As the world reacts to the monstrous earthquake off the coast of Chile, one voice remains curiously quiet. Without Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson to guide us, we are unable to decipher why god has caused this particular calamity.
According to religious prognosticators, sinners will suffer the wrath of god in the form of earthquakes as biblical punishment for their errant ways. The declarations and explanations of such divine calamities always come after the fact, but let us not have such annoying details get in our way. Nobody is more out front in decoding god's will than Robertson; he declared that the devastating earthquake in Haiti was a consequence of Haitians making a pact with the devil. Robertson also believed that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for legalized abortion; and that Florida's weather woes are due to the state's support for Gay Days at Disneyland.
So we must therefore ask the great "broadcaster, humanitarian, author, Christian, businessman, statesman" from Lexington, Virginia, for what sins did the citizens of Anchorage, Alaska, suffer for the quake of 1964? I remember not any declaration of god's intent from that event. And now of course we must query Robertson on the divine meaning of the massive earthquake in Chile. Perhaps their sin is naming a country after a pepper, and then misspelling it.
These most recent efforts to interpret god's intent based on man's experience raises the question of how well we have done historically in predicting or deducing the divine plan. A favorite is to claim knowledge of the End of Days as a consequence of natural events. Predictions of the Apocalypse or its equivalent have in fact been a common theme throughout history. But the record for accuracy is not particularly pretty. An error rate of 100% (after all, we are still here) should call into question the legitimacy of the enterprise, but alas, that is not the case. The likes of Pat Robertson never tire of pretending to know the mind of the infinite being conjured from their imagination. Let's see how we've fared over the past 150 years.
Xhosa Girl
In South Africa, in 1856, a young Xhosa girl went to fetch water at a local stream. There, she claimed to meet strangers from the spirit world. Excited, she returned with her uncle, Umhlakaza, who spoke with the same spirit world reps. From this encounter, Uncle Umhlakaza came back with an important message. At the time of this ghostly meeting, the Xhosa tribe was battling the English. The spirits told Umhlakaza that to succeed in driving out the foreigners, his tribesman must kill every animal in their herds, and destroy every kernel of corn so carefully stored in their granaries. The spirits promised him that if his tribesman followed these instructions, heaven on earth would be theirs. Dead loved ones would return, fat cattle would rise from the earth, corn would sprout in abundance, sickness and troubles would be banished and the old would become young and beautiful again. With such great promise, backed by the authority of the spirit world, Umhlakaza's orders were carried out, resulting in the slaughter of two thousand cattle and destruction of all grains. Instead of earthly paradise, the Xosa experienced a famine so deadly that the tribe nearly ceased to exist.
Branch Davidians
In 1990, a Houston teenager by the name of Vernon Wayne Howell moved to the sleepy wind-swept town of Waco after dropping out of high school. There he changed his name to David Koresh, explaining blandly that he was the reincarnation of both King David and King Cyrus of Persia. David did not stop there, further claiming he was in fact the Messiah, appointed by god to rebuild the Temple and destroy Babylon. At least 131 of Howell's Branch Davidians were convinced enough to ensconce themselves in his compound, yielding to him their daughters as young as 12 to be impregnated by the Messiah. That episode ended badly, as we all know.
Heaven's Gate
In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult took their own lives, dying in shifts over a few days in late March. Some members helped others take a deadly mix of Phenobarbital and vodka before consuming their own poisonous cocktail. Why did these people die? Members of the cult believed the prophecy of Marshall Applewhite, who claimed that the comet Hale-Bopp was the long-awaited sign to shed their earthly bodies, which they called "containers." By leaving their containers behind, followers would be able to join a spacecraft traveling and hiding behind the comet, which would take them to a higher plane of existence. Everybody outside of that cult would agree that the guy had a screw loose. But in fact, Applewhite had good precedent in broadly accepted religious lore. Gnostic Christians believed that Jesus not only knew about, but encouraged, Judas to betray him so that Judas "could sacrifice the man that clothes me." Jesus apparently wanted to shed his container. Either Jesus was crazy or Applewhite was not.
Credonia Mwerinde
In Uganda, in March 2000, somewhere between 200 and 500 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments committed suicide by setting fire to their church. The congregation apparently forgot about the commandment concerning "thou shall not kill." These people died because the sect anticipated the end of the world, expecting a visit by the Virgin Mary on the Friday they self-immolated. She never showed up. The prophet in this case was Credonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute.
