From Mormon to Atheist

     I use to be a strong believer in God and Mormonism, I believed it to be true without a doubt, and something that most Christians and Mormons might have a hard time believing is that it was actually my strong faith in God, that faith without a doubt that brought me to Atheism. As a Mormon I strongly believed in the scriptures, I thought they were true word by word, well that the Book of Mormon was true word by word and the Holy Bible to be true as far as translated, due to it being translated countless amounts of times, and that it is believed by Mormons that the true translation has actually been lost. I always knew as a Mormon that God had to be the same yesterday, today and forever, for if he did something different he would cease to be God (see Alma 42:13 in the Book of Mormon), which brings me to how I became an Atheist. So there is a scripture found multiple times in the Holy Bible and in the Book of Mormon, and the thing is, if it is mentioned so many times, it has to be really important. Of course if only mentioned once wouldn’t make it less true, the scriptures have to be true word by word, especially in the Book of Mormon if it really was translated to perfection by Joseph Smith as the Mormons believe. I will quote one verse from the Book of Mormon, which in different words but with the exact same message is repeated throughout the Book of Mormon and the Holy Bible many times. The quote I’m quoting is in Mormon 9:21; which says, “Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.” This verse has a lot of powerful points, I will quote it again, but this time with emphasis”Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, DOUBTING NOTHING, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth.” I had that faith, that very particular faith without any doubts, according to this verse, my prayers, which had nothing but good intentions, should have been answered and should have happened.

     Mormons believe in Modern Day Revelation, which includes that every individual also has the ability to receive personal revelations through the power of the Holy Ghost. Mormons believe that everybody can feel the Holy Ghost, everybody can receive personal revelation from time to time, but as a member of the Mormon church you receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which means that that individual person once a member of the church would have the Holy Ghost as a constant companion, so long that person is trying his or her best to live righteously. Now in the Book of Mormon in Moroni, this character Moroni gives a challenge to read the Book of Mormon and then to ask God in Prayer if the book is true or not, but after those verses in Moroni 10:5, Moroni explains “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” It literally explains that we can know all truths through the power of the Holy Ghost, which the Holy Ghost, as believed by Mormons is a mouth piece from God, and the scriptures do a very good job explaining that God cannot lie, because if he does, like I said before, God would cease to be God, therefore he cannot lie.

     Now, I’ve had my fair share of personal “revelations”, heck, I even had a dream that seemed so powerful that I thought it was a revelation from God because how symbolic it seemed and how angelic it was and also how powerfully I “felt” the Holy Ghost afterward. I really felt that the Holy Ghost was my best friend guiding me throughout my life, leading me to the right direction to where I needed to go in life. Now in the Holy Bible it explains what the Holy Ghost is, and how you can tell it’s the Holy Ghost (or the fruit of the Spirit) and nothing else, which is in Galatians 5:22-23; which says “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Now, I’ve prayed many times for answers and what were to me at the time, needs, and received many “revelations” with all the “Fruit of the Spirit” mentioned in Galatians. And I believed without a doubt, whatsoever, I had 100% faith in all these things I asked for and I was 100% sure that God was going to grant unto me these promises that I had personally received through “revelation” by the Holy Ghost, so according to the scriptures, it was suppose to be true, it would have to be, or God would have to cease to be God, which would be impossible, because God can’t lie, therefore it HAS to be true, without a doubt.

