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Because they believe he was a good and godly man who was actually a prophet as indicated by his deeds and the testimony of those around him. The Book of Mormon is one of those things that is believed to be a strong piece of evidence for his apostolic calling.
No, not if it is normal for the culture and the payee initiates the transaction and all parties involved believe that such a thing is possible and all actions are being done sincerely.
Well, that could very well be true. But Joseph Smith suffered tremendously in his life because of his religious claims. You need to read a bit more history of his life. He was also an extremely generous man and beloved by the people.
Once, as the Mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois [Joseph Smith] was told of a black man in Nauvoo named Anthony who had sold liquor on Sunday; which was a violation of the Nauvoo City Code. Mormon writer Mary Frost Adams tells us what happened:
"While he was acting as mayor of the city, a colored man named Anthony was arrested for selling liquor on Sunday, contrary to law. He pleased that the reason he had done so was that he might raise the money to purchase the liberty of a dear child held as a slave in a Southern State. He had been able to purchase the liberty of himself and his wife and now wished to bring his little child to their new home. Joseph said, ‘I am sorry, Anthony, but the law must be observed and we will have to impose a fine.’ The next day Brother Joseph presented Anthony with a fine horse, directing him to sell it, and use the money obtained for the purchase of the child." (Young Woman’s Journal, p.538)
The horse was Joseph’s prized white stallion, and was worth about $500; a huge sum at the time. With the money from the sale, Anthony was able to purchase his child out of slavery.
There are many stories like this of Joseph's kindness and generosity. This is one of the few times in his life that Joseph Smith wasn't close to poverty. His trust and forgiving nature was part of the reason he ended up getting assassinated.
To begin with, wikipedia articles relating to anything Mormon are thoroughly controlled by anti-Mormons, who instantly remove anything that they deem positive, regardless of accuracy, unless they are so thoroughly footnoted beyond nearly anything else on wikipedia that you could almost win a lawsuit with the documentation. Believe me, I'm a wikipedia editor and have watched it happen many times. You need to learn to take anything related to Mormonism on wikipedia with a grain of salt. As an example, take a look at the "Reformed Egyptian" article there. It begins from two completely false premises (that "reformed Egyptian" is a language and that it was used somewhere outside of the the Book of Mormon record) and then it proceeds to bash away for the entire article. We've managed to get a little section in at the bottom, but note how John Gee is described. John Gee has a Ph.D. in Egyptology from Yale University and is currently a Egyptologist at BYU. He is also editor of the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. He is writing in his area of expertise. Anywhere else he would be described as a "scholar," but wikipedia describes him as a "Mormon apologist."
Each one of those things you raise has been answered many times and for most (but not all) there are excellent responses. Some charges are simply ridiculous. I don't want to turn this thread into a purely Book of Mormon thread, but if you want to start a new thread where we deal with specific issues on the Book of Mormon, I'd be happy to do so. I would suggest, however, that you become familiar with the current LDS responses to those criticisms so that we can start out a step ahead of the process. A good place to start would be the FAIR wiki. In most cases you will see where I will probably start in any response I make to your attacks.
This list that you discounted simply because it is on wikipedia is full of citations:
The lack of correlation between locations described in the Book of Mormon and American archaeological sites.[82]
The lack of linguistic connection between any Native American language or language family and Near Eastern languages.[95]
The lack of DNA evidence linking any Native American group to the ancient Near East.
Just because it's on wikipedia doesn't make it false. It makes it worth looking into.
Can you seriously place cattle, milk, horses, asses, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheat, grapes, silk, steel, bellow, brass, breast plates, chains, copper, iron, mining ore, plows, swords, scimitars, and chariots in pre-Columbian America despite what archaeologists will tell you?
So Joseph Smith was wrong when he taught that God used to be a man on another planet (Mormon Doctrine, pg. 321)
After you become a good mormon, youcan become a god (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (345-347, 354)
And that God lives near a star called Kolob? (Pearl of Great Price 34-35, Mormon Doctrine, 428)
I was answering your earlier question, which was "So you're not going to live on your own planet with your wife and have lots and lots of spirit babies?"
The answer to that question, as I believe it, is no.
As for these three new questions:
No.
No/Yes. (It's a poorly worded question.)
No. (At least not literally, and not a star as you are thinking of it.)
(1) Joseph Smith was not a "con man." The evidence doesn't support that, and the very reason for the existence of that charge is that those who reject his claims about his religious experience want to use that as part of the argument to attack his religious claims. But Joseph Smith is in good company. Another famous religious leader was also unjustly accused of being "a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." Reputation is a fickle thing, and determined enemies can usually come up with enough "evidence" to make a charge stick for people who are inclined to believe it already.
