Sorry, this is a long one.
Jason,
Please cite your sources. Where are you getting your information?
To this point my primary source on Joseph Smith has been Joseph Smith's own account. It's in the Pearl of Great Price, in the LDS scriptures. Here's a link:
scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1I also used "Martyrdom at Carthage", an artricle from the June 1994 issue of Ensign magazine that described the martyrdom. Here's a link (although I'm not sure this one will work very well):
library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20june%201994.htm/martyrdom%20at%20carthage.htm?fn=document-frame.htm&f=templates&2.0There are also a great deal written about his life and background on sites like FAIRlds.org.
God is not
exactly like a man. If you met Him face to face you would know you were in the presence of a heavenly being (or so I understand).
When He appeared to Joseph He appeared in a column of light, was himself a source of light, knew Joseph's name, and was standing in mid air. All that would be a pretty good trick for some random old guy in 1820.
You forget possibility number 4 - that it was exactly what Joseph said it was - a true vision from God.
I have no idea what you're trying to get at here. Michelangelo was a great painter, not a great philosopher or theologian.
It doesn't corrode. Those plates had to lay in the ground for 1400 years and still be legible. It's softer than many metals. That makes it easier to write on.
Metal plates used as writing materials by ancient societies have been found by archaeologists, including gold and silver plates. Check out FAIRlds.org and FARMS.byu.edu for many examples.
A good question. The first answer is that God promised the Nephites who wrote the plates in the first place that the plates would be translated and read by their descendents. God was therefore keeping a promise by providing Joseph with the plates.
A second possible answer is that Joseph needed props like the plates and the urim and thumim to translate to begin with. Later on he began projects like a revision of the Bible without their use - his faith had grown to the point where he could do without them.
That would be the third answer. The testamony of eleven witnessess who saw the plates appears in the front of the Book of Mormon. Three of them also had an angel show them the plates. None of those witnessess ever recanted their testamony, even though many of them later left the church.
The Bible records, among other instances, Elijah being caught up in a fiery chariot and rising to heaven, never to return, so if you believe the Bible you believe physical things can indeed enter heaven.
Why did God take the plates back? Well, for a while there was a good chance that they might be taken by the enemies of the church, so they would be much safer in God's hands. Another possible answer is that God intends the message of the Book of Mormon to persuade people to accept it, not the presence of the physical plates they were translated from. It's the same question as "if God wants to save us, why doesn't He simply appear on International TV and tell us all what to do to get to heaven?"
Sorry, I do in fact believe it occured. Or at least, I believe the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible is based off of a real event. I believe in the Garden of Eden and the flood too.
God punished mankind for attempting to make themselves gods through material means.
No. The issue wasn't that they could actually reach heaven with the tower, the issue was that they wouldn't listen to God or his servents while they were focused on making themselves gods through their own means. It was blatant hubris.
The goal of the space program has been entirely different.
Smith was not a racist.
With regard to changes in the Book of Mormon, I touched on this earlier in this thread. First of all, the Book of Mormon makes no claim to infallibility - it recognizes that men are not perfect and that there may be errors in the text. Second, the LDS church believes that a living prophet is more important than a dead one. If the current leaders of the church make a correction in the scriptures then we will accept the corrected version as the most valid one.
The meaning was always intended to be spiritual. The change was made to clarify this.
Isaiah 1:18: "...Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson they shall be as as wool." Isaiah isn't really saying that sins are red and repentence makes them white - he is using the colors as a (quite poetic) metaphore.
From a lifetime of study of the church. The specific scripture which covers Joseph's teaching on marriage is Section 132 of the Doctrine & Covenants.
One of my sources is also the rituals, including the sealing ceremony, which are performed in the LDS temples. I cannot discuss those in any great detail with non-members because I consider them sacred and have promised not to reveal them.
It is possible that we might still be practicing polygamy if the Church had won it's case in the Supreme Court, yes. That would have made it unnecessary for God to withdraw the commandment in order to save the Church. On the other hand, it's also possible God would have withdrawn it anyway. It's difficult to say since the government did crack down.
A relevent scripture (concerning the Church's failure to build a temple in Missouri in 1841) is D&C 124:" 49 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing that work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept of their offerings."
I'm not sure that he is lying - it's possible he is merely uninformed, or using anti-mormon sources that do lie for his information. In any case his clear intent is to mock the faith, not to provide unbaised information.
Uh, your source here says that we ARE the only mainstream church to use vicarious baptism.
I have heard there are some non-Christian churchs that have something similar, but I haven't heard of any Christian churchs that do. I'm not claiming we are the only Christian church that does so, merely that I haven't heard of any other that does.
Problems with this little link include:
1. The rituals of the temple greatly resemble those of the Free Masons to the extent that Masons I know have said the basic structure and some of the signs and tokens are the same. The message and teachings that accompany them are entirely different, however. I consider the Temple rites to be sacred and will not discuss them at any great length on a public forum.
2. The Mountain Meadow Massacre did involve Mormons (and native americans) killing essntially innocent settlers, but there is no evidence that it was ordered by Brigham Young. There have been several attempts to fake evidence that Brigham Young ordered it, most recently an inscription on a lead plate that was discovered just before the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was later discovered to be a hoax.
3. Polygamy was stopped both publicly and privately. People who already had multiple wives in 1890 were not forced to divorce them, but people who entered polygamous marriages after 1890 were excommunicated by the church. That policy continues to this day.
There are splinter groups who call themselves things like "the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" who continue to practice polygamy. Their members are not members of the LDS church.
4. Parts of the Book of Mormon do indeed quote the Bible. The quotations are only sometimes word-for-word matches of the King James Bible. More often there are variations in wording - sometimes quite extensive variations. In the New Testament Jesus and his disciples often quoted from the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah, as the Book of Mormon does.
5. There hasn't been a cover-up on the baptisms of notorious historic figures - after all, this website knows about it.
6. Is this guy seriously going to lay blame on us for the sinister role the church plays in "A Study in Scarlet" and the "Starship Troopers" movie? Both fictional works produced by non-Mormons?
7. I notice on this page he gets more of the details of the Joseph Smith story correct - he mentions a stone box containing the golden plates rather than a cave with a table. Why is he telling a different story here?
EDIT: Fixed quote tags.