     It turned out to be, everything that I had hoped for, all the things I believed to be true, being 100% sure, turned out to be nothing but lies. I was on a Mormon mission, something young men in the church usually do after turning 19, were they leave home for 2 years to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Something happened there while I was on that mission, something that scarred me for good, something that I just couldn’t understand, because I was so sure of it, I believed it to be 100% true, without any doubts, not one doubt would cross my mind, because I wouldn’t allow it, it brings tears to my eyes right now as I even think about it. I’m not really comfortable explaining what it was I was so sure about, but I will tell you this, it broke my heart in so many ways, it’s like my heart shattered into a million pieces of a broken mirror. It happened to so quickly, and I didn’t expect it, not one bit, only because of my 100% surety of what I thought was to be true, what was going to end up to be my turning point in life, what would help bring me to salvation, what would bring me forever happiness in life and the life to come. I believed it without a doubt that these things were true, that God had shown me glimpse of the future, but yet, it turned out to be nothing but lies. I couldn't handle it, I tried to stay strong, but I kept falling, it let me to depression and misery, I was in denial, and I couldn't let go for a whole year. That’s how long I was hurting, my heart ached, I was emotionally hurt for an entire year, non-stop, I didn’t get any breaks other than sleep (which also let to dreams sometimes that caused me pain as I slept), but when I was I awake, it felt like torture 24/7, I couldn't help but think about it. Well, this event started actually during the beginning of my mission, I was only out for a month or two, but I managed to finish the full 2 years, even though I was hurting so bad half of the time, 1 whole year out of the 2. I came to a time, to “ease” the pain, I came up with a conclusion, “God works in mysterious ways, and we can never understand what he really has in store for us and why he does what he does.” It was in a way, a type of denial, I believed in God so much (and there were many reasons for it too), that I ended up making an excuse. 

     Well the time came that I returned home from my mission, I finally I got see my family again after 2 whole years, which felt great after that long time, which I thought it [the mission] was worth it (now it’s just a great experience to me where I had fun, well on the second half at least, but now I also feel that I could have done better things during that time). I continued in the church strong, I was still a faithful member towards the church, I thought I had the truth right in front of me, and I believed that God actually had something else planned for me, I didn't know what, and I still couldn't understand why all those things “had” to happen while I was on my mission. Well, as time went on, (you might as well call me insane during this time, according to the definition of insanity, but religion will do that to you) the same thing happened over and over again, and I fell for it over and over again. Sure, these occasions weren’t as extreme and they were kind of spread out throughout time, they didn't happen one after another, but I was still foolish enough to fall for it every time. It was after a year and a half after my mission (early January of 2012) I was getting more concerned about myself and all things I was chasing after for that I thought were promptings from the Holy Ghost. Well shortly before that, I was watching a lot of “Penn and Teller: Bullshit” at the time, both being Atheist made me think about Atheism, now I was thinking “I couldn’t never be an Atheist”, I loved Penn and Teller, especially Penn (he’s like a hero to me today), the things he just said I was just in favor of, except being an Atheist, I excepted Penn being an Atheist, but I thought that I could never be an Atheist. 

     While I was concerned about myself and what I was chasing after, I was in Barnes and Nobles, and I know about Penn’s book “God, No!”, which I thought would be interesting just to look at, not to convert into Atheism, but just too look at, he’s a funny guy, heck, Glenn Beck even likes the book according to his review on the back of the book, he’s Mormon, it didn’t deconvert him. Well I opened the book, and one of the first things I read in the book was “If god (however you may perceive him/her/it) told you to kill your child—would you do it? If your answer is no, in my booklet you’re an atheist. There is doubt in your mind. Love and morality are more important to you than your faith………. If your answer is yes, please reconsider.” And no, I don’t have a child, at least not yet, but it made me think for a minute, “If I did have a child, would I?” and I came to the conclusion that I probably couldn’t, I probably could kill any person really (unless maybe they were really evil, but then probably couldn’t either) even if God asked me too, I was never a fan of somebody losing their life, just thinking about it makes me uncomfortable, I always feel weird and not right when someone I know or know of has passed away for whatever reason, I just don’t think I could do it. So that whole quote by Penn really got me to thinking, and it bloomed my way into Atheism. I thought about many many things, I also came to realize that this “Holy Ghost” was nothing but my own thoughts, when I thought it was telling me something I wanted (that comes in many different shapes and forms) or what I thought God wanted from me, even if I didn’t like it (it was that farfetched). But it all started to make sense to me; all these things that I thought to be true came nowhere else but from my own thoughts, my very own mind. That’s the day I first became an Atheist, the day I realized that God probably doesn’t exist, the day I stopped believing God whatsoever.