Joseph Smith
In the early 1800s, in Palmyra, New York, a local boy claimed he could divine the location of ground water, as well as treasures buried by Indians. Persuasive as a snake-oil salesman, farmers paid him $3, a princely sum then, to find buried riches on their land. The boy, Joseph, used "magic stones" to discover the sites of this bounty. When he inevitably failed to find either water or treasure, he would leave town, often with "encouragement," and move on to other fee-based treasure-hunting activities.
After a particularly large and humiliating failure in the Susquehanna Valley, near Damascus, New York, Smith stayed on to court a local gal, Emma Hale, in spite of community accusations that he was a "charlatan." In the spring of 1826, a group of unhappy customers went further and brought formal charges against Joseph, claiming he was nothing but an imposter. He was subsequently convicted of "glass gazing," an outlawed form of fortune telling. Emma's dad, Isaac, was one of the duped treasure hunters who testified against Joseph, so he was not pleased by the courtship of his daughter by this convicted criminal. He considered Joseph to be arrogant, fraudulent and lazy. Those who knew Joseph best claimed, "He could utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvelous absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity." Others said that Joseph was "in particular considered entirely destitute of moral character and addicted to vicious habits." But Joseph was persuasive to some, and Emma eloped with him in January 1827. To reconcile with his estranged father-in-law, Joseph promised to lead a more honest and honorable life, and to help Isaac on his farm.
Instead of working in the field, however, Isaac found Joseph spending all his time indoors. When he finally investigated, he discovered his son-in-law muttering long phrases from the Bible, with Emma sitting behind a curtain writing down Joseph's ramblings. Joseph explained that he had found two ancient golden plates by digging in a spot to which he had been led by an angel. He claimed the plates were written in "reformed Egyptian." Fortunately, the two plates conveniently came with their own set of Rosetta stones, allowing him to translate the symbols to English, which explained his indoor activities. Joseph Smith was translating the ancient Book of Mormon. The "ancient" part might be in question, though, since the book agitated against such contemporary institutions as Freemasons, and even Catholicism. Sadly, the plates mysteriously disappeared before the dates could be authenticated. In fact, Joseph declared that instant death would be the result for anybody but him looking at the golden plates. Nobody but Joseph, the fraudulent diviner from Palmyra, ever saw the plates. Only through the tainted word of a convicted con man do people know of the existence and content of those disappeared golden tablets. So terribly odd that such a monumental discovery would be hidden and destroyed rather than proudly shown to the world to prove that god's word had been found at last.
Are the claims of Joseph Smith any less bizarre than those of Marshall Applewhite or David Koresh, different as those other prophets' ventures turned out? Without large numbers, Mormonism might be considered just another lunatic cult -- as it was by many Americans in the 19th Century -- with a foundation little or no different from Heaven's Gate or the Branch Davidians. But the power of faith to overwhelm rational thought is not to be underestimated. Mormonism is now one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, with proselytizing missionaries pursuing their task with passion and zeal in every corner of the globe.
William Miller
In 1831, or thereabouts, a minister by the name of William Miller began predicting the coming of Christ, based on his unique interpretation of the Bible. He started preaching his message of doom and redemption in New York (again!), but quickly made his way south and west. Some claim he gave over 3000 sermons on the advent of the end of the world. As a consequence of Miller's sermons, fifty thousand so-called Adventists waited for the end, predicted to occur in the summer of 1843. Many sold all their worldly possessions in anticipation of the big day. When the world kept on trucking, leaving the still-alive followers destitute and homeless, Miller claimed he had miscalculated the date, leaving tens of thousands of Adventists waiting anxiously, as their descendents still do today.
Jehovah's Witnesses
In 1966, the Jehovah's Witnesses predicted in Life Everlasting in the Freedom of the Sons of God, a book by the society's vice president Frederick Franz, that the world "six thousand years from man's creation will end in 1975..." That prognostication must have caused some chagrin in 1976 when Armageddon was again delayed, particularly because leadership had encouraged members to sell their homes and property in 1974. The failed prophecy of 1975 continued a long tradition started by Charles T. Russell, who founded the Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1879, he claimed that 1914 was the big year in which the world would be destroyed. When the year ended quietly, Russell changed the date to 1915. He died in 1916, when Joseph Franklin Rutherford took control of the organization. Upon taking the reins, Rutherford prophesied that in 1918 god would destroy churches and their members, and that by 1920 every "kingdom would be swallowed up in anarchy." As December 31 rolled around, he reset the date to 1925. We are still here.
