Mormons release photos of Joseph Smith’s magical “seer stones”

Well, although the religious often say they don’t need empirical evidence to support their beliefs, they get really excited when such evidence turns up, and tout it widely. Here’s one case: according to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Mormon church has released a photo of one of the “seer stones” (also called “peepstones”) used by church founder Joseph Smith to “translate” the golden plates that became the Book of Mormon.

The translation began in 1828, and, according to the Mormonism Research Ministry (which appears to be critical of the church), went like this:

Harris’ description [Martin Harris was one of the scribes who wrote down Smith’s “translation”] concurs with that of David Whitmer, another one of the three witnesses whose testimony appears at the front of the Book of Mormon. Whitmer details exactly how the stone produced the English interpretation. On page 12 of his book An Address to All Believers in Christ, Whitmer wrote,

“I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”

This of course is dubious, since the plates were written in an unknown language, and nobody takes this as a serious manifestation of the divine save the Mormons themselves.

Be that as it may, here’s the Tribune’s pictures and explanation:

The LDS Church provided a new glimpse of its origins Tuesday by publishing the handwritten “printer’s manuscript” of the Book of Mormon and photos of the “seer stone,” a dark, egg-size polished rock founder Joseph Smith claimed to have used to produce the faith’s sacred scripture.

Both items are included in the just-released “Revelations and Translations: Volume 3,” the 11th publication in the groundbreaking Joseph Smith Papers Project, as part of an effort to be “more transparent” about Mormonism’s past, LDS Church Historian Steven E. Snow said at a news conference.

. . . Smith also used two bound stones — known as the Urim and Thummim — as “interpreters.”

But enough. You’re surely dying to see these items and the stone, so here are some pictures provided by the newspaper. Note that the stones themselves were not displayed, just the pictures and the transcript of the printer’s manuscript:

Presumably the stones are still in the Church’s custody, as color photographs didn’t exist when the manuscript was published. But of course examining them will prove nothing.

The whole story is of course fakery, although 12 witnesses, including Cowdery, signed affadavits testifying that they actually saw the golden plates. Note that this testimony, including identifiable witnesses, should be far more convincing than the simple testimonies of Jesus’s words and deeds given in the New Testament and lacking independent confirmation. But far more people find the words of the Bible more convincing than signed affadavits!

As we all know, the reason for this disparity is that the origin of Mormonism occurred in historical times, and thus is more easily debunked, as it has been, than the historical stories that gave birth to Christianity.