     It was while I was reading Penn’s book, “God, No!”, (I decided to purchase that book two weeks after being atheist) when I first heard and learned about “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins which I purchased shortly after reading “God, No!”. I was already an Atheist for a little over a month when I first started reading “The God Delusion”, but as I read that book, a lot of things started making more sense to me why there most likely is no God, and I just became a stronger Atheist. I can now make a pretty good debate on rather why God exist or doesn’t exist, both sides actually, but a lot more on the latter. I started watching documentaries by Richard Dawkins, like “Root of All Evil” (which I would recommend to anybody) and other discussions Richard Dawkins had that I saw mostly through youtube. I started to realize more and more how religion is poison to the mind, that it is actually poisonous to our brain and that it can make us do all crazy things just because we believe it. Of course I realized it from first-hand experience, I realized how badly my religion had poisoned my brain. I also realized that there is an antidote for this poison, an antidote that many people will refuse to take, because they are too hooked by their religion. I came to realize that religion is a drug, a drug just a bad a meth and possibly even worse, a drug that is so harmful, that the people using it don’t realize what they are doing to themselves. But I do know what the antidote is, and that is to just stop, to stop believing God completely, and you will recover 100% if you completely stop believing God and let go of your entire religion right away, without turning back, not even one step back. Move forward without believe, without any believe, and it cures you completely. I have come to realize how much it had cured me in no time, as soon as I made that turning point to leave my religion completely.

     Now my mother is still a true believing Mormon, and I know she just can’t let go of God, at least not now, she is just so sure he exists without a doubt. She’s actually fine with me being an Atheist, but she still preaches to me here and there, but when she does, I really just see more and more why this religion is such a big poison, and how badly it affects our minds. I know my mother means well, she’s happy where she is at, and all I want is for her to be happy. Her believe in God makes her happy and it is not my job to take that believe away from her, I’ll tell her my story, I’ve already told her some, but I’m not going to debate with her how there most likely is no God. Anyways, thanks for reading my story. If you are somebody who is going through or already have gone through similar things I went through, my hope is that my story has helped out in some ways and that maybe you even have learned a thing a or two about your own self.

On the Religion of Science

Recently, my Genesis friend (see earlier post) tried to use the angle on me that science is essentially the same as religion. Science books are our Holy Texts, and anything written within them, we accept without question as the True and Complete Word, completely on faith. We don’t go out and do the experiments ourselves, we just accept that it’s true. He also pointed out that in many areas of bleeding-edge research (what grad students do), the experiments performed will probably never be repeated by anyone, and at that point the accepting on faith of what they say really does depend on the researcher’s character and whatnot, and the Truth of the experiment is questionable.
At first, I can certainly see where he’s coming from. At the level of doing research for graduate school, many of the experiments being done out there are singular, and not likely to be repeated explicitely. But I assert that there is a big difference between the religion of Science, and the religions of God.

While some science experiments may not be repeated again, many of them in fact are repeated. Any result that is a foundation of sorts to our modern technological advancements has been repeated, and usually quite often. Photoelectric effect? Been done thousands and thousands of times. Not only have the experiments fundamental to current science been often repeated, they usually have very strong agreement with the original experiment and with subsequent experiments. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? There have been experiments both old and new that verify General Relativity to a very close degree. And the journals and the papers still exist; even if I don’t do the Millikan Oil Drop experiment myself, I can still look up results from others, and see the agreement.

Also worth mentioning is that in the higher sciences (physics, chemistry), the foundation results usually have mathematical derivations. You can literally work out the math yourself, and see what it comes back as. In a sense, you could think of all those homework problems as being ‘experimental’ verification.

And how does the religion of God work in these matters? Not so well, I’m afraid. Take a rather simple experiment: pray to God to see which religion out there is the True Religion. This experiment has certainly been done countless times over the years. And what results come back from these experiments? Does everyone who ever sincerely tries this end up a mormon? Certainly not, as I can personally attest to. Usually, the Catholics receive verification that Catholicism is true, Muslims get a verification that Islam is true, and Jews get back the verification that Judaism is the One True Religion. Or in my case, nothing at all. See all the contradictions in the experiment? This is in stark contrast to science, where the results tend to agree quite strongly over and over. Just because we haven’t gotten around to re-testing every single experiment ever does not mean that the things we have re-tested are somehow not in agreement. That agreement, incomplete though it might be, is something that makes science better than religion.