Actually the evidence does suggest that Joseph Smith was a con man. He was convicted in 1826 of FRAUD for his magic treasure seeking. It is on public record. You can look it up.
This list that you discounted simply because it is on wikipedia is full of citations:
Good heavens! It has citations! It must be true!!
Quote:
Just because it's on wikipedia doesn't make it false. It makes it worth looking into.
I totally agree. In fact, the vast majority of stuff on wikipedia I think is correct. It is just when you get to highly subjective and emotion topics, such as extremely controversial religions such as the Mormons, you have to remember that anything you read might have been put there by a zealot on either side of the issue.
Quote:
Can you seriously place cattle, milk, horses, asses, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheat, grapes, silk, steel, bellow, brass, breast plates, chains, copper, iron, mining ore, plows, swords, scimitars, and chariots in pre-Columbian America despite what archaeologists will tell you?
Absolutely. But it depends on how you word the question as to whether it would be "despite" archaeologists or in agreement with them.
And just to shorten this conversation by a post or two, let me give you an example.
If you were to ask an archaeologist whether any European-style swords had been found dating to pre-Columbian America, he/she would almost certainly say no.
But if you were to ask an archaeologist or historian whether there were pre-Columbian American, long, hand-held, stabbing-and-slashing weapons that the Spanish repeated called swords when they saw the native Americans fighting with them, then the answer would be "Absolutely, it is written in extant Spanish texts from that era!"
You need to remember that not one of those words you mention ("cattle, milk, horses, etc.") was in the Book of Mormon. Those are all English words that were chosen in the translation process to stand for what was in the original text.
And aside from the issue of what exactly is meant by the labels, some of those have indeed been found. That list is growing shorter (it used to include things like cement and barley, which have since been found), and some things on it will certainly be removed as the wiki article is updated (e.g., "silk"), assuming the anti-Mormons will let it be updated.
And aside from both the translation issue and the fact that some things have been found that are claimed to be anachronistic, some things are simply false assertions about the Book of Mormon.
For example, the word "milk" is mentioned three times in the Book of Mormon, but only in the writings of Nephi who lived in Jerusalem and was quoting Old Testament scriptures at the time.
The same is true of the bellows mentioned in the Book of Mormon: it is only mentioned in the Old World, never in the Americas.
The same is true of plow, which is never mentioned as a tool in the Book of Mormon at all. The one place where the word "plow" is used is as a verb in the sentence "And they did make all manner of tools to till the earth, both to plow and to sow..." So unless you believe that there was no pre-Columbian agriculture or that the pre-Columbians just laid the seeds on the top of the dirt, this Book of Mormon reference is perfectly fine. If you want to learn more about this, you might want to look at how many times on the Internet people talk about the pre-Columbians plowing using foot plows, such as the taclla.
We could go on, but I hope you are getting a sense that the wikipedia article is lacking in the accuracy area. And just maybe you'll believe me when I say that the lack of accuracy is partially due to the fact that anti-Mormons have hijacked that site for their own polemic purposes.
Actually the evidence does suggest that Joseph Smith was a con man. He was convicted in 1826 of FRAUD for his magic treasure seeking. It is on public record. You can look it up.
You really, really need to stop trusting anti-Mormon literature and websites so much. The information there is notorious for being inaccurate and skewed.
I'm not sure if the anti-Mormon wikipedia editors would accept wikipedia as a valid source for calling the pre-Columbian weapons "swords," so here's another site.
Actually, googling "pre-columbian swords" gets over 21,000 hits, so I'm hoping at least one of them might be authoritative enough so that the wiki article could be updated...
to check out the "swords" problem. Well, whoever added "swords" to the list of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon was kind enough to give us a footnote (footnote number 89, to be exact). This happens to be the same footnote justifying the inclusion of "elephants" in the list.
So let's go see this authoritative reference that helps us get an objective view of the Book of Mormon.
Hummm. Let's see. Footnote 89 is for "What is Mormonism? | Book of Mormon Origin | Theology"
Uh oh. That doesn't look very good. Let's click on it and see where our object wikipedia editors are sending people who might want to know more about elephants and swords in the Book of Mormon.
Well, we learn from that web page that Mormons don't obey their leaders, that they are connected with Freemasonry, that they are racist, that Joseph Smith believed he was superior to Jesus Christ, and the list goes on and on with nasty polemics against my church by vehement fundamentalist Christians.
This is a joy!
By the way, I removed the word "plow" from the wikipedia article since plows are not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. That was at 1:15 my time. It was put back in within 35 minutes. The anti-Mormons are getting slower...
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