With such an embarrassing history of failed predictions and miscues from reading god's intent from human experience, one would think Pat Robertson too chagrined to keep up the tradition. But no, like Miller, or Franz or Applewhite before him, Robertson believes he has a special phone line connected directly to god's chamber that gives him special insight. So we pause with bated breath to learn why god has decided to smite Chile; and we're still waiting to hear what grave sins the citizens of Anchorage committed to witness the land split apart in 1964. Pat, we're standing by.
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Look at the drawings in it and you'll see more than a few which depict buildings collapsing on men, women and children. When you ask one of the Witnesses about this, he/she will tell you that this is what God will do to non-WTS members for being 'wicked'. The Muslim fundamentalists are not the only ones who want God to incinerate non-believers. Their books and magazines are full of such images. What's the point of believing in a God who's basically holding a gun to your head and saying "worship me!"? This is the God of the Watchtower.
The only thing Schweitzer is probably right on is that the quotes about Smith's character were by his accusers at the time of trial, rather than many years later as Rathje postulated. But they definitely were not uttered by those who knew him best. If you want the up-close-and-personal view of those who knew him best, read the biography written by his mother, Lucy Mack Smith. She knew and observed everything he did from his cradle to his grave.
As to the 11 witnesses, give me a break. I can get 11 people to swear in court on their mother's grave that they were abducted by aliens. Do you now want to devote your life to alien abductions because 11 people so swore? My credibility is not at stake here; the Mormon story is so ridiculous that the burden of proof lies there, not with me. And if question the historical accuracy of my statements, don't believe me; go to any library and look up the events yourself. Then you can stop doing what you wrongly accused me of doing -- saying "trust me." Do you by chance recognize the hypocrisy of doing what you accuse others of?
Maybe they were all delusional. Maybe they were all deceitful. Doesn't matter. The fact is, you said "Nobody but Joseph, the fraudulent diviner from Palmyra, ever saw the plates."
OUTRIGHT LIE. At least twelve men claimed to have examined them firsthand. Don't hide behind "go look it up in your local library." I know the history. You either don't know it or else you knowingly lie about it. I won't say whether Smith was or wasn't a fraud. But you, Schweitzer, are definitely a fraud.
We are saved by *faith* in Christ. This excuse of 'bad things happen, so there isn't a God, or if there is, he is not someone I want to be around,' is wearing very thin. It is an excuse to stop you doing the most important thing for you: ensuring the salvation of your soul.
The alternative is to be rejected out of hand and spending eternity in such a ghastly place that you'll wish you were back on earth in an earthquake, or be starving. It would be more tolerable. You will have burned your bridges by that time.
If anyone should reject God, it should be me, but from a life of struggle, I have also learned of the Almighty's grace towards me, even when I haven't deserved it. For me to use the 'bad things happen, therefore...' excuse to try to deny God would be folly indeed.
What does "Xhosa Girl" tell us, other than there are evil spirits?
As for the Mormons, I used to be one - for a couple of years. I left because I didn't believe their claim to be the only true church. In fact, I don't consider it to be a work of God at all, but of the Devil.
"Atheists" get their way so much these days because they confuse the unlearned by mixing belief systems like this. Why not stick to the point? Forget Pat Robertson - what does the Almighty God say (not evil spirits, 'Allah', Joseph Smith Jr., the tooth fairy, etc.)?
This is a fallen world - fallen due to sin, therefore bad things will happen. This means you don't know what day will be your last, so you'd better get right with the Christ asap and then you don't have anything to worry about.
If I may say so, 'atheists,' for all their talk of "clear-thinking oases" and the "enlightenment," are ignorant of the reality of life on earth. Wilfully ignorant, I would say, seeing how God has made his creation and presence abundantly clear. So much so that on the Day of Judgment no-one will be able to excuse themselves by claiming they did not know.
When you consider that 'science' has evolution wrong, i.e. that God made the genome perfect in the beginning and it has been deteriorating over time, then it is obvious that people lived longer in the past. Today, at least 1/3 of the population is getting cancer. The Virgin Birth is a matter of faith, but it was one of many prophecies that came true in my opinion. Why should Satan appearing or depicted as a serpent be a surprise?