Another distinction that I would personally point out is the necessity to investigate further in Moral matters.  For many people, science falls into the category of  ”Information That Doesn’t Affect My Daily Life” (it indirectly affects them far more than they think, but let’s ignore that for now). The point is that for many people it’s just information, and has no effect on their morals; they aren’t out there killing people because of the level of scientific knowledge that people do or do not possess. Ah, but you say, what about those crazies that do go around harrassing others because of such things? For those people, it has transcended the level of information, and has become something that affects their morality.

For simple information that has no effect on your daily life, a lack of rigor (verifying results, doing the experiments yourself, etc) can be understandable. But if it’s something that affects your morals, something that changes who in your eyes is Good and who is Evil, who deserves praise and who deserves scorn, then you have an obligation to apply more rigor to your stance. Any flaw in your line of thought will have larger consequences due to its affect upon your morality, so you need to make sure to find any flaws that may be there. If science doesn’t affect your morals, then it is far more forgivable to take it on faith compared to something that has a definite effect on your morals.

The moral implications of religion is precisely what makes religious faith less acceptable than scientific faith. Religion has repeatedly shown to have a very large impact on how people view their morals, and as such it needs to be held to a higher standard. If people are going to kill for it, then it needs to be on even more solid footing than anything else; prove to me that there really are WMDs before marching in.

So in my mind religion, due to its impact on morality, needs even more compelling evidence than science, and is even less deserving of faith than science. So how come all of the ‘evidence’ that one finds on religious matters are precisely the types of objective, personal accounts that are considered to be so unreliable in science as to be practically worthless?  When I say that my beef with religion is the lack of evidence, this is precisely what I mean. Any issue that decides your morals needs to be held to a higher standard, and religion simply doesn’t stand that high. To paraphrase the saying, the reason I don’t believe in religion is because I’ve never found one that’s up to my high standards. For something that important, compelling and reliable evidence is a necessity. To take something that important on faith is frankly a ghastly, Immoral act.

Rose-Colored Glasses

Leaving the LDS church can be a very painful process in many ways. Like a fresh and aching wound that leaves one feeling raw and vulnerable, taking those first small steps away from the comfortable confines of organized religion can feel almost unbearable at times. This is mostly due to the social, cultural, and family norms that you may be breaking away from in the process. In fact, many who cease to believe continue to actively attend church simply because they don't want to lose their friends or disappoint their family. The desire to be one's genuine self is weighed heavily against the expectations placed on them by their peers. I know this feeling. I have felt this pain.

Case in point - a journal entry of mine, written in early 2010, shortly after my husband and I decided to leave the LDS church:

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"From the moment I was born, I was being programmed. All children are. They are born into a family, a society, a world that pushes group beliefs, fears, and social norms on that child, shaping and molding him into the person society wants and expects him to be.

But what happens if that child grows up and refuses to fit the mold that has been prepared for him? What will his friends and family say? Will they be disappointed? Will they disown him? Or will they keep open minds and continue to love unconditionally this person who has found out for himself who and what he wants to be?

I think most of us know what is likely the unfortunate answer.

Life is rough right now. I feel like I'm constantly playing a violent game of tug-of-war in my head. On one end of the rope is this gut feeling that I am doing the right thing - that I cannot and will not continue to stand behind a church and community that is so backward and twisted, one that never practices what it preaches and is full of people who are so quick to judge others and to defend to the death what it deems as "right." On the other end are all those beliefs I've been programmed with since birth - that if I do not obey, stay in line, walk the straight-and-narrow, I will lose everything. My family will hate me. My friends will desert me. My husband will resent me. In short the message is simple: Stay in the church or watch your life crumble.

I wish I could switch my brain off, just be still and not have to think for a while. This constant battle rages in my head day and night, a heated debate that never seems to end. It's almost physically painful - removing those rose-colored glasses that were placed on me at birth and to see the world in real, vibrant, raw color.

