Problem with the "prop plates" theory: Joseph had no history of metal working, and he was too poor to afford to pay a blacksmith to make a set of plates. In fact, I've read that hefting the plates is one of the reasons Martin Harris agreed to mortgage his farm, because he knew there was no way Joseph could afford either gold or lead to produce something that heavy.

The part of your response that you clipped for the introduction basically sums up all critical responses to the witnesses.

I love their struggle session. It’s like they’re trying real hard to convince themselves. I wonder how many of the four of them had a spiritual witness before their defection and how fascinating it would be to watch them talk themselves out of that.

Love your recognition of the general quality of the LDS discussions series, despite your reservations about this particular episode. Great show of integrity in acknowledging them. On the apologetic response, I feel like that typically ends up as a defense, however rational or irrational, or ignoring the argument, as opposed to making a concession barring further evidence. The refusal to let anything be wrong ever is how we end up with nonsensical tapir arguments that hold no water whatsoever in the decision about how one should dedicate his or her life.

Some thoughts on the Samuel Smith example. I don’t really understand the criticism. He did reference him holding the plates because he pointed to the account right there in opening pages of the Book of Mormon. Basically said “ I am witness to this thing written here. I know Joseph was inspired by God. You can know too by reading it and praying.”

I really wish Mormon apologists would do direct long-form conversations with Mormon discussions or bill reel et al

Murph having two exmo scholars in the livechat is quite telling

1:01:15 “Why do we need the Holy Ghost when you could actually just convince me that the plates are real” I don’t think he thought through that argument very well. It’s far more likely I could be convinced against the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon were it not for the witness of the Holy Ghost.

12:53 it’s instructive that the friends at Mormon Stories Podcast are concerned about the term “friends” in their allegation of friends being willing to collude and lie. Seems like they’re projecting.

You are a trooper for watching all this

Of course they neglected to mention that all of Straings witnesses left his church, like the eight witnesses, but not only did none of them return to that church, they all admitted it was a fraud, while some of the eight witnesses returned, and none of them denied their witness. Lucy Mack Smith never saw what really happened, she was assuming. Plus she was well advanced in age with possibly poor eyesight, and never saw if what she said was exactly what was written. And of course they didn't mention all the witnesses who felt the weight or caught a glimpse accidentally. I bet they never do, because the mass hypnosis doesn't work, the conspirators doesn't work and most never went public. Plus when you add the Caraters Document written by Martin Harris?, and dated back to the 1830s, that have Demotic and Hieratic Egyptian characters with Yucatecan Mayan characters, that when translated, using ancient Hebrew grammar, that name characters and describe events from The Book Of Mormon. They HAVE to isolate the witnesses and other events from each other, so they can attack them in different ways that contradict each other. When the evidences are taken together, they eliminate all their attacks against them.

I really appreciate this longform engagement with their longform content. More of this is needed from a faithful perspective. You are doing great!

Their discussion really falls apart towards the end

If Joseph showed the plates to everyone, they would have been stolen like the 116 pages. That episode of the 116 pages, btw, proved why it was so important for Joseph to be so cautious with who knew where the plates were.

You are my favorite apologist! You validate those who come to different conclusions and you offer really fair criticisms of exmormons. Please do responses to lds discussions! That would be amazing! I’ve been wanting someone to do that so I could see a broader view of it all. I don’t like listening to most apologists, but you’re someone I can actually tolerate and respect. Keep up the good work!

With the quality of the winesses, you can't prove without any doubt that the story is totally true. There is SO much JS could have done to make this proving without ANY doubts, but you can't do that when you make up things. Narcissist people will do any thing to get what they want. People that did not encounter in their life a narcissist person have no idea what they are capable of. I can tell you that these people will surprise you everytime and come up with new ideas and gimmicks to get something out of others. The parody with south park, looks absurd to mormons, but in reality, they got it straight.

Didn't Oliver Cowdery move to Utah after re-joining the Church and even spoke at a General Conference in Salt Lake City?

Why was the rock and hat hidden? Very much a turn around from.gold plates? Also the cumorah has been demoted to a distraction after joseph swore it was the last battle site..swore to it...😢

When pride and LGBTQ+ issues are extinguished from character, the antagonism community would be quite different.

Another thing I thought of while watching this video. What were the Roman version of Mormon stories? You know people trying to disprove early Christianity

Thanks for making this video and man watching Mormon Stories, I gotta say I'm more convinced these guys are leading another a sect of Mormonism, just the postmodern one

Thanks for the incredible insights, JD and Nemo. After listening to your little band of merry haters, I'm even more confident that there is no real criticism to the witnesses as evidence.

