narrative (with some absences serving as red herrings and to discount reasonable inferences).

“Significantly, there is no evidence that the Prophet Joseph Smith ever took up the matter with the Lord.”

“In fact, no evidence exists that he manifested any further interest in the plates after early examination of them, although some members of the Church hoped that they would prove to be significant.”

“Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is unknown.”

2. White washing a long history of being fooled in a single line (ignoring how many prophets, seers, and revelators were duped).

“In any case, this altered version of the extract from William Clayton’s journal was reprinted … and, unfortunately, was finally carried over into official Church history.

“Many people [including Mark E. Peterson], now as well as then, have an appetite for hearsay and a hope for “easy evidence” to bolster or even substitute for personal spirituality and hard-won faith that comes from close familiarity with truth and communion with God.”

3. Transferring blame to expendable others without good evidence (even though doing so undermines their credibility for 99% of faith-serving needs).

“Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton”

“there is no evidence that Joseph Smith ever concluded the plates were genuine, other than conflicting statements from members who hoped that a translation would come forth”

4.  Picking at irrelevant minor points of inconsistency in testimony to cast doubt on the whole.

“…apparently as much misinformation and hearsay was current among people as there was fact. Pratt heard of a discovery in Pike County; Clayton said Adams County. Clayton said that the find was made six feet underground; Pratt, fifteen.”

5.  Substituting appeals to the readers’ faith in Joseph Smith for positive evidence – using the implicit power of rhetorical questions

.“…for those of us who believe that Joseph Smith was the Lord’s prophet: Isn’t it natural to expect that he would be guided to understand that these plates were not of value as far as his mission was concerned?”

“Isn’t it natural to expect that he would be guided to understand that these plates were not of value as far as his mission was concerned?”

6.  Conflating speculation and reasonable inferences from the evidence to serve the narrative.

“But how much of the conjecture that was current in Nauvoo at the time might be attributable to [Joseph] would be a speculation in itself, impossible to verify from the available accounts.”

The “Phonetic egyptian will never be 100% certain” fails completely in that Smith’s so-called translation was 100% wrong. Every single letter, every word, and ever description of the fascimile.  Nothing that Smith taught or did stands up to any degree of scrutiny. The one and only reason to believe in him is the emotional response Mormons call “a spiritual witness” But that same spiritual witness witnesses the truth of every religion, including child-raping fundamentalist LDS.

If the Holy Ghost is such a trickster that everything he asks me to believe is counter to the proof that is in front of me, then he is no better than Anansi, Kokopelli, Coyote, and the other mythological trickster gods.

Sure, today you have a translation completely different to Smith’s interpretation but that may not stay that way for ever.

That is a very interesting take. I wonder how many of the faithful promote an idea like this in Sunday School class. “Yeah, all scholars today agree Smith’s translation has nothing at all to do with the actual texts – it’s all BOOK OF BREATHINGS and such – but one day they will all be proved wrong! They will see that it was actually written by Abraham’s own hand, like Joseph said!”

I can understand why you might grasp at such straws in an attempt to maintain your faith but… really? Do you honestly believe that one day we will all learn that Smith’s claims regarding The Book of Abraham were legitimate?

Man. I don’t know what to say.

The Flat Earth Research Society still clings tenaciously to the conviction that given enough time, funding and support, they will yet eventually be able prove scientifically to all who are truly honest and reasonable that the idea of a globular earth orbiting around the sun is the purest nonsense.  Even that prospect is no more improbable than the prospect of eventually vindicating Mormon claims about the BoA.

I agree with you that “. . .the apologetis[sic] seem to work really hard to use reason in an attempt to prove reason does not matter.”  At least a lot of them do.  Of course, this has always been the case with religious apologists and mystics of almost every persuasion.  Martin Luther was particularly vehement in his denunciation of those who relied upon reason to influence their convictions.

Isn’t it amazing how some can fail to see the glaring, inherent contradiction in attempting to use reason to argue people out of relying on reason?

Joseph Smith was like most everyone else at the time – he also probably believed the Kinderhook Plates were real. They looked real. It was a convincing hoax with some effort put into it. Everyone seemed to think they were real at the time. They were put on display at a museum probably as an ancient Native American artifact. Take in mind that the experts that examined them in the 1960s couldn’t even come to any definitive conclusion and it wasn’t until 1980 that the plates were proven to be a hoax using modern, scientific, destructive testing methods. So it’s easy to believe that Joseph believed the plates were real also.

Assuming JS wasn’t an actual prophet, he probably still thought the KP were real plates probably from the Indians just like everyone else did.  It’s not like the KP verify the BOM or anything.  They could be a cookbook for all he knows.  But it’s the same situation as if he was a real prophet, everyone wants an answer from the man that claimed to have translated some other plates.  He had to give them one.  Plus it was an opportunity to make it seem more credible that he was a prophet.  So he makes a quick diagnosis of the plates, just like he did with the Book of Abraham papyri and the Greek Psalter, and he pronounces a quick explanation of what they were.

 It was a mistake on my part. I meant to say copper. Thanks for the correction.