It's amazingly wonderful.

And utterly terrifying.

So what do I do? Do I sacrifice the relationships I have now to obtain my own happiness and discover who and what I really am, or do I maintain the status quo to appease others and lose myself in the process?

I know the answer. In my heart I know the answer.

So I guess the question I'm sending out into the universe - to all those who are family, friend, or both is this:

If you knew I wasn't Mormon anymore, would you still love me? Would you still be my friend? Would you still speak to me? Would you still care for me?

Unfortunately, I know the answer to this too."

What an inner battle was waging within me, wanting to be true to myself and yet being full of so much fear about disappointing others. I am very grateful that those feelings have (for the most part) passed and that I chose authenticity over friendship, genuineness over conformity. 

The advice I give those who are just beginning the journey toward breaking away from the LDS church, feeling that inner struggle waging strong, is the same advice that I have heard time and time again from others: Life gets better. So much better! 

Will your family be disappointed? Maybe. Will they disown you? Perhaps. Will they some day come to their senses and at least attempt to understand you in order to preserve precious family connections? I certainly hope so. And if they refuse to accept you and love you for you, then they are not following the teachings of the religion they profess to follow. Remember that.

Will you lose your friends? You'll certainly lose some. I lost them all. It will be hard to move on without them, but move on you will. Will you make new friends? Yes! And the best part? They will like you because you are fun, smart, interesting! They will not only like you because you share common religious beliefs. The new friendships you cultivate will match your new personality and perspective because they will be genuine. And that's an amazingly wonderful thing. 

If you have decided to remove those rose-colored glasses and see the world as it is - as it really is - it will be difficult at times. Painful at times. But one morning you will wake up, rub the sleep from your eyes, and as you stare at the ceiling and mentally run through your daily checklist of things to do, you will come to an amazing realization: You have never been happier in your life than you are right now. 

Never. 

I can't describe to you how incredible that feeling is, but I promise it will come. And when it does, you will never look back. 

On Con-Man Similarities

When looking at various sources regarding the history of the mormon church, one can easily find claims that Joseph Smith was a con-man. They invariably include such things as his apparent criminal record before starting the church, and similar such things. But when looking at the church’s history, one of the things that I noticed strongly but never saw explicitly pointed out was the appearance of impropriety cropping up time and again. Throughout many of the stories about Joseph Smith, even the sanitized mormon versions of the stories, he routinely makes actions that are very much in-line with what a knowing deceiver would do. Once you strip out the alleged reasons behind his actions and just look at what he actually did, a disturbing pattern emerges, at least to my eyes.

One good example of Joseph’s actions matching that of a con-man appears within the story of the lost 116 pages of the book of mormon.  Here is a quick version of the parts of the tale pertinent to this post. Martin Harris was acting as Joseph’s scribe at the time, helping to translate the plates of gold. But Martin still had doubts as to the authenticity of Smith’s claims. He finally convinced Smith to lend him the transcript of the 116 pages that had been written so far, to show to his wife and a few others. While Martin was back home with the manuscript, the manuscript vanished from his wife’s locked bureau where it was being kept. Joseph Smith eventually claimed that God had commanded him not to re-translate from the Book of Lehi, but to instead translate from the Book of Nephi, which contained an abridged version of the same events.

After the manuscript disappearance, Martin Harris’ wife said that if Joseph was truly speaking through god then he should be able to easily replace it. For a skeptic such as Lucy Harris, the implication here was clear; a replacement would be proof of Joseph’s divine claims if the replacement was word for word identical, but his claims would be dis-proven otherwise.

Keep in mind here, I am deliberately giving a brief account of the events and not the whole story. I’m trying to focus on Joseph’s suspicious actions, and some parts of the story do not relate to this. If you really want to know more, there are tons of sources out there about it; you can always start at Wikipedia if you want. Anyway, back to the tale. Time to examine the stripped-down version of the story, and not the prettied-up version that exists of any story that has been retold often enough. And the bare facts are that Joseph made and/or translated a different telling of the same story that was contained within the 116 pages.