This commentary is interesting, and I tend to agree with your analysis of their arguments. My responses are largely the same. But for me, the whole question of "how the Book of Mormon got here" is so much less important than looking at its contents. The more our historical and linguistic knowledge advances, the more plausible the work becomes. The evidence for the historicity for the Book just on the basis of the English text is mounting, and the odds of that happening for a supposedly historical book from 1829 if it were invented are astronomical. I feel like you first have to deal with the fact that the Book really does appear to be genuine, and then that will obviously color how you look at its provenance. I care less about whether someone thought the plates were physical in the early 19th Century, when I can see the tangible results of the claim that they were real.

Why didn't you continue uploading content on Spotify?

Murphy. Please to an open discussion with Dan Vogel. !!!!

If they were....would there be a Show about them??? (Isn't that The Problem with Joseph Smith too???)

Dont you have any concerns over the racism that prophets taught for 140 years..do you.think the Saviour would have taught this???. Or polygamy or blood oath atonement? .😢

I'm glad you're doing this response because I think you bring a good push on how to analyze the historical documentation with respect to the witnesses. I think that's awesome. The witnesses as reliable evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon does get shot down pretty quicky in light of Hume's On Miracles. Even if the witness statements are materially true, all that gets us to is that there were plates and that a glowy guy claiming to be a resurrected white American Hebrew said that the book produced by Joseph Smith was an accurate translation of the markings on the plates. That would have some interesting implications, but it would not establish actually establish the accuracy of the translation or the truthfulness of the contents. I suppose this is where the accusation of just finding any reason to not believe kicks in, but that's not my point. My point is that the witness teatimonies, even if shown to be substantially reliable as evidence, could only get us so far in establishing the truth case of the Book of Mormon. In light of issues like Deutero-Isaiah, the technological anachronisms, the physical impossibility of the slaying of Laban as described, and so on (and adding on other circumstantial issues, such as Book of Abraham, competing miracle claims, etc.), what basis do we have to accept the witness statements as credible as opposed to either fabrications or being sincerely mistaken? 9:00 I cannot agree more that the witness claims to the plates are similar to the witness claims to Jesus' resurrection (actually, the latter is WAY worse, as there are NO written eyewitness accounts, merely stories of eyewitness accounts). And yeah, if Jesus's resurrection is the most important event in human history, I'd argue that god could and should do better in giving strong, positive evidence to the reality of the event. Restricting knowledge restricts agency. 11:00 On what basis do you consider the witness statements "credible"? I get consistency can be tracked by comparing statements against each other, but I'm not sure how you're vetting credibility. 14:00 I think Mike's point here, if I may steelman him a bit, is that there are no antagonistic witnesses. If the plates can be seen by natural eyes, as the 8 would suggested, then a non-fraudulent claim should not need to hide that physical evidence from the eyes of witnesses unfriendly to the claim. Instead, the guest list only included Smiths and Whitmers, who were all friendly to the claim. (I suppose, insert argument about the three all leaving the church but never denying their teatimonies, and my response of their leaving Joseph Smith and their leaving Mormonism are two very different ideas, and I don't think the evidence is sufficient that any became hostile to Mormonism [notable possible exception of Cowdery, who may have actually been willing to denounce his testimony after all]). And again, yes, I would absolutely agree that the evidence for Jesus's resurrection, if a real event, should be WAY better than it is. 16:15 I don't understand your point here. 31:00 Better stated, given their magical worldview, why should elevate their testimonies as credible evidence above empirical evidence that either fails to confirm or even disconfirms the claims of the Book of Mormon? I mean, apart frok Nahom, the witness statements may be the best external evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, but I don't see that as a glowing review of the authenticity of the text or the credibility of the statements. 32:45 If they're wrong in one instance, we can adjudicate our confidence in their claims accordingly. Remember, we're butting up against Hume's razor here. Any lost credibility can (and probably should) be considered fatal to the miracle claim predicated on the testimony. 34:00 All that undermines is the idea that John Whitmer was hesitant to sign the statement. It tells us nothing of the disposition of the other 7. I imagine that in a group of 8 people like that, opinions varied. If there was hesitancy among the 8, it is entirely possible that John Whitmer was just super on board anyway. 41:00 Nah, once I, as a critic, add the cloth, I'm adding an entity to the discussion. If John Whitmer wants to claim that supernatural power was involved in his seeing the plates, I'm happy to leave him to it and to apportion my confidence in his credibility accordingly. 42:45 So, I wonder, when they claim to "see" and "handle" the plates, are those both physical, natural phenomena? Are they happening at the same time? Are they handling the plates under a cloth or in a box and "seeing" them by supernatural power? Is the phrase "see and handle" (and its variants) just the party line that becomes the memory through repetition? If that can't be parsed out in the sources, I see that as a great place to go back to Hume. 1:09:20 Help me out here though. The Samuel Smith statement that suggests seeing and handling the plates is much later than the one where the whole idea is omitted. I don't think the criticism from that 1863(?) statement is resolved merely by pointing to this one from 20 years later. 1:12:00 And again, the evidence for Jesus's resurrection can and should be better. There are NO antagonistic witnesses of the plates Joseph translated. Just deeply friendly witnesses with magical worldviews that increase their susceptibility to claiming supernatural or visionary experiences. The evidence could and should be better if it's true. Question, will people still have faith after the Second Coming? 1:14:30 The plates only "pass visual inspection" with friendly witnesses with a magical worldview. That's not much of a test. 1:16:50 Yes, I would make that argument about the god of Christianity. He's pretty incompetent at this whole evidence thing too. Going back to my point earlier on, this is why deconstructing Mormonism is so often fatal to god belief. I think we're actually disproportionate in producing atheists and agnostics. If the choice is between accepting Jesus or suffering, and if god is a loving, good, powerful, and knowledgeable god, then he would do all in his power to give people convincing evidence that leads them to Jesus and to avoid suffering. Otherwise, he is lacking in one or more of those characteristics. This goes to the problem of divine hiddenness. 1:18:00 Is god not powerful enough to both protect the plates and allow them to be shown? That doesn't strike me as a strong apologetic. 1:21:45 Mike is the only one to bring up the cloth. And I think that was a slip on his part. 1:28:00 Joseph making his own set of gold tinted plates is not more impressive or more unlikely than his having an ancient American record written in reformed Egyptian delivered to him by a resurrected white Hebrew American whose nation of capable of supporting an Iron Age (in pre-Columbian America) military of hundreds of thousands strong was eradicated at the same place as another civilization (which crossed the ocean in wooden submarines after escaping the confounding of languages at the tower of Babel), millions strong, was destroyed. It is not more impressive or more unlikely than Joseph manufactured such naturalistic plates than that that record was presented to three and eight witnesses by that same resurrected white Hebrew American. 1:29:30 Nothing that they suggested is inconsistent with what people did at the time... Sure, speculative, but much more likely than the stuff necessary to accept the faithful narrative. And now you're bringing the cloth back in where Nemo said nothing about a cloth. Or if he did and I missed, then it just isn't necessary for his point to stand. 1:32:00 I don't think their statements support Joseph having forged plates at all. I do think that the idea that Joseph forged plates does explain several data points introduced by the witness statements that make it a plausible, if not likely, event. But that's a question of directionality, not so much substance. Anyway, I wish you were a participant on this panel to discuss this in real-time, but I appreciate the work you've done in going to the documentation.