The gold plates were a figment of the fertile imagination of the teenage shyster Joseph Smith. Nothing to do with Christianity, other than he plagiarised large parts of the Bible for his Book of Mormon, pinched from other books and stole the Masons' temple endowment ceremony, not to mention a tenth of his followers' earnings.
So all the Mormons out there can go ahead and try to defend the indefensible; I'll let you have your way. Better yet, I invite everybody out there to read the Book of Mormon cover to cover. Please. Then draw your own conclusions. Then do the same with the King James bible. Cover to cover. Then draw your own conclusions. If only everybody actually read these things thoroughly, from one end to the other, organized religion would become a minor factor in human affairs.
Are you kidding me? Go get a Book of Mormon right now. Browse through the first three or four pages. You see that? Under the heading “The Testimony of the Three Witnesses.” Then look at the segment below it entitled “The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses.” Take your time. I'll wait.
All done now? I rest my case. One wonders whether the editors over at Huffington Post were on lunch break when Mr. Schweitzer submitted this article. It is simply so breathtaking erroneous.
Book of Mormon. So no, I'm not kidding you.
No, Joseph never said this. Here is the quote from Joseph Smith:
“Again, he told me, that when I got those plates of which he had spoken—for the time that they should be obtained was not yet fulfilled—I should not show them to any person; neither the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim; only to those to whom I should be commanded to show them; if I did I should be destroyed. While he was conversing with me about the plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could see the place where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it.” Joseph Smith-History 1:42
Note that it states JOSEPH would die. It doesn't state anyone else would. You may find this equally incredible, but it really hurts one's credibility when one fails to so dismally on the basic facts.
Freemasonry is not even mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Freemasonry only becomes a topic of interest much, much later in Mormon history. You're obviously freely blending facts and narratives together from disjointed sources you've consulted.
Catholicism is not specifically named in the Book of Mormon either. There is a passage in 2 Nephi (a sub-book within the Book of Mormon) that talks about a “great and abominable” church which some later LDS writers ASSUMED was talking about the Catholic Church. But a close study of the Book of Mormon passage reveals that it couldn't have been referencing Catholicism – which didn't exist at the time the scripture in question is talking about.
Most of these opinions were made long after the fact – after Mormonism had become a national sensation, and after people had moved beyond the occult beliefs they had held earlier in the century. Much of the testimony is suspect, as the witnesses would inevitably rewrite the facts to make themselves appear more respectable. As to whether these people “knew Joseph best” - this is nothing more than bare assertion on your part. I'd like to see some sources for this, but your track record on the facts so far doesn't give me a lot of hope.
(“Joseph explained that he had found two ancient golden plates by digging in a spot to which he had been led by an angel.”)
The artifact in question was a book of hundreds of paper-thin leaves of metal that appeared to be gold bound together with three rings and reportedly weighing about 80 lbs.
But once again, this blog is not about Mormons as much as they would to defend the strange; that is just one example among many demonstrating the odd claims of humans to know the mind of the god they created.
(“In the spring of 1826, a group of unhappy customers went further and brought formal charges against Joseph, claiming he was nothing but an imposter. He was subsequently convicted of "glass gazing," an outlawed form of fortune telling.”)
Joseph was arraigned for trial but never convicted for anything. Recent court documents from the trial in question indicate it was never a trial at all. There was a warrant served to bring him into court, but nothing else. We have no reliable historical evidence of any conviction.
(“Emma's dad, Isaac, was one of the duped treasure hunters who testified against Joseph, so he was not pleased by the courtship of his daughter by this convicted criminal.”)
Isaac Hale disapproved of treasure-hunting in general. It was part of the reason he objected to his daughter's marriage to Joseph. He never participated in treasure hunting himself. In fact never testified at Joseph's court hearing either. The list of witnesses for this court evidentiary hearing is as follows:
Joseph Smith Jr., Joseph Smith Sr., Josiah Stowell (Joseph's employer), Horace Stowell, Arad Stowell, and Jonathan Thompson.
You see any Hales in there? Nope, neither do I.
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Let's take it from the top then. I've placed all Jeff Schweitzer's quotes in parentheses and included my refutations. Here goes.
(“In the early 1800s, in Palmyra, New York, a local boy claimed he could divine the location of ground water, as well as treasures buried by Indians. Persuasive as a snake-oil salesman, farmers paid him $3, a princely sum then, to find buried riches on their land.”)
First off, three dollars was not a “princely sum” even in the early 1800s.