Let us consider things from the point of view of a trickster. Setting aside Joseph Smith for a moment, let us consider a con-man in a similar situation. This con-man claimed to have divine translation powers, and had convinced a prosperous man to finance the ‘translation’ work. But someone had managed to steal the only existing manuscript, and skeptics had declared that a truly divine source would be able to recreate the manuscript. The con-man would know that the expectation would be that a re-translation would not be identical, and that this would expose his fraud. And since he was a con-man and was in fact running a scam, he would know that he would not be able to make up an identical copy. Even if he somehow did, the stolen copy could be altered to make the two appear different.

At this point, the con-man has two basic options left to him: give up, or double down. The former option would be to admit defeat, and perhaps slip out of town in the middle of the night; there would always be another gullible chump the next town over. The latter option, the double-down, would be to keep the current scam going, and to try and discredit those that had put him in this bind to begin with. Sometimes, even in the face of clear evidence, a strong enough denial is enough to convince others. Knowing that he could never make an identical copy, the double-down options for the con-man would be to either come up with a convincing excuse for not re-translating that portion of the work, or to come up with a convincing excuse for making a re-translation that was worded differently.

As it so happens, Joseph Smith did both of these things. His claim was that this was a translation of the same story but from another book, from the point of view of a different author. And since it was supposedly written by a different person, this new account will naturally have different wording from the original. He even went so far as to claim that God had foreseen this event, and had multiple accounts of the story prepared for just such a purpose.

The problem here is that the action Joseph Smith took is identical to one of the two choices that a con-man would have likely made. If a con-man had decided to double-down on his scam, this is exactly what he would have done. He would have re-made the work, and had a plausible excuse for why it was worded differently. And what did Joseph Smith do? He recreated the story, and had an excuse as to why it was worded differently.

Now does this prove that Joseph was a fraud? Of course not. This post isn’t about direct evidence contradicting the church; though I may make several of those later. No, this post is about the fact that Joseph’s actions in so many of his stories are the very same actions that a knowing fraudster would have taken. When someone acts in such a suspicious manner too often, it is worth note; where there is smoke, there often is fire. Consider it this way: how likely is it that God was so smart as to prepare another account of the same story, yet so dumb as to let his prophet’s actions in the matter mirror that of criminals? If God had really had such foresight, he would have made sure that the second version of the story did not come out under such suspicious circumstances.  Maybe it could have been revealed by a later prophet or something, but it seems downright silly for a god with this much foresight to have left such a blatant, gaping hole.

And this same gaping hole exists again and again within the stories of Joseph Smith. One example lies with the plates of gold themselves. If you consider for a moment the possibility that Joseph Smith was a con-man, or if you consider a deceiver in a similar situation, then certain actions and non-actions become immediately clear. A con-man in Joseph’s financial situation would never be able to afford an actual facsimile of solid gold plates that would pass more than the most cursory of inspections. So what actions would a con-man take in that situation? He’d make sure that no one else ever saw the plates, and he would come up with a good sounding explanation as to why he refused to show anyone. And what did he do? He didn’t show them to others, and had an excuse as to why he didn’t show them to anyone.

Apologists to the church will immediately point out here that Joseph did purportedly show the plates to a chosen few, the so-called Three Witnesses and Eight Witnesses. Bringing up these individuals however, opens up a huge can of worms for believers.

For starters, these were not reliable witnesses. They were not men that were faithful mormons for the rest of their days, which one would expect from a solid, reliable witness being shown the truth in such a thing. One could expect a reliable witness to be a solid, well-grounded individual that had no real faults to speak of, and who followed the church for the rest of their days. But in fact, the opposite seems to be the case.

Out of the Three Witnesses, all three were excommunicated from the church less than a decade after their written testimony. All three excommunications came within a year or so of each other; one in 1837, and two in 1838. Of the Three, two of them were known to have fanciful visions and hallucinations, even before their association with the church, and about things unrelated to the church. This would make any testimony from them pretty shaky stuff as-is; hardly the solid, reliable witnesses one would expect.

Of the Eight Witnesses, every last one of them was a member of either the Whitmer clan or Joseph Smith’s own family. Of them, all of the Whitmer clan were excommunicated in 1838. So out of all of the Witnesses, there were only three that were not excommunicated within a one-year period: Joseph Smith’s father, and two of his brothers. I should hope that I wouldn’t have to spend much time explaining why family testimony is unreliable. So far, this is hardly a collection of solid and reliable witnesses to support the introduction of the One True Church upon the earth.

Now let’s look on these events from the viewpoint of the con-man. For the fraud, it would be necessary not to show the plates to anyone, especially early on when the con-man’s finances would not allow for any sort of reasonable facsimile. But a fraud such as this would be severely weakened without a shred of evidence that the plates ever existed. For a more convincing con some evidence would be needed, like witnesses that could vouch for the plates’ existence. Simply paying someone off to vouch for the plates would not be likely; such a person would be explicitly privy to the fraudulent nature of the con, and would place it in great jeopardy to exposure. Another option would be to use a spiritual experience to convince the people involved that they had experienced something that they had in fact not experienced at all; modern con-men such as psychics that claim to be able to speak with deceased loved ones utilize this method. Another possible solution would be to create a facsimile of the plates whenever finances allow.

Whether using an induced spiritual event or utilizing a facsimile of the plates, protecting the secret of the con would require that any witnessing be a one-time event. Subsequent handling of a facsimile would greatly increase the risk that the forgery would be detected; likewise, repeated spiritual events would run a similar risk, as many of the techniques used are either low percentage techniques or techniques that would become more obvious with repeated uses upon the same audience. (for a brief overview of one of the techniques that could be used, see the Wikipedia article on Cold Reading.)

A similar issue arises when looking at who the witnesses are. A con-man would find it very difficult to get a truly dependable set of witnesses; a fraud would more likely get a group of weak witnesses, and rely upon the natural tendency of people to believe in such statements without first investigating the reliability of the witnesses. The con-man would need to rely heavily on family, friends, and the easily fooled to find their witnesses. As it so happens, Joseph Smith picked witnesses that were family, witnesses that were easily fooled or otherwise given to fanciful visions, and the families of those fools. Again, what a striking similarity.

And what to do about these witnesses afterwards? An honest and true prophet would likely expose the Witnesses to the plates on multiple occasions; it would strengthen their accounts, lessen doubt, and there would be virtually no risk in doing so. Those people have already shown themselves to be people that are faithful enough not to be struck down by viewing the plates, and further viewings could only provide further testimonies as to their authenticity.

The con-man, on the other hand, would certainly never let them ‘see’ the plates a second time, as this would drastically increase the risk of exposure. Someone already on the inside of the con might be able to claim multiple exposures, but the rest would certainly be limited to a one-time event.

And how would a con-man respond to the threat of exposure down the line? What if he feared that his methods might be exposed? These witnesses would certainly be popular interview subjects among church members and the curious; they would likely end up telling their account of events many, many times. Any methods that the con-man used, or discrepancies between accounts, could end up being disastrous over a long enough period of time. The con-man would probably want to remove them from the picture after they had served their purpose. And if the current events of the day were increasing the risk of exposure, then the con-man might have to remove many of them from the picture in a relatively short period of time. Lo and behold, a power struggle was occurring between groups in the church around 1838, and all of the Witnesses that were not Joseph’s direct blood relatives all ended up being excommunicated right around then.

Again, the contrast seems striking to me. God was so smart, and had such foreknowledge to make a second account of the beginnings of the book of mormon, yet was dumb enough to let it be brought forth in such a suspicious manner. God was smart enough to provide Witnesses to the authenticity of the book of mormon, but dumb enough to make them all unreliable witnesses. In many of Joseph Smith’s other stories, you find similar results. If you assume a con-man was in Joseph’s situation, then his responses make complete and total sense. It happens far too much to be easily explained away. I simply cannot imagine that an all-knowing deity would leave such gaping holes in such important events.