The Voree plates translated to 100-200 words and thus a prop could more easily be fabricated. The Book of Mormon is roughly 269,000 words. The idea that Joseph Smith fabricated a prop that convinced 8 men that the Book of Mormon was produced from it would seem preposterous.

Of all the 4 people speaking here, Dehlin is by far the least objective, comes across as completely one-sided and makes some embarrassingly uninformed, slanted claims. If this is what intense anti-Mormon work makes of you, then this is actually the best warning for all those who follow a similar path. You could almost say that Dehlin has created his own monster out of his life's work.

Dehlin and his group haven’t brought anything new to the table on attempts to debunk the Witnesses. They pick and choose convenient documents to lead to their conclusions. It is so obvious like many conspiracy theorists do. I stopped listening to Mormon Stories a few years ago because of John’s approach to his criticisms that all stem from his objective to build his own platform to break faith so he can mend them. Like a doctor ruining your health so he can the be the fixer and profit from such. All these old arguments are boring and do nothing to those who have studied the history and understand the nuances. Good job to take on these voices and give alternatives to perception and reason. The bottom line is that none of the Witnesses ever denied their testimonies and the Three especially to their deaths maintained their testimonies. John’s speculations and reason are far stretched and just don’t really resonate to anyone who has a solid understanding of the Book of Mormon background. John has no choice at this juncture of his latest life work to back down. A sorrowful example of what happens when driven by money, popularity and pride. Why in the world with all the real problems in this world would Dehlin spend all his efforts and resources to trying to break Mormonism? Seems obsessive and telling of exactly what he benefits from them.

Oliver gets a B+ on credibility, David B- and Martin gets an F.