(“The boy, Joseph, used "magic stones" to discover the sites of this bounty. When he inevitably failed to find either water or treasure, he would leave town, often with "encouragement," and move on to other fee-based treasure-hunting activities.”)
What on earth is your source for this? I've combed through both of the major biographies of Joseph Smith's life - “Rough Stone Rolling” and “No Man Knows My History” and neither author gives any indication that Joseph Smith ever “skipped town.” The narrative in both biographies indicates that Joseph remained in the communities where his services were solicited, regardless of result.
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Hmmmm, could it possibly be that this type of god isn't real?
I have a MAJOR problem with the notion of god being worse than our lowest, most subhuman impulses - vengeance, jealousy, suspicion, insane wrath, emotional psychosis, and continual, manipulative games of spiritual chicken.
For heaven's sake, we socially isolate, institutionalize, or imprison people who act out vicious reptilian-brain impulses like these to any great extent! And yet some of us believe that god is allowed to behave in ways that we arrest and sometime even put fellow humans to death for? That it's somehow holy and divinely inspired, even! What insanity and separation from self does it require to believe in and fear such a god?
I refuse to believe in and empower such a crappy god. Whatever higher forces exist, which we may not (read: probably don't) yet understand, are far better than the gods of organized religion. If GOD exists, it isn't what we're told to believe in by mind-controlled orthodox religious structures.
Personally, I do have a sense that some higher power exists, and no, it's not entirely rational. The difference between me and many others is that I'm willing to admit that I might be wrong about this feeling, and that it could appear silly to someone else. And that's OK with me.
Just like someone who believes in a psychotic, hateful, and hypocritical god appears ridiculous to me, I am willing to acknowledge that my "beliefs" can and probably do baffle others who don't share them. That doesn't particularly upset me, and as far as I'm concerned I don't need to argue about it or convince others of it. It comes down to "it works for me and it doesn't hurt anyone else", so why not live and let live?
A serious case can be made that organized religion DOES harm many people and society, and you've made arguments in this vein very adeptly in the past, Jeff. It's why I was one of your earliest fans, actually. As you've stated before, there's nothing that organized religion does that irreligious people and a secular, lawful, and moral society can't do too. We don't need religion to be good people, have worthwhile lives, or functional cultures.
Ultimately, what I most I object to is the fear-mongering mental, emotional, and spiritual imprisonment of organized religions, not a belief in god per se. So often, however, they cannot be separated.
Besides Joseph Smith, 11 others saw the Gold plates which had the record of the Book of Mormon written on them. 3 witnesses were shown the gold plates by the same angel who directed Joseph Smith to their whereabouts. 8 oher men saw, hefted & examined the plates. These men saw no angel, nor, as the other witnesses did, heard the voice of God speak to them.
The 3 'special' witnesses were later cut off from the Church they helped found. Although they had, at various times, issues with either Joseph Smith or the LDS ("Mormon") Church, none ever denied their testimony of seeing the angel and hearing the voice of God declare the Book of Mormon to be true. All reaffirmed their testimonies throughout their lives. All three bore solemn witness all their lives & again with their dying breaths.
For those of you who have some Biblical knowledge, the Mormon claims is that the NT was corrupted (mostly because it clearly dispels any notion of "restoring the priesthood" or ANY of the OT practices that are so important to LDS doctrine). What cracks me up about this is that the BoM's validity RELIES on the accuracy of the KJV. More circular reasoning from certifiable organized religion.
Now I'm not saying that he couldn't find sources to back up most of his claims, but I can say with some confidence that looked at with a more thorough and searching investigations those claims and his conclusions would have a very hard time maintaining their integrity.
Then there's the claim
"Nobody but Joseph, the fraudulent diviner from Palmyra, ever saw the plates. Only through the tainted word of a convicted con man do people know of the existence and content of those disappeared golden tablets."
The claim which can be disproved easily by anyone who opens any full copy of the Book of Mormon and reads the testimonies of 8 others who saw the plates.
This man was supposed to advise a president of the US on scientific matters yet he makes a claim that ANYONE who but opens the pages of the book he references can be refuted.
Not only that but all 11 witnesses continued all their life to testify of the veracity of their statements with regards to the Book of Mormon, this despite the fact that many became disaffected from the Church or Joseph at some point in their life and some never reunited with the Church yet NEVER denied, and often reaffirmed, their testimonies of the Book